My Family, My Love

Posted on November 6, 2026 by Kelsey

I woke up at 3:30AM, just. Loo, coffee, and try to take a deep breath. I am struggling to do that. Yesterday when I was at work on what turned out to be my last order of the day, a double, I came through the intersection on Main Street going north at Starbucks, and the car cut out briefly, as in totally died, then came back to life. It did it a couple of times in quick succession. So I took it into the emergency lane and then into the parking at CAL Ranch. IT was running, so I went into the backroads and carried on to Hyde Park to do the deliveries, which as it turned out, were right there together in almost the same block. Then I cut the day off at only $74 earning. I took the battery terminal apart and cleaned the mating surfaces where I have had trouble before and took the car home. I did not want to get stuck down there in Logan with it! It drove fine to the house, and then onto pick the girls up at school. So I am going to try again with it today. But I am about $100 shy for the week of where I normally am.

So, on Saturday last, I met Noelle at the South Logan Walmart. She brought my daughter, Autumn, from my first marriage, who I have not seen in almost exactly 25 years! Noelle is my first wife’s niece, and the one who told my daughter that when I was there, married to her mother, it was me who sat Noelle down with a cup of tea, and talked to her about going into middle school, and encouraged her and steadied her ready to go in and face all those bigger kids and those bigger classes. My actions to take the time out to encourage a kid making a step in life, helped her to do it. and face it with her chin up, apparently, and it was a story that she was able to give to Autumn that helped her to overcome a lifetime of storied from her mom that told her that I was evil, and wanted to kidnap her, and take her away, though I also apparently hated children. Don’t ask me. I did not shit this pile of BS.

So Autumn reached out. The first thing she hit me with after I responded was a direct question of if I had a problem with her being trans. Of course not! So, we have been in touch every day since, which was around the end of June. Over that time, she has become my sort of little Jiminy Cricket; a voice of someone standing on my shoulder, helping guide me along in way I have never had before. I have been able to come to understand her compassion, and how deep it runs, which is deeper than my own, and consider how she feels so passionately for the lives of other people. More so than her own! Maybe somewhere in this, I am to help her to feel more for herself, and to find her own reasons for her own life. But for now, we are continuing to get to know each other and build up trust between us.

Bringing her into my home is in a way bringing a part of her mother back into my life, and that is something I have always been apprehensive about. We did not end well, and suffice it to say, I would never choose to have any part of her again. I have moved well on. As for our offspring, she has moved quite on as well, and though there are traits, she seems to lean heavily the way I do. I am trying to start building fresh and not let the wall between me and her mother color the situation. What I have seen of her so far has compassion and humanity that runs deep and does not reflect at all the woman that I married all those years ago in a previous life. I am incredibly proud of the one who has come seeking out the relationship that was torn away from us because of my first wife. And as I continue to get to know our Autumn, I still cannot rationalize at all why she did it. Everything sort of gets swept up into the dustpan of, “Well, that’s your mother.” Or collected into the bedpan of it, maybe. But getting to know Autumn, I am sincerely seeing a far different person than her mother, and it is welcomed!

We continue to bond, and each day is a welcomed treat! Meanwhile, I am struggling to keep up financially. The job is not paying well, and I am distracted and trying to get out of it what I need to keep my family on its feet. I think I need to go in and spend an extra long day working and really focused on it. But today is my youngest daughter’s birthday, and she needs first to be celebrated! All of my five kids are unique! So, it is sort of silly to say she is. But she is. Of all the things I can give her in the world, she needs most to know how proud I am of her. She is spirited and always full of thoughts and ideas and bring s a crazy perspective of her own to anything we are talking about and is ready to fill it up and follow through. She can expound on any proposed situation with gusto, and with laughter! I could not ask any of my kids to be more than what they already are! And my youngest is one of the most enjoyable people you could ever hope to meet! She has been since her personality came exploding out of the infant and toddler that we brought into this world on our little farm here in Idaho.

Our oldest is injured on his hand from an accident with a saw and has not come down this time on his days home from the oilfields of North Dakota. I think I can offer for my wife that we are sad for this and are missing him and his family. Next visit will be around Thanksgiving, and we look forward to seeing them all then. I always enjoy his visits! It is good to see him and the man he has become. he pushes through his tough times, and keeps his family provided for very well, and always has a good conversation to be had with me. He was a rough kid to raise at times, and it is humbling to see him grown up, and taking over his adulthood so much better in so many ways than I did my own!

Next oldest came with my wife and daughters to pick up Autumn on Saturday. He sort of faded into the background and kept out of the way. That is his way, I know. I want him to know how much I appreciate his help in getting our whole household together, and for his being there on the day. He contributes by being there, and I love him and his wife so much! They are forging their own path through life and raising two beautiful children that we are so fortunate to get to see often. I cannot wait to see them again! It is always hard to go off to work when I know they are coming by because I would so much rather see them, than run off to provide for my own house.

