So, I took a non-oath of silence and just stopped writing. One day, in February, apparently, I just got sick of talking. We've just been living life here on the Waltenburg Ranch. I've been trying different approaches to be a better me. None of them really stick for more than a week or three. Whatever.
The Westward Migration becomes more and more real each day. We've been cleaning out the closets, the drawers, and donating a magical metric fuqueton of items to the Goodwill place. Someone, somewhere can make better use of those things than we did. They were just taking up closet real estate.
It's kind of fucked up to think that it's now been over four months since Dad took his leave, and to be quite honest, it doesn't really feel any different. Sad truth. It was what it was, and it is what it is. No signs from the great beyond. I never thought there would be. I realized, after this showed up in my OneDrive memories:
That this is one of the few photographs of him (on the right) WILLINGLY smiling. He was a very stoic, very unemoting person. My uncle (on the left) is the polar opposite. I wish he had ever been that carefree and playful in the role of my dad. This is a man I never knew.
Anywhoooooooooooooooo, back to reality ... We have 99.52% decided to "flip" our own house. I cannot fathom having spent nearly 20 years here and just walking away. I want to leave it better than we found it and we have worked far too long, too hard, and too many hours to not at least try to make it something special for the next residents.
That being said, we got the roof and fence fixed last week, just in time for a HUFUCKINGMONGOUS storm to pass through Friday night, complete with tornados, to test out the durability of the repairs. Thankfully, the roof, and the rest of the property remains intact. It was questionable. We are very fortunate. I believe this house is built like a brick shithouse, and it won't go anywhere for a very, very long time. The ol' abode's got good bones. (I don't see this house as gender specific, really)
We did an old-folks kind of thing yesterday and went out driving around to surveil the tornado and storm damages because that's what you do in Ohio on a Sunday. It was quite nauseating. We didn't even have to drive off the normal beaten path to see it. This place used to have a complete and huge roof:
I can't fathom how it took JUST the roof, but left everything else intact, and yet just up the road, it completely flattened an entire old barn.
I can also say that I have NEVER seen long pieces of metal siding woven through the tops of trees like so much yarn or fabric ... What the holy fuck? It all seemed so very random, like it touched down, went back up, touched down here, went back up ... Just weird.
So many places that we see every time we drive up to Fort Wayne that are just gone now. So many chances to be thankful that we are safe and sound.
We now take intermission for me to show you this:
Fish belly. Adorable.
I've been exploring my right brain for a while now. Perhaps about a month? It looks something like this:
I needed a thing to do. I needed to learn to do something new. So I did. I'm still working on it, as much as possible. Learning as much as possible. Someday, I'll share more about it, but for now, feel free to go look. Also, I'm obsessed with the color of fresh radishes (the kinds with their tops still intact). That was my favorite part of setting the produce floor - making sure all that glorious color was visible.
I've been learning how to use all the digital design tools again, like Canva, and all the other components that go into this type of thing. It's exciting!
As for me, I'm pretty much back to where I started before I began that 12-week-year thing last year. Today is a new day. I spent yesterday doing food prep of all kinds. Made some shredded chicken, some caprese salad, some broccoli salad, some regular lettuce salad ... Cut up some celery. I just realized I forgot to boil some eggs, and make dressing. I've got enough food made, though, to keep me fed.
I think I need to write again, just to keep myself honest, and stick with it. So, if you're bored, you'll have something to read most every day. Not following any sort of strict plan, just mostly low-carb/keto-ish and getting my shit back together. I've been just winging it, and the weight has slowly but surely came back for a visit.
Time to regroup and change the brain set. There just comes a time when you get sick of how you feel, and you do something, instead of just waiting for it to change whilst doing the same thing over, and over. Today is that day.
That's kind of why I made this the other day:
It is a NEW DAY.
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