Loooong night.
Tossed and turned. Pain and discomfort. The van was facing mostly the right way, but unfortunately, still on a bit of an angle.
😕
And for whatever reason, I woke up depressed and feeling like maybe I’d done something wrong?
Bad hacker? Sorry. 😞
It was really weird to have my emotional state be so massively different just waking up in the morning versus going to bed at night.
I’m not used to that.
Gratefully, after eating just a little bit of food, I perked up a bit.
Man, nutrition. Big deal.
Or maybe it’s all this down time with nowhere to escape to but my own thoughts?
Either way, after eating a little bit, like I said, I perked up a bit.
Today was supposed to be a day where I spent a very large chunk of the day doing JustAnswer work… But I sort of chose to sidetrack myself playing in the creek. 🙃
With the dam surviving the downpour, and having filled up full to overflowing, at least temporarily, I decided to get my creek groove on. 🙃
I didn’t fix my skid steer. I didn’t do any dirt recon touring. I didn’t work on JustAnswer. I just played in the creek.
Well, played around the creek.
I still worked my tail off today, because that’s… What I do. 🙃
I rolled a burn barrel dan the hill from the greenhouse To the little lower plateau just above the ramp that goes to the creek. Then I rolled the burn barrel down the ramp into the creek, and then I dragged it up onto the rocky bedrock Bank And spent a little while trying to get a fire going.
Not easy getting a fire going when the storm dumped 2 Or 3 in of rain all over everything. 🙃 But I worked and worked and worked and found small little twigs that could dry out quickly if they were subjected to a flame, and I managed to get a fire going eventually.
Once the fire was going in the burn barrel, I started cutting back the brambles and weeds and branches that have overgrown onto the bedrock Bank of the creek.
I’m pretty sure I’ve probably mentioned it before, but the creek bank was super overgrown, with years and years and years of silt and dirt running down from the bank onto the bedrock, and allowing plants to grow because there was enough soil that had made its way down onto the bedrock bank to allow moss first, and then other plants and weeds to grow.
Anyway, so I spent pretty much the whole day pulling weeds and Vines and other plants and what not up by the roots, as much as I could, to clear The bedrock Bank so that people could walk along it without having to bushwhack through blackberry bushes and poison ivy and weeds and whatever else.
Everything that was burnable, I dumped in the burn barrel, and everything that was way too green, I dumped in a pile to dry out for later burning.
On and on I went until my body just about gave out from heat and exhaustion.
So I took a break, grabbed my pineapple, found my LifeStraw water bottle, didn’t have a knife, so I used my hatchet to split open the pineapple into several pieces 🙃, And had a little pineapple lunch As I wandered back and forth on the bedrock bank.
That gave me the Boost that I needed to keep going.
I worked and worked and worked and worked and cleared a massive section of the bedrock, so you can go all the way to the end of the bedrock now nearly weed free. I still don’t have all the moss and stuff scraped off, But I’ve gotten a massive amount of that done as well.
It’s looking really good. 🙂
I cleared the bank almost to the point to where you can walk right up to the spring that’s closest to the greenhouse that bubbles right out of the hillside, where I fill up my water bottle.
But that’s going to take more clearing and more effort, as the bedrock either disappears into the hillside with a lot more dirt on top of it, or it just disappears all together. I’m not sure which is the case.
Anyway, part of my effort going up to where the spring bubbles out was to try and keep the spring from bubbling sideways and running down onto the bedrock.
So I carved a channel from the main spring straight down to where it falls about a foot and a half or so into the creek, and I carved a side channel for the other two places the spring gurgles out, and connected them to the main channel so that it all comes down on one main mini waterfall.
Unfortunately, it looks like the wet that bubbles out and allows water and dirt to pool up over time on the bedrock comes from another place and is not part of the main spring. I might be able to find it and divert it down to the mainspring. We’ll see.
I’d like to keep the spring from running out and depositing silt on the bedrock.
With all the rain, The water was super cloudy, but it was still fun. With the dam in place and the high water level, at the deepest spot, the water was up to my chin, which is just about perfect, in my opinion. 😁
The water level dropped a bit during the day, maybe about an inch and a half or 2 in by the time I finished up?
It might self-seal… or it might not.
Anyway, I Tangled with Poison Ivy and, gosh, I can never remember the name of the other one. Poison whatever it’s called.🙃
Hoping I don’t break out in an itchy rash, but that’s probably wishful thinking.
