I Usually Drink Mine Standing Up

Good day today. I accomplished nothing whatsoever until after 1 p.m., and I call that a victory. Then Amanda dropped by, and she graciously helped me move boxes from the kitchen to the upstairs storage room. Since the move, I had been hoping elves would break in and move them, but they didn’t show up, so I resorted to physical exertion. Thank God I’m not the only one who suffered. I know how to treat a guest.

After Amanda left (I was out of jobs for her to do), I took her advice and used a new weapon on my immortal live oak stumps. She told me a fascinating story about the house she and her once-husband bought. The original owner built it around a tree. Smart! When the tree grew, the house mysteriously remained the same size, so something had to be done. Amanda and Co. paid someone to cut the tree and lift it out of the house, but the cable snapped, and it fell on the roof.

Anyway, she ended up with a stump that would not die. She used Roundup and I know not what else, and nothing happened. She then pinned her tree person down, perhaps physically, and forced him to tell her the real solution. It was two words: motor oil.

Roundup does not do a great job of killing stumps, and the hippies would much prefer seeing our houses replaced by useless trees to having us taint the precious water table with one part per billion of oil, so we don’t hear a lot about motor oil. Now I know the secret, so I used it.

I read up on it on the web. If what I read is correct, other petroleum products will work. One such product is diesel, which I always have on hand. You drill holes in your stump and you fill them with diesel.

I do not have a really good cordless drill right now, so I decided to bore-cut my stumps with a chainsaw. Beats dragging a generator across the yard. I fired up my little Jonsered and plunged into the stumps, scaring the crap out of a number of carpenter ants. I returned with the diesel jug a short time later, and I filled the stumps up. Except for one, which was apparently bottomless. I am now looking forward to seeing the results.

Using the chainsaw was a good move. I think. I don’t want to dull my drill bits on crappy live oaks, and anyway, drills make very small holes. The chainsaw made holes several inches long and about 3/8″ across. That’s a hole that means something.

Is diesel good for the environment? Don’t bother me with trivia. Besides, my well is a good hundred yards away from the stumps, and I drink bottled water.

It would be nice to have a skid steer with one of those stump attachment things. They rip stumps right out of the ground in seconds. But renting one would cost money, and the diesel trick probably cost less than three bucks.

After I treated the stumps, I shocked the pool again and brushed the algae off. I hate pools. When I was a kid, my dad made me clean the pool at our house, and I rarely did what I was supposed to. He didn’t supervise me or anything, and I was the king of all procrastinators, so basically, every month or so, he would explode for an entire day. I can’t tell you how miserable this made me. Not sure why I didn’t respond by doing a better job. You know how kids are. I have been doing as little as possible to maintain our current pool, and it has worked out about as well as you would expect.

After the hurricane, the pool pump clock died. I don’t know if the death was storm-related, but that’s what happened. I replaced the clock, but I bought the wrong model, and it died again. I finally got the right one installed last week. By then, the pool had gone quite a while with irregular pump cycles, including the long period of inactivity that passed before I realized the clock was dead.

I have been keeping the pool alive with shock treatments, hoping I could avoid skimming and vacuuming, but today I gave up and got out the brush and scoop. When I removed leaves from the bottom of the pool (which is fully screened; go figure), little bits of white stuff came up with them. I wondered what it was. Then I realized I was looking at chlorine-eaten organic material. Stuff I had left in the pool had sat on the bottom, slowly turning white. Also, I’m sure a lot of things that would ordinarily have been sucked into the filter went to the bottom when the pump wasn’t working. My guess, at this point, was that this stuff was eating my chlorine. When you put chlorine in a pool, how well it works depends on the job you give it, and if your pool has a lot of crap in it, it’s not going to get much done.

I accepted my fate. I removed whatever I could, and I brushed the whole pool to get the crap into circulation so it would go into the filter. I am hoping I can backwash it out and get rid of it.

Right now the pool is about as inviting as Chernobyl the day after the accident. I’m pretty sure it will glow at night with or without the pool light. I did not skimp on the chlorine. It’s downright poisonous. That’s fine with me. I don’t care if anyone ever gets to use it. I just want it to be blue and clear.

Maybe I could have it filled with blue lucite. That’s genius.

I also checked my burn pile. I put some big logs on it yesterday, and in the evening, I poured nine gallons of water on it to put it out. This afternoon it was going great guns. It had come back to life. Maybe burn piles aren’t for big logs.

Tomorrow my plans include eating Mike-Sell’s Puffcorn Delites and possibly poisoning my pond. Hope your day is equally fulfilling.

With Christian Brothers Like These, who Needs Pagans?

It is Sunday morning, and I am not at church. Praise the Lord.

I suppose I sound cynical. In reality, I would like to attend church. I’ve been looking around online. I say, “Praise the Lord,” because I’ve been part of two cults in a row, and I’m glad I’m not currently being mistreated and milked by any preachers.

Marion County is filled with churches. It seems like everyone I meet is a Christian. That’s the reason the people here are so nice. I’m surrounded by churches, which is good, but I still have to be careful. I can’t just flop down in a chair in the first church I see, because I run the risk of being pumped full of greed-based Joel Osteen/T.D. Jakes/Benny Hinn/Paula White nonsense. Did I mention enough preachers by name? I want to offend as many people as I can.

I look at websites. I rule out all the websites that say, “We believe every individual is filled with the Holy Spirit at the moment he accepts Jesus.” That’s code for, “We can’t get the baptism with the Holy Spirit, so we pretend it doesn’t exist.” I rule out the “Jesus is cool” churches. If I wanted to go to church with confused non-black kids who dress and act like rappers, I’d go back to Miami. And tattoo preachers…no. If you got tattoos before you were saved, and now you can’t afford to remove them, fine, but if you seriously believe God wants you to look like the funny papers, you are way out of God’s will, and if I get around you, I will expect to be taught lies and possibly chastised for not “sanctioning your buffoonery” (to steal a line from Tommy Lee Jones).

I reject all churches that say members have to tithe. Tithing is for Jews, not Christians. Any church that gets excited about tithing is run by a pastor who is a) afraid God will let him go broke, or b) obsessed with money.

I saw a church with a site that advertised the importance of keeping the Sabbath. Not for me. The Sabbath is Saturday, not Sunday, and Gentiles have never been required to observe it. It’s a Jewish thing. It’s great to set aside a day for God, but pretending it’s the Sabbath, or claiming we are required to do it, is legalism and possibly replacement theology.

My plan, as I have said before, is to sit in the back, give just enough money to pull my weight, and be quiet. No volunteering. No church office for me. I want to meet Christians, but I don’t want to get into any more squabbles with carnal preachers and their spoiled wives or kids. I never want to feel that I can’t go home at a moment’s notice, or that I have to refrain from speaking the truth in order to avoid offending a preacher who is driven by greed or pride.

I saw a place that doesn’t look too bad, but they had a video of a lady screaming and waving her arms because…Holy Spirit. That’s not how it works. God doesn’t take away your self-control. The devil does. Self-control is listed in the Bible as a fruit of the Spirit. If you’ve ever been “slain in the Spirit” and rolled on the floor at church, you need to know that God didn’t make you do it.

I just had a thought. Imagine visiting heaven. Suppose God takes you up and shows you what happens there. You look out over the host of angels and the saved human beings…and they’re all screaming like monkeys, waving their arms and legs, and rolling on the ground.

Really?

Is heaven a mental ward?

If you wave your arms and scream in church, it’s not God. You’re just that kind of person.

Prayer in tongues sounds silly, and it’s normal to react to God’s presence with some odd facial expressions and semi-involuntary sounds. That ought to suffice. You don’t need to do the gator.

In all likelihood, I will not find a church that doesn’t have significant problems. I do hope God leads me to one that isn’t completely nuts.

Things are going well between God and me here at home. God keeps showing me things. And he does some impressive deeds. Remember how I burned myself and then had the blister disappear? It appears to be happening again. I keep finding new ways to burn myself on chainsaws. Yesterday I learned that you can burn yourself on the chain. I started a saw and ran it a little bit to warm it up, and then I tried to sharpen it. I grabbed the chain to move it forward, and a searing, inexplicable pain shot up my thumb. I let go and looked. My thumb was burned. Dang it. How do you prevent injuries when you don’t know they can happen in the first place? I didn’t know saw chains could get hot.

I work very hard to protect myself. I study tool safety. I read up on poison ivy. I wear pretty decent protective clothing and gear. When I cut trees, I do my best to figure out which way they’ll go after they’re severed, and I prepare. Then I burn myself on a saw chain. Come on. Is that even fair?

Anyhow, I kept working, and I prayed and commanded my flesh to be healed and so on. I kept thanking God. Over the day, the pain decreased. By the time I went to bed, the burned area seemed flatter and less messed up. I checked it just now, and I had to look for it. I am hoping the healing continues.

I am not satisfied to leave it as it is. Should I grovel and drool and stop praying? Should I say I’m so grateful for what I have, I should be ashamed to ask for more? In short, no. If I did that, the primary reasons would be laziness and lack of faith. I don’t want to spend the day praying and thanking and so on, because I’m lazy, and I’m afraid God won’t finish the job, because I lack faith. The thing to do is to keep going forward and see that God gets as much glory as possible, even if I’m perfectly content with what has already happened.

Jesus didn’t do any half-healings.

Interesting thing…I told my friend Amanda about the other blister that healed, and not long after that, she burned herself. She fought it supernaturally, and it went away. No mark. No blister. How about that?

