Sunshine

A clear sky and bright sunshine again. I do love the sun now that we are a solar power family. I know that we need the rain and I welcome it, but I also love to see my power bill disappear into the sunshine. We are heading into the months of declining solar power and at 'True-up' time with the power company, in January, we may actually owe them something. But next year, with a full year of sunshine we should come out even at True-up. True-up is the power companies term for the date when they compare what we sold them to what we bought from them. Then one pays the other. One time a year.

I have not looked at the news this morning. We were too busy getting ready to go to the coffee shop for our weekly socializing with our middle child; our second daughter. But...I bet that the $100 that I bet yesterday is safe. I'm sure the candidates did not mention anything of substance. No, I did not watch the 21st century version of the old Laugh In show. Do you remember that one? Well, these debates are a poor imitation of that show. Imagine all the candidates mixed up with the characters from that show... now that's funny!

My ASD is in full gear these past few days and last night, and this morning, as I've been collecting old time logging photos. I've been getting them from the Universities of Washington and Oregon. Also Pinterest and various other sites. I already had a few hundred of them and now I have twice that. I was never a logger. My first daughter's first husband was a logger and we lived in a county that depended on the timber industry. My grandfather on my father's side was a timber cruiser in Minnesota; not for very long. My great grandfather on my mother's side was a lumber dealer in Seattle and a grand potentate in the Hoo-Hoo's... look that one up! So I guess you could say I have a slight connection to logging. Either way, I love to look at the old photos of these men and the magnificent trees that they were falling. Huge trees! The they would haul the logs out on plank roads, through the forest, using oxen or horses to do the hard work. Now I have done a little bit of falling, just enough for firewood each year while we lived in the woods; and I can tell you that even the small logs are very heavy. They are filled with hundreds of gallons of water and they are dense. So I can imagine just how hard the work was. No chain saws and no heavy duty Caterpillar tractors. They didn't even have 'hard hats' to wear and protect them from the 'widow makers' that fell from high up in the tree while they were intent on sawing and chopping. Then there is the ugliest side to this old logging business; they left a devastated landscape behind when they moved on to the next stand of big trees. Stumps that were four to six feet high, smaller trees crushed by the fall of the giants, rutted and churned up forest floor. In some places, a hundred years later and you can still see the damage they caused.

As expected, my pain is back. It had me awake at three this morning and I had to go back to drugs after two days without any at all. The people that want to highly restrict pain meds say that with meditation and yoga you can control pain. Which pain are they talking about? A headache? A toothache? I suppose meditation might work for those. I've tried that with my pain and I cannot clear my mind of the pain long enough to 'meditate'. And yoga? With a fused lumbar spine and inflamed bursa in both hips? I couldn't even consider it. As usual, the 'do gooders' don't know what they are talking about and they're trying to use one remedy to fit all.

Okay, enough about the pain...I must meditate now.