(written on the 26th from notes taken previously)
Still bleary-eyed, I peeked out the front windshield at the scenery around me.
🥰
I was in the clouds… literally. 😁
Up on the low mountainside where I was, the clouds were moving in and out, almost as if the mountain were breathing.
I adore the beauty of this world. 🥰
I crawled out of Rover to get some pictures.
My dentist appointment was at 11:00, and there was a shooting range not too far away from it. It wasn’t going to be open before the dentist appointment, but I figured I would swing by to give it a look to see if it might be a place that I could sell some of my ammunition, just in case I decided to make a brief stop over in Canada to visit the hot springs before heading to my sister’s place in South Dakota.
I thought maybe I would set up a little sign at the entrance to the shooting range place–just in case people were interested.
From there I headed to the dentist, also in Issaquah. I was grateful for the opportunity to get some answers now, and then hopefully be able to use those answers for quicker treatment once I got to South Dakota. I was grateful that the scheduler was totally fine with me taking advantage of the new patient deal despite the fact that I pretty much certainly wasn’t going to be using them for my treatment options.
I started doing some work online while I waited for my scheduled time, and then I headed back, had an absolutely massive number of x-rays taken. They took 19 x-rays, 18 X-rays of two teeth each, and then one panoramic x-ray.
They took so many that I wondered if my head might start getting hot from all the radiation. 😅
I don’t think I’ve ever had more than just a handful of x-rays taken at the same time.
I’m grateful I got the x-rays, but the dentist certainly didn’t give the impression that she was very knowledgeable. She kind of seemed a little green?
It is a large dental chain, so that might have something to do with it? Maybe a lot of brand new dentists starting there as a way of getting going?
I don’t know. The main takeaway from the x-rays was that one of the teeth that was bothering me most was either needing a root canal or close to needing a root canal, so the dentist wasn’t confident in her own interpretation of the x-rays and wanted to refer me to an endodontist for an opinion about what to do with that tooth. I’m still hoping that maybe there’s a chance that I don’t need a root canal yet.
Was so hoping to get out of my 40s without having the need for a root canal 🙃–especially after having super crazy deep feelings as a middle teenager.
I still have hope. 🤞
Though I recognize there’s probably a pretty good chance it’s going to need a root canal. Oh well. 🙃
They also recommended gumline fillings for the exposed roots that I have had for so long that have made my mouth hurt just in general for years and years.
I don’t know enough about gumline feelings yet to feel comfortable giving the go ahead. I want to learn more about those.
After the dentist, I started working again, taking call, one of them in the dentist office with them graciously allowing me to finish up my business conversation before we concluded our business transaction. I also requested that they email me the X-ray files, so they took my email address and told me that they would send them to me.
I started heading back to the shooting range, and then I went and talked to the guy working the counter at the shooting range and asked him about selling ammunition in the state in general, and he suggested that I put a message up on the board right there at the shooting range.
As I was only going to be there for a matter of hours, I figured I would just go ahead and head down back to my van, make a little sign, and stick it out on a bin so that people coming in and out of the shooting range parking lot could read it and decide if they wanted to buy some of my ammunition.
So I made the little sign, put it up on the plastic bin outside of rover, and then just started doing online questions and what not while I sat in the van hoping for people to stop and want to buy ammunition.
Minutes turned into hours, and after a handful of hours of waiting, with the time approaching for me to need to leave in order to get to my sister’s house in time to spend some time with her and her absolutely nutty work schedule, I packed up my stuff and got ready to leave.
Just as I was getting ready to leave, I saw a jogger jogging toward me stop while jogging and beyond my van behind me. Curious as to what she was looking at, I stuck my head out the window and saw what it first I thought was a dog sort of jogging away from me.
But then… it wasn’t a dog… It was…
A bear!!!
😶
❗❗❗
😍
A bear!!!
A little adolescent one. 🥰
I got out of my van with my phone to take a picture, but it was sort of jogging away from me, stopping briefly and then jogging away a little bit more, before ducking into the woods.
The lady might have been a local, as she mentioned that she had seen a mama bear with a couple of cubs in the area, so this was probably one of those cubs.
The mama bear, if she was around, wasn’t in sight, and the little adolescent seemed to be running around on its own.
So naturally I got in my van and drove toward the woods where the bear had entered. 😁
But I didn’t see the little guy/gal (I’m just going to call him a guy from here).
