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.

Last week I was faced with a minor clog in the shower drain.  The water wasn’t completely stopped, but the tub wasn’t draining as quickly as it normally does.  The sink and the toilet were flowing without a problem, so I knew the problem existed between the tub and where the drain line met with the sewer line.  This seemed to be a minor issue.

Heather said that the water wasn’t flowing very smoothly, so she did a little bit of plunging.  When she was done with the plunger the water ceased to flow entirely.  This just went from a nuisance to a problem.  It seemed that she had successfully moved the clog, but now it was a bit more compacted and was now watertight.  I figured that perhaps I could clear the clog with a little more plunging efforts, but that did not help.  I poured some baking soda and vinegar down the drain to agitate and “shake up” the clog.  No luck.

I did not want to resort to using Drano, so I busted out the trusty plumbing snake and began to feed it down the drain.

The water flow started slowly, and seemed to increase a bit.  It seemed like I was making progress, and so I continued to put vinegar and baking soda down the drain as I furiously plunged and plunged to no avail.  After hours of this I decided that I needed to resort to using Drano, and so I did.  I put a little bit in there and let it sit, then flushed it through with hot water.  No real change.  The water was draining from the tub, but very slowly.  I poured more of the Drano into the pipe, and let it sit for even longer before flushing it through with hot water.  Still, I wasn’t any further along than I was when I started using Drano.  Eventually I used an entire bottle of Drano, and still got zero results.

I had had it by this point.  I was very frustrated to have tried everything in my arsenal, including the last-ditch effort of using Drano – yet the problem still persisted.  I resorted to using the snake one last time, and the water started flowing a *little* better than it had been… however, this time Heather and I heard an ominous splashing sound and knew that the water was going into the crawlspace, not into the sewer.  This was bad.

I crawled under the house and confirmed my worst fears… all/most of the water that I thought had flowed beyond the clog had actually just leaked directly into the crawlspace.  This means that gallons and gallons of water were now covering the floor of the crawlspace.  Water in the crawlspace is not fun, but when it is mixed with an entire bottle of Drano, a couple gallons of vinegar, and a few boxes of baking soda, it is infinitely worse.  I assessed the damage and realized that when I was pushing the snake through I dislodged the J trap.

After a quick assessment of what was wrong I started thinking, “This will be easier than I thought”.  While it was disgustingly wet and smelled of chemicals, all that was broken was the trap just underneath the tub.  Most likely the clog was right there in the trap as well, so I could replace the trap and be on my way.

Plumbing does not work like this.  When you identify your problem, fixing that problem is not necessarily the ultimate solution.

After 3 trips to the hardware store (including one where I got a ticket for talking on my cell phone while arguing with my brother about the logistics of the plumbing nightmare that I was attempting to tackle on my own, but that’s another story), I had completely replaced the J trap.  Prior to putting the new one on I made sure to run my plumbing snake down the rest of the pipe to be sure that there were no further clogs.

I went upstairs and started the water, then ran back into the crawlspace to look for leaks.  No leaks!  Awesome!  I cleaned up my tools and headed upstairs, only to find that the water was still sitting in the tub.  I had successfully replaced the J trap and fixed the leaks that I created, but the clog must have been beyond the work that I was doing.  This was very discouraging, as the main sewer pipe was not far beyond where my snake reached cleanly while the J trap was disconnected.

At this point I realized that I could not fix this problem on my own, and I called a friend to give me a hand.  Lee Colley, thank my lucky stars, came to give me a hand.  He knew that I was very frustrated at this point, and that I had spent the entire day under the house.  I was at the end of my patience and Lee knew.  Since he had the more cool mind, and his skills were more in tuned with the job, I let him take over and became his helper.

We continued with the project.  The idea was that we still needed to clear this nasty clog.  We made a quick trip to the hardware store to purchase a hose-end device that you stick in the end of a clogged pipe.  The device is like a rubber bladder that fills with water and prevents any water from backing up, then it delivers a high-pressure blast toward the clog.  This high power blast pushed the clog right along, and soon we heard water flowing.  This was music to our ears.  The water was flowing beyond the clog.  Excellent!

