Wednesday, November 20th 2024
Could have just as easily camped out last night in the tent despite the all day drizzle rain. At around 9 I was cutting weed plants up and tossing the stems into the front yard to be mulched up along with the last of the fallen maple tree. One more mow. Cleaned all the house gutters and pitched ‘The Space Ship’ off the roof and down into the backyard below to burn. The Space Ship is something I built about 10 years ago for the sole purpose of sleeping under the stars rooftop style. Basically, a two-piece plywood sheet painted read that is connected by four hinges and folds up into the side of the chimney when not in use and straightened out with two aligning 2 x 4 railings, one on each side. There is, like most roofs a slight slant, so The Space Ship balances it out so you can sleep flat. Many a night the wife and I would sleep up the under the stars before new neighbors on corner put in their spotlights they keep on all the time. Some of these peoples’ electric bill must be off the chain! Slept in later than I have in many months. Ate some special cookie and watched Party Monster while doing bong hits. Put me into coma. Needed a good sleep, but wasted this day when could be working on the cabin roof. Was too wet the other night. Rained for 15 minutes, but that was just long enough to make it too wet for the self-adhering roof cap. It is going to be a real bitch getting that heavy roll up there myself, especially wearing sandals and missing toenail. Finally had to pull it. Made video of it called Pulling Toenail with Rusty Pliers – Part 3 and is a sequel-to-the-sequel-to the-sequel. Been wearing ‘ninja’ sock with sandals. The 30-foot ladder is just tall enough to allow me to stand on the very top rung. Unfortunately the top half of rungs are not squared off but rounded and there’s only a few inches of clearance. Had to take a day off because my calves were getting so cramped from literally standing on my toes putting the trim up. The Sun has just ducked away. Might as well be close to 5 PM, when the Sun sets, but only close to 2. I’ve wasted this day, which is gotta be in the sixties and warmer than this old house. Got the front door open, but of course there’s someone using a chainsaw. This block is never ever quiet in the daytime. I should be out there with another roll of insulation. Just got $50 from my brother for dog walking 2 weeks. It isn’t much, but combined with a $35 gift certificate it will create another insulation batch to install so can finish up back wall after capping. Then can put pre-cut flooring in and actually sleep in it with my North Face one-man tent Storm 1. Ah, never mind, starting to hear raindrops and when checked weather it is def going to rain and then storm and then maybe turn to snow by tomorrow. Still, should be able to get things done, just sucks walking up and down a hill and in and out of woods when the ground is cold slime and ninja socks soak it up like a sponge and you get so into that when it is finally time to try to fire up a fire you find you can’t thaw your toes before the sleeping bag and they are frozen until one of the AM hours and have to stumble out into it to take a piss and you feel like each step you’re taking is like shattering glass with each step…. But can’t wear boots as of yet. Doesn’t matter that much because my Lowas have lost their waterproofing altogether. Patagonia did them in this summer. I don’t think my feet were dry a single day that entire 5 day hike around the W. The front of the boots were coming apart after Alaska so put a treatment on the toes, a rubberlike stuff just to make South America, which seemed to work alright, but the sides where the bend is has been worn out and impossible to mend. Or maybe there is a fix, dunno. Will ask the Avon Lake shoe guy advice. I had my work shoes resoled by him for $35. Well, re healed, should say. Wow, even darker now. The wind yanked the storm door open and let in some fresh autumn air. Rain is pelting the awning. The guy is still using limb chopper, but has put away the chain saw, which is a good idea at this point. It is going to storm like a mo-fo! Thinking of resurrecting my blog from the cyber graveyard. I know that writing is one form of personal therapy and will do it regardless, sometimes this clown needs an audience so it just doesn’t seem like pissing out into a backwind never to be seen again. Writing helps me battle this lifelong depression and think more clearly. Eager to start working on my book Eater of Dreams again, use this negativity in a positive way. The other night I was more upset than I had been since my twenties. Was told by my Dad that I wasn’t wanted at their house because the dogs bark at me and I disrupt the house. I had gone in at 9:30 PM to say goodnight to my Mother and retrieve headlamp batteries to could keep working late into the night. Hell, it gets dark at 5 so I have a headlamp on nearly around the clock, well, until around midnight when begin to fatigue and start a fire to smoke some herb and chill. I always have a beer in hand, the weed just helps me go to sleep and the pain upon waking more nullified until can drink my green glop (Kratom) for ‘breakfast’. Usually have vitamins and a glass of red apple cider vinegar water with 5 drops of mineral salts from the Great Salt Lake of Utah to rehydrate faster. The vinegar water as ‘The Mother’ enzyme and allows my beaten stomach to break