This summer has been the busiest ever for me. That is both good, and bad.
It is good because I have been feeling up to it. I have had such joint pains for something like 45 years that I have been affected by it for what seems like forever, and however bad it has been, it has progressively gotten worse and worse. It has never quite made it to a full disability. But it has always been a low-grade pain that has certainly slowed me down severely. When I was a kit, I would wonder how others could run the whole mile. As an adult, I was finally getting to the point that I wanted to look into getting a proper diagnosis from a doctor and consider getting a placard. I made every step count, because I only had so many in a day before I had to be down because of the accumulated pain.
I never had a visible disability. And you know the stigma that goes for people like that who park in the handicapped parking. Someone chasing them down yelling at them that they don’t belong there. It was that kind of stigma that kept me from ever perusing medical help in the first place. How do I deal with something invisible? Neverminded what others see. I don’t even see it. And you know the other stigmas of being weak. All these things compounded.
Then last summer came along, and the doctor I saw about an unrelated issue suggested I needed to lose weight and gave me a proper diet to follow to do that. That is what made me remove gluten from my diet. Basically, I figured out that I have had a lifetime of pain because of stupid breads and pastas.
Big changes happened. I was called upon to work to keep our family. I needed to do a job that I could balance time on my feet and time in a seat and really experiment with what I was now capable of. My body improved, a lot. I spent the next several months DoorDashing. It was an easy line of work to get into, and I could chose for myself when I worked and when I didn’t. That gave me time to keep the kids going on their school runs, and I could confidently stop for the day if I was fatigued by any more joint pains and the like. But I have not had that problem in 10 months now. I know I could not spend the whole day on my feet at this point. There is no way. Maybe there is lingering issues. Maybe it is to do with never having been able to do work up to it. I remember in my high school at the grocery store, wondering how the checkers could spend the day stood in one spot like they did. I took walking as relief because I was at least distributing time on my feet between steps. One place like that? When I tried, it killed me.
So now I know I can at least work out some time on my feet, and I am working to increase that without being overwhelmed by pain. Meanwhile I keep DoorDashing, and that is the bad part of this busy summer. The pay is awful. I have to do it a lot in order to have enough money to get us through each week of a relatively inexpensive lifestyle. Working takes all my time. I have found little to do other things. I am always trying to get to town to drive so we will have enough money. I also have to put about 25% back into the gas tank. So I am working a lot of hours just to afford to work a lot of hours. It is stupid.
I am trying to round up some time to work on putting more of my photography site together so I can attract clients. I would very much like to start shooting for real. I seriously could do three to five jobs a week on average to offset the entire time I am spending DoorDashing.
Please have a look!
Meanwhile, there is the farm. Now, you don’t think with the schedule I have just mentioned that I have been able to keep up with things like mowing the lawn? I have not. The place is a mess. I have so much to catch up on. I have hardly been able to apply myself to getting any firewood sorted for this year. That is the worst mistake a man can make! I am lucky that where we go to get it, they have whole massive tree trunks that have lain around and dried out over years, and we are able to find plenty. Lots of people go there and pick up branches. I set up early on to get whole trunks up to 10 feet long at a time. While my electric winch is out of service at the moment, I am still able to take four foot sections and put them on the trailer deck. I prefer to do as much of my chainsaw work at home as possible. Safety thing.
Yesterday I gave up for the week and came home a few hours early. Rain was incoming, and I got to work under some of the most amazing skies. I got most of the smaller rounds split and the larger ones piled up ready to cut down and split. I hope to get at that on Tuesday. I do try to take one day a week off Dashing to get at least my laundry done. Oh! And Tuesday is tomorrow! So that is exciting! Noting like a restful day off to rejuvenate the body, right?
Thanksgiving is almost here. Christmas will soon follow. I am ready for neither. Missus is trying to make it as inexpensive as possible for us. Well, we will take it how it comes, I guess.
Meanwhile, Missus just came up to let me know that the power is out. I had not even realized it went out while I was typing away at this laptop at 5:30. I need to get up soon and get dressed and ready for my day. Looks like I am going to do it the old fashioned way in the candlelight. It also looks like I will be publishing this over my phone’s hotspot. Away I go!