The battle is on

You can see where I've been raking the rye seed under.

3/4/09 Wednesday
Yesterday I did a lot of running. Went to Odessa to pick up a rebuild kit and fuel filter for the tiller. When I talked to the guy at the parts counter he informed me that they don’t make a rebuild kit for the Honda motors and it probably just needs a good cleaning. That’s good news, I think. So I just got a fuel filter. I also went to Harbor Freight to get one of their solid brass water sprinklers to see if it holds up any better than the now six sprinklers that this hard water and Texas sand render unusable.

When I went to poop scoop at Steve and Janie’s Steve was there. Haven’t seen him in about six months. I don’t think I’ve seen Janie since Cherie house sat months ago but I could well have and forgotten. They live such busy lives I get tired just reading about it on her blog. How I wish my energy level would return to where it once was before the accidents.

Steve finally was able to get a hold of Rusty about this proposal to put a pipeline in through our property. When Rusty first drove up and talked to me he was offering a hundred dollars on a handshake and said the pipeline would just clip the corner of our property. Now the plan seems to run it the full length of our land along the highway. We are so grateful to have friends who understand this stuff and offer to help for otherwise it would be easy to bamboozle us. When Rusty called the other day he said he was sending a check for $1500. I told him to talk to Steve and the check never arrived. Steve got a preliminary contract and the figure had risen to $3000. Steve went through the details with me to insure I understood what they proposed. Learning that the offer was on the low end of what is commonly paid I suggested we negotiate, which Steve already had in mind to do. Steve called last night and now the offer is at $4800.00. He put in conditions that will protect us and limit it to just one pipeline instead of giving the company a blanket contract enabling them to do anything they wanted forever. We would have been clueless. Thanks Steve, and Janie. IF it happens we may be able to buy the tractor that is so desperately needed.





The battle is on. The pictures tell the story. All those patches of green are little tumbleweeds starting to grow. Multiply this little five foot space by five acres and you can get an idea of the problem I face. That is one of the reasons I’m killing myself to get rye planted.









The other is the stickers. I can count fifteen stickers in the next picture and that is probably a four inch area, that is despite everything being tilled under 12 inches. Again multiply this by five acres and you can see what we face. I am constantly touched by how all five of our dogs walk barefoot through this just to be near me as I work. Rascal and Trixie are always there but the others usually join them as the day wears on. They all play in the plowed fields next to us for it’s the only place without stickers. To give them five acres to safely run is a goal. This will require intensive work and I can’t physically do it without a tractor. I tried last year and rented a tractor with a tiller once but all that did was provide fertile ground for weeds to grow and made things worse. To do it right I would need to till everything under at least three times during a season. We just couldn’t afford that last year but hope for more resources this growing season.


Got to go to work. Here’s a cute picture of Ginger puppy sleeping on top of his dad. Look how big she is already. We let her in the house some now. She loves to steal socks or some of the dog toys that lay all over and just prance around. What a joy our animals bring us.
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10:30 – Am having a slowdown. Also have a headache. I’ve had a good streak of this not happening. Had one a couple or four days ago. I’ll have to check back in this journal to see. It was Tuesday. It’s going to be nearly ninety degrees today so I want to get as much done as I can before it gets hot. So I’ll tough it out. If I stay focused and just do simple things I’ll be fine. Was going to take that carburetor apart but that’s out, at least for now. At least I don’t hurt much. Gotta go.
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2:30 – Came in to take a pain pill. Nothing unusual, pain comes with physical work. I’ll just lay down fifteen or twenty minutes. It’s a good time to write. I’m drained from the slowdown but not to bad. Some are worse than others and this one wasn’t bad. I had written a whole paragraph when I had to go out and see what the dogs were barking at. The computer was frozen up when I got back so I’m running the spyware now. My cognizance is coming up. I remember writing about running at a six on the bob scale before it froze up. All of that is gone now but since going out and coming back in I’m up to my usual seven. That’s the way it is, up and down, smart and stupid, fast or slow, I never know. It’s like being on drugs. Hell, I used to pay money to be this impaired. Dumbass.

Being on drugs is a good illustration of what it’s like with this TBI. I’ve been thinking about that since Beau Berman came and did the TV interview. He asked us what difficulties the brain injury caused. I know we talked about the short term memory loss and also about the problems my lack of social skills caused, like being asked to go somewhere else by the church we were remarried in. Plug “Cedar Creek” (the name of the church) into the search blog box at the top to read all about that. I say things wrong, as if I’m on drugs, I get mad, I cry, and I’m paranoid about what others think of me, about what I said to offend them. That’s why I told him we were blessed to find a church family and Christians that didn’t judge and took the time to understand. You know, people who practice what they preach. There was a lot we talked about but you just can’t cram it all into a minute and a half. He brought up the movie “Memento”. Cherie and I had watched it several times after one of the people who helped me research my past at the Toledo Public Library recommended it. I told him how much it illustrated TBI issues but the fact is I really don’t remember it. I remembered the guy used tattoos to remember things and that he had a traumatic brain injury but that’s about it. I remember more about the movie “Fifty first dates”, which also deals with TBI.