down anything I attempt to eat as my alcohol intake of so many years has done a number to my poor gut. There is a saying that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, which, if you look at it scientifically is very true due to this enzyme, this scobie, as it is called when making Kombucha. I can’t afford a $4 Kombucha drink every day, so I do it the poor man’s way and try to eat yogurts when I can – the natural yogurts, not the high fructose corn syrup nasty shit kind passed as ‘good’ for you. Stomach/gut health is super important and some people are selling their stool, their feces, their shit for money. Hey, that might be a good money maker for me! Think might have finally found my calling! If you ever want to lose weight, and I try to do the exact opposite, try drinking some Mother loaded red cider vinegar water each day, diluted in water of course, and see what happens. Reason we eat so much and obesity is such a problem is because we are constantly hungry from not only having such poor quality food, but our guts can’t get what vitamins and minerals they need so brain says to shovel in more and more. Yeah, think I will start doing a blog from here on out. I’ll go back and erase/hide some of the old boring stuff (like this is not boring) and start fresh and anew, just to keep up with the cabin making project and to give some insights on some of my photography. Feel like I am just ‘giving it away’ on Facebook. I have two FB accounts; one is strictly images with titles. The other I have for ranting and whatnot and keeping up with friends. Amelia says I don’t have friends but have groupies. That makes me feel rather sad inside, but then again what does she know? She uses a fake account, a spying tool basically, and I she has been off my friend list for over a decade now. Plan on keeping it that way. Not sure how freely I can write on this blog considering circumstances pertaining. Anything I write might and probably will be used against me in the court of her law. She can be quite devious at times, surprisingly so as I’ve given her more credit than deserved as a blinded husband. But those days are over. A new era has begun and it will be interesting to see how it unfolds. Will be interesting how I, the thing I consider me, that atman, what I am but view as an outside source from the functioning me, will become as the pain, anger, and depression increase all the while the temp decreases and have to push not only the mind but the body as well. Not eager to go back to my parents’ house, where I park my car as I ascend to the woods below and work and camp after this last brushing. Had believed my Mother would be up until 10 PM like she normally does, but it was my Dad on his recliner watching sports. Maybe that is why she went to bed early. My Dad is the boss after all – of everything. Well, not everything, no one is the boss of me in the end. I do ‘play’ along with everyone just to keep the flow going, but when the nitty gets to the gritty I do put my foot down. An example would be when helping my Dad fix an upstairs window of the garage and he told me to pound it with a hammer I refused. I am not going to risk not only my career as a photographer but possibly my life for a stupid window. Of course was still going to help, but was putting on safety gloves first. But that didn’t fly with him and of course he went up there and pounded it back up all the while not wearing any protective gear, not even glasses, for he wears none. He is anti-safety everything. I on the other hand am super accident prone and in my older years turned into a safety nerd. Over the Summer I had helped him throw pallets over the hillside trying to extend some of the usable yard property and it caught my shorts on way down and yanked me head-over-heals along with. I mean I did a complete flip! Ripped my shorts all the way down and my Tibetan prayer bead necklace I got in Kathmandu while doing Mount Everest Base Camp. It took me 2 full days of searching finally find it. Need to fix it still, but don’t have a special tool. It will be a wintertime mission. Anyhoo, I landed on my back and neck cutting my face in process. If there had been any rocks probably would have broken some bones, quite possibly my back. There was some glass down there, as people back in the 50s and 60s would just bury their garbage and it emerges over time. I actually have a bottle collection going on, which will be put into the final cabin project. It will be filled with cool stuff from the property like a turtle shell, raccoon skulls, old rusty tools, and a snakeskin I tanned after eating it. That was my one and only time eating snake. Might have been a bit better if I had not just cooked over campfire and added seasoning. Probably will pass on snake from here on out. The coolest thing from the property is the 8 pointer found in the pond. It was under the water for a long time and protected somewhat from nibblers. The skull will go right above the mantle as a centerpiece hanging from wall by a metal mount, just like the one used in backroom for my most favorite skull of all found in the Vermilion River while fly fishing with father-in-law last season. It had been protected from the critters as it was on a slippery slate slope and hard to get to. I had my spikes on and was able to go down to it and cut it off the spine. Then had to carry about 3 miles back. Was worth it. I’ve been offered $500 for it, but