My original plan with the old chicken pen was to take down the old coop with a drill and a sledgehammer and build the new coop inside. That way, i wouldnt have to take the sides, roof, or buried part of the fencing down, which seemed more complicated to me. Well, that idea got poo pooed and we settled on my neighbor’s idea of taking a piece of the roof, wall, and buried part of the fencing down (its all connected). I just kept feeling dumb that i didnt understand how in the h*ll this was going to be easier but he seemed to have a vision so i guessed i’d see as it was happening. Turns out….surprise surprise, i was right. My way would have worked. I used a drill to back the screws i could reach out and put them in my pocket. They all ended up some percentage of stripped, even at 5 percent damaged i wanted good screws to work with so i tossed them rather than save them for other projects. Part of the problem is that chickens peck at silver things and though i was stripping them somewhat during removal, it was because i couldnt get a great grip on them due to the chickens pecking them for 6 years. Note to manufacturers: chickens are drawn to shiny things. Make the screws wood colored or black and the chickens wont peck the exposed part relentlessly like dumb dinosaurs when they could be out foraging for bugs. I took a sledgehammer to the door and roof because the screws were not at an accessible angle for me to get at. They came apart rather easily with an 8 lb sledgehammer. I figured i could swing that one more easily than the 10 but its weight would have more oomph than the 6 lb so 8 lb ended up being the way to go. Perfect for what i needed it for. I took a sledgehammer to the nesting boxes after backing out every screw i could reach. The nesting boxes fell off the rest of the way and i removed them. This left me a path to get to the back of the pen where i was anle to back out the rest of the screws with the drill and carry all the pieces to the unburnable brush pile (the sellers left it under some trees…it would have to be not under trees to burn it and i dont fancy purchasing or renting a tractor). I did the whole thing in the middle of a nasty cold front. It was incredibly windy and biting cold, making the process slower and less pleasant than it could have been. The whole demolition took me a whopping hour and a half and the pen is completely intact.
Cold and fed up with the windDone
I should mention that the reason it has become imperative to fix up the other pen is because ive ordered 12 chocolate orpington chicks (and a free mystery chick whose eggs i just had to agree to give to the community for free upon maturity) from a hatchery in ohio and they are to arrive mid march. Now, this is a less reputable hatchery that i have never used before because the one i love is not doing chocolate orpingtons this year. They did once and they were hard for them to get with pure genetics and not as in demand as other breeds so they elected not to carry them in future years. Sometimes people breed anything brown with an orpington and call it a chocolate orpington but it looks nothing like an orpington. So, its hard to find real chocolate orpingtons but ive always wanted chocolate orpingtons ever since i saw them at powell (now permanently closed). Ive ordered twelve to account for possible losses in transit on the airplane and due to weather. I need 6 plus the mystery chick. Which ever of the remaining six survive are free chocolate orpington chicks for my coworker and her family who already have chickens (an assortment of unknown breeds). I think her boys will love them. They are known for being fluffy, huge, and friendly. I have a brooder box to put together, 11 out of 36 pavers needed (sutherlands next restocks on jan 22), and a coop that needs building. I bought a clamp and some wood glue to repair some pieces split in transit. Theres only one rectangular coop that fits the rectangular dimensions of the pens i buy and also seats 6 chickens and its maufactured in china and currently only available through wayfair due to tariffs. So, wood glue and clamp is a way quicker option than asking for another but not broken. I wanted to repair the last one in this manner as well but my neighbor said the wood glue and clamp were too far away down the road in his shop so he would just put a screw in to hold the split part together. Ive come to the conclusion that i have to be the only human on this land even if it is more work when its just me because i like everything done my way in my home and if i wanted to compromise id get married. Ive been single 12 years, so that tells you about how fond of compromise i am. I have until mid march to get the pieces repaired, the coop built, gravel put down around it, pavers on the outside, and the brooder put together. I figure ill keep 6 orpingtons and the mystery chicken if its not a tiny breed or a rooster. Since theres only 5 buff orpingtons, ill try to scoot her in with them, but if she’s a lot smaller than them she’ll have to stay with the chocolate orpingtons or go to my friend and be separate. Not of equal size, alone, the buff orpingtons will try to kill her rather than accept her into their group. Even if smaller than the chocolate orpingtons, if the mystery chick grows up with them, the orpingtons will accept her. But i wont know what she is definitively until she gets bigger. So i will probably research, see if i can guess from the fluff coloring, and if it looks like a small breed, give it to my coworker with her orpingtons, and if it doesnt, take a chance on keeping it and sort it out in the future. Either way, every time i get new chickens i say im never doing this again because its so much work to socialize them and keep them alive until they can regulate their own body temperature. Then without fail before two years old the whole new flock gets the bird pox, that mosquito born illness that they only develop immunity to via antibodies after contracting it. I will probably keep the extra mystery chicken and put it with the chocolate orpingtons because if i start with 7 inevitably after the pox ill probably have 6. Despite all the work and worry ahead, im excited because im thrilled at the thought of legit chocolate orpingtons and im excited to raise chicks again. Baby animals are so magical when you realize what had to happen to get a whole lifeform here when there wasnt one and then suddenly there was the beginning of one, and it lived to completion. Then the real work begins…training it and keeping it alive.
November first of every year our little town ends up with a light up wire christmas tree plugged in at the top of every other pole on the main road. It turns out its the elctric company that does it. It ends up looking like something out of harry potter. In the pitch dark its like a floating row of trees in the sky. I look forward to it every year. Its what gets you in the mood for the holidays. Well, november first came and went. Bandera put their bell decorations up, comfort put up theirs, fredericksburg put up stars…i started to wonder if ours had gone down the river in the flood. My half of the town was serviced by the electric company in kerrville while the other half was supplies by bandera. Kerrville had flooded during the july fourth flood and i knew our electric company’s storage warehouse had been affected. I wondered if the light up floating trees had gone down the river in the flood. Other people in town had noticed the absence of the trees too and a neighbor inquired at the next town meeting as to their whereabouts. We were all relieved to find out they hadnt gone down the river. The electric company was buying more for us this year but they hadnt arrived yet and they were only going to go out for install once so they’d be putting up the decorations in our small town on december 1, a month later than usual. November felt strange without them and it was hard to get in the holiday mood. I was terribly worried that the new ones would be bells or stars or ribbons…not our signature green christmas trees as they had always been. I figured they might not have such an aversion to change as i did. I worried myself nuts about those new lights possibly not being trees and then the night of december first guess what there was now a million of?! Identical in size shape, and color floating green christmas trees! There was now one on every pole up the highway leading into the town from both directions, down the main street, past the cemetary, and even past the elementary school down china street. A green floating christmas tree in the sky on every single pole on both sides of the street. Everyone called around to see if their neighbors had seen the abundance of green lit up trees we now had! I mean the electric company really came through with all those light up trees! I am so glad they’re not red or white or bells or candles or angels or stars. Those green trees, we’ve always had them, and we’re the only town around that does. For whatever reason they do a combination of gold, red, and white bells, candles, ribbons, and stars for the other town they service but for us, they’ve always put up green christmas trees and it looks like a floating enchanted forest in the sky, and none of us wanted it to change. Its been a hard year. When i go to the river to eat lunch in my car on a forced half day…the trees are still scraggly and sideways. The shape of the river is now clogged with sand banks and big shoreside mounds of rock and mud material that was washed down from other cities and caught here by the dam. Its not pretty to look at anymore. Its kind of strange, wide, shallow, and bulky. The water is not the deep color it is when theres some depth before the bottom. The trees are still sideways and look like they’ve been part of a hurricane. Its been a rough year. Im just saying, we needed those christmas tree lights and the electric company came through.
