bits of fourth

 It's the Fourth of July.  I have the day off from the office job, but still have 'double duty' postal route tomorrow so I don't know if we are going to try to go do anything late night tonight.   We're still waiting for the HVAC company to get the equipment and come install it, probably next week.  I've written a little bit on a few books but I've taken up teaching E some work skills like inventory management, spreadsheets and table formatting.  She is going to help me set up a printer today.  I told her we also need to work on some phone skills, and of course, preparing more for her driving test.  We need to focus on getting her a car to drive - but the HVAC was unexpected and we've had to do that first.  Next week we go and make sure she has all the classes she needs to graduate this year, as there have been some changeups required.

 

I've wondered what other online courses I could get her to take that might be of use for her, certificates etc.  I took that financial literacy course with her late last year, but haven't been chomping at the bit to take any more on that site, either.  But she is appreciating learning more about computer skills that I actually use daily at work, and her school experience has pretty much thrown her out into word processors and spreadsheets and said 'go do something with it' without giving her anything useful to do with it or any instruction.  It's a far cry from when we had entire classes in typing and ten-key (which she had never heard that term before), computer programming and word processing.

 

I've been studying French and Welsh - both of those are advanced level stuff so it's not as easy as just playing around in low level Japanese or Czech, but still not as annoying as  trying to keep Spanish separate in my head, and started a different world in the Minetest to see how I adapt to building now with knowing how everything works and how to survive in each environment.   And that isn't getting any more books released.  I've just put a lot on my plate right now and some of it - like E's extra computer lessons - are things I probably should have been doing for a good while.

bits and kick

 

It's been a tough couple of weeks -our air conditioner has went out, and we have to find out still what we can do to replace it - so we have been dealing with the hot temperatures and the floor sweating downstairs with the humidity - the repairman said the current unit cannot be fixed.  We also need to replace our washing machine - although I knew that a few months ago it took time to come around to consensus on that and perhaps tomorrow we will actually go and get something done.

The air conditioner is a harder thing -the estimate for a new unit is really expensive

Esme finally asked me for some help with cleaning her room - it's been years that I've been backing off as I was told I was too overbearing on the subject .. but now she wants help and doesn't know why I was holding back.  I told her I should have been more forceful too, instead of just listening to the other advice, but I wanted to avoid fights and that is not always the right thing, either.

 So, while we try to decide how to repair things, I kicked my little sketch I did in my notebook off into a Kandinsky/ J Ward style?(Mark calls it that) style drawing to try to get some juices flowing.

Lots of work - so far this has been my 16th day on between the two jobs, although the day after my birthday was just a few hours. 

bits - kick my tail, imaginary time

had some reflective 'I should kick my own tail' thoughts today that I have several more small stories and books and I just haven't been able to drag myself to work on them but then I go and spend a few hours here and there in Minecraft building a huge empire that doesn't exist - which imaginary world is more productive? It is all 'imaginary time', like dreams, but a bit more tangible.

 

I have another Mikki story I had half-realized - and several others, and then a few more popped into my head today and I captured an iota of it... and yet I sit here staring at what I sent myself on my lunch break and saying 'Do I really want to work on that or do I want to go build a road to nowhere in the game' again...

 

Both past times can be done at midnight or 3 am...

only one of them will ever amount to something in my publish queue....

 

  

 

Mikki Mack - the quite pretty small grey cat with the glorious long fluffy tail 

 

I worked on a few simple illustrations and thoughts for that story.  And I thought about tomorrow, which is the Solstice.  I have to work tomorrow, and it will be early.  What if, instead of walking all the way up to the road and watching the first light and walking all the way back down, I made coffee and an egg and watched the red day lilies light up in the garden?  I think that would be good.  And Saturday will perhaps be a hard day, starting late at the post office and as long as it takes to get it done - and not a route I run often.  There won't be a lot of time the next few days to do much leisure / thought process.  Sunday I have not volunteered, though - and I hope it won't be a call in situation, so we can all go to the store.

 

bits, japanese forest village in Minetest

 

Not much, studying Finnish on both platforms, working at clearing a large area for a village in the Japanese forest in Minetest, which is difficult, as the trees are so close together and it is slow going to clear all the bits to make the leaves fall.  The one nice feature of the Japanese forest is that the leaves are good for fuel - and you get stacks and stacks of the leaves when you try to clear it out.  I've been burning the bricks and clay and making bread with the full stacks of leaves and not had to use much coal or wood for that.  Another nice feature is there is plenty of sashimi and racine to cook and eat that you naturally pick up along the way.

