I Started To Travel.............

............all over the place today in terms of visiting people's blogs. Some of the stuff going on in people's lives make my problems look - quite small and insignificant. It was a wake-up call for me to continue praying for many people that are going through so many different - stressful - and sometimes gut-wrenching things.

I hate to see people getting sick, or hurt, or losing their jobs. You read it in their words: the tension is palpable, the loss of any kind of security is frightening. Some of those people come here. I want you to know that I am praying for you - I lift up prayers to the Lord frequently for people that are going through all kinds of things on Blogspot and other blogging venues.

And then there's all the crap going on in the world. I read about a town somewhere in New Mexico, I think it was, that is basically lawless and that some of the Mexican drug lords have actually moved in there. This was - an unbelievable thing to read. A town where they openly know that these kinds of people are living there and nothing is being done about it? The story goes on - you'll have to find it if you are interested and read it for yourself. I don't understand the "security" for a lawless group of thugs and murderers living on our side of the border.

The swine flu scare. Pirates in Somalia. North Korea a viable nuclear threat. On, and on, and on. I find peace through my Lord and I also find peace by tuning this stuff out at some point and discontinuing reading about it. I am not living in a cave or on an island - I do like to find out what's going on in this world, but I find that I can only take so much of it and then, turn it off. I have enough troubles of my own - and I am also actively helping other people who are going through tough times right now in giving out food here and there as I can. In other words, I do what small part I can and leave the rest up to each individual as each person chooses - to reach out or not to reach out.

As for today? I made the boys go out there and paint all 3 trellises - well, not paint them, apply the wood seal to them. They have been out there an hour and should be out there another hour at least. I made no promises of anything, either. Caleb is allegedly going to go find a job when he turns 16 - which is later this month. I hope he finds a job and I definitely expect him to get a dose of life. Life can be extremely difficult at times - have we not all experienced that - going to work is a part of it. Most days I love going to work, some days I drag my @$$ out of bed and force myself to go through the motions to get myself there. Once there, the mind always kicks into automatic - do this, that and the other thing - a daily routine.

He has definitely gotten some doses of reality through JR ROTC, though, and I have fully supported him in that endeavor. It's the kind of program that starts to prepare you for the reality of life. Daddy will be there as long as daddy is alive - that would be me - and he will always be welcomed in my home, but the time is coming when he will move out on his own. I am slowly preparing myself for this eventuality. I cannot envision myself without having kids in my life. I love kids, I love having them around. The most probable scenario when the day comes that he is gone is that I will try to adopt. I have been reading about it - to great extent actually - single parents are welcomed into that system. That's because of the total lack of sufficient families that are willing to adopt.

Anyway, Michael is a totally different story. He is in for a big surprise. Even high school is a wake-up call. He will undoubtedly flunk most of his classes this year. I don't even know that they call it flunking anymore - but I will ALWAYS call it that, especially when it's caused by a person failing to show up for school or doing homework with the parents saying - yeah, that's okay. It's okay to do what? Set up your kid to fail? Try that s*** in college and see how far it gets you. Or the military - or any venue in life.

Ummm, enough. Finally got motivated and am heading outside into this horrid humidity heat to get some things done.
ben

Saturday

I came home from work yesterday just absolutely exhausted, after not getting near enough sleep the night before. I still went outside and watered just about everything. Unfortunately, the "wave" wasn't over yet, so I visited the casino for a couple of hours as well. I tend to ride out winning streaks until they're gone. Last night, my "take" was only $70 - but - it's $70 I didn't have before last night - so I'll take it. Is the wave over? Who knows. I enjoy the outings is all I can say about that.

Chad - the gentleman that left a message on one of my entries a couple of entries down - was true to his word. Of course, I could hardly ever imagine talking to a company official making promises like that and not carry through with them. I received the gift card yesterday in the mail. Thank you, Chad! I was going to spend the whole thing on my food storage supply, but I have altered the plan to use 80% for food storage and the other 20% for a nice, thick, juicy steak. Ohhhh yeaaaaaaaaaah. I was thinking of making homemade coleslaw again - a big hit in these parts of the world (well, at my house anyway :|) and get a picnic roast, slow cook it and make more BBQ - I guess I'll just make up my mind when I get over to Fry's later on today.

I am supposed to go over today or tomorrow and dig that tree out. I do want that tree, but I most certainly do not feel like digging that thing out. I envision a LOT of work to remove a tree, even if it isn't that big. I was thinking of getting one of those "day laborers" that hang out on the street corners and pay him $25 to dig the thing out - the tree would be worth far more than that - and not do anything but sit there and watch the person do the digging for me. I'm only half awake right now and it's still early - give that some thought.

