Justify?

Yes, I show up at 4am, unload the boxes out of the truck and put it on pallets, drag it out to the floor and stock the shit. But, you see, I am wearing my cool mp3 player jamming out to rage against the machine death metal and sometimes Jello Biafra’s spoken word screeds. Hahahaha – they don’t rule me!
Seven hours later I go home with another sixty-two fifty in my pocket. Oh how the mighty have fallen…

I thought I’d spend the rest of my life on the homestead. Y’know, I’ve never done anything forever. The only thing I know for sure about the future is it will be different than today so I have no need to hide from the temporary drudgery of this particular present.

Other People

Most people really have nothing to do with my immediate life so it’s a waste of time interacting with them any more than what’s necessary. I wonder how many people have purposefully not interacted with me?

Hey – this counts as a post.

5

Keeping up with the spanish and the kettlebell. Hasta manana.

4

Catchy titles, eh?

I have a job 3 days a week unloading on truck days at Lowes. Mindless dumb labor. Suits me. Sucks to get up at 3am but I’m off by 11 so I still have my farmer’s daylight hours. I’m usually too tired after work to do a whole lot so it’s nice that my desires and capabilities jive, eh? Found out the guy who gets to drive the fork lift has one more semester of school so it looks like I’m going to be line grunt for another six months. I ought to think about moving to the paint mixing department.

Adios.

3

As per Alan Watts I’m trying to be aware of the empty space around things. Also decided to spend some time each day going over some spanish exercise so I can maybe half keep up with mi hijo who is taking it in school. Did numbers today. Ciento cuarenta y siete centavos.

Hey – Two In A Row!

Picked up the kettlebell, too. No takers so the buck forty-seven is still mine.

Last couple of weeks I’ve been on an Alan Watts kick, crawling the web for books and lectures. I know everything is for free somewhere in cyberspace… some things are just harder to get than others. What the hell… keeps me off the streets.

New Year, Another Go.

Not dead yet. Thought I’d give the blog another go. It is said it takes 90 days to form a new habit (obviously whoever said that never did cocaine) so the plan is to log on here every day and post some damn thing no matter how insignificant. There’s a year and a half’s worth of unblogged events so ‘scuze me if things are a bit random for awhile.

Big Plan #1 for the new year is to work with the kettlebell everyday – even if it’s just one turkish getup on each side. I got the cardio walking thing down pat but I got a fat roll developing and I can’t have that shit.

A dollar forty-seven says this is the last post for another six months, bwahahaha.

Heart attack

Last week the bavarian creme chocolate iced bismarks with rainbow sprinkles (and my 20’s and 30’s) finally caught up with me.

Was working between the garage and basement and just kept slowing down until it was finally time to lay down. Then I felt really wrong, Tight chest, hard to breathe and both upper arms felt like they were in a low power blood pressure cuff. So I crawled upstairs to the wife and she googled and five minutes later we were on the way to the ER.

God damn asphalt sealing crew had the ER entrance blockaded can you believe that shit? Had to walk maybe two blocks to get to the damn door,  shuffling along with six inch steps to the counter said help I’m having a heart attack…

Wham into a wheelchair, pushed ten feet to a gurney, hooked up to a dozen implements in five minutes and the doc said yep, you are having a heart attack.

Got to ride in the Meatwagon with bells and whistles to the good hospital in Joplin where they gave me the Madam Ho shave and wax special, stuck the wire up the groin artery and put in a couple stints in the Right Coronary Artery.

Anyway I had a hundred percent blockage but I am all good now. As an aside, the stent clotted over a couple days after I was released and I had to do the whole process over again. The “fun” part of that episode was the heart went bazzoo as I was being prepped in the cath lab so out came the jumper cables. Three WHAMs  and the heart rhythm settled back down. That shit hurts! Gigged Frog.

Turns out why I can’t run isn’t from smoking trashing my lungs but from shit blood flow! Can’t wait to feel how good Im going to feel when I heal up. And the absolute best news is that the chest X-Ray showed no signs of lung tissue problems. Elongated lobes from forty years of smoking before the quit but I can live with that.

July’s babblings.

Btw – I reached the six month no smoke date. Once I get to town I’ll try the running thing.

