Archive
tomorrow i’m prime
Looking forward to turning 43 tomorrow. I like prime numbers. I have been reading “A Beginners Guide to Constructing the Universe” that goes over the archetypal symbolism of 0-10. Its been a cool book full of great number lore, based in Pythagoras but sweeping in its scope. Doesn’t seem to have an axe to grind but just putting the information out there, making connections. 42 has been a bit of a tough one and i won’t shed any tears to see it gone.
the tiges just pulled out a close one against baltimore. Valverde made it a nail biter but struck out the last guy and built his lead on saves. this could be the year. john was impressed i could talk baseball with our brother-in-law bill. Owe that to dad like so much else.
The heat broke, its been nice. thinking about taking one of the dogs for a walk. probably smokey, she gets the least exercise.
Still planning on doing a night float of the gasconade tomorrow. the 219 to the 235 in case i am never heard from again. you’ll know where to send the search parties. its a full moon on a saturday on my birthday, how often does that happen. would prefer to float the big muddy, but its closed. its also the peak of the perseids so even with the full moon should see lots of sh0oting stars. let me know your wishes i may have extra. mostly for peace, freedom for the people of syria, that sort of thing.
well the dog ain’t going to walk itself.
there and back again
returned today from an extended outing to go to the family reunion. its a long drive to have lunch with family but it needs to be done. i felt like i strengthened some connections losing dad and was glad i followed through with coming up although i didn’t push myself to chat with people as much as i’d hoped. i finally went through a few edits on dad’s eulogy, emailed it out to those i’d promised, and submitted it to the new yorker. if they pass on it i may try a few others like it and if no bites then i’ll throw it up here on the blog.
the trip was good. we took dad’s truck and john drove. i keep going back and forth on if i’m going to keep it or not. am now leaning towards not, its a bit out of my league to deal with and i hate to take a loan out to get it. at least his bill’s will be paid up. i may change my mind again. got to move on the probate thing, probably this fall.
the drive up was pretty smooth and staying at betty and bill’s was a good idea. it wasn’t so hot up there and they have built in swimming pool and have done a lot of work on it and its pretty sweet. i could get used to swimming every day. smokey and fido kept wandering off so they were mostly leashed which cut into their getting to run around and be a dog. fido was off enough to get into the burrs though.
betty and bill also have an amazing yard, big with a big vegetable garden. very lovely, got a shopping bag full of cucumbers, and betty even picked them for me. they’re tomatoes were coming along nicely as well as potatoes (russets which are tough to find seed apparently), cabbage, green beans, and other stuff. it was late because they had a lot of rain early on but its come along nicely.
betty and bill really crank out the back yard food production far more then most of my friends who state it as a value. they’re big production makes me question my organic approach. maybe i should try optimizing for pulling out food. its making me think and seeing the sad state of my little patch upon my return is making me want to step up my game.
my big plan is to put in a short wall around my first bed and add significantly more compost. hopefully improve the drainage by raising the bed and adding a lot more organic matter. we’ll see, it would be good to get the wall built while its hot and dry.
the reunion itself was pretty fun. a little more sober then usual with a lot of deaths recently and one less then a week prior. one birth though. my niece julie is due on 8/18 and we’re all excited about that. grandpa trapp’s was 8/17 and of course mine and my brother dob’s is on 8/13 but happy to be having another leo in the family. and the food was amazing. so much stuff mostly homemade it was good stuff.
sunday we went to rumors a Mediterranean place which most liked some not so much. i was sad to hear the beirut closed. that was the first middle eastern food i’d had and it really expanded my world being a vegetarian at the time. a big group of us went and spending a lot of time with family was really nice. am going back for christmas.
john and i left monday morning and drove out to iowa city. we reminisced about camping near there on our mammoth first hitchhike across the country. we camped for a week while john’s ankle healed up. this time we stayed at a motel 6. made it a point to spend a lot of time relaxing each day even though it meant i didn’t get to see friends. i am learning to respect my limits. although i did go out and see bobby’s band saturday night even though they didn’t come on until after 12:30. bob and i went and they played at howard’s in bowling green which brought back some memories seeing some shows their back in the day. hadn’t changed much. bobby’s band “minus elliot” was a lot of fun.
