I have a mouse in the house

I was watching Training Day in the living room tonight. It had just started too. I heard it. I heard the soft bumping noises that only tiny critters can make. I knew my faithful cat was outside and that it couldn't be him, so I stayed in the recliner and continued with my movie hoping to avoid any sort of conformation that there was, in fact, a mouse in the house. I did this mainly because I have a problem with mice. It's not the typical problem that most have. It's quite the opposite actually. My problem with mice is that I don't have a problem with mice. I can't kill them but I know that they can't live in the house because they wreck things and are just somewhat terrible roommates in general. I can't kill them because I feel badly about it. They're not doing anything wrong, they're just trying to make it through the day like everyone else. And it's not as if they intentionally try to upset humans. They actually go out of their way to accommodate our behaviors. It's very dangerous for a mouse. Everything wants to kill them everywhere they go! What a terrible and unfortunate set of circumstances to have to live in.

Anyway, I didn't get to live in ignorant bliss because the little feller came within two feet of me. He had found a chunk of dog biscuit under the couch and was transporting it somewhere. (That was the noise I was hearing) I looked at him, he looked at me, dropped the biscuit and hurried back under the couch. I went back to my movie thinking he would be terrified and leave. He wasn't. Or maybe he was but he was just really hungry. Or maybe his wife wanted a midnight snack and he didn't want to get yelled at for not bringing it back when he went out for smokes. Whatever the case may be, he kept coming out and I kept sitting up and away he would scurry. After a minute or two, he decided he wasn't going to run away anymore and we simply stared at one another. I suppose he deduced that I'm not the mouse killing type and neither is my cat. After about a minute or two of gazing at one another, I made a sudden movement followed by a yell. Mostly out of frustration because I don't want him to be in the house and I really only don't want him to be in the house because I don't want to kill him and I don't know that I am capable of killing him but he is sort of forcing my hand because everyone knows you can't have mice in your house. I haven't seen him since but I have a feeling that won't last long. I'm going to have to borrow a cat's cat from my mother before I start setting out food for him.

The paleo diet enabled me to embrace imperfection

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This morning I read an article about people love the paleo diet/workout/lifestyle so much. The diet I can get down with. I’m not personally going to follow it all the time but I’m for sure on board with the fact that processed foods make you feel sluggish and squishy. That’s all fine and logical. It really wasn’t until they stated that shitting in a modern toilet is terrible for you that I wanted to slam my head on the table. I’d actually read an article about this a few years ago it just wasn’t in reference to the paleo lifestyle. It was specifically about these new toilets that are designed to mimic squatting but in a more modern and comfortable setting, i.e. your bathroom as opposed to the woods.

Both of these theories, or facts I’m not sure if they’re theories or facts, either way, I’m sure they are both true. I’m not arguing that you wouldn’t feel better and have healthier bowels, you very well could. My only point of contention is, what’s the fucking point? At some level, everything is bad for you. I once read an article that alleged eating large quantities of peanut butter on a regular basis for an extended period of time, can cause cancer. Yeah, I suppose it can. And we all know that drinking beer can and smoking can and I guess peanut butter could and maybe using a high-seat toilet is could lead to your demise as well. I can assure you that something will. Something will be the death of you and it could very well be something you never expected. What I take issue with is  not the desire to live a happier healthier life, it’s the worry, the need for perfection, the underlying current that we can some how figure out a way to cheat death. I don’t believe it’s ever going to be possible and I’m pretty sure it’s a selfish fucking thing to want. We exist because we take things from the earth. Water, food, oxygen, all those great things. In return, we must die and give back carbon as payment to the earth for services rendered.

