(written on the 27th and 28th)
The nerve issues this morning were a little more… unnerving to me.
Each day this goes on, I get more and more nervous.
In the hopes of maybe somehow loosening up the nerves, I walked a loop around the neighborhood a couple of times, but to no avail.
Starting to get a little scared.
😕
My first stop of the day was to visit the bank on Highland Drive. Yesterday, when I went in to see about exchanging the money, I had asked to see a banker about adding a beneficiary to my account, but there weren’t any bankers available, and it was the end of the day, so today was the day to get that done.
After going to the bank, I headed toward my brother’s house in Herriman, stopping at a nearby park to hang from the monkey bars for a little bit in the hopes of some positive progress in getting rid of the numbness.
But still no change.
[sigh]
😕
At Richard’s place, I got all the stuff that he’d been letting me store there while in New Zealand, and he offered to let me unload my van in his driveway to try to get it reorganized in my van, so I spent the next… several hours in the effort. 😅
After having traveled for 6 months with almost no possessions, having a big van full of stuff is a little… stuffocating, as my mother would say.
As I organized things, I was pleased to have little ideas pop into my head for how to better store stuff. Don’t know why I didn’t think of those options before, but it made for more efficient use of space. 🙏
Always a bonus when living in a vehicle. 🙃
I also helped Richard make a Marketplace post on my account for something he’s selling. 🤞
With my concerns about my leg, I asked my brother for a blessing, and the elders quorum president came over and they administered to me, which was nice, after which Richard and I headed over to Gold Fish Asian Bistro & Sushi.
Oh! I also weighed myself with my brother’s scale.
189. 🙃
That makes a lot more sense than the 186 the scale in New Zealand gave me. I’d bet I’ve probably lost at least a few pounds since then, as with my dental issues, I haven’t eaten much for the last couple of weeks, or so.
I was pretty shocked to see only 186, and it would make a lot more sense to me that I was in the low-to-mid 190s, and I’m now in the high 180s.
Anyway, after dinner, I spent the rest of the night talking to someone, and it was a super challenging conversation for me–so challenging that I ended up having a full-on (though brief) psychotic break.
😞
I’ve been doing so much better overall since Sunday, but the conversation was just too much for me, and I broke, collapsing to the ground in the fetal position and literally beating my head with my fist over and over, crying out in agony with phrases like, “I’m trying. I’m trying.”
I think that’s one of the phrases, anyway. Part of me was fully aware, as if an impartial observer.
Clearly, a lot of internal pain and struggle.
At something like 4 a.m., I pulled into the Maverick on 8th North in Orem (near the Macey’s) with a misfire issue on cylinder eight. Figuring it was probably a coil pack issue, and having extra coil packs with me, I removed the coil (not so easy on cylinder right, or at least, a lot easier to remove than reinstall 😅), and found that the spark plug well was full of oil.
😬
Lovely.
So I spent the next… maybe two hours? Trying to clean out the spark plug well with very little access, using a piece of rubber hose to partially fill the spark plug well with brake cleaner, and then to try to pack shop towels around the opening and use the same tubing to blow really hard to spray the mix of brake cleaner and oil up against the shop towels.
I did that over and over until I felt I’d gotten most of the oil out.
Then I fished a new coil pack through all the obstacles, fired it up, and the misfire was gone.
It’ll keep leaking oil, so eventually, that issue will come back, and I’ll have to clean it out again, but I think I’ll just do that instead of trying to fix it, unless the leaking becomes so bad that I have to clean it out on a regular basis.
I guess we’ll see how it goes. 🤞
I made it to my little Slide Canyon parking lot about 6:00 a.m. and called it a day.
Tough one today. 😕
And the side of my head is rather swollen. 😅
~ stephen
Lift the World 