Saturday, July 28, 2012

Can't Afford To live.

Started getting some bills in from the hospital, this is plum damn pitiful. I went to a hospital closest to my house, I received an aspirin, a shot of morphine,and a nitro pill, plus an EKG and a doctor telling me I was having a heart attack. This took probably 30 minutes and cost over $6,000.00, then I was taken to another hospital, and the bill for that hospital was over $79,000.00 for 2 days stay. I can't wait for the doctors and everybody else's bills to roll in.
That 2 day stay in the hospital should not had cost that much, it should have had some money taken off that bill, the dang bed kept airing itself up every 5 minutes and deflating by itself making noise all night long, the dang nurse kept me up all night coming and going, checking on this and checking on that, asked me if I wanted a sleeping pill to help me sleep, I ought to get my money back on that pill, it didn't work and whats up with them damn gowns, do they think your never gonna get out of that bed once they get you in it, if you get the back door trots or the runs for you city folk, you are in a world of hurt if people are around, they gonna see the ole bad moon rising if you know what I mean, they need to knock off a lot of money for those gowns or half gowns I guess you would call them, they are embarrassing. Now we get to the food or lack of, they ought to pay you for eating that damn stuff, I think one of them Hungry Man meals from the store, tastes better than the food they give you, bland ain't the word for it, I'm just gonna tell it like it is, it's shitty food plain and simple.
Now what that doctor and nurses done to me is just down right unspeakable in the emergency room,THEY SHAVED ME DOWN THERE, bare as a baby's butt, hell it looks like a shaved headed Jimmy Durante down there, scarier as hell looking and for some reason I've been getting a lot of e-mails on male enhancement pills since I got home, it was cold and I was scared in there you know, things seem to shrink in them kind of conditions, and the doc's and nurses should mind their own dang business and not sell my info to them spammers anyway.
Now if y'all will excuse me I need to get the magic marker and recolor some spots down there until it grows out some.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Question Of The Day




6:30 A.M.   This quitting smoking just ain't fun y'all. It's been 10 days now since I've had a smoke and I've all but ate the door knobs off the house, it's like I can't ever get full. I'm supposed to lose 15lbs not gain 20 pounds.

3:30 P.M.- Just came home, been out to Fredericksburg killing time, as long as I'm not setting in the house I really don't feel like eating so much. Had a nice little drive just to get out for awhile. I think after the doctor visit next week it might be time for a trip out to the place in Terlingua. I need to get away for awhile. Hopefully the doc will tell me I can get back to working my butt off, I have a lot of pick slinging to do out there. I did almost a mile worth of trails on my place with that ole pick and rake, its not bad if you catch it right after a rain, one swing of the pick and you can dig up most of the creosote bush's out there.

I found this weather map that is pretty handy. I guess its run off of Goggle Earth, you can zoom right onto you place and see how close the rain is to you.
http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/western-texas/weather-radar-interactive

Speaking of rain, I just received this from Brewster County, looks like Alpine is getting it.
Flooding conditions exist. Please use caution at low water crossings.

It's time to go prop the ole feet up, I've been up since 3:30 this morning.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Just Chilling

