Wish I were in the mood for some kind of a fun prank to play.
But I’m not.
Today is one of those days where, and I guess it’s not really the whole day, it’s mostly just the end of it, where I just… want to give up or disappear or… something.
Body has been hurting a lot more lately as well…
I guess I had probably better just post one for today without worrying about trying to catch up. I’ve written a little here and there over the last few weeks, but I never post anything until I’ve gotten myself caught up, so that the daily happenings can be caught up in order.
But I just don’t… write much anymore.
Today has been a discouraging day for me.
I try so hard to do good, and I just feel like I screw things up all the time and just end up frustrating, annoying, and angering people.
After getting up this morning, I spent a little time trying to clean things up in the lower field. I’ve had some stuff just sitting there–a little bit of trash… a bin full of my stuff… So I spent a little time cleaning that up, and I spent a little time digging out some of my AC equipment to go help one of Dan’s employees with his AC.
Van was dead this morning because I forgot to unplug the charger from the cigarette lighter that connects to the power station.
I keep forgetting to disconnect it, so I keep draining my battery down accidentally.
Not good for the battery.
Anyway, headed over to Dan’s and got things started again with the AC stuff for his employee whom I was trying to help yesterday.
I got everything squared away with instructions, similar to yesterday, and then I headed back to Haven Hill to try and get stuff done before the storm rolls in tonight.
I spent some time loading up wood that was by the ponds to bring it over to where Jim has been piling it up in preparation for cutting it up.
I probably only got a third of the wood loaded up. Back is hurting. Some of those logs are a lot heavier than what I should be lifting.
Hard to not do heavy labor. I like doing heavy labor. There’s a sense of accomplishment with it.
I like being physically tired from expending lots of energy.
But I stopped because I didn’t want to hurt my back more. It’s been stiff. And I’ve listed too many things that were too heavy recently. And I’ve got my mattresses stacked two high in preparation for the upcoming trip, and I wonder if maybe that is accounting for some of the increase in spine issues.
I remember last year that once I got rid of the second mattress, my spine issues were noticeably improved, though certainly still quite a bit of an issue.
I’ve been sleeping on these two mattresses for… a week now?
I don’t know. But it’ll be good to get it back to its previous home.
I also spent some time loading up rocks by the power pole. There were several clusters of large rocks that make it impossible to mow with a regular mower or the tractor, and with spring here, everything greening up lightning quickly, and the grass beginning to grow tall, it becomes a much greater challenge to find the rocks in the tall grass.
So I’ve been trying to clean those up to make it easier to take care of the place.
Got that load taken down to the spring area, as I’m going to use the rocks that I gather from around the property to help fill in the huge hole that got dug out by my previous skid steer debacle.
By that point, I needed to head back over to Dan’s place because the vacuuming down and the holding of pressure of the AC system was done, and they were back from running errands and getting lunch.
Dan bought me lunch, which was nice of him, so I ate it and then tried to teach the young gentleman how to charge his AC system, explaining what I was doing as I did it.
Gratefully, it went quite well, and he’s going to be able to take back some of the stuff that he bought, which will get him some money back.
I also found out that he didn’t know that he was charged a core for the engine that he bought, so he might be able to get another hundred plus dollars back as a core. They could be a stickler because he’s a couple weeks past the 30 day requirement for returning a core, but hopefully they’ll be lenient and allow him to get the core charge back. 🤞
The young man gave me some money, which I wasn’t expecting, for helping him do the AC work. I tried to not take it, but Dan told him to just go put the money in my van since I wouldn’t take it.
Darn you, Dan. 🙃
From there, I headed back to Haven Hill and jumped on my skid steer again.
I’m using it so much that I haven’t listed it for sale. 🙃
Trying to help things get ready for the year.
Anyway, I did a little clean up by Jim and Steph’s house, cleaning up wood leftovers that were still there. I tried to take my skid steer down the creek from up by the deck, as the water is too deep by the swimming hole portion for me to be able to scoot by there, unfortunately.
And again, unfortunately, I was stymied because the natural dam has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, with more vegetation having gotten caught in the huge tree that fell across the creek. It’s so big now that it was immovable by my skid steer.
So I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do that part of creek bed adjusting.
Spent probably an hour in the creek by the deck scraping the bottom of it. Liz had mentioned that there was very little water in the creek, and I had thought there was more, but I spend all my time down in the shelf area, so I don’t see the stuff by the deck much anymore.
So when I took my skid steer down in there to try and go from the Upper Creek to the lower part of the creek to work on the creek bed to make everything deeper for swimming and playing around, I realized just how low the water was.
Not sure why it’s so low. Maybe the neighbor is filling upon again? Maybe it just hasn’t rained much? I don’t know. It’s going to rain again for the next 4 days, so there will be an increase in water.
But I went and scraped bottom to at least make it look a little more presentable with more of a flow across the whole Creek instead of little channels here and there.