I suppose I could be accused of being negative or morbid, but I really don’t see it that way. Frankly, it seems miraculous that we are all even here, running around and eating organic quinoa. This is how I see it. It’s a choose your own adventure game and every day of our lives we win. Everyday we make it out alive. It’s really only one day that we don’t. That in and of itself should be celebrated. I mean fuck. What other game do you play that you win everyday but one? We are all operating on a 99.9% success rate at making it through the day if you look at it that way, and I do suggest that you look at it that way. Feel good about that and then get down to the other stuff. Did you feel well today? Did you make anyone else feel well? Are you happy? So on and so forth.

I guess the question I’m posing to you is, what if we all just enjoyed things for what they are and stopped trying to change them? What if we said, “You know what, maybe I’m not evacuating my bowels completely, but at least I’m safe from the elements and any potential critter attacks. I’m relatively comfortable and I’ve got a soft bed in the other room and some fucking dried Tibetan goji berries in the pantry. This shit is not so bad.” What if we replaced the constant, obsessive need to make things the best ever with sheer contentment?

The only night I’ve ever spent in Portland, Oregon, I was at this terrible little strip mall bar waiting for Lucas and Sarah to finish fucking or fighting or whatever was taking them so long. This bar was pretty boring, but I’d been in the woods for days so I didn’t mind. They had liquor and people, so I sat there minding my own business until one of the bartenders came over, sat two shots of Jagermiester in front of me and said, “Let’s make this a mother fucking Monday.” He took his shot, I took mine, we clinked glasses and he walked away. I have never seen him again in my life because I think that was the end of his shift and he must have gone to the strip club, or home to his Chihuahua or whatever scenario constitutes a “mother fucking Monday” for him. I’ve never forgotten those words and I actually have come to use them a lot in my life.

My point is, what if things didn’t have to be nipped and tucked and pinned and pulled and banned and culled? What if we just made Monday a mother fucking Monday? 

Thoughts about life, death and student loans.

I'm in Louisville currently. Came back for a brief photo shoot. I hadn't written in this blog because I was working, incredibly stressed, slightly hermitic and I didn't see the point of writing in Louisville. Until last night.

I went drinks with my friend, Lauren, which always results in a multi-hour, looping, creative pondering session that I absolutely love. The only point that I want to touch on from last night's conversate-o-thon is student loans. At present, Lauren is coming to terms with the magnitude of owing $50,000 in student loans, which is actually going to be closer to $100,000 in the end. Having graduated with over $40,000 in student loans, myself, I understand that it can seem like a crushing weight that you desperately want to dart away from it in any direction possible. Being five years older, I've already reached the acceptance phase and I don't think too much about it.

Last night, I was more or less telling her, "You made your bed and you're bummed because you put scratchy sheets on the damn thing. That sucks. Nobody likes scratchy sheets but what are you going to do?"

That's maybe a little too unsympathetic for my nature so I wanted to write a more explanatory letter to her today. I decided to just put my thoughts in the blog because I know this is an issue that lots of people struggle with. Below is a better explanation of how I got to be more or less comfortable with my own set of scratchy sheets.

First off, if you are dead set on getting out of paying your loans it is possible. There are some forgiveness programs available through the government if you work in public service. You need to have made 120 payments on your student loans first though. That's not really getting out of them because you have to pay for ten years and only work in certain fields but it might be an option for some of you.

Other options that are less straightforward involve making less that $15,000/year or moving to Kansas.

For anyone interested in the Kansas option, there are 50 counties in rural Kansas that hardly anyone wants to live in. The state of Kansas will pay up to $15,000 of your student loan debt if you move there and become a productive member of the community.

I've actually driven through many of these counties and that experience greatly impacted my decision to become a vegetarian. There are a lot of feedlots in this area. I imagine partly to due with the fact that they are out of sight and out of mind from most Americans.

I don't think this is such a terrible option. It would certainly be a unique experience and there is a sort of serene beauty to the land. Some people call it boring but it reminds me of Jackie O, stately and calm with her slight, subtle ecru covered curves under constant threat of life altering storms.

