Looks like I missed yesterday all together. All I could remember of yesterday is that we went to the VA for my EEG. I downloaded whatever pictures are on the camera and seeing them unlocked some memory. The EEG at the VA was an interestingly long session. I know I’ve had these before but only remember a few bits and pieces. She put on a skull cap kind of things with electrodes that screwed into your head, not puncturing the skin but you knew it was there. Then came a series of different noises. NOPE…wait a minute. I was blending the memories of the MRI with this one. Got to sort it out. OK, there were very few noises with the EEG, just a steady hum and the sounds of a switch being moved to different positions. Every now and then there would be a beep. Evidently this whole procedure was monitored remotely as the nurse made a call to “Commence data transmission” and later someone called her to say a particular electrode on my head was not hooked up right. I fell asleep once during all of this waking up with a start as I heard her instructing me to “Open your eyes”. It took about an hour for everything to be finished.
This plant looks good enough to eat. That would probably mean it's deadly poisonous or something. Only found it on the south facing sand slopes. Here's some pictures of how the wind sculpted the sand.
Come to think of it we were lucky to get the test as it was. When we walked in there was no one at the window and when a lady showed up she was surprised to see us. No, there was not an appointment listed on her computer. She began a series of calls ending with “So you just didn’t call them to let them know” which identified the source of the snafu. She called around the hospital to find a technician who could…Damn, I’m talking about the MRI again. It’s liable to be a hard day if I am unable to keep these memories from blending. These kinds of days I get confused and lost easy. Still sharp just get things mixed up.
These pictures remind me of what I did yesterday. In order to make Cherie’s sewing tables I need wood for the legs. This will be a month we count the days till it ends for then I get my check. It’ll be a lot of peanut butter and cereal this month. That’s good as we both need to lose weight. So I looked in the garage and there is only one good two by four but three others that are old pieces I recovered from different areas. They need to be planed but I can’t get at the planer because of all the stuff we brought back from Toledo piled all over the place.
So where can I get wood? How about the mulberry tree, that’s some pretty wood. Thus began this venture. Ends up being a lot of work with little progress. I cut out some logs for this and then tried to slice the length of a log with the chain saw. That wasn’t working well so I decided to try a different way. Going into the garage I found the axe head I had dug up in the hen house. Using it and the splitting maul as a hammer tried to split the log. Only had limited success but this has promise.
Going back into the garage I looked up the half an axe handle I had found. I spent the next hour or so making that handle fit into the axe head. Taking it back out to the log I continued trying to split the log. Part of that involved swinging the hatchet and that quickly reminded me of how poor of shape I am in. Not only did the arm get tired but I couldn’t hold onto the handle so constantly dropped it. I went cut in finger slots to help me hold onto it. 
I kept having to sit down to rest and relieve the back pain and while I did I noticed a black pick up truck parked on the highway just a couple of hundred feet away. It just sat there. I couldn’t tell who was in it because of the dark tinted windows. After a half hour I got the binoculars out. When I looked at the truck it started up and ran on down the road. Strange. Later on I am laying down when I hear Cherie call to me about this strange truck sitting across the road. I get up to see a dark Ford F-250 with dark tinted windows sitting directly across from our drive with it’s noisy diesel engine idling. Again curious but probably nothing. I went about my work of trying to make a usable timber out of this mulberry log. The truck stayed there but would occasionally move it’s position. I got the binoculars out again and had Cherie write down the license number. I’m sure it’s nothing and I am probably just being a little paranoid but you never know these days. If the truck shows up again I’ll walk over and ask what they are doing.
Here's another weed. This stuff is all over the place and covers the ground like a grass. Who knows what it will turn into. Cherie's sister is the one with a degree in agriculture stuff so loves to look up this stuff.
So today we will go get some telephone poles, or at least try to. Want to use the trailer while it is empty because we are going to use it as a storage unit.
We hooked up the trailer and after walking clear around the trailer and truck to make sure the lights all worked I hopped in to drive off. At first I thought the brakes were sticking but then it dawned on me “I used a cinderblock to chock the trailer wheels”. Yep it’s still there but it did plow a path for itself. Had to have Cherie back the truck to get it loose from the wheel. Now we can go.
There was no one at the landfill when we drove in so I went to where I knew the telephone poles are. There they are, dozens of them stacked fifteen or twenty feet high. But wait!! What are those? RAILROAD TIES@@@ Yeah, I know they’re not in good condition being half rotted on the bottom sides but the price is right and they are very usable from a practical standpoint. We’ve got nothing set up out here at the house and there is no money so these are getting put to use.
There were about nine of these things piled up here and they were not too heavy because there was so much rotted away. I thought this would be easy and that after piling up the railroad ties I could turn my attention to the telephone poles. Oh yeah, what an imagination I have. I had brought my tape measure so I could cut these poles so they would just fit in the trailer. Had it piled four foot high in my mind. Wake up call. I am getting constant reminders of just how bad a shape I’m in. Those “Not too heavy” railroad ties were not too light. I’m glad I brought the two wheel dolly along. I would lift one end and have Cherie put the dolly under it. Then I would lift the other end and together we’d walk it up the ramp into the trailer. I tripped and fell and Cherie learned how to work a dolly. It kicked our ass. My back has been getting lots of abuse lately so made sure I knew it. There was a five foot section of phone pole sitting nearby so Cherie gave it a tug to see how much it weighed. Not light at all. I gave it a try also and called it a day at the landfill.
We came home and after backing the trailer in hurried indoors. I grabbed a coke and took some aspirin, a pain pill, and lay down. Cherie came in with the bags of seeds we have and we both went through them, sorting the flowers from edibles. Then we sorted the food seeds to organize them into categories like melons and root crops. That took a while and I had to go find a box we could fit all this in. I finally got all the packets of seeds carefully and neatly fitted into the box. I was so proud I took this picture of it. Oh yeah, now I can lay down a bit I thought as I picked up the box to move it from where I wanted to plant this torso. The bottom opened up and dumped its contents out. That’s done. I just threw them all into a plastic bin.
There is tons of work to do. Spring is coming. We saw a tree in town that was blooming and there are other evidences of green appearing. We’ve got tons of seeds but there is no place yet prepared to plant them. I checked the compost experiment out and it wasn’t promising. The fact that I had neglected to water and turn it has nothing to do with this, ok. I had Cherie point out how she would like railroad ties set up for the front of the house. We also talked about where bushes would work well and then trees and stuff. Things are starting to come to life now. There was a cloud of some flying insect hovering around the compost I had just finished turning. These Hydrocodone sure help me get stuff done as far as making the pain manageable. Gotta watch that. I should swing by Leroy’s place to see how he’s doing and thank him for doing such a good job on the well. The electric bill for the well still runs around ten dollars a month, way down from the $116.00 I saw on one of grandma’s old bills. Actually my main motivation for seeing him is to see if he still intends to plow a garden area for us. That would be nice and some of this seed we have should be in the ground by now.
Now’s when things get busy.
Here is the end of the day so good night.
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