Category: A Daily Tree

We pulled out the “rails” for the boat ramp last night at dusk – because that’s when the low tide was low enough to make that doable. I probably should have been paying attention to the tides, knowing Arthur had that project in mind, but I hadn’t been, so it came out as one of those “ambush projects” that Arthur hits me with, that stress me out so much.
In fact I don’t mind helping on Arthur’s projects, but, like a small child, I don’t manage my stress well when I don’t get advance notice about what’s expected of me. Arthur is not inclined to communicate his plans or intentions ahead of time. After dinner, without preamble, it was: “I’m going to pull out the rails now.” Of course no invitation or expectation that I would help, but I simply can’t imagine Arthur in his increasingly frail state doing this project himself – those rails are heavy, and pulling them up the ramp is awkward. So I had a choice: let him start it himself and then be there to help when he finally asked for help, or otherwise I could simply start out helping knowing it would get to that. It’s one of those “military moments” when the arbitrary “task” comes down the chain of command and one simply has to leap to action in that moment.
Lo, a tree did grow.

[daily log: walking, 2km]

Today was shopping day. It rained most of the day, but we got our errands done in town. I made my chupe de pescado (Chilean-style fish chowder) for dinner.
From the archives, this tree was seen in Manitoba, in 2009.

I am studying US History. This is because I need to fulfill a prerequisite for this teacher certification program I want to enter, and despite having actually taught US History in Korea, I have never taken a college-level history class of any kind. So I do fine with the broad, outline-y questions, the order in which events unfolded, I know my presidents. But a lot of details are not well established in my mind. I don’t know the specific names of the originators of policies or events, e.g. the name of the presidents of South Vietnam in the period leading up to the Vietnam War, or the specific act of congress that tried to get Native Americans onto reservations on the Great Plains. So I have some studying to do. I scored about 70% on practice versions of the two “tests for college credit” that I am planning to take.
Meanwhile, I saw a tree.

[daily log: walking, 2km]

I didn’t have a very good day. I tried to do some work outside, since it wasn’t raining. But I felt low energy, got really tired without getting much done, and came inside and did almost nothing useful the rest of the day: reading blogs and messing around with small, unnecessary and goal-less tweaks to my server and its plethora of not-quite-functional applications.
Perhaps I’m coming down with something. I can’t even tell.

[daily log: walking, 1km; tromping, 500m]

Arthur surprised me today. He wanted to go out on the roof of the boatshed to fix his raingauge, today – it occasionally gets full of debris and needs to be cleaned out. In the past when he’s decided to do this, he will, without warning or discussion, walk out on the deck over the boatshed, climb over the railing and simply go do it. This approach is difficult for me and stresses me out. His record of falling and issues with stability and vertigo mean that I am constantly worried he will slip and fall off the roof of the boatshed. Anyway, this time, instead of just doing it, he consulted with me beforehand. He said he wanted to do it, and asked what we could do so I was comfortable with it. This type of consultation with Arthur feels almost unprecedented, so I was very pleased. In the event, he looped a rope around his belt and I held onto it while he walked out there. It’s not really that much of a safety factor, I’ll be the first to concede, but it meant that if he lost his balance, there would at least be a bit of a break on him slipping all the way down the roof/side of the boatshed (it’s a continuous curve of metal, quonset hut style).
After sending off my Professional Objectives essay, I also made some good progress on a little database programming project I’ve been working on, related to my geofiction server.
All in all, it was a very positive day. I needed one of those.
Here is a tree.

[daily log: walking, 1km]

We stored our vehicles just in time, yesterday. Today the rain came hard and continuously.
I worked on my final application essay for the teaching certification program at UAS. Also, I procrastinated on that.
Here is a damp tree.

[daily log: walking, 1km]

Arthur and I got the boat out of the water, up the ramp, but parked outside the boathouse for now – Arthur wants to clean it off, debarnaclize it. And it started raining quite hard in the afternoon, so we both became demotivated with respect to outdoor activity.
Here is a tree.

[daily log: walking, 1.5km]

Below is a tree from the archives. It is a tree in front of the house in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, where Michelle took her own life in June of 2000. The picture was taken in 2009, when I stopped by there at the behest of Michelle’s ghost, who sometimes makes requests.