😶
I did take a couple of baths with soap to wash off any oils, but who knows. I guess we’ll see.
I accidentally left the van a little too long where it was, so it’s going to probably be a really hot night. 😅
Hopefully not, but again… probably wishful thinking.
🙃
The last thing that I did was to use a piece of dead wood to scrape Moss off the bedrock and then spray water all over the bedrock to have the leftover dirt and vegetable matter run into the creek.
Picture somebody splashing someone else in a pool, and that’s basically what I was doing to the bedrock.
Would have been easier with a pressure washer, but using my arms, hey, that’s a little bit of exercise. 🙃
I stayed in the creek for a little while after all that was done just to cool off, and then I packed up my stuff and headed away from the creek.
Next stop, my mom’s house, which is where I am right now as I finish dictating this bit of my journal entry.
I’m going to do some JustAnswer work and then call it a night. I’ll be back here in a little bit with my update for the rest of the day.
…
All right folks, just about 11:30, and I’m just leaving my mom’s house. I worked for about 4 hours doing just answer, so I made a little bit of money. I didn’t make as much as if I were fixing cars, but I’m not covered in nasty chemicals, and I can do this from anywhere in the world.
Which I will likely be testing soon. 😅
Anyway, yeah so I worked for about 4 hours. I think I answered 12 questions.
Big thank you to my mama for feeding me while I was there. You rule, mama. 😊
I’m fighting off a migraine that’s wanting to come on, leftovers from not taking care of myself today as well as I should have. I really just need to put food in a lunch box before I leave the van for the day.
I’m just really really good at getting focused on what I want to do and having things like food, necessary evils, fall to the back burner until they’re absolutely necessary, but then I want to get the thing done that I’m working on getting done, so… I don’t eat properly. Or drink properly.
No wonder people with lots of money sometimes higher personal assistants. 😆
If I made more money, I think that would be a no-brainer. Help somebody else make some money, and help me take care of myself. 😆
While I was there, I also hung up the new shower curtain and the other one that My mom cleaned, so now she can take a shower again without getting water all over everything and without having to look at the super nasty shower curtain.
I also helped my mom with her phone a little bit. She’s got an old phone that doesn’t have much storage capacity, so she has to pay attention to How much of what she keeps on her phone and where everything is stored. So I taught her how to move apps over to her SD card which has more memory than The phone itself. And I also showed her how to move files from her phone to her SD card to free up space on her phone.
That’s pretty much the day.
My face is raw from wiping the sweat off onto my shirt sleeve all day. I forget over and over and over again how much skin gets rubbed off every time I wipe the sweat off. Oftentimes I come to the end of the day and think I have a sunburn, only to remember that it’s actually friction burn.
And I I get to empathize now with my mother who ends up sometimes with trigger bitten arms after weeding the garden. I’ve never really had to deal with That, but today, after doing all the weeding and stuff right next to the creek, oh boy, yes, I’ve got little chigger bites all over my upper arms. Gratefully, so far none in my armpits, but definitely lots of little chigger bites on the outside of my arms.
Going to eat a little bit of food when I get home. Take some migraine pills. Drink some fluids.
I have tentatively decided to go ahead and order starlink nomad. Will be able to use that while on the road trip out west, assuming that all goes down successfully, and then I can pack it to New Zealand if I decide to head that way again.
Still listening to rules for Radicals… and I admit at this point, there’s a lot in there that is getting more and more extreme to my sensitivities. The suggested courses of action using his steps are, in my opinion, dangerous and destructive and really divisive.
Certainly, they are effective at getting people what they want, but at what cost? Holy cow what a cost!!!
Maybe I’m naive. That certainly isn’t a shocker. I’ve been naive most of my life in a lot of ways, I think. But wow.
Maybe that’s the difference between what he calls community organizing and what I want to do in community building?
I’m trying to bring people together on common values and help people come together and grow together.
And he uses division and discontent and anger and enemies in order to marshal people together to accomplish whatever it is that they’re trying to accomplish.
Definitely very effective.
But from my way of thinking, so so so sad. 😞
There’s more that I’d love to say… Want to do some more contemplative posts instead of the basic daily summaries.
I’ve been… different lately.
One of my best friends on my mind even more than usual, an odd thought I’m not sure what to make of. I guess I’ll find out. Or I won’t.
Anyway, I’m migraining, and so I’m going to end here for tonight.
Love and hugs.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 