Journal Entry | 2 August 2023

My plan with this is to just jot down the little things I do each day that I think will be interesting to someone somewhere. If a Journal Entry is long enough to post by itself, I’ll hit publish. If there’s just not much to say that day, I’ll compile a few days. At least once a week there should be a Journal Entry post.

I often forget how different life out here is from the perspective of someone who lives in more urban areas. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you’ll comment to let me know if you found anything interesting or entertaining.

2 Aug

No beaver

This morning when we reached the farthest point of our morning walk, I had my camera ready to go in case the beaver was there again. Yesterday it was sitting on a rock eating twigs, and when it saw or heard us, the thing jumped into the water and slapped his tail. That gave me and Rob both a jolt of adrenaline. The startling was very thorough, but as soon as it happened, I saw the beaver going under the water and the flight or fight urge dissipated.

Mushrooms

However, there was no beaver to take pics or video of. Apparently, he didn’t want to chance us seeing him again and found a new place to hang out for breakfast. But I did see some more of the little bluish pinwheel mushrooms on the driveway again. The day before I’d meant to get a pic and forgot on the way back to stop. But today I stopped on the way.

Snake

Later this morning there was a black rat snake snaking up the porch rail towards the hummingbird feeder. I foiled his plan by relocating him. It coiled around my arm while I held it with my left hand so I could drive the 4-wheeler with my right hand the 1/2 mile down the driveway to the gate. Hopefully it stays away.

Shipping woes

I’ve been trying to get shipping labels made for the art books. These are going out to all of the people who have collected any of my original artwork. There are 15 envelopes, all identical except for the address of destination. The USPS website gave me such frustration and headache. Every step of the way was incredibly tedious. It made me want to just bring them all to the post office to ship, so I printed out ordinary mailing labels for them. But then I didn’t want to wait until Saturday to mail them, so I decided to give Stamps.com a try.

OMG it was so much easier to do the same task. I see now why people pay the subscription fee to use the service. I had a trial for 30 days to use, so unless I start getting regular income quickly, I’ll cancel that subscription before it ends. But it was super nice to get the whole shipment together and ready to go into the mailbox today. Without an extra trip to town to do it.

It takes 30 minutes just to get down our dirt road to the pavement, then another 10 to get to the post office in Kingston. That’s traveling the dirt road at a very slow speed of 10 mph. But going any faster is hard on vehicle suspension and tires, and it makes it harder to look at things while I’m driving, haha. So I don’t mind that it takes that long. But because of that, it’s not a simple thing to just ‘run to the post office’. This is why I try to do as much as I can online.

That’s it for today, as of right now at 1345. If nothing else worth mentioning happens today, that’s it. If something merits a mention later on today, I’ll tack it on here before it goes live at 1800.