as a bone collector it is the find of a lifetime. So the dogs started barking at me as usual and he states that I’m not wanted, which is a given. I’ve never been wanted, never had a place anytime or anywhere. The wife hates it when I’m home and all my stuff is lying about. My parents, Dad mostly, doesn’t like any of my stuff in view. But I have a lot of ‘stuff’ being a photographer and part time carpenter. Lot of gear, lot of tools, and add fishing to the mix then got waders, rods, backpack, blah-blah blah. The living room here looks nice when I’m gone, will have to admit, but not like your normal average everyday joe-schmo, I’ve got a million and one interests and ‘hobbies’. Some will call my photography a hobby, but that is actually what I do, have been doing for many years. But it is a tough market. I do what I can when I can and for different reasons. Was adopted as a kid and my name was changed. I would change it over the years as well. My name has never felt like my name nor did anywhere I live feel like ‘home’. My home is in a backpack. Bike and hitchhiked across the country in my early years. Wherever I lay my head was home to me. Well, a temporary home, even my backpack is not the same pack as back then. When I moved from Georgia to up here in Ohio to start attending community college I lived above my folks unfinished garage. Had put money into thinking I’d someday live in the loft after graduating. Worked two jobs and commuted. Even though I’d put about $300 into the project and it was winter and no walls or insulation I was charged rent. Was perpetually broke, but at least I felt like I might some day have a place to call home. But that would not last as my uncle was given the stay and I went off to Kent State in search of a better life, which ended tragically. Not going to go into detail about all this because I wrote and autobiography about it, which took over a decade to get right. Well, still not completely ‘right’ as I have to rework the short ending titled Epology. Eventually I would move into this house, rent it out while rentivating, but along came my brother and his wife and I was shoved back in the corner of the very room I spent my childhood within, which I didn’t feel like ‘my room’ because never really felt part of my family. An outsider of an outsider of an outsider and was suffering from Schizophrenia at the time. But that was a long time ago and he eventually moved out so I could scrape of the pieces of my own crumbling marriage. I don’t feel wanted in this house after all the hard labor put into it. Even if she were gone completely I’d still feel ‘unwanted’. The only place I really feel any connection to is the woods where the cabin is being built. It is a special place and even though tick infested at times seems to always have open arms to embrace and help me sleep peacefully. The property has been in the family for 80 + years now. Though some of it was sold off by my paternal Grandmother, there’s still at least 4 ½ acres left of woodland, which we call ‘Over The Hill’. If you’re an insider you know what is being referred. I felt very hurt from that blow from my Dad as he sat on his reclining throne, but retreated wounded, but not defeated back down over the hill to continue working on into the night with the help of a few solar lights. Headlamp batteries were not completely charged so eventually I was back to fire pit cracking some stronger beers. Didn’t smoko though, because THC can affect my condition at times. I like to play it safe at times and be in control, especially when memories and brewing up old feelings of rejection. The following day we ‘made up’ and set a time limit at 9 PM to come to the house, which is fine, usually would never go there past 9:30 because my Mother typically, as I stated, goes to bed at 10. The cabin, The Chicken Shack as I’m calling it, is not going to be a home to me, just a place to escape, like kids building a fort in the woods. I mean, I could live in it and keep warm with the potbelly stove that will be installed, but the place I feel most at home at is right in the middle of our woods under the Red-tailed Hawk’s nest and the owls. I am tolerated by the raccoons, deer, fox, opossum, mice, and all the creepy crawlies about, they seem more like family to me in the end. My brothers and parents interact very differently than us, as I very rarely use the ‘L’ word and don’t do the European cheek kiss or embrace goodbye that much. After we buried the hatchet my Dad tried to hug me. It felt awkward and weird, but I participated so it would make him feel better. My Mother had asked if I wanted to come inside and for a cup of coffee, but I explained that only for emergencies would I go inside from now on. Their three dogs go nuts every time I walk in. Doesn’t matter if it is two hours or two minutes, they still have to do the barking thing. It started with the black miniature poodle my Dad got her, whom I call ‘Satan’ they call Mini-Me. The barking infected the other miniature poodle and will always be like that even if Satan has a stroke from barking and dies, the young one will pick up right where the evil bitch had stopped. There’s a saying that goes you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. But you actually can, what you can’t do is teach a dog to unlearn old habits. Once it is ingrained it is for during of its life. So this is how it will always be for the next decade. One of