Stubfart Ramble: Okay - I’m Callin’ It, And Mom…

 Gawd I can’t remember his name. There’s this gopher somewhere and if he comes out of his hole and sees his shadow and goes back down - it means 6 more weeks of winter…? I’ve since concluded he’s a hack and a fraud! That bunghole doesn’t know anything about seasons. I’ve seen the same with the squirrels too. We had a warm prolonged chinook back around Christmas and the squirrels came out of hibernation…and then the cold rolled back in and I guess they went back to sleep? I wonder if that’s hard on ‘em? When I was a kid I remember one very early April gopher that had tunnelled up through a foot and a half of snow on top of his hole out at the farm … and he was sunning himself in the glorious warm sunshine. Brent shot him with a .22. Only time I ever managed to feel sorry for a gopher…

The Canada geese have been back for awhile but they’re almost always early and ya can’t count on them either for an accurate call on the arrival of spring. Ya’d think Mother Nature’d been smarter than that? But that’s women for ya: watches are fashion statements only, and punctuality is something only men worry about! 

I’m calling it spring, fellas.

Winter is OVER.

The snow is in full melt mode now. We can see the pavement again out in the street, the snow’s turning to slush, and I’ll be putting away my winter crocs soon and getting out my summer sandals n’ shorts. I’m gonna coil up the extension cords for the engine block heaters, open the shed up for the first time this year and maybe see if my motorcycle will run. I won’t put the shovels away… we might still get a random dump of snow yet…but I’ll hang them up beside the cords in the shed soon too.

Hrrrmpfppffff!

Maybe I’m full a beans about women and punctuality?

This lady bug seems to understand what time it is and getting to work!

So we’re gonna have about  4 or 5 days of glorious mild temps, snow melting like mad - and then mud. I’m an old fart now so I don’t have to hate mud or gophers anymore. Time changes everything.

I really gotta do a health n’ welfare check on mom one of these days. I think I’m back on her shit list again and haven’t heard from her in two weeks. The old bitch might have died and gone to hell and I’ll have missed the party, HAR HAR HAR!!! She’s so much like her mom. When my Gramma was in her last years she turned into a complete sea hag and she fought with my mom and it was like cats n’ dogs going at it. She’d be in tears over it too. Now she’s giving me the business and it used to spool me right up too… and now I seriously just don’t care. Isn’t that awful? A couple months ago I was ready to goon the old whore with a garden shovel or the flat of an axe but now…? Why was it so hard to get from there to here? There’s a lot of drama and baggage and feuds in my family and that shit is so heavy… and I dragged it around for years, and just couldn’t lay it aside and leave it. That spools me up too!

😡

In addition to my Bible-ing I’ve kinda-sorta been dabbling in chithouse Stoicism. It’s amazing how the two are almost parallel in some directions. “Your plans don’t mean a thing. God, Darwin, Murphy or fate can spoil everything, anytime. Their plans trump yours and you can throw a fit or deal with it. People will betray you and do shitty things to you. You can piss and moan about it or handle it. These are universal concepts - even the Japs espouse them. Yesterday I learned about one of their warrior-philosopher-kings… Fuji Musitachi…? I can’t remember his name - but he sounds more like Marcus Aurelius than Marcus does, HAR HAR HAR! I wish I’d discovered faith and these great thinkers earlier in my life. I really struggled with the biblical idea of forgiveness and could just about wrap my head around it - but some remedial stoicism and Japanese tutoring finally put me over the top. It took me long enough, but it finally put me over the finish line. I suppose I can’t really claim total victory either… the temptation to go back, pick up that old garbage and baggage is almost overwhelming sometimes. Almost.

😉

Welp… I have my path to tread, and I’ll be discarding more junk and weight as I go. The trick in travelling is taking only the gear you need, and not the endless troublesome gadgets that don’t work and only slow ya down. The destination is not the point of the hike… but eventually ya gotta get there. 

Funny how that works, eh?

Over six decades on this mortal coil and I STILL don’t

understand nothin’.

Being stupid is hard work!

Make sure ya take some time out from the chores and do something fun today! And thanks for stopping in!

Cheers!

Filthie