My ‘middle child’ is nowhere in the middle of anything but age. She pops out with her constant quest for knowledge and language. Her dark humor is always a laugh! She got to go with her school class to Boondocks and celebrate their ranking in the state on their test results in recent testing they did. She is in her last year in school. Next comes college, and I have never seen anyone so ready for it. I am a bit petrified! She is one of my best friends. All of my kids are my best friends!

I cannot thank Missus enough for all of her support through all of this as our family has finally come together for the first time and she has done so much to get the house ready for the changes and the holidays. During all of this, she has also been an emotional support to me. I cannot begin to thank her enough! She has done so much more than just this but also been a support for me for all of these twenty-five years since I last saw Autumn being hauled off in her mother’s arms screaming and crying. She has helped me to hold on through all of these years and provided a bond between the idea of this lost child, and our other kids, so they have all made her a part of our family despite the separation. Thanks, Missus, for keeping our family together for all of these years and making everyone a part of this beautiful group of people in a way that I could never have on my own!

Okay, I need to go back to sleep. I am frankly feeling unwell. I feel weak, and tired, and I know it is not because of the time. I think something is wrong, and I cannot identify it. But here we go. So, I am going to try to rest because I need to work today after we all get up and celebrate our daughter. I’d really like to feel better now. I need to feel better than I did yesterday! I wish I could stay home with my people.

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It’s A New Day And I’m Feeling Good!

Posted on October 27, 2026 by Kelsey

Oh boy, what a day! Missus and I went up to town and got some breakfast items and came home and ate! It was good! There were sausages and pork chops, and some mushrooms, too. Between them, we were able to keep at our work in the kitchen today. We cut and hung some beadboard look tempered Masonite. It is improving the look of the ceiling of the kitchen already. So Missus and I are both pretty chuffed!

Doing this project has required getting the 4×8 sheets out of the barn, loading them on the tractor and taking them up front, then getting out the table saw and setting it up in the front yard, then cutting down the pieces we needed. Then when everything was cut to the proper length, we had to sort out all the notches, and such needed for a complicated installation. Honestly, I was up and down that ladder all day for a 9 and a half foot ceiling, and working in the top 18 inches of it. There were al lot of pieces that had to be cut to the proper width, too. Notched to get around our faux beams. And matched to not put to beads together at a seam. I kept at it for hours, and as I have said before, I realize I have been spending most of my life at a serious disadvantage to others, since I now see how much more I can do than I once did, when everything hurt so bad. Times gone, I could only have made it till about ten in the morning doing that work, then I would have had to rest till around just gone dinner, then I could have started again for a couple of hours. No. Today was a full day of work, and I still feel like I could keep going but or needing to sleep ready for work tomorrow.

Before and after. If you can’t tell which is which, you are not my caliber of audience. Don’t mind the clock. The battery is dead. So, we will put edging in, paint, and make the whole thing white in order to make it bright and look big. The shadows will cast enough for visual impact. I am sure the edging is going to be even harder and take much longer. Oh well.

Anyway, there we go. A good day’s work, and lots accomplished! One never knows how long health will hold out, so take advantage of every day!

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Feeling Better Still

Posted on October 26, 2026 by Kelsey

Mondays are workdays, so I worked. It is the last day before I take a day off on a Tuesday. I do Tuesdays because they are often slow, and low earning days, however, there is always an exception to the rule. “There is an exception to every rule except this one.” Also, if I take Tuesdays off, then I can plan things for days off in the future, or Missus can know what day of the week I am off. That consistency helps. The peculiarity of working on a Monday is that it is the first workday of the new pay period, and so the earnings I get go towards the next paycheck, strange because I take Tuesdays off, then get back into the earning.

Tomorrow is that day off, but I got a start today. I put a ladder in the barn, got a cat cage out of the house, moved a picnic table from the back where it was apparently abandoned and put it in the space under the willow tree. I also helped out with the kitchen refresh. Doing all that after a workday and still feeling just fine is a wonder of a thing for me. My knees were out today, but that was like old man pain, not the traditional pain and it was so much easier to cope with than the deep bone pain of the years going past.

We will see how things go tomorrow. I would not have dragged the picnic table to the front a couple of years ago, and now I just went at it, and came out without the old pain. That is so satisfying.

Hopefully tonight I will get a good night’s sleep, and none of those hours laying awake. Got to get the kids to the bus on time. Then tomorrow is on.

