Oh boy.
I’m tired. It’s way past my bedtime; and I really don’t want to write tonight. I just want to go to bed. 🙃
But that wouldn’t be very good now would it. 😅
Discipline, Stephen. Discipline.
Okay, so I got up a bit later than I would want to with my new attempted schedule. I think it was like 6:30 or something. I’d like to be up at 5:00, but I’m not getting enough sleep for that because I’m not getting to bed on time yet.
But that’s okay. Little bits of progress here and there.
I think I have my most successful morning as it relates to getting my dailies done. There are a whole bunch of things on the list to do every morning, and I’ve not been 100% on any day yet, but I’m not worried about it. I’m making progress, and that’s what matters, and today was the most successful day I’ve had. 🎉
Spend some time in gospel study, completely spacing what I had planned to study today. 🙃
Oh well, it was a pretty nicely productive morning in all respects.
I started reincorporating my 5×5 back into my daily routine, and I’m excited about that. I’m so much more productive in the little things when I do my 5×5. So much gets done. 😊
One new thing that I started today that I’ve been thinking about for the last 2 or 3 days is doing something called my Gratitude Power Hour.
I want to get to the point where I’m like my mother, seeing the silver lining and the blessing in pretty much everything. So to help me get there, at 1:00 everyday I have a little alarm go off with the intro to the hymn Count Your Blessings, and then every 10 minutes for that hour, the alarm goes off again with the same intro, and what do I do? I think of 5 things I’m grateful for. (I started with 10 today, but it wasn’t really realistic as I’m to distractible with all the things I’m trying to get done, so tomorrow I’m just going to do five at each alarm, and then hopefully I can work up to 10.
I can already tell that it’s helping me to focus more on gratitude. Even with just one day of small effort.
Yay for successes! We celebrate all successes! 🥳
After my morning routine and gospel study and whatnot, pretty much the entire rest of the day was spent working on the septic tank project.
I helped Hans with the leach line stuff on and off. I spent some time trying to figure out the septic tank burial spot. That’s been a fairly big stressor because of my pretty significant mistake in over digging it.
I have the thought today that maybe, since we had to go lower than we had originally measured, maybe the rock that I had been hitting with the excavator wasn’t very deep, and maybe I could just excavate out the Rock and have everything below be dirt. So I started shoveling the dirt out of the way that I had just barely shoveled the day before yesterday 🙃 (so much effort being repeated. Lots of “wasted” time. Bu
Anyway, so I was hopeful that maybe we could just move the tank back to the second dig out spot, that the rock layer wouldn’t be too thick there because it was ending relatively shortly thereafter further down the big excavation site, but alas, it was not to be.
After shoveling all the dirt out of the way and getting down to bedrock, I started chipping away at the bedrock, chipping through about maybe five or six inches worth, and then getting a drill to drill down to see if I could get through it, but no dice. The drill, with like a 10-in bit, just hit rock the entire way. Apparently, it was a fairly thick rock shelf that just all of a sudden ends but stays fairly thick until it ends. 🤷
Oh well. It took me about an hour, probably, but it was worth the gamble.
Another idea that I had was to simply dig a brand new hole, instead of agonizing over what to do about the whole that I had over dug, I could just fill it in and dig a whole new one. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal, as long as the excavator arm was working, because it probably would only take a couple hours to dig an entirely new hole, so no biggie, and then we wouldn’t have to stress about whether or not the compacting job from a backfill that was probably 4 ft deep wood be a problem, causing the tank to sag on one end, split the seam, and cause significant issues.
So I started digging and exploratory trench just about 8 or so feet on the east side of the existing excavation site, but closer to the house, in the hopes that maybe we would get lucky and be able to put the tank closer to the house because the rock shelf ended.
So I dug an exploratory hole with the little Kubota tractor, going down probably about 7 ft, the max the Kubota could reach, and I didn’t hit any rock bed.
That’s a very hopeful sign. 😊
Answer just a few questions online today, about the same as yesterday. Enough to make a couple of nickels, but not much more than that.
Finished the day helping Hans with the leach lines–getting the water permeable cloth down, and then I in the trench directing him where to dump the gravel, and then leveling the gravel well he got another scoop of gravel in the kubota. Gratefully, that went really well, and then we glued together the leech line piping, put on a filter sock to keep debris from getting inside, and called it a night a little bit after sundown.
Heather mixed up a big thing of Gatorade for me, as I was parched and exhausted. I need more nourishment than I’ve gotten today, but I just don’t do well eating after expending that much physical energy. Drink, yes, but eat… ugh… no.
So I didn’t eat dinner with them tonight, heading over to Cascade falls, instead to rinse myself off and take a little bit of a bath. I was covered in dirt and crystallized sweat all over my shirt.
Cascade Falls felt absolutely wonderful.
Rinsed off, then took a little bath in preparation for sunday, saw a really big frog, maybe a little smaller than a baseball, but right about that size.
Cleaned up a whole bunch of trash that people have left.
We clean up so much trash over there. It’s a little discouraging to think about how much trash gets left there on a daily basis. How much trash I pick up nearly every single time I go.
But at least I’m able to make it look nicer there. 😊
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful for the progress we were able to make today on the septic stuff.
- I’m grateful for the benefits that I’m already seeing after only one day, and even an imperfect attempt at my Gratitude Power Hour. 🎉
- I’m grateful to be getting some pretty good exercise. It’s really hard work, but it is good for me, so that’s a bonus.
- I’m grateful for the wind that makes the heat so much more bearable.
- Speaking of heat and bearable, I’m really really really grateful for dry heat. Compared to the sauna that is Arkansas heat, it’s almost balmy, even when it’s 100°.
- I’m grateful to have Cascade Falls so close.
Success:
- I’m catching myself more and more even at the slightest twinges of frustration or irritation. 🥳
Improvement:
- Progress is being made on putting my whole heart on the altar, but each time I feel even the tiniest twinge of frustration or irritation, that’s clear evidence of part of my heart not on the altar. So, plenty of improvement potential with putting my whole heart on the altar..
We’ve got this. 💚
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 