today had breakfast in montezuma, really good diner food, had a denver omelet with roast beef, cheap and yummy. there was a nice break from the heat and humidity especially yesterday though we drove through some heavy heavy rain storms after leaving the Iowa 80 truck stop. that also brought back some memories as john and i spent a lot of time there as kids. its quite a deal now, major tourist trap but we just ran the dogs.
and then back to the show me state. like hitting a humidity wall driving back down. got home and cleaned house. its nice to do that ahead of time but couldn’t and glad its done. settling down with some baseball and about ready to call it a night.
weekend cooking
Enjoyed the rain yesterday and feel better for all my plant friends. It was also nice to have a break from the 90s and humid that feels like it has gone on nonstop for better then a month. i took advantage to put down my milky spore. We’ll see if it works. the traps turned out to be a bust in the mole war. when i pushed down the humped earth to see if the run was active they just went deeper. i had a trap on a run which was fruitless and had no better luck trapping the air hole. they would come up right by the activator plate and not set it off.
Other then that i mostly cooked yesterday. I made a cucumber salad with cukes, green peppers, banana peppers, onion, all from the market with basil & oregano from the garden. I did a dressing with sour cream, red wine vinegar and local honey and a little fresh ground black pepper and it was done. It got a nice flavor with just a few hours in the fridge. I soaked some sweet corn in the husks cutting off the ends. I made a packet with the last of the cabbage (what little i salvaged from the moths) [which i am hoping the milky spore will help with those fellows too] and thin sliced zucchini. I put some garlic, tarragon, onion, a little bacon grease slathered on the foil and some seasoning salt oh and one of my crappy tomatoes from the garden.
For the main course i rubbed in some turmeric, onion powder, & garlic granules with some Traverse City cherry hot sauce on some pork cube steaks & let that sit for awhile . i grilled it all on a mesquite chunk fire. for the steaks i seared both sides on a hot fire and then turned off the vents and let them smoke for a few minutes. everything came out pretty good.
at the market i had gotten some canadian bacon and john had suggested egg mcmuffins. i have new respect for mcdonalds. mine were much much better but what a pain in the ass. I made a round egg mold out of a tin can but the egg stuck to the sides, even when i greased the edges. i found the best round egg was just to bust it in the pan and scrape up the egg into a round shape when it cooked a bit. i broke the yokes and covered them with sharp cheddar. i just heated the canadian bacon with a little water. also sliced up thinly an heirloom tomato and broke out the local horseradish mustard and it was pretty yummy. i served it up with some cantaloupe, blackberries, raspberries & blueberries and some hash-browns (microwaved red potatoes and grated them up and fried them with butter and seasoning salt) .
all in all a killer breakfast with home roasted guatemalan, light like i like it. it was a nice prelude to seeing cowboys and aliens with dan and harry. pretty decent i thought and wrapping up the afternoon with some tiger baseball. verlander’s no hitter blown away in the eighth but they’re still up by one run and i am cautiously optimistic. have to roll into work and play a little catch up and that’s the weekend. feel more up to the daily grind then i did last week. and a 4 day week at that as i head up for the family reunion friday morning.
vicarious trauma vs burnout
Vicarious Trauma is the secondary effect of the therapeutic process and is intrinsic to good work. Empathy is the foundation of all successful practice. Empathy comes with listening and grows in depth and intensity over time with focused application. It can look like burn out but it is fundamentally different. Burn out is an over-application of energy or a lack of appropriate boundaries or limits or even a lack of self care. Vicarious Trauma comes with the job. The people who show up for treatment are almost always the walking wounded. Horror scarred trauma survivors who need someone to listen to them and feel their pain. Ask them questions about solutions and when they’ve done well and tell them they can do it. This is not without cost.