So I turned Rover down onto the road where I had come in on originally, hoping that I might get a glimpse of the bear from that section of road, as the road was sort of a t shape, and he was in one of the sections by the, I think, north side of the T (the long part of the T running east and west, I believe?)
And then I saw him!
And not only did I see him, I saw him here! 😍
Little guy up in a very small tree eating berries. 🥰
Yay!!!
I tried to get closer, hiding behind the trees, so I could get a better picture, also. Around to make sure the mama actually wasn’t around.
Speaking of mamas, don’t worry, mama, I had my bear spray with me. 🙃
😁
Unfortunately, I was upwind, so the bear climbed down from the tree before I was able to get to a place where I could take a better picture.
I had hoped that I would find him again, so I actually wandered around for a little while, venturing only a little ways into the woods in different sections, and then going around to the walking path that was in the direction I think he went, bear spray in hand, though not expecting to need it, hoping to maybe catch a glimpse of him again.
No luck this time, though.
But what an amazing opportunity to see a little bear in the wild, and not just in the wild, but up in a tree eating some berries! 🥰
Heart grateful and happy. 😊
From there, I started making my way to my sister Leslie’s house, hoping to arrive about the same time that she was going to.
On the way there, however, it was a bit warmer than it had been, so I went to turn my AC on, and it blew, but it didn’t blow cold. It blew… warm. 😅
Hmmm…
Once I got to the area where she lives, ahead of schedule, I pulled over on a nearby Street by a park to give my AC compressor a look over to see if it was kicking on, and what did I find?
The AC clutch on my AC compressor was missing. 😅
Gratefully, I’ve continued to be blessed with this gift of just taking things in stride and being grateful for absolutely everything that happens–sideways blessings included. 🥳
So I didn’t worry too much about it. I looked at the metal shavings that were still magnetically attached to the compressor pulley, and I thought about not having AC back in Arkansas, and I just… didn’t really worry about it.
🥳
My visit with my sister Leslie was absolutely wonderful. 🥰
We just talked in her kitchen from about 6:30 until about 10:00 or 10:30, just talking and talking and talking.
It was a beautiful and meaningful time together. 🥰
We talked about so many different things, and she encouraged me, and I committed to, having my first nonprofit type events, and my first revenue, by this fall.
😳
She’s got a huge passion project that she’s working on as well, so she made the commitment, and encouraged me to do the same.
That brought a few anxious nerves, because when I make a commitment… it’s a commitment. It’s not something flippant or unthinking.
If I make the promise, I’m going to do it.
And that’s a bit scary because I’ve talked about it and talked about it and talked about it and have only ever made little bits of progress.
Having both a first event and first revenue is… huge. 😳
😅
Bring it on.
…
😅
Thanks, Leslie, for the challenge and encouragement!
After our long chat, Mark coming home toward the end of it and joining the chat, we took selfies, and I headed out on my way.
Wonderful visit. 🥰
As I was driving away from my sister’s house, just a couple of streets over, I pulled up to a stoplight and noticed that there was a broken down car kitty corner on the cross street in the middle of the turning lane with its hood up and a guy on his phone looking at the engine bay.
I rolled down my window and yelled over to him to ask if he was okay, and he looked over, but he didn’t say anything. I was in the lane going straight, and the first one there with cars behind me, so I couldn’t just get over into the turn lane to swing over to him, and the green light going straight came before the green light going left, so I went straight, went a couple of streets down because the next one was a one-way the wrong direction, took a left, and then made my way back to the street that he was on, pulling up behind him.
I wandered over, and found that his vehicle was completely dead, not even a single light coming on–which was actually a good sign, as the likelihood that it was something super simple increased dramatically.
The young man’s name was vladimir, guessing he was in his early to mid-20s, and was over here from Ukraine, I think he said from Donetsk.
Rough place to be from these days. 😞
He didn’t speak much English at all, so I was grateful to have my Gemini AI. 🥳 I asked it to translate what I said in English into Ukrainian, and after a little while, there were times where he would speak back to it in ukrainian, and it would automatically translate it to me in english. Sometimes I had to prompt it to say it in english, but it was super cool.
Since pretty much everything I own but my outdoor stuff is in my van, I have most of my auto tools with me, so I grabbed my multimeter and quickly found that though his battery was charged, the charge wasn’t getting from his battery posts to his battery cables, indicating that there was some kind of corrosion or something preventing a solid connection.
There was no visible corrosion on the outside, but been fixing cars long enough to recognize that there was likely going to be corrosion on the inside that needed to be scraped off.
