Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 642)

Hello Everyone!

Bizarre dreams, Chicken smarts, A lethargic Eastern King, A big scrawny doe & Quicksilver moods explained!

I awoke not all that long after sunrise from another series of rather bizarre dreams but this time there are only pieces and fragments of memories floating around in my mind so at least I did not wake to a bunch of supercharged emotions (nor memories) to sort through. If anything I awoke feeling quite distant from my emotions and with a keen rationale chipping away at the difficulties my life currently has.

It is a hard thing to describe but something has assuredly shifted for me. I think that by day's end I will have formed (or begun to form) an entirely new perspective which will hopefully keep me from sliding into some of the more troublesome lines of thought that have been getting the best of me lately. Call it an intuition (or an unconscious observation) but there is assuredly something going on there beneath the calm surface of my mind.

Aside from all that jazz, it is another rainy morning and the weather does not look like it will be breaking anytime soon so I may as well take my time here, enjoy my espresso and get some writing done. Having leaned so heavily into the writing of late I can only be thankful for it because honestly without it I would have gone totally mental at this point and never would have been able to steer myself clear of all the upheaval/turmoil that I have been feeling.

On a different note. Late last night I let the dogs out at one point and was a bit surprised to find one of the hens was outside the coop and standing on the deck in the dog yard, which yeah was super odd. At first I wondered if maybe she was ill or something but after petting her some and her seeming fine I was then like: Oh no something has scared her out of the coop!

After bracing myself for the worst I walked to the coop to find that yup something was in there! It was that big Eastern King Snake and it had eaten so many eggs (I could tell from all the bulges in its body) that it had apparently fallen asleep (or just became super lethargic) and was sprawled out in the nesting box that she likes sitting in!

Sometimes I wonder about the intelligence of the little chickens because she had followed me to the coop and stood by my left foot until I shined the flashlight in there, saw what was going on and then told here something along the lines of: It is just the King snake, it does not want to bother you, it just wants the eggs and you can go in there and it will be okay.

Now believe it or not she looked from me to the coop, shook herself a bit then hopped right in there, jumped up onto one of the sticks they roost on (almost directly above the snake) ruffled out her feathers and began roosting! Had I not seen it all for myself I would have doubted it also but whoa was it pretty neat to witness and yeah I really should start shutting the coop at night to avoid that from happening again!

Like I have remarked upon numerous times before those Eastern King Snakes are really good to have around due to how they displace and/or kill the venomous snakes. Also that particular one that has been eating the eggs (and I keep seeing around the dog yard) is the largest one that I have seen around here and yup I am completely okay with fattening it up!

Alright, it is a little before noon now and I fizzled out on the writing earlier and worked on that Homesteading Resources article more just to take my mind off stuff. All in all that article is getting more complex as time goes on and now (belatedly) I am thinking that I should try to get it all into some form of alphabetical order or something just to make it easier to navigate!

I still think it is a neat project but trying to squeeze so much information into one place is a downright tricky process because just figuring out what should go under what category (or sub-category) is rather daunting to say the least! As with most long-term projects I will just have to keep chipping away at it and see what emerges. My big idea with it though, is to have a consolidated source of information that I can reference (or point folks to) without having to try to recall stuff from memory!

Having gone way down the information rabbit warren over the years (when trying to do stuff on my own) I have probably forgotten more things than I can realistically recall and honestly I wish that I had kept much better notes. Not that I have a bunch of regrets in the 'note taking' department because whoa life is always happening!

Sans a secretary, assistant or a device that is constantly recording (aside from my brain) I do not know how I could have done a better job of it in most of the scenarios that I have been in let alone all the projects that I have worked on over the decades! Thankfully these entries do have some information tucked away in them but at some point I think that I should really focus on 'putting to paper' many of the things that I have learned along the way in life and especially so in regards to homesteading, land stewardship, construction and water management.

Seriously I have not just been 'a sponge' on those topics but have so much hands on experience that yeah it occasionally makes my head spin when I really think about it. Granted I did do a pretty good job at capturing some of that stuff in that video series that I did but it being my first real content creation project (and me going through a rather rough period in life) I think that it is all too mixed up with my personal stuff to have much value in an informational regard.

