A Rocky Trench, Fixing Some Plumbing, Tying One On & Thoughts On Getting Healthier
It has been a strange few days and I did not take much time to write about things along the way so here I am now pecking out some words during the wee hours of the morning after waking up incredibly early. I was having a pretty weird dream just before waking and decided to get up out of bed and shake it off the best that I can so that perhaps I can fall back asleep and get a little more rest before the sun comes up over the horizon and I will need to start working on stuff outdoors.
A few days ago I got side-tracked from working on digging that trench but I did wind up getting the remaining four meters of it dug and right when I was within the last meter of the digging I ran into a really big stone in the way and although it took me a while I eventually got it dug up and rolled it out of the way. I do not know what it was about running into the stone at the end of the trench but whoa did it sure sap my willingness to work on it anymore. The trench is far from done because the other day I decided to just go ahead and dig the entire thing down to roughly twenty-four inches and still have yet to go back over everywhere that I have already dug and deepen the trench. Hopefully I can get the trench project wrapped up over the next few days but I am hesitant to guess exactly how long doing so will take.
On that same day I wound up accompanying one of my fellow homesteaders and visiting a neighbor's place to help with fixing some plumbing problems that they were having which basically just amounted to repairing several drain pipes that had come lose under their house. Fortunately the place where the pipes were located was not in a crawl space and it was actually pretty easy to get to them, see what was wrong and get them all re-connected again. The pipe glue that we had with us was almost too hard to use but we poured a little of the purple priming agent into the glue can and after some vigorous stirring with one of my fingers I was able to get it to become a pliable 'gel' that I was then able to smear into the pipe fittings after giving them a good cleaning with a razor knife and some sand paper. We jostled the pipes around a good bit after the glue had dried and apparently everything held so my hacky solution with the glue is one that I will have to remember in case I ever encounter that problem again.
Once that job was wrapped up I spent a bunch of time hanging out with some of my fellow homesteaders and I even did what I generally avoid doing and did a little drinking with them. There was no super special occasion for celebration or anything but a few of us had been saying for a couple of days how the times sort of called for a stiff drink. I dunno if it was the ice coffee whiskey drinks or the late night vodka that really did me in but at one point I had headed back to the shelter site and just laid down on the side of the hill and went to sleep. I got woken up by a fellow homesteader asking me if I knew where I was and I reached around me looking for the dogs then said something like 'Well I am not in my cabin because there are no dogs' which was probably pretty funny to watch. I then inquired as to where I was and started laughing when I was told and accepted the help offered to me to get me to my cabin. I know all that sounds pretty bad but honestly it was the most relaxed (and albeit inebriated) that I have been in well over a year or two and I think that my mind really needed the overall experience.
Just so folks have a clearer understanding of things I generally just drink a beer or two alone and call it good enough and do not go around other people when I feel like drinking which is mainly because I dislike having to filter myself to start with let alone when I have a little booze in me. Like I have stated many times before I like to stop drinking during the winter and enjoy the stuff rather moderately the rest of the year but whoa by that last month (this month before I stop for the winter) it always seems like I want to have one last hurrah and really get it out of my system. That 'last hurrah' is one that I like to do over the period of a few days and sort of binge out and see what bubbles up in my mind which is pretty damned handy to expose any repressed feelings (or thoughts) that I might have inside me. I am not romanticizing the booze or anything but occasionally it can be some damn good medicine if it is treated like medicine.
Anyway, I have been at this point over the last several weeks (maybe a month now) where I keep thinking about getting more exercise and yeah I already get a lot but I am thinking more the physical training kind than the working kind. Mostly I have been thinking a lot about my own health and well-being and what I can do to basically just be healthier and get into better shape than what I am already in. As frightening as it is I have been considering setting aside all my vices for the duration of this winter including my beloved coffee even though with it I will more than likely just drink a little less of the stuff and call it good enough. I have yet to commit myself to this course in life but I truly think that it would do me a lot of good and perhaps even lower my monthly expenses as well as give me some clarity in the long run. I am not fond of parting with the few things that I enjoy in life that bring me some sort of mental comfort and I damn sure would not be writing it all out if I was not rather serious about doing it. For the most part I enjoy my vices and all but I think that change can be really good for me and who the hell knows perhaps I will find other things to enjoy along the way.
Well, I think that I am going to just wrap this one up and call it good enough. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
She is one watchful bird!
Thanks for reading!
More about me: I have been doing property caretaking (land stewardship) for many years (decades) and live a rather simple life with my dogs doing what most folks would consider to be an 'alternative minimalist lifestyle' but what I often just think of as a low-impact lifestyle where I get to homestead and spend the majority of my time alone with my dogs in the woods doing projects in the warmer months and taking some downtime during the colder months.
A little over three years ago I began sharing the adventures (misadventures) of my life via writing, videos, pictures and the occasional podcasts and although my intention was to simply share my life with some friends it undoubtedly grew into much more than that over the years and now I find myself doing what equates to a full-time job just 'sharing my life' which is not even all that glamorous or anything but hey folks seem to enjoy it so I just keep doing it!
The way that the Fantastica Chronicles came about is that I was living at another place when I started chronicling and sharing my days but eventually I wound up moving to a new place. The new place is a homestead named 'Fantastica' so I started with 'Day 1' upon my arrival here and just kept documenting my days much like I had done for the previous nine hundred and fifty-seven days at the last place that I lived.
I have mostly done that 'documenting' at Fantastica exclusively with words (and pictures) opting not to do the videos because as I learned at the last place, sharing videos over an intermittent and slow internet connection is horribly time consuming and what I often think of as an 'ulcer inducing' experience. All that said, I opted for simplicity with the documentation and have no real regrets for doing so.
The way that I look at it is that I give it all my best each day and while some stuff I write is better than others I think that for the most part I do a pretty good job at doing what I am doing which is simply 'sharing my life' as candidly as I possibly can and whatever folks get (or do not get) from it there is always the satisfaction of me doing what I set out to do... which is to simply share my life.
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That Is All For Now!
This post was originally posted to the Hive Blockchain here:
https://peakd.com/homesteading/@jacobpeacock/the-fantastica-chronicles-day-433-434
