😴
So I went to bed last night hoping to get a decent night’s sleep, even putting up the little blanket to keep the light out from the ridiculously early sunrise.
…and then I woke up at 4:45ish… with it already light out.
😶
Do I just have amnesia? This seems totally foreign to normalcy, but it’s not like the world just… started spinning faster while our clock stayed the same.
🤷
I don’t know. Unfortunately, I didn’t just wake up at 4:45, my brain got going, and once the brain goes, I’m pretty much toast at that point. 🙃
I tried to go back to sleep and tried and tried. I dozed for a little bit, thinking that I had maybe been able to sleep some more, but I think it was only 5:30 when I looked at my phone again.
With my brain fully awake at that point, I just gave up trying to sleep more, and I think I wrote my post for yesterday.
Might as well be productive if I’m going to be awake when I would rather be asleep. 🙃
I’m yawning up a storm right now, though. Hopefully that’s a good sign for tonight. 🤞
Anyway, so I did some morning routine stuff, wrote the post, and then I decided to try and go back to bed, and gratefully, I think I was able to doze for maybe another hour and a halfish? I don’t remember for sure, but after being up for probably an hour and a half, i dozed for maybe another hour before getting up for good.
It rained a little bit last night, so the ground was a little wet, so I was slow to want to use the backhoe, but it didn’t rain as much as it might have, and so the ground wasn’t a muddy mess, so it ended up being okay to use the backhoe.
A got Zora her breakfast, and then I learned how to put on a rope halter on a horse, and I went over to Fiona to invite her out of the horse area to go eat some of the grass they love in the yard area, but she walked away from me. So then I went over to river, and he was a little nervous, I think, but he let me put on the halter, so I opened the gate and walked him out and stood there doing some online on my phone while he munched away at the grass.
And Fiona was jealous. 🙃
She started whining and carrying on, and I was like, “Well Fiona, I gave you the opportunity first, and you turned me down, so you can’t complain now.”
I let River munch for probably 20 or 30 minutes before I put him back in, and then I took the halter off of him and started walking toward Fiona who, apparently was rather offended, and walked her little self right away from me.
😆
I might give it a try again tomorrow, and we’ll see if she walks away or if she lets me put the halter on her. 😁
Anyway after that, I spent a good little while on my computer trying to organize and clean up my files. I’m trying to get all of my computer files organized and cleaned up, with duplicate files deleted and related files combined into folders and whatnot.
That’s been on my to-do list for a long time, and getting all my book notes and draft stuff organized together was kind of the catalyst. If I’m going to be doing it for that, I might as well do it for everything, as that’s something that’s been important to me for a while now, so I can make sure that I know where everything is, and so that I make sure that I have multiple backups of everything. Basically, what I’m going to do, is have two hard drives, one that’s solid state, and one that’s Legacy technology, and those will hold my file backups, the stuff that isn’t ever going to change, and then I’ll have my little jump drive that holds everything that I’m currently working on that I will back up probably once a week or once a month and just overwrite that particular file folder on both of my main backup drives.
Anyway, so I spent probably two or three hours doing file stuff, eating breakfast, and doing online work stuff before heading out to the house project again.
I started by spending some time clearing away spilled concrete away from the form-a-drain. I still have quite a bit left to do on that, as I haven’t even finished half the perimeter of the house. 😅
I used the backhoe to start moving some of the crushed up rock that I’d made a pile of yesterday, and then I turned the backhoe around backwards and tried to use it to pull apart the rock that is in the way of the septic line that comes out of the house.
The huge excavator arm couldn’t do almost anything with that rock. I don’t know what kind of rock it is, but the excavator barely did more than a flesh wound’s worth of work.
Anyway, so I talked to Hans about the roto hammer, found it, and then started using it to chisel up the rock.
Massive job.
Nothing like chiseling out a super dense, hard to break rock–and not just a little bit. I needed to jackhammer out an area probably about 8 ft long and about 18 in deep, or so.
Hefty hefty rock. 💪
The roto Hammer would get hot quickly, and I wasn’t comfortable continuing to use it while it was so hot, so I grabbed my sledgehammer and chisel and started beating away at the rock.
Periodically, I would use the roto Hammer again until it got really hot, and then I would stop using it again and go back to the sledge hammer and chisel.
Back and forth I went alternating between roto Hammer and sledgehammer with chisel, and then periodically, I would use the excavator to see if I could make any meaningful progress, which was kind of a lost cause at that point. I don’t know what kind of rock we’ve been trying to chisel through, but good gravy!
Anyway, so I did that and tried to take calls for work at the same time. I was able to take some questions, but then I guess Cloudfire had some sort of significant outage, and that affected JustAnswer, so for a while, I couldn’t even log into my account to work.
Chatted a little bit with my sister Heather who’s out of town on a work trip.
And I kept working at the chiseling project for several hours until Hans got back, who, when he came over to see what I was doing, joined me in the rock destruction efforts.
He manned the roto hammer, and I manned the sledgehammer and chisel, and then I would remove the waste rock from both of us, to keep things flowing smoothly.
A little before 6:00, we decided to call it a night, as the sun was getting lower in the sky, and we had decided that we were going to go take a dip in Cascade Falls to end the day, and then we were going to head over to Dairy Queen.
Cascade Falls was the most crowded I’d ever seen it. There was I think a Lakota Tribe get together, so that was cool, though I do prefer it when I’m the only person there, I and whomever I bring with me.
But there was another family from the little Branch there, so that was nice to see them, and it was fun to see all the kids from the big Lakota get together running around and laughing and squealing and jumping in the water. 🥰
Hans and I did a little exploring down river, thoroughly enjoying ourselves in the lovely water which is cold enough to be uncomfortable when you first jump in, but then warm enough that you can get used to it and sit in it for a good while.
From there, no butts in sight 😆, we headed into town and decided to go to Taco John’s first before dairy queen, I grabbing a burrito and a drink and some big thing full of tater tot type potato dealies that were super good. No ketchup needed. So good. 🤤
We skipped dairy Queen because we were full, and it was getting colder, so we headed home by way of Sheps Canyon, just going for a scenic drive in the beautiful little nearby canyon.
Then it was on home, and for me, back to file organization on my computer. It’s 12:23 a.m., and I’m still transferring files around while I write this post. 🙃
The current transfer is over 10,000 files, only 24% complete as of the moment, with over 82 gigs left to transfer. 😅
My eyes are tired. I want to sleep. 🙃
😴
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful for my sister Heather for her efforts to help me get out of the heavy place. It was a much better day today in that regard. It wasn’t bright and light like I’ve been used to mostly lately, but it wasn’t heavy and dark, so that was a great step up, and as of right now, things are pretty good, and it’s been a great day.
- I’m grateful for the progress made in excavating the trench for where the septic line is going to go. Didn’t think we were going to have to spend so much time excavating solid Rock with chisels and whatnot, but hey, it’s getting done. 😊
- I’m grateful to have Cascade Falls so close. What an absolutely wonderful experience to be able to just go over there at just about the drop of a hat and enjoy the water and the time out in nature.
- I’m grateful to have been able to share the visit to Cascade Falls with Hans today. It was nice to hang out with him and enjoy it together. It’s always nicer to share places that I love with people who are important to me.
- I’m grateful that River was willing to let me put the halter on him and lead him out.
Success:
- When things could have gone darker today, I fought those thoughts off. 🎉 Celebrating successes!
Improvement:
- Ummm… I could have been better at expanding dedicated effort to focusing on the ways I can lay my all on the altar. Part of what I want to be doing right now.
Love you guys!
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 