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Healing

Posted on October 19, 2026 by Kelsey

Monday morning. The pay week closed last night, and I have a workday ahead of me. That part of my schedule for the week is kind of weird. It leaves me feeling a bit less ambitious for today, the last day of my week, and the first day of a new pay week. I kind of go for whatever, where yesterday was the day I pushed to bring the total up. I don’t have it in me at the end of the week, and the beginning, to push it today. I am tired from yesterday, and fed up, frankly. I take a day off on Tuesdays. I didn’t last week. I really feel that I am going to this. But what’s really frustrating is that I worked a seven-day week last, and I only earned on average of $96 a day. I mean, what the hell is that? Now I get to take out the fuel expense from that and see what I get to live on. Talk about a bullshit job in 2026! That was a 42-hour week, with me optimizing for the best times I could work each day. About $16 an hour. You know? A day or two off each week would sure be nice, rather than worrying about getting in which is 50 miles round trip by itself! Then I could, you know, have a life of my own!

Okay, now I am really frustrated. I know the seven-day week worked over 42 hours is not that much per day, but the 50-mile commute, and the days spent away from my home and family, are just not worth it for piss-poor money. Before my time off for surgery, I was struggling to get ahead because DoorDash frankly messed with the algorithm and cut what they were paying, and now after I am trying like hell to catch up, and still can’t get ahead a little. I am trying to be positive as yesterday was the first time I had to start to rely on credit to get through the day, and that’s not bad considering how we have been stretching it to make it work surrounding my time off for recovery. I get paid into the bank tomorrow.

None of this would feel as challenging if I was not listening while I drive to the read wheel bearing which is completely shot, and the tire wearing on the inside back there. I need to get it replaced, which is to say, I need to order one and do it myself, because there is no way I can afford to pay prone for someone else to do it, which is laying prone, nonetheless. I cannot afford to be lazy. Anyway, I discovered yesterday how badly that tire is wearing. I need to keep an eye on it. I don’t think it has much time left. The wear is on the inside of the rear-left, where I cannot conveniently see it. But I can reach it. I can certainly hear the bearing! It is louder than ever right now. But my ears have never been able to distinguish which side it has been on. Also, I am never quite sure what is worth fixing on this car as the transmission whined like mad and is obviously not long for this world. Once that goes, I doubt I will afford to fix it. I need to sort out another car. I need to fix the Honda, too. But its fuel economy is so low that it would likely not be worth working in at all. And never mind the fact it has twice the miles on it that the car I am driving does. This is a tragic tale of cars sacrificed to earn pennies for their driver.

Surgical recovery is going well. The lump of scar tissue around the cut is smaller than ever. Still there, and still numb to the touch, but it no longer feels the size of a sausage link. I’d say more like a pencil. There seems to be more below the surface. But the lump at the surface is what interfered with me putting my chin down while lying in bed looking at my tablet, and things like that. As for how I feel after the op, I still feel a lot better than before! My body needs to stabilize and not be scarfing calcium from my bones and putting it into my blood supply, interfering with kidney function, and my heart. It feels like it is doing that. I have been doing okay on stairs, not showing up at the top feeling like I Am going to die of a heart attack right there on the spot. That sure gives me hope! I was thinking I had the heart disease that killed my paternal grandfather. Now, maybe not. I have not pushed it too hard. I need to get my heart into better shape before doing that. I don’t want to be the guy that killed himself pushing too hard to get into shape!

Eating is a bit safer feeling. Another symptom I am meant to have come by with this operation is lowered insulin resistance. I do better with sugar, though I still don’t care for much of it at all. I don’t feel like passing out for a little. I feel like my metabolism has changed, though I cannot really identify in what way, other than to think my blood sugar does not go as extreme as before. I feel like it is more manageable when I have not quite eaten enough, and I feel more satiated when I have eaten a little, which is what leads me to believe things are better, and will be better for weight loss.

The season is changing. I have a thermometer next to my bed that measures from out in the yard, and it is showing me 32.2 at a quarter till six in the morning. I think the stove is going to want a fire in it. Times are changing. Two weeks from today I will be waking up with my milk-carton kid in the house. After 25 years of not seeing her, I am pretty excited! I have feelings all a jumble that I cannot really express coherently. I am also in that stage of disbelief that I tend to go into when something big is on the schedule and can still go wrong. I guess that is my natural skepticism that is built to protect my emotions from things that can go wrong. But still, the anticipation is building! I think it will be a lot easier to just talk with her, too, rather than relying on communications devices and keyboards. I really look forward to that.

Missus is painting the kitchen and redoing it ready for the two big holidays to come. She also needs it feeling fresher because she rightfully hates working in it now and feeling like it cannot come clean after. The biggest change so far is the brick at the wall the oven is in. That has gone from white to red. Painted, of course. But that has changed the whole kitchen. She has also been refreshing the cupboard doors with the same shade of blue, so they don’t look so worn. She has laminate flooring she intends to put down, too. That’ll make a big difference. I will need to make her some thresholds that will stop shit going under it at the doors, and quarter rounds for the edges. My time off is planned! Things are looking very good in there! Let’s push for finished!

