Dry Bones of Neglected Projects Receive Long-Awaited Rain

My propane cart is all done. I finished welding, and I taped around the bare parts and hosed it with truck bed coating. Looks pretty good.

I decided to try my gas outfit. It had been sitting in a box since last September. The hose was still coiled neatly in the box. When I started taking parts out, I saw a big ball of woolly stuff in the coil. I thought Victor/ESAB had put some kind of filler in there for shipping purposes. No, it was a mouse nest. Thankfully, no one was home. Unfortunately, it smelled like infected mouse butt, and that smell is still clinging to the hose.

I was under the impression that I had bought a propane outfit, but it turned out to be set up for acetylene. It had an acetylene regulator instead of a propane regulator. That was a speed bump. I thought I would have to order a new regulator. Then I Googled around and learned that an acetylene regulator will work fine. The hoses are rated for propane, so that was not a problem.

I didn’t have a propane heating tip. I Googled again, and I found you can use an acetylene tip if you clamp a little shield around the end. I fired the acetylene tip up, and it worked fine. I just need to put a shield together. A propane tip costs $158, so I might as well try the jury rig method first.

I heated a piece of 1/8″ by 1″ bar, and it turned red in a hurry. This outfit is going to be very useful. I ordered a couple of propane cutting tips. I already have a pair, but since I put them aside a year ago, I have lost track of them. Some day they’ll turn up.

I need to create some kind of hanger I can weld on the cart to hold the torch and hoses.

I got a lot of other things done yesterday. I put a new seat on the garden tractor. This is the one part John Deere doesn’t overcharge for. The Chinese knockoff costs $90, and the real thing is $109, so I went with OEM. My old one had cracks in it, and they let rain fill the padding. I cover the tractor, but you only have to have the cover blow off once to get a seat full of rain, and it never evaporates completely. Now I should be able to mow with a dry rear end.

For some reason, the people who built this house left two humps in the yard, roughly the size of pitchers’ mounds. I have often wondered what they were for. It occurred to me that dogs and cats might be buried under them. People do that. As bad as I feel for people whose pets are dead, I am not going to screw up my yard for a dead cat. This week, I used the tractor’s front end loader to start scraping the dirt away. A few days back, I annihilated a hump in the front yard.

Yesterday, I worked on the hump next to the workshop. I unearthed one corner of a 6′ by 8′ blue Home Depot tarp! What on earth was that there for? Maybe somebody didn’t want Fluffy or Snowball to get rained on in heaven. Whatever. I could not budge it with a shovel because roots had gone through it, so I ripped it off with the tractor, smoothed the ground out, and took the tarp to the dump. I didn’t dig up any collars, so if there is a dead dog down there, he’s still resting peacefully.

Here’s a tip: if you bury your pet in your yard, don’t expect the buyers to leave it there when they want to put in a pool or plant a tree, and that goes double when you don’t disclose it during the sale. If you really have to bury dead stuff in your yard, pick an area that’s out of the way, and bury everything at least three feet deep. Don’t let the kids scoop out a little hole with their hands and then pile a little dirt on top of the departed.

The prior residents did a lot of bad landscaping, and I have been reluctant to dismantle it because I trusted their judgment more than my own. That’s all over with. I’m going to rip out a lot of annoying shrubs, along with some bad decorations. Nice grass is better than sloppy shrubbery and floppy rail fences.

The stumps from my ill-fated citrus trees are gone, and I’ve been running the mower over the locations to smooth the dirt down. I don’t plan to put anything in to replace them, although I might relent and plant a single peach tree. Something useful that won’t die from a Chinese disease.

Peach trees do great here, as long as you poison them to kill bugs. That reminds me; I have to start killing squirrels to protect the peaches. I don’t think I’ll eat the squirrels. I plan to throw them in the woods. Crows and foxes enjoy them.

I have a roof issue. I’ve been working with contractors for two weeks. One crew wandered off after giving me an estimate, so I got another one. Glad that happened. The first guy gave a high estimate and didn’t tell me anything helpful. The second guy gave me a painfully long, boring lecture about roofs and what does and does not work. It was dull, but I kept quiet and let him talk. I learned a lot of great things, and I realized he was going to do a better job for less money. I’m hoping to have everything fixed in around 10 days.

I got nervous and invaded the attic to inspect the roof from underneath. This was a horrible experience. It was over a hundred degrees, and I had nothing to stand on except widely spaced trusses covered with fiberglass insulation. I had to twist and contort my body to move a few inches at a time. The good news: no serious problems. That roof should be good for 5 more years, once I get my patch done.

I understand the roof a lot better now.

I’m having my satellite dishes yanked. They cause leaks, and there is no way I would ever have Dish or DirecTV in this house.

I still have one major boulder issue in my yard. I went out the other day and started blasting it with a jackhammer, and of course, it started to rain about 10 seconds in. The weather is getting cooler fast, and the rain is drying up, so I hope to have that boulder leveled soon. Then I’ll have more grass and one less mower obstacle. There are some small boulder tips nearby, sticking out of the ground. The tractor can’t move them, but the jackhammer will take them down below mower level.

I bought a propane weed torch. Wonderful tool. I’m thinking of using it to char steaks. It will also be great for starting burn pile fires. The tank is heavy, however, so I may go to Home Depot, buy another handtruck, and modify it to hold the tank. A cart made for the tank runs over $60, and that’s ridiculous, because it’s a cheap, embarrassing cart. I can get a real cart and modify it for less.

