Hard start

5/19/06 Friday
This is a hard start morning. I have a headache and am walking like I am 80 because the right leg isn’t working well. They switched Cherie’s hours again. Changes from day to day as some sort of disturbance between executives rages in the corporation. Cherie was running late as she has to come in an hour earlier than yesterday and was accordingly stressed. Of course I have to get in the way do take care of morning bathroom duties that can’t wait. We are rushing. Cherie to get to work and me to get out of the way when the doorbell rings. “Who could that be? Nobody comes to see us. What’s all that noise outside?” runs the conversation.

The doorbell rings again and I look out the window to see front end loaders coming into the parking lot. I’m not anxious to have a visitor as I am naked, bad timing. I see the notice I had taken off my door last night and read it again. “OH yeah. New parking lot. Move cars. Shit, got to move. Cherie’s pissed at the timing and inconvenience of this and say’s “I’m not moving till I leave for work. They can wait” she says as she takes curlers out of her hair. Grabbing some sweats to be marginally presentable I open the door to see who was ringing. There is a conversation with Fred as I hear someone offering to move Fred’s car. “I got it. I’ll get Fred’s car moved” I yelled down the stairs and rushed back in the apartment. I got clothes and shoes on in record time and went out to move it. Fred is standing at the door and handing me fifty cents said “Would you get me a paper?”.

Now that I write this I wonder if I ever got him his paper. That’s a problem with this not remembering thing. I suppose I need to call Fred and ask him if I got his paper, if indeed he asked me to. I can’t tell if the my memory of his asking for a paper was this morning or yesterday.

I called Fred. Yeah I got his paper, walked in and laid it on the table like Fred asked. I explained that I was just checking up on myself. Fred understands as he spends a fair amount of time with me. He knows I forget where I am going as I drive down the road and learned to watch where I am going as I drive him. He laughed about it and we hung up.

Now what do I do. Running just a little slow with a window of clarity that lasted about an hour. I know I need to work on the love story but have a hard time because of all the noise of heavy equipment and not being up to speed. Maybe I will carve some more. That is relaxing and peaceful, something I have used to distressed going back to 1976 when I learned to carve in prison.

I called Cherie a second ago. A statement she made yesterday surfaced in my mind with the answer seemingly attached. Perhaps I had thought it through since then or my brain worked it out while I slept. Don’t know, I just figured I should call her about it while it was still in this mind. “Cherie, about what you said yesterday, that you didn’t want to start off working full time in Texas maybe only part time. That got me to thinking. You Will be working full time. But you will be working with me. We’re going to build this farm together. We got some cash so lets rent a place while we get this done. It’ll take some time. Maybe six months”.

That is so true. There is a ton of things to be done starting with paperwork. That covers getting government grants and incentives that are available all the way to blueprints and permits. The first step is to assay the total situation. Water, plumbing, electrical, structural, grounds clean up, whatever else needs to be done. Then we prioritize everything to determine the order it will be done in. How much we do and when is dependant on finances.

I have an overall plan worked out in my head that I simply call “the dream”. It is what I would do with the place if I had a million dollars or so. The thing about dreams is you might as well dream big because even if you don’t quite achieve that dream you will stretch yourself and thus accomplish more than if you had not dared dream in the first place. I have always been a dreamer.

There is a reality that I wait to face. A reality that is a question for now and can only be answered in time. That question is “what am I able to do?”. What are my limits? I always try to do more than I can. Would that be a guarantee of failure then, to always take on more than you can do? Maybe to you, or someone else (I don’t know who’s reading this) but to me it is a guarantee that I will learn something.

Enough writing. It is already 1:00 and I haven’t eaten yet. Besides the racket outside is driving me nuts. What I do need to write and do immediately before I forget is this. I talked to Linda, the property manager for Girdenich realty when I was moving the car. After a quick dig about overnight notice of the parking lot I got to talking with her. I made a comment about it being a shame that they don’t take section 8 because I knew a guy who really needed a safe place. She said they will so I got her card. I need to call Wayne.
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6:53 – I hadn’t written much about yesterday and had a hard time remembering what I did till I went to get something to eat. I found the fresh guacamole I made yesterday and what was left of the pineapple upside down cake I also made. What I did yesterday was cook dinner and went all out with it. Fred took me to breakfast where we could get eggs, potatoes, and coffee for a buck. We didn’t say much but the eggs were eggs and the coffee was hot so we got our moneys worth. After breakfast I took Fred to the dollar store where he bought stuff Barb needed. I took him to Barb’s with the goodies and then we took Barb to Kroger for food. After all that I came home and other than cooking dinner don’t have a clue what else I did.

We just went out to eat. Went to the Oaken Bucket and I am not impressed. The ribs were tough and the barbeque sauce sucked. Tasted like something Chef Boyardee would make. I’m going to run over to Allen’s tonight. He called and is feeling depressed or sorry for himself so I will go cheer him up.

Boy Howdy…That was fun!! I just watched Allen play a video game for two and a half hours. We didn’t talk other than “Did you see that, Whoa?”. Allen wasn’t feeling pain and his glassy eyes told me he was flying. He tried to get me to play but I no longer do that with him. He has hundreds of hours playing and always wants to correct me and show me better ways to do something. Everything he says is gibberish to my ears as I am having a hard time making a guy move forward much less understanding any of the intricacies of the game. This coupled with my brains inability to process information quickly takes all the fun out of playing. So I watched. Finally I said it was time to go and was glad to get moving. Allen chain smokes and invariably I am downwind from him so my clothes stink by the time I escape. I'm glad I don't smoke anymore.