My character is still disappointing. That’s to be expected. I made self-corruption my special project for half a century, and I did a great job. God has definitely improved me, however, and I look forward to being substantially less contemptible.

My friend Mike is coming down tomorrow to spend a few days. I look forward to that because Mike knows a lot about construction, and I want him to fix my chicken house for nothing he’s a good friend, and I haven’t seen him in a while. He lived near Ocala for a long time. He and his dad raised racehorses. He loves this place and wants to move back. He’ll be beside himself the whole time he’s here. He’ll get to have Krystals and Sonny’s BBQ. He’ll get to go to Rural King. Maybe I’ll let him drive the tractor. No, I think I’ll just let him sit in the seat with the ignition off and go “VROOM VROOM.”

Along with Amanda, Mike has been very helpful with my turbulent Ocala transition. They disagree on one issue, however, and that is the goat question. I would like to have a couple of goats here to eat weeds. Mike thinks it’s a good idea. When I mention it to Amanda, her head spins 720 degrees and flames shoot out of her eye sockets.

I think she’s against it.

We will agree on a few things, however. Sonny’s. Krystal. Rural King. Sonic. Carhartt. Mike-Sell’s Puffcorn Delites. We agree that Miami is a swollen can of pus.

Next weekend, I am virtually certain to be in Miami. Disgusting. Has to be done, however. Miami, like a colonoscopy, is one of those things that has to be confronted head-on. So to speak. I hope I’m not there long enough to let the stink rub off on me.

I have to paint a rental condo. If things go really badly, this is a six-hour job. I know that from experience. The materials cost eighty bucks. Possibly a hundred, if I need primer. The slackjaws in Miami want $2000 for this service. Unacceptable. I’ve painted many condos, and I can’t stomach that price. I figure I’ll paint as much of it as I can, and then even if I have to pay someone to finish it, they’ll be ashamed to charge me a lot.

Well, let’s be serious. It’s hard to shame a slackjaw.

The tree removal work is going well here, but I can see that I’m not going to get the county to move much of the debris. It would take me months to get it to the highway, and I have only weeks.

Yesterday I cut a couple of big oaks that fell by my fence. I cut one section about seven feet long and two feet thick. I tried to roll it onto the timberjack so I could cut it in pieces that might be small enough for the tractor to carry, but I couldn’t do it. I’ll be more accurate here: I could not do it at a level of exertion I considered safe. I refuse to exert myself hard enough to injure myself. I push to something like 75% of my capacity, and after that, I figure it’s time for a helper or a new tool. I don’t want artificial hips or knees, and I don’t want a bad back.

I have a number of oaks just as heavy as the one I worked on yesterday, so progress will be slow. Maybe there’s a better machine for the job. I could rent something once I have all the wood cut up. I should look into that.

I think it’s time to consider the unthinkable: serious exercise. I may get some weights. I don’t want to be so flubbery and soft I get hurt easily. My current workout is paying off about a hundred times as well as expected. I operate one exercise bike with my hands and another with my feet, for a weekly total of about half an hour. Unlike the rest of humanity, I am treated to a full view of myself in the bathroom mirror as I get into and out of the shower, and I am not the same person I was three months ago. But weights would be much better for strength.

I have a Bowflex, which is a fine machine for lazy people who are happy with moderate improvement (me), but I don’t know if it’s possible to get real strength out of it. I have not tried lately. I need to move it out of the garage. I forgot to have the movers (slackjaws par excellence) do it.

In the past, I refused to think about resuming weight training because I was so lazy I knew I would not persist. Now, however, I am getting used to a higher level of mandatory activity, and lifting weights a few times a week would not be much of an increase.

I have to move logs. I have to lift full fuel containers and hold them while I fuel machinery. A little extra strength would be helpful.

When I was in law school, I was pretty sturdy. I maxed out all the machines at the University of Miami Wellness Center. Now I feel like it’s a victory when it only takes me three tries to get out of a chair.

One great thing about exercise equipment is that it’s cheap. Very few people buy it and the use it. Generally, it ends up being used to hold clothing on hangers. I should be able to do quite well on Craigslist for a couple of hundred bucks.

I better get with it. The day is slipping away, in spite of the death of Daylight Saving Time.

Hope your Sunday is going well.

Oh, the Irony

I am procrastinating. Shame on me. I should be doing bookkeeping or moving downed trees, but today I made myself pancakes with grade B syrup and several “bacon steaks” from the meat lab at the University of Florida, and I am still enjoying the afterglow too much to work.

The Ocala assimilation process continues to flow seamlessly. Yesterday I received some new duds I ordered, and my wardrobe is coming together. I got some Wrangler chambray work shirts, a Carhartt belt, and two more pairs of Carhartt jeans. Today I’m wearing the jeans and belt with Keen work boots and Wigwam El-pine wool socks, and I wonder why people aren’t born wearing these things.

I’m not sure, but I think my last two belts were from Old Navy, which means they were made from Chinese dogs. They were okay for Miami, but up here I wear heavier pants that exert more pull. Cheap belts stretch and deform. The Carhartt belt is very hard and tough, so it ought to last longer and work better. I got a 34, and I have a few empty notches on it, so if I lose more weight, I should still be able to wear it.

It will look better than a cheap belt. A belt which is stretched and distorted looks sloppy.

As for the jeans, I’m not sure why anyone wears anything but Carhartt. They have triple seams and six (not four) belt loops, and the waistband is at the waist, not just above the crotch. Very comfortable.

I like the Keen boots. I think Danners are a little better. My Danners are some comfortable I hate to take them off. But the Keens have a cut-resistant toe cap thing on them, which is good when you’re cutting trees.

I have not ironed the Wrangler shirts yet. I never wear a shirt until I’ve washed it. Brand new clothes smell funny and make me itch. I don’t know if I’ll like the snaps, but it was hard to find a simple chambray work shirt, and Wrangler makes them, so I’m trying them.

My second Carhartt jacket should be here tomorrow. I don’t know if I really needed it. The one I have seems to be comfortable in 60-degree weather. It’s not too warm when I’m sitting around. But I’m afraid it will be too hot in mild weather if I exert myself in it.

I wore a fleece jacket the other day. I don’t like it. Not for outdoor work. Things catch on it, and it won’t stand up to abrasion. It will also tear easily, and it absorbs water very quickly. Fleece is overrated.

Well-made work clothes are vastly superior to crap from Old Navy, Timberland, and The Gap, and the cost is roughly the same. I should have started wearing this stuff 30 years ago.

A tree guy came by today to look at the giant, unstable branches I need to have removed. He wasn’t a jerk about it. He only wants $300 per tree. He won’t be back for two weeks, so let’s hope no one dies in the meantime.

I keep learning about poison ivy. It appears likely that one of my troublesome trees has a poison ivy vine on it. I always thought poison ivy was a small plant, but it turns out it can grow into huge, woody vines so thick you can swing on them. The tipoff is tiny hairlike roots growing out of the sides of the vine. Even if you can’t see the leaves, those hairs prove you’re looking at poison ivy. I can deal with little plants I can kill with spray, but how do you kill a giant vine without contaminating your tools? A chainsaw won’t work. The sap will get into the chain.

I’m thinking I should use a hoe to scrape the vines open. Then I can spray Roundup into the cuts. Bark protects plants from Roundup, but if you can get it past the bark, the plants will die. A hoe blade is easy to wash.

I see the Hollywood sex mess is spreading. One of the good things about it is that it’s causing people to expose their complicity inadvertently. George Clooney and Matt Damon issued ridiculous, self-praising statements condemning Weinstein, and people jumped on them, saying they obviously knew what was going on and did nothing. Now Clooney and Damon are lying low and cancelling public appearances. Rosie O’Donnell attacked Kevin Spacey, saying “we all knew.” Intelligent people are pointing out that this means she helped Spacey commit more offenses. If she had said something, maybe he would have been stopped.

Eventually, if there is any common sense in the world at all, the public will come to realize that the majority of Hollywood performers and behind-the-scenes professionals who are not newcomers are fully aware that the system tolerates abuse, and the public will hold them accountable for shielding the predators with silence. It’s very simple. People in Hollywood are terrified of losing their coveted jobs, so they kept quiet about perverts and bullies. There is no other plausible explanation for the systematic abuse.

Hollywood is a funny place. They’re very gung-ho about the pro-homosexuality “anti-bullying” message, but they suck up to bullies who commit sexual crimes. Kevin Spacey is a bully. James Toback is a bully. The fact that sex was involved doesn’t turn bullying into something else. Will the anti-bullying people acknowledge this?

Abusers don’t just mistreat others. They force intimacy on them. Abusers are often exhibitionists. They touch people without permission. They don’t respect boundaries. It’s very natural that many of them should express themselves through sexual acts. Maybe they don’t respect boundaries because they don’t see other people as fully real. They don’t realize we feel and think. They’re too self-absorbed. It makes sense that bullies grope and rape, because bullying is very much like rape. It’s a violation.

We should all be examining ourselves and repenting, in the hope that God will judge us privately instead of hitting us over the head with public disgrace. But in Hollywood, that’s not an option, because Hollywood people hate God.

I wonder if the inquisition will extend into the past. CBS journalist Mike Wallace had a reputation for gross, arrogant, boundary-shattering behavior with female employees. Will he be outed? Bob Hope used to make crude remarks about Doris Day. Shirley Temple was abused. There are rumors that Kirk Douglas raped Natalie Wood. Will the bodies be exhumed, or will the crusaders be content to bring down the living? If Thomas Jefferson and George Washington aren’t safe, I guess Mike Wallace is fair game.

