Reliving My Assault – Thanks Republicans!

What tears me up most: Ford's testimony, Kavanaugh's, or the Republican senators response to both? I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that I'm a fucking mess today.

I was assaulted when I was 7. It wasn't sexual assault; it was bullying. But other than the sex aspect, it was much like what Ford described.

So long ago, here's what I remember like it was yesterday …

Neighborhood kids led by one redheaded, 13-year-old devil decided to jump me. About 10 kids attacked me and got me on my belly. They were kicking me and laughing. It was great sport for them.
So angry, so angry and so helpless …

Then that devil, his knees on my back, put his lips to my ear and said, "I'm going to kill your dog."

That dog was my best friend and the only trustworthy source of love in my life.

What more can I add? That's it. I can remember what the devil kid looked like and his curly red hair. I remember his name all these years later, though I'm not going to print it. I remember being pinned on my belly in the grass, unable to escape. I remember the yard it happened in. I remember the laughter.

I'm not sure I told anyone at the time, or if I did, that I was taken seriously. It's always felt like my private burden.

Some months later, my mother started taking me therapy for fighting. Tall and strong for my age, I was a rabid wolf inside, ready to destroy much older kids than me if they started something. At least that's how I remember it. Neighborhood parents were complaining about me.

So was I an agressor? Or was I defending myself, which is how I remember it? No telling. Maybe both.

What came out of therapy, according to my mother, is that I was driven by anger toward my father. Total bullshit. The counselor and my mother were trying to squeeze me into a theory for their own reasons. They didn't listen.

Even today, when pushed just right, my wolf rises up, ready to destroy. You see, for most kids, most people, fights are a kind of game for social dominance. Not me. I've rarely fought since then (and not since my early teens), but when I have, it was with clear, red-hot focus: kill, or die trying.

So where am I today? I'm hateful toward the Republican government for making me relive it all over again and minimizing my experience. How? Doing it to Ford does it to me. Not sure how that works.

I already distrusted the Republican government. Now I trust them even less. There's this feeling … What is it? Oppression. My own government is my oppressor, my devil, now more than ever. I hate them. I want them off my back. I want them dead.

How Do You Ruin Someone's Life?

Two days ago, Lindsey Graham said about the then upcoming Kavanaugh-Ford hearing, "Unless there's something more, no, I'm not gonna ruin Judge Kavanaugh's life over this."

Ruin his life? How would failing a job interview and being pubically shamed "ruin" Kavanaugh's life?

This statement struck me because I've always found the notion of ruining someone's life rather odd. My paternal grandmother said my mother ruined my father's life, I guess by divorcing him and getting me to hate him growing up. An uncle said his son's stalker ex-wife ruined his life, too.

I don't get it. Sure, maybe my mother caused my father a lot of pain and changed his expected course of life. Same with my cousin.

Let's say Kavanaugh and Judge did rape Ford exactly like she says. Did it ruin her life? No! It caused her a great deal of pain and, according to her, a few really rough years. Based on the recorded testimony I saw today, it still hurts her greatly. But it didn't ruin her life by any means. She's a strong, successful woman.

Being divorced by my ex-wife and alienated from my stepkids was fucking awful. The worst thing that's ever happened to me, it still causes me agony. Some days I wish we were still together. But she didn't ruin my life. I have a different life than I hoped for learned some tough lessons. That's it. (And that's plenty.)

Maybe throwing someone in the hole at Guantanamo could qualify as ruining someone's life. Yet, Mandela was in prison for, what, 30 years? He came out to lead a nation. Did the Apartheid government ruin Mandela's life? Nope.

Yes, people are responsible for the pain they cause to others, especially in ways that are illegal or should be. But let's not overblow this. Even hurricanes and cancer don't ruin lives, except for those who die. Death qualifies as "ruined."

If Kavanaugh isn't confirmed, he'll still be a respected attorney with job and income prospects most Americans can never dream of. The worse he can say is this really, really sucks for him and his family. Doubly so if he's innocent.

A Good Reminder ...