Lately the temperature at night has been hovering right around freezing and ive been leaving the greenhouse lights on overnight to keep it a bit warmer in there considering theres two open wall vents that let the outdoor air in even when i close the windows. That means the roses in there have had 24 hour grow lights on them. They’re essentially getting the equivalent of “more sun”. I knew we needed to put the lights on chains and drop them down closer to the plants but my neighbor who was helping me with the project at the time said the plants would get plenty of light from the ceiling. They dont get enough light as it turns out and the plants were all stunted this year. I began making plans to buy chain from sutherlands and lower all the lights for next year. After 4 trips they finally restocked enough chain for me to have 14 seven foot lengths of chain and i can now get a ladder and drop all the lights down so that they are closer to the plants. One night i walked into the greenhouse and found that my maroon rose was not pink. It was a deep maroon, as intended. I realized, if i could get these lights lowered, i could potentially see maroon roses all the time. It was a treat. I knew the rose plant had been receiving more light under 24 hour grow lights but this was not good for the plant at regular because every living thing needed to have a period of rest and repair eventually. I could only do this on cold nights. I would do better next year, after i lowered the lights. Next year would be better.
Ive gotten mixed feedback about whether pin oaks and spanish oaks will succumb to oak wilt. This tree is actually a cluster of 6 equally aged pin oaks stemming from the same patch of ground and the end result is perfection. The tree is so full and beautiful and each fall it turns bright orange before losing its leaves. I dont know how many years i will be blessed with its presence but i appreciate each new one i get with this magnificent tree. It never disappoints when it turns color. Im always stunned to see the vibrant orange. Im so used to live oaks. I never tire of looking at it. It will be like this a couple weeks and then they will turn brown and begin to drop. Then the next exciting stage will be brand new baby leaves ehich appear as brown buds, then pink and green baby leaves as they unfurl.
Each year my mortgage payment goes up around a hundred dollars a month. Im now at the point where living the way im living, im breaking even, not making profit. So i sat down and made some new years resolutions. Budget wise, i need to buckle down for the next 13 years. I decided that the food budget was the place most hemorrhaging money. I would move to buying bulk rice at the h-mart in austin in 50 lb bags. I would buy two boxes of rice pasta a week ($10) and spend $90 including shipping on misfits market fedexed produce weekly. Im frustrated when the elders at work say to us “$50 on food, you’re complaining about $50 for food, do you know how much food i could go buy if i went to heb right now?” They shake their heads like we’re so irresponsible and entitled and dont know what the heck hard times are. But, they get a pass. They have dementia, and the last time they visited heb with a wallet and a shopping cart, $50 would have bought a lot of food. Now it buys 15 items. But, back in their day, before the current rate of inflation and lack of wage rising, $50 was a lot of money. Anyways, on the weekends i eat once or twice a day due to a medication that unfortunately is also an appetite suppressant and robs me of the joys of food and on weekdays i get full faster so eat less. If there were any way i could get off the medication i would but it seems to be vitally necessary to the endometriosis problem, though it comes with some not so great side effects of its own…it is not something i can get off right now. So the amount of food in the house at this time is currently plenty. It just all requires cooking. Im very busy these days, cooking and cooking again, as thats how it goes. Once you eat it, you necessitate the act of cooking once more. Anyways, most of my dry beans, rice, and flour are expired but i was determined that food not be wasted so i put what seemed salvageable on a couple shelves and organized the newer food (which was on the floor in the kitchen area of the one room tiny house) on the middle shelves. I took all the shelves out, dusted them, and flipped them over so they could warp in the opposite direction for a few years. Then i put the food i was keeping back on the shelves. I had things like oat milk, raisins, soup mix, olives, canned beans, and canned fish that i wouldnt likely buy again during the next ten years so i decided to savor those things until they were gone and then get used to this new food plan i had. You could see more of the floor now that the food was actually in the pantry. I also discovered the presence of a field mouse who had eaten her way through a box of soup and a box of flaked mashed potatoes. More reasons non-venomous snakes are important. Cats are just coyote food. Have you ever seen a 50 lb coyote eating a garter snake? Thats why theres snakes out here and theres not too many cats. Not cuz we dont stock up on them each year, cuz they dont stay. The snakes stay. I tell you what; anyone who says “the only good kind of snake is a dead snake” is a city dweller that hasnt had to find out how quickly 30,000 field mice can multiply in one season. They eat all the animal feed (sometimes right out of the animals mouth), drown in the livestock water bowls (thus contaminating them), chew all electric cords and hoses, destroy any and all packaging by shredding it for nesting material, and climb in through the dryer vent hole so they can chew through any cardboard boxes within reach. If you get a hail storm sometimes they end up stoned to death and the ravens pick at them but there’s always more smarter mice who made it underground before the hail began. Anyways, the pantry is organized, the budget is refigured, and im ready for january.
Bud is the larger armadillo with a healed over puncture mark that lives under a rotted tree stump behind my house. Berkey is the name my mother gave to the newest younger and smaller armadillo to show up on scene. He was quite small when he first appeared and he seems to have a den underneath the shed. I suspect his mother may be Bud since they sometimes browse for bugs together, but i cant be sure. Bud may need a new name…
I will preface this topic by mentioning not everyone will have as bad an experience as i did and there are a few reasons for that.