Alright. Time is getting close to getting dressed and on with the day, time. As I indicated above, it is generally a relaxed last day of the workweek. I’ll just go in and go along with it from the time I drop the girls off for school till the time I pick them up. Eager to get to my home life, I will probably try to stop early. It would be nice to make $100 today. Mondays tend to bring the week down in earnings because I get fed up with it because of it being my Fridays. And of course, my Friday is really more like Saturday because my stupid work week is six days long. This is way too much effort for way too little money! Great! Now I am pissed off again!

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Running Out of Speed

Posted on October 17, 2026 by Kelsey

I woke up at 5AM this to answer the call. It’s no time to get up and stay up a it is Saturday, and I will be working through lunch and dinner rushes, trying to get $200, but given the rate of earning yesterday, I expect I will be struggling to make it to $100. Anyway, I went back to sleep without my CPAP on and woke up again tingly and a bit tired. Well, we know not to do that again, don’t we?

Two weeks from today ends a 25 year saga, almost to the day, of not seeing my child from my first marriage, as she is coming out to stay with us for a spell. There is so much to catch up on, and I am really excited for it! Obviously. I am busy trying to catch up with work, and get something settled as the car is falling apart. But I have no idea how to pay a monthly payment, in order to keep going at this. Shame, too, because overall I like the work, and it is about as stressful as I can take.

So, if anyone needs a portrait photographer, I am your guy. That I can do, and do well. It won’t be cheap, because it shouldn’t be, but I will get you some good work done. My coming to stay offspring is really good at photography, too! I’d love to put a business together with her, but her stay is not planned to be long enough to endevour on such a thing. Shame, too. I think we could really support eachother on that. But I need to do it form myself anyway. I need to stop on the hampster wheel I am on now, as it is just wearing me out.

Now the hard part! I am needed at home for several projects going on at the moment, and I need cash money in hand to pay the bills and buy the animal feed. There is my time gone. Well, expect for what I am spending blogging, obviously. So, I guess away I go! Better get me some breakfast and get going on my website, at least. Just a little to get me going in the right direction, and let’s see what happens.

I should add before I go, I feel so much better today than I did three weeks ago. So far, so good, and I really need to use this while I can, before age catches me up again!

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Pyroclastic Dreams

Posted on October 16, 2026 by Kelsey

Most of my dreaming is done when I am awake. I have had some memorable dreams in my nocturns, but they were not in any way mystical or guiding. Just strange amalgamations of the things going on at the time in my life, usually. I have daydreamed a good deal, not unlike Ralphie in A Christmas Story. But like Ralphie, that was in my youth. As an adult, I have spent my time daydreaming the things that I had planned for the farm, which is how I made them manifest. Everything I have built here has been through that uniquely human power. Nowadays, it seems that the unique powers of humanity I possess are turned more towards the ability I have to write a memoir. I suppose that is a form of daydreaming too, in the form of reliving memories. But that form is hampered by years, and the need to accurately recall things that have gone long into the past. I worry about that slipping away as it is a lot of what defines me. I wonder if there is anything else in the universe that is so defined by the events of its life, and aware of them? Or are we unique in the whole of it as entities aware of their existence for so much of their lives? It could be that there are billions of other planets or other bodies where creatures of some sort or another have evolved, and none with any latency to their memories that gives them as great of a perspective on their own lives. Or everything on our own planet could remember its own lives better than I do, and I am not even aware of that. I could be the worst of them! Only with language! Making me the only one of the species that can say ‘I forgot!’ What an idiot I am!

Some daydreaming is speculating, and it amounts to nothing useful at all. And now through another of our unique talents as a species, I have shared my stupidity with you! And through the power of the Internet, once this is written and published, it will never be forgotten

So, it’s 3:30AM, and I am awake. How nice. How lucky I am to have myself here with my thoughts, and no melatonin to help me knock off back to sleep. I’ll try to be there again by 5AM. I have to remember to get the rubbish out of the house and the bins out to the curb. I need to go down for early voting, too, before I start my workday.

I have another memory, and memory type. It’s one I cannot forget, though I was told as a young lad that it did not exist. I was told I could not remember pain. I was told that by the woman who bore me, so I thought for sure she would know what she was talking about in issues of pain. It has been my experience that I do remember it, whether it is physical or emotional. But that void of where it was cannot be refilled and experienced as it was at the time it originated. My shoulders are a little sore right now, and it honestly scares me a bit. It is triggering a memory of the pain that always was in me. I am reminded of how just sitting up hurt, or holding my arms in a position like this to type was done at the expense of great effort, overcoming the want to just let things drop because the pain all the way down to my bones was so exhausting. But what I am experiencing now is only a slight drag, a little distress, and not to the core. Not like it was. Not like I remember. Perhaps that is what makes it so hard to just roll off back to sleep right now? I feel so much better, and I worry that the feeling is going to go away, so I want to be awake and enjoying it!