Via Instagram – September 21, 2018 at 11:07AM

Guess what they had at Walmart for $3.98? I've got my dragonfruit seeds now and a snack besides. #walmart #dragonfruit #cactus #cacti #cactusfruit #pitaya #pithaya #hylocereus #pitayaroja #perrenialgarden #permaculture #rgv #lrgv #tropicalpermaculture #hylocereuscostaricensis

Via Instagram – September 19, 2018 at 01:17PM

Latest addition to my #perrenialgarden -- 2 agaves! Got them free from a friend. They have some food, fiber, and medicinal uses, but mostly I planted them because I like the way they look. BTW, this is not the kind usually used to make tequila, though it does produce a sap you can ferment. This is Agave americana. The tequila kind is Agave tequilana, aka blue agave. #agave #agaveamericana #centuryplant #permaculture #gardening #rgv #lrgv #xeriscaping

Making Tofu Is Too Much Trouble

Yesterday, I utterly failed to make tofu. It didn't set up. Don't believe I'm going to try again, either. There are too many steps and too much cleanup.

I'll stick with my homemade seitan, boiled beans, and soynut butter. I might try making fermented nut cheeses at some point.

Even though I'm moving back toward a plant-based diet for health and savings, I'll likely keep eating eggs, too. A lot of people say that they couldn't give up cheese to go vegan. For me, it's eggs, especially the orange-yolk pastured kind. Nothing beats a couple fried eggs with sourdough toast in the morning.

Maybe I'll get my own chickens at some point, but honestly, keeping livestock seems like a hassle. Except maybe mealworms. They're easy.

By the way, I was going to make tofu as a possible egg substitute, cooked with a little black salt for that sulfury note. But as I said, too much trouble. And no, I'm not going to buy tofu at the store. It's pricey and inferior in these parts.

We go as far as we're willing to go, and no more. Until something changes.

What Do You Do When You Have Nothing to Do?

I'll tell you! It's as simple as making a list!

Every morning, after breakfast and COFFEE, I sit down at the computer for at least 2 hours to write. Sometimes I get a lot of productive writing done, and sometimes I meander. But I'm always there. At the very least, I fill up my journal with nonsense and make a to-do list for the day.

Now, in that to-do list, I try to hit the big notes: write something, cook something, read something, clean or maintain something, work in the yard, and get some exercise. Of course, anything with a close deadline gets on the list. But otherwise, I keep it simple.

It's not like a person needs to be busy all day. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors averaged 2-5 hours of work a day to do everything necessary. Then they talked and played. With my system, I hit that easily. And then I'm done and satisfied. Easy.

And the rest of the hours? Whatever. The time passes quickly enough. Boredom isn't a problem in my house.

The 8 hour workday PLUS commuting and chores is just a century-old compromise between modern wage slaves and their masters. It's not sane, and it's not healthy.

Aren't I privileged!?

Writing Takes Time

Did you know that? Maybe not.

Most think writing is about having a good idea. It's not. There are a million ideas; very few are executed. Writing, like so many things, is about plugging away until you finish.

I'd forgotten about that myself.

Now, with so much time on my hands, I find myself writing again. Most of it is nothing much: rambling journal entries, thinking out loud in text, like talking to the walls. You wouldn't want to read it. Should I become famous and studied, pity the poor future scholar who has to read my crappy notes.

But here we are: a blog post on a new blog, another writing journey begun. In a private Google Docs file, the first notes of a memoir. Perhaps soon a few poems.

All this almost nothing took a couple hours of staring at the screen, nothing much on my mind. Lots of nothing. Word after word after word, perhaps for months, until some kind of something takes shape. Who has time for that bullshit!?

I do. Now. This slow, cheap, lazy life is set up that way on purpose.

What I'm speaking of is the hardest kind of creative writing, of course, the kind from the soul.

All writing takes more work than it seems, but some is easier than others. I've written many a press release, memo, and marketing blurb off the top of my head. The more restrictive the scope and familiar the material, the quicker it goes. You become efficient.

But the more original the work, the more searching and researching, revising, wandering, sputtering, and dead ends.

Basically, the writers you'd call Writers need a lot of time on their asses. "But-in-chair time" it's called. Unglamorous. No sane person would do it if they had a choice.