the reasons for building this cabin is not only to bring friends out into the woods to enjoy nature and have cool little cookouts and live like they did in the olden days – no running water, no electric, no real heat, but just a shelter, but the other reason being is so I can have a place to stay as they fall ill and are in need of care. I’d be just a cellphone click away. Surely now even more so it would be relatively impossible to keep my sanity over blasting television and dogs barking and that nagging feeling like I’m unwanted all the time. Can just go up there, do what they need, then slip out the door as if never existed at all. After a few beers the feelings of rejection subsided some and I got to thinking of other things besides, like designing the interior of the Chicken Shack. I never wrote out any plans for it, just dotted down a vision of what I wanted it to look like from the dream I had had. The idea for it came from sitting around the campfire with my Dad one summer night. Must’ve been 2 years ago? I missed an entire year of building because worked so hard got tendonitis so bad couldn’t even drive. Couldn’t even brush my teeth! Still have it, mostly in left arm, which I use to lift my heavy camera hundreds of times a day. The two added together; photography and carrying boards, drilling, sawing and hammering destroyed me. I was like a machine back then! Running full steam like a Motorhead album cover. But not a spring chicken, this body is a mountain of trials and scars. Hard to believe I made it to 51 years of age! Had asked him permission to build, which he granted, but I don’t think he knew the extent of what I was planning. There’s an old barn down there that used to house the goats and a sheep named Noah and he said I should just convert it into a cabin. Disgusting! Hate going into that thing for any reason, which is for wood. Once the wood is all used I’m going to cover the old rotting plywood planks with pieces of pallet wood, just like the cabin is being made from. Took many an hour tearing apart all those pallets, which I would usually do at this house, the Inwood House, as I call it, and then load it into my Baja and drive out. Then I had to carry it all down there little by little. I refuse anyone to help me built this project, as it is my Noah’s Arc. After the outside is covered will resurrect the rusty ruminants of the old piano we set ablaze long ago. I took a photograph of my best friend, Nick Tobias as he acted like he was playing it. That is one of the only photographs that will be going into the cabin. He was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident at 24. I had sold my bike for a better camera. He already had a better camera. After all the barn is coated with free wood using a bucket of discarded nails, which fits the bill because this entire project is about using recycled or discarded building material, I will attach that piano skeleton to the side in remembrance of good times of long ago…. Well, have one more weed plant to trim up and jar up that better be getting back to. I give out mason jars of marijuana as Thanksgiving Day gifts as my giving. I have been growing a lot time and I like to share His love in a personable way. Lot of my love goes into it and people tend to enjoy it. I make cookies as well, but some people like those too much like my friend who just had his 69th birthday last week and again ‘overdosed’ on THC. It will lay you out, that’s for sure! He smokes on a daily basis and said he listened to my advice and only had half a cookie, but still that was too much. I had less than half, maybe two bites last night, which was just perfect for sleeping in – little too long today! Didn’t get up until nearly 1 PM! I had been trying and trying all month to get in one sleep in day with no success, but this time it worked. I feel very mentally competent right now and getting things accomplished. Weed can tend to make people ‘stupid’ at times and they mess things up. I am one that cannot trust myself to do necessary work while high, while stoned. Some can. Some can be functional alcoholics just as myself, some cannot, and vice versa. Pick your poison well my friends, but know when not to cross the streams like in Ghost Busters or you might end up like my buddy who just got his first D.W.I. this past week. After completing the trimming will get out the __________ tool I got for free to carve the sign ‘The Chicken Shack’ to hang onto the cabin using a super heavy duty piece of Russian plywood my friend, Paul gave to me back in the day. My friends, though she calls them my ‘groupies’ hook me up with building materials and metal to be scrapped. I try like the good book says to surround myself with the best of peoples and feel like have done a fairly good job despite…. I’ve been scrapping metal for years to transform the cash into the metal roof I’ve been trying to install. It is an experiment and have been taking a stationary photograph from the same spot each addition, which will put together in a short clip with music so can witness the thing be built from the ground up. Should be pretty cool. Glad that things are moving along. All I need to do is cap it then don’t have to worry about falling thru the floor and can really start doing some detailing. Will have to teach myself masonry so can use the free bricks to form a safe barrier behind the stove.
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