Posts Tagged ‘sleeping in’
Bad Thermocouple
We all have good days and bad days. Our day yesterday deserves to be called a good one. I try not to complain too much when I sleep soundly right up to a half-hour past when we usually feed the horses. Delilah let us sleep in. By the time I finished breakfast and made my way through the entire daily newspaper, it was almost 11 o’clock.
There are plenty of days when I would feel discouraged that outdoor projects didn’t get started until the middle of the day but given the luxury of freedom to take as much time as I want playing word games on my phone, finishing my poached eggs, and perusing all the articles in the newspaper is something I relish being able to do.
One key aspect of the day that made it so good was how much was achieved after the morning of leisure. Cyndie and I decided to get after the multiple “widow makers” hung up in our woods. Five of them, to be exact. Three of which were relatively small and easy to deal with. That left a couple that I wasn’t looking forward to and led me to don a helmet, just in case.
I was ultimately successful in all cases but the key reason all was good was a matter of luck that my being in an unsafe position right when the chain came off the bar didn’t lead to any negative consequences. The biggest and most challenging tree came down with a scary amount of cracking that had me jumping back three times, only to need to step in and continue the cut each time. When it finally crashed to the ground it was with a ferocious amount of energy that is really unnerving.
Once everything was on the ground, the clean up has become rather routine for us and we were able to process everything with rewarding efficiency. I was even able to cut three other trees that I’ve wanted to deal with for quite a while but never happen to have a chainsaw with me at the time. Yesterday, I had a saw.
As I was finishing up in the last spot, Cyndie caught up with me and said the guy who installed our horse waterer in the paddocks was coming to figure out why the heater wasn’t keeping the water from freezing like it used to.
This was a problem that plagued us throughout much of last winter and it was looking to be even worse this year based on the few overnight freezes we’ve experienced thus far. We’ve been asking for help for weeks but he hasn’t made it out, despite telling us he would.
Just having him show up was going to make for a good day but having him diagnose a specific problem of the thermocouple failure and his having a replacement with him and installing it without trouble seemed like a bonus.
Yesterday was one of those good days.
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It’s Friday
One of the marvels of my Fridays is that I don’t have to commute the long drive to the day-job. You’d think that might give me an extra hour to sleep in, but my experience has been marred by a problematic habit of staying up too late on Thursday nights, and then suffering a double whammy by naturally waking very near the normal early alarm time of my work days.
By Sunday mornings, I have usually made progress with sleeping past the alarm time, but that just makes it that much more difficult to deal with the Monday alarm time the following day.
At this point, of all my attempts striving toward optimal health, getting enough sleep every night seems to be my Achilles’ heel.
Being over-tired doesn’t mix well with needing to drive in traffic for an hour to and from work.
Some days there are changes that mix things up a bit for me, which helps maintain alertness. On Wednesday morning, I had a chance to explore some of St. Paul’s streets in the early dark hours when I dropped off the Tiffany light fixtures with a buyer who found my ad on Craigslist.
Yahoo! They are gone!
There is a perk for driving through the cities four days a week: it’s easier to accommodate buyers who aren’t exactly local when I’m pawning off clutter online. The woman this week was so appreciative that I would drive all that way to deliver what I was selling. (It was a few short blocks off my normal route on the interstate.)
I didn’t bother to tell her I would gladly pay her to take them, after having them sit in a box under foot for the last six years.
My drive home yesterday was interrupted by another traffic stopping accident, but this time I was close enough to the incident that my delay was mere minutes. The sad part was this meant the vehicles were still positioned where they landed and the people and emergency responders were still present.
It’s a very unsettling sight. The collision occurred at an at-grade crossing of a divided 4-lane highway that has a 65 mph speed limit. Damage was significant to at least three vehicles.
I drove a little slower the rest of the way home, and I didn’t feel drowsy at all.
But for the grace of God, go I.
When I pulled up the driveway, the horses were in the far corner of the paddock and whether it was that they saw me, or heard Cyndie and Delilah walking down to feed them, they bolted from where they had been standing, racing and kicking their way up past the barn overhang all the way over to the near paddock fence.
What a nice welcome-home greeting.
Cyndie reported she and Delilah came upon two young deer that dashed away across the trail in the woods. Our paths are becoming paved in golden hues. The freezing temps seem to flip a switch on a lot of our maples such that 80% of the leaves will drop in a matter of a few hours and create a gorgeous circle of color that carpets the ground around the trunk.
It’s beautiful to be home this Friday.
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Shortened Day
I guess it should come as no surprise that sleeping in has a way of really shortening a day. It was worth every minute, but man, I don’t know where the day disappeared to.
We didn’t do all that much. There was a brief trip to the grocery store in town for some items to help Cyndie do her special magic in the kitchen. While she was preparing things inside, I moved some snow around outside, digging a path to the fire pit so we could make a cooking fire. The grill was stowed away somewhere, so I suggested we just cook over a wood fire.
That meant I got to manage two fires at once. I built a fire in the fireplace, in addition to the one outside. That’s about all I did, between periods of eating things Cyndie prepared.
Late in the afternoon, our friends Barb and Mike arrived to help us tend the fires and eat food. We did well at both.
The short day was sparked to additional heights when we received a surprise visit from our friend Jane and her pal, Eric, who stopped over to say hi. What a joy.
If there is ever any doubt about what matters in life, experiencing the pure delight of time with treasured friends, and the energy of meeting someone new, does a lot to make it clear.
It’s the people.
I’m so happy the day wasn’t too short for that.
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Relative Something 