I’m glad I’m not famous and that my sins aren’t worse than they are.

I better fire up the golf cart and cut some wood. Those pancakes were great.

Strange Visitor from the Planet Diesel

I feel like I got nothing at all done today, but when I list my achievements, they sound pretty good. I applied Roundup to every plant I could find that resembled poison oak or poison ivy. I used it to kill a young magnolia and a bunch of small live oaks. I also took a bag of Amdro fire ant granules and nuked our mounds. I bush-hogged a big percentage of the big pasture. I also cleared a lot more oak branches away and put them on the burn pile, which was still smoldering from yesterday. I put several gallons of water on the pile to keep it from flaring up again. I ordered a new garbage disposal for a tenant. I ordered myself another Carhartt jacket, in a lighter weight than the one I already have. I need something I can work in, when the weather is between 40 and 60 degrees. On top of all that, I took my dad to Tractor Supply and made sure he had a good lightweight jacket of his own. It’s going to be 39 degrees here tonight.

I’m not sure if we have poison oak and poison ivy or not, but I found a bunch of plants that look a whole lot like the pictures on the Internet. I had to stop clearing hurricane debris because of them. I read up on poison ivy to make sure I didn’t expose myself to it.

I read something reassuring: you don’t get poison ivy just from touching it lightly. The contact has to be sufficient to get urushiol, the poisonous compound in poison ivy, on you. The best way to get it is to break something so the juice comes out.

Anyway, I am being very judicious about what I touch when I move debris, and I use the tractor’s forks by themselves when I can. In the areas where I sprayed Roundup, I plan to leave things alone. Maybe I can go back in when the plants have had time to die and rot. You can’t burn them, and you can’t handle them when they’re dead, because the urushiol takes years to break down. I figure rot is the easiest solution.

The Internet says one of the best ways to get a rash is to get urushiol on your tools or gloves and then touch them later, so I am trying very hard to keep my gloves away from my eyes and nose.

I don’t know how strongly I react to poison ivy, but I am not in a hurry to find out. Mangoes contain urushiol, and some people can’t go near them. Supposedly, there is urushiol in mango skin. I’ve skinned a zillion mangoes, and they never bothered me. But I am not anxious to be my own guinea pig in an experiment that causes a horrible rash that lasts two weeks.

I suppose I got enough done today.

My big problem these days isn’t getting things done. It’s getting to bed on time. I hate to go to bed. I enjoy the things I do so much, I don’t want to quit. When I know it’s time to quit, I linger and procrastinate. I wish I could go out and cut some downed trees right now.

The lifestyle here suits me perfectly. I love the work clothes; Carhartt and Danner should pay me to endorse them. I have come to feel nervous when I’m not wearing a ball cap; if I find myself leaving the house without my Tractor Supply cap, I go back in and look for it. I love the tools. Everyone should have a tractor with a front end loader. I didn’t realize how incomplete I was without one. A man with a good-sized tractor is a superhero. Lift a compressor? No problem. Pull a tree down? Hold my beer and watch.

My parents should never have left Kentucky. Being a Southerner is what it’s all about. It’s just better. Period. No wonder so many people want Confederate flags. What we have is great, and what other symbol do we have to celebrate it? Maybe a flag with Colonel Sanders’ face on it. Or the flag of Jesusland.

It may sound weird that I enjoy life this much when I’m so solitary, but it doesn’t bother me at all.

It’s late. Time to knock off.

I’ll try to take more photos in the future. It’s inconvenient to take my gloves off, but I’ll work on it.

Sawing Away at Life’s Problems

Today I got to work on my tree situation. Areas of the farm that used to be inaccessible because of standing water and mosquitoes are open for business, so I took my pole saw and tractor and made some excursions.

Two oaks by the highway to my east were giving me problems. They both snapped about 25 feet from the ground.

One tree had several major branches, and only one branch snapped. That left a tree maybe fifty feet tall, with a torn place halfway up. The part of the tree above the place where the branch tore out appears to be resting in a crotch between two branches of a taller tree. I think the place where the branch tore out is too weak to hold the remaining branch up for long. If it comes out, it could conceivably fall on the highway, which could be very bad. The broken part was lying on my fence, threatening to break it.

The other tree only had one main trunk, and that trunk snapped. It didn’t detach at the break. It was hanging down onto my fence. I would guess the broken part was 25 feet long and weighed several hundred pounds. It was not in danger of hitting the highway, but I wanted it off my fence before it ruined it.

I considered calling a tree service to cut both trees. Tree surgeons call objects that threaten to fall when you cut trees “widowmakers,” and I was dealing with three of them: the snapped-off branches plus the branch with the weakened support. I was afraid that if I tried to cut them, they would find ways to swing toward me and kill me, which was not the outcome I wanted. I thought I had finally found tree problems I could not fix.

I decided to see what I could do. I took the tractor and backed it up to the broken tree that only had one trunk. I cut off as much of the ground side of the broken bit as I could. I put a tow strap on the end of it and took off with the tractor. The broken part came loose at the top and slid down quite a bit, and I was able to cut it up with the pole saw, until nothing was left on my side of the fence except for cut-up wood. I still had maybe 12 feet of trunk outside the fence, but it’s not going to hurt anything. No one walks out there in the weeds. I can take my time dealing with it.

I was able to nibble away at the fallen part of the other tree until nothing big remained inside the fence. When I cut it free from the fence, it swung toward the road, but it wasn’t long enough to go anywhere near it, so it ended up leaning on the tree’s trunk. Now I can put a strap on it, yank it down so it lies on its side, and either cut it up or just leave it for the county.

The top of that tree is something I can’t handle. It’s way up there. The tree people may need a bucket that goes up 40 feet to get to the parts they need to cut. I know when to quit. But I think I did myself a big favor by getting the broken part off the fence. Instead of telling them to deal with the whole tree, I can have them cut off the scary part way above the ground. That’s a smaller job, and it should be cheaper.

I would rather pay $500 than $2000. It’s worth it to reduce the work I leave to paid help.

I also have a widowmaker in my front yard. It appeared as though by magic a few days ago. I would say the break is about 40 feet up. It’s the main trunk of a tall, straight tree. The broken part is maybe 15 feet long, and it’s heavy. It’s just hanging there. I keep hoping it will fall by itself. If I could get a rope on the low end, I could pull it down with the tractor, but it’s way up in the air. That distance may end up costing me hundreds of dollars. If I could get the broken part down, I could handle the rest of the job and not pay a dime. There ought to be a safe way to do it. Surely someone has invented some kind of grappling hook for grabbing trees. If it cost me a hundred bucks, it would be a bargain.

I need something I can attach while standing to the side of the tree. If I’m under it, and I accidentally bring the widowmaker down early, I’ll be in trouble.

Tomorrow I will have to call the tree people and see what they can do for me. I can’t just sit around and see where these things fall. The one by the highway has to be fixed ASAP. I can wait longer to deal with the one in the yard, but it would be awkward if someone were crushed to death before I arrived at a solution.

After I did what I could with these two trees, I took the pole saw deeper into the property and started working on some other trees. In about an hour, I did an amazing amount of work. The pole saw allowed me to cut dangerous branches and trunks up to nine inches thick, without risking my life. It’s one of the best tools I’ve ever seen. I felled a rotten oak with it and bucked it so I could move it off a dirt road. I cut major limbs off a fairly large downed oak and fixed it so it was no longer applying pressure to the trunk of a young maple I want to keep. I had another oak that had snapped maybe 15 feet up, and the place where it had snapped was still hung up. I cut away at the grounded end until the part that was suspended crashed down to the ground. Now I can buck it and move it.

I also slaughtered every small live oak I could see. I hate those things. I will not let them reach maturity. I’m making room for maples and pecans to fill. From now on, I plan to kill every oak sapling I see, unless I can think of a good reason to let it live.

The pole saw is actually more useful than my 20″ chainsaw.

I am growing disenchanted with the raw woods I loved at first. Woods down here are buggy. They’re weedy. They’re full of spider webs with 3-inch spiders suspended at face level. They contain a lot of undesirable species, like live oaks. Now that Irma has knocked over a lot of my big trees, I’m thinking I should give up on the idea of having a wilderness area and try to create some tamed woods. I can get rid of the bad trees and weeds and plant some better ones. Instead of having thick woods that look beaten up, I can have thinner woods that have been put in some kind of order, with more grassy areas. I can put bamboo around the perimeter to restore my privacy.

If I can get a bamboo wall to work, I can live without the woods. The main purpose of the woods is to provide seclusion. A 20-foot-high wall of bamboo with no breaks will do a better job of providing seclusion than a bunch of stringy oaks that fall over every time it rains. It would actually be really neat. And if a tree falls on a bamboo hedge, no problem. Bamboo grows back very quickly.

A lot of people have thick, ugly hedges here to shut out the world. They look pretty bad. Bamboo is pretty. It looks elegant. Remember Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? I have to find out how hardy it is, though. If bugs eat it, there is no point in trying.

I don’t know what I’m doing, but I feel like I’m headed toward a solution.

I’ll try to post more photos. This stuff can be pretty dull when it’s all text.

John Deere Manuals are Full of Little Jokes

Yesterday I really screwed up. I tried to do the responsible thing, reading a machinery manual instead of doing things however seemed right at the time. I should have known better!