Since the heart attack I've been trying to do what the doc told me to do,which is, not do much, which is down right dangerous. I've never been told by the doc that I have A.D.D. but I have self diagnosed myself with it, my ole mind goes 10000 miles an hour. What I'm doing now has already been done in my mind awhile ago and the future is going through it now, if that makes any since. If I'm setting doing nothing it gets dangerous, I can come up with nine million different answers to a question. Reading directions, forget about it, by the time I read the first sentence I have to go back and reread it again, this process goes on and on until I've reread it about 10-15 times then I can retain some of it. I'm just rambling on about a whole lot about nothing here, I'm bored stiff. I did mow the yard yesterday with my wife chewing on my butt the whole time, the doc wanted me to lose about 15 pounds and I think she chewed around 4 pounds off yesterday. She keeps telling me stuff I already know, like the doc said don't do anything for a week and then light duty the next week. She says that means mowing the yard, I tell her he said to walk also and that's what I'm doing mowing, I'm walking, so leave me alone dang it. She doesn't know I mowed the neighbors yard Saturday, if I told her that, I just might lose that extra 11 pounds I need to lose, but than again I will look kind of funny with no ass.
 I've had time to reevaluate my doctors visit 3 weeks ago and it ain't good, I gave him an F- on that visit. He's the one that told me everything looked good, I did tell him that I was having chest pains for awhile and instead of checking it out he just talked about what it could be and he came up with stress was causing my chest pains, I had a damn psychic doctor, he wasn't one of them laying of hands on ya kind of psychic doctors, it just comes to him in his mind and he solves your problem, well he was wrong, the ass hole, hell Sylvia Browne could of done better than him. Doctors are getting like everything else in this world, cheap junk, don't care what you think, its what you get and if that ain't good enough for you tough s--t, just give me your money, Walmart doctors that's what most of them are now, there diplomas are probably made in China.
I do know one thing, that ole heart doctor knows what he's doing,I sure do feel a lot better than I did a week ago.I had told the wife that something was not right with me 6 months ago, I had lost most of my energy and felt like I was dragging around a 100 lb boat anchor all the time, didn't feel like doing anything. Now I feel 15 years younger and want to do everything. I have not had a smoke in almost a week now, around 8:00 tonight will be a week, I know that is helping me feel better, but damn I want to eat everything I can get my hands on, and they told me I couldn't eat what I liked anymore, B.S., I'm a eating type of fellow and that sissy food just ain't gonna cut it all the time, no salt, no bread, no nothing, I got to have me some red meat now and then, I can't have chicken and fish all the time, don't care for it that much. I got me some ribs in there now I'm fixing to throw on the smoker here in a minute if I can ever quit typing on this dang thing, I'm getting hungry. Since my ole fried brain has started working over time I'm sure I'll be back pretty soon.
In the meantime, check out this ole fellow. To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant .... maybe even a lot of nonsense.I'm guilty of looking at someone doing something strange and thinking,"What A Nut" and I'm guilty of calling myself a nut some times, after reading this maybe some of the nuts I thought I saw aren't as nutty as I thought they were and just maybe, I'm not as nutty as I thought I was.

 It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun
resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the blue ocean.

Old Ed came strolling along the beach to his favorite pier.. Clutched in
his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed walks out to the end of the pier,
where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a
golden bronze now.

Everybody's gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on
the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts...and his bucket of
shrimp.

Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white
dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky
frame standing there on the end of the pier.

Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering
and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As
he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, 'Thank
you. Thank you.'

In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn't leave.

He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and
place.

When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a
few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs,
and then they, too, fly away. And old Ed quietly makes his way down to the
end of the beach and on home.

If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water,
Ed might seem like 'a funny old duck,' as my dad used to say. Or, 'a guy
who's a sandwich shy of a picnic,' as my kids might say. To onlookers, he's
just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls
with a bucket full of shrimp.

To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They
can seem altogether unimportant .... maybe even a lot of nonsense.

Old folks often do strange things,
at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters.

Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida .
That's too bad. They'd do well to know him better.

His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero back in World War
II. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his
seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled
out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.

Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of
the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they
fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water.
They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were.

They needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service
and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled
his military cap over his nose. Time dragged. All he could hear was the
slap of the waves against the raft..

Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap.
It was a seagull!

Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next
move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to
grab it and wring its neck.. He tore the feathers off, and he and his
starving crew made a meal - a very slight meal for eight men - of it. Then
they used the intestines for bait.. With it, they caught fish, which gave
them food and more bait.......and the cycle continued. With that simple
survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until
they were found and rescued (after 24 days at sea...).

Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot
the sacrifice of that first life-saving seagull... And he never stopped
saying, 'Thank you.' That's why almost every Friday night he would walk to
the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of
gratitude.

