Better today. Not great, but definitely better. 🙏
I slept in again a bit, I think until maybe 8:30 or 9:00? I don’t remember exactly.
I started writing my journal entry for yesterday pretty quickly after getting up, and it took me… a long time to finish. 🙃 Lots of things I wanted to write that don’t work very well as part of a public blog post.
I finished up a work call that I had started last night, and they pretty much figured it out by morning. It turned out to be one of the things that I had suggested last night, though I think he forgot that I suggested it last night, so he basically figured it out on his own.
I mucked and dragged and put some hay bales out into the hay tubs for the horses.
Somebody who had been interested in my flatbed trailer maybe a week or so ago messaged me again this morning offering me a price I was willing to accept. I negotiated up a little bit from his first offer, and ended up selling it for slightly more than what I paid for it, which means I’ll basically break even after registration costs, replacement spare tire, and gas To get the trailer and the tires.
I’ll take that. 🙏
One more piece of equipment down. Three to go. I was going to try avoiding going to Arkansas until it cooled off, as it would seem to make more logical sense to do that, perhaps just making room in my for van to carry all the parts with me during the road trip and then to do all the necessary work at the end of October when we get back to Arkansas for my niece’s wedding, but I’m more seriously contemplating driving away tomorrow night?
Temperatures are going to be absolutely brutal in Arkansas, but… we’ll see?
🤷
Shout out to all the people who made it possible to get my trailer sold today. Special thanks go to my nephew Rhett, who likely got all hot and sweaty unloading something like 50 bales of hay by himself, so that the trailer could be looked at and hauled away. 🙏
Special thanks also go to my mother for being one of the most selfless people I know, taking her time to drive over to the hill and conduct the showing of the trailer, the paperwork, and the financial transaction for me. 🙏
Thank you also to me Arkansas my sister Liz and brother Jim for helping to orchestrate things. 🙏
Trying to sell stuff when I’m 900 miles away means I’m dependent upon others’ kindness and service to make things happen, and I’m grateful to them for their kindness and service. 🙏
I spent a good little while today digging up cacti from the main horse pasture, putting up lots of little orange inspection flags to replace the blue removal flags, and in the cases where I saw cacti that weren’t marked, simply an orange flag after removing them.
Good progress today on that.
Some of those cacti are absolutely brutal, spines going right through my leather gloves. 😶
Gratefully, I caught Zorra I think just as she was about to give herself a dirt bath which would have had her roll onto her back right where a nasty prickly pear was.
Hence why I dig them up–not so nice on the feetsies or the backses.
When Heather got home, we did a little wandering around the pasture marking more cacti and pulling up a grundle of Russian thistle plants.
It’s amazing how quickly noxious plants can take over. The Russian thistle goes nuts. The mullein goes nuts. The Canada thistle… That one might be the most insidious. That one can have runners up to 20 ft long underground shooting up little plants everywhere. So it’s not enough to just dig them up by the supposed route, because all you’re doing is pulling one plant off of the longer runner underground, and it’s just going to pop up more plants from the runner. You either have to kill it with an herbicide of some kind, or dig the entire runner up.
And good luck with the latter. 😅
My body’s a little unhappy with me for the work I’ve been doing. Not sure which work caused the problem, but I had some pretty painful tendonitis-type symptoms in my right posterior forearm.
Gull durn it. 🙃
Wait… I’m supposed to be thankful in all things. 🙃 Ok, ok, let’s see… I’m grateful for the pain in my arm because it gives me an opportunity to practice patience and empathy.
🙏
I went to move my van, per my sister’s suggestion, to the shade of the late afternoon Shadow the house casts on the turnaround, only to find that my van wouldn’t start. I’d suspect it as much the last couple of nights because when I went to lock it, the doors would indeed lock as they were supposed to, but the horn wouldn’t honk on that second tap of the lock button.
I don’t know why the battery died. I didn’t leave anything on, and I certainly didn’t expect what I found next.
Both of my lead-acid jump boxes had dead batteries as well.
😶
Wait, all three of my batteries died at the same time? That’s got to be some kind of a record. 😅
Fortunately, I am a bit overprepared, so I had a third jump box, my lithium-ion one, without issue with that one. Once I got it moved over to the shade, Hans brought my extension cord over, and I got my battery charger out and set my van to charging.
Hans and I decided to take a little excursion over to the springs to cool off. A nice option after a triple digit day. It’s kind of funny, though, as earlier in the day, I felt like it was hot, but it didn’t seem crazy hot? And I looked up the temperature, and it was something like 84 or 86°, and that seemed about right, but then I realized I was looking at the temperature in Avoca, Arkansas. 🙃
So I switched it over to Hot Springs, South Dakota, and it was 100°. 😅
I never would have guessed. It felt cooler today with the 100° dry heat than it did yesterday with the 77° sauna-like humidity.
I definitely appreciate the dry heat. 🙏😊
On the way to the Springs, as we were driving down the main dirt road, we spotted a loose dog on the side of the road–a very large Corgi. It was young, maybe 2 or 3 years old? (given the color and sharpness of the teeth) Super friendly, and obviously well taken care of and well loved. But no color.
Hans called the local police to report the puppy, and we got connected with the local shelter, driving into town to meet up with the shelter peeps at the local gas station.
We had been planning to go into town to the gas station anyway to buy fountain drinks to get plastic cups to use to plug the drain pipes in my soaking pool, so it wasn’t really out of our way. It just took a little bit of time.
The extra time meant that by the time we got to JH Keith Park, it was starting to get dark, and drinking an extra large, rather cold fountain drink had not only cooled me off, but had me a tad chilled.
It was the same for Hans, so heading down to the soaking pool was no longer a refreshing relief from the heat but a bit of a cold plunge. 😆
Before walking down and taking a dip, we chatted a bit with Irene who was there last time I went as well. I showed her how to get down to my little pool. I’m fine showing that to her, because she’s a local regular who’s just an awesome lady. 🤍
Down to the water, it was indeed rather chilly , but I I still dunked myself under. Then I proceeded to take a bit of time to rebuild my camouflaging brush pile that had fallen over (likely because of the most recent storm And because I had made it super tall and skinny instead of wide such that it could support itself structurally. I had intended to come back and add more to the pile, but I just hadn’t gotten to it yet.
Back at the ranch, I listened to a President Eiring talk with Heather and Hans, and then we called it a night.
Unfortunately, my van was dead again , the starter clicking quickly and loudly but not actually turning the engine over.
The voltage reading with my multimeter showed the battery to be fully charged, and that voltage didn’t drop after trying to start it, oddly. I would expect that it would quickly reduce the voltage after trying to start if it were a bad battery, but nope.
That leads me to wander still of somehow there’s just a bad connection? But he fires right up as soon as I put my Noco jump starter on it, so… must be the battery.
I think my actual battery tester is in Arkansas in the little shed in the lower field, so I can’t check the cranking amps (not that those battery testers are very reliable anyway 😆).
I’ll try putting the battery charger on it again, this time in repair mode instead of just charge mode. Maybe I can bring the battery back to life. 🤞
But. If. Not. 🙃 I will do as Elder Holland encouraged while still president of BYU, I think: “Spend cheerfully on things that matter, time as well as money.”
I listened to talks while I was getting all the battery stuff figured out, and then I spent a little time walking up and down the driveway journaling and chatting with the Big Guy.
I’m gonna choose Him.
Faith. Hope. Trust.
That’s my most important focus– getting to know Him better, so that I can be confident in him and trust Him, come what may.
I’m grateful to feel lighter today, despite the fact that I continued turning toward distractions and diversions regularly instead of to light, but the evening was much more focused on light.
🤍
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 