Blather

I just came in from trying to wade through the leaves in the front yard and haven't had a nap yet; sleep will come early for me tonight.

The stress: I did not, not, NOT want to go to court. But the results weren’t as bad as I had feared, so I'm happy. However, I have a new stress- I'm leaving my home in a week and I might not be back for awhile. So while the money stress is better, I'm becoming more stressed over leaving my home. You have no idea how happy I am here- I have my garden, my garage of tools, and I do things that are useful. Today I fixed the latch on the door to Richie's Buck Stove firebox which was rusted so badly it wouldn't turn. I cut it off with my Sawzall then drilled it out. Three times. Each time the drill got bumpier and choppier but I finally got the hole smooth and I replaced the crappy part with a bolt. I eyeballed the right angle for the latch and welded it back on while the door was on the floor of my garage. Now the whole thing works better than before, plus the latch is much stronger. Richie and I rolled the whole shebang around to the side of the house on its wheels, parking the smoker on the cement patio.

Kimmie and I worked in the garden while Richie (very much like a little boy with a new toy) fired it up, putting in this wood and that charcoal, opening the vent and checking the temperature. That wonderful big son of mine even put the old firebox on top as a secondary, lukewarm smoker. He played with his new toy all afternoon. Kimmie dug out some of the too-close tomato plants while I prepared some of the garden for her to put them into. Now we've got lots of new tomato plants in the ground, plus we have pumpkins and a couple of cantaloupes. We got a lot done in the back yard. When the hot afternoon began to cool off a bit, we sat in the patio chairs and talked; we played "stick" with the cats. Before the entire afternoon got frittered away, I replaced a broken piece of sprinkler hose so the front yard gets its drip irrigation now. And then I swept up the area where Richie had cleaned the Buck Stove, leaving quite a bit of sand and ash and a few bits of steel that were left over from repairing the stove.

I'm tired, sweaty, grungy, but I'm happy. Heck, even the cats were fun today: While we were outside, they followed us everywhere; we talked with 'em, played with 'em, even watched 'em sneak under the porch, where Sam the Feral Cat lives.

Work, sweat, grime, dirt, and a lot of happiness. That’s been my day today.

Richie said I should pack, at least for the first time. I've got this large gym bag with a few pockets on the outside. This bag became my carry-on when 9-11 took me to North Dakota. I'll check the gym bag because I want my knife and I can't carry it on the plane any more. I used to fly with a gun but now I can't even have my knife.

I put up a piece on my blog about going to court yesterday. My finances won't be so bad. She'll have a lot more money by herself than we had while I was working but I'll have some, too, so maybe my future won’t be so glum. There's a pic of my anvil and hammer there; 'tis an "environmental portrait."

Today's Friday. I don't know if Pense or Schaffe will be here for Sunday but I'm OK. I have my own mini-family- Richie and Kimmie and the cats. If my daughter and small son come for Father’s Day, that’ll be great. If they don’t, that’ll be acceptable. Ditto the following Tuesday, my birthday.

The dream: Let me tell you something. A lot of years ago, before Bonnie and I went to Germany with a 2-year-old Richie, I had a strange dream. I told her about it then, and we'd forgotten about it, but it's still there in the back of my mind. I dreamt that I was someplace that felt not quite like Europe. Something was going on. I looked up a street that was a big boulevard, sort of. The grey, dusty road sloped uphill a bit- two blocks away was about three feet higher than where we were standing. Something was going on. I did something, then I swung around this big, chest-high cement block, about three meters square with a statue on top of it. I sat on the ground. I reached my hand up to my ear, and felt something wet. I immediately looked at it; there was blood on my hand. I had a feeling of surprise, because I didn't feel any pain and if something caused me to bleed, I should be feeling some pain. Then I woke up. I don't know what else happened in the dream. The items I recall well are the street, the cement thing and waking up as soon as I saw blood on my hand.

What I saw clearly was the base for a statue, maybe not quite three meters on a side, but big enough to provide plenty of protection from small-arms fire. Statues are usually on big blocks of something like cement. Something was happening, and I ducked behind the cement for protection. A bit scary, this dream. I think there was someone with me but I don't have a name or face, just the feeling that I wasn't alone- like I was part of a team or something, maybe just one or two guys.

Waking up straight after- that meant that I was afraid, so in order to get away from the fear, I took myself somewhere less fearful, to being awake.

There was a time when I'd have avoided going somewhere that my dream told me could be dangerous to me. But not anymore. I'm not as afraid as I was before. Since then, I’ve considered this all-too-real dream a few times. This was before Bonnie, Richie and I went to Germany. There was another time when we went to Romania- I was antsy because Romania wasn't quite Europe, but I came back fine. Then we went to Thailand. I wasn't as concerned because when I got there, Thailand really didn't feel like the not-quite-Europe of my dream. A large impact on me was the feeling of something like Europe, but not quite like Europe. I had similar almost-subconscious reservations each time I've been back across the Atlantic- to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, once again to Romania and then to Rotterdam.

I'll be fine.

I've got lots to look forward to- my house, my future, heck, maybe even finding my way to a nice vacation in Brisbane. Yep, I'll be fine. I may get tired, sick, sleepy, lonely, yadda yadda. But I'm not going to let a dream make me afraid any more.