We know how empathy works in the brain. If you are given an electric shock certain brain areas light up on an f-mri scan. If you watch someone given an electric shock the same areas of the brain light up. Mirror neurons i think they call them that underlay our theory of mind. how we get into other peoples heads. What if you are an artist of getting into peoples heads. Maybe the negative energy would build up in you all day, almost every day so that by the end of the week you almost tingle with bad vibes.
Other peoples stress hurts your back and you feel that if you might be touched all you could do was shudder. You might become estranged from your own body and be soul sick empty. It might go up and down as your ability to tolerate it grows and becomes depleted from circumstances, real life events, that sort of thing. You might become afraid to handle it. shake it off. work it out. allow it to pass over and through you but not be you. maintain a core inviolate. but what if that just leads to ratcheting up the pressure. more. more. more.
I know what i can take and how much is good for me and i am solidly in the middle between the two. the only time i’ve worked in the field and not held symptoms of burn out was with cortez. i worked maybe 32 hours a week. 2-3 groups and maybe 10 clients, seen once weekly. i took a 4 day weekend every month, a week off every season and a month off in summer. i set my own schedule.
but i made squat and poverty has stresses of its own. the world is not organized this way. the world expects 40+ and more hard hours. i love being a clinician but it is not good for me. not in this world. but i’m learning and remain cautiously optimistic that i can find a way through the apparent inherent contradictions and do great things in a less costly way. Definitely success, people getting better, making a difference, more positive feedback then is good for me, is a counterweight to the hurts and pressures. my self care of course has a lot of room for improvement and that is probably where i need to go. the only factor really subject to change because it is under my power. gratitude of course. its whats carried me through this week til i ran up short feeling estranged and worn out but happy too at happy hour. putting it out there feels good too. i’m hesitant to share about my days unless they’re good. but one good thing about this space i don’t fear trouble. i am way beyond that.
interventions for co-occurring mental health symptoms
wasn’t feeling well today. a day of rest behind me and i don’t feel substantially better. will allow the days events to carry me through. feeling better then the neighbor though i imagine she was just taken away by the police. that is never really a good thing. it was the campus police which always weirds me out because their cop cars say “Mu Police” which always makes me think agents from the lost continent are prowling about.
i am watching the tigers game, up on the whitesox by 2 in the 3rd. planning on doing a little work. I have a training i am doing on wednesday and i swore i would write a handout. as per usual i like to do my creating on my own time in my own forum so that i own the fruits of my labor. plus work is a terrible place to try to create. you need space free of demands to make something new. mostly my work creativity is drug out me responding to situations. allowing solutions to develop.
if your a new reader i am a counselor at a substance abuse treatment agency where i coordinate some of our mental health programming and staff training. i have been trying to increase the counselors comfort in helping individuals with co-occurring mental health disorders because its way to common for me to handle all those folks.
Integrating Co-occurring Disorders Treatment into Substance Abuse Counseling Sessions
Principles:
The client is the biggest expert on their situation. You don’t have to know anything about the disorder to help the client manage it. So tell me about disorder X? What does it mean for you? Is there a time when it has been better then other times? What was that like? What did you do that made it better? Oh, that sounds like a good idea, do you think we could try that again?
There are no magic wands or “experts” who can do substantially more then you can. When I was a young clinician i referred out most tough stuff but when i did follow up contacts i learned that those referrals that were so hard to hustle up rarely yielded results. Appointments don’t get made, eligibility changes, someone doesn’t get engaged, there are endless ways that things go wrong. I began to notice my simple interventions were usually the most helpful thing. If you’ve got them engaged then likely no one can help them more then you can.
Mental illness is a concept with a lot of give and uncertainty. They can be thought of as nothing more then names we give to clusters of symptoms. Breaking down what symptoms are occurring and developing separate management plans for each symptom can be tremendously helpful.
Data is really useful and collecting it is good for you. Documenting negative behaviors decreases their frequency and the data collected can point to management strategies.
Treatments that people believe in are more effective. Treatments that individuals believe will not be effective will not be effective; we call this the Nocebo Effect and it is real and measurable and more powerful then morphine. Present yourself in a hopeful and confident manner, share some brief success stories.