Plus, this is another of those long narrow islands, and leveling enough for several houses is a second challenge. It is in the other picture,  behind me here the land goes UP, and there are several deposits of interesting minerals but I will have to climb for them.  And behind the travertine brick house is a very deep deep cave, which I spent a good amount of time in pulling out that travertine and a few other minerals, lots of clay, and the blue granite which is the first I have ever found in this world.

 

 I had found grey granite, black granite, green granite, white granite and red granite but had only seen the blue in the resources guide.  
 

 

It is my birthday in a few days, although I have to work at the post office that day.

reminder : they opened up a new bookstore/cafe in town, but I am not sure when I could ever get to it.. at least they are open until 5 pm, so there is a chance. 

from here the land goes UP.  I've been to that little spot on the right there that is tallest, and there are three different minerals right there at the peak.  I came back down to empty my inventory and will have to go back up and get them - jade, serpentine and blue limestone.  There is also some sodalite down by the shore there that I didn't get a chance to mine out yet as it is beneath a layer of grey granite.

the bits and spelunking in Minetest

 

 

a sort of 'townhouse' in the middle of the jungle near the cave system

 

Another whole week went by, it doesn't seem like it was that much time... but we've been busy.   Esme made meatloaf last weekend, and it turned into lasagna spaghetti in the midweek, and we ate up all the leftovers.  I've made some ramen and stir fry as well, and used all of my sushi rice and adzuki beans taking bento boxes to lunch.   

I've been studying Spanish, French and Japanese - and actually got to use some of the Spanish at my job this week several times.  I still find it much harder to get my brain to switch into Spanish gear - even trying to remember thank you (so simple, you would think)  the German or the French gets in the way and I have this awkward pause where my brain is saying 'danke schon' and I am actually saying nothing until I can remember 'gracias'.  

 

Why is Spanish so hard for me?  I even remembered some Czech one day first (dekuji) instead of the Spanish - it's like having eight cards for everything you want to say and having to throw away the first four until you get to the right language.  It's not a problem exactly of too many languages - but that Spanish is that far down my 'queue'.  C'est la vie, que sera, right?  They say it climbs up that queue the more you actually have use for it.  We'll see.  

We're thinking still about getting a new outdoor shelter for the goat and cats (beyond the ones they already have, which are several), but haven't went down and looked at it in person yet.  I still have postal route tomorrow, and it is going to rain all day.  I've also had poison ivy on my arm for days and it is getting to be quite annoying.  I've been trying to get myself to sleep every night before I actually want to fall over, and have been waking up even a tad bit earlier in the mornings.

 

In Minetest, I've somehow wandered all the way from my northern almost tundra alpine climate area down to the south jungle again where the cocoa farm is.  I don't know why - I hung around the cocoa farm for a long time and built five more houses and roads in all directions, and the cocoa still did not grow.  And then, when I thought maybe I'd go and get tomatoes and papyrus and bring them all across the southern continent in a development sweep - I fell into a cavern in the jungle, and discovered an absolute rabbit warren of natural caves, full of clay and other minerals (no ores, though), and have been popping out of this entrance or that one like whack-a-mole for several days, bringing up hundreds and hundreds of blocks of moonstone, silver sand, limestones, amber, amethyst and more.  

Every time I think I've found all the little holes in the landscape where this cave comes to the surface - I find more - and I say 'Hey, I can see (name of site) from here.  I can see my house from here!'.  I made one true base for the cave system where it comes out into the ocean on the shore near another major jungle site - and I have been collecting up the resources there - and trying a different little building style as well.  After a bit longer, I will go off back to one of my cities across the ocean from this and see if I can pick up the tomatoes and papyrus. 

 

 with the papyrus and tomatoes (still growing)

 

bits

 My mail truck was not fixable, so at 338,000 miles, it was done for.  It's been a week at work that was shortened by Memorial Day, but feels like it should have already been Friday today.  Getting things done, but my anxiety is up a little.  The dentist came back with information for me and an estimate - it will be a big thing to get my entire top denture done and it still feels like I'm not ready for that - but there are four big teeth to pull before that, too.  I need to schedule for the first half of those to happen sometime soon  - the estimate is to work on it over the course of a year - I'm sure that is their financial idea and they actually intend me to do it much quicker, but with my reduced healing, it might be wise to take it slow, maybe not that slow, but slow.