Talking to Others    When I look back at any given day interacting with people I’m mildly horrified. I just don’t like how my forays into verbal communication with da people go. Some clerk asks for a zipcode – BR549. Sorta falls into a dead zone. Somebody yapping on a cell phone – I grab a candy bar and talk to it – I’m looked at. Oddly. The walmart greeter can’t seem to understand that when cash has been exchanged the transaction is over and no I don’t need a receipt to exit the store. How can they be vacuous when I point out that had I opted for the planet killing plastic sack we wouldn’t be having this fucking conversation? Do you realize you’re accusing me of being a thief? Shall I get offended right back at ya? Do you want to be responsible for me chewing the eyes out of the security goon you desire to summon at this moment? Describe in paragraph form the taste of the boot leather of your corporate masters you swear fealty too. And then I waved at the self checkout moniter who came over to see what the commotion was all about and walked out the door, certain that the walmart swat unit would be tazing my ass any moment.

So I want to learn to walk around the zoo without talking to the animals.

 

If I ever go panhandling I’m going to dress in British sorta clothing and have a sign that says “Spare a Quid, Mate? And when asked if I was from England I’d say “No, I’m from Arkansas – catchy sign, innit?”

 

July 25th  I have been reading Archdruid’s lastest post for the last three nights. As always he’s a slog through read for me, but well worth the time. Greek philosophy, industrial erasure, and the myth of progress all wrapped up into something that explains why I like to stuff seeds in the ground. Everybody’s gotta do something; cantaloupes just might be my way of expressing myself in an age of serious limits.

I’m in a 98% empty house now and the garage got packed up today. Started a burn pile for the years and years worth of old trim and lumber that I collect – it’s a sickness. Can’t wait to see what the place looks like dejunkerated.

 

July 19 When green beans come in the term to describe it is “inundated”, especially when you’re crazy like me and plant like, 400 plants. And, the absolute worst time for them to come in is in the middle of a move to town. Most of the beans will go to the pigs after boiling to soften them up – for some reason the pigs don’t like them raw but cook em a bit and they love them.

I am occupying a corner of the living room here at the farm, the rest of the house is empty and moved to the new place. August 1st the new people will be here to take care of the critters so I can go live with my wife and kid. Limbo sucks.

 

July 15  I wake up on the farm, do critter stuff and spend the morning weeding and picking the garden.  Then it’s load up the truck with whatever seems to want to go on it and haul it to the new place. Unload and eat dinner with the family. Then it’s back to the farm for the rest of the day and night.

This is quickly becoming not a whole lot of fun. Note to self – 400 feet of green beans is more than enough 😀

The For Sale- Chickens and Ducks sign (and a craigslist ad) has brought in 200 bucks this week. I’m pretty much out of chickens now except for some young purebreeds that should start laying in a month or two. No one wants ducks for some reason. I hate to kill laying birds but if they don’t sell I’m afraid a bunch of them are going in the freezer.  Sell chickens, buy hog “fatner” with the money, butcher hogs, sell pork… boredom is going to kill me when I don’t have this level of complexity attached to everything I do.

July 14  We rented a house in town.

Nice town of about 12 thousand where the wife teaches at the college. Bailing out of the farm is pretty off the wall but the long and short of it is as simple as giving the boy three years to ride his bike around with friends before he’s 16 and the car fixation kicks in.  At this point it would be cruelty to keep him isolated on the turnip patch with no siblings or nearby kids to hang out with. The wife wants a break from six different kinds of critter  poop imbedded in every square inch of everything, and the never ending state of remodeling on this moderately small and dumpy house has been getting on her nerves for a looong time. Me? Whatever.  It’s a nice house in a town that is 100% bikeable for 99% of “stuff”.  I can go to the turnip patch a few times a week and keep up with the garden, the meat and egg thing is a bit more complex. That will take some cooperation with people I know still on dirt. I can’t eat a storebought egg anymore, and the boy said you betcha to the move… as long as we weren’t reduced to eating Tyson chicken. Raised him up okay so far!

Two Weeks

2 weeks since the smoking quit. Just for fun I decided to torture myself a bit; it’s snowing so it’s an inside day. I figured the most boring thing I could possibly do is a puzzle, so after critter chores I hauled down a 500 piece puzzle and just sat at the kitchen table all day doing it. 8 solid hours to finish it, and actually only had a couple passing thoughts of cigarettes.

What I really need is a stress test episode. Maybe I’ll drive really fast and try to get pulled over. Then I can do that “exercise my rights” shit and see if my quit is stronger than a tazering or regular cop beatdown.

On second thought, not. It’s been way more than two weeks since I fell off the turnip truck.