Morning has risen

This morning's sunrise

6/14/07 Thursday
Morning has risen and so did we at the urging of the puppies. I was doing fine till they started digging in the flower bed, wiping out a sunflower and some other flowers that had just started coming up. Now I am angry and that is not a good thing for me. Anger is one of the biggest problems with the emotional control issues caused by the brain damage. Most of the emotions are controlled by the frontal lobes in the brain and those are some of the areas most damaged in me. The MRI’s show all kinds of dead spots there. If I don’t get involved doing something to focus my mind elsewhere it will be a problem. Some can’t or refuse to understand this thus judging me as if I was a normal person. This is one of the biggest problems brain injury survivors face daily.

TBI is sometimes referred to as the “unseen” illness because many of us appear quite normal on the outside. What others can’t see is the millions of severed neurons and totally dead areas that make it hard for our brains to not get confused and crossed up, especially when stress and strong emotions are involved. So some will sit back with their arms crossed and smugly pass judgment as if they are so wise and knowledgeable that they “Know” this guy is just being an ass or whatever else they have decided. “He’s not disabled. He’s just using this to get sympathy, to get money and help out of us” are the kinds of things said. I have to wonder what is thought of me at the first church of Stanton, what is said as I am discussed in private conversations. Do some there judge me despite never having taken the time to even talk to me or get to know me? Without any conversation from anybody there I can only guess at what is said or thought of me. And the information I have to guess with is simply the lack of any communication, not even a phone call. Ah yes, the love of Jesus demonstrated so loudly I can’t hear a thing. Sorry, like I said there is lots of anger inside. Depression is often not far behind.

I would love to be able to write that I am wrong. In fact I really want to. But others like Janie and Eric have stepped in and helped much by just being available to talk. That is all I have asked for, never asked for gifts or money though they have been generous in that area. I even told the whole Sunday school group in Stanton that I would gladly go without food or hot water in exchange for conversation because I feared they thought I was a mooch or bum.

I think I need to go work on the garden to settle down a bit.
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Well I went to the garden. And I did what I usually do which is work till I hurt and keep going. I made up a batch of insecticide soap and sprayed it on the corn and the green beans I have planted in the corn. I read on the net and possibly the Mother Earth News magazine we just got our first copy of, that some kinds of soap are not good for this and may actually harm the plants. Cherie brought home a bar of Zote soap that Amy uses to make her home made laundry soap. It contains only a few ingredients unlike the other stuff which has a long list. That is probably better.

After spraying the corn and beans I hit the sunflowers, which I noticed was infested with aphids, and the rows of other beans that seem to be going great guns. After that I went through the corn, carefully squirting mineral oil in the corn silks and removing a few of the corn worms I found. I also pulled some weeds and did a lot of hoeing. As I did this my thoughts remained on how we, or at least me, didn’t seem to be accepted at first church of Stanton. I wondered if some thought I was one of those people who is scamming the system to get a disability check. I know I surprised a couple of them when I lifted items and unloaded and split the firewood that was brought over. Perhaps they don’t understand that my disability isn’t a physical one though, having broke my back, neck, and being partly paralyzed I have some problems. Mostly pretty bad pain that I aggravate by pushing too hard. If it wasn’t for the pain pills I wouldn’t be doing a lot of things. I really don’t know, I just want them to like me but am not good at things like that.

So I’m taking a break to let the pain subside a bit before I go back out. It’s time to run to the landfill with the garbage so I’ll check mail after that. Cherie is running to Midland to get some stuff. We are down to fifty bucks till her check comes next week but that’s not bad at all. Her job is over till the next survey so it’s time to tighten up. We are good at that but greatly enjoy these periods of what I will call plenty where we can go to a restaurant and pick up a few things extra that we like at the store.

Cherie bought an electric can opener at Walfart that was on sale for the incredibly low price of $6.00. That’s because it’s an incredibly crappy piece of junk that wouldn’t open the can of coffee we first tried it on. So that’s going back and we will get a good hand unit. We’ve been using a cheap device that doubles as a bottle opener but it was painful to use and finally bit the dust. We are going to start avoiding Walfart because we have consistent problems with their made in China stuff. I was getting groceries and noticed the garlic was imported from China. Put that back right away. There is no telling what kind of chemicals were used on it.

The puppies continue to brighten our lives. Rascal seems to be attaching to me, which works out because he is more the outside dog, and Trixie is becoming mama’s little girl. They are starting to chew on electric cords so we will have to address that. There is only one plug in our bedroom which is where the television and all kinds of stuff are so there are extension cords and power strips all over the place. The power strips all have circuit breakers on them so that helps keep things safe. I think I’ll dig up a strip of carpet to lay on top of the cords. Right now there is a towel over the main power strip so that covers a bunch of cords.

Sitting up to write on this laptop is killing the back so I’m gonna finish this and get walking around which helps a lot.
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OK, it’s 9:00 PM now so what did I do with the rest of the day? I went to the landfill and got rid of the garbage that was getting ripe in this West Texas heat. Of course I had to look around to see if there was anything I could make use of. Like they say “One mans trash is another mans treasure”. I picked up some more of the wire fencing that there is always a lot of. Used up a bunch of what I picked up last time making the tomato cages.

Oh but that wasn’t the real find. Look at this. It’s my new puppy pool. All it needed was a plug for the drain hole so I sanded down a piece of wood and added a little silicone caulk. Works great. Getting the pool home was a bit of an adventure. I threw it on top of the ladder rack of my truck and wrapped a tie down around it. On the way home I stopped at the pond I got permission to cut firewood at to see if the water level was low enough for me to get in. It was drying out fairly well. When I went back to the truck I saw that the pool was gone. Nuts. It flew off somewhere on the way home. Where? I went through Stanton and picked up the mail, then headed up the main drag on the way to the house.

Time to back track. Just hope it didn’t hit someone or cause a wreck. I got lucky. It had blown off about a mile down the road. I put it back on and tied it up better, or so I thought. So I headed merrily back down the road. I heard a noise and looking in the mirror saw that the pool was gone again. Ok, spin around and go back to find it. Tied it on again and this time drove at about forty instead of seventy miles an hour. Made it home with the pool still on top.

I filled the pool halfway and put a stone in it and one on the outside so it would be easier for the puppies to get in and out. I knew that after the trauma of their first bath they might not hanker to getting in the water real quick. Yep, I’m pretty smart. This will take some time so I am working on getting them familiar with this tub. Rascal has taken a drink out of it so that’s a start.

So the puppies have a pool. After that I did something I don’t remember but ended the day spending a few hours harvesting the winter wheat. That will be another post.