Some people have spouses who can drop them off for work in the second car until the first one is finished with its necessary repairs
Some people live in the same city that they work in so its easier and more feasible to find a coworker to carpool to work with until the car has had its necessary repairs (providing gas money to the coworker can make the extra effort to come pick you up on the way worth their while)
People who live in the same city as their parents who are still married may be able to convince them to loan their adult child one of their cars for a week while both parents share the remaining car between them.
As a single woman whose parents are not together who lives in a town two cities away from where she works…none of these notions were an option for me and any complication that might have been, was.
One monday i got up, got myself and the homestead ready for a day of work, put the key in the ignition, and the car wouldnt start. The more i tried, the less it did. The lights flickered on the dash and the engine sounded worse and worse as it tried and failed more and more to turn over. So i figured i needed a new battery. It was the wee hours of the morning in the middle of nowhere. I figured if i wanted to go to work id have to pay a tow service to jump me. My friends wouldnt wake up for hours. A tow company would be hundreds of dollars and my friends would be free, and id still have to pay for a new battery after, but i was committed to showing up for my bosses and my patients. I needed to get to work, so i elected to go ahead and call them and pay the money to get a jump in the dark before dawn. The tow service mentioned that it would be an hour before they could arrive. I thought about it. An hour would put me very late to work and in two hours my friends would be awake and could help me with jumper cables. I politely notified them i’d changed my mind and would wait for my friends to wake up because an hour put me at very late to work, not just a little late, at which point it was worth it financially for me to just wait until my friends woke up and could jump my car for free. The man said he could talk to his guy, expedite the matter, and get him there in thirty minutes if that would keep me as a customer, that an hour is just something they say to give themselves wiggle room, but he’d tell his guy it was important he be there as early as possible and he could get him there in half an hour without speeding.
One hour and thirty minutes later he arrived. I should have known the man was just saying whatever he needed to say to keep me as a customer. He never even called the driver who was unaware he was supposed to arrive in thirty minutes and said that was not even a thing he could have done because it took half an hour from the time i called for the call center in a different state that is “the office” to contact the tow driver and let him know there was a customer. He parked next to the carport and jumped the car. It took him a while to get it running and he said he had to give it gas to get it going, so he didnt think the problem was just a dead battery. He said “something’s not getting juice”. He was very kind and good conversation in the freezing cold. This cost me $250. I thanked him and drove to the brand new auto parts store that had moved into town. The manager there was named “Brian”. He wore an old fashioned news boy cap and was outside smoking when i arrived. I left the car running and went inside to inquire about a compatible battery. They confirmed that they had a compatible battery in stock and told me i could go ahead and shut off the car. I did as they said and went back inside the warm store to wait for them to come out with the cart and a new battery. They did a lot of looking at the computer and making “hmmm” noises and checking the shelves behind the counter again, but no cart on wheels emerged. Finally Brian said, “Well, theres good news and theres bad news.” I said, “what’s the good news?” He said, “there is a battery that’s compatible with your car and we do sell it.” I asked, “what’s the bad news?” He answered, “its 3 cities away and we need about two hours for someone to drive it here from a different store. Can you stand the wait?” I said, “welp, it doesn’t look like i have much choice. The car is off now and i need a battery.” Brian offered to get me a chair to wait two hours for the guy driving the battery down in his car to arrive but i had a better idea. My best friend lived a mile from the auto parts store and i woke her up (sorry) asking if she could come get me, and could i hang out at her house where there’d be electricity, food, cats and a bathroom for two hours. She said i could but she was in her pjs and not quite ready to get in the car and go out in a small town. I said i’d walk. Brian then offered to drive me over to my friends house. He said i was not going to walk in this cold and wind. He’d drive me, no problem. So we got into his old thunderbird in which i had to slam the door shut and pull very gently on a temperamental seatbelt to get it to reach the buckle and off we went to my friend’s house. She made a wonderful breakfast of quinoa, imported italian olive oil, sesame seeds, lemon pepper dash, and shredded seaweed strips. It was savory quinoa breakfast. If you eat anything at an italian’s house you will know that the olive oil is more of a sauce than a method of making sure something doesnt stick to a pan. The quinoa was drowned in the liquid gold and if you’ve ever tasted italian olive oil you’ll understand why this was a generous hospitality in drowning my food in it. Anyways, i played with the cats. We had a good conversation. I charged my phone. Her husband woke up and found me in his kitchen again. Im always surprised by how chill he is upon discovering unauthorized visitors in his house but he’s italian so he basically upon discovering visitors just offers food and begins discussing any current events he has strong opinions on. I enjoy knowing both my best friend and her husband immensely and appreciate them more than they know. While i was at my friends house i got a notification on my phone. My grandmother had deposited money into my account, effectively paying for the new battery and the car jump by the towing company. It was very kind of her and helped immensely because ever since the tow driver had spoken the words “im not sure thats just a battery problem” i kind of knew other more extensive repairs were coming down the pipe.
2.5 hours passed and Brian gave me a phone call to let me know i could come back. My best friend drove me over there and he put the new battery in. He lost a screw somewhere in there with cold numb fingers in the wind so he bought me a replacement one out of his own pocket, saying it was his fault. That was nice. He said the battery should last about 4 years. I heard the tow driver’s words in the back of my head. He didnt think it was just the battery. He figured there was another problem going on. I had been dealing with the screens on the car going black from time to time and the car being slow to shift for about a year. I wondered if these things were all related and tied up in a bigger problem about to come to a head. I knew this car had a history of transmission issues and nissan had not fixed them in the 2019 model, but they offered a lifetime warranty upon conditions, for the transmission and engine….one that could only be honored by the location in boerne that stole $25,000 from me when i bought the car with a cashier’s check, the employee made off with the money, and signed me up for financing, ruined my credit, saddled me with relentless bill collectors, threatened to repossess the car, and forced me to sue them. We settled out of court. Nissan paid the loan off, and their senior employee wrote a letter to the bill collectors and upon receiving it they began to fix my credit and closed my account with them and stopped harassing me. Im not stupid enough to bring the car back to that den of thieves for any kind of maintenance after suing them and in my opinion winning, even though i felt the employee should be fired and they couldnt let me know if any disciplinary action had been taken, which to me means it probably hadnt, because if he was fired, why wouldnt they just say so. So i was aware that essentially, whenever the transmission went out, it was my responsibility, and after san antonio stated that they would not honor the warranty provided by boerne because that was between me and them, i decided hiring lawyers to make them do so would be pointless because by the time i won, theyd be disgruntled enough to destroy the car in retaliation when i handed it over for maintenance, so i just gave up on doing the “every 5000 mile oil change” with nissan (my end of the agreement) and started taking it to walmart in a town closer to me. Nissan used to make us “stuck customers” who were trying to maintain our end of a conditional lifetime transmission and engine warranty wait about 4 hours after our scheduled appointment to get our oil changed, no doubt hoping we’d give up and not uphold our end of the bargain. I just procured an uber and made a shopping run in san antonio and got food, then returned. Others chewed them out. I knew it was pointless to yell. They won if you yelled. The point was to frazzle you and get under your skin. Car sales these days is psychological warfare and those are not god-fearing people you are dealing with. Those are money motivated people who care only about bringing home the bacon for them and theirs and if their gums are flapping, lies are happening. They’re also assessing your body language and tone to see if what they’re doing is working. You must be careful what you give away when talking to these people. So, in summary, i could feel “expensive” coming and figured it would most likely be a transmission issue since this model of this car was notorious for having transmission issues early on. Against all better judgment, i hoped it was fixed.
