hump day- get over it!!!!

It is Wednesday

Hump Day

 out my back door

    To most of the people I know it is known as hump day. If you make it past Wednesday it is all downhill from there. But to my nursing friends that isn’t always true and for me personally, although I am disabled I still try to have a daily regimen to keep me going, and this means to us it is just another day to the week. A lot of that has to do with the profession you are in as farmers and care givers accept as another day of the week.  Also since part of my present interest includes farming and being retired, the old adage , make hay while the sun shines also applies. I find myself at this time of year weighing personal wants against needs. Trying to prioritize my time becomes harder as I just want to, indulge my senses with the fall foliage as the countryside turns shades of gold. A richness of fall colors takes my breath away at times. I can smell winter also as I know cold times are a coming as well my 60^th birthday. Winter is hastening me to finish projects I am working on.

 

 moving along with project

 

      Finding a better wood heater and getting it installed. Starting the foundation and getting footers all dug out and laid out before the snow flies is a priority. I am also trying to process wood for heat and storing it in the greenhouse. At some point I would like to plant some more trees out of the greenhouse and into different areas of the farm. Winterizing this and that has me a list to keep me busy, well after and up to my birthday when I turn 60. Thoughts of being six decades old has me a bit scared, yet thankful to still be around.

     I remember back to the time I was 5 years old and watching my grandpa, a man who I often try to imitate but can hardly come close to the character this man was. Quiet, humble, always thinking about the task that needed done. And he was 60 years old then. I remember seeing the tractor tire tracks where he was run over by a tractor and had tire marks across his chest and 13 ribs broke from trying to climb on that runaway tractor trying to save a piece of equipment that was going to stop anyway. His fingers thick and stubby in comparison to mine, as if scabbed and scarred so bad from numerous accidents he had while working. He was a carpenter most of his life and had built houses and was responsible for one right down the road, the one I live in and many more. Grandpa had more accomplishments than most his age and was respected by neighbors, someone I always tried to live up to. 

 a days work in pile in front thanks to manual, you will notice tools of trade

     I have his old notebooks where he had ordered material for his houses with all his correspondence so neat and orderly. Something I could never do or was much good at. I did fine in college and high school, keeping up on my notes. But fell out of habit, and now I let the puter organize all my writing. If it wasn’t for that it would be files of unorganized chaos to sort through to find something. Grandpa died well before the time of computers an so had to keep notes and figures in  his notebooks  and served the same purpose as a puter, only it was simpler , except maybe finding the pencil and pad to write it down on. Grandma kept after Grandpa making him account for every penny he spent. I remember riding with him when he went to the lumberyard. After picking up materials he would stop at Mc Donald’s when they still had arches and we would share dinner there only to be told not to tell anyone because he didn’t want Grandma to know he was spending money foolishly.

      After his life was over I have to remember it was Grandma and me who would share dinners at Mc Donald’s and other places at least once a week or more. We did this for a while, I remember talking to grandma who had always had this man, my Grandpa at her side telling him what to do, and now he was gone. I can still sympathize with her loneliness as I miss them also, especially when I look back and think what they have meant to everyone in the family.

       As I reflect on how my thoughts starting out writing turned from priorities to reflecting on my Grandpa and Grandma and now I am tasked with bringing it together here on hump day. In effect it has to do with me judging my actions in comparison to my Grandpa and Grandma and how they sacrificed personally to get what they wanted in life. Grandmas a penny becomes a nickel, a nickel becomes a dime, and a dime a dollar if you have enough of them philosophy , always saving for tomorrow and doing with less today, attitude, made the both of them at 60 much more worthy then for what I have accomplished so far in life. Still at 59 and going downhill rapidly, I just need to put on the brakes and coast along in control and I am not ready to give up. Only in recent times I have found purpose and a design to life that somewhere I know I will fit in the nooks and crannies as I go along.  I will spend each day doing the best I can and looking forward to the next. The rest of my life will be downhill and easy coasting, as it should be. It is all I can do this hump day.