PS: Eddie started Eastern Airlines

Thursday, July 19, 2012

A Crazy Monday

I've sat here for an hour trying to figure out something to blog about. I've tried to post something with a little humor in it ,about what happened Monday afternoon, but I just can't find to much in it. It does concern a Jeep though.
My wife has a Jeep and it has given us its fair share of problems, I have come to hate that damn Jeep in more ways than one. The problem is she gets attached to cars like I do to dogs. We had a white van once and she called it, Van-a-White, so you see she does not like to get rid of a car unless its deader than Aunt Lulu that died 50 years ago, it just ain't gonna happen, so Monday she was all nice and everything and I should had seen it coming but dumb me fell for it again. Honey, now that should had been the word that made bells and whistles go off  in my ole fried brain and made me take out running like a scalded ass ape, but noooooo dumb ass me had to say," what", she says " Would you check the air in my tires on the Jeep", now that don't sound to bad does it, except me and that jeep has history together, cuss words kind of history.
 There are three words that has changed my life for ever now, HONEY, WHAT and JEEP , those 3 words damned near killed me Monday. I was checking the air in the tires on that damn Jeep and had a HEART ATTACK. I always thought I had an idea what a heart attack would feel like if I ever had one, note to self, it ain't never like you thought of one feeling like. I started feeling like I was getting a little indigestion,I never had heart burn before but figured this is what it would feel like, so I checked another tire to see if it needed any air and a little more burning in my chest, by the time I had gotten to the 4th tire I was thinking ,damn this is starting to hurt and burn like hell, and told the wife that I might need to go to the hospital and see why my chest was burning so bad. We hop in my truck and before we had gone a mile I started sweating so bad I was soaked in a matter of seconds.I had rivers of sweat running all down me and I could not lift my arms, they just felt like they were asleep, I could not breath very well and my chest felt like a 18 wheeler was setting on it,I just kept moaning to the wife hurry up that I'm not gonna last much longer, we get to the hospital and they wheel me straight into ICU and start working on me,I'm so wet from sweating,they have problems hooking up a EKG machine to me, I'm laying there while they give me aspirin and a nitro, the EKG machine is now hooked up, I hear someone call out blood pressure, there are at least 10 people working on me, yell 93 over something, my eyes are on the doctor right in front of me, he tells me that I'm having a heart attack and they are doing all they can at the moment, I hear another reading being called out 81 over something, its dropping and I'm thinking this might be the end of the line, then I hear 60 over 40 being called out and everyone is looking at each other and I'm thinking this really is not good. Now at this point I'm looking around at my surrounding and am thinking this is the last picture I'm gonna see in this world and this ain't a pretty picture, they need to dress these rooms up like a happy place, some place you can kick back and say, if I have to go it can't get no better than this, not some all white room with people in all white running around like a bunch of ghosts, it just ain't pretty, we deserve something better than this for our last picture. I hear the ambulance has arrived and I'm thinking I'm already at the hospital what the hell is that all about, and they tell me it is going to take me to another hospital, I'm thinking my blood pressure is dropping like a rock and you are going to take me to another hospital, I ain't gonna make this trip and see it through, I'll be dead visiting aunt Lulu before we get to the other hospital. Then I hear some good news, my blood pressure is coming back up, the aspirin and nitro has kicked in and opened my arteries up a little. I did make it to the other hospital and was hauled into their new state of the art heart room, I don't know what they called this new room, so I just called it a heart room, within 20 minutes I had a stint already put in and was feeling like a new person.
 I came home yesterday, and have not smoked anything so far, they told me I had to quit smoking,its not to bad quitting so far, all I have to do is see my last picture I thought I was gonna see and the thought of a smoke is not so strong. My heart doctor told me since I got to the hospital so quick that there was very little heart damage and all in all everything looked real good.
The sad thing is I can't do much of anything for a week or 2 and that is driving me up the wall. I sit here now and look outside an see a lot of things I could be doing. Since they opened that artery back up it seems like I really want to get out and do more things than I did before, I NEED TO WORK, dang it,I need calluses on my hands not on my ass. I can't write for heck any how, but now its getting real hard to concentrate, I keep staring outside, the wild is calling me, I must go.

I should had put in this blog that I had just gotten a clean bill of health from my doctor three weeks ago. I have never been on any kind of medication I've always thought that I was in pretty good shape and the doc seemed to think I was also. 

