Logging

 Our place is 3 1/2 acres, heavily wooded with jusr the area right around the house cleared. I have been slowly cutting down a few dead trees here and there. mostly they become firewood, although there was the one incredible Maple stump that was so incredible that I have been turning it into custom wood furniture.

My neighboe up the road has a little sawmill. He specializes in furniture grade dimensional lumber, fence buards and trim. He is well known enough that the local Home Depot sends people his was if they need more cedar than the store stocks. He has 40 acres, so he has been selectively cutting trees on his place for 20 years..

When out in the yard this summer I looked up and saw a big cedar, standing there dead. So I went out in the woods to check it out and started looking close at thetrees. There were a bunch of dead cedars out there, So when I ran into the neighbor, I asked him if he wanted to come down and fell the trees. He could have the logs in exchange for the work, as it required putting in a road and clearing some land to get in to the trees. We ended taking out 17 trees, plus he took down a couple of other dead trees. Two Hemlocks, a couple of small maples and one sizeable  Douglas Fir. I had a couple of the douglas firs cut into two inch slabs, so I can cut them into whatever size I nees.

I akso asked him to cut me six 2X6s X 6 foot to make a trestle style base for a dinng room table I am working on.

Most of the cedars were rotten in the center at the bottom, so all that wood will become firewood.., plus all the stuff too small to be cut into lumber, plus the hemlock, doug fir and maple. In all it will account for probably three cords of wood. (for the uninitated a cord is a stack 4' x4' x8'. or 128 cu.ft.) I already have about 6 cords of firewood in the wood shed and under tarps behind the garage. I al running out of space..

If I do any more, I might have to sell some. At the prices firewood is going for, I might make enough to make it worth my time.

Once More into the breach

 I have fought with depression for many years. Starting in the Fall, I spiral downwards towards the pit. I always go to the doctor and request an anti-depressant.

They are of some help, but most of them have side effects. The question becomes when do the side effects become more difficult to handle than the benefits.

I have a condition called Familia Tremors, which causes my hands to tremble. It is a genetic condition inherited through my dads siide of the family. It interferes with my ability to do fine work. As my current favoriite creativity is woodworking, I have to be careful. Sharp tools and trembling hands do nor go together very well. Almost every thing they have given me tp try makes my tremors worse. 

WWellbutrin worked OK except that I hd big problems with impulse control. I would go off before I even thought about it. So that was a no-go.

Prozac my hands trembles, fluoxetene same,, BuSpar I turned out to be allergic to. Broke out in hives. I hav tries three or four others. None were a good fit.

Right now they are trying Cymbalta, which seems to be working with no bad sided effects.

 The kicker is that it can be hard on your kidneys in some people. I hae stage four kidney disease, brought on by my diabetes and long term pain problems. I used Ibuprofin like it was candy to manage my pain for years. That and my hobby of home brewing along with my djabetes wrecked my kidneys. Being in pain 24/7 is no fun, so they have me on Percocet. J hate it, but it does an efective job of handling the pain. I use as little of it as I can, but with arthritis in my neck, sholders, thumbs, hips and lower back, if I want ti do anything I need to take some. Currently I use about three a day.

So although I seem to have found an antidepressant that works well, It will pprobably be too hard on my kidneys fot long term use.

So around and round and round she goes.

Political Ethics

I have spent considerable amount of time trying to understand the current political situation.
I am a Liberal. Although that term has been used as a term of disparagement by the ultraright it is actually a compliment.
I have family and friends that are conservative. Some of them are even intelligent, have degrees abd everything. So I really do not understand how they can be so fanatically devoted to the ignorant piece of slime that currently occupies the White House. He isn't capable of making a coherent statement, is completely ignorant of History, world politics, and other peoples feelings. He has abused or mocked women, minorities, the disabled, anyone from another country, anyone who is not white.
How can relatively normal people forgive the many flaws of this egotistical flawed narcicistic moron.
I meanI have actually thought about this.
I have come to the conclusion that they lack empathy. They are incapableof puting themselves in someone elses shoes, of seeing things from someone elses point of view. People fleeing from political opression and worse are "drug dealers and criminals". Women are rated by their looks and if they should dare take him to task are "nasty women", and if you are famous you can "grab them right by the pussy".
The rest of the world looks at us and says "Is this the bes they can do?"
I wonder the same.

