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My thoughts released; a mind set free |
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These pages contain my thoughts, from meandering ideas and persuasions to deep cerebrations and serious mentations. Why, for what purpose? To release my mind and set creativity free. Somewhere inside the constraints of my mind dwells a writer, a poet, an artist who paints with words. In here I release those constraints and set the artist free. Perhaps, lost somewhere in the depths of thought, is a story or a poem, waiting to be written. 
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| I'm not sure what I want to write, but I do need to write about a very unpleasant surprise we got yesterday. I should tell the backstory, but that would take volumes and likely get very confusing. So, a short summary may work. My stepdaughter and her guy had three kids, but because of drugs and bad choices, lost them. By the time, my wife and I got involved, the kids had been in social services care for a few years, bouncing between foster homes and institutes. It took a long time to work out all the problems so we could adopt them and give them a family. One of the biggest, and most difficult parts was to break all contact with any of my wife's kids because of the abuse and trauma they caused. After finally adopting them, we had to agree that there could be no visiting or contact with them until they turned eighteen or it was approved by psychiatrists and social services. So, our oldest is now eighteen and wanted to meet her mom. We arranged it, they had a good visit, and upon returning home wanted to spend a week with her boyfriend to think about everything. She went over on Sunday, and yesterday text my wife to say she's moving out this weekend, she's tired of the lies and stuff we have told her. What did her mom tell her? We have no idea, and that she even thinks we have lied and manipulated her to keep her away from her mom is crazy. But, she no longer wants to live here. How it all will turn out, we have no way of knowing, but we still have a fifteen-year-old at home with us, and now we fear that if they communicate, and they will, that the younger grandchild will soon want to move out, too. Time will tell, and there's not much that we can do except hope that they understand we have never lied to them about their parents and have only tried to protect them and provide a stable home. |
| I will apologize in advance for my following rant: Sorry, I just want to get this out, and who knows perhaps someone has a solution that doesn't risk incarceration blow-back. With the warm weather, our snow is melting fast and has resulted in quite a lot of mud in the driveway. Of course, there are large snowbanks that are still melting and creating even more mud. My solution to this was to dig out a few trenches for the water to flow away from the driveway, rake and shovel some of the surface to get all the water to flow off the driveway, and then let it dry out some. Once it was dried out, I drove back and forth over the surface to pack it down and create a solid surface that would allow rain to run off instead of letting it soak in. It worked great. Except, our neighbor kind of messed it all up. He's a nice enough fellow and means well, but he is also one of these people who does what he thinks is best. He thought it would be good to plow down the remaining snowbanks. It was a good idea, but it would have been nice if he decided this before I put in multiple days of work on the driveway. In the process of plowing, he created more ruts, totally destroyed my trenching, and spread snow all over the drive creating more mud. After he was done, I redid my work on the driveway, re-dug my trenching, and re-packed the surface. I was ready for the rain predicted for the weekend. I also helped him work on his boiler Saturday and took that time to inform him that I had packed the drive and asked him not to run the drag over it and loosen it all up because it creates more mud. Knowing that he likes to drive the 4-wheeler around with the drag just for something to do, I also told him that I would let him know when we wanted him to drag our side. (I should add that last summer/fall, he would drag both his side and ours daily, sometimes even twice a day. Anytime it rained we had mud and when it was dry, our vehicles were covered in gritty dust.) Yesterday, he decided to push the knocked-down snowbanks around a bit more and messed up my trenching, then hooked onto the drag and raked it over the entire driveway. Before I could do any repair work it began to rain harder and without the trenching, the water flowed onto the now soft and worked-up driveway creating a lot of mud. Last night the rain turned to snow, so when this melts, it's going to sit on top of the driveway and soak in even more. It's going to take a week or more to get it dried up again, and I'll have to dig trenches, shovel, and rake the damn thing all over again. I thought by asking him nicely, he would stay off our side, but I should have known he would do it even more because I told him a packed driveway would stay drier and he commented that dragging it and having it soft would let the water soak in instead of sitting on top. He's like that; whatever someone else tells him, he will argue and do the opposite. I just wish I knew how or what to do to counteract this. |
April has arrived along with the second major snowstorm of the month; not bad for only four days. I wrote on this a bit in the Newsfeed and in "Alotta Monkey Business"  but wanted to touch on it again here. In my other items, I may have sounded a bit bitter by the endless winter weather, but in truth, I take what we get and try to keep a bright outlook. Maybe I should say I vent a little, but it's meant to be lighthearted and with humor. Sure, we are in a blizzard, and the snow is butt deep to a giraffe (not really) and I'm eagerly waiting for warm weather and the snow to be gone.But, others in the path of this storm are having tornados, thunderstorms with damaging winds, hail, and all sorts of other nasty weather. If it's a choice, I'll happily take being snowed in for a few days. Sure, the wind is gusting and howling outside my window, but forty mph is a lot better than ninety. And, I'd rather get a bunch of snow instead of hail. I'm eager for some nicer weather so I can start working with our Husky, Max (almost six months old) outside, but currently, his training is limited to adjusting to Bellah, our eight-week-old Australian Shepard. There has been so much going on that it's been hard to do any serious training with him, but I squeeze in what I can and everything is going pretty well. I did try and work with him a bit today on a new task since he has: sit, lie, shake hands, and kiss down very well, but he was much too distracted, so we just did some of his already down tricks. Although Bellah has been with us for a couple of weeks, the newness hasn't worn off yet, and being a puppy himself, all he wants to do is play with her. What did you suggest, separating them? Yeah, we tried that, but his focus then is just on getting to her, and again, no focus. As I said, his current training is trying to get him adjusted to her; we are making progress. Let's see, what else is happening here? We are pretty well all moved and set up, except for the garage. By renting both sides of the duplex, we also get both sides of the garage. Nice! Well, it would be if we could use the other side. I would love to have another vehicle inside out of the weather, but the former renter still has items in there. When asked about it, she stated that she sold her pick-up and has no way to move anything out until the landlord helps her. He is supposed to be back this week, he drives a truck, but with the weather we're having, he may be delayed. Even if he makes it back, I don't see him hauling stuff until after the storm has ended. Sometimes life is like two steps forward only to find your three steps behind. So how are things going this month? So far they are going about the same, only different... |
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