So I grabbed my tool, disconnected his battery cables, and found that yes, indeed, there was a thick, hard, corrosion that had built up between the post and the cables.
I think I’m scraping it away with a flat head screwdriver before I remembered, after having done lots and lots and lots of scraping 🙃, but I have wire brushes specifically for that purpose. 😆
So I went and grabbed my wire brushes, spent a little while longer cleaning up the posts and cables, and she fired up!
🥳
He tried to give me $20, sticking it in my tool bag, but I grabbed it right out of my tool bag, saying “no no no no!” And with a smile, tucking it into his hoodie that was draped over his shoulders and back.
Grateful to be able to be of service. 🥰
Wish I had thought about grabbing his phone number and taking a selfie with him before I left, but it didn’t even cross my mind until after he had driven away.
I looked on the freecampsites.net app and found a little spot up in the national Forest area just north of Darrington, Washington, so I pointed Rover that direction and started listening to uplifting and important (to me) things on my headphones as I drove. I think I spent a good long time listening to some old recorded conversations that I had that were important to me.
The little camping spot on the national Forest Road looked quite promising at first, as I headed up a dirt road into the wooded hills, but after having gone a good ways, but before getting to the actual spot, I rolled up to a section of the road with the sign saying Road closed, and half the road missing, having crumbled away in a landslide.
I toyed with the idea of driving over the uncrumbled side before coming to my senses, both wanting to be safe and wanting to be someone who obeys the law.
So I think I rolled backwards away until I got to a spot that was wide enough for me to do several Point u-turn, and then I headed back down until I found a turnout that was wide enough for me to camp for the night and still be safe in case someone else came up the road.
I don’t remember what time I got there, but I think it might have been somewhere around 1:00 in the morning, and I spent the next 2 hours reading through spiritual experiences that I had had and written down, as well as reading through some special experiences that a friend had written and shared with me years ago.
Absolutely beautiful day. 😊
One of the things that trying to figure out right now is how to take care of myself. In addition to the near PTSD with a thought of trying to figure out stuff with doctors and whatnot, having lost nearly all faith in the medical establishment, yet still needing medical help, I also struggle to spend the time necessary to figure my own medical issues out because that takes away from the time I have to try to be a blessing to other people, and it’s hard for me to justify focusing on myself when I could be helping others.
The reality is that I need to take care of myself so that I can better serve others, but with so little faith that anyone can do anything to help my physical ailments, it’s hard to get up the willingness sufficient to overcome the lack of hope and PTSD-ish reaction to even thinking about putting in the time and energy and effort again.
But I need to. I spend so much time being concerned about others ailments and struggles, so much time trying to help them find answers and relief. I should spend more time taking care of myself. I would want my loved ones to do that for themselves when needed.
Anyway, finally crashed about 3 a.m. 🙃
Gratitude:
- Remember how I’ve mentioned in the past that when I stop focusing on sports, once I get over the initial withdrawal, I’m grateful that I’ve managed to walk away? Well, I’m there! I just remembered today that it’s the NBA playoffs, and I have no idea what happened, and I don’t care. 🥳 I’m free again! And I’ve been free of my daily News and tech and political fixes. And I love it. It’s so wonderful–so so wonderful!
- I’m grateful to have been able to spend time with my sister. I don’t see her very often at all, generally once a year-ish? If that? So even though it was a brief visit in the middle of the ridiculously challenging and busy work time for her, it was still wonderful.
- I’m grateful to have found this little spot to sleep in the little turnout since the other place wasn’t accessible.
- I’m grateful do you have been able to see that bear! So fun! Makes my heart happy. I love this beautiful world and all these wonderful little experiences with mother Earth and her creatures. 🥰
- I’m grateful to be grateful. Things are shifting inside of me in ways that are just… powerful. 🙏 Things have been going sideways sometimes, and I’m still grateful. In fact, the nerve twinges in my feet that have been twinges have recently started turning into really sharp painful firings, but I’m ok. Yes, the neural pathways are still there and go right to suicide, but those are just thoughts that pop in, and I’m okay, despite the ever-worsening symptoms. 🥳
- I’m grateful to have been able to help vladimir, and I’m grateful that I have the know-how in such a common area of need for people.
Success:
- Gratitude and perspective victories! 🥳
Improvement:
- I… can’t think of anything today? I’m sure there is, but it’s been such a great day of excitement and joy and growth and just… great experiences that I’m… at a loss to find something at the moment, and… I’m grateful for that, too!
Love you all. 🤍❤️💚
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 