I have a John Deere 430 garden tractor with a mower deck. I don’t know why it’s called a deck. It’s a big flat attachment that connects to the underside of the tractor. You can’t stand on it, like a ship’s deck or the deck behind your house. In any case, it probably weighs over 200 pounds, and it has three blades on it. Once in a while, the blades have to be sharpened.

My yard is bahia grass. This is a somewhat disappointing, very tall grass which a friend of mine has compared to leather. It’s very tough. When I first arrived here, I started using the mower, and it seemed like it was pushing the grass over on its side and tearing some of it. It did not appear to be cutting very well. I read somewhere that bahia grass requires very sharp blades, so I resolved to figure out how to sharpen mine. Also, I hit a stump or an exposed rock the first time I mowed, and I felt like I needed to see what it had done to the deck. A big spark shot across the yard when I hit the obstruction, and I assumed that was a bad thing.

The previous owner said he used ramps to lift the mower so he could work on it. That seemed like a bad idea, so I looked at the manual. I was aware that farm machinery manuals tend to be highly optimistic (i.e. full of it) concerning the difficulty of servicing equipment, but I decided to take a chance. The manual said you pull some pins, turn a lever, disconnect the PTO driveshaft, turn the wheels, remove one wheel and slide the deck out. Child’s play!

Yeah.

My first bad move was to put the tractor on grass. I was going to have to flip the deck over once I got it out, and I did not want to do that on concrete. I did not consider the immense difficulty of moving a heavy item on three smallish wheels on soft dirt. But before I get to that, I will talk about the other problems.

First, there is a bizarre assembly with two arms on it, attached to the front of the tractor. The arms attach to the deck from the front. You have to push a pin and pull a lever to make the front of the attachment drop out. No problem! I tried to push the pin. It was frozen. I banged on it with a punch. When I finally got it moving, it bounced. It was a spring-loaded pin with a detent you have to activate to hold it in the out position, and the detent doesn’t work, so it keeps popping back into the hole, preventing the lever from turning.

When I mastered that, I found that the lever did not want to turn. The lever turns a rod with two circular flanges on it, and the flanges fit between two flat plates. The engineers in Japan apparently decided it was important to have tremendous friction between the plates and the outsides of the flanges, so they made them with an interference fit. Picture an axle with two wheels (the flanges), turned by a lever on the hub of one wheel. Then picture two brick walls, pressed up against the wheels from outside.

Turning the lever was impossible, until I got out my 3-foot pipe wrench. What about a breaker bar? Well, the lever points downward when you get it rotated, so a breaker bar would be pointed toward the center of the earth. In order to avoid obstruction, the bar would have to be about an inch and a half long, defeating the purpose of increasing leverage.

I got the attachment to fall, and then I pried out the spring-loaded J-pins that held the arms onto the deck. They’re supposed to move freely. Ha.

I got all the other pins out, and then I had to remove the driveshaft from the PTO. The driveshaft telescopes “freely” (again, ha), and there is a collar on the front end that compresses some ball detents to keep it in place. The collar moves…freely. Unless it’s impacted with thick, black, greasy dust from mowing. I had to work it and work it. I pulled the deck backward and forward by hand. I moved the tractor up and back. Finally, the coupling fell off the PTO.

When I had everything loose, I pulled the deck sideways in the soft dirt, which was not easy at all, and then the little gearbox in the middle of the deck hit the inside of the frame of the tractor.

To get this stupid thing out, you have to jack the tractor up maybe two inches. This is not in the manual. John Deere’s little joke.

No problem. I had a farm jack.

I put the farm jack on the right front axle and started raising the tractor. As I raised it, the jack leaned closer and closer to the cowling. Great. It was going to gouge the crap out of it. I found a towel and shoved it in there and continued jacking.

Eventually, I got the deck to slide out, and then I decided to lower the tractor for safety reasons. It would not budge. It was perfectly happy to go up. Down was not an option.

I went to the shop PC and got on the web. Guess what? Farm jacks freeze up so they can only be raised. There are two sprung pins in the mechanism, and whenever you use your farm jack, you’re supposed to lube the snot out of them before you start. Otherwise, you can end up with a heavy load suspended in the air, with no way to get it down.

I used WD-40 and lithium grease (because WD-40 evaporates), and I got the jack to work.

I have a policy of never lifting anything heavy. First of all, lifting is work. Apart from that, it’s a great way to ruin your old age. One lift can screw up up for life. Unfortunately, I had no help, so I picked up the front of the deck and rolled it on its back. I will not be doing that next time. If it had been fifteen pounds heavier, I don’t know if I could have done it.

The blades were held on by three huge hex bolts. I tried a wrench, but they were on there pretty good, and it was just about impossible to hold the blades still. When I turned one bolt, all three blades moved. I got out my impact wrench and fired up the small compressor, and thanks be to God, the bolts came right out.

The blades didn’t look bad at all. I saw a John Deere manual online, and it said the cutting edge was supposed to be a flat surface 0.4 mm wide. In other words, much duller than a butter knife. I have no idea why that would be desirable. I would guess that the unsharpened blades were considerably sharper than that when I took them off. I wasn’t having it. I went to my small belt grinder and created edges that were sharp enough to slice bologna. It’s not easy to put a really good edge on steel that thick. I was satisfied. I went through the horror of disassembling and detaching the deck, backward, and after maybe 3 hours of work, total, I had a tractor ready to mow.

Supposedly, you should use a torque wrench to put mower blades back on. Yeah, sure. Thanks for that great tip. I’m all over it.

I used the impact wrench.

I still have a lot of sticks and twigs in my enormous yard because of Hurricane Irma. I asked some forum people if I needed a landscape rake, and one said I should just run over the twigs with the mower. I decided to take his advice. Now I know how to fix blades, so I don’t care what happens to them. I ran right over everything I saw, up to 3/4″ in thickness. Whatever the blades hit, they dealt with. Good enough.

Hmm…the Internet says this deck weighs 300 pounds. Yeah, that feels about right.

There was one bright spot in my ordeal. The smiley spider from my front door showed up to help. I am told his name is Larry. Not sure how helpful he was, but it was good to know he was in my corner.

Larry says I should get a smiley tattoo to match his own, but for the moment I have decided to pass.

Here, Even the Bugs Smile

Today is a great day. I got the road to the south gate cleared, so now I can start moving wood to the side of the highway.

But first, a picture of the coolest spider I’ve ever seen.

I asked friends if this was a spider or a transformer. One says it’s a decepticon. My question: does it know it has a big smile painted on its butt? Is this normal, or is it a spider holiday? Maybe it’s spider Mardi Gras or Carnaval, and this spider is drunk.

To get back to the road, two big oaks fell across it, and to make matters worse, one was on top of the other. The other day I got them mostly subdued, and then my chainsaw ran out of gas. I left one trunk lying across the road, with two plastic wedges stuck in it. Today I went back and finished cutting that trunk, leaving me with a piece maybe eight feet long, lying directly on the road. I used the timberjack to cut that in three pieces, I rolled them out of the way, and the biggest obstacle on the road was tamed. After that I moved down the road and moved a few small trees that were in the way.

This is sweet. Next time I fire the tractor up, I should be able to use it to move big logs out to the highway, and once they’re there, they’re the county’s problem.

I’ll still have to burn a lot of crap, but burning two-foot-thick logs will no longer be part of the job.

In other news, my second pair of work boots arrived. I was considering getting a shorter pair of Danner Vicious boots, but curiosity overcame me, and I decided to try some American-made Keen Braddock boots. Keen is famous for its weight-saving asymmetrical steel toe, which puts more metal over the bigger toes.

The boots seem fine, but I think Danners are more comfortable. We’ll see what happens. People say disparaging things about the Chinese Keens, but these are American, so I have hope.

I needed shorter boots. The tall ones are heavy. They’re great with shorts, because they cover my ankles, but long boots aren’t necessary with jeans.

These boots have a true steel toe, unlike the Danners, which have some sort of hard plastic or something. A chainsaw ought to bounce off steel pretty good.

I came close to rolling a huge log onto my foot today, so I feel smug about choosing not to wear my plain-toe boots.

That’s it for today. Hope you’re enjoying life as much as I am.

Tree Removal Continues

Today we had another day of fall-like weather. It was in the mid-70’s, with little sun. I was pretty happy about that, because I have about 5 years’ worth of tree removal work ahead of me, and doing it in 90-degree heat is not much fun.

I have two big oaks that fell as one. They are pointing in the same direction, and one is (was) on top of the other. Cutting them up is an intimidating job. The trunk of the upper oak was above shoulder height, so that ruled out a typical chainsaw cut. You don’t use a chainsaw for cuts that high, because if it swings down, it will have a lot of momentum, and it can hit your legs. Worse, you could Jennerize yourself.

Another problem: cutting the upper trunk near the base would cause it to fall on the lower trunk, and from there, who knows where it would bounce?

I solved the problem using my fun new technique: the bore cut. You shove the chainsaw through the middle of the tree, leaving “straps” above and below the tunnel. I didn’t have to lift the saw that high to do this.

When you cut a tree, you end up with one side in tension and one side in compression. For example, imagine a horizontal log. The weight pulls on the top fibers and tries to push the bottom ones together. If you cut too far on the compression side, the tree will close on your saw, and then you get to have fun trying to extract it. This has happened to me several times in spite of my efforts to avoid it. Sometimes trees surprise you.