Memory is what tells me that things are changing. This world is changing. I remember a weird little thing just now, which is a cinderblock wall that ran parallel to my great-grandparent’s garage. It held up an awning type covering over their carport. It is gone now, but it defined a space that was under it, and a space that was outside of it. Under it was significant because they kept their trailer there. Along that was enough room to walk, and we would come through the gate there where the trailer was put in from the side road that went past their corner lot. It meant that once we entered and closed the gate behind us, we were in their space, and that space was shaded from the California sun. It was welcoming, and always filled with anticipation, because I loved those people. I would have to walk along past that cinderblock wall, which only went up three feet, and then I could get to the steps up to the back porch, which was wooden, and topped with one and a half 4×8 foot pieces of plywood, making it 6×8 feet in size. That’s where great grandpa would come out to smoke. But that little pink wall was also what separated the driveway under the carport from the side yard of the house. The rest of the boundary that kept strangers out was a white picket fence and rose bushes of all different colors. There was a narrow strip of grass, and the side of the house extending forward to the front. That little yard was as close as it would come to an outdoor space where a kid could play. It was small. It was narrow and long. But it was enough for my little six-year-old self. The little pink cinderblock wall was a backdrop for photos of family that came to visit, with its trellis covered in vine, and little plywood figure cut out, painted to look like an 18-inch-tall woman bent over to pick the weeds from what ultimately was a bed of pyroclastic rocks that my great grandparents used to collect when they went out travelling to places where rockhounding is forbidden now. A quick look at the old house on Google Maps Street View reveals that that wall is gone now, and once a person walks through that side gate, they are free to just kind of fall into the yard. The pyroclastic rocks, like great grandma’s collection of late 1800’s Vegas Silver Dollars, are gone now. Some are lost in our own backyard here in Idaho. I have no idea where the others went.

Memory. I remember that atop the trellis there was a thermometer, where a person could accurately read the temperature. In that California sun so close to the coast, it never strained itself in either direction. About a block west of the house was a mountain that shaded it from the very early sun, only allowing it to peak into the breakfast nook window around 9AM, and only if the fog was not overcasting the area. That mountain had a pumice mine. It was also a source of fear for my great grandmother. I could tell because of how she would speak of it in the years it caught fire. But there is so much more to remember there. There is so much detail, and there are so many things I know I have missed because I was too young, and just unaware.

Right. I am going to try to get back to sleep. This little journey through my memories has been brought to you by insomnia. Ask your doctor if insomnia is right for you. May cause drowsiness, and everything else bad you can imagine. But it sure is entertaining!

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A Fortnight Gone By

Posted on October 15, 2026 by Kelsey

Last night I got a call from someone claiming to be fraud prevention and nearly gave away a code over the phone to authorize a new device. When done, I reset my password and thanked my wife for helping to be very suspicious of the call. It scares me that I even came close to falling for this scam. I don’t know if that is 55-year-old me in action, or if it is post-operative me in action, or just plain exhausted from a workday in action! But it was definitely someone’s brain-inaction! I am not happy about it.

Now, amid all this, I need my family aware that they may need to step up and offer a hand against me from time to time. It definitely was the oldest thing I have ever done. I was up the same yesterday as I am right now, way too early! It is just coming to 4:30, and I have just answered nature’s call, and now I am here thinking, ‘well, I could just sit a write a bit. It’s okay! Actually, I could also go move my laundry into the dryer!’

Okay, that’s done! Glad I remembered that before getting up to a pile of wet clothes! See? First thing int he morning I can remember a thing. Of course, that was my second time downstairs past the bathroom door, and only just noticed my daughter sleeping on the settee right in front of it.

Oh! That’s right! She is there because of the two kittens she brought in last night. One has died, and she was staying close to take care of the other one.

Wait! To be fair, I did go to the other bathroom the first time. So I did not go directly past my daughter then. So, it’s okay that I did not see her, though it is not okay that I just remembered that. Maybe that’s just 4:30 in the morning me talking.

Okay, coming back to serious headed me. I have put a line under that above to really focus on this, and this is that things have most definitely been different these past two weeks since surgery. And two weeks ago, it is, today! I am lay here awake with no pain whatsoever again. My head feels a little close, and in fact the entire world feels closed in at the moment. I feel like there is just me, the computer’s glowing screen, the keyboard’s softly light letters and numbers, and the darkness.

I am thinking of my daughter who is coming out here soon to stay a spell. I am thinking of my oldest friend’s, Robin and Rusty. I sent a message to Robin the other day and have had nothing in reply. I texted Russ for a bit yesterday. I have never felt so distant from him. These things pain me so deeply. I am excited to see my daughter! First time in something like 25 years. But she is coming to an environment that she may find hostile, and that is cause to worry. My oldest friends are two guys who I have always planned to be friends with till the day we die. They don’t talk to each other anymore. They stop talking to me too, and you have basically seen the end of the Three Musketeers. I can’t bear that. That is loneliness. That is darkness for me.