[daily log: walking, 2km]

Today, Arthur and I took the boat in for its annual service (Arthur calls it “winterizing” but that’s not quite accurate – nothing will be different about the boat once the service is complete, vis-a-vis its adaptability to the climate).
We put the boat trailer on the Blueberry (the car). I drove that into town, while Arthur drove the boat into town. Arthur took his time getting to town, this time – normally this “race” takes each of us almost the exact same amount of time, but this time Arthur took an extra 20 minutes to get there. Apparently he took a slight wrong turn at Cemetery Island.
We pulled the boat out of the water at the public boat ramp down by the fuel dock (north end of town), and drove it to the boat store for its service. I took a picture of the boat on its trailer at the boat shop, with an accompanying tree, to meet my tree-photographing obligation.

[daily log: walking, 2.5km]

Today we had our neighbor-from-down-the-road, Aaron, stop by and I paid him to help us clean the gutters. Just like last year, Arthur was ready and eager to simply do it himself: go up on the 32′ ladders, all the rest. Fearless. Last year, for gutter cleaning, Arthur fell from a ladder and was briefly unconscious, and it was a truly horrible day. Yet he emerged from that experience without apparent long-term injury, which thus left him confirmed in his own belief in his indestructibleness.
This gutter-cleaning is an utterly winless situation for me. If I let Arthur clean the gutters, at best I deal with the excruciating anxiety of him falling from a ladder. At worst, he falls and breaks his neck or dies – a more real possibility than he’s willing to admit, given his vertigo, his stability issues, etc. And in what happened instead, where I insist that he NOT clean the gutters, well, he glowers with obvious resentment of my overcautiousness, of my “supervising” him, all the rest. He grits his teeth and lurks judgmentally on the margin, unimpressed with my presumed incompetence and displeased with my own evident anxieties around heights. It’s emotionally painful.
I simply can’t win. Therefore this new tradition emerges, as I move into my second year here: The Worst Day of the Year: Gutter-Cleaning Day.
Aaron did a good job.
Here is a picture of a cleaned gutter, with a tree, so that I can meet the tree-picture criterion.

[daily log: walking, 1.5km]

I made good progress with dirt and insulation today.
Here is a tree.

[daily log: walking, 1km; shoveling, 2hours]

We went to town for Thursday shopping, and when we got back, I shoveled some dirt.

[daily log: walking, 1.5km; shoveling, 1hour]

I moved dirt.
I saw a tree.

[daily log: walking, 1km; shoveling, 2hours]

The rain returned. I tried moving dirt for a while, but in the rain that’s less fun.
Here is a tree.

[daily log: walking, 1km; shoveling, 1hour]

Arthur once again tried to catch a halibut. He actually caught one! It was very, very small: a “baby halibut.” Not much bigger than the bait we were using. We threw it back. Sadness ensued.
I took this picture of the hillside at Caldera Bay reflected in the calm, smooth sea. You can see some leaves and other things floating… Pick a tree, any tree. That’s your daily tree.

[daily log: walking, 1km; shoveling, 2 hours]

Another day working hard moving dirt around, burying the pipes around the well-head.
A tree seen from the boat, from the last time we went out in the boat.

[daily log: walking, 1.5km; shoveling, a lot]

I spent the day working very hard, putting insulation in the “dog house” at the well-head, and burying some pipe that I placed.
Here is a tree from my archives. It is a tree inside Bukhansan Park in Seoul, beside a stairway up to a Buddha in a cliff-face. I took this picture in October, 2013.

[daily log: walking, 1.5km; digging, alot]

With the rain in remission, I undertook a mission to work on project to winterize the well. That went well, but I lost momentum in the afternoon. I’ll resume tomorrow. Meanwhile I studied some, in my CLEP book.
This tree was along the road.

[daily log: walking, 4km]

I got my CLEP textbook yesterday. Now I can take my studying to a new level. CLEP is a formalized “exams for college credit” system. Since UAS is requiring me to fill in some holes in my undergraduate transcript of 30 years ago, taking a few CLEP exams seems the most efficient approach. We’ll see how it goes.
Here is a tree.

[daily log: walking, 2km]