Groggy morning but I'll have a good day cause I said so

6/5/07 Tuesday
It is another groggy morning like yesterday was. I told Cherie that it is like I am on drugs from a physical standpoint. Or perhaps a small hangover. Perhaps I had a partial seizure during the night. It is curious how different areas are affected, sometimes it is my mental agility, sometimes it is control of the right side of my body, and this morning it is things like my balance along with the pressure in my head. If I closed my eyes I would fall over. The brain is operating at it’s average of a seven on the bob scale.

I will run to Lowe’s this morning to find what I need to run the water line under the house to the air conditioner. After that I’ll stop at Walfart to get some mineral oil to use on the corn and a couple more items Cherie has on her list. I’ll see if I can pick up her medication at the pharmacy but am not sure if I can. It would save her a trip up there. I also need a belt as the one I picked up at a thrift shop in Toledo is worn out. I’ve lost so much weight and gut since we moved to this farm that I added three holes to cinch it up tight. It’s loose again.

That’s it for now. The puppies are springing forward at an amazing rate and getting more adventurous and confident along with moving faster. It won’t be long till keeping up will be a challenge.

It’s 9:30 and the end of my day. Let’s see if I can recount the day. I can’t remember if Cherie went to work or not this morning but I did make it to Midland where my first stop was Walfart to get Cherie’s prescription. That was not the problem Cherie thought it would be. I just told them her name and they looked on the computer and went to a shelf where it was packed and waiting. I’ve been needing a belt and remembered I planed on getting one here so went and picked one out.

Cherie made a list of things for me to get while I was out but there were only two things on it and one of them could only be gotten at the HEB grocery store. That is an organic soda pop she had tried at one of those sample stands stores put up. It was great so she brought three flavors home for me to try. Good stuff and the flavors are so intense I poured it in a glass of tea half and half and that worked well. Kind of a flavored tea with a fizz. The other thing on the list was mineral oil that Phelan over at Homesteading Neophyte suggested to keep the worms out of my corn so I figured I’d get both at HEB.

Never did make it there. I stopped by the Habitat for Humanity’s Restore on the way to Lowe’s as it is near Walmart. Wanted to check on the cabinetry doors they have. They are marked twenty bucks apiece but can be had for five dollars now. Cool. They have plenty of choices including some that are a light natural finish and unfinished as well. I need to measure the doors on our cabinets.

From there I headed to Lowe’s where I intended to get the ferrule needed for the water hose going to the air conditioner. Walking in the door I decided check out the garden section to see what they did with the bags of soil and stuff that had broken open. The broken bags I was getting at Aldredge are no longer available. I suspect that the kid who said I could take them made a mistake. So I found an employee and asked what they did with them. “We sell them” he said and took me over to a couple of pallets and asking what I wanted. There was all kinds of stuff. Manure, mulch, top soil, and some stuff that killed grubs and other bugs. I told D.B. (the name on his tag) that I would take everything except what had poison in it if he gave me a good price. DB was a nice guy and I had developed a rapport with him, telling him I was on disability and grew food to eat and perhaps sell to stretch my check, so he started digging up all kinds of damaged bags and said “You can have it all for $25.00”. Deal.

They had to call a manager and dig up all the product numbers to get it done. I have to remember to bring some corn and melons to DB if and when they come due. He worked hard to get this together for me. It took fifteen minutes at the cash register because the computer had a hard time accepting a twenty five dollar price for $102.00 worth of product. Yeah, you heard it right. It was a good deal and all stuff we can use. There was maybe ten bags of mulch which is the one thing I really needed. I’ve been scratching up the dried up tumbleweed sticks to use up till now. Mulch makes a tremendous difference here in the desert as it helps keep the moisture from getting sucked out of the soil by the West Texas sun and dry wind.

After all this time and the work the guys did to put this together I decided to load it myself. They had used a forklift to take it out to the side of the store. I should have asked for help instead of being a macho man. Hurt myself just a little. Big back pain and holding a spoon to eat the ice cream sundae we had a couple of hours ago hurt pretty good as well. I got everything except the mulch (which is pretty light) unloaded by sliding the bags to the edge of the truck and slicing them open so the dirt, manure, top soil, and whatever else spilled into the wheel barrow. Then I could truck it to wherever it was going with greater ease than carrying the bags. Besides I am mixing most of it together to make a garden cocktail of sorts.

Cherie’s boss, Joe, came over to teach her some things she needs for the job. Joe’s a neat ole guy with a dry sense of humor I enjoy. He would come outside occasionally to smoke a cigarette and invariably I would be taking one of the many breaks I needed while unloading the truck. Come to find out he has a good friend who received a traumatic brain injury when she went through the windshield of a car. He does much to care for her and she has many partial seizures like I do. Sounds like she has them more often. This came up when I mentioned how nicotine triggered seizures in me. He has noticed that hers reduce when she goes to the hospital for regular tests or something that take a week or two. That could well be from her smoking less at these times. It would be cool if this tidbit of information can help her.

I know there were some other things I wanted to write but I am tired and it is late, besides that I can’t remember. So night all.

Well I looked at the pictures I took today and see the ones of our wild sunflowers. There are two types that just showed up. One has much larger leaves and flowers than the other. It will be interesting to see how the seeds are. As I hoe down weeds I am careful to leave these plants alone. Yeah, they’re a weed too but I like them. Besides they grow without any help so when I plant the seeds I plan on gathering it will look like I am a fantastic gardener.


The other thing that came to my mind, one I had wanted to write about, is that as I drove away from Restore I noticed an antique drill press setting out in an industrial yard. I turned around to check it out as I could always use one and the old stuff is tough and not hard for me to recondition. A young man saw me and came to the fence. He let me know that none of the stuff in the yard was for sale that he knew of. He asked me about my hat that said “Mission Toledo”. I explained that it was a ministry I taught bible study at but soon discovered the founder was a professional con man who traveled the country starting these things up. Jim Watson is his name and you can do a search in this blog to learn about this shyster. Caused a lot of harm and messed up some lives in Toledo.


Come to find out the kid was in Teen Challenge. He brought it up questioningly when I talked about how Jim would take drug addicts and others off the streets and get jobs for them to work from the churches he approached for funds. Jim would keep the money they earned. “I’m kind of one of those guys” this kid said after I reassured him that Teen Challenge was a great organization that I had worked with in the past. We talked and shared through the chain link fence for a while. I told him of my past and how I had fallen back to old ways. At the end of our conversation I said “It’s not an accident we met”. It surprised me to hear this come out of my mouth. I have so many problems with the hokey stuff I hear out of the mouths of some who wear the label of “Christian” and consider it superstitious crap. That’s not all of them mind you but there are many who “spiritualize” everything. You’ve got folks like Pat Robertson who say “God told me” this and that. In his case the predictions, or prophesies as he calls them, don’t happen so either God is a liar or he is. So here I am with these doubts finding this statement coming out of my mouth. Where did it come from?

So we’ll try the good night thing again. Good night all.