Two weeks, and my body feels so much better. Of course I am waiting for the penny to drop. Russ has had many of the same problems. We pondered the possibility that it is something we shared for having grown up so close to Rocky Flats when we were kids. That was a government run facility where they manufactured triggers for hydrogen bombs. Those are triggered by atomic explosions. So, basically, they were building atom bombs out there. Can you say Superfund Site? And our thyroid problems could most certainly be caused by radioactivity. But then, I think there would be others who suffered it, too. But yeah, we lived in this quiet, neat, and well-planned little community that sprung up in the 1950’s around a government facility in charge of nuclear material. What could go wrong?

Well, anyway! I was saying. Two weeks post operative, and I feel like there is a definite change in my metabolism. My bones feel so much better. Again, I find myself lay here with nothing at all. I walked the yard in my coat, with my camera and lens on me, and my heavy camera in hand, and it did not feel like I was dragged down by the pain of just lifting the gear or the pain of just wearing the coat, like I have always felt. I could feel a slight strain in my back muscle because of the weight against it on the opposite side of me, but it was only slight, and nothing I could not have reasonably expected. Before, it would have been a sound amount of pain from the top of my spine all the way down both arms, and my spine, my hips, and legs to my ankles. I do think this will help my photography just for being able to bear the burden of the gear that I need to carry for it!

I feel like my gut has softened a little. I am sincerely hoping to finally bust that, and I am trying to eat accordingly. There is no cause to become some sugar monster, eating terrible things and changing where I am at now with a daily salad, and one to two other meals. I don’t know if I could get away with eating breads again. I have always been able to eat some. Two sausage-egg McMuffins in the morning hold me well, except if I chew gum and eat Life-Savers for my teeth and breath after. Then the apatite begins to arise sooner after. I need to figure out a better way of cleaning my teeth. I’d like to go till after lunch rush to have to fill the gap with my salad. Supper could be a yes or no thing. If Missus has gone through the trouble to make it, I will happily eat it. But if she has not, then I could pass okay, too. I think her for her trouble. She is certainly free not to do it. But I get by with a little. or a lot, of help from my friend!

I need to call Russ soon. I feel like I have dodged a bullet in life but then looked over next to me in the trench, and my best friend is lay there hit and bleeding to death. It sounds like he is suffering, and maybe even gasping for air at the moment. I don’t like that for him. I know I have suffered with my pain. But it sounds like he is going through it, or worse. That is no happy thing.

Okay, so today is Thursday. I have the kids in school today. Then I have work till it is time to pick them up. So that’s a definite plan for today. Then I have the evening free. I need to figure out how I am going to spend it.

I brought in some wood yesterday from the back yard that I need to prepare as stock for some quarter rounds and base boards for the house. There’s a couple of big, nasty knots in them that will have to be worked with, or around. They are wet from the recent rains, and they are moist from being outside. So, I will have to leave them to acclimate in the shop for a couple of weeks, at least. I may want to put a fire in the woodstove a couple of times to help it along, too. I’ll give them a straight edge with the jointer, then scrub plane them to relatively flat, then probably try the electric planer to get them all uniform fairly quickly, if it is sharp enough. Otherwise, it is to be the hand plane. Either way, I intend to finish them with a hand plane, as I cannot bear machine marks these days.

Missus has started to redecorate in the kitchen. She is painting the oven wall now and needs the quarter-round to join the beadboard to the ceiling above the cabinets. I need to see if I can get enough from the wood to do any of the trim on the front porch, where a lot of it is needed. There are holes that need covering in the wood below the windows, there are gaps at the ends of the big windows where wind blows cold right through. And there is missing quarter round where the proper beadboard meets the tops of the walls. I also need baseboards all around. Get all that done, and it is only lacking a floor in there, and it is fine, except for all the work needed to make the door look like it is properly installed and weather proofed. Uh, yeah. That really wants a lot of wood!

As for what Missus needs, it is mostly for me to net her some quarter inch square linear stock, that can be shaped to quarter. She needs probably around 60 feet of it. Knowing my sophisticated means of calculation, I will be best to plan on 100 and need 110. Maybe double that. There are the flooring edges, too. Shit!

I can hear my daughter up and moving about downstairs. I expect I will get up and drink a coffee and enjoy her company a bit, if that is her. It could be Missus. It is exciting to hear someone else moving about in the morning like this when I am also already awake and up. I’ll find me a shirt and go down and brew! It is good to feel good, and I am here to enjoy it today because I don’t trust it to be here tomorrow!

