Red Foot Garden

It is another morning where I see 3am, but I’ve cheated a little bit. Since I came home from Denver tonight I went forward a couple of hours. Tonight I am tired, but for some reason I don’t feel like going to sleep. For some reason I feel like writing, and that is fine with me.

Returning home after being away for a long time (more than a day or two) is a fantastic thing, but it can be kind of tricky. Sometimes you are looking forward to home so much that when you finally get home it isn’t all that you have hoped. I must admit that I am very blessed to have it be a rarity that I am disappointed with my return.

Heather met me at the airport at just before 1am, and was happy to stay up with me for a bit while I settled down from the flight. The dogs were extremely happy to see me as well, and we all rolled around and huddled together for a while. It was a wonderful family/pack moment, and I haven’t felt that good in a long time.

We watched a Mountain Moods Blu-ray, and as my mind drifted I had what felt to be almost a religious experience. I wouldn’t say religious, because that word has been given a bad name. I had a spiritual moment where I felt connected with my mother, as though she were in the room with us. Heather remarked that her presence was a sign that she was happy I got home safe as well, and I had to agree.

While I will never truly get over the loss of my mother, I think that tonight I finally came to terms and reached acceptance. It has been a long and difficult struggle, but I can finally think of her without either breaking down or diverting my thoughts to avoid breaking down. I’m a momma’s boy through and through, and I’m happy to admit that.

The spiritual moment was a feeling of a concept of God, but it was my own concept of God that I actually felt comfortable with for perhaps the first time in my life. I think that whether you believe in God or not depends on how you define “God”. I define God as the responsible party for the creation of me and the world that I experience, but I’m not arrogant enough to be able to say that I know exactly what or who is responsible for my existence. I don’t think that I, or any other human could ever have the ability to see or comprehend the forces or beings that are responsible for our creation.

The nearest form of a “creator” that we have is our parents, and further along in time we have our ancestry to thank for paving the way to our existence. Extend that as far back as when I, or anything that I can identify with first came into existence, and is that “the” creator? What helped that creator come into existence? That must be considered the creator.

Humans, like all other animals, were created according to the laws of science. Throughout human history we have sought answers and have repeatedly found them through science and logic, to the best of our ever-expanding abilities. As the ability to produce, store, and share knowledge so quickly increases we answer more questions with logic, but there has always been an element of the unexplainable. There is always something “special”, that can be described as divine, and cannot, with our current intellectual limitations, be described scientifically.

These unexplainable twists in reality are what I consider to be manifestations of God, our creator, perhaps the sum total of all the souls of our ancestors throughout the history of existence. If that is true, and our souls will continue through to be grains of sand in the network of “God”, the way that we treat our souls is very important. While we all have varying concepts of what is right and what is wrong, most people are conscious enough to know wrong when they are doing it.

Following God is being yourself, doing what makes you feel good and comfortable, not fighting against your own inner voice of what is right and what is wrong. Do what you know to be right, and understand that sometimes nothing is right, and you only have to choose between things that are wrong. Also understand that sometimes conflicting things are right, it is a complicated world but it can be simplified!

That’s what I seek to do, simplify my life and the world around me. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

I might be delirious, or sleep deprived, or a good combination of both, but I feel good, and I haven’t in a while.

Good night.

*By the way, I’m publishing this at 4:26am, so if you read this before I edit my mistakes in logic and grammar, please comment. Thanks!

My body is restless, and this is nothing new at all.  I have always had a very anxious body, hardly ever allowing myself to rest properly.  I can remember being a very young child and wondering what everyone else thought about to help them fall asleep.  In third grade I remember thinking of songs to make fun of my “friends”, which kept me in a jolly mood even though I was struggling to fall asleep; I was a terrible child.  Later my fascination became the long grasses that grew by the kickball field.  I would literally try to focus my mind solely on the tall grasses blowing in the breeze.  If my mind wandered over toward the kickball field itself I would get angry.  Kickball is active, and thinking of action is counterproductive when sleep is the goal.  Of course, getting angry is probably far more counterproductive, but this is something that I’ve always felt was a bit beyond my control.