Listening is still the most helpful thing you can do for someone. When someone tells their story to a supportive listener their self efficacy increases. A rising tide lifts all boats. Validate their struggle.
Techniques by Symptom:
Depression: Sunlight and exercise. Reframing. Separating feelings from behaviors. Cognitive approaches.
Mania: Catch it early. Sleep every night. Progressive relaxation.
Impulsivity: Slow things down. Strengthen powers of reflective thought. Keep long term goals in working memory. reward curbing impulses. work on something that happens all the time and then generalize.
Hallucinations/Delusions: Ask if they know if its real or not. If they do tell them don’t attend to them or give them energy. Learn to ignore it. Shift to the concrete. Never feed into it or ask for unneeded details. If they can’t tell its real they have to ask people they trust.
Paranoia: note if they describe it as such, it means they know its not real. If they truly think people are out to get them de-escalate and reassure.
anxiety: cognitive approaches work well as does data collection. scaling and exposure are the classic approaches. de-escalation and teaching self soothing is also key. exercise.
attention deficit: point out there are times they can pay attention. measure them and grow them systematically with rewards.
OCD: cognitive approaches.
suicidal ideation: ask, contract, normalize
SIB: validate as a valid coping mechanism, identify healthier coping mechanisms
Sleep Problems: exercise earlier in the day, cut back on caffeine, routine, progressive relaxation, Trazodone
Nightmares: Propranol,
Finding a doctor: Primary care is not a bad place to start they use less psychiatric medications in lower doses which can be a good thing for patients with addiction. If no insurance contact the Family Health Center (214-2314)and ask for the medical social worker for a referral to Medzou. If you frame it as a psychiatric issue he may not refer.
The Phoenix psychiatrist is reserved for existing patients and MAT evaluations. Good candidates: have no insurance, are alcohol or opiate dependent, have had numerous treatments, are willing to do aftercare with Phoenix for the long haul.
early on the late day
got up early on my late day and mowed the back yard. lot of picking up to do but the dog waste compost system is doing well. no real odor and stuff seems to be breaking down. taking a little breather in the ac and drinking some water before i get back out there and water. i am going to use the rain barrels since i have the time and don’t want my tomatoes to taste like chlorine from the constant diet of city water. they seem to be doing ok, my big squash that wasn’t producing was completely wilty so i pulled it out and one of my poke weed was down so i pulled that out as well. my other volunteer squash turned out to be acorn. i’ve got another one growing by the okra, which is coming along nicely by the way. i think it likes going in late when the soil is nice and warm. my volunteer tomato plant is budding so i’m curious to see what comes off that. felt good to get out and do something. the heat wave has really curtailed my efforts. yesterday it was work and watch the tiger game, call it a day. not much of a life that. i only have an hour before its get ready for work time. don’t like to push myself too much as working until 8:00 makes for a long day. well my waters gone and the plants are thirsty and the day promises to be hot and long. better get back on it. peace to you constant reader.
hot & wet
the heat continues here in the show me state. there is a heat advisory until friday at 7:00 pm. we were lucky the last couple of years so i am trying to bear it with good grace. no, that’s not strong enough. i am trying to enjoy it for what it is. been just running the air 24/7. we keep it on 79 here on leslie lane and with lows close to that and humidity there’s no real point. usually i like to let the dogs come and go in the morning at least, but this am i tried it for about 2 minutes and a bitter hot wind was flowing in so i closed her back up.
did spend a little time outside this morning. watered everything in the back. used city water because i didn’t want to fritter away the shade hooking up the hose to the water barrels. i want to do it in the morning because the water can get hot. trevor just got a wooden barrel for his house. i want to upgrade when these go to pot.
friday we went on a bit of a float trip. drove out to overton bottoms with jared and met up with eric and a buddy of his and trevor and a buddy of his although didn’t end up seeing them much. fido came along had a real good time. ended up smelling like a swamp. dove off the canoe twice and did some swimming. we canoed down but couldn’t get through to the river. canoeing through the woods is a rare experience.
