It’s been a bit of a roller coaster of a day today.
I had a really low moment today, where I watched myself react the way I reacted months ago.
It was rough.
Having felt so much light and peace and joy and love… It was rough to see myself revert to a very very ugly place.
But I’ll get there…
Woke up really early, once again. I suppose I probably wouldn’t wake up as early if I put the blanket back up that blocks off the view from the front of the vehicle to the back, consequently also inhibiting the light from entering.
It gets light so early!
The day started off really beautifully. Up, good morning routine, really good conversation with the Big Guy.
Gave my sister a really big hug before she left for work, and then I got down to it. 😎
My goal was to use the big backhoe that the neighbor rented that he’s letting us use while he’s out of town, and to move the entire huge dirt pile from where the septic is supposed to be to the northwest corner of the house, in preparation for the finishing touches around the garage if/when it’s built.
I tried to be a little coy about it, and then as soon as my sister was out of sight after driving away, I hopped on the backhoe and got to work. 🚜
I scooped and drove and scooped and drove and scooped and drove.
I also tried to multitask, making phone calls while driving back and forth, trying to get in touch with the quarries to ask about engineered fill.
I also got a phone call from the sales rep for one of the exteriors companies who wanted to come by and look at the house to give a bid on a potential stucco exterior, so I coordinated that with Heather and Hans, and Heather said that she would come home for lunch to be able to ask the sales rep / estimator all her questions.
In the meantime, I kept going on the big backhoe, trying to be as efficient as I could be. Getting the horses out of the pasture, getting my internet turned on and my van moved such that I could use the Vans internet to make my phone calls and whatnot, lots of different little things.
After maybe two and a half hours of using the backhoe, it started making some pretty good squeaking noises every time I’d raise the arm or tilt the bucket. 😬
Knowing the sound was likely the sound of pivot points having run out of Grease, I kept using the backhoe for a little bit and then finally decided that I needed to get it greased up if I was going to keep using it.
So I tried to get in touch with Hans to see if he had a grease gun somewhere. I looked all over for one before trying to get in touch with him without finding one, and then he was super busy, so he didn’t have time to get back with me quickly, so I ended up driving into town to bomgaars to buy a grease gun and some grease.
Chatted with my mom while on the drive, knowing that she would enjoy hearing that I was able to get my tempo recommend yesterday. 🥰
I found the grease gun for a pretty cheap price, and the grease was a really good price compared to what I was used to from buying it at AutoZone. 🙃
So I headed on back, looking at the clock, and sort of measuring/guesstimating that I was going to be okay–that I was going to be able to get the whole pile of dirt moved before my sister got there to meet with the exteriors guy.
But that’s when things went sideways… 😕
And it was something so trivial, too.
The grease gun that I bought was missing the fitting that’s supposed to go on the hose adapter. At first, I wondered if maybe I was just missing the part from the box, maybe it just fell out or was still in the box or something, but no.
Then I wondered if maybe I was supposed to remove the fitting from the fixed connector thing to put on the flexible hose, so I unscrewed it, but it didn’t fit on. The threads were too big.
Which meant that I was going to have to take off the adapter and the coupler from the fixed connector.
But there was no joy there, either. The coupler was on so tight that I was just mangling the rest of the piece of equipment trying to loosen the coupler.
And if that weren’t bad enough, the piece that I originally tried to take apart to swap over to the hose, fell apart into eight different pieces.
And I lost it. 😕
My neural pathways slipped me right back to a reaction of the type that were quite regular 3 months ago.
😞
In some ways, I guess I was more restrained than 3 months ago, but in other ways, it was… still the same.
I didn’t used to get like this. 😞
So much pain and so much struggle for so many years… I became someone that I just don’t even really recognize.
I’m mostly back to being me, but this was a sobering reminder that it takes time to overcome what has been so powerfully ingrained.
It was a reminder that with the flip of a switch, I can slide back into patterns of being and thinking that are far from what I want to be and do.
I think it was an eye-opener for how quickly I could slip back into my pornography addiction were I to continue reacting that way.
It’s still hard to look back at how I reacted and not feel… Discouraged a bit.
I had hoped to be beyond those kinds of reactions, but clearly, I’m not yet, so I get to be okay with the fact that I’m not there yet, and I get to continue to work on not going back there again. 🙃
Funny enough, after my toddler tantrum, Hans was able to direct me to where his grease gun was, and I was able to get the backhoe greased, and I, even despite the uncomfortable grease-gun blessings 🙃, I still managed to get the dirt pile nearly completely gone by the time my sister got home. There were just some little odds and ends left to scrape up after she got back, but I pretty much accomplished the goal that I had hoped to accomplish, despite everything else. She was able to come home to a completely missing pile of dirt that had been there for something like 2 years.
