Day 364

Okay, feeling a bit better but didn’t sleep much last night. Lots of coughing and congestion that I hope will be better by tonight. It’s already better today, but I am pretty tired. A good night’s sleep would be wonderful.

Our son arrived okay from California. With the recent air scare over the idiot underwear bomber he decided he needed to get to the airport in LA three hours early, but then had to just mess around forever as it was no big deal to get through security there. He borrowed a car from us a moment ago to go see a friend and then they are going on to another major metropolis to see a mutual longtime friend of theirs. He’ll be back in 4-5 days, so it’s quiet here again, which I have come to really enjoy. It feels a little funny to loan him a car – I tend to remember conversations we had years ago when I was teaching him to drive where he just couldn’t understand why one has to stop at a stop sign if no one is coming. And while he is in the ER of a Army hospital most of the time, the Army has him driving ambulances occasionally, which I somehow find funny. When he lived with us, he lost a dozen or so keys – to the house and various cars, so the old me worries about him losing this one, especially as he will be several hundred miles away in a few hours. But I guess that was the young man who lived with us, before the Army reshaped his life some.

My wife is reading the last version of my manuscript and I’m hoping with the slightest of polishing it will be ready to go. Trying to be quiet so I don’t bother her.

I still have about ten days off until I have to be back to work, though I do have a couple of days of preparation to do prior to then. Since I have a little time, I’ll be writing on the middle reader book series today, to see if I can get some more of one of the books in it finished. I think there are about a hundred books in the series, and I have the first eight in varying stages of finished as I get them ready for another agent to hopefully match up with a publisher.

Had breakfast with the family this morning – unusual for me, but part of my new normal. My wife is generally up a little earlier than I am and eats alone as she has always been a good breakfast person. I’m trying to be. Had an egg and some toast with OJ, and I know it’ll help with the mid-day hunger. She is trying to do the six to eight meals a day as we both feel she has some blood sugar issues that might benefit from smoothing out any sugar level spiking. Since the boy was home, she tried to make her signature bacon (one of his favorites) that we used to serve when we had a bed and breakfast, but she was talking with him and it got – how do I say this delicately – a tad overdone. Even the stray cat that has come around a few weeks or so won’t eat what’s left of it, and he’ll eat nearly anything. Oh, well. No real loss.

She did buy us a new scale, so now we have some idea where we are in relation to the rest of the world. I stepped on it and it seems about where I was afraid I was at the moment. Completely right or not, it will be “the indicator” from this point forward, at least until this adventure is over.

Since it’s Saturday, we’ll likely go into the nearest town of any size (sixteen miles away) late in the day and eat at a favorite restaurant. The owner/chef is a raw foods enthusiast and both he and his girlfriend are about as big around as a broomstick. His place has the best Caesar salad I’ve ever eaten, so that’s likely to be dinner here. There is also a new coffee place where really good coffee is only a buck a cup, and there is quality live local entertainment in the back on weekends. Hard to beat that.

It was cold last night, so I put a sweatshirt over the shirt I was wearing. Of course, it was a bit tight, but that only served to give me more resolve to make this work. Sure helped with the cold though and I have several, all of which I don’t really wear because they are a little too tight – at the moment, that is.

With the exception of a small amount of my favorite vanilla ice cream in the freezer, the house is more-or-less set up now for this experiment. Good food, fresh and organic when possible is the plan, even though it is sometimes a bit more pricy, and also cooking at home – a major change, as we ate out for months while building here.

When we bought this acreage, it came with an old two bedroom/one bath sort of cottage, with a detached new three car garage (go figure that combination!), and a new well – which is a relatively big deal here. It is 600 feet deep and cost something like $25,000 to drill and setup, as water is an issue where we are and we are on rock for the most part. The plan from the start was to seriously remodel the original house, but we needed somewhere to live so we built a small guesthouse first. Two bedrooms and one bath, with a screen porch – cute and comfortable – but with no kitchen, so we had to eat out. Every meal. After tearing into the main house, we realized it was pretty poorly built and entire unsatisfactory from a “green” standpoint, so we tore most of it down and rebuilt right on the same footprint, adding 170 square feet to the total (now 1170 square feet in the main house itself). Again, months of no stove/oven/microwave, so we ate out. Never a good idea, but a necessary evil at the time.

Beautiful, with tremendous views, it’s now finished, so we will be cooking here much of the time, which will help with both portion control and general calorie intake. At least, that is the plan. So, here I am, writing again one more day. There will be odd bits and pieces about this journey I’ll add from time to time so you can understand what’s going on here, so again, please bear with me as I try to decide just how much of the personal struggles that led up to this decision I want to discuss openly. For now, see you tomorrow.

-Average Joe
Somewhere, USA