I went home. By now it was evening and i prepared for the following day. The following day, i started the car and it was slow to shift again. The first problem was that i put it in reverse and it still thought it was in park. The parking brake was off but it operated as if it were securely on. I turned it off and tried again. The screens were off and the buttons did nothing to turn them on or navigate them. This time the car went slowly backwards but my foot was all the way down on the pedal. It was like driving with an insufficient parking brake on. You went, but not very fast, and your foot was all the way down on the pedal. Part ways down the road the car began violently shaking as if i was driving on cobblestones. my teeth were chattering and it felt as if the car would surely break apart. I realized the tow driver had been correct. It was not only the battery. I had to call work once more in my shame and tell them i wasnt going to make it. I drove a minimum of two hours a day and as much as i drove, i needed to go ahead and make sure this car was not on the verge of breaking so i would not be stranded. It needed something and i needed to figure out what.
A friend in the city i worked in had offered to take a look at the car if i had any further car troubles after the last car trouble he fixed but reasonably, i figured that offer was conditional upon it breaking in the city he was in. I didnt think he, with a child and a day job, would be willing to drive two cities over to look at my car, so i didnt call him. To me, he was a world away living his own life and this was my problem, in the town i was in, to solve myself.
I drove it to the nearest town with mechanics and tried to find one that could look at it same day. I tried every mechanic in town. All said no. The nicest, most affordable, and christian one i’d used before said the answer would normally be yes, he’d fit me in, but he wasnt even in town…he was out of state getting an experimental cancer treatment. He was dying. This town has its own cancer treatment center and you’d be hard pressed to find a citizen of it that hasnt had cancer or is actively dealing with it. Babies, toddlers, high schoolers, elementary aged children…. I wondered when i moved out here how come a small town gets an entire cancer treatment center…. I wondered why every single person either had cancer or had an immediate family member dealing with it. I figured it had to be something specific to this region. Upon further investigation i concluded the problem was in the river. There were two large plants upriver who were known to dump waste into the river and upon testing it was identified that there were 13 cancer causing chemicals in the sample of water taken from the river in this particular town. How many of those do you think get filtered out in the processing of the water before it is routed into the tap of the houses in this town? Zero. Bacteria is filtered out. Chemicals remain. So everyone in this town goes swimming in the river. I used to as well until i began developing a multitude of moles on my arms, I quit swimming in the river, burned the moles off with an at home mole removal pen, and didnt develop any more after i quit going in the river. The neon green color of that river seems like a warning that theres things man-made in the water that we ought not come into contact with. Thats not just algae as i originally thought. Beyond swimming in the river, people in that town drink the water from the tap, cook with it, and bathe in it when it comes into the shower or the tub. Effectively, by using the water, they ensure everyone has cancer at one point or another in their lives. Its a small town. They’re married to their cigarettes and their river and they dont want to hear anything i have to say about either one, so i leave them to their plight. But, when i call and find out yet another business is being closed or another person is unavailable because they’ve succumbed to cancer, im reminded that the river is not to be messed with and i think its sad that the citizens of this town have chosen to have eyes wide shut. If they wanted to, they could see that the cancer rate there is much higher than any other city in texas, and if they wanted to, they could have a lot to be incensed about, but they mostly just label me a crazy conspiracy theorist and tell me everybody has cancer, thats just life. They dont get out much so they dont know that for the rest of the world, its less usual. The powers that be have quietly made cancer treatment very available for this area and hoped that the problem would be overlooked. Mission accomplished. It saddens me that this auto mechanic is dying because he is a good man, who has historically made auto repair affordable and available to people without gouging them for money just because he could. He wasnt a rich man because he chose to take small profit over large profit in order to be kind to people. He was well loved in the community and i told him i was sorry and hoped the test he was going for brought good news, and he said that it likely wouldnt but he was not without hope. The bible tells you not to lose hope, and he considered himself a man not without hope. I could tell from the quiet tone and the trailing of his voice that this was a season of his life that included unknown territory, uncertainty, and sadness. Our conversation ended and i continued my search for a mechanic who could look at my car.
I found one who could look at the car in two days and wouldnt charge me a storage fee for parking on his lot until then. However, i had a new problem. I had been on the phone to a wretched little man who i would meet later in the week named Renee. He was the representative of the enterprise in the town where the mechanic that could look at the car was….the town where i was currently located. “Enterprise” (the call center in india) booked me for a sedan rental car at 10:00 am. Renee called me immediately afterwards to tell me no such car existed. (I knew this would be a problem and i’ll spend a paragraph detailing why).
Before the pandemic enterprise and companies like it had an abundance of cars. However, cars break. Cars require maintenance a lot. When you rent a car, you expect it not to break down right? Right. So how do car rental agencies prevent this occurrence from happening? Well, me, if i was in charge? I’d open my own mechanic shop and stock it with licensed mechanics whose sole job was to maintain the rental cars. I’d have each car checked every so many miles and make sure no maintenance was required, and if there did arise a problem identified, id have the mechanics fix it. But, this would be the harder more time consuming option, albeit the more efficient one. Instead, rental car agencies just buy cars, and get rid of them all before they turn two years old, then buy new ones. That way, their cars are always new, and they figure, they probably wont start to break within the first two years. Well, during the first few years of the pandemic, production ground to a halt. Materials were not being harvested, countries were not accepting materials from each other. Factories were shut down. New cars were not manufactured. Stupidly, the rental car agencies dumped all their cars like they always did and were never able to replenish them in the numbers they had had. So, now we have a shortage of rental cars, which is fine if you are booking for a vacation and can call ahead, but for car maintenance, you never know ahead of time when you will need a rental because your car broke down unexpectedly.
