Killed a snake, It won't be the last

This morning's sunrise


12/19/07 Wednesday
It’s been a hard few days. Sunday was the bad slowdown and yesterday I had two more of them. These petite seizures come and go and seem to run in cycles where I have a season of them occurring often and then times where I go for days without one. The first one yesterday was mild but the later one was fairly severe but not nearly as bad as Sunday’s. It is frustrating and depressing. Monday’s entry shows how my worries and paranoia can increase at these times. I worry that I have offended and sometimes even that someone is gossiping about me and causing others to distance themselves. I am sure this instability makes it hard for some to be comfortable around me. It makes it hard for me to be comfortable as well. This kind of thing is not uncommon for traumatic brain injuries. In fact what I experience is mild compared to others. The list and types of personality and perception changes is large and can be quite confusing. I know of one guy who doesn’t at all understand it is improper to tell a woman how sexy her body parts are. (I’m being politically correct and mild in describing his behavior) Fortunately I am able to recognize my issues. That doesn’t make them go away. This is where communication is good but sometimes I just want to hide.

The original grape trellis my grandfather built along with the remains that had died because no one took care of them.


Yesterday I got some stuff done despite the slowdowns. I am not real clear on the order of things. I got the grape vines planted, I killed a rattlesnake. We took Cherie’s car to a shop to get fixed. I dropped Cherie off at Steve and Janie’s to do some work. I was able to talk with Patrick Duffy, our attorney. Cherie asked me what he had to say and I wasn’t too sure. She said that was why she doesn’t get a job because she needs to be with me on this stuff. That bothers me, that I am a reason she doesn’t get a job. We went to Rosa’s with Steve and Janie but that was when I had the second seizure so I had a hard time even deciding what to eat. I began clearing up towards the end of the meal so was able to drive home.
Here I cleaned up the old vines and put a new pole in. It's one of the telephone pole tops that holds the wires I picked up at the landfill. You can barely see the four grapevine plants.


Right now Cherie is using the truck to go check cotton fields. She only has two to check as she needs to do a final count when they are harvested. Then her job is over. She won’t do it again and quit. I went out and did some work in preparation to plant the wildflower mix. Unfortunately it should have been done in October. The rye grain should have been planted in September. None of it could be done because we didn’t have money to buy the seed till the CRP check came and that wasn’t until the last day of October. Then it took me five weeks to plant the rye. I was hoping that the nice warm, almost seventy degree days would have helped the last part of that come up. I had scratched up some of the seeds a few days ago and saw they were germinating. Each one had a little root coming out of it. But when I looked this morning there was nothing new showing. I scratched up some seeds and they don’t look good. The roots look shriveled and dead. I think the twenty five degree nights we had froze them. That would mean that a third of the work I did is gone. Perhaps it will work out. There are a couple more warm days and above freezing nights ahead but then another cold front is coming in. Without the proper tools and funds it’s hard to farm but I’ll keep working at it. It’s discouraging and adds to the depression making me have to push to not give up.
This rattler was almost four feet long. I had just gone out with the dogs and heard a steady noise that I first thought was a water leak because it was non stop. When I recognized it as a rattler I put the dogs inside and got my hoe. The snake was curled to strike and buzzing at nothing there. I watched and it stayed frozen still with the rattle still going non stop. It was curious. I still wonder what that was about. I crept close carefully and got it with the second strike of the hoe. It never did try to bite me.


Cherie just got home. She picked up the mail and Virginia sent a thousand dollar check out of the estate. McGilvray showed me her figures that there was fifteen thousand left in the account last month, half of which comes to me after fees are deducted. It makes me angry that this is not finished after two years and makes me wonder why. Why is she dragging her feet. Is it because I requested a full accounting of how the funds were handled including bank records? Am I just being paranoid again or is there something she has to hide? She stopped talking and even answering emails after I made this request and told her what I thought about her letting her brother steal the washer and dryer out of this house. And we sit here suffering for the lack of funds. This would have gone a long way in helping us get a tractor, but I’ve pretty much given up on that. It won’t happen without help and help isn’t there.

I need to get out and plant the wildflower seed mix that probably won’t come up anyway. Better than sitting here feeling sorry for myself and thinking. Sometimes thinking isn’t good so I work aimlessly to avoid it. There is always something to do.
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Here's what I found underneath everything that was stored in the henhouse. I buried it and reset the two traps that had been tripped and cleaned out.

It’s 4:30 now. I got a little work done and am preparing to go after the rat that’s in the henhouse. Cherie headed into Midland to do some things I can’t remember. I came in to check my email and see if anyone commented on the blog. Unfortunately I am having another seizure. It is always strange how different they can be. This one is affecting the physical side more than cognitive function though that has slowed too. I am real dizzy and having to concentrate in order to walk. Am real tired. Could go to sleep sitting at this computer. If I was laying down as I often do when using this laptop to reduce back pain I would be fighting to keep my eyes open. As much as I want to go to sleep I will make myself go out and start removing all the bags of fertilizer and other stuff in the henhouse. The rat has tunneled under it and uses it for cover so I must remove it to expose it and give it no place to hide. Too bad I had to kill the rattlesnake. If it had been a non poisonous snake I would have thrown it into the henhouse to hunt the rats down. Time to go to work
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The auto shop called. They have Cherie's car fixed. It will cost two hundred dollars, thank God we got the check from the estate, just in time to pay for it. He said that the rats had chewed up lots of wires so he had to replace the spark plug wires I just installed last month because of rat damage. We will pick the car up in the morning.