another windy day

1/30/08 Wednesday
For some reason my clock has been way off regarding what day it is. I thought yesterday was Saturday and Cherie cracked up when I asked “is today Saturday?”. I say “for some reason” but I know the reason. It’s gotten a lot better as my brain rebuilds over the last six years but there was a time that when I woke up I never knew what day it was and sometimes where I was. Opening my eyes nothing would look familiar so there was confusion till I figured it out. During the period of being homeless, when I was always finding a new place to sleep out of fear of the other street people, it was real disconcerting. But this doesn’t happen anymore, especially because we’ve lived here for over a year. It’s home and it’s familiar. But I can still lose track of what day it is. This is one of the reasons it is important for me to live by a calendar and schedule what I need to do.

I got some emails yesterday in response to the paper on brain injury I published on the blog. Tom, the author of the article, (can’t remember his last name right now) wrote and asked me to send a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal the article was in. This was after I sent him an email that outlined the many undiagnosed brain injuries I’ve sustained in my lifetime as well as asking if it was ok I posted his article. One of the other emails came from a survivor who’s brain injury occurred in 1987. He is active as an advocate for brain injury victims in addition to working with the Mt. Sinai hospital in their brain injury research. I am now on his email list and will receive regular information on things related to brain injuries. I noticed on Mapstats that I got a large number of visitors from around the world who googled “hidden brain injuries” and similar searches. There were also some visitors evidently from the Mt Sinai organizations who did some extensive reading of the blog. Mapstats shows me how many pages a visitor reads. This in addition to my regular readers from places like the Omaha Brain Injury Board. This works for me as I strive to help others understand this sometimes confusing disability. To most people I’m sure I appear “normal” and it is hard to detect the problems I face every day. So they judge my behavior accordingly and probably think that when I say something insensitive or inappropriate that I’m just an ass. Of course I might be anyway.

It will be a busy day I think. At two we are scheduled to go to Big Spring and meet with a representative of Texas’s Rehabilitation commission (or something like that. Not sure what their official name is). This is to see what services they offer that will help me get this farm working and become self sufficient. I learned online yesterday that Texas has a program that covers the cost of tuition in state supported colleges for honorably discharged veterans. That would be cool if there are colleges nearby that offer courses related to agriculture. Perhaps they can help me get a tractor, the most important piece of farm equipment out there. I don’t know what they do so it will be good to find out.

Other than that I think it’s mostly working around the farm. Always plenty to do there. Part of that plan is to experiment with mixing Portland cement with sand to find a consistency that will work to pour a floor in the old henhouse. That is one step in turning that into a seed starting room where I’ll hang the metal halide lamp.

I burned some of the oak recovered from the landfill last night. It burns as good as expected and kept us warm though I did have to throw some more on at two this morning. Because they are smaller pieces they don’t last as long as a log. That’s ok. I’ll throw on a big mulberry log for overnight heat and use the oak during the day.

Time to get out and see if the hoses have thawed so I can start watering again.
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It’s another windy day. I’ve got to learn to keep my mouth closed out there because it’s making my teeth gritty. Not pleasant at all. I had Cherie put getting bandana’s on the shopping list. I’ll be needing to get some more garden hoses in preparation for the upcoming growing season. Some of the landfill ones are so brittle they snap in two when stretched. There seems to be less of them showing up out there lately. Perhaps there will be an influx with spring as folks replace their old ones.