yesterday canned pickles with sarah, went to the market and drank coffee with harry. saw the pitiful state of memorial hill and weeded it while the grill got going. roasted a local chicken over a can of ginger ale with some garlic thrown in. smoked it up with apple wood and fresh sage & brined it in balsamic, sugar and salt. roasted some sweet corn & polished off the cabbage/pasta salad.
for our outdoor adventure john and the dogs and i hiked up bear creek. went right the creek bed which gives it more of an outdoor feel dropping out of the sounds of the city and the dogs could be off leash some. fido got confident and started to wander so i leashed him up.
made for a long day so i went to bed early and slept late. had a long involved dream again largely work related. a client from the agency shot me in the shoulder with an electrical gun. hurt like hell but i was stoic about it and told him not to worry about it that i had bated him. i had said “go ahead and shoot me” or something of the sort, new it was the wrong thing to say at the time but dreams. the overall feeling was a stunned bemusement so that appears to be progress. usually my overall feeling is being overwhelmed or annoyed/frustrated. haven’t had a panic work nightmare for many years and several jobs.
this morning made french toast with black bear bakery wheat bread. i had sliced thick as it was crumbly and let air out but the slices were to thick and the batter didn’t seep all the way in so it was a little on the hardy side. french toast is not supposed to taste like its good for you. had a nice flavor though i fresh grated vanilla bean, nutmeg, cinnamon stick & star anise into the batter.
mowed the front lawn before it got unbearably hot. drinking my second round of coffee before gearing up for the next project. i’m going to make some zucchini soup i got out of the tribune. maybe i’ll be early enough on it to serve it with supper. going to do something with the left over chicken probably throw in my annie’s mac & cheese with some grape tomatoes and fried cabbage (if the moths left me any. my cabbage has been almost a total loss. handpicking was inadequate for the task so i am looking for a more aggressive organic solution or i may have to look at poisons or give up on home grown cabbage).
bread & butter pickles
had fun canning pickles with sarah today. our second year. only took us 3 1/2 hours for a batch and a half of dills & a bit more than double batch of bread & butters. i had a request for the recipe and so i thought i would provide both sarah’s mom’s recipe & the recipe i used off the internet. turns out they are identical except for how much sugar and cinnamon they take and sarah leaves out the celery seed. so the brine takes: 1/2 cup kosher salt, 2 1/2 cup white vinegar, 2 cup apple cider vinegar (i use bragg’s unfiltered mostly),2 1/2 to 4 1/2 cups sugar (i used agave nectar last year to good effect), 2 tbsp mustard seed, 2 tsp crushed red pepper, 1 1/2 tsp celery seed, 1-2 cinnamon sticks (i broke mine up), 12 all spice berries, 2 pinch ground (i fresh ground 2 berries last year & a touch of star anise), 12 cloves, pinch of ground cloves (fresh ground 2 cloves last year), & 1 tsp turmeric (i substituted yellow curry last year). for the pickles you use twice as much cucumbers as sweet onion and green pepper slices. last year i also used red peppers (i think pimento), banana peppers,& poblanos. last year my cukes (thanks betty) were a couple of weeks ago so i limed them according to the instructions on the pickling lime package. this year and the first batch were probably less than 24 hours off the vine before going in the jars and stayed crisp all year.
adventure can be inspiring
Its a hot day outside and enjoying some rare ac at home “relaxing and enjoying the work of justin verlander” to use the commentary without the expressed written consent of major league baseball. Its a slow game though and with only evenings and weekends for entropy control and to advance projects it seemed a good time to blog. as i said a post or two ago i am committed to blogging weekly if for nothing else to give the computer enough time online to do updates. i feel like my last couple read like that too.