So this wretched little man Renee set about giving me all sorts of lip and attitude because i was trying to inquire about the likelihood of me waiting in town for a car to return panning out or if it would be worth it for me to even try or if i should consider other avenues and keep trying to solve my problem another way. I just needed to know if “i’ll call you if we by chance have a cancellation or a car come back early” was a likely thing or a long shot. Was he saying the polite version of “sorry, goodbye now” or did he actually mean that might happen. I was not testy, accusatory or disgruntled at all but he was immediately very angry with me that i was trying to gage the likelihood of something, anything that he had said, happening. As far as i could tell, he had spoken, he had said all he had to say, and if i wasnt getting it, i was just stupid. Clarification was not required and i was wasting his time and inconveniencing his day with my slowness to understand what he had clearly already stated in all detail that was necessary. I got the sense that Renee was a man that wasnt over-enthused about dealing with women, because i had asked no stupid questions and in actuality had talked very little during the conversation, and still the immediate implication was that i was stupid and not hearing him. This was not a deficit on my part. This was a hang up on his end and i knew that. I made a mental note that finding a rental car in this particular town would now probably be extra unlikely because the gate keeper to those cars was now extra un-fond of me, and unlikely to help me even if a car did come back. Sure enough, during a later phone call to clarify whether a car coming back would be mine or was their a waiting list ahead of me, Renee went ahead and confirmed that if a car came back, he wasnt giving it to me. There was a whole list of people who had inquired before me, and he’d be giving it to one of them. The sentiment was “you’re not getting a car.” So i called the city i worked in. Its hard to explain…its a town of the same size but primarily year-round, half populated by visiting tourists. So, most of the people were staying in hotels near main street and did not need rental cars. The citizens themselves were usually wealthy enough to live there and had multiple cars of their own. So i figured, maybe there’d be more opportunity for a rental car in this city. I spoke to Andrew, a very nice happily married young man with multiple children who sounded lovely. He actually lived not too far from me and had similar ideas on technology, the government, and the direction humanity was headed, which we had ample time to discuss while i squatted in the enterprise office for four and a half hours hoping upon hope for a rental car to return so i could have it…. Andrew was very kind and friendly and said he had one car scheduled to return at 4 pm and if the person didnt call and add another day onto their rental or another car came back early, i could have it. He didnt yet have a waiting list and if one came back it was mine. I was just an hour away on the highway and had to find some way to make it to that city.
First i tried uber. Not one person would pick up the drive. They’d get paid $46 before uber took their cut for a two hour detour from their day. I didnt blame them. It wasnt worth it. I then tried a taxi service. The first one was permanently closed (out of business) and the second one just would not for the life of them ever answer their phone. It just rang non-stop with no call waiting or answering machine. I could find no one to take me to the city that the kind enterprise employee without a waiting list was in. He mentioned that he normally worked in the other city with Renee but the guy for the city i worked in called in so he was temporarily stationed up there where they had less demand for rental cars so he’d probably be more likely than Renee to be able to get me a rental car this afternoon. I felt that my best chances of getting a car were up in the city where i worked. Andrew seemed pretty sure that if i was there by closing, he could get me a car that afternoon. I was scheduled to go to the dentist in austin the following day and id already rescheduled once and each time i owed a $75 cancellation fee which they had waved the first time but i was pretty sure they wouldnt do it a second time. Also if i wanted to keep my job i needed to hurry up and have a means of transportation because if i kept the dentist appointment this would now be three days in a row i hadnt shown up for work. I needed a rental car pronto.
I didnt want to do it but i felt like i had no choice. I called my best friend and begged her and her husband to take me to the city i worked in so i could squat in the enterprise on the off chance that they might have a car get turned in that afternoon. I told them id give them $200 dollars for the ride. They refused the money and instead had me fold all their english and italian inserts for their christmas cards in the back seat of the suv as her husband drove us to the city i work in. They made sure i had food and water before leaving me. We stopped at the health food store and i got a fuji water and a couple baby food smoothies with the twist off caps on pouches (they keep well without refrigeration and are good for a quick blood sugar spike when needed). They dropped me off at the enterprise and i just made conversation with andrew, the enterprise guy, until a car came back. As soon as he came in to turn in the key at 4:05 (the branch closed at 4:30) i wanted to throw my arms around him and kiss his feet. The car that was supposed to come back at 4:00 pm didnt and another car that was turning in today left theirs at the boerne location instead. So, technically it was turned in, but not accessible to me. Then this guy came in and turned in his key two days early out of the blue, thus producing a car i could lay claim to, and i wanted to hug his ankles, but i was pretty sure without context, this would be interpreted as extremely weird and unwanted, so i glued myself to the seat, sat on my hands, and tried to stay silent throughout the turn-in process. They did a walk through together and i watched out the window. He got in his daughter’s car and left. Andrew came back inside with the key and said, “so its not the car i was expecting but he turned his in a little early. Its that mitsubishi mirage out there. Do you want it?” I clapped my hands together and nodded my head up and down emphatically exclaiming, “yes, yes, i’ll take it.” He asked me to let him pull it round back and vacuum it and then i could take it. He did and i gave my credit card details, my insurance company, and my name and then i asked what else he needed and he said “nothing. I’ll show you where everything is on the car incase its located differently than on your car and then you can take off.” He did get me in the car and show me where all the buttons were and then he said “you’ve been more than patient. This is now your rental car and you are free to go.” So i did. I stopped briefly at the grocery to pick up one item, i don’t remember what but i think it was a maintenance item more than a food item. It was something that id been meaning to get. I think it may have been baking soda for the laundry but im not sure. I called everyone who had been praying about the matter, including work, and let them know i had procured a rental car. This was especially good news for the speech therapist who had offered to drive me an hour away back to my home town if enterprise didnt manage to get a car for me that day in the city i worked in.