Life's a Riot

Living out here in the woods of the Olympic Penninsula, I have become more of a spectator than a participant. And for the most part that is fine with me.
The present state of things has been a long time comin'. Under the current administration, the reality of racial inequity has become all too obvious. I w that good can come from all this turmoil. There are valuable lessonsoleheartedly approve of the protests, but not the riots and looting. Although it can be hard to separate the two since they happen together, it is neccesary to separate the two.
Back in the dark ages of my teen years, I marched in civil rights marches, got tear gassed, and really thought I was part of the solution. It saddens me that things have not changed all that much. Sure, the whites only drinking fountains are gone, and the black vote has become a political f wind up dead at the hands of police for imaginary or minor offenses. The protests are appropriate. Unfortunately the criminal elements of society use the protests as a platform for riot and looting.
That's only half the equation. The response from authorities is the other half.  The response of the police is is either nonexistent or disproportionate. The authorities must recognise the right of the participants to demonstrate, and ideally demonstrate solidarity with the protestors. Too often the response of the authorities creates an atmosphere of us versus them, The key is communication, on the street level. Listening to stuffed heads spout platitudes isn't going to get it. Person to person, one on one communication is what it will take to  get people to recognise their similarities, not emphasize their differences. I don't know how  that looks, but there are much smarter people than me out there that should be able to  figure the details out.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the incident at Forks.
A racially mixed faminly traveling in a converted school bus, travilled from Spokane to the Olympi penninsula to go on a little camping trip. Some moron in Forks decided they were ANTIFA activists com to riot and loot. The total lunacy of this escaped them. So thay hazed them out of town. The family set up to camp for a couple of days, A group of  misguided teens with chain saws and felled a bunch of trees so they could not get out.
It is an embarassment to everyone who lives out here. The whole thing sounds like a cheap episode from some second rate made for tv show.
It is possible that much good can come from this. If people do not recognise the legitimacy of the protests, the next ones will be more violent, so it is in out own best interrest to act now.

Goin' to the dogs

Been a rough weel.
We have this Brussels Griffon dog. He is my wifes constant companion, walking buddy and confidant. He is a very good boy, yes he is.
He is also a financial drain and a lot of work.
He has cataracts, so he really cant see well. He walks into things. he will also walk right off the bank and into the ditch. He is an insulin dependant diabetic.
Somewhere or the other the last week he walked right smack into something sharp. I suspect it was a blackberry vine. So we took him into the vet and he had an eye infection. So on top of his insulin injections, he has four eye medications.
Then he developed the shhits and pukes. took a stool sample into the vet last Friday. They were closed for the weekend, so we had the weekend ffull of cleaning up puke and crap. Nor a whole lot of fun. He couldnt hold anything down, so we were tring to keep him hydrated with pedialite. he was worse on Saturday, worse on Sunday. We werent sure he was going to make it, neither one of us got much sleep. Carol was crying and i was trying to be the strong one.
By Monday when the vet opened we were a mess, and we handed over Monk not sure we would ever see him alive again.
Turns out he had giardia, which is a parasite from unclean water. Don't know where or how he could have picked that up. He is an inside dog, and when he goes out, he is on a leash. Untreated it can be fatal.
They took him in and rehydrated him and treated him for the bugs, and he is much better, About $500 better.
Still, having to seriously consider  life without the little bugger, iit is a relief to hear him warn us about the UPS driver, or a truck driving by, or a jet flying over, or another dog barking in the distance,orr...............

Procrastination.

I am a world class procrastinator. This blog is a perfect example of that.
I have started to make an entry into my blog several til
mes his tear, but find that I don't like where it is going, or find I am not ready to talk about things or just lake immagination.
So like this is about start six or seven.
2019 was a difficult year for me. My mom died. I have always been a nit of a mamas boy, so it hit pretty hard when I finally came to the realization that I could no longer just pick up the phone and talk to her. This was a PERMANENT change to the fundementals of the Universe. It just wasn't fair. It made an already cold universe just one minescule degree colder. So you hunch your sholders against the cold and march forward.
Then Keith died. It's not like Keith was that close to me. He was my daughters significant other. He was my friend. Having to watch hims fade away and die of Pancreatic Cancer was a terrible experience. He went from a very robust strong guy to a walking skelleton drifting through a world wnere pain was the main feature of the landscape. It just exposed that the universe is indeed a cold and uncaring place where we stumble along doing the best we can whils things crumble around us. The universe became just a little bit colder, but what can you do?
You hunch your shollders and march fotward in the hope things get better around the bens.
So woth new years, I approached the new decade with the sincere attitude that things will improve.
Man did the universe drop kick my ass.
It is not ver ofter in life that yo go through an experience completely out of your control that illustrates to you just how insignificant you fruely are.
This had been one of those times when you know, when you are absolutely sure that things have just changed forever. In terms of my personal life, not as significant as the other two events, but somehow more pervasive because it doesn't just efect me, but all of humanity forever. It is a journey where we have no idea what things will belike when it is over, but are aware that things will be changed forever for everyone. What this looks like in the real world, I have no idea.
One can hope that this experience will show us all how fragile our place in the world is, and therefore make us a little kinder, a little more considerate, a ;ittle more helpfu.
OR. The big or. We beome more insular, more selfish, less empathetic. HEY! I might NEED those 370 rolls of toilet paper and to hell with the little old lady that has crones disease and just crapped her Depends. I NEED that case od hand sanitizer and to hell with the caregivers for whom it caouls be life saving not just for then but for all the people they come in contacht with.
So we hunch our sholders and march forward, not quite sure that the place we are bound is any better than the place we are right now, and may be a whole lot worse.





















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