If you like this option, here you go. http://www.kansascommerce.com/index.aspx?NID=320

On to the second option I mentioned, poverty. The government offers Income Based Repayment options. It means exactly what you think it means and it is possible, if you are in the narrow parameters of the poverty index, to get assigned a monthly payment of zero. If you so choose and you can maintain poverty level income for 25 years, the government will say, "Alright, fine. Just never mind" and that will be the end of your loans. Each area has its own poverty index and parameters so you can look all that up yourself if you are so inclined.

I haven't chosen any of these options. Over time I came to realize that if I just stopped worrying about my student loans, I could live a happy and full life. I pay them when I can afford it, which is most of the time, and I call and get them deferred when I can't pay them. I NEVER ask or am even aware of how much I will pay in totality. This would simply ruin my day and yet not change the amount I am going to pay. The dye is cast. I already spent the money. I'll just put on my rose colored glasses, sip my coffee and go sniff my hydrangeas.

Back to Lauren's personal predicament. She has money saved up that she's trying to decide what to do with. Do you put it toward your student loans? I wouldn't and I'll tell you why.

Many people are desperately trying to get away from paying their loans or maybe just the interest on their loans to "save money". To save money for what though? I think it's important to answer that question before you sit around stressing about keeping all this money out of the hands of your financial institution. What amazing thing are you going to do with all this money that they aren't? Why is it so important to keep it for yourself? Furthermore, does saving money improve the quality of your life?

Let's say you have $10,000. There are a lot of things you could do with that amount of money. You could use it as a down payment on some property you want and continue making your monthly student loan payments. You could quit your job, postpone your loan payments and use it to travel around the world for a year and then continue paying your student loans when you become gainfully employed again. You could donate it and have a beautiful community garden named after you and continue paying your student loans. You could also put it toward the balance of your student loans and continue paying them but be done 5 years earlier. All of these scenarios result in you paying your student loans. What I suggest doing, even as just a creative thinking exercise, is to take away the student loan portion of the equation because it's the constant. Now solve for the variable and tell me what your variable is and we can figure out a workable scenario because maybe the quality of life should be more important than the quantity of dollars it takes you to achieve it.

Many people will call this idealistic. My only response to that is to shrug and say, "so what?" I enjoy my life and you can't stop me.

Below is a photo of an old radiator I found out behind the trees. I would guess it was either part of a tractor my great grandfather, Swen, had or maybe something my dad thought was cool looking. It is from an 18-32 Cross Motor. Here's a picture of a whole one which I stole from the internet. 

During all of my research, I discovered that history of Case is fascinating. Rife with family feuds and lawsuits. I'm not kidding. It would be a great soap opera. Partially because it's scandalous but also because a lot of farmers have afternoons off in the winter and I know for a fact some of them watch soaps.

Basically, there was this guy, Jerome Increase Case, and a long time ago he started a threshing machine company. It became very successful but he got bored with it after a while so he made his brother-in-law VP of the company and ran off to buy a ranch in Texas, start a bank in Wisconsin, buy a couple of freight liners on the Great Lakes, be mayor of Racine, WI and get involved with horse racing. Then this dude decides to open up a plow factory NEXT door to the threshing machine factory that his brother-in-law is running that still bears the Case name. Jerome was like, "Dude, don't worry about it. I'm going to name my new plow manufacturing company the J I Case Plow Works so no one will get it confused with the J I Case Threshing Co. They're totally not the same thing at all. Apples and fucking oranges, man." 

So Jerome owns 100 percent of both companies but is only running one and it was mostly rainbows and puppy dogs until he died. In his will he stipulated that all shares of the original company must be sold and the newer company was given to his children. The in-laws were probably miffed that they hadn't been given the company that they'd been running for years so they bought it. A massive pissing contest ensued and suddenly the J I Case Threshing Co isn't just making threshing machines and the J I Case Plow Company isn't just making plows  and it's not apples and oranges anymore. The kids sue the in-laws and both companies try to change their names to the J I Case company. At this point, the post master in Racine is about to kill all of these mother fuckers because they have almost the same name and practically the same address and both receive tons of mail. The federal government steps in and the post office stops delivering their mail. They aren't sure whose mail is whose so both companies have to send a lawyer down each morning to open the mail in front of postal officials in order to discern who gets what mail.