My father is notorious for having a short temper.  Whether it be nurture or nature, I share his ability to boil over at what others believe to be nothing.  Anger surges through me and I do everything that I can to contain it, but I can’t.  I remain angry.  Since I have been dealing with anger for my entire life and have seen and felt how it impacts others, I try not to allow the anger to be externalized.  Most people think that I am calm and quiet – if only they knew the chaos that existed within me.  One day there will be an explosion – Kaboom!

We got home at 1am this morning, after a seven hour drive from Vermont. The drive was a breeze. I don’t think that we hit a single spot of traffic. Not even a minor annoyance. Basically I was free to drive the entire way, which is rare.

Only being gone for a few days, we were a bit overwhelmed by the amount of change that welcomed us upon our return. Hurricane strength winds uprooted a towering maple tree from my neighbor’s yard. The fallen tree now sprawls across the border of mine and a few neighbor’s yards. For the size of the tree, the damage to my yard is fairly minimal. I got very lucky. Mostly my shed is a little mangled and one of my trees was stripped. My brother and his chainsaw took care of most of the initial cleanup work, and now we need a professional to step in and remove the tree.

Since I was out of town for the whole ordeal, my neighbor Chrystal got the entire scoop for me. The people who are living in the house where the tree was uprooted are renting. These folks don’t speak much, or any English, but they are just renting; we need to get in touch with the owners. Chrystal has been trying to contact the owners since the tree fell, but no one has responded to her voicemails.

I know that I will be fighting for days or weeks to get this resolved, but I’m pretty happy that the damage to my property is minimal. Everyone is saying that I could get a new shed out of the deal, since it was mangled when the tree struck it. I will definitely be getting a new shed, but I don’t think that anyone owes me anything because the wind blew a tree down. These things happen.

I wasn’t surprised to find this situation. Heather’s parents were nice enough to be watering our plants while we were in Vermont. They would stop by the house and check in on things, and it was a good thing that they did. They took a bunch of pictures of the yard so that we knew what we were dealing with when we got home. Thankfully my brother was able to head over to the house while I was away to clear most of the problem areas. (Thank you Mario! That was a huge help.)

What surprised me when I got home, was a distressed chipmunk that needed my help – at 1:30 in the morning, after a seven hour drive. I saw the poor fellow staring at me from the bird feeder, but something was wrong. The brave little sucker was stealing some food from the feeder, and managed to get himself into a situation from which he could not remove himself. His head was sticking out of a small hole where bird food is dispensed, and the back of his body was snaked out through another feeding portal. Both of his front legs were through the hole, and he could not retract his head. His hips and legs would not make it through the hole either, and I was completely lost as to how I might help this critter

I fumbled with trying to ease him in the right direction, but it became obvious that he had been there for a long time. He must have panicked, as he crushed his back legs in an attempt to pull them through the portal. He was afraid, and his bowels released all over himself. I soaked him a bit to cool him off, as it had been almost one hundred degrees earlier in the day. As I worked with him, he slowly realized that I was not trying to hurt him. He went from lashing out at me to accepting my help.

Heather suggested that I cut into the metal that was holding him, so I got a pair of wire cutters. Being careful not to cut into the animal, I started cutting and soon had opened the hole through which his head was poking. He was still quite stuck. I placed the cutters on the back piece of metal and clenched until the metal tore apart. Although he was mostly freed, he could not get himself out of the feeder.

I hollered for Heather to grab me a pair of pliers, and she brought me 4 pairs. I used two pairs to hold and pry the openings wider, and then I helped the chipmunk to free himself. His posterior was mostly paralyzed, and I was at the same time joyful that he was free and sad because he was perhaps beyond repair.

Our dogs would finish him off, but I thought that he might have a chance to recover, if only he could heal his wounds. I did the best thing that I could do at the time, which was to get him out of the back yard so that the dogs could not get him. I put him in the hosta garden, and hopefully he was able to get some rest.