Posted in Catastrophe & Disaster, Delivery Jobs, Family Time, Journal Entry, Memories, Philosophical, Photography, Woodshop | Leave a comment

Optimism for a Fuller Life

Posted on October 14, 2026 by Kelsey

I don’t feel as good this morning as I did yesterday, but I am pretty sure it is something to do with popcorn lathered in butter and covered with salt that I ate before bed last night. Again with the no bone pain, which is astounding. THis genuinely feels life changing. One of my daughters looked up the condition I had before surgery, and she read out some of the symptoms, and one section included the statement “slowly sucking the joy out of your life.” I have apparently had this for a long time, and the joy has been gone for as long. I cannot remember not feeling a deep abiding pain that I could not shake, and that always slowed me down. To feel ‘normal’ is to feel like I spent 55 years of my life being robbed, and shorted on everything. But to really confirm this, I need to do some things, and experience some things that would have slowed me before, and that I should have been able to do all these years. One in particular is my photography.

Yes, even my photography feels like it ihas suffered. Why? Because I like good cameras, and good cameras are often very heavy. Be it my Hassalblad 503CW, or my Nikon D850, those camersa have weighed a lot. But both are able ot capture detail in the images that none of my other cameras throughout the years have been able to. I remember my first shots with the Hasselblad. I took a picture of a girl and when I got the negatives back and scanned them at high resolution, I looked at her eyes, and in them I could see the building behind me when I took the image, and the car parked in front of it, and the oulines of the grass, and a fence. They all appeared in such detail in someone who’s waist up portrait took up less than a third of the image space on the negative. Then there is the D850. A full frame sensor at 45MP, mounted behind some of the best glass in the world, and it does essentially the same.

Well, these cameras are both made with a metal chassis, and in particular the case of the Nikon, it is fully loaded with electronics and both weigh a hell of a lot, especially with their massive lenses with superior elements. I have always begun to hurt from the moment I have lifted either of these cameras. I mean this from a guy who begins to hurt when he is wearing more than just one shirt, such as GAP style layering, or a even jacket. As things have been clearing up for me in that realm, I have to wonder if I can now carry the camera more easily to go out shooting with it? Will it be okay to try to haul a second lens?

It has hurt to just lift the camera, making even shooting portraits difficult, and carrying to s shoot or hiking to a location with a camera has been all but impossible. Go back to 2006, when I first started this blog, and you will see I was shooting from rail journeys and on bike rides. Well, that is because I hated carrying the camera, and needed to mount it on my bike rack just to be able to have it with me. I mean, to really illustrate my level of pain in all this, I have not even been able to put my cellphone in the front pocket of my shirt without it weighing down and hurting my spine.

I’m going to recover from this buttery popcorn by eating some decent food today, then maybe this evening or this weekend I will try hauling my camera around a bit here at the house, and see how it goes. I’ll know. It really has always been that bad.

So the question is, am I going to stay where I am at in life now? Or do I take this new found lease on life and get after my dreams? Of course I do!

Brain fog has been another issue symptom of my issue, and I cannot say I have lived life without it. I have always hurt for memory. There is a reason I know history in generalities, and cannot remember specific dates, and why my own expertise in anything has always been limited to the same kind of generalities. I don’t feel like I have ever been a complex thinker. Then again, there are some levels of complexity to which I think it is a waste of time going into the weeds after, or down the rabbit hole chasing. But I am still waiting to see if the brain fog clears and anything changes, or if I am just stupid. Probably that. Be it whatever on that score, I will not be distracted by the constant low level hurt anymore, so even if there is no difference on by brain fog and thinking, there will be less distraction, and that is extremely promising.

To say this moment in life has been nothing short of miraclous is short of how it feels. I keep expecting my shoulders to start hurting, my spine to radiate pain, arms to want to fall into a resting position and feel like they are pulling me down. But instead, I keep feeling nothing. Not even a twinge in my internal organs! Has life really been taking this much from me?

When Jordan was here yesterday I took a short turn on the log splitter, and nothing of it bothered me, or left me feeling wanting. Instead it was lift the log, split the log, throw the pieces, and lift the next one without any of the drag of sore knees, hurting joints in my elbows, shoulders, and wrists, or my hips and back making me feel like everyting wieghs twice as much as it does.

So, where do I go from here? The house needs work. The photography wants love. Wood wants working. My world needs cleaning up, and the idea of keeping up with it should not be so damned challenging. I also need to lose weight, and I need to be more fit. I need to eat well! Better than I did last night! Generally, that’s not hard, and I even feel motivated for it as I feel better. I don’t know to what extent I should try to exercise some, or just rely on increased activity?

But yeah, I genuinely feel that much better these past few days. My body is probably still adapting to the lower calcium in my blood. In a couple of more weeks, I should know. I’ll need to do some more blood tests to see where I am on things like my cholesterol.

Anyway, here I am. Things are different. The joy does not feel like it is being slowly sucked out of my life anymore. But I don’t just want to be bouyant. I want to lift off, and fly. I need to be cautious to not think I can do more than I really can, and I need to adjust slowly. Adapting to new capabilities must be cautious, so I don’t harm myself trying to do more than I can.