Stayed and hung out with my sister for a bit while she chatted with the exteriors representative. Then I hopped back on the backhoe to move the dirt was just west of the buildup that we are working on. I measured the garage openings and slopes and everything and found that we were going to want more room on the west side of the garage to taper the build-up down to the natural layer. So I used the backhoe to scoop the dirt pile probably maybe seven or eight feet further than it was.
Heather and Hans got home not too long after that, both excited to see what all I’d been able to accomplish.
The hard jostling on the backhoe all day had left my back pretty sore. The seat has a shock absorber, but I don’t think it works because when you go over a bump, the seat comes slamming down instead of like a spring or a cushion. It’s just bang, bang, bang.
So my back was pretty sore from all the vertical up and down shocks.
I took a little break, as Hans started working on the septic perk test holes. We have to have four different holes, three at least 30 in deep, and one something like 4 ft Plus deep. So he started working on those, I think getting them nearly done.
He had done two before, and now he was doing two more.
After resting for a bit, I decided to go ahead and start using the backhoe again to dig out the front portion of the house where they are going to have their walkout basement.
There’s a pretty huge amount of material that needs to be dug out, and so I started going to town on it. It’s pretty hard to dig out with a backhoe, as it’s really not very versatile. You have to basically sit in the same position to do a bunch of work, and then you got to completely move the machine just to move just a little bit.
I’ve definitely been spoiled having an excavator. 🙃
Anyway, in the process of doing the digging in front of the house to try and get everything down to the grade that’s desired, I managed to catch one of the stabilization legs with the bucket, bending the really big, thick piece of metal that’s mounted over the hydraulic cylinders to protect them.
I didn’t realize what happened, until I went to lift up the stabilizer legs and saw this really badly bent plate metal.
😕
I guess maybe the silver lining is that I didn’t flip out like I did with the grease gun. I was mostly just dejected…
Gratefully, the damage is just cosmetic, and I was able to bend the piece back that was badly bent, though it was still clearly slightly bent, and the metal was deformed where I had bent it back.
Being such a heavy duty metal, there’s no way that it could be properly fully bent back into shape without going to a blacksmith/welder place. The metal is going to need to be heated up significantly in order to be malleable enough to fix, and then it would need to be repainted. If it’s not repainted, it’s going to rust.
Anyway, that was pretty discouraging. I kept digging for a while before I finally just ran out of steam, parked the backhoe up on the fill pile, and grabbed my tools to start taking the stabilizer arm shield apart.
I’m falling asleep while riding this. It’s a quarter after midnight…
I’m trying to get back in the habit of writing every night. 🤞
Anyway, it took a little while, but I was able to get the piece off the backhoe, which was when I realized that the metal was not just bent, but was also split, and two of the bolts that hold the assembly together were bent from so much pressure against them.
😕
It was very hard to stay positive. Very very hard.
But both Hans and Heather were way less concerned about it than I was. And it was nice for their encouragement and greater appreciation for what I had done for the property then their concern for the backhoe.
It’s surprising to me that a piece of heavy equipment would be designed such that it can actually damage itself. I don’t think any of my pieces of heavy equipment are capable of damaging themselves. The excavator arm simply can’t reach.
But I guess it’s different for a backhoe? Or maybe I didn’t have the legs all the way out? I don’t know. But I’m not going to worry about it.
We all chatted about septic stuff and yard design and whatnot for a while. We ate dinner. Had a bit of a gospel discussion for a bit that was really meaningful for all concerned, I think.
I stayed up a little later chatting with my sister, more gospel conversation stuff, and that was nice.
And now here I am finishing this post for the day. 😊
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful to be in a much better place right now than I was late this morning with the grease gun debacle.
- I’m grateful for my sister for caring so much more about me than about a damaged piece of plate metal on the backhoe.
- I’m grateful for my sister suggesting that we listen to hymns. It was really good for both of us, and I think it was instrumental in helping me to begin to let go of my concern for superficial things and to embrace the eternal.
- I’m grateful that despite the uncomfortable blessing of the grease gun, that I was able to give my sister and brother-in-law a happy surprise today with progress, meaningful visual progress.
- I’m grateful to have had a really beautiful morning and to be bookending the day by coming back to brighter and happier things.
Success:
- I’m going to bed with positive thoughts and actions when it could have been something far different.
Improvement:
- Outcomes. I don’t need to be focusing on getting the outcomes I want. I want to be focusing on the journey and my heart, letting the outcomes be whatever they are.
We’ve got this. 😊💚
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 