Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 671)

over 1 year ago

Hello Everyone!

Barely sleeping in, Fair weather, Hobbling around, The shop tent shuffle & A friendly Eastern Black Kingsnake!

I slept in a little late but still managed to get up not all that long after sunrise even though I wanted to keep snoozing the morning away. It seems like lately I have been staying up too late at night and 'getting up before the sun' has not been happening nearly as much as I want it to.

Between all the stress and anxiety that I have been grappling with it is amazing that I can get rest as consistently as I do so I should not complain too much about my schedule being slightly off. Part of why I keep being up late at night is because I keep squeezing in a nap each day and then later making some espresso to 'get me through' the evening portion of my writing, editing and posting routine.

Those evening espresso beverages are probably something that I should get back out of the habit of having but I sure do enjoy them! At this point I am skeptical about removing anything from my routine that I actually enjoy because yeah my morale needs as much reinforcement as it can get at this juncture. At least that is what I keep telling myself.

Anyway, this week it is looking like the fair weather is going to continue to hold so I am going to be in a good position to get things pulled out of the shop tent, sorted through, cleaned up and packed away again. Ever since finding all those brown recluses living in there I have been going at it all with a much slower pace because yeah I definitely do not want to be faced with dealing with one of their nasty bites!

Between all the dust, grime, mold, bugs and vermin waste... cleaning the shop tent has been a daunting and messy affair and there just is no other way to put it. As with most such things though... I will keep chipping away at it all to the best of my abilities and try not to overthink things along the way.

I mean heck I am almost always 'overthinking' to one degree or another but what I mean there is that I have to avoid overthinking about the stuff that gets my gears turning in the wrong direction. That is especially the case now that I get a 'twinge' in my leg which has that old injury that has been flaring up over the last several days.

Suffice it to say that I awoke today to said injury throbbing and walking around to let the chickens out left me wincing with every other step. In short, it is all too easy to get annoyed when dealing with pain and it is equally frustrating considering how it inhibits my movements and what all I can actually accomplish until it heals up some.

Of course I do not have much tolerance for whining at the moment so please take all the above as the observations that they are and nothing more... nor less. I kind of look at it all like 'the deck is stacked against me' and leave it at that because there really is nothing to gain by doing more than acknowledging it for what it is.

Which is absolutely nothing new, surprising or insurmountable but I do like to take note of 'how' said 'deck' is stacked against me so that I know how to maneuver against it. Call it grit, willpower, stubbornness, dedication, commitment, insanity or whatever but at this point I doubt that what it is called even matters as long as I keep plodding along putting one foot in front of the other.

Alright, it is well after sunset so I best get back to working on this entry before I lose interest in doing so and either zone out for the night or fall asleep. Although the day was not super productive I did get some stuff shuffled around in the shop tent, got some dishes washed, turned some of the soil in the topsoil trap and went on a few brief hikes.

Once I got up and really started moving around this morning it was hard to ignore the throbbing in my leg so for much of the day I sat around doing my best to stretch it out and let some of the pain/discomfort subside. I am still rather miffed at myself for having let it get re-injured in the first place but hopefully once my big food order comes in (and I can start taking anti-inflammatories) I can get it healed up in short order.

On a different not. The Eastern Black Kingsnake that lives near the shelter site has gotten even more cozy with eating the chicken eggs and even less disturbed by me or the critters moving around near it. Today I watched it climb inside the coop, go straight for the box that the hens have been laying eggs in and begin looking for eggs.

Finding none in the box it eased into the next box (there is an opening behind all the laying boxes which connects them together) and made itself comfortable with its head barely poking into the first box. Hours later one of the hens laid an egg in there and it got the egg, ate it and then resumed its previous position (with its head in the same place) waiting on another egg!

It really is a beautiful snake and given its vibrant looking skin (probably from its diet of eggs) it is by far the healthiest such Kingsnake that I have ever seen. Some of how it looks could be because it has shed recently but overall its skin just looks super 'healthy' which is kind of surprising for such an old snake.

Anyway, I always enjoy seeing it around and I just now learned (via some online searching) that they are actually immune to pit viper venom. Which makes total sense because of how they tend to hunt, kill and eat venomous snakes... but I had not really thought too much about the venom aspect before... so I guess I learned something new there!

Well, I am going to cut this entry short and call it 'good enough' so that I can get on with the editing and posting before it gets too much later. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.