I noticed that night that the rental car took a while to turn over and worried this one needed a new battery too. The following day i drove it to austin to go to the dentist and stopped at an auto parts shop to ask if they could test the battery on a rental car just to see if it was good. They said they could, tested it, and told me the battery was brand new. They said, “this car has a lot of miles on it huh?” I said, “not really…22,000.” The woman looked confused. She had me open the hood again and we examined it together. She said, “theres your problem. The serpentine belt is on its LAST leg and i do mean VERY LAST. That needs replaced desperately. Its weird that ran out already at only 22,000 miles. The condition its in, you would think there were a lot more miles on this car. What year is it?” It was a 2024. She continued to look confused. She didnt seem like someone who was trying to sell me something. She looked legitimately confused about what she was seeing and made no immediate suggestions about anything she could sell me to fix it. She explained, “so thats whats draining your battery and its going to continue to do so. See how its running for a while before it catches. Put a new belt on this car and it would be golden. Theres nothing else wrong, but that serpentine belt needs to be changed.” She told me to call the rental agency and see if they wanted me to take it to firestone and get it done while i was in the big city and they could fit me in within an hour, and they could just subtract the cost from my rental fee. I knew what the answer would be. I figured they’d have their own guy who gave them a discount price and they would not be down for firestone in austin to do it, simple as the procedure was, so i asked the woman, “do you think it’ll make it a week before i need a new battery.” She shrugged, “maybe. If you want to try and hold onto this rental with that serpentine belt for a week, long drives are better than short. Make sure after you start it you drive it for an hour at least before shutting it off. No quick errands. Also, rev the engine as much as you can. When you start from the stop light or entering the highway, really punch that accelerator because that will charge the battery. Also, dont drive much at night. The headlights will drain the battery. When i got the rental car it made 4 noises before turning over when i put the key in the ignition. When i turned it in it made 6. So, it was draining the battery and getting progressively worse, but i did all the things the lady at the auto parts shop told me to. If i turned the car on i didnt turn it off before an hour. I left the car running while i ran into the post office or didnt go at all. I tried to turn the headlights off as soon as the sun peeked over the hill. I called andrew and told him about the serpentine belt and he said if i paid for it it would not be taken out of my rental fee so he wouldnt recommend doing that. He said i could keep it and theyd address the needed repair when i brought it back or i could turn it in and they’d call me when they had another one available. I had worked so hard to get the mitsubishi and id likely have to squat and involve friends again to get another, and there was no guarantee i would. So, i decided to keep the rental car and hope it could limp along to the finish line of when my own car was repaired and ready for pickup. It did. It turned out the alternator needed replaced on my car. So while i was nursing the badly worn serpentine belt and a draining battery on the rental car the mechanic shop was ordering a new alternator for my car and then calibrating it after installation because everything’s a computer now and you have to drive it for two days after installation to set all the sensors and computers up again so it knows where the car is, where other cars are, and does all the beeping and lighting up the side mirrors exactly when it should. To the mechanics credit, they were quick with getting it in and quick with the turn around. Just under a week for the whole thing. I appreciated that because rental cars are not covered at all by my insurance, even in the event of a car accident, so each additional day i required a rental car would add up financially and their quick turn around for getting me my car back was not only financially appreciated but probably what allowed the serpentine belt to limp along to the finish line rendering it an enterprise problem in the end and not a me stranded on the side of the road problem. I topped off the gas tank after work on the final day of the rental and drove the rental car back to the enterprise where i would finally get to meet grumpy-butt renee. He was about as i imagined him, a short hispanic man who felt women didnt even require eye contact. He seemed to think talking to me at all was beneath him and appeared disenchanted with life as a whole. He found nothing to smile about the whole time i was there and was very short and curt with his words. He did a lot of sighing and seemed inconvenienced with everything. I struggled with whether to tell him about the serpentine belt because i knew andrew understood that it was a maintenance wear and tear problem that i could not have created in 6 days but i felt renee might not hesitate to try to charge me for the car returning with a problem that wasnt noted on paper when i first took the car. My coworkers all voted to tell him because they didnt want the next renter to get a car with a nearly dead battery and be in a worse position than i was. So i did. And immediately after i told him his face changed. Though he had previosuly been arranging me a ride to the mechanic shop, now we would need to go out and look at this problem. I could tell i had made a mistake and he was going to try to pin this serpentine belt replacement on me. Just then Andrew came out of the bathroom and i recognized him, “Hey, you’re over here now!” He said, “hey, yeah i am, did you get your car fixed?!” I said, “yeah, and the mitsubishi made it. I did exactly what the auto parts shop said and made long drives not short ones and it made it.” He said, “good im glad.” As we were catching up renee stated that this serpentine belt no longer needed to be examined right then and in a few moments andrew could watch the store and he’d take me to the mechanic shop. Andrew had impeccable timing. I think that timing was probably a God thing so i didnt end up punished for my honesty.
Andrew had always opened the door for me and offered to carry one of my four bags to the rental car. Renee opened the door and walked through, allowing it to swing back and hit my arm on the way out. I pushed the door back open and struggled with my four bags of stuff to the car because renee made no offer to carry any of them. It wasnt cuz i was a lady that i wanted help carrying the bags…for the record i dont consider myself “a lady”. Im covered in dust and chicken poop way too often for that nonsense. It was simply because there were four brimming bags that i would have liked help. when i left the car at the mechanic shop i had to take everything of value or necessity to access that was in it and because i have a one room tiny house, i store a lot of stuff in the car. Renee also didnt open the car door for me and then berated me when i took too much time to get in saying that he had other things to get back to at the office so i should get in as quickly as i could. Then he demanded to know where he was going. I told him the name of the place and showed him the address but this was not sufficient. He raised his voice stating that that was not what he needed. He needed step by step instructions to get there. I loaded the directions on google maps and pressed start, turning the volume up on my phone. It gave him directions. The rest of the car ride was had in silence save for the little robotic voice telling him to turn right at the next light. He dropped me off and couldnt leave quickly enough.
I didnt think much of renee. He was a very unhappy little man. Andrew was happily married, had a gaggle of children, a house, and didnt mind that he was working at enterprise rather than using his bachelors degree. He was a smart, well educated man and yet was working at a rental car desk and it paid the bills and diapered his children and allowed him to provide for his best friend/wife whom he loved and he seemed more than content. Renee must not have had such a cozy home/family situation because he was mad about something. He seemed mad at life itself. The bible says to pray for your enemies but people like renee make it hard. Maybe when im in a more enlightened season of life, but for now, that icy man, all i can say is i wont wish for anything bad to happen to him.
Inside, after all the ordeal with uber, the taxi services, and my neighbors, and the three hour stay watching roseanne on their couch in the waiting room next to the counter, the mechanic shop owner didnt remember me. I would have thought they didnt get such a circus ride showing up every day. But, alas, they wanted to know who the heck i was and why i was standing in their office. I had come to pick up the nissan. I paid and they gave me my car. I thanked them for the quick turn around time. I knew they had actually put in a new alternator because though the car had been set and callibrated, it took a whole nother day for the systems that said “on” to start functioning. It said the sensor that alerted me to a car being next to my car in the lane beside me was on, but it neither dinged or lit up the side mirror until the following day. So i knew they didnt just keep the car and tell me they put something new in when they didnt. Everything ran smoothly for 48 hours. On the third day is when the driving on cobblestones shaking began again. I decided i had had enough of enterprise for the time being and i would not take it back to the mechanic shop. I had just gotten everything that is normally in the car back in the car. All the feed bags and car stuff and paper products and gps’ and nail care stuff (i hate hang nails). I didnt fancy dealing with renee again. I was done. I would ignore the shaking until the transmission broke and i wasnt replacing that before i had to. The cobblestone thing usually happened right after i turned the car on and on cold days. After it got running it disappeared. I could live with it for now.