Overall, i’ve been a little low energy which is not unexpected but inconvenient as the world expects me to jam, all day almost every day. i’ve been on top of that but not much else, personal life items i’ve left without the attention to detail and positive effort they require. but today i am tired but a good kind of tired. not as tired as verlander, its 98 in KC and he’s over the century mark and a fast hurler. in his defense he’s in much better shape, which sort of relates to what i’m going to be blogging about. adventure can be inspiring.
friday i lit out of work right on time and threw some things together for a float trip with eric and trevor. we were going to go camp somewhere close and then float the grand, conditions permitting. [verlander’s getting some rest after an inge error cost him his shut out, there’s bases loaded with a 1 run lead] i loaded a lot of stuff since i had the space and time and wasn’t exactly sure what the camping would be like. i also gave everything a good solid drink in the garden because it was supposed to be hot and stuff was thirsty. i also found this ginormous tomato horned worm and squished him. he’d done some damage and i feel like there’s at least another one but i can’t find him. maybe tonight when its in the shade.
at close to 6 i decided i would see if i could load the boat. if you’re not a regular reader i have short and stubby plastic canoe that slides nicely into the back of the popster’s f 250, one strap and its secure. its really growing on me. my brother got it for a float with smokey down the big muddy and its both short and has a huge keel which makes it maneuverable for a solo boater. also makes it convenient not to have to strap it on top. plus people are always impressed with all the cup holders. john calls it “the Cadillac of cheap canoes”.
but i never got to see if i could load it myself because mark, who i knew was a possible drove up and helped me load it and ably strapped it down. i have a thing about scraps and am majorly inept for having been dealing with them my whole life. its probably a complex but i’m almost 500 words into this post and haven’t even left yet so i got to pick up the pace. mark followed me over to trevor’s and we had a PBR in the front yard and strategized. the grand was flooded and there was no nearby camping so we decided to do locust creek through pershing state park. [the royals announcer gave a nice run down on victor martinez, he came to the tigers not up to potential, got in ‘short stop shape’ and this year he’s an all star. cabrerra has also dropped some pounds (but he was a monster last year big as a house)]
mark rode up with me and it was nice to reconnect as we both have been through some stuff and could relate and we had a good talk about grief. we stopped in macon for mexican food. i got alleged tamales which were either these little deep fried things which were pretty good or a mass of corn meal with an array of chicken and hamburger. not bad but not tamales. i also realized i forgot fido’s bowl, remembering i had let it be when i thought to pack it in case he wanted to eat before the treat. i walked over to walmart and got some iam’s little dog cereal and a couple of other things.
so with all that we rolled into pershing state park pretty late. it was an rv kind of park but the entrance was empty so we were off by ourselves and they have showers. not bad really for $11 i think for a nonelectric site. i didn’t want to chance setting up the tent not really knowing if its mine. john and i both had Marmots and he had packed up the camping stuff conflating our things and i couldn’t remember what model i have. so i decided to just sleep on the cot which was a bad idea from the start because of the mosquitoes and not packing a sheet. plus the raccoons were persistent and fido was barking and facing off and i didn’t get to sleep until they called it a night at sunrise, except for the four stuck in the dumpster. [valverde holds the lead and the tiges go into the all star break in first beating out the hated cleveland racists] so maybe 2 hours sleep tops.
but i woke up a little groggy but feeling good. eric makes this coffee concentrate and i mixed it strong and everyone enjoyed the can of condensed milk i broke out. a camping trick i learned from the popster who liked to live large. it was also good with the oatmeal mark made with lots of chopped almonds as it sweetened it up a little. i read the paper and drank my coffee and felt human enough to do the dishes. we drove south to find a pull out, checked out a little iron bridge and talked to a local who didn’t know anything about floating conditions. we drove south and found a spot and left the red truck.
we drove up to 36 i think and went west to the first pull off and found a good put in place. this is norther missouri bottom land. flat and rich mostly agricultural. there’s a nicely maintained riparian zone down the creek and it was muddy but of a goodly size. trevor saw a flat turtle and we both encountered a snake at the first log jam. it looks like he was fishing were everything just suddenly comes to a halt. we looked around and he disappeared. we ended up with a fairly lengthy portage which we did with good sport and a lot of gratitude as we ran into some really great wooded wetland with some really big old beach trees that certainly predated settlement. they didn’t look as big as the biggies in the spot of alleged old growth in Houston Woods in Ohio but they were really good sized and it was a mature forest.