Via Instagram – September 14, 2018 at 10:35AM

Oh, wook! It's a widdle biddy mowinga twee! She were a just teeny, tiny seed just a week ago! #moringa #moringaoleifera #perrenialgarden #permaculture #urbanhomestead #eatyouryard #backyardorchard #homegrownvegetables

Saving Money Is My New Job

Two weeks ago, I quit a perfectly good job. Well, not perfectly good. Among the downsides was getting yelled at once or twice a day by customers.

But this isn't the first job I've quit in the last few years. It's the fourth.

The lesson here is that I won't probably won't put up with the bullshit of any job – and they all have bullshit – unless and until I'm completely broke and in debt.

I wish to put that day off as long as possible, maybe even the rest of my life. So my new job is saving money. In other words, penny pinching.

The good news is I'm in a great position to do that: I have investments earning money and own my house outright. The risks are recessions and unexpected expenses.

The bad news is that I can't pare down much more. The home taxes are what they are, and there are no cheaper homes, except for remote, rural land. The homeowner's insurance probably won't go down as I live on a pier-and-beam house at 22 ft. altitude in a hurricane zone. Utilities are trimmed, including phone and internet. And the auto insurance is down about as low as it can go. (Giving up the van isn't something I'm willing to do.)

Fortunately, I found a way to get nearly free health insurance!

That leaves food and discretionary spending. Solution? Cooking at home from scratch (even mayonnaise and jams!), growing most or all of my food, and becoming Mr. Garage Sale and Mr. Fixit for the rest.

I already stopped eating out in any way, shape, or form – even the $1 corn dogs and $1 soda refills at Stripes. Just as well. Don't need that crap in my life. And restaurant food is almost always worse than my own cooking.

Even so, I'll likely need to make an extra bob or two for those unexpected expenses. Sooner or later, I'll do some kind of little microbusinesses. Not sure what. Plenty of ideas.

Maybe the lifestyle I'm describing sounds extreme. Maybe it's not how you'd like to live. But Man, I sure prefer it to a job. They suck the life right out of me. Plus they cost the one thing I value most in life – time.

Via Instagram – September 13, 2018 at 12:50PM

Meet my new best friend for cleaning! The steamshot cleans glass, tile, countertops, etc. The steam jet totally blows the gunk out of crevices, like around the faucet. Bunch of attachments included. No chemicals used, just distilled water heated to steam. #cleaning #housecleaning #bissell #steamshot

Books: A Lost Love

Two landscaping books I ordered arrived yesterday. Yet again, I was disappointed by my purchase. Why? Because while the books themselves were well done, all that information is free on the internet already.

What happened? What killed the excitement of getting a new, printed book?

In my youth, information was harder to collect. If you wanted a serious treatment of a topic, a text to take you all the way from A to Z, you needed a book. The best you could hope for in newspapers and magazines was a short piece on a subtopic.

Not today. Today, when I want to explore a topic, it's the internet I go to. In a few short searches, I get the full treatment from multiple sources and points of view. As questions come up, I search, following my interest sideways.

Of course, this is informational, mainly nonfiction reading. Longform fiction and nonfiction essay are something different. Even then, e-readers and apps can take the book's place. That's how I read for pleasure now.

Sure, sometimes the printed book is more useful. Like many, I prefer a physical book for close reading and research writing. But as I'm no longer in graduate school nor engaged in serious research, it hardly comes up.

Some people prefer the printed book to reading on any screen. Some also like to collect books they've read or want to read. I have no argument there. That's a personal choice of medium. The book has become one choice among many.

That breaks my heart. First love is lost.

Once, the book was highest mountain, final word, journey's end, my heart's desire. Once, the library and bookstore were ecstasy embodied. Now I find the book a slow, expensive option, and the library and bookstore too far to bother.