To get the bladder device into the pipe we needed to remove a cast iron elbow piece.  There is a good reason that they stopped using cast iron for plumbing.  These pipes were so old that the threading on the pipe cracked completely, and we were now missing a good chunk from the end of this pipe.  This was no good.  We just created a problem with an 8′ long cast iron pipe that led almost directly to the sewer pipe.  Our task just altered entirely.  We went upstairs to get cleaned up and noticed that the sink was no longer draining.  The sink was draining perfectly the entire time.  At this point we were under the impression that the clog was completely cleared, but it became obvious that we had pushed the clog into another drain pipe – the sink drain pipe.

Now I could not shower, I could not use my bathroom sink, I wasn’t sure if I could use my toilet, and Lee and I were both exhausted from a day of failed effort.  Heather and I decided to head to her parents’ house to get a shower.  Lee and I planned on starting the project again at 9am.

Lee showed up right on time.  We started out by removing the 8′ long cast iron pipe.  We worried that we might damage fittings further down the line, but we had to take that risk if we were going to fix this problem.

Our first attempts were met with a stubbornly unmovable pipe.  We blasted the threads with a bit of WD40 and tried again.  This worked perfectly, and the pipe slowly began to free itself from the fitting.  We removed the pipe all the way without a problem.  Now we needed to clear the clog.

Lee brought out his snake, which had more bells and whistles than mine did.  Mine was just a coiled piece of metal that you shove down the pipe.  His was the same coil, but had a crank that you could use to push the coil down into the pipe.  The idea is that with the coil turning via the crank, the end of the snake would work its way into the clog.  This worked amazingly, and what looked like a dreadlock that had been dipped in mud came dripping out of the pipe.

Never have I been so excited to see a mass of disgustingly dirty hair.

We now knew that the clog was gone.  All we had to do was replace the 61 3/4″ long, 2″ wide pipe and put another new J trap on.

We gathered ourselves, made another trip to the hardware store, and attempted to find a replacement for this cast iron pipe.  Of course, the place where we went did not have a section of cast iron that was that long.  They even suggested that we wouldn’t be able to find a section that long anywhere other than a specialty supplier – perhaps we’d even have to order it.

We started considering replacing the cast iron with PVC, and quickly decided that this was our only hope of coming to a resolution.  We got all of the necessary parts and headed back to the house to see what we could do.

This time we went back into the crawlspace determined to complete the project.  We got the long section of pipe installed flawlessly.  We put the new J trap in with perfection.  We went to join the trap with the tub drain and the size was all wrong.  We had a 1/2″ pipe trying to connect with a 2″ pipe.  Crud.

We knew we had a very small gap to bridge, and that we were well on our way to correcting the problem.  We only had to make one more trip to the hardware store… or did we?  On one of my 5 trips to the hardware store I decided to get a bunch of gaskets, couplers, step-downs, and extensions – just in case they came in handy.  This, thankfully, saved me one more trip to the store.  In my bag of goodies we had a step-down from 2″ to 1/2″, which is exactly what we needed.  We had plenty of extra length from what we cut off of the main piece, and in no time we got back under the house and made the connection.  I yelled up to Heather, “TURN THE WATER ON!”.  She turned the water on, left it for a bit, then turned it back off.  No leaks.  “IS IT DRAINING PROPERLY?” I asked.  “It sure is!” she replied.  “TURN IT BACK ON, AND LEAVE IT ON!”.

The water drained from the tub, and there were no leaks in the crawlspace.  We did it!

It has been a really long time since I’ve posted anything on this blog – over 2 months! This has sort of been by design. I started to get upset with myself for not posting often enough, and I felt pressured to continue posting. While I felt the pressure to post, I never was able to post as often as I wanted to. Rather than being a fun foray into a new activity, it became a new chore that pressed on me. To relieve myself of this feeling of obligation, I’ve stopped posting to help remove this attachment.

I feel better, and today I’m posting something that is on my mind rather than coming up with something to post arbitrarily.

Last night I had a long running nightmare. In my dream I chased down and tried to murder a childhood friend of mine. I know, completely brutal. In the dream I pinned down this old friend of mine and bludgeoned his head with a hammer until his brain was exposed. There was no motivation for this act, as far as I know. Once his skull was crushed and I was about to complete the act, I stopped. I left him barely alive, and the rest of the dream was running and trying to keep all of this a secret. I told a few people, and much of the anxiety of the dream was wondering if I could trust those who I had told. I was essentially waiting for the police to show up and take me away, but I wasn’t just sitting and waiting.

I don’t know what this dream means, or why I had it. I don’t even know why I am posting this, other than to get it off of my chest.

I’ll continue to post to this blog as necessary, but I’m not making any promises =)