I feel like God has given me relief from demons that discouraged me. I speak defeat, binding, and muzzling to them every day. I know people don’t believe in demons, and they think people who do are nuts. Jesus believed in demons, and he talked to them. This has always been a nominally Christian country, yet we still assume people who say they have experience with demons are mentally ill. I don’t care. I’m old, and the older I get, the less I care what unintelligent, low-information, insecure people think about me. I’ve had demons cast out of me, and they’re as real as you are.

You can physically feel it when a demon leaves, and afterward, you notice your mind is quiet. The thing that was inspiring counterproductive words to form in your mind is gone. I’m careful not to call it a voice. I don’t hear voices. I can just see what would happen if I said I heard voices. “Your honor, clearly this man can’t be allowed to possess firearms or live on his own, so let’s take his guns and his house and turn his property into a BLM safe space for LGBTQ-trans-mutant-googolsexuals.”

You are surrounded by demons. You are inhabited by demons. They corrupt your thoughts and emotions, they hurt your body, and they destroy your success. It’s the truth. They’re not just for crazy people.

Why am I getting so much help from God? Why am I doing so much work on my responsibilities? I wonder if I’m getting this property ready for the people who will move in after the rapture.

Here’s something interesting: I expect to be here on earth after the tribulation.

I used to wonder if we would return after the tribulation. This week, something occurred to me. We are not going to die; we will be assumed in to heaven as we are, in the flesh. There will be no reason for us to die or age in heaven. If you’re raptured alive, you should be alive 7 years later when the tribulation is over. Jesus will return, in the flesh, at that time. The word says people will return with him and rule with him. It makes sense to believe the raptured will come back.

If these things are true, then a lot of redemption is coming our way. People who were crippled when they left, or who were old and single, or who lost all their children, or who always lived in poverty will be able to lead happy, successful lives on earth. They will be physically perfected.

Will they have marriages and children? Things don’t look so good. Jesus said, “at the resurrection, people will never marry nor be given in marriage.” Does that mean we won’t reproduce, or does it mean we’ll reproduce, but we won’t be bound permanently in pairs? Will there be a universal state of open marriage during the Messianic Age?

Jesus said people who gave up children for the kingdom of heaven would have children multiplied to them on earth and in the world to come, and it seems harsh for people who were trapped in solitude during their lives to have that condition continue after the tribulation, but I’m sure whatever happens will be great.

Was he speaking of the post-rapture return when he said “resurrection,” or did he mean the final gathering at the end of the Messianic Age?

Don’t know.

In any case, it looks like I will be back after 7 years, assuming I manage to be raptured. It would be nice to get a chance to do a few things over, correctly and without opposition or curses.

How do you get raptured? Jesus said he wanted to find his servants giving food to his household. Food appears to mean instruction in the ways of God. The Bible calls basic instruction “milk” and advanced knowledge “meat.” I think that if you want to be raptured, you should be involved in relaying knowledge when Jesus calls.

I keep this in mind these days.

I truly think we will be taken before the tribulation. Leaving us here with the willfully obtuse boneheads and God-haters doesn’t make any sense. God got the Jews out of Egypt, and the plagues didn’t touch them. God took Lot out of Sodom before he burned it. God lifted Noah above the flood. There has to be some reward for obedience.

On the web, I see leftists, literally shrieking about 2020. There is a famous lady on TikTok, screeching profanities like a severely autistic kid having a fit. There are many like her. Most are female. They are losing their minds. Ginsburg’s death pushed them over the edge. My response: 2020 has been great for me. Your reality depends on your relationship with God.

In April, my friend Travis died unexpectedly. I had hoped he would be my compensation for not having a son. I had a very bad month after he died. Other than that, this year has been wonderful. It has been peaceful. Annoying people haven’t been bothering me. I no longer had to care for my demented father. I had two properties that drove me crazy. They were sold last year. I’ve been getting things done. I’ve been doing things I wanted to do in the past but couldn’t seem to get on top of.

I have lacked nothing of importance. My health has been good. I stopped worrying, with God’s help.

My 2020 and the 2020 of people who hate God and authority are two different years. It’s as though they live on the other side of a gulf, like the gulf in the story of Lazarus the beggar.

It surprises me to see how miserable the Antichrist’s people are. I’m not in touch with them day by day, so it’s a shock when their rage and horror pop up on my monitor and in my speakers.

People really need to get to know God. If they’re this miserable now, in the world’s richest country, living in security, surrounded by opportunity, simply because democracy isn’t working out in their favor and the world refuses to mold itself to their pathetic, infantile fantasies, how crazy will they be when Trump wins the election and when his justice is seated?

It’s going to be an astonishing spectacle. They’re at the breaking point already. Full-blown psychosis is just a heartbeat away. They just need Trump to light the right match, and he will do it with the eagerness of a D-Day soldier tossing an explosive satchel into a pillbox full of Nazis.

The rapture will be a division. The Antichrist’s black-clad people will be stuck here, raging at each other and screaming in anguish, much as they are now, and we’ll be at a marriage feast in heaven, free at last from their incessant squawking and abuse. The division seems to be accomplished already, within us. Now it just has to be completed physically. When we’re gone, the Antichrist’s mob will get everything it has clamored for, and it will burn them like flamethrowers around the clock. They think we make life painful. In reality, our presence is the only reason it’s as pleasant as it is.

I can’t think of a time I have enjoyed as much as the last few months. I know that’s God’s work. I’m sure other people can get it, too, if they will just listen.

Thank you, God, for 2020. I hope you will see fit to continue things as they are.