Upon getting things back to normal at work my friend who had done the second to last car repair in the city i worked in asked where the nissan had been. I told him it was in the shop and needed a new alternator. He said he would have put in a new alternator for me, that he changed his own in the sutherlands parking lot one day, and that he knew how to do it. He said he was good with cars but since he wasnt certified, no mechanic shop would hire him without a certification and two years experience at a shop. I said, “well each time it broke it was one or two towns away from here. I didnt think you’d want to drive all that way.” He said, “i would have driven.” The basic message of the conversation was ‘in future, in terms of car repair, i got you, and i wouldnt have charged you $2000 neither’. note to self: next time call the friend, idiot. Boy wouldnt it be good not to have spent that $2000 and instead spent $500 or even $1000. Oh well. You live, you learn. Ive been trying to remember when this change in attitude came about, because i used to think everything was a personal catastrophe happening to me. I think that when a diagnosis i had, that impairs me in no visible or professional way, disqualified me from adopting healthy children, because im “disabled” but qualified me to adopt medically terminal or behaviorally complex children (ie children with a history of setting fires, self harm, or molesting foster siblings), i realized that it was not about me being unfit as a parent. This was how i knew it was about money for the state and not about finding children homes and loving parents, because if i was disabled, how was i more equipped to deal with medically complex or behaviorally complex children? I think thats when i understood that this is a fallen world where unjust things happen to righteous people, and theres nothing we can do about it. So i stopped kicking and screaming and just started making the best of each situation and moving on. I should not have had to take an adjustable rate mortgage with my excellent credit and $40,000 down payment, but, i dont make those rules, and because it was a tiny house on land, and not a tiny house on wheels or land without a structure on it, it allowed the bank to say there were no comparable properties, even though the realtor found them three…and they knew no other bank would take on the property so it was their deal or no deal. They said it was a risk for them so i had to make it worth their while with an adjustable rate mortgage. Sometimes you can make the “right” decision and be miserable or make the “wrong” decision and be happy. After much contemplation i made the financially wrong decision so i could be poor and happy and i dont regret it. Many other people had been trying to purchase the property and were completely incensed when i managed to do it before them, and they wanted to know how i did it. Simple. I took the raw deal they refused. Thats all. You decide what youre willing to give up to get what you want and they werent willing to give up as much as i was so they didnt get the property. They harassed me for a year to see if id leave and sell the property to them but i just got padlocks and guard dogs and moved on with my life. Nothing is going to make what happens in your life just. This is a fallen world and it will always be primarily unjust. All you can do is your best and keep getting back up, keep moving.
Im back in my car and waiting for my next paycheck to pay off this month’s expenses, which will include all the car related ones, and see how bad its going to hit and then start making preparations for the roughly $2000 i will owe in taxes soon. Im employed by a privately owned company and their forms are not, how should i say, the most intuitive and professional kind that could exist. I elected to withhold the most amount possible from my paycheck for taxes as a single person. However, every year it leaves me owing the irs roughly $2000. My director said he solved this problem for himself by asking the company in writing to withhold an extra $400 a month from his paycheck. In that way he ensures that he always gets some back as a refund when tax time comes. I looked at him as if he had just said something in chinese. He was talking about withholding my entire monthly food budget for taxes purposes. I wondered what kind of paycheck he was really getting that he could afford to part with $400 a month and then realized he didnt live an hour away in each direction so he could work 8 hours a day rather than 6 and also his hourly rate would be slightly higher than mine because of 6 years of schooling versus 2. So, he probably can stand to part with $400 extra a month but i cant. I just plan to have to part with $2000 from my savings in the beginning of each year, so i try to make sure there’s $2000 on top of the emergency reserve i like to keep in that savings account. In two days i’ll get paid, turn round and pay my bills, and see exactly how much im going to be missing from the savings account come tax season next year. Best case scenario, i can work enough to put a little extra in there to use on taxes. Totally acceptable scenario, i have to take $2000 out of my emergency reserve to cover taxes….worst case scenario – i have to take more than $2000 from my emergency reserve to cover taxes and car repair and recent chicken pen expenses. We’ll see. Tax season would hurt a lot less if i knew they were using my hard earned money to pave roads or maintain parks…something useful…not studying the effects of cocaine on hamsters or measuring whether teens today are more depressed than teens 20 years ago. Do we really need $160,000 to figure the answer to that question out? And who the h*ll cares what coked up hamsters are doing? If you dont know how to wisely spend my tax money just give it to me and require me to donate a certain percentage of it to a cause of my choice each year. Ill pave roads and fund the fire department and you can play with your hamsters and answer the hair-brained questions thought up by the psychedelic corners of your twisted mind on your own dime.
Anyways, in the post pandemic world, if you are single and live in a remote area, car maintenance and rental cars are going to be a problem, so just plan for a long and complicated experience. Or just be married or live in the city. (Not for me.)
The coyotes were on the neighbor’s property tonight. Right as the sun set they came running in yipping and hollering like excited teenagers out on the town. They were fresh and full of energy. I was not in the mood. I was finishing up chores. Normally i’d go in the house and wait them out, give them a chance to pass through the property on the game trail the deer kept well worn into the rocky dirt. however, this particular night i was racing a freeze and i needed to get the trees thoroughly watered and the spigot covered again as soon as possible. I couldnt afford them the time. They were very close. They could be in the yard in a minute, so i ran back to the house (not a thing i’d normally do as you’re acting like a prey animal if you do this) and threw the dog run gate open. I didnt even have to say anything. The dogs knew what was up and glided silently onto the porch steps, waiting at the door. I opened it and let them in. I could hear the coyotes coming ever closer but i’d forgotten to cover the spigot and i didnt want to risk one of them trying to drink from it since it was my own drinking water source so i ran to the shed porch where i’d left the spigot cover and pulled it over the spigot. Then i ran back to the house.