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Stop And Smell The Roses

I guilty of it and I'm sure a lot of others are too, I see and do things all the time and never stop to smell the roses. I'm either to busy doing something or in a hurry to get somewhere to really stop and take the time to really look at my surroundings. When I'm out at Terlingua, on the place I sit out at night and look at the stars, there are billions of them, I sit and pay more attention to things out there, I'm in no rush to do anything or go anywhere, I'm at peace with the world. I go somewhere out there and catch myself doing 50 in a 70 mph speed zone, something I cuss people doing here in Austin, I stop and smell the roses out there. I get back to Austin and its back racing 100mph trying to do this or do that, I'm always in a hurry to do something, even when I'm at home I'm not really at peace with myself, always thinking there's something I should be doing, my mind is always wandering.
I have a lot of plants around the house, its something to do when I have nothing to do. I told the story about my pepper plants the other day, but this story is about another plant I have, its a ole big Purple Sage out back and with all the rain it's full of flowers. All my life I've seen Purple Sage growing all over the place here and thought how pretty they were when in bloom, I just glanced at them and thought hey that's a pretty plant and kept on going about my business, I never stopped and really looked at them. Today I was setting watching TV and looked outside an saw that Purple Sage in it's full bloomed self and thought, I'm going to get a picture of it in all it's glory. I grab my camera and out the door I went, I get up close to that bush and it came alive with bee's just busy as heck gathering pollen to take back to their hive, I just stand there a minute and take it all in. So I start taking pictures of my pretty little Purple Sage, this angle looks good click I take a picture, then this angle looks better then another click, I click until I had taken 20 something pictures of that plant. So off to the house I go to down load the pictures I just took. I start looking at those pictures and am in awe at how beautiful the blooms are on those plants. I have never took the time to really look at the blooms on those plants. For a short time there I was at peace with myself ,I had stopped and smelled the roses as the saying goes. For all of you that are like me 99% of the time and not smelling the roses. I want to share my moment of peace.



It just goes to show,some times we just need to stop and smell the roses or in this case the purple sage.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Gardening

Do you plant a garden every year? I did up until this year, ever year the dang squirrel's kept eating more and more so this year I had the bright idea of planting some Trinidad Scorpion Butch T peppers in pots and keep them on my patio. I figured I could kill two birds with one stone with these peppers, one hope a squirrel would come up and bite into one of these hot ass peppers and fry his happy little ass and then what was left of the peppers I could laugh at others trying to eat these hot dang things. Well the laugh is on me.
 I would had been better off just buying some of these damn peppers from the store, have you ever sat down and figured out how much it cost to grow things? With the garden in the past I never paid much attention on the cost of one, but growing them up close to the house in pots I was able to keep tabs on what I've spent and it ain't pretty. Anybody want a half million dollar pepper? That might be what I have in these damn things before I get a dang pepper. I'm used to putting something in the ground and it grows and starts to produce and then the squirrel's come and eat it, simple as that. These peppers I believe are sissy pepper plants, they need so much dang attention it wears on me, at first when I got the seeds I followed the instructions to a tee, put them in germination soil and wait till the seed sprouts and has 3 sets of leaves then replant them. Sounds simple don't it, I put one seed in each little potting container and waited and waited, then one day I walked into the kitchen where I had them pots and started jumping up an down hollering for the wife to come look, she told me to do something with those peppers that I don't think is humanly possible if you know what I mean, she wasn't happy having 20 something pots in her kitchen, any way I watched the cute little sprouts come up and after about a week I watched the cute little sprouts fall over deader hell. That should had been a sign to me to throw it all in the trash and be done with it but hell no I'm stubborn as heck, I get on the Internet and find out that germination soil is deader than hell won't nothing grow in it, what the hell. So I add fertilizer to my little pots and my peppers start growing, I'm on a roll now. It gets time to replant my nice little plants so off I go to buy potting soil to put my plants in bigger pots, I get all my plants re potted and think all I have to do now is water and wait and I'll have me some peppers before long, dang I can't wait, dang it wrong again. I check on them every morning, since I've spent so much time on these dang little pepper plants. I go out one day and lord Ole mighty I have blooms ,I would had called out to the wife but after what she told me to do to them peppers before I didn't think it would be a good idea, so I think to myself ,hot dang it won't be long now I'm gonna have me some peppers. Those pretty little blooms opened up and the next day they are laying on the ground deader than hell, damn what now? Off I go to the Internet and find out maybe I need some bloom set spray, so I figure I'll go to the box store and get me some bloom set spray for these nice little plants the next day. The next day before I make it to the box store I get up and check on my dang little plants. What the hell are all those little black looking balls around my plants on the ground, WORMS o'hell I start looking at ever leaf on them plants and start pulling off these dang green worms, I get 15 of them off my plants. I sweep all their little droppings off the patio an sit all day going out to check for more droppings, those dang worms can strip a plant in one day you know, I'm good to go again got all of them buggers off my plants. Now I'm off to the box store and get me some bloom set spray. I get home thinking now I'm gonna fix these blooms and finally get me some peppers, wrong again, man I'm getting tired of this being wrong all the time. I start spraying my bloom set spray on my blooms and what the hell is that I see now, little tiny spider webs o'hell again, spider mites. Back to the box store for some spider mite spray. I'm thinking I'm gonna kill all them little devils and maybe get me some peppers now. I sprayed all my plants yesterday and go in the house thinking it won't be long now and I'm gonna have me some peppers, wait is that thunder I hear? Damn its raining washing off all my bloom set spray and my spider mite spray off, HELP, dang gummit.
 So today I'm watching the weather to see if I can go spray again and just maybe, one of these years I'll have me some peppers.