Michael did not go to school yesterday. He does tend to come up with some interesting excuses. Apparently he spent the whole day at my house. For the excuse, he should have just come over here the night before and - he then would have no excuses. What was the reason he didn't go to school? Well, first off, he told me I wouldn't believe him. So I started making guesses. I was way off.

Turns out his dad got drunk, extremely drunk - well I cut him off there and started making more guesses. I was still way off. First, that guy never used to drink. The advent of Michael's mom getting a job and actually sticking with it plays out to the purchases of a lot of alcohol and a lot of marijuana. When it comes to money management, those people have absolutely no clue, and if it wasn't for the great State of Arizona and the Federal Government paying for their housing and giving them food stamps (and Lord knows what else), they would be out on the street and would be hungry.

Anyway, dad apparently cranked up the music and left the volume so high, people inside their homes 150 feet away could hear it. Me? I would have called the police after 10:00 pm for violation of noise ordinances. But that's just me. Michael claims the music was on that loud, all night long, until he finally passes out (the dad, that is) and then they shut it off. I can't even imagine that man being drunk. He's already a hot-head, I envision a man going crazy and threatening everyone and going off without reason. Certainly NOTHING I want to be around.

Ummmm - long break. All tenants converged on the kitchen at once. The newest made French Toast. Yummmm.
I'm still trying to decide what to do with this day.
If it keeps going like this, the question will answer itself.
Happy Saturday!
ben

Thursday

Is it really Thursday already? Yayyyy!
Tomorrow will be a long day - a GOOD long day I might add - in that I should be busy all day long at work until it's time to go home. West Phoenix; Downtown Phoenix; Williams Gateway Airport in the easy valley; Casa Grande for some pipe; back to the yard; possibly back downtown; and then finish putting together and order that "HAS" to be there, at the jobsite, at 6:30am on Monday morning, plus another order that "had" to be there - later than 6:30 am, obviously :-|

The grocery store circulars that were supposed to come yesterday came today. I'm quite amazed at the amount of competition that is going on between all of them. Even Safeway has some real bargains. The real deal - though - is the 47 cent per pound chicken. 10 pound bags. I want 3 of them. I am going to feed that stuff to the dogs. I have been trying to fatten all 3 of the big dogs up for some time now. Only Duke has succumbed to my otherwise futile attempts to get Coco and Prince to see some meat on their bodies instead of a bunch of bones sticking out. I don't want to make them obese, per se, but they definitely need to fatten up some. Duke is hardly overweight. I'm guessing he's about 135 pounds now, whereas Prince is probably around 120. Prince could use at least another 15 pounds, Coco could use at least another 5. Duke is good where he's at - he looks good, not too much and not too little.

Look, that cheap chicken? I've bought it before. If you're a starving human, sure, you'll eat it. Otherwise, forget it. The stuff smells - bad - cooking it and I don't even try eating it after smelling it. The dogs absolutely love the stuff - and they don't get sick or diarehea off of it, so it's all good. Usually I'll mix that chicken with some freshly cooked rice - but darn if the price of rice right now isn't a weeeeee bit high.

Well, I still have some scouring of the ads to go - but - Fry's is still right at the top. Only fresh & easy is doing a bit better because on top of their ad, they also sent me a $6 off on any combined purchase over $30.

Anyway, if I do receive that $50 gift card from Fry's - thanks to Chad - I will be spending the entire amount on canned goods for my food storage. That should beef that stockpile up quite a bit. I want to buy at least 30 cans of tuna fish and then whatever else. My food storage is going well - I'm approaching a 2 month supply of food stocked up - canned and boxed. If you count the refrigerator, it goes way over that - but I don't count it because if something REALLY bad happened, then one could also assume the power is off and then that food goes bad and is worthless. I'm also lacking on the cooking facilities if power did "go away". That would be a camp stove that uses the small cans of propane. I do have the BBQ grill, but it's hardly efficient. It uses quite a lot of propane to cook - being because there are 3 burners on that thing and even at low, I have gone through a 5-gallon thing of in about a month and a half. 5 gallons of that on a camp stove would last FAR longer than that.