Yeah, I want to change just about everything, including posting in my blogs and such, and photgraphing and working my wood hobby into some kind of business, too. But the first thing I need to do is get myself into the condition to do all of this, so a little more activity in my life.

Sorry, this is all about me, me, me. I have a family, too. One of whome will be out here with us soon. And I am excited about that!

I feel so optimistic! It has been hard for me to feel that way for years now. How could I when everything has felt so hard to do? I suppose i fI had felt like this from a young age, I would have taken it for granted. Not taking it for granted is why I am gushing about it now. On the other hand, I think I could have done so much more with my life had I not been constantly fighting the obstacle all these years. If I had not been bound with a millstone, I may have done better in my career, with my education, with building the wealth I needed to care for my family better. I hate that this has come so late in life, but I am so glad it has come. I never knew there was a problem that was curable. I fell for the propaganda that I was a lesser person because I could not keep up with the pack.

I don’t want to jump the gun, and I hope what I am feeling is real, and it is permanant. It feels it. I hope I don’t screw it up by injuring myself trying to do something a 55 year old just can’t. I hope I can quickly pace myself into a new life. Well, not a new life, but the one I am living, only fuller. Much fuller.

Even as a young child, pre-ten years old, I was hurting, and unable to play as hard as the other kids did. So much has been robbed from me.

Posted in Catastrophe & Disaster, Cycling, Philosophical, Photography, Special Update | Leave a comment

Day 12 – Feeling…

Posted on October 13, 2026 by Kelsey

Good! I think this morning was so strange. I woke up at 4:30 to asnwer nature’s call, and then woke up again at 5:45, and decided to just lay there and wait for the 6:15 alarm. During that time, I observed that there was nothing at all that hurt or was sore anywhere in my body. No muscle pains, no bone pains, no organs anywhere hurtning for some unknown reason. I’ve no idea how long this is going to last, so my goal for today is to live it and enjoy it! I cannot remember a time in my whole life that I have ever felt this good. I hate that I have gone 55 years till I have felt this, and yet am so grateful to feel it! And I am obviously suspicious of it, like it is going to all be taken back in a minute, which is why I feel such an urgent need to enjoy this!

Even when I was a young child of seven or so, I had leg cramps all the time. As I got older, there was a pain I could not identify that just made me feel as though living just hurt, and I could not do anything with vigor. Running in gym class was impossible. I tried a job in a factory when I was 21, and I lasted all of four days. Besides the work being inane, it was cold and painful, and I could not keep the pace or work accurately. There has never been work I have been involved in where I did not suffer from the pains within. Especially on my feet because of deep hip pain, leg pain, foot pain, and especially lower back pain. And added all up, it has been absolutely exhausting!

It is strange that I feel none of it. I did not know how it felt to feel like this. My hobbies, woodworking, photography, and my personal life, especially shopping, have all been done with reservation because of pain. I worked in the shop yesterday. I did the day before, too. Yet this morning I feel none of it! It is so strange!

This morning our oldest is already down to the house, visiting with his mom and waiting for a clearing in the weather, or maybe already outside splitting firewood. I wish I was at home helping him

Early evening has come and I went home after I made $95 by 2PM. The app tried to get me to do an 11+ mile trip for less than $5. Well, that’s my que to skidaddle.

I found our Jordan working with his wife at the log splitter in the Service Yard. After catching up with Missus, I helped them load the truck and split more wood. They got in about 3/4 of a cord, and their little one picked her pumpkins for Halloween. They only took two, a medium and a relatively small one. Perfect for their little one. They did not want to save seeds for next year, but I reminded them they can always roast the seeds for a snack, too. Jordan kind of liked that idea a little better, but I doubt they will. They have busy lives.

We have a small fire in the woodstove. Jordan left us with quite a lot more wood than we had started with on the split pile. We still have a lot out in the woodyard, and a lot in the trailer. So he thinks we may already have enough for both houses. I remain skeptical, but I also really cannot afford to run out. And if this winter turns out to be very cold, then we will really need the wood! So I am cautious. What’s more, the wood is old and very dry, but also a little rotten, so it will burn faster. I’d really love to get fresher wood and season it myself after it is split, but one has to account that such wood would be much heavier and harder to handle.

I got the girls from their bus stop just after the Warners left, and we got our outside chores done. Now everyone is preparing a DIY supper. I am not particularly hungry, so I will wait.

I am still not in any kind of pain. I am still in shock. I did not expect this kind of day. If this keeps up, I need to really get in the habit of living more fully! That is not something I am accustomed to.

Posted in Catastrophe & Disaster, Delivery Jobs, Family Activities, Family Time, Firewood, Journal Entry, Special Update, The Farm | Leave a comment

Nine – October Tenth

Posted on October 10, 2026 by Kelsey

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.

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