I kept cutting the upper tree until the trunk was suspended in space. That put tension on the top and compression on the bottom, down by the base. I cut up into the tree from the bottom, making a kerf maybe five inches deep. Then I pounded two plastic wedges into it. Wedges hold kerfs open while you work. You don’t want metal wedges for this purpose. You use plastic, because every so often, you’re going to hit a wedge with your saw.

I made a bore cut through the tree, above the kerf with the wedges, separated from the kerf by material intended to form a hinge. I left a little strap up at the top to hold the tree up while I switched saws. I got my pole saw, stood at a relatively safe distance, and cut into the strap. The trunk fell straight down, and I was in business.

This method, with variations, works on all sorts of stressed trees.

I’ve been studying the crap out of tree-cutting methods on Youtube, because I don’t want to be crushed or mutilated any more than is necessary. If you’re using a chainsaw, and you haven’t studied, well, people like you make a lot of money for hospitals.

I’m not the perfect example of chainsaw safety. I don’t have chaps, and I don’t wear a face shield. But I’m considerably better off than a guy who thinks testosterone is a good substitute for brains.

The timberjack I bought is a huge help. I can take a log that weighs hundreds of pounds and flip it over with one end suspended in the air, without exerting myself at all. Green live oak is extremely heavy. It’s so heavy, one piece I cut came close to straining the tractor’s front end loader. With the timberjack, I can cut everything in small pieces I can move.

I have to get these two oaks moved, because they have been blocking the dirt road to my east gate. I need to use that gate to move logs to the swale by the highway, where the county will pick them up for nothing. Today I got to the point where both oaks were cut in pieces. My big saw ran out of gas while I was finishing up the lower log, so I left my wedges in the log and called it a day.

Thanks to the weather, I can wear long pants while I work. My legs aren’t getting cut any more. I’m not bleeding at all. That’s a nice change.

I got myself two probationary pairs of Carhartt jeans, because the local stores had a crappy selection of overalls (my first choice). The jeans are great. I have Carhartt work pants, but they’re too nice for cutting trees, and they have to be ironed. Jeans are more practical. I have a pair of overalls on the way via Amazon, and if they work out, I’ll get more.

Overalls should be ideal for this kind of work. Coveralls would be better if the weather were cooler. Bark scrapes bare arms up pretty good. But overalls will do. I need something that permits freedom of movement and has lots of pockets. Naturally, I ordered Carhartt. Their other products are so good, the overalls must be good, too.

I have owned many pairs of Levi’s in my life, but now I look down on them. They have a number of problems. First, the cotton is cheap and weak. It’s not made to last. It’s made to wear out early so little girls will have cute rips that expose their knees. Second, Levi’s don’t sit at the waist. They sit below the waist. Your waist is about at the level of your belly button. Every time you bend, Levi’s cut into you because of the unfortunate location of the belt line. Final thing, Levi’s don’t have a lot of pockets.

Carhartt stuff is not made to look good on little girls. It’s made to last. If it doesn’t last, the company goes bust. The quality is much better than Levi’s, and the price is lower. That’s how I see it.

I decided to order a second pair of boots. I can’t stop myself. My Danner Vicious boots are wonderful, but when I’m wearing long pants, I don’t need 8″ boots. I can get by with shorter ones, which are lighter. I decided to try a pair of Keens. Some Keen boots are made in China, and it looks like they aren’t the ones you should get. I ordered some American jobs. We’ll see how they work out.

I never buy Timberlands. I’ve had two pairs of Timberland boots, and they were both disappointing. They’re fine for rappers, I guess. If all you do is rap and stand in police lineups, you don’t need comfortable boots that last.

The Danners and the Keens are waterproof and have crushproof toes. If I roll a 400-pound log onto my foot, I want something other than leather between me and the wood.

I can’t wait to start dumping logs by the road. Burning them is helpful, but it will take me the rest of my life to burn all the wood I’m discarding.

I think the farm is in good enough shape to resume cattle raising. I have to come up with some kind of agricultural operation unless I want to pay serious property tax, and this place is already set up for cattle. I don’t have a lot of interest in raising cattle, but you go with what works. I am told I can get a tax reduction with two tiny dwarf Brahmas. That should be easy.

Question: do people eat dwarf cattle? I could actually see the appeal in little rib eyes. A rib eye is no good at all unless it’s at least 1-1/2″ thick, but a steak like that weighs 2 pounds, which is a lot. Maybe a dwarf rib eye would be more practical.

I believe that customarily, people here put useless animals on their land and do nothing worthwhile with them. It would be perfectly okay to buy two tiny steers and let them live here until they die of old age. But it seems weird.

Amanda keeps telling me goats are the livestock from hell, but it would be very nice to have a couple to eat weeds.

I’ll try to put up some photos. I’m pretty pooped. Even though it was cool today, I drank about 72 ounces of beverages when I was done working (within a period of a few minutes), and I have yet to see the customary evidence of overcoming dehydration.

I hate Miami more than I can say, and I pity everyone who lives there, although I would rather see most of them live there than here. This place is wonderful.

I will work on the photos now. If you see a tiny orange dot on top of the lower trunk in the first photo, that’s my big 60-cc saw. Tells you how big the tree is.

There is a Cure for Miami

I am enjoying Ocala to the point where I almost wonder if something is wrong with me.

When I moved here, the movers screwed up badly. My dad insisted on going for a drive and got lost on the day of the move. My dad overdosed on pills he was supposed to let me measure out for him, and he ended up in the hospital for several days. Hurricane Irma hit me with tropical storm winds and knocked over lots of big trees on the farm. The power went out. I had to bathe in buckets of pool water. The main AC unit in the house died, and we had to fork out $6800. A tenant broke a lease in Miami, and we had to pay $5000 to fix the apartment. Hurricane Irma messed up a yacht I really needed to sell.

Plus it was ungodly hot during the day, and the mosquitoes were so big and numerous they practically lifted me off the ground when I went outside.

It was a bad start.

Now I have a lot of my stuff here. I made a trip to Miami, and a friend also went down and brought things back. The boat sold for more than I expected. I have three chain saws, and I’ve learned how to move a lot of wood in a hurry. The air is drying up, and the weather is cooler. The bugs are going away.

Finally I can enjoy this place.

When you join a moronic street gang, they “jump you in” and “jump you out.” That means they give you a beating when you join, and if you leave, you get another beating. Satan seems to work the same way. Simply moving back to Miami in 1997 was a beating. This year I left again, and the God of Losers came at me again. That’s how I see it.

Whatever. The suffering I endured doesn’t really compare to the eternal roasting my enemy is going to get.

Today I went out to the shop to start my day of hurricane mess recovery, and I felt the cool breeze hit me as I stood on the porch (My shop has a porch!) and opened the door. A crazy wave of pleasure hit me. I was overcome. It’s gross and trite to compare everyday pleasures to sex, but that’s what I thought of. Something went through me and left me a little dizzy.

Today I lit up the burn pile again. I also sharpened the pole saw and made my way into the middle of my woods. I have a bunch of big downed trees in there. I’ve been reluctant to take them on because of the bugs, heat, and standing water. Today was the right day.

I found out a neighbor had cleared away 90% of a big oak that had fallen on a fence. That was nice. I don’t have access to the DMZ between our fences, so I was dreading looking him up and asking how I could get in. Evidently he did not consider me accountable for my tree’s behavior. All I have to deal with is the stump.

I found several trees which fell near each other. Some were on top of each other. I took out the pole saw and got to work. I put in around 3 hours. I murdered those trees. Because the pole saw is so safe to use, and because it can reach things several feet away and things that are over my head, I had access to all sorts of branches that would have been a problem for a chain saw. I cut the crap out of the trees and made a giant pile of limbs and logs.

I had my trusty timberjack with me. What a great tool. It makes short work of heavy logs I could not have dealt with a week ago. They used to be a real pain. Now they’re a joke.

Within a week or two, I should have a clear path to the gate on the highway. Once that happens, I’ll be able to use the tractor to take wood out through the gate and dump it for the county to pick up. I won’t have to burn it!

I’m sad that I lost trees, but just about all of them were worthless oaks. I can plant pecans or something.

Maybe I should do something with that lot. I don’t know how many desirable trees are on it. I like the woods, but maybe I should consider a plan with fewer trees and more grass. Maybe there are pecans and other trees there that I could assist by cutting oaks, and then I could thin out the brush and put in grass.

I do not like seeing the neighbors. I’ve read that bamboo will grow up and form a thick hedge in a year or two. Maybe I should plant a couple hundred feet along the fence line. Bamboo looks really nice, and on top of that, the canes are useful for certain things.

While I was hacking away at a tree, I hit something and knocked the chain off the pole saw bar. It was time to quit anyway, so I headed back to the shop. I had two bottles of cold water from the Rockstar fridge, a Pellegrino orange soda, and an egg cream. It’s amazing how much water you sweat out while using the saws. I sat in one of the shop’s entrances in a plastic Adirondack chair, facing the woods, enjoying my beverages. The breeze blew through the shop and kept me cool. Too much. I loved it.

I goofed off. I texted and called friends. The only thing missing was a smoker with a few ribs in it.

I was so right about this place. That tells me the idea came from God. When I have my trees cleaned up and my bamboo installed, I’ll be the big daddy king of all eccentric hermits.

Some day this will be a place for prayer meetings and God knows what else. Until then I’ll enjoy myself getting it ready.

I just can’t hate Miami enough.

Sorry for not taking photos. I was too engrossed. Maybe next time.

