2025-06-16 (Monday) — “He’s a Digger”

Discipline, Stephen, discipline.

You don’t want to stay up and write your journal post, but you do want to get the habit back.

No time like the present. Put it off, and you’ll likely put it off again. Do it now, and you’ve got a better chance of succeeding.

[sigh]

I meant to get going earlier than I did this morning. And I misunderstood the timing for when everyone was getting up, so when I got up about 7:00, Heather and Hans were already up and going, taking care of chores on the homefront.

I did some morning routine stuff, and then I hopped on the backhoe to get things going for the day.

The first step was to dig an exploratory hole with the backhoe to make sure we had at least 4 ft of dirt below the lowest trench level for the leech lines.

An exploratory hole had already been begun, but it needs to go down a good bit deeper, so I got to work.

I dug and dug, but unfortunately, after about 4 and 1/2 ft, I hit solid rock.

So I moved the backhoe about 15 ft further down the hill and started digging. The ground was so hard that I couldn’t barely make any headway at all. The clay was so packed that even the huge backhoe arm was barely just scratching bits of clay up.

It didn’t help that there was a ton of slop in the back of arms pins and bushings. That made it really hard to do the things that I was trying to do today.

Anyway, after trying for a fair bit to dig a hole in that crazy clay, I gave up for a little while and headed in to take a break. I let Hans know what I had run into, and he headed out to try his hand at it.

So I ate some breakfast and tried to answer a few just answer questions, as I’ve not answered many at all, and despite having an average of five star customer satisfaction this last week, and once again being warned that I’m close to being downgraded to pay out level.

Hans was able to get a fair bit done, and I came outside and we sort of tag teamed for the last little bit of yet another exploratory hole that he had started in nearly finished. This time, gratefully, we made it down I think over 6 ft without hitting rock.

🥳

Finally.

Every single step of the way, this house building project has thrown up obstacles and barriers.

It reminds me of all the things that I’ve been trying to do in Arkansas for so long. 🙃

But finally, we had a successful exploratory hole. 🥳

We also realized pretty early on that we weren’t going to be able to do the septic the way that we had been doing it. I had carved through about a foot and a half of solid rock, but we learned that there had to be a certain depth of soil beneath the septic tank, not just space.

Fortunately, I noticed that the rock shelf that I had been pounding through was sloping downhill quicker than the grade was sloping downhill.

That meant that I could simply extend the area that I had already carved out for the septic.

So I got to digging again, adding I think maybe 8 more horizontal feet?

Whatever the addition was, it was pretty substantial, which has left a hole in the ground the size of the small pool. 🙃

After getting everything squared away with the enlarged hole in the ground (roughly 25 ft long, 8 ft wide, and 6 and 1/2 ft deep, I think).

From there, we spent a good while planning and then digging the actual leach lines. Once again, I hit crazy hard clay, which meant what should have taken maybe 45 minutes per line, took a heck of a lot longer.

I didn’t quit for the day until probably around 7:00 p.m., having spent probably 9-10 hours on the backhoe just today.

Long day. 🙃

When Heather came home, we all headed inside and just hung out for the rest of the night, Hans and Heather making yet another very tasty dinner.

We hung out laughing and joking and enjoying ourselves, before I bid them farewell to head out for the night.

It’s Temple Tuesday tomorrow, and it’s a fair bit of a drive. 🙃

I had initially planned to take a dip in Cascade Falls on my way out for the night, but when I got to Cascade Falls, I noticed that the sign said that the area closed at 10:00, and it was like 10:15 by that point, so, not wanting to break the park rules, I just headed on down the road, looked up to see if casper, wyoming, has a planet fitness, and they do, so I’ll just shower there before heading to the temple.

I didn’t drive all that far, just about an hour to get to Mill Creek junction again. I’ll stay here tonight, and then I’ll drive the final two and a half hours tomorrow once I get up for the day.

I’m tired and ready for bed. 🙃

Gratitude:

• I’m grateful that the hole for the septic tank was able to be extended.
• I’m grateful for Hans and Heather for making dinner every night after long hard tiring days.
• I’m grateful that we were able to learn that we don’t have to dig the leech lines down as much as we originally thought we did. With the issues with the excavator and the crazy hard ground, it’s taken a crazy amount of time just to make the progress that we’ve made, but now that we know we neither have to dig down as far nor as deep as we thought, it’s going to be a lot easier going from here. I hope.🤞
• I’m grateful that the storm doesn’t appear to have brought hail with it. It was raining as I left Heather and Hans’s place, with warnings of severe weather possible.
• I’m grateful to be getting to bed a little earlier, just shy of midnight.

Success:

• With things going sideways again and again with today’s efforts, I did manage to try to recognize everything that seems to be going south as uncomfortable blessings.
• I also reached out to the person that I had the really hard conversation with last night, not diving back into the same conversation, but just letting that person know that I’m not ignoring but need some time to kind of process through everything before reaching back out.

Improvement:

• Despite some success in this particular area, I still really want to get to the point where I’m not irritated / annoyed / discouraged / whatever else when things go “sideways.”

My love to all y’all.

Lift the world.

Bring it on.

~ stephen