Lets see what we have spent here.

 Potting soil - $20.00
Bloom set spray - $ 7.00
Spider mite spray - $ 14.00
Doctor visit stress related to pepper plants - $ 35.00 copay
Prescription for Xanax for stress -  $10.00 copay
I'll probably need rehab after this is all over - $25,000.00
Maybe a divorce attorney  -   $25,000.00

 So if you are gonna grow some Trinidad Scorpion Butch T peppers you might want to keep this list handy to see if you can afford to grow them.

Y'all have a good day now I have to take a pill and get back to my pepper plants.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Doing Something Stupid

Have you ever bought a new flashlight and turned it on and then looked at it to see how bright it is? Well let me tell you I bought this 60 led motion light from Northern Tool. It's solar powered so I didn't think it would be all that bright. I just needed a light to put out by the trailer for when we drive up at night we don't step on a dang snake when we get out of the truck and walk up to the door. The instructions said you need to put the solar panel out in the sun and charge it for 3 days before use. Well I put the panel out in the sun and in a couple of hours it got dark on me. I kept looking out there at that damn light thinking to myself I don't think I can wait 3 days to see how bright that light is. I figure 3 hours charging it ain't gonna be that bright anyway but I just had to test it out. I went out there and grabbed that light and like a dumb ass looked right at it and turned it on, you know some people have said in near death experience's some have seen a bright white light, let me tell you I thought I was fixing to meet the man himself, that damn light dang near blinded me, it was so bright I had to call the wife out and shine it in her eyes so so she could get the full force of 60 L E D's, we might be speaking next month again I hope, anyway I don't know in the long run how well this will hold up but I sure like it and am thinking about buying another one. I paid $39.00 for it with a $5.00 off coupon. A heck of a deal.


http://www.northerntool.com/images/product/images/16687_lg.jpg



Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Getting Back To Normal

Man, what a month its been. My ole buddy Ben passing away and then my wife's Aunt passed away.

I told you about my trip out to the ranch and all my solar panels were upside down in my driveway and broke all to hell, Amazon had 145 watt solar panels for $160.00 each. I grabbed me 2 of them Sat. afternoon. Sunday Amazon started charging tax on us Texans. So I got them for $320.00 and free 2 day shipping with Amazon Prime. I received them today and laid them out and stuck a volt meter to them and was getting almost 24 volts out of each one.
 I had the Harbor Freight 45 watt panels before just to keep my battery's charged up. Now I will buy a inverter & run some of the stuff in the trailer off of them and I have to buy some more battery's since mine are deader the hell. An ole guy out there is selling some kind of 12 volt battery's that weighs 150 lbs. each for $150.00, I hear they are huge. I talked with some people out there that are using these battery's and everyone is happy with them so I'm going to buy a couple of them. Then I need to build a rack to mount these panels on and cement them in the ground so they don't blow away like my last one's did.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/418f61%2BlTwL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Now I need to do some studying on how to hook these up. From what little bit I've read, you can hook these panels up to where your getting double the watts or double the amps so I need to see which is best. Also see if I want a 24 volt system or a 12 volt one. To damn much stuff for my ole brain to take in at once. If I had known I was gonna live this long I would had taken it a little easier back in the 60's and 70's. I fried to many brain cells back then and tore my dang body up. When I passed 30 I figured by the way I was living I wouldn't see 40 so I partied like hell, when I hit 40 I thought o'hell what now. I decided I had better start taking better care of my ole self and quit everything except sex and smoking, now I'm thinking about cutting out the cigs but that's hard to do when the wife smokes also.
I better go do some studying on these dang panels, I have to read something about 5 times before it starts sinking in.