[sigh]
I started damning up the creek a little bit upstream of the deck. We had wanted build up the creek there a bit, so we could have a mini falls to be able to enjoy the sound of water when out at the deck.
From there, I spent some time clearing blackberry vines and other Vines and vegetation from the edge of the Woods by the creek and from the area on the east side of the spring House where it’s built up massively.
I made some progress.
And then I went accidentally tore up massive roots of an absolutely gorgeous walnut tree that’s between the lower pond and the spring that I’ve been working around lately.
That was really discouraging. I accidentally dug deeper than I thought I was digging with my skid steer. All I was trying to do was clear away top level vegetation, but I ended up digging down maybe five or six inches in a few spots, maybe more in some other spots, and ended up hitting an absolutely massive route that by itself is probably 10 or 12 inches in diameter.
Hit two roots. 😞
And then I got my skid steer stuck again. This time, I got a little too close to the edge of the spillway where the spring house pond winds through the ditch to the creek.
The side of the spillway started to give way, and down I went.
The result was a skid steer that was tilted on maybe a 30 or 45° angle, two wheels down in the ditch, and two up top, high centered, and completely stuck where it was–unable to move even an inch.
I was frustrated… discouraged… angry.
And I was embarrassed as well.
I just feel like I screw everything up. It’s like everything I touch just… gets ruined.
I try so hard to do good, help people, make things better, make things easier…
And then I tear up big roots of gorgeous trees, which increases the likelihood of them getting disease and fungus and infection and bugs…
And I get stuck yet again and have to waste Jim’s time to help pull me out.
To Jim’s credit, it doesn’t seem to bother him a bit. He laughed when he heard that I was stuck yet again. He came and rescued me, yet again. He’s such a patient, wonderful person.
And I just… want to quit and give up, looking around trying to make things better and feeling like it’s one step forward two steps backward.
😞
But Jim got me pulled out, and he did his best to comfort me in my discouragement and frustration and embarrassment.
In the process of digging me out, we ended up tearing up all sorts of other roots for other trees, tore the bark off of one tree…
The area looks like an absolute disaster down there, and all I’ve been trying to do is make it beautiful, make it a place for people to enjoy–enjoy the beauty of nature, spend time together in a beautiful place.
But I just seem to make things worse. 😞
Took him out to dinner. Stuff was having a book club, so he hadn’t eaten yet, rescuing me, and then waiting for the book club thing to finish before he got dinner, so I just invited him out to dinner. We went up to a little Chinese place in Bella Vista. Supposedly, they were open until 9:30, but when we got there around 8:40, they said they were only doing to-go orders at that point.
Oh well.
So we headed back to the house, getting there after the book club thingy had ended, and everyone was gone.
Ate dinner, chatted with Jim and Landon and Elinore for a bit. Helped Jim unload I saw to get it out of the weather that’s coming tonight. Thunderstorms, pretty hefty ones, starting around 6:00 in the morning, I think.
Found out today that some people have been frustrated with me for the things that I’ve been doing on the property.
It’s really hard for me when people are annoyed by the things that I do.
So I’m pretty discouraged right now. I know it’s an overreaction to the reality of what’s happening on the hill. At least… I think it’s an overreaction.
But I’m still… it’s just discouraging to know that people are frustrated/annoyed with some of the things that I’m doing. It’s been happening a lot more lately it feels like.
I just want to crawl into a hole and die.
I’m not very good at having people think poorly of me or be unhappy with me in any way whatsoever.
…
I got my power station charged back up, thanks to Jim and his generosity who said to go ahead and charge up whenever I want. I know it’s probably only literally a few dollars worth of electricity in actual cost, but still feels like a big thing to me because it’s… someone else donating their time and money to help me when I’ve made the choice to live the way that I do, and I feel like I should live with the consequences.
Anyway…
Feeling as crappy as I did, I snuck into the Walmart Neighborhood Market in Pea Ridge just before it closed, so I could buy some comfort food.
Surprise surprise. 😞
Soda and popsicles.
More things that I’m unhappy with myself for. Vicious cycle. Gosh… so crazy to see how life has changed so much for me, both on the outside and on the inside.
[sigh]
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful that my skid steer is working at least enough to help here around the property.
- I’m grateful to Jim for pulling me out of the ditch
- I’m grateful to Jim for being so kind and patient with me and for sharing his gratitude for the things that I’m trying to do to help the hill
- I’m grateful for Rover, that he’s still going strong.
- I’m grateful that I was able to get myself to finally go to the store and buy screws to increase the number of places where the top is fastened down. I didn’t get it done before the rain came, but at least I got the metal screws bought. Progress.
Success:
- It’s hard to think of it as a success because for the most part my language was absolutely awful today, but there was at least one instance where I held my tongue, so maybe that could be a success.
Improvement:
- Probably would be good if I could not take it so hard when people are unhappy with me
Another day in the books.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 