I am not an alarmist, I don't necessarily think the world is ending (but if you read the Bible, it will definitely end someday) - but there's too much garbage going on right now to "trust the system". And anyway, it's definitely a good thing to have at least some kind of food stock saved up. If the s*** hits the fan, people literally flock to grocery stores and it's all gone in a very short period of time. Chaos ensues. Does that happen? DARN STRAIGHT it does. Just look at hurricane victims. Heck, just about any natural disaster. My mother also has quite a huge stock of food piled up 'just in case'. The plan would be to move to her property up in the mountains if some disaster struck. The plan is there whether we are able to communicate with each other or not.

So - the only thing I'm really hurting on is that I let my dog food supply dwindle. I did that on purpose, though, because the food I was buying them really wasn't very good. Too much garbage in it for preservatives and such that simply isn't good for them. I'll get that back up within a month's time with some other food I found that has better ingredients and is still reasonably priced. I want 500 pounds on hand to be happy with it.

It's funny, something that happened today that somewhat coincides with all of this. I went back to the place that is selling out all of their shade screen for windows and such - the deal is too good to pass up. The first time I went, the gate was locked and no-one was around. Today, the gate was opened and still no-one was around. I got the number from this guy after the first time, so I called him. Turns out he was in one of the shipping containers he has in his yard, working on something. He is selling everything he has and is "returning" to Asia. Apparently, when the Vietnam war was over, he didn't come home. He moved to Cambodia or some such thing and lived there for a long time - and decided to return because his parents are here.

His desire to leave, he states, is the chaos that is "coming". The dollar is basically going to become worthless against foreign currencies- and a lot of other stuff. Well, to each his own. His advice? "Guns; garden; food" and something else I can't remember. Now, admittedly this guy was a bit eccentric, but he isn't that far off. What is going to happen to the dollar when all this trillion plus dollar budget is passed?

I dunno. I'm just preparing myself for whatever may come. I'm short on things I want - but I'll get there eventually.

Anyway, I bought today another project for this weekend. Or not. Karen - the former tenant - called yesterday and said she has a pine tree sitting in the middle of her yard that she wants gone, do I want it? Umm, I'm thinking a giant thing that I have no way of getting out of the ground. Hey, I COULD get it here - just borrow the semi - it has a 48 foot flatbed trailer on it. I intoned such. NO, she says, it's about 7 feet tall, in great health. Still - I envision a lot of work, but to buy a 7 or 8 foot tall tree? Not cheap. I agreed to come get the thing this weekend with the caveat that she start watering it NOW. Water, water, water.

Oh, well the project I bought today is the shade screen. But I"m not done putting up trellises yet - heck I haven't even bought all of them. The shade screen will go on the backs of the trellises to screen out the southern sun from hitting the house. It will stay that way until the vines - of which I have yet to get since I haven't even got all the trellises in yet - grow and cover them. It's an on-going project - I have been doing a little here and there, but it's time to pick up the pace. Heat is coming my way, and soon. We're facing May starting tomorrow - and yes, May will heat up substantially around here - it always does. Then comes hell - June - which is a part of a 3 month onslaught of a nightmarish heat that is unreal. Then another month after that like May and then in October, if we're lucky, it will cool down.

Karen also wants to go to the casino this weekend. I have no "feeling" about that yet, so I neither agreed or disagreed. The cards played very well last weekend, but that most assuredly does NOT mean it will happen again. But - it could happen. I'm so very superstitious when it comes to casinos, blackjack and whether I'm going to play or not - I admit it freely. The feeling, the aura, everything has to be right. Even the place I park at the casino must be in the same, general area. I have mostly shyed away from it in recent times because I couldn't afford to lose. I still have $100 of casino money left from last week's adventure - I will consider it on Saturday - IF - I get that tree out of the ground! I spent $35 today on that shade screen. It was a smokin' deal. It's the heavy-duty stuff they use at nurseries to make shade covers for the plants. That stuff is normally 4 times that amount of money.

Oh, BTW, has anyone read about this thing where you can actually make your own solar panel? Allegedly you can buy the materials at Ace Hardware or similar place, put it together yourself, and it will generate enough power to power up an appliance. I've read a couple of sites with the plans - about $200 in materials. I'm undecided. It would be great to have and use for a refrigerator.

OH, that reminds me, the laundry tree! I totally forgot about that! Must get one this weekend after tenants pay me. I have $600 in tenant's money coming in - and with most bills paid up, it allows for the purchase, I hope anyway - of that tree. THAT thing will save a LOT of money in not using the dryer. 4 adults here using the dryer at various times throughout the week? THAT adds up.

I'm getting longwinded and I have some watering to do outside.

Take care, hope your day went well and that this writing finds you all in good health.
ben