Fat Bunny

  • Zero Day…

    To steal the nomenclature of hikers I am taking a zero day, a day to rest and recover and make no progress on the hike. Though I will probably do a thousand miles in my head thinking about jobs that need doing and budgets that won’t be met.

    I would love to claim the day off was because I have enough sense to back off occasionally when the stress on my body is starting to creep up, but it’s mainly because I have to drive someone else to a medical appointment today. The irony of the appointment not being for me hasn’t gone unnoticed. I also lifted something that would definitely had one of those warning stickers with two people required to lift on it. I’m the one on the left.

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  • Bite Size…

    Today was a day off from working on the the cabin, so I set the fire to the beacons. Yes I did say Gondor calls for aid! as the flames took hold.

    There is something about tending a fire that pushes everything else out of my mind for a while. It’s a task that requires me to just focus on feeding the flames and not letting it get out of control. I rarely get to focus on a single task for 8-9 hours especially something without a set goal, other than burn off some timber and stumps before summer gets here. Large piles of dead wood is not ideal during bushfire season, or during snake season.

    I wasn’t even pretending that I was going to clear this lot today, as it just isn’t possible to have to large a fire while I am alone, and if I am not staying the night. I did however make quite a dent before I had to start letting the fire burn itself out. Maybe a third, maybe a little more from the pile that came from all the driveway and drainage works.

    I would also like it to be done by spring so all the grass and plants can grow back. I am really missing the green leafy trees at the moment.

  • The Things We Can’t Leave Behind…

    I am not religious, never have been. Raised by atheists and ignored by the usual recruitment wings of school scriptures or those child catchers that cults send out to pinball arcades and roller rinks*.

    I do however believe The Serenity Prayer is a good mantra to embrace. I know it has basically nothing to do with religion other than starting with the word God, that’s probably what put me off initially. However as I have gotten older and my baggage heavier I am trying to find a little more acceptance of my past crimes** both real and imagined. I am working on the changing the stuff I can part everyday and then trying to accept being a bit crap at it sometimes. The wisdom to know the difference could turn up a bit more quickly and often if I’m being honest, but it definitely seems more abundant than it was in my youth.

    I have started to accept that the annoying troubled youth had to happen for me to that change is possible, because that guy was an absolute bellend.

    *That may have just been a story my mother told me to keep me from hanging out with the tough kids that smoked and played pacman.

    **Not actual crimes you narc!

  • 1666: The Devil is in the Details…

    After not seeing a usable set of French doors in months I have found 2 sets in week. The first set are aluminum framed which is probably practical for the exposed side of the cabin where they would fit, and they are slightly narrower so they will fit easily in the gap. The gap in this case is exactly 1666mm.

    The second set of doors are wood and will need sanding, painting, and regular maintenance. They are also 1640mm wide without the jambs, so in total I will need 1676mm to install them. I’m leaning towards the wood pair just because I am more comfortable cutting up wood and installing hardware than I am aluminum. I suspect the greenhouse is going to get a nice set of aluminum doors and I am going to be planing 5mm of both edges of each of the wood doors.

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  • Zen and the Art of Dashcam Videos…

    I have found that when I am feeling stressed, which is increasingly often this year, I have been finding it difficult to come up with ways to cope and distract myself. I am also very sensitive about putting my stress out into the world as I really don’t want to be the person who throws a sourdough loaf at somebody in the supermarket for blocking the aisle.

    My possibly unorthodox solution has been watching compilations of dashcam footage on YouTube, and just relaxing and letting the road rage inciting incidents (poor driving not accidents) just play out while I just breathe and remain calm. I am sure I am just reinventing the wheel here, and this is just some sort of immersion therapy (possibly not the right term). There is something amazing about watching stressful situations and not being able to just concentrate on keeping your heart rate just high enough that your Apple watch doesn’t try to alert medical authorities for you.

    I’m noticing that I am also calling people DUMBARSE less when I am driving in actual traffic lately, which has to be a good thing…

  • Midweek Break…

    I’m not actually taking any time off the break is more emotional than physical. Break is also probably a bit dramatic, because I am just a bit tired and it feels like it’s been winter for about a thousand years.

    Did I mention I was feeling a bit dramatic?

    I should be feeling positive because I am making real progress at the farm again finally, my new medication appears to be working and I’m hoping the specialist agrees that I am in remission. Instead I’m just feeling a bit flat from spending so much time alone at the farm. Neither the children nor the cat seem keen to spend wintery wet days working in an unheated cabin with no windows, or digging out drainage canals by hand. I can’t blame them really, I would prefer to be in town taking a nap near a heating vent to.