Not that my personal stuff being in there bothers me or anything like that because yeah I really dislike the sterile, impersonal, 'two dimensional' approach to content creation. That said though, that kind of content does have a heck of a lot of value on a purely informational basis. It is just not my cup of tea (or espresso) so to speak.

While sure it (said style of content) would more than likely be a more profitable avenue... when I weigh 'profit' against 'being personal' the allure of said 'profit' is vastly overshadowed by my inclination to behave as a real and authentic person with all the quirks that entails!

When it comes right down to it I enjoy being a story-teller and yeah I do not mind being the 'main character' of the story because hey it is an easy perspective to write from and one I am all too familiar with! It also requires very little from my actual imagination which yeah is pretty nice considering how I like to keep it occupied (or even preoccupied) on other stuff.

Okay, it is much later in the afternoon now and I am once again skipping my nap so that I can squeeze in some more writing. I just got back from a pleasant hike (that I was actually capable of enjoying) and was pleasantly surprised that some of the persimmons have begun to drop from the trees! There were even some on the ground and although they were not to that 'super ripe' point where they will not make my mouth pucker... they looked delicious nonetheless.

I thought about collecting them anyway to let them ripen but decided to leave them for the deer and wildlife instead. Considering there are only a few of them on the ground I figured the critters could use the extra food source considering we are heading into autumn and it is time they start putting on some fat.

I also stopped at that big stand of black muscadines and while I was standing there picking grapes I got startled more than I have been in quite some time. I dunno how long I had been standing there circling the trees, plucking off grapes, tossing them in my mouth and spitting out seeds but my guess would be that it was for more than five minutes but less than ten minutes.

Anyway, I guess I shook the tree a good bit while getting grapes, or stepped on a branch, or something because all of a sudden maybe three meters away and slightly downhill from me (which yeah made it seem way closer than it was) a rather large doe deer popped up from where it was laying in a clump of grape vines. Seriously I could of taken several steps towards it (where it was laying) and never noticed it had been there the whole time due to how well it blended in with its surroundings!

For the deer's part I do not think that it had noticed me either! Once it was 'on all fours' it looked at me in a kind of sleepy way, shook its head, looked like it was about to bolt at full speed but instead it just 'jogged' a little downhill before turning to look at me as if to say: How rude of you I was napping! It was pretty comical actually because after eyeing me for a few moments from its new location (maybe nine meters further downhill) it laid down in another clump of vines as if nothing was amiss!

I was way to slow on the draw getting my phone out to snap a picture and by the time that I did it was already lost to view again! Most likely it has been browsing on the grapes there which would totally explain why I have not been seeing many of them on the lower hanging vines. As a side note, from the looks of her she either recently gave birth (which meant there may have been a faun nearby) or she just was not getting enough food because whoa she was looking a bit scrawny for how big she was.

Given her odd behavior I am thinking that she is either completely accustomed to me (yeah she looked like one of the ones that browse near the dog yard) or she did in fact have a faun nearby. Either way I more or less eased away from there so as not to startle her further and went hiking in a different direction altogether away from the meadow entirely.

Another reason for said behavior could have been that the rest of the herd was in the vicinity but I just failed to see them and was not keen on the idea of maybe disturbing them just to find out. She definitely did not look sick or anything which yeah would account for the odd behavior but honestly there could be all kinds of reasons why she chose to remain in that area and I could guess all day long as to what they might be and still not know for sure!

All in all I really need to keep doing those hikes each day because they sure do help my mind 'settle down' and give me something else (in this case nature) to focus on. It really is all too easy to get wrapped up in my head and forget to enjoy all the natural wonder around me. My words here do not quite do it justice but whoa just stilling my mind and observing nature (including the weather) sure does the trick to improve my overall mood.

On a different note. Earlier today I had the realization that some of the anxiety that I have been feeling lately is in part due to having to do stuff that I really dislike doing on a more than 'once a day' basis. Mainly that all boils down to having to check my email, my phone and the messaging services that I use... plus I have had to have some of those pesky 'notifications' active!

Just the act of having to do those things repeatedly throughout the day (and watching for notifications) really gets under my skin and I am more than a little surprised that it took me this long to notice it! There is also the anxiety of perhaps having to communicate with people (in response) which yeah is one of those things that I am fine with once its happening but fully dread when it is not happening!

