Well, I've always been a bit of a screw up, but today, I really screwed up. I got up, got ALL my work done, packed up, drove down to have lunch with my cousin (only ten minutes or so later than I usually do on Wednesdays), ate, grabbed a couple of donuts (they're probably in my top five things in the world, up a notch from this time last year), and then drove down to the cabin.
And I started falling asleep during the drive, surprising myself because I was only one-fourth of the way there. I did what I could to stay awake, turning off my audiobook and listening to music so I could sing along, and when I finally got to the cabin, I considered--CONSIDERED, mind you--just crashing on the couch for a few minutes. But instead I unloaded my car (along with my own things, it had all the supplies my mom gave me to take down, lightbulbs and towels and Orange Sunkists and stuff), then set up my laptop, turned on the power and water, and sat down to edit the latest "Delusions of Grandeur" episode, which I should've turned in last week--or if I was really ambitious, the week before*--and got a few minutes in.
The cabin was cool, but not cold, actually pretty wonderful in temperature (low sixties, which of course plummeted as soon as the sun set), but I thought I'd lay down on the couch with a blanket for a moment anyway, maybe listen to a podcast for an hour (or less, if all I needed was fifteen minutes or so). And I did . . .
. . . and woke up with the sun setting in the distance. I scratched my head, dragged my groggy, stupid body off the couch, and realized that it had been more than an hour. Somehow, I had slept until eight-thirty pm, and now the day was gone.
Well, I owed my 2020 self a song (which I'd been thinking about for the past month), so I grabbed my phone (which I couldn't find, and scrambled all over to locate, as the magic hour faded right outside the window), and then hopped in the car and drove up to the dam overlooking the remains of the lake** and ran--not walked--to set up my camera to sing a song as the sun--
Well, the sun had set and was just the afterglow now, so hey, I'd better get it right in the first take.
I cursed myself and my unbelievable laziness as I sang a less-than-stellar version of the greatest song ever, and then felt my hands start to freeze as it got dark and I took advantage of the wi-fi on the hill to check current events (apparently, Kick-Ass is playing Kraven the Hunter in an ill-conceived movie they're actually going forward with making***), until I couldn't stand it anymore.
Then I hightailed it back to the cabin, where it was pitch black all of a sudden, and chose to grab some wood for the fire I'd need to make if I wanted to eat and not spend the whole night shivering--and hmmm, all the wood I had stacked in the fall up against the house was gone. It was there on Saturday, because nobody had used the cabin since the day I put it there, but my niece and her boyfriend used it on Sunday, and I guess they didn't depend on body friction to stay warm. Sigh.
So, I don't know what I'll do. I guess I could go down, turn on the gas, and see if I can get the heater to work, but I--
Okay, that's what I'll do. I might as well see if I can fix that right now before it gets really cold (it's 45 outside and a nice 62 in the cabin itself).
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In May: 2612
Well, I didn't manage it.
My brother struggled for a long time (at least fifteen minutes) on Saturday to get the darn thing going, and I didn't see how he ultimately did it, but I turned on the gas, turned on the stove (seems like that's how he got the flow all the way to the wall heater), and then pressed the Ignitor button between fifty and sixty times before I realized I hadn't plugged it in. So, I did so, then pressed Ignite another hundred times. Nothing. Not a spark, not a smell of gas, nothing. I tried it in various different settings (even twenty times in the Off position, t'would be ironic if that had worked), and went back to trying it with the fan unplugged. I got nothing at all, except a feeling of worthlessness, which I already had down pat for sleeping the whole day away this afternoon.
I finished editing the DoG podcast, and made myself some rice and beans and an awful little can of Chef Boyardee (I've really got to stop buying that, but it looks so good on the package), and started a fire in the fireplace, but--big surprise--it went out.
So I started it again, my hands already getting cold despite the typing, and guess what? Yep, it went out again. Now I'm sitting, thinking, and worried that I'm not going to get any words written today or exercise (although I kind of have to, despite wanting to come here to edit audio****). A real man would just stand up and start doing push-ups.
So I will.
Push-ups Today: 66
Push-ups In May: 2939
So, something I observed around this time last year was that, even though I was exercising a lot (not every single day like now, but getting close to it), I found it incredibly difficult to do it up here in the mountains. Well, I had forgotten that until I did push-ups and my body didn't want to obey, and sit-ups were literally twice as hard as they usually are (sometimes my three year old nephew will sit on me while I'm doing sit-ups, and this was close to that feeling, despite only ghosts holding me down). But I did some, and will try to do more later.
I often talk about the weird/scary sounds I hear out here at night (and during the day--I don't know what I heard elsewhere in the cabin earlier, but I suppose it could've been an animal in a trap, rattling the cage). I heard frogs and owls and nightbirds, but no obvious werewolves. Obvious, mind you.
There's a supermoon out today (which my brain REFUSES to believe is a scientific term. It's like a silly Millennial term like "Goldilocks Planet" that somehow the experts have adopted, despite it sounding like something out of a badly-translated Japanese cartoon), and hey, I can see it through the window as I type this. If I believed in werewolves even 2%, it would be spooking me right now, being the only warm two-legged meat for a mile in any direction (although, while I was butchering that song earlier, two noisy vehicles drove by, reminding me that my fear of embarrassment was one of the reasons I started singing these songs in the first place).
I took a break from writing--if two hundred words can be considered writing--and recorded an old Poe story (I guess they're all old, but you know what I mean, this is one I'd never actually read, and was short enough I could get the whole thing done without deleting anything off my recorder). I don't know what I'll do with it--Marshal likes to run Poe stories on his show, or I could put it on my podcast, and talk about the various times I've gone to hypnotism shows. Or I could simply upload it to YouTube, like I used to do with Stephen King stories.
Words Today: 566
Words In May: 17,028
*Or, if I made money from it and treated it like a job, the week before that when we recorded it.
**We're in the midst of a drought, which will surely be terrible by the end of the summer, and the water level is way, way down, which I'm sure I said multiple times last year, but it's only May, and it's already where it's supposed to be in July. The Fish n' Wildlife Bureau might be wise to skip planting trout in the lake this year, since I can already hear them flopping on dry land a month from now.
***???
***I am constantly out of space on my SD card, since I only have the one (when I had multiples, I could switch between them, knowing that when I filled up one, I could go to another and delete stuff off it that had already aired or been edited, but I never have found those other cards, despite having two Rish Outcasts on them that were already supposed to air--hence April and May having almost zero episodes--but being unwilling to record them again).
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