In the end, the kids didn't manage to make it out of the depression and had to sell their company to Massey-Harris, who sold the remaining rights to the Case Company name back to the in-laws. I can't imagine the new owners wanted anything to do with the name at that point seeing as how they were the Kardashians of the turn of the last century. Or maybe the Jacksons. I'm not sure.

Note to owner of photograph; on the extremely low chance you ever see this, please don't sue me for copyright infringement. I'm negative more dollars than I'm positive as it is. Would it help if I said, "I think your tractors sexy"? I'm not sure why I offered that. I should have offered to say, "I think your tractor is modestly dressed. She's no a flashy little tart. No, sir!" Because it's not sexy I think we both know it's not sexy. I mean it's matte grey. You could probably use that thing set your to white balance. I was only making a terrible joke to lighten the mood so you wouldn't want to sue me and then I called your tractor a girl and for all I know, you could have named him Fred or Reginald and are now deeply offended. 

I gutted and cleaned a prairie rattlesnake today. I should have done it yesterday but I was too freaked out about it. I'm not afraid of snakes per se but when you grow up on a farm in the northern plains you learn not to mess with two things; badgers or rattlesnakes. Honestly, I really should have grabbed him yesterday right after David remodeled his head. I've always wanted to cook one but I was too freaked out. After killing the snake, he threw the body up on the hood of my old F85. I would have had to lean my body the snake's body in order to grab his head. There are two things I know to be true. All snakes are males, even when they aren't, and you must always grab a rattlesnake by his head, even if he's dead. Now, I know that a dead rattlesnake can't miraculously spring back to life and bite you in the face while you're attempting to retrieve him from the hood of a car but it's the same as knowing the garbage disposal can't suddenly turn itself and viscously mangle your pour little hand while you're cleaning it out.

When I was a small child I used to wonder if sharks were going to suddenly spring up out of the swimming pool drain and eat me. I'm an excellent swimmer due to the fact that I'd swim the length of the pool as if three giant sharks had actually been chasing me. I'd huff and puff and press my back against the shallow end only to end up back in the deep end when my breath and I found each other. None of it made sense. I knew sharks couldn't possibly show up in the YMCA swimming pool and even if they had, it wouldn't be safer in the shallow end of the pool. It's not like a shark is going to stop at the floating jump ropey thing that divides pools into shallow and deep sections.  

Anyway, back to the snake. I'm out there on the bluff not able to get within three feet of an obviously dead snake and cursing the prairie for being so god damned devoid of tree branches. I would have been okay picking it up with a branch If I had a branch. That way I wouldn't have to touch it and I would be able to whip it a good twenty feet out into the grass if it freaked me out too much. All I could see in a were tumbleweed stems so I went back to the house. It gnawed at me. Now, I must tell you, there are plenty of tree branches in the yard around the house so I it's not like a tree branch was terribly unattainable. Why couldn't I just pick that stupid thing up? It continued to bug me. I tried to convince myself that I shouldn't skin it right now anyway because I didn't have any glycerine to soak the skin in and I was going to dinner in a couple hours anyway so I shouldn't be cooking snake right now and so on and so forth. It still bugged me until I went to dinner and mostly forgot about it.

This morning I had to run errands in town so I didn't think about the snake until I pulled into the driveway just before noon.

Inner monologue is as follows:
"Well, I guess I could just drive back there quick and see if it's even still there. I suppose a raccoon or something hauled it off and ate it over night. Lots of things eat snakes. I wonder if they know to avoid the head. That would really suck if something was all psyched about a free meal and nicked themselves with one of the fangs while they were eating it and died. I wonder if that happens sometimes. I suppose it must."

