Yesterday was pretty good. My neck is still sore on the scar. It almost feels like there is a sausage under my skin where the scar material is at. That part feels numb when I touch it. Otherwise, I really cannot tell I had surgery. Well, I can tell. I felt so much better yesterday than I have my whole life, I think. I went through the day with no bone pains at all of any kind. I mean, even after working around the house with my family, then after working from afternoon to evening. If this is what ‘normal’ feels like to others, then they are operating with an unfair advantage over me. I felt better after removing bread from my diet, in the sense that most of the pain was gone, but there always lingered a sort of limit to how long I could tolerate being on my feet, in the form of more of a tiredness than a pain. Yesterday I felt as good at the end of the day as I did the beginning.
I have definitely felt a change in my metabolism. I am giving an effort to not eat out of habit, but to operate on what I am hungry for. Removing the Parathyroid glands is meant to reduce insulin resistance, and I am trying to stick with what my body needs, and hopefully lose a bit of visceral fat, and weight. That can only be healthier for me. I am tired of carrying around a belly.
Between the stupid gland removal and the CPAP, I am at the moment feeling better than I have ever in my adult life. I’d love to have spent all my years feeling like this! I think I would have accomplished much more my whole life. That’s depressing. But I am just going to take as much as I can out of every day. Take more while I can have more.
I finished the chimney cleaning yesterday. Lit the woodstove of all the old mail that was piled into it over the summer and then cleared out all of the ash. Today I need to clean the glass and clean up the cast iron shelves next to the firebox. I am thinking I am going to do something about the wood that is the floor of the firewood bunk. I don’t have enough boiled linseed oil to totally plane it down and refinish it. Well, maybe I do, just. I guess I will find out. I am just reluctant because that bottle I have cost me something like $35 back when I bought it. It is useful! I hate to run out when I cannot really afford to replace it. But replace it I must! It is a need. Everything I make in the woodshop gets it on it.
I covered the hay ready for the wind and the rain and gave the goats and llamas enough from the old bale to keep them in hay all day yesterday and today. (It’s 4:30AM as I write this.) I’ll probably put them in some corn stalks later.
Tomorrow is going to be very rainy! If i am going to work, I will NEED to replace that bad wiper on the right side of the car. We are in for a deluge. I may not even go to work. It is promising to be very bad. I am not sure how this much rain is going to be processed in our mountains, and how that will all pour down into the valley.
It is amazing to see how Hurricane Isaias just hit Florida, and is moving inland, Tropical Storm Rachel is moving north towards California now, and what’s that cyclonic action down there at Mexico? Three storms after North America all at once! And that hat up there in Canada is the Jet Stream, which Rachel is expected to collide with around where we live, making who knows what? But there’s that, and cold temperatures with it.
I am expecting to lose power. Ours is really reliable. But this is potentially too much for it, so it is best to prepare. That is one of the good things about having the woodstove ready to operate. Still have cooking available to us. I have two Jackery batteries that still need to have a top up charge. Just in case. So we are at that, some cleaning, some bringing in of firewood, and covering some outside where possible. I’d probably do well to put all the wood on its side outside where the rounds are, to keep them from soaking in water on the end grain. I asked the kids to stack the firewood that got split by Jordan when he was down last. I don’t think they are going to get to that. I’d like to clean up the tools out the front door, so they are not getting poured on, and the little bit of wood there, alleviating the trip hazards. The tractor has fuel. It needs an oil change. Money, money, money.
There is a lot of preparing in preparing. I never did find that can of tar to go around the chimney in the pantry. That’s a bummer. I don’t know where it went. I have looked in every outbuilding. Running out of time now! Going to have to just catch the water as it pours into the house. That’s not good. Not good at all. At least it is real wood up there at the ceiling and will hold up better than any of the stupid synthetic materials or drywall they use now-a-days.
I need to go pick up $80 for the hay man today when I go into work. He sure does us a favor by keeping us in hay and handling it at his, so we don’t have to store it. The bale he delivered yesterday was light. The tractor lifted it with ease. I think that’s why it cost us less. Grassy. The animals might not like it as much as they do their alfalfa, but a couple of those goats could do with the diet.
I accepted a ‘Friend Request’ from my first wife’s niece, Noelle, a bit ago this morning. She was just a kid last I saw her. But she is also the one that made the difference in my child contacting me. I’d like to thank her for that. She told mine that she remembered me taking her aside as she was starting middle school and talking to her about how she is going to be okay, and that everyone is starting with her and feeling the same feelings of fear and insecurity. I remember that conversation. I hated seeing her terrified of her first day and wanted her to be okay. Turns out she remember is too, and it countered the narrative my Autumn had been fed all her life that I hated children. So, Autumn got in touch. We have been talking daily since, for what? Three months now? That’s been fantastic! And I owe it all to Noelle for breaking that brick out of the wall.
Well, it is just after 5AM now. Guess I better put me on some Heather Cox Richardson, and get me some shuteye, hopefully after I hear at least most of the broadcast. Not like last night when I fell right to sleep after putting her on.