When it comes down to it I guess I just dislike the distraction but I also know just how moody I can be and it really is a bit of a 'grab bag' on what quirky part of my personality will respond to said communications! All that stuff is difficult to explain but what I am getting at is that I really enjoy being alone with my own thoughts and any 'perceived intrusion' upon them really gets me off-kilter.

The other part worth mentioning in regards to all of that is probably the 'meat' of the problem. Having broken my phone addiction quite some time ago (years ago now I guess) and all this recent activity of having to use the phone more often... is slowly strumming that old habit in such a way that I can already see that addiction forming again! It might seem like something minor... but ugh its a frigging doozy for me and extremely irritating to boot!

Okay, it is much later in the day and getting closer to sunset so I best get this entry closer to being wrapped up so that I can stay on my posting schedule and not be up late dicking around with it. I did wind up getting a nap (I just woke up from it actually) and during that time it apparently rained a good bit so I guess I did not miss out doing more stuff outdoors... but now I need to shake off the mental fog and dive in here.

Something that I noticed earlier when I was writing about the 'phone thing' is that I often say how 'moody' that I can be. I never gave it much thought as to how that probably gets interpreted by others given that the word has such a negative connotation attached to it... so I should perhaps try to spell out what I mean by that! I think that most folks read it and are probably like 'oh he goes from good mood to bad mood a lot' or something like that which is actually not what I mean at all.

My moods have a much larger gradient than the simple (maybe even simple-minded) 'good to bad' that I describe above. So, yeah I get it if that is how folks interpret that but really my actual 'bad' moods are frigging few and far between... and generally are the result of something really messing with me either physically or mentally and generally by the time it is to that point of affecting my mood that strongly... it is the well beyond the point where most folks would have had a damned all out breakdown.

If I were to truly spell it out I would have to say my moods go from indifference, to clinical analysis, to compassion, to being sardonic, to humorous, to downright quirky, to thoughtfully antagonistic, to incredulity, to understanding, to emotionally distant, to cleverness, to crafty, to being wholly obstinate, to optimistic, to pessimistic, to jovial, to being dense, to being insightful, to being passionate and on and on in that vein ad infinitum!

The thing is I do not fight my moodiness and more or less just 'go with the flow' with them as they come and go. Because alas the only ones that really concern me are if I am in a super good mood because I get suspicious of it and of course a bad mood... because well bad moods suck! Which yeah should be obvious because I have yet to meet anyone who actually (consciously) likes being in a bad mood unless they are just a manipulative jerk!

So, there you have it and if there has ever been any confusion on the matter as to why I tend to use the term so much now you know! I know that it sounds kind of messed up but my moods are a bit like quicksilver and while sure I am okay with it given most of them are either a form of 'good' or 'neutral' mood... it can be wholly disconcerting to folks who are communicating with me.

It is also incredibly frustrating for me when I am communicating with folks because yeah knowing how disconcerting it can be and my inclination to just roll with the mood at hand and having to forcefully not do that creates internal friction... it is just simpler to not communicate with folks in the first place. Or to only do it during times when the mood shifting is more or less 'in slow motion' so to speak.

In short: Being moody is just a part of who I am and yup I am a-okay with it especially since I can spot a bad mood coming on from rather 'far away' (sans some kind of injury) and act responsibly by not communicating with folks until it is long gone! Which yeah may not work for most folks given their lifestyle choices of being around other people... but hey being the hermit that I am it works awesome!

Anyway, I probably just muddied the waters there more than what was necessary but such is life! Overall the day was pretty good and although I did not get more stuff cleaned up and/or packed down I did get a bunch of routine chores done, cooked up a few days worth of meals and fed my brain a heck of a lot of both entertainment and information which yeah I find wholly relaxing!

I have actually been trying to enjoy Sundays lately to help de-stress my mind so hopefully I can get that worked into my weekly routine in such a way that it sticks even during the times when I get super busy. Which yeah is something that I should be in full swing of by now (in regards to projects) but given the circumstances I do not want to spend more calories nor waste any more time here than I have to!

Well, I guess that I best call this entry 'good enough' and get on with the editing and posting. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night... or something like that!

The persimmons are really starting to ripen up!

Check out all these persimmons!

I was not fooled by how ripe this looks!

I do not recall seeing this mushrooms around here before but whoa there are a lot of them!

Thanks for reading!

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