 

Doing Japanese, and French-to-Spanish.  Studying small bits more of Japanese cookery.  Needing to get myself to bed so I can do work and get the animal feed and something for Mark on the way home tomorrow.  

 

but I want to rant a moment on motivation, and how that relates to 'reality' 

I've heard others talk about how hard it is to get out of bed at all in the morning - how they want to stay in bed and call in sick.  They say this like a joke.  And I'm always doing my alarms in the morning so I can turn my hips and knees and shoulders over and eventually get them centered and feel right to get up and not jar anything.  Some days I feel that much more fragile than others - and sometimes I am so focused on what a dog is barking about that I get up anyway without doing that... and pay for it for a while afterward.  But no, I don't think about calling in sick.  I think about moving my body forward and making it do the things it has to do - and seeing if it cooperates and what must be done to make it do so. 

What I've found works really best, besides the turning back and forth a few times - is to imagine what time it is, and what an hour or an hour and a half from now should look like.  Where should I be?  I imagine that future me looking back at this me and saying 'hey, we're here because you got your a** in gear and did the things it takes to get here', and then I lay out what those things are, superfast, like a trail leading me to that future if I just make all the hops and hoops.  And then usually that visualization - which I often call 'kick my tail', or 'hike my tail', is enough to get me to do the next things, and the next.. until it really is an hour and a half later and I am driving, or sitting at my desk, and saying 'yep, did that, check...'  

This is especially helpful on mornings like this morning, when I've had intense vivid dreams that were not reality the night before and it is so hard to break out of what was unfinished etc.. but it's not real, it was the past, or a conglomeration of multiple bits of my past (oh how fun the 'you don't remember your login and you work at a place that calls itself something familiar but is a conglomeration of three places at once, joy - fun - take a few minutes working out what detail is from what and what the simulation has in store to try to stress you with!  Will this be a dream where nothing works right no matter how hard you try, or one where you can circumvent the laws of physics to solve the problem, or both?)..., or a different dream like Aladdin's Cave or etc..  Aladdin's Cave is a common dream of mine as well, the Cave of Wonders - a store or a house or a library, some place that is full of interesting things for sale or for the exploration etc etc.. and I feel I can choose this or that or nothing at all, and I wonder where all of those things come from that I see so intricate and detailed in those dreams, the books with titles and stories that do not exist, necklaces, contraption machines, statues, clothes, trinkets, maps, globes, dishes, stones and minerals and other artifacts etc etc...   

The helpful bit - and my reason for ranting on - is that my visualization of what will really happen in real time can come true - I can look back and see myself in the real past from the real future.  When I am in those dreams and attempt that - I realize that it is futile, and that the dream is fleeting and immaterial, and that I cannot plan a future within it or see it's past.  

 

The only exception to this are the 'million miles' dreams, where, for some period of time in the dream, I am in 'another world' - still not real, but it is lucid to a point much greater than Aladdin's Cave, or the Great Library, or wandering through supermarkets or such... but those dreams also slip through my fingers and most of the million miles dreams -dreams of another life down to the toothbrushing and dish washing etc, fade away with only impressions that remain afterward, but when I am in within it I can think of what I did 'yesterday' in that place and what I might do 'tomorrow' in that place, if I remain there - and usually at about those times that I am thinking deeply about that, I realize that the time is still illusory there and that I do not belong to that world, somethings are just slightly not real enough, the memories are not quite complete enough - and someone pulls the weft out of the weave and it begins to fall apart - I am capturing only a few images of myself on my fingers - that self - but maybe still remembering the map of the city, the way the room looked, the textures of the fabrics, the iron railing at the window, the fireplace, climbing those stairs in the city and looking down again at the sidewalk, those 'tastes' remain and sometimes return, days, months, years later - I will be in that place again, but not that self.  

I call these 'million miles' dreams because I wake up feeling like I've traveled, lived days and weeks and months away, and then suddenly it is only the next morning here, in reality, and I am not older, perhaps not wiser, but I do appreciate a lot of things more, for the feeling of 'having been away'.

 

But in the real world, the real real world, I kick my tail, and turn off the alarms, and crack my unruly knees and put my feet into slippers to gather all my clothes and pick my way down the stairs one by one, each second following each other one in correct order - until the hour turns around again and I look back at myself and say 'Well we did that one, on to the next'