And then I got stuck in the mud. I spent about fifteen minutes trying to get out before walking back to house to get the pickup. Once I got back out there with the pickup I realized it wasn't going to have enough traction to push the Mercedes out anyway.

More inner monologue:
"Fuck! Why did I drive a 3,000 pound car out in here in the first fucking place. Grandpa's going to wonder what the hell I was doing driving out here and then he's going to be pissed I rutted out the road. What the fuck am I going to say I was doing? Checking to see if a dead snake was still in the same spot it was yesterday?"

I debated calling someone to help me with the stuck car debacle but since I'd done something rather strange and foolish I didn't. I debated waiting until tomorrow to see if it would dry out a bit but the forecast said it was supposed to rain all day. In the end, I got it out by myself but the soil is like gumbo back there and I knew anyone who came out would see the big ruts I created. I grabbed a shovel and went out to try and repair the damage. Thirty minutes later it looked a lot better but I looked like hell. I was sweaty, muddy and soaked because the rain had started again. It was at this point that I decided to walk out and retrieve the snake with my shovel.

It isn't very easy to get a dead snake off a car hood with a shovel but by that point I was completely drenched, standing in the rain and not leaving without that bastard. I had to grab with my hand and put him on the shovel. Three times actually because he fell off twice during the trek home. Once I got him home and lobbed off his head I felt much better about it. I should amend that to say once I lobbed off his head, threw it in the trash and took the trash out, I felt much better. It was actually kind of a relaxing process.

Now I've got a snake skin tanning in a ball jar in my kitchen. I'm still not too sure why, but I'm glad I did it. Should be a little easier next time.

On the phone with Megan.

Me, "Are you at the farm?"

Megan, "Yeah."

"Did you see a drunk guy with a guitar at the bottom of the hill?"

(laughs) "No, was I supposed to?"

"He was there when I left for town. He said he'd give me twenty bucks if I drove him to the rez. I just wanted to see if he still needed a ride. I guess someone picked him up already. Need anything from town?"

My father passed away in April and I've been staying at the family farmstead ever since. Many people suggested I write a book about experiencing the death of my father, living alone on a working farm and/or dealing with the cast of characters that ramble in and out of here on a daily basis. That seems overwhelming. Especially given the fact that I've never written a book and the more important fact that I've been avoiding writing since I've been here. That's not entirely true, I've been avoiding writing anything of any significance for years. Even after typing that last sentence I took a five minute time out to watch three rabbits chase each other around the yard. It's quite fascinating to watch rabbits when you live over a mile from another human and discontinued the satellite television because you convinced yourself you don't need it and you'll have a more interesting experience without it. Solitude. Self reliance. Lots to write about there. Once you remove the rose colored glasses you just end up watching rabbits play in the yard if you finished all your chores before dark. If not, you end up putting together puzzles at the dining room table and listening to old country or classic rock or something else you know all the words to.

I've been here for a while. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of the beginning of June now. I started a temporary job working as an independent contractor at one of the giant "Marts" in town. The whole place is a hot mess and I show up whenever I get there and arrange things however I like. It's been perfect for me and for them. I'm an expert when it comes to making people want to buy things. I've worked in advertising for my entire adult life. In return, no one tells me what to do or when to do it because they're all puzzled as to why I'm there but delighted that it looks so nice.

I've decided not to edit any of this blog, indefinitely. It's partially an exercise in free writing and partially due to this strange epiphany that I had tonight when I was watering the garden that I hadn't really wanted, which was then commandeered from me and subsequently partially abandoned. I was irritated as I was watering and I had a hard time understanding why. I actually like gardening so it seems absurd to be angrily gardening. Hell, the words "angrily" and  "gardening" are absurd in the same sentence. It was because it hadn't been planted the way I would have done it, there was litter scattered about and no one had watered for a few days. I decided to try a new approach to life. I am going to try to find enjoyment in the act of doing and not solely in the act of doing well.