Maybe Miami was Just a Bad Dream

Ocala is just too much.

Today I finished looking after my dad’s business, and I put my boots on and headed for the workshop. I sharpened up Big Bad Mama, the 20″ Echo chainsaw, and I put it in the E-Z-GO along with my new Woodchuck timberjack. I cruised over to the big live oak that tried to crush my chicken house, and I went to work sawing it up.

Before I got to the oak, I went off my property and grabbed a gigantic ball of live oak limbs and Spanish moss from my neighbor’s swale and carted it to my burn pile. Good neighbors don’t leave hurricane junk on each other’s swales. I scooped it up with the tractor forks and dumped it on the pile.

I cut little limbs and moved them until I had access to the bigger bits of the tree, and then I went at it. I cut the tree into manageable pieces, and then I used the tractor and a strap to yank it around into a position where I could buck the last big branch.

The timberjack is wonderful. You can grab a hundred-pound limb with it and yank it into cutting position with about as much effort as it takes to flip a pancake. I had no problem cutting big limbs up with it.

The tree had one huge limb which could be considered the trunk. Hard to say. After I moved things around with the tractor, that limb was off the ground. Using my brain, I put the tractor forks under it and then cut it off. It fell on the forks. I didn’t have to roll it onto them. I ran it over to the burn pile and dumped it on.

Because I use the right tools, I got a whole lot of work done in a short time. It was a pleasure. Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll go out and hit the pile with my plumber’s torch, and it will go up like Mt. Saint Helens.

When I was done, I moved everything back to the shop, got a chair, and drank several beverages, ending with a lovely Sierra Nevada Torpedo. Occasionally I drink beer to blow out kidney stones.

The air was cool. The bugs were not biting. It was quiet. No one was yammering at me in a foreign language. Exquisite.

This place gets better and better. Why didn’t I move 20 years ago? Oh, right. I was out of God’s will. I would not have fit in.

I’m in the workshop now. A nice breeze is blowing through. I hate to leave.

I’ll post a few photos.

Man, I hate Miami.

FYI, my dad’s boat is sold, and the money is in the checking account. A major headache, GONE!

I think I’ll buy some pie.

Thank You Again, God

They say the two happiest days in a boat owner’s life are the day he buys and the day he sells. That’s misleading. Selling is WAY better.

The sale of my dad’s boat closed today. That means it’s not my responsibility any more. I will never have to pay for another repair. I will never have to worry about it sinking. It’s gone! Gone! Gone!

The boat was fun. We cruised to Bimini, Eleuthera, Chub Cay, and Key West, among other places. It’s a real privilege to putt by the tourists on a huge cruise ship in Nassau Harbor and watch them wave at you and know they all wish they were you. It’s fun to catch dolphin in the Tongue of the Ocean and tuna off Harbour Island. But my dad is 85 and has no business on a dock, let alone a boat, and there was no possibility that we would use it again.

Boat culture is kind of sleazy anyway. It’s all about getting drunk and fornicating, to be quite honest. You take your boat to the Bahamas, you get a slip, you fish your heart out all day, and then you go to the bar, get drunk, and hope you get lucky. Yacht people are as shallow as ice trays, and nothing they talk about or think about has any real importance. None of it has any relationship to the kingdom of God. If you want to watch fat, drunk lawyers make fools of themselves in Bahamian bars, get a boat.

I don’t recall seeing a lot of doctors over there. But then doctors are not interested in fun. Just money.

What I take away from the boat is that I know how to run one and maintain one. If I ever have to jump on a 60-foot diesel yacht and go to Jamaica, I won’t need any instructions. Just GPS and lots of bottled water, Gatorade, and peanut butter M&M’s.

My dad’s boat was not 60 feet long. It was a 46-footer. But it’s the same thing.

I was starting to think I’d never get rid of that boat. Now I can put it behind me and start thinking I’ll never get rid of my dad’s rental house or the condo we want to dump.

I got rid of the boat, and I also renewed my concealed carry permit. If you’re a Florida person, I learned things that may help you. If you renew your permit by mail, it takes 8-10 weeks. They send you the application about 150 days before the time is up, but if you’re like me, you forget. This weekend I learned you can get your permit renewed at your county’s tax collector office, and they give the new card to you immediately.

I drove to the government building complex. It’s hilarious. Perfect for Ocala. It’s a bunch of brick buildings spread out over maybe 30 acres. It almost looks like a summer camp. I went in the biggest building and saw a gigantic line. I could not complain. I deserved it. But I asked the official greeter, and she said I had to follow some signs and go to another part of the building.

After some twists and turns, I came to a long row of windows and a line consisting of…ONE person. I was at a window in about a minute and a half. The lady who took my photo and did the paperwork could not have been nicer. How can that be? This is the same place where you get your driver’s license. They’re supposed to be rude and condescending, as if everyone admires and looks up to people who do repetitive government jobs.

It was a beautiful experience. I’m sure it’s not as much fun in Miami, though. Down there the tag agencies are staffed by huge, surly women in tights, who barely speak English.

When I finished my other jobs, I decided to look into fixing the bush hog. It didn’t cut too well. Someone on a website said bush hog blades don’t have to be sharp. The idea was that they moved so fast, sheer speed made the blades cut. That turned out to be a fantasy. You have to sharpen bush hog blades, or they just push the grass over.

My bush hog has blades held on by 1-5/8″ nuts. I do not have a 1-5/8″ socket. What to do? I saw someone on Youtube sharpening blades that were still attached, using an angle grinder. Couldn’t hurt to try!

I propped the end of the machine on a jackstand, and I got under there and sharpened the blades. Then I mowed. It’s considerably better. If I got them truly sharp, it would mow like crazy. I think the answer is to get the correct socket and use my bench grinder.

While I was mowing, a gigantic wasp smacked into the bill of my hat. At least I thought it was a wasp. A fraction of a second later I realized it was a spider. It was so big, it felt like someone hit me with a crabapple. Luckily it was not any happier about the situation than I was, and it scrambled off of me before I could have a complete mental breakdown.

I also got my hair cut. I love my barber. His shop has about five American flags out front, along with a big yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag in the center. I don’t even care how my hair looks. That’s where I’m going from now on.

On top of all that, I managed to shift my schedule so I’m getting up at 6:30. This is very important, because I pray a lot. By moving back to 6:30, I make it possible for me to be fed and showered by 9:00. I don’t lose as much of the morning. Nice.

Things are getting better.

Ocala still rocks. Miami is still a humongous butt boil. Every day, I’m happier about the move.

Tomorrow I’m thinking I might sharpen my chainsaws. Can life get any better than that? I may follow up with some target shooting.

I’ll try to post more photos. I’m too busy having fun to stop and take the phone out.

Moving North, to the South

I thought today would be the day I was finally free of my dad’s boat. Wrong! It’s Columbus Day. Bank employees are not working. The brokerage can’t have the money wired today. I don’t know if title can pass before the money moves, but the brokerage appears to think it can’t. So I’m on the hook for another 19 hours or so.

In the meantime, I have accomplished some stuff here on the farm. I did some more work on the stupendous live oak that fell on my chicken house, I got a safety chain reattached to the bush hog, I bush-hogged part of the pasture, and I threw a whole lot of wood on the burn pile.

I assume the purpose of safety chains is to keep the bush hog attached in case the three-point hitch fails. I removed one chain because I needed to attach a strap to the pin the chain attaches to. I was pulling a tree down. After I got it down, the chain wouldn’t attach. Suddenly it was shorter.

It turned out the chain had done something physically impossible. It’s too boring to describe, but a chain link moved through an opening it was too small to fit through. No idea how it happened. I adjusted it and got the chain attached.

I’m sick of the piles of dead limbs all over the farm, and I’m tired of their huge masses of brown leaves. I would guess I got a thousand pounds of this stuff onto the pile today. As I expected, the pile was still burning from yesterday, so once I got a couple of forkloads on it, it started flaming up.

In the past, I have been unwilling to put wood on a live fire, because I didn’t want to melt the tractor. What if it stalled by the pile? I’d be in trouble. Now I’ve decided I don’t care. I have to get rid of this wood, and the odds that the tractor will stall and be unwilling to start right when I’m next to the pile are very low.

Like the odds that a hurricane will hit Miami one month after you list a yacht for sale.

Anyway, things go much, much faster if you’re willing to shovel wood on a live fire. You can do three days’ worth of burning in an afternoon.

I’m not sure I’m mowing correctly. The bush hog does not give me nice short grass. It seems to knock the grass over and tear some of the top off of it. This is a lot better than nothing, but it’s not what I want. My pasture is full of bahia grass, which is very tough, and it doesn’t seem to want to yield to the bush hog. I have the RPM’s at the right level, and I lower the bush hog as much as I can. I don’t know what else to do.

I do not like Columbus Day, and it’s not for the usual reasons. It’s not because Columbus was a white man who wasn’t gay and had a holiday named after him. I hate Columbus Day because every year, people in Miami use it as an excuse to cruise around the bay, drunk, stoned, and completely naked, performing sex acts in public.

Miami now has two disgusting holidays. The other is Memorial Day Weekend, which is now part of Urban Beach Week. Sleazy rappers descend on South Beach and scare the crap out of the locals, and they don’t spend money. They bring their own weed and cheap liquor, they pack ten people to a hotel room, and they don’t go to expensive clubs and restaurants. They shoot at each other a lot, so it’s always a good week for the TV news people.