    I’m really pinning my hopes on spring providing a mood boost and a garden with more than dead leaves and empty pots…

  • Insomnia Paralysis…

    When I went through a serious bout of PSTD induced insomnia a few years ago I was pretty much ready to check out a few times. But with a lot of work and a very strict sleep routine I managed to reset myself and get back to a more or less normal sleep schedule. Which has helped my health both mental and physical.

    However—I have now become so fixated on maintaining the same routine that helped my insomnia that I have been unable to listen to anything other than the same three audiobooks. I no longer read before bed or listen to podcasts for fear of interrupting the all important schedule. It hasn’t helped that the few times I have varied things with a late night or an evening event I have struggled for the next few days.

    I’m hoping that I can break the routine at some point without breaking my sleep again. I don’t think my brain can handle the atrophy much longer that is happening with the lack of stimulation. I’m hanging an awful lot of hope on the farm regulating my sleep while allowing me to return to the creative life that kept my mind occupied.

  • Empty…

    The last few months has involved a lot of work to get the shipping containers to a stage where they could contain things. I had to install a road just to be able to get them onto the property just in time for the coldest and wettest time of the year. I then had to pave a path to allow access to them so I wasn’t standing in a mud bath while I tried to fill them with all the junk from my storage unit in town that had raised its prices 3 times in the last 12 months.

    I also desperately needed to sort and downsize the amount of stuff. It was suffering badly from having a pile of stuff hastily moved into it, which was something I didn’t want to just transfer to the shipping containers at the farm. So after months of selling, sorting, and eventually just dumping I have reduced the amount of stuff to mostly quality items in organized storage tubs. I have also handed back the keys to unit and that felt great.

    There is a sense of purpose and a daily endorphin feed that comes with jobs like this. Which lasts a few days before it all wears off and you remember you have another task ahead even bigger than the last one.

    Next week I better get back to work on the cabin because it has been rather neglected while I have been taking care of other things.

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  • There are Two Paths…

    Except one is a sticky mudslide. Actually both were sticky mudslides because groundwork, constant rain, short days, and subzero temperatures are not great for making ground you can walk on let alone drive on.

    Which would not be an issue if I didn’t need to be able to use the shipping containers until spring. I do however need to move a bunch of stuff from town to the farm in the middle of winter because as usual my timing is awful. So the only practical solution is to make a path. Starting with a ute full of rocks and sand.

    Because the cure for mud is drainage according to some french guy on YouTube. I probably should have watched a few videos in a language I can understand because then I probably wouldn’t have started at the furtherest point and worked backwards. It didn’t make the job easier to be stomping through sticky clay while carrying bags of gravel.

    In my defense the end container was the one with the slipperiest areas, so it felt more important to make it accessible. I should add that the initial plan was just to gravel it, but then I found a pile of pavers my father had collected from somewhere and never used. One of my goals for the farm is to finish the jobs he started and use the materials he stockpiled. Of course once I decided to use the pavers I then needed to compact the gravel. Lay, screed, and compact the sand and then scour internet free sites for more pavers.

    Free pavers seem to show up quite often but disappear just as quickly, and spending money on them seems to go against the spirit of things. However if enough to finish the job show up all at once I might be convinced to part with fifty bucks. By my calculations I need another 400 to get to gate. I did see an offer for 1200 pavers for a $100 but that way madness lies.

    I already considered paving the area between the two shipping containers for no practical reason. So every pallet of free bricks or pavers looks like me spending 5 years putting paths through the woods.

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  • Nah, I’m Good…

    Occasionally I get asked out, no really I do. Sometimes I even go, have a coffee, and a chat but not too often because I know how busy I am at the moment so it’s not really something that seems fair to the other person. The other problem is that I am not just comfortable with my own company, I enjoy it.

    I’m starting to think I could only ever spend time around someone who was equally okay with their solitude. There is attractiveness about people who don’t need to take people’s BS. Someone starts playing games? Explain you don’t need that in your life and walk away. I also like the idea that someone would just cut me dead and never talk to me again if behaved for one second like I did in my 20/30s.

    Maybe it was getting a cat that pushed me over the edge. He’s cool, I’m cool. He does his thing I do mine. I remember to buy food, and occasionally he bites me for no reason. I really can’t imagine a relationship gets better than that, but I wish he liked going for drives.

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