Dogs and spigot secured, now it was time for me to find my rifle and quit acting like a prey animal lest they take me up on the identity. I retrieved and unzipped the rifle case. I laid it on the floor and went to the other side of the house where I kept the bullets to load it with. I wasnt playing today. I bypassed the rat-shot and grabbed the heavier box of bullets for use on coyotes. I measured out 5 in my hand, as that’s all the rifle would take at a time. I would need to keep track of how many times i’d fired to know how many bullets i still had left. I loaded the bullets one by one into the little magazine and pushed it back up into the rifle until i heard it click. I then shouldered the rifle and told the dogs to stay in the house. I went back outside to finish the chores. It had been a while since i had an opportunity to practice shooting. I figured i may be rusty and ought to use the first bullet to get back into the swing of things with the bolt action rifle…make sure i still remembered how to rack, eject, and reload without any forgotten steps or problems. Well, unbeknownst to me, this test shot into the ground near the porch was all the motivation the coyotes needed to change course. Once i was confident i remembered the steps and could fire the gun effectively if needed, there was no longer a need. I wondered if the coyotes remembered the noise from the times two of my neighbors shot and killed a coyote on separate nights, each time while it was trying to make off with one of their animals. Maybe they associated the noise of shooting with danger the way i associated their yips and howls with danger. I changed my course and so did they.
I finished the rest of the chores in relative peace. The fact that i needed a test shot to make sure i still remembered the process is exactly why the practice target i ordered is necessary. I put it off because its not cheap but with only 2 acres, i cant afford to practice shooting at anything other than the ground because depending on the material you shoot at and the distance from it, a bullet can go through something and keep going. If i dont want to have to go to a range, i need a target box that will stop a bullet because i no longer have friends with hundreds of acres who will just lend me a cliff of rocks to pick out and shoot at. As fun as it is watching rocks blow up…i know that time has ended and i need to find a way to not be rusty while making sure i can also keep my stuff and my neighbors’ stuff safe. I need to practice once in a while so its like muscle memory, so that i dont have to think about it. It is kind of cool though that with the help of the rifle i was able to change the course of the coyotes so i could finish the chores before the freeze. I enjoy the existence of that rifle on the homestead. It is a good tool.
I donated this painting to the nursing home 7 years ago. it used to hang in my kitchen behind my stained hardwood kitchen table. It matched the color of the tree trunks and rocks. It was a beautiful painting and i loved it dearly, but when i moved to the tiny house it became abundantly apparent that the prefab very thin glued particle painted walls bought in sheets at the hardware store to line the interior of my remodeled shed tiny house would not withstand the addition of nails or screws very well as i found myself patching splits in the wall where i had tried with plaster and sensodyne toothpaste. I realized i couldn’t hang anything, especially not something heavy, and i left some paintings with a family member, but they were only willing to take a few. I had to let the rest go. This was the only one that cut deep to let go of. The others i would miss, but not like this one. The art, the lighting, the subject matter, was a whole mood. It was beautiful, and i would miss it. Well, years later when i returned to healthcare and started working at this building again i found this painting on the wall in room 101. I was so thrilled! Whenever a patient moved out i’d go stand in there and stare at the painting until i’d gotten my fill of it, knowing another patient would soon move in. I made sure to steal a glance every time i went to pick up a patient for therapy from room 101. Sometimes they’d take it off the wall when a patient stayed in there and put up a different painting instead. Once a blue flower painting. Once a motivational patchwork of squares with the hodgepodge letters to spell “yes you can”. Each time they put the painting in the office on the floor, leaned against the wall. Once the patient moved out they’d have maintenance hang it on the wall again. I wondered if people found the winter scene depressing. Maybe they were requesting it removed from the room and replaced with a more cheery or upbeat image.
One day i walked in and it was gone from the wall. I checked the office floor and it wasnt there either. I figured it would turn up but it did not. I asked the receptionist in the office if she had seen it or knew where it went. She had not. She asked what it looked like and told me she would keep an eye out for it. She said, “if you ever find it you ought to just take it home. Nobody cares for it here like you do and if you love it so much you ought to just take it home.” But i couldn’t, and i told her so. I had tried to donate it for the nursing home but the employee who arranged the exchange insisted on paying me for the paintings so i sold it to her for a quarter, and for seven years the painting had belonged to the nursing home. It wasnt mine to take anymore. For a period of 5 months i did not see the painting and i had to make peace with the fact that the owner had probably taken it down and either tossed it or taken it home. I lamented the fact that i’d never again see the lavender shadows in the snow beneath that vibrant peach sky reflected in the river it hovered above. I did so love that painting. I could stare at it for hours, and the regal frame did the work of art no injustice at all. It was perfect. Every day i passed by the room it had been in i looked, hoping to see that it had been magically restored to its former position. Every day i was disappointed. Then one day i was assigned a new patient in room 109. He was a reverend. He was known to be a very kind and patient man so i was looking forward to getting our session started when i went to introduce myself and a little voice in my head said, “look up”. I lifted my head to face the reverend and there on the wall behind him, in all its brilliant glory, was my painting. The one that had hung in my kitchen for all those years, the one i had cherished, the one i had donated 7 years ago, the one that had been missing for 5 months. They had moved it to room 109. I was so relieved and overjoyed to see it again my eyes began welling with tears. The reverend was notably confused so i began to tell him the story of the painting. I told him i’d been looking forward it for five months. He said, “and now you’ve found it,” his eyes beaming with happiness. He said, “well you can come to my room any time you want to look at it and you can bring anyone else you want to show it to. My door is always open, any time you want to see the painting.” He wore a contented expression as if he knew the painting was supposed to be there and he was supposed to be there in that moment. I figured God had probably spoken to him the way the holy spirit had spoken to me and told me to look up. He was a man of his word and he allowed me to come to the room many more times to visit the painting and show the receptionist. I had worried the painting was in danger and id never get to witness its beauty again and now it sat guarded in the room of the reverend where it would be safe against request of its removal. It was the best place it could have ended up and i was glad to see it however many more times i was afforded to witness it again.
This winter i began a project with some framed chicken wire and glass/wood/ceramic/paper beads. It involves stringing beads on little metal wire pieces and then attaching them one per space of chicken wire in the frame. When i am all finished i will use the velcro stick-on strips to hang the frame on the bathroom wall so i have something enjoyable to study visually while peeing. The bathroom doesnt have enough interactive things. This way while im waiting for the shower water to heat or popping a squat, i can observe all my favorite beads. Its the little things. You gotta do what you can to make your life interesting. Unfortunately, i sort of hit a budget snag, so it will probably be a couple years before i finish this project secondary to the fact that im now limited to buying one bead per month, but im good at follow through when it comes to a long-run plan. I’ll take a photo when its finished.