we pushed through both poison ivy and stinging nettles to get back to the creek and were glad to get in the water and ended with no ill effects of either except from some nettle-itch at the time which is invigorating if you can look at it right. we ended up having 2 more portages and saving a third one by lifting the canoe over a fallen log at the third obstruction. nonetheless we all had fun and the portages made it more of an adventure, our own voyage of discovery and a good time was had by all.
especially fido who enjoyed his first float. he enjoyed being off leash as we scouted pull outs and put ins and had been on a swim and was reluctant for me to grab him up and throw him on the canoe. He jumped out once preferring to swim or run along side but he got used to it. we stopped to pick a couple of ripe blackberries (in a week or 2 it will be an excellent float with a lot of berries pickable by boat. I had fido on a leash when we picked berries or he would have abandoned the expedition.
I bet he’s glad he stayed though cuz we hiked in out of the way places, swam when we got hot. one nice place had a shady log and there was one of the few bluffs and the creek had carved out a nice deep swimming hole. fido swam across even though it was wide and deep with a strong current. he is a doughty sailor dog just like bichon frise’ are supposed to be. we had lunch really great cheese and avocado on black bear bakery bread which were very yummy. i wish i would have brought my first tomato though, although we may have that for dinner tonight. kevin made hummus and tabbouleh.
at our lunch stop i really struggled. i sank into the mud up to my knees and lost a shoe and was really stuck for a minute. had to have help to scramble up the muddy bank to the luncheon log. it really struck home my desire to get into better shape and the need to be way more on it now that i am getting older. i’ve been cutting myself to much slack for having a hard life and still need exercise more and eat better. i was more convinced when i was the only one that was completely done in (except for fido) at the end of the day. eric was kind enough to drag my boat out and carry it up to the truck.
but the adventure was fun. it could have been an ordeal which that uncertainty is a prerequisite of adventure. we were all resourceful, flexible and laid back so we would have rolled with whatever and made it work but it was big enough to be a challenge but doable enough to be pure fun. we all enjoyed some country cooking and had the buffet and i ate good. but not so good as has been my habit of late.
been pretty on it today too. slept hard and good and woke up refreshed and feeling like i’d done something. drank coffee and read the paper. roasted my first batch of beans, an ultra-light Guatemalan that looks awesome and i’m eager to try. i’ll let you know in a day or two how it is. then i mowed the back yard before it got to hot, got some laundry hung and made it to the wabash farmers/art market. got some sweet corn, cucumber for the humus, and some peaches (pricy but good). decided to skip malick’s new one but saw it was playing through thursday so i might still catch it. been thinking about asking someone out. haven’t done that in many years.
everything bread
got a slow move on sunday which was nice but didn’t get my lawn mowed. slept in read the ever diminishing newspaper [sighs] and drank john’s excellent light roast guatemalan. i’m a big believer in easing into the day. if everything goes higgily piggilly at least i got this time in to relax. then made breakfast with this honey cured bacon out of Hermann that was pretty tasty, thick & meaty with a couple of the stanton boy’s eggs (the yolks were a particularly violent orange) & toast. i also sliced my heirloom tomato which was as good as it looked. next year i’m doing more heirloom tomatoes i’m heavy in red hybrids this year with 3 kinds and only one black plum (which is looking good). it was looking like rain so i put things away and took the lids off the compost containers.
then the tiger game came on, playing the giants who’ve been tough. great pitching early on but the tiges prevailed. john has been watching the games caught up in nostalgia no doubt. its a slow game though and by the ending innings i was outside weeding the roses between innings. allowed me to catch the storm blowing in. got very windy and the trees were bent over. i’ve been trying to be more aware of spiritual things for a group. it was very easy standing in the wind feeling a part of everything.
Multiconstruct 
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