Wait! I’m not in Miami! I have to keep that in mind. I’m on my own farm, with tractors and a shooting berm.

Whew.

Urban Beach Week is funny to watch (if you don’t mind watching a city sicken and die) because it exposes liberal hypocrisy. South Beach is a gay stronghold, and gays take great pride in their far-left leanings. Gays love crowing about the way they support minorities. Now they are watching their Shangri-La disintegrate due to an influx of two-bit gangsters, most of whom are black. There’s a lot of pressure to “fix” South Beach and bring back the days when it was all gays and Europeans, but how are socialist gays supposed to discuss the problem without being PC’d to death? They can’t. Local bigwigs made a sneaky effort to bring in a big air show to break the minority Memorial Day monopoly, and people saw right through it. Amusing.

The weather here got cool, and I was pretty excited, but then it got hot again. By the end of next week, we should have a return to normal October weather. Even with the heat, the sun is milder here than in Miami, and it cools off at night. It will probably be 80 degrees at 10 p.m. in Miami tonight.

I may have to go back to Miami at the end of the week. I sincerely hope not, but I knew when I moved up here that I would have to return from time to time. Visiting briefly is a whole lot better than returning to Miami after visiting some other place. You know it’s not permanent. When you re-enter Miami after visiting…anywhere…it’s like being returned to prison after a month on the run.

There is something seriously wrong with people who like Miami.

I don’t understand people who don’t like Ocala. It’s quiet. The people are wonderful. You can have land. You can have a tractor and a big workshop. You can speak English and be understood. There is good barbecue everywhere.

Some people can’t entertain themselves. They have to be able to go to bars. As if bars were exciting.

I can shoot here. I can use tools. I can ride motorcycles. I can enjoy the outdoors. To me, that’s too much entertainment to deal with.

The other day I saw a pickup truck here with a four-foot-wide Confederate flag flying from a pole in the bed. I thought that was neat. Years ago, I got rid of the only two items I had that had Confederate flags on them, because I don’t want people to think I support the Confederacy’s position on slavery, but I hate the hysteria and self-righteousness currently surrounding the flag. People who want one should be able to fly it. They’re not thinking about slavery. They’re thinking about how much they enjoy being Southerners. If you flew that flag in Miami, you would stand a pretty good chance of being run off the road and beaten. It’s neat that you can have that flag here and not have people take it the wrong way.

Being a Southerner is pretty cool. You get to shoot. You get to have tractors, golf carts, four-wheelers, and ATV’s. You get to drive to the mailbox instead of walking because it’s more fun. You get to be nice to people instead of going through life generating aggression displays like an angry lizard defending its territory. It’s understandable that people would be happy they’re from the South.

This place is great. Miami is a stinking abscess. That about covers it.

Plus Other Major Achievements

Today has been pretty good. I have had no major crises, and I got a couple of things done.

First, I managed to burn more hurricane wood today. When the weekend started, my burn pile was enormous. I had stopped adding to it because it was so big I was concerned about attracting the law. Yesterday I had an opportunity to light it, and I reduced the pile to a much smaller size.

Today I went out to add more wood to it. Amanda visited this weekend, and she ordered her sons to pile up the branches in my back and side yard. Today I scooped it up with the tractor and dumped it on the pile. As luck would have it, the pile was still smoldering from yesterday, and up it went.

You’re supposed to extinguish debris fires at night, but it’s not that easy to do it reliably. The burn survived an intense cloudburst yesterday, and that should tell you what I’m up against. From trying to light fires, I’ve learned how unlikely it is that a debris fire could spread around here, so I’m not worried.

Second thing: I repaired my Rockstar fridge.

In 2015, a tenant abandoned one of my dad’s warehouses, and we got his stuff. Most of it was garbage, but he left a hilarious mini-fridge with Rockstar Energy Drink logos all over it. I decided to hold onto it. Perfect man cave addition. A couple of weeks ago, a friend ferried it up from Miami, and I installed it in my workshop.

The fridge worked, but it made a noise like a constipated bear, and the little fan that was supposed to move the cold air around didn’t work. I ordered a new 12V fan off Ebay and waited for it to arrive.

If you have a Rockstar mini-fridge, you need to know that your crappy fan runs on 12 volts, and in order to replace it, you just remove the panel in the rear of the fridge. It comes off with four or five screws. You also have to remove one shelf support to get clearance to pull the panel out.

I cut the wires to the old fan as close to the fan as possible so I would not have to run the wires all the way back to the transformer in the top of the fridge. That would have been hard, because the manufacturer didn’t make this fridge to be disassembled easily. I put shrink wrap on the wires, connected them, soldered them, and shrunk the tubing. I reassembled the fridge, and it worked. Now I’m very happy.

I don’t know how much time this fridge has left. Maybe 20 years. Maybe a month. I know it’s running at the moment. That’s a victory. It doesn’t seem to be moaning as much as it was. The evaporator was covered with ice before I repaired the fan. I don’t know if that’s because the fan was dead, or if it’s something else. Anyway, I’ll check the ice tomorrow, while reaching for a cold, delicious Gatorade or ginger ale.

Forgot one other accomplishment. The other day I saw a reality TV guy named John Klump, giving a tip for clearing up cloudy headlight covers. He sprayed Off! on a headlight and rubbed it off with a paper towel. It cleared right up. I was amazed. The headlights on my truck have been looking sad for a while, and the compressor-driven buffing kit I bought didn’t work too well on them. I tried the Klump trick today, and it really worked. Astounding.

Off! has a nasty chemical called DEET in it, and DEET is famous for melting tents when you spray it inside them. I guess it melts headlight covers, too. Just enough to let you buff them with a paper towel. I don’t really know, but it works like crazy.

My headlights don’t look perfect, but they look much, much better. I suppose they could be perfected with more Off!, but I didn’t want to stand there all day, wiping them over and over.

I recommend NOT buying a headlight kit. I’m glad I have a buffer, because it’s useful for lots of things, but it worked very poorly on my headlights.

I hate to post news of these enormous feats and make everyone feel small, but I felt the world needed to know.

It’s wonderful to work in a garage where I can swing a cat without hitting a wall. I love this place.

Time for a beverage.

Manly Activities Bring Joy

It seems like there is nothing you can’t do with chainsaws, a tow strap, and a tractor.

I have been putting off tackling a particularly dangerous fallen oak. It snapped about 15 feet off the ground and fell into the crotch of another oak so it was suspended horizontally. A major branch extended about 30 degrees off the fallen oak, toward the ground. This made things worse, because the big branch was bent against the ground, storing up energy so it could spring loose and kill me or drop the main trunk on me when I cut it.

You can’t cut the main trunk on a tree like this, because there’s a good chance the fallen part will come down and crush your skull. You never fell a tree with a rotten or broken part above your head. I had to work on it from the top end.

I didn’t even consider cutting this tree until I had a pole saw. Most of it was above shoulder height, to put it mildly. You don’t use a chainsaw for jobs like that. A pole saw is okay for high cuts under certain circumstances, i.e., when the wood you cut off won’t fall on your head.

I had to cut off the top of the fallen oak, which extended past the crotch of the host tree, as I choose to call it. The top had branches going every which way, and some were bent against the ground. My hope was to snub it off at the host tree’s trunk so I could then cut the fallen oak on the other side of the trunk, allowing it to fall downward with the fallen tree’s trunk acting like a hinge.

Cutting the top of the fallen oak got difficult as I cut higher and higher. Eventually, I had to climb on a ladder to cut. By the way, do not buy a long Climbtek ladder like mine. They’re really heavy, and they can swing shut on your hands while you adjust them. They’re strong and versatile, but 99% of the time, you’ll be better off with a sliding extension ladder and a regular step ladder.

If you need the versatility, then I highly recommend Climbtek. This ladder can do almost anything. Just don’t complain about the weight.

You should never climb a ladder with a chainsaw, but a pole saw is different, because if you fall, you’ll land seven feet from the chain. That’s my theory, at least.

I trimmed the top of the fallen tree as much as I could, but as I went higher, I got to the point where I was cutting nearly straight over my head. The last piece I cut took a fall path about four feet from me in the horizontal direction, and that was close enough. Now what? I stared at it for a long time.

I remembered I had a tractor and a 30-foot strap. I had also trimmed a lot off the fallen oak’s big branch. I realized I could put the strap on the end of the branch and use the branch as a lever to twist the fallen oak and make it fall off its stump. I had to get on the ladder to attach the strap to the branch, right under the horizontal part of the tree. That made me wish I were wearing diapers, but nothing happened.

I attached the strap and started pulling with the tractor. I pulled and backed up and pulled and backed up and pulled. I didn’t want to pull too hard and store too much energy in the tree and strap. I didn’t want anything coming loose and flying my way. After two or three repetitions, the fallen oak tore off its stump and fell. This was one of the great moments of my life. I’m ashamed to say I faced the oak and made a gesture I’ve seen a lot of Italians make in movies.

The big branch was hanging in the air now, so I used the pole saw to buck it into little chunks. You’re not supposed to buck logs with pole saws, but I was too tired to walk and get a big saw. Took me two minutes.

Now the tree is utterly defeated. Tomorrow I can get the big mama saw out and buck it for removal to the burn pile or the side of the road. I’ll get to use my new timberjack!

“What’s a timberjack?”, you wonder. It’s an amazing tool for bucking logs. It has a hook like a peavey on it. It has two legs on the other side. You use the hook to roll logs over so the legs hold them up. This gives you clearance to cut the logs in pieces without sawing into the dirt.

