Someone stole our melons

9/20/09 Sunday
I woke up with my left big toe hurting real bad. Can’t remember hitting it on anything, the only thing I can remember is stepping on stickers. Cherie said it looked swollen. I am no longer taking the seizure medicine and can’t detect a difference. I still have periods of ringing ears and lightheadedness and at times have a harder time forming my thoughts. But that’s no different than when I took the medicine. However I feel like I’m more clearheaded in my thinking, not doped up. Wish I could figure out this toe. Makes walking real painful. Is this God’s way of making me stay in and work on the business plan? Doubtful. It seems that everything I want to do is blocked by something, that there is always a distraction or obstacle in the way.

Last week Cherie said she thought she heard voices outside at around 11:30 at night but I was sleeping so she didn’t want to wake me. I wish she had now. Seems that someone stole every cantaloupe and melon we had, both ripe and unripe. They just cleaned it out. We hear the dogs bark all the time and are so used to it we ignore them. Plus they aren’t the type that will attack anyone. I got Cherie’s gun out and cleaned it up to see if it would work any better. No. It still jams up. But at least you can get one shot off. Cherie is unable to jack the slide back so I now leave it ready to fire with the safety on despite my training that this is wrong. It doesn’t do any good if she can’t fire it and the whole idea is for her to be able to protect herself out here in the country. Having people sneak on the property and steal doesn’t sit well. Eventually we need to invest in a gun that works. A shotgun would be nice, something small that Cherie can operate.

That’s it for now.
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I took the trash to the landfill and picked up mail. After that I ran to the courthouse, turned in the jury summons paperwork, and explained to the judge that I had to appear in Midland court for a traffic ticket on the same day I was to appear for jury duty so he excused me. Then I picked up a hamburger at the drug store and came home. The toe is killing me for certain, but despite that I figured I’d climb on the tractor and disc under some weeds. Not going to happen, at least not now. The battery was too weak to start the tractor and even after I put jumper cables on it from my truck it still won’t start. Some would say things like this are the devil trying to stop you or even God. Beats me. I just know that I want to work and can’t seem to. But I do need to focus on the business writing. There’s an urgency there that I shouldn’t ignore. Just having my foot down makes the toe pound so I am laying back in bed with it up. The pain pills don’t seem to be doing much at all. I left the truck running to charge up the tractor battery so will go see if that’s helped any.
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It looks like the starter has gone bad. It doesn’t even click now. Hope starters for 1959 Massey Ferguson tractors aren’t too hard to find or too expensive. So I’m in for the day. I have lots of writing to do. Ron encouraged me to get to work on my book, mentioning that memories fade with time. Strangely enough my memories seem to be coming alive. The REO concert brought back a whole lot of them. They started out at the University of Illinois in Champaign during the early seventies and mentioned that several times. That’s when I was stationed at Rantoul AFB in Illinois during my training. We would all go to Champaign on the weekends to party. I don’t remember seeing REO but I did see Foghat in concert there. Those days were a self induced haze as I did every drug I could get my hands on in addition to drinking like a fish. In fact I would buy LSD made by one of the university lab students in Champaign. There are some stories from that time for sure.