Via Instagram – September 12, 2018 at 10:16AM

This is supposed to be the easiest way to start a garden. Poke holes on the bottom side of the compost or soil bag, cut open the top side, and plant. We'll see how it works. At least, the plastic will kill the grass underneath to start a permanent bed. You can't see them, but I planted the root end of three grocery store onion bulbs in there. That's supposed to regenerate a new plant each. I'll be adding some cowpeas, which are soaking at the moment. In the paper egg carton are seeds for wild tomatoes -- yes, tomatoes have gone ferrel in the RGV. They're cherry tomato size, often yellow, and the plants are super hardy. Taste good, too. When the seedlings get big, I'll cut apart the egg carton and spread out the plants. Also today, I planted scarlet runner beans along two fences. Later this week, I'll start a potato bed, which will have more cowpeas and garlic, too. I think I'll make it a hugelkultur bed. Thats where the bottom layer is logs or other big wood pieces. We'll see. #permaculture #vegetablegarden #vegetablegardening #urbanhomestead #growyourownfood #rgv #lrgv

WARNING: I've since learned that this method works with garden soil or top soil bags, not pure compost. I may end up adding soil to to my compost to get these veggies the minerals they need. Or else I might transplant them once they get going. Haven't decided. At any rate, Google the soil bag growing method before you try it yourself.

Sweet, Sharp Homemade White Vinegar!

Yesterday I got a happy surprise! As I was about to throw out my failed first attempt at making white vinegar, I gave it a taste. Turned out it'd come up sharp after all!

Making plain vinegar for household cleaning and canning is another of my many penny-pinching schemes. I estimate that a gallon of homemade vinegar, made from cheap granulated sugar, costs about $0.30 a gallon versus more than $3 a gallon at the store for white distilled vinegar. Plus I help Mother Earth by reusing my jugs.

The process for making vinegar is no mystery. You basically let air into alcohol to spoil it on purpose. Or you can help the process along by mixing in some unpasteurized vinegar, what they call a "mother."

But I found no instructions online for making plain white vinegar. Posts on homemade vinegar are mostly for wine, cider, and flavored vinegars. Not what I needed.

So what I did was create a roughly 10% solution of sugar in water by weight by mixing 1.5 C white sugar into 12 C (3/4 gallon) of water. (That's a 1/8 ratio by volume.) Then I added a tsp of bread yeast, taped a napkin over the opening to keep bugs out, and let it ferment about 3 weeks. Finally, I added some Bragg's unpasteurized cider vinegar and left it alone another month or so.

When I first tasted it a couple weeks after adding the mother, it seemed too sweet and not vinegary enough. I was tempted to throw out my failure, but I was busy and left it where it sat. Yesterday I was organizing the kitchen and about to throw it for reals out when, as I wrote above, I sampled it one last time. Sharp and oddly delicious! Perfect for cleaning or cooking.

A friend of mine who's expert in home fermenting tells me there's an easier way. She advises mixing some of my current batch at 1/3 straight into my 10% by weight (1/8 by volume) sugar solution and letting it do its thing. Should be much faster. I'll give it a try.

BTW, that picture at top is a Chinese classic, "The Vinegar Tasters." Check out the link. Interesting allegory.

Via Instagram – September 11, 2018 at 06:51PM

Time to plants some beans! BTW, the scarlet runner beans are perennials in the RGV. Not only are the pods and dry beans edible, so are the young leaves and fat, starchy roots. Butterlies love the red flowers. #scarletrunnerbeans #cowpeas #seeds #urbanfarm #urbanhomestead #perrenialgarden #beans #permaculture #rgv #lrgv #burpees

Today's Instagram – September 11, 2018 at 1:33PM

Today's tree plantings in order: sugar apple (aka custard apple or sweetsop), Pakistani mulberry, and two wonderful pomegranates.

And this completes planting of the main trees and bushes in my yard, the bones of my permaculture plan. Next up are grading for rainwater management, some tiny experimental vegetable beds, and learning a smattering of landscape design to come up with a hopefully attractive edible garden.

#backyardorchard #perrenialgarden #permaculture #urbanfarm #urbanhomestead #fruittreesinmybackyard #rgv #lrgv ... via Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/p/BnmJMKsBPls

Today's Instagram – September 11, 2018 at 10:02AM

Saw these quinoa flowers at Lowe's the other day. Yes, quinoa, the "grain"! I'm considering growing quinoa and amaranth as flowers and crops someday. But I'll be planting from seed if I do -- much cheaper.

#quinoa #permaculture #rgv #lrgv #urbanfarm #urbanhomestead #gardening

via Instagram https://ift.tt/2QmOAWn