Sawing into the dirt is fun, but it’s a bad idea. Like a lot of fun things.

I should post photos of the timberjack when I finish that tree.

As far as I know, I will be able to cut and move every tree on the property without professional help. It’s just a matter of nibbling away at the unsafe bits until you have something safe. The tractor is a phenomenal tool. I can move wood with it, and that’s obvious, but I can also yank trees around and make them safer to cut.

I spent about $1200 on saws, plus another three hundred or so on things like a hard hat, gloves, the timberjack, and wedges. That’s bad, but it’s a whole lot less than a bunch of slackers with a crane would charge. I’ll want to hire slackers if I ever want to fell big trees near the house, but I’m not shelling out 10 grand for them to move trees that are already on the ground, especially when I can burn them or shove them onto the right of way for nothing.

I spent some money, but I have something to show for it other than huge bills and a Wimp of the Year trophy. The tools will be waiting in the shop for the next crisis. On a farm, there will always be tree issues, so I had to get these things anyway. I may never again have to deal with a dozen or so trees that fell over simultaneously, but trees will fall from time to time, because THEY’RE ALL ROTTEN HERE. This place produces the scabbiest, most scrofulous oaks in the world. It’s amazing they allow the filthy things to grow, when they could plant pecans or something.

Speaking of Wimp of the Year trophies, this whole ordeal has me thinking about Satan’s successful attacks on American masculinity. We raise ladies of both sexes now. What has happened to our men? They wear makeup and tights. Half of them are insisting we pretend they’re women. Is masculinity really that repellant to men? Is it possible they actually find it distasteful?

I love man stuff. I love my Danner boots, my diesel pickup, my tractor, my welders, my machine tools, my guns, and my tractors. I love going out there in a $4.99 Tractor Supply hat and wreaking havoc. I love shooting. I used to love fishing until it became a giant burden. What’s with our fruity modern males? How can they not like these things?

I can’t understand little sissies who don’t like setting things on fire, blowing things up, or ripping things up with power tools. I’m pretty far from a man’s man (even though Acidman called me that), but I’m doing a lot better than a lot of guys I see these days. I still feel gay every time I put gel in my hair.

I’ve started wearing my Tractor Supply hat into restaurants. I didn’t see that coming. I feel strange leaving the house without it.

Amanda got me a high-visibility Rural King hat, so I have variety. I kind of hate to sweat up a gift, though.

Hurricane Irma and these trees can kiss my big white Christian conservative male rear end. I didn’t move here so I could take estrogen and do yoga while my neighbors had all the fun. I will keep putting these trees in their place until they wish they had never germinated.

When I have my machine tools here, I’ll be the most annoying Southerner on earth. If I’m not already. Almost everything that causes me problems can be dealt with by cutting it, dragging it, welding it, machining it, or shooting it. When I have machining covered, I will be insufferable. I plan to, anyway.

Hope you enjoy the photos. If not, quit reading this blog, because I will never stop posting this kind of stuff.

More

I feel like writing some more. Another benefit of living in Ocala is that I’m in better shape. I can’t seem to gain weight here. I had to move to a smaller belt, even though I’ve been patronizing Sonny’s barbecue pretty heavily. On top of that, apart from a short hurricane-related lapse, I’ve been maintaining my HIIT workout schedule, and everything is firming up and improving. I would go so far as to describe myself as semi-muscular. I looked in the mirror the other day and saw something that almost resembled abs.

I’m excited about being in shape. I may even get some weights. Ordinarily, it’s hard to make myself lift, but I do so much work here, lifting will just be noise on the graph.

It would be neat to go back to 47 chest/33 waist.

I guess I’m the only person on earth who pushes exercise bike pedals with his hands, but I won’t apologize. It works. The resistance knob on the bike broke (again), so instead of fixing it, I put an adjustable clamp on the calipers that apply pressure to the bike’s wheel. Now I get lots of resistance. It’s having an effect. If you’re too lazy to lift, this will tone your upper body and even add some bulk, and if you ever have to do strenuous work, you’ll be ready for it.

This place rocks. I hate Miami more every second.

The Opposite of Nostalgia

Today I was thinking about all the problems I have. I still have a bunch of big trees to cut and move. We are having a mosquito plague that beggars description. I still have to get my machinery moved from Miami. I have to get a house down there fixed up and rented. I gave myself a sunburn on one wrist and one leg using the welder. I added all that up, and this was my conclusion: I HATE MIAMI. THANK GOD I’M NOT IN MIAMI. I LOVE IT HERE.

So things could be worse.

I remember what some people said to me when I used to criticize Miami. “If you don’t like it, leave!” Sometimes they said, “Get the f___ out!”

I did! I left! Great advice! Muchos gracias!

People thought I wasn’t serious about leaving. Yeah, okay. They don’t know me very well. I’ve been trying to get out for years.

“Get the f___ out!” Always nice to get polite advice from good friends.

What do I miss about Miami? Still nothing! Nothing, nothing, nothing. Not the traffic. Not the rudeness. Not the ethnic tension. Not the near lack of seasons. Not the perpetually moldy smell of the air. I don’t miss paying ten bucks for a McDonald’s breakfast. I don’t miss having my unpleasant neighbors right up my nose as soon as I walk outside. I don’t miss not being able to shoot without driving for half an hour and paying a fee to be monitored by killjoy range officers. I don’t miss having a tiny, cramped workshop. I don’t miss not being able to talk to people because they’re too lazy and selfish to learn the language of the generous country that saved their lives.

I have two friends left in Miami. Two, after decades of living there. Guess what? They hate it. They hate it so much they want to move all the way to Virginia.

I know other people there, but we have drifted apart. Not including the couple I mentioned above, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t be surprised if I called.

Well, I do have my house sitter. He has to stay there for another year because he’s in college. But he hates Miami, too.

Last week a friend had to go to Cudjoe Key to check on a rental house he owned. I let him sleep at my dad’s house in Miami, and he brought me a lot of stuff the movers left behind. I have my Rockstar beverage fridge! I have a guitar amp! My sawzall is here! I have my compressor hose reels! I even have one of my big soup pots, plus my huge pressure cooker!

I still have no steam iron, but that’s okay, because I hate ironing.

Yesterday Amanda and her kids came down for a visit, and I made collards, ham hocks, neckbones, hoe cakes, soup beans, and sliced tomatoes and Vidalias. We also slapped together some oatmeal cookies, from the recipe in my book. It turns out the book is wrong; they’re only supposed to have about 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg in them. Anyway, it was a great feed. First real home-cooked meal I’ve made in months. Sometimes you need a big pot.

My laundry facilities are better than hers, so I told her to use them when she needs them. In return we get some company.

There are some things I had to replace after I moved. Example: my old-man tweezers. When you hit a certain age, hairs sprout all over you. You can either pull them out or watch them take over. I don’t mind buying tweezers, because tweezers are among the products we make a whole lot better than we used to.

It’s a good thing we got out when we did, because my dad’s condition worsened abruptly after our offer was accepted. It would have been a lot harder to move, had we waited. Now he has a big bedroom suite and a living room all to himself. He has a safe place to do his daily walking. His quality of life is much better. He isn’t tempted to drive. Looking after him is way easier here, and when things get worse, we’ll be surrounded by people who are experts at caring for old people. And they speak English.

He has started having false memories. The other day he told someone we had taken his boat to France and Italy, with extra diesel in drums on the deck. I sat there hoping no one would ask me about the trip.

Dementia is very strange. Dealing with a demented person is like walking through a house that has been hit by artillery fire. Some parts are totally sound, and others are just plain missing. Depending on what you talk to my dad about, you may be able to get very reliable input from him, but if you enter one of the damaged areas, the floor collapses under you.

Up here, he’s relatively safe from telemarketers and other swindlers. He doesn’t have to worry about close relations showing up on his doorstep, making wild accusations and demanding money. He’s less likely to be preyed upon by financially shaky, morally flexible middle-aged ladies who have suddenly found themselves drawn to octagenarians.

The weather has changed. I think. The forecast for this week is running seven to ten degrees lower than last week. That should make tree clearing easier. I’m told we will get bug relief after the first cold snap. That will be nice. Mosquitoes hate me, but there are so many here right now, even the outliers that find me tasty are able to cause problems. And because of the heat, sweat has been washing the repellant away.

Weather sites list the mosquito outlook as “EXTREME.” I would go along with that. And it makes sense. There is still standing water from Irma.

I can’t wait for better weather. The outdoor work has to be done.

I’m considering getting weights for the tractor. The guy who sold it to me left a bush hog on it for weight, but the bush hog gets beaten up a lot while I drag it around. It doesn’t lift completely off the ground. It would be a pain to switch weights for the bush hog, but it might be worth it. I would have more maneuverability, and the bush hog could be tucked away in the goat shed to rest.

A 1000-pound set of weights runs about a grand, but there is probably someone around here who has an old set to sell.

I had to weld the bush hog again. The welds I put on with a stick electrode broke when I hit a stump. They were really bad welds anyway. I fired up my generator and used the MIG to replace them, but I’ve had some problems. For one thing, the generator surges for some reason, and that makes the wire feed switch on and off. I may need a new torch cable liner to reduce resistance.

I don’t know what it will cost to get real 220 installed in the garage, but it’s a must-do.

That’s all I have right now. I am still here. I am still very, very, very glad I left. Hope to post more photos in the future.