I grabbed a clean pair of jeans while getting ready to shower yesterday morning. I unloaded the pockets of the ones I was wearing and removed the belt.
Then it occurred to me that I’d forgotten to take a photo while I was outside just before, so I stopped disrobing, picked up my phone and walked out the door. I hadn’t taken ten steps when my unbelted pants fell down.
I’m talkin’ past my knees. All the way down.
Yeah, I’ve lost weight. I can’t put a number on it, pounds-wise, but jeans that stayed up without a belt eight months ago now have over three inches of slack in the waistband.
I noticed that back in May, I think it was, and I’ve since adjusted my eating habits. And while my weight seems to have stabilized, it looks like I’m not gaining, either.
Honestly, I can’t say I’m concerned. I’m fine.
When I say, “it’s great to be here,” I mean it. Every second of every day, I’m grateful to be living in this place, breathing this air, reveling in the peace, doing all the things I do.
Sometimes pictures say more than words could. This was the western sky at sunset Friday evening:
And here’s my misty view from behind the cabin as the sun rose on Saturday morning:
The Mountain is special. These are the best days of my life. It’s great to be here.
About the time the dogs and I moved across the driveway three months ago — has it been that long? — I wrote about a few things you’d see in and around the cabin that might have you scratching your head. I thought of a couple more.
For example, there’s a coffee can on the shelf under the kitchen sink, but that’s not where I keep my coffee. In fact, if you popped the lid off of that can and got a snootful of the aroma, it’d probably spoil your appetite for coffee (or anything else).
It’s my compost shuttle, the first of three stops for food scraps on their way to becoming garden gold. Every couple of weeks, when the coffee can is full, I dump its contents into a five-gallon bucket behind the cabin. When that’s full, I truck it down to the compost tumbler.
The emptied shuttle gets a thorough rinse with the garden hose and sits in the sun to dry (pictured) before it comes back inside.
Today’s second oddity also is in the cabin kitchen. I collect trash — anything that isn’t bound for recycling, composting or incinerating, that is — in a stainless-steel step-on can. Resting on top of its lid is a fat ULINE catalog. Always.
I started doing that (or the equivalent, with some other weighty object) years ago, because my girl Scout had a habit of getting into the kitchen trash. Miss Smudge isn’t mischievous that way, but there’s no telling what she’d do if I was gone awhile and she got bored.
The big catalog is perfect for the task. And because ULINE insists on sending them to me, I get a fresh one every six months.
Bi-weekly reprovisioning got moved up a day, from Sunday to Saturday, but it wasn’t because I needed anything right away. I just felt like getting it done.
Beautiful morning.
Smudge and I were back from Walmart shortly after 11am, leaving the rest of the weekend wide-open.
Whenever I make a Flippin trip, I take one Marion County road east and then, roughly 2.5 driving miles from the cabin, I turn north toward town on a second county road. At that junction are two commercial turkey barns, just like thousands of others in this part of the country.
Another cluster of turkey barns is visible in the photo above, just east of the one on the corner. A third complex, twice the size of those two, is three-quarters of a mile farther northeast, hidden from view behind a ridge.
The most distant of these barns can be seen from the east flank of The Mountain, two-and-a-half miles away.
Only rarely do I pick up and pass along memes on social media. I decided that this one (below) was worth sharing.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that a deranged 23-year-old tranny (but I repeat myself) shot through the windows of a Minneapolis church the other day, killing two kids and wounding a reported 18 more. This monster had vile, antisemitic, anti-Trump, pro-Nazi messages scratched into his gun and magazines.
So yeah, basically Democrat talking points.
There was a “manifesto.” (Natch.)
Y’know, I don’t blog much about politics these days. I can’t remember when I last wrote about firearms or our birthright to keep and bear arms. But you shouldn’t take either as a sign that my principles have changed or that I’m any less resolved about what I believe.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable