End of the World. Beginning of a new one. The Life of Amberwolf.

@mdd0127 - Whoah you are back!!!!! I glad you are alive and you got every ES members worried about your health condition.
 
that would help if he was in phoenix so he could get on food stamps with regular address and then he could figure out how to get the doctors to help him with his medical problems. once his broken neck is fixed it should help him get to the other side and be more productive again.
 
Yeah, that's kinda how i play it, though i'm nowhere near that good or fast. :oops:

Hachi sometimes would sit there and watch my hands, and her ears would perk up at certain notes, and sometimes she'd paw at my neck hand to tell me she didn't understand why I wasn't teasing her with a toy instead, usually ending whatever musical thingy I was doing so i could go outside and play with them instead.

Nana didn't care much about the sound, and would just come snuffle my hands and slobber on them and down into the soundbox hole before sticking her nose into my eye. Probably didn't do the guitar any good, but I figured it gave it character. :lol:

Bonnie almost always disliked the music (any music) for some reason, and often left the room for outside or the other end of the house. :(
 
Thud said:
Just eating my lunch & listening to a couple of your links......Amberwolf, you just blew my mind a little bit LOL.
I would call it contemplative music but its produced way past my expectations...

... ditto's from me too. I like the cuts you posted, they are good!
 
dnmun said:
that would help if he was in phoenix so he could get on food stamps with regular address
Doesn't matter where in AZ he is, single males can't get state help or most of the other assistance programs. They changed the law a few years ago, screwing a lot of people like him and me over. I think both he and I have pointed this out a bunch of times but nobody ever listens. :(

EDIT: sorry for the grumpy reply; I'm so tired I am snapping at even helping hands. :(

Unless they changed things recently, which I can't imagine being for the better if they did, then there's no official help for single males here in AZ. Might be clinics or other things that will help *anyone*, but so far I've never been able to get into one no matter how early I show up, and I had to give up trying. Thankfully right now I don't need any medical care, but the only way I know to get it if I ever do is to go to an ER and then just ignore the bills, because even the ERs haven't been able to get me any assistance, and none of them would take payments I could actuallly afford.

Now if you're female, you can get any help you like, kids or not. The more kids you have the more help you can get, even if you don't spend any of it on them and just waste it on yourself. If you "borrow" other people's kids as your own, you can get even more money because you don't even need to give anything to them--even though I'm sure it's illegal it seems to happen anyway.

No, I'm not bitter at all. :(


However, this thread isn't the place for this discussion, so I'll stop there, and hopefully everyone else will leave it alone, too. ;)
 
Due to communication errors on both ends from yesterday and previous, I missed window of opportunity for help for today with local friends. So I have not been back to the house today. I need to go back and finish what I was doing when I was so rudely interrupted, which is to get whatever is left of my software and backups and stuff out of the old bedroom to take over here to Bill's where there is A/C so it doens't get destroyed by the summer heat in the sheds, and so I can reinstall it on the new computer(s) as needed.

I am going to wait until Mdd0127 is on his way down, most likely, so that I can still be there when he arrives, and notify neighbors/etc that he'll be there.


Also I have to bring a bunch of stuff I'd brougth to Bill's back to my place, because I don't need it here now and will need the space for other things later.


I remembered some of what friends helped out yesterday with, before the looter showed up (long after they'd all gone).

Margie and Tinker, Jim S, Judy G, and Jeff J came by and helped sort and move stuff. Margie moved the small lantana that would be crushed by the new big shed if I ever get the old small one moved and the new built in it's place. Everybody else moved water-sensitive stuff into the small shed to protect it against the predicted (but so far no-show) rains, re-filling about a third of that shed.

Jeff and Jim and Tinker partially sorted the scrap pile into mixed materials / electronics, aluminum, bikestuff, and steel, getting it closer to neatly stacked along the inside of the back fence, out of the way of everything including somewhere to put the old small shed.

Unfortunately because teh looter's attempt forcibly made me think about that kind of problem, I'm gonna have to move it all away from the fence to make it harder for them to climb over it. I will also have to move the city dumpster so they can't use it to hop the fence either, at least not without moving it again and being seen doing so. Hopefully the city won't get pissed at me but I'm still moving it. I also have to take all the stuff I had previously put out for bulk trash and put it in the big dumpster, cuz otherwise it makes a nice pile for the looters to climb over the fence on.


Judy also sorted out the boxes with mixed tools and other stuff from the house into some red bins I had prepared, so we can fidn them to use them when needed, isntead of digging around.


Finally we ran out of stuff (at the time) that they could really do, without unloading that small shed and leaving the stuff unprotected in the predicted rains, and moving that shed, and starting to build the floor of the new one there. So I let them all leave and I stayd to continue sorting keep from discard.

I got about another refrigerator-sized volume of stuff tossed out, mostly old computer stuff and costuming stuff, and found my Amiga computers that havent' seen daylight in a few years I guess. :lol: (a 1000, two 500s and a 2000)

I can't get rid of them yet, becuase I still have music on disks only readable by them, for software that will only run on them, that I need to someday get off of there adn converted to Cakewalk's format by direct MIDI cable connection. No idea if that will really ever happen, but I would like to at least have the possibility.

I ended up with a volume of at least 2'x3'x3' of computer parts and stuff that i'll be leaving out for people to take if they want it. I left it out in front of a shed last night in hopes that looters would steal it first rather than breaking into the sheds, if they did come back after dark.


I haven't heard back from the pick guy about the wolfprinted picks, or syntaur about the ASR88; not expecting them to be quick.


Also discovered I really dislike this old Dell USB keybaord I got at Goodwill the other day (because I can't type on the tiny dell laptop's keyboard very well at all). It's keys are nice enough, positioning, response/etc., but it's shape has NO palm rest at all, so when I have it in my lap typing like I always prefer, I have to arch my hands too much and they hurt pretty quickly, plus it slides arond under my fingers making my typoes so bad I *have* to correct them just to make myself readable at all. Sometimes it slides off my lap into the floor as I type.

I ran across my old Microsoft USB keyboard with the fingerprint reader but for whatever reason it is detected and installed correctly but will not react to any keypresses. Same problem with a little PS2-USB adapter I got from Bill--it will recognize any PS2 keyboard I plug into it, but it won't actually take any data or keypreses from them, other than sometimes lighing up capslock or numlock when pressed. All the keyboards with palmrests wide enough to actually use are PS2; my USB ones were in the fire and are goo, at best.

I found a really old serial-port type Handwriter FX tablet that my mom used for drawing on Windows95 or 98; if I can find XP software for it I can use that as a drawing tablet on the computers that have serial ports, or maybe with a USB-serial adapter if I still have one (I think it was conneccted to the melted computer itself, along with my USB-PS2 adapter and other stuff; if so it's gone).

I think someone else was there and other stuff got done, but I can't remember now. Randall? Or was that teh day before? Dangit...my brain is completely fried from sleeplessness.

I have dozed off a couple times typiung this, too. trying not to sleep now so I'll sleep better tonight for my really early days (earlier than this past week, certainly) starting tomorrow morning.

Oh, and Bill helped me get the boxes from Freecycle this morning, too, so there's now enough to repack many things, maybe even the rest of them once I toss out stuff I'm not keeping.

I stowed most of the stuff from Bigmoose's and Harox's care packages in the organizers my little sister brought by, and the under-bed rollout John W brought me. The laptop itself and it's AC adapter are next to me on the bed awaiting me deciding how to proceed putting my stuff on it, since I think it's internal drive is a lot smaller than my main drive. What I probably have to do is ghost my main drive to another big enough to hold it's stuff (like 250GB), then delete all the non-OS/program stuff from teh copy, then ghost that copy to the laptop's drive (or one of several spares that Bigmoose sent along, more likely, so i can preserve the fresh OS/etc he setup on it before sending it to me).

Then I can again reghost my full drive to the copy drive, and use the copy as an external for the data on it, and put away my original as a backup in case of worst case problems. Dunno how long it'll be before I really get that all done, probably not quick. But the same procedure can be used to setup the desktop Bigmoose is sending, once it arrives and I have the time.
 
Please don't wait for me as I am waiting for others. Do what you need to do. I'll be there tonight for sure. I just got the pedal that I needed to get done finished and am waiting to hear back from the owner. I'll call you when I get into town. Most of your neighbors have seen me around before so if I get there before you can or after you're gone, there shouldn't be any issues. I'm hoping to roll out of town before or around 5pm so I'll be there around 6:30-7ish.
 
Amber DO NOT GHOST the Laptop drive unless you want to loose all the IBM specific features. I reloaded that drive from the IBM Source CD's that have all the "unique IBM" Features and drivers that make the built in things in the IBM work. If you Ghost it, you will loose all those features forever. Of course, it is yours to do as you please... just be fore warned what messing with that hard drive will do.

Also you cannot "Ghost" the internal IBM drive onto a larger drive. It will not copy the "proprietary" IBM hidden partition... it is a royal pain in the keester to clone those. That is why I sent some auxiliary hard drives with a USB dock to hold additional data. If I were you I would consider using the desktop as the large data storage machine, and the laptop for portable computer use and communication. I put a brand new 80 GB in the desktop, and an other 20 GB. I know there not huge by any standard of today... but it is easy to add another drive to the desktop.

I went over everything on the X31 and all the features should be working and the system stable. Be careful with the proprietary IBM stuff until you read up on it.

Good luck, you are doing well!
 
This is a very hard read and very sad and has taken me some time to sit and read thru just skipping as it is so tear full. Please i would like to send a little money for gas for mdd0127 so he may help. Please someone PM me with a pay pal address. Thank you. And good luck as I had a fire 7 months ago and is hard to clean my tools so I can bring them back in my garage.
It's very hard to think of the lost of your loved Dogs. Take care both of you.
 
Thank you; every bit of support helps.


bigmoose said:
Amber DO NOT GHOST the Laptop drive unless you want to loose all the IBM specific features. I reloaded that drive from the IBM Source CD's that have all the "unique IBM" Features and drivers that make the built in things in the IBM work. If you Ghost it, you will loose all those features forever. Of course, it is yours to do as you please... just be fore warned what messing with that hard drive will do.
I know--that's why I intend to use a different drive to ghost to, not the actual one that's in there. ;) I probably wasnt' clear on that. Then I just have to physically swap it out; those drives are easy to change out as the tray slides out after teh big screw is undone, then just the four tray screws on the drives. (Not that it necessarily means anything, but I used to be an IBM-certified tech in a previous work life, although I've not worked on thsi specific model, all of theirs are quite similar. :p)

Then if I need to I have a reference drive to go back to, or clone drivers from for IBM specific hardware, etc. Plus if I really have to I coudl probably still order the original restore kit from them, or find one on the web somewhere. (not likely I'd need to).



Also you cannot "Ghost" the internal IBM drive onto a larger drive. It will not copy the "proprietary" IBM hidden partition... it is a royal pain in the keester to clone those.
At least the pre-norton versions of ghost used to clone even those hidden partitions pretty well, even on Sony Vaios. If not, PING (partimage is not ghost) might do it. Easy to test, just takes time to set up and run, then swap cloned drive in and see what happens. Easier to do once the desktop arrives, as I can use it to run the drives with laptop-size HDD adapters I'm pretty sure survived, and boot from CD or USB stick.



That is why I sent some auxiliary hard drives with a USB dock to hold additional data. If I were you I would consider using the desktop as the large data storage machine, and the laptop for portable computer use and communication.
that's more or less the plan, but I need windows and various programs configured in a very specific way to properly use a computer, especially visually, and it takes months or even years to do it all and get it just right. If I can clone my setup over and just fix drivers then it is far less time to get to using a stress-free computer setup. ;)

The desktop would also then be the music/art/etc machine, as I can add in the necessary cards for stuff and/or have more ports to plug stuff into.


I put a brand new 80 GB in the desktop, and an other 20 GB. I know there not huge by any standard of today... but it is easy to add another drive to the desktop.
And I have a number of harddisks of various sizes that weren't in the fire, mostly old backups or smaller drives that used to be main drives in the system. Most of them probably still work. Some are IDE and some are SATA. I think I even have a board that converts from one to the other, somewhere. I had almost gotten to that part of the old bedroom when the looter interrupted the rest of my night. But I didn't go back yet today so not sure what's still there.



I went over everything on the X31 and all the features should be working and the system stable. Be careful with the proprietary IBM stuff until you read up on it.
RTFM? Me? Really? :lol: I just tend to poke buttons until they do stuff I wanted to happen.... :p



Good luck, you are doing well!
I dunno about that...but I am doing better. Trying to focus on moving forward, because there is no other direction to go when your pants are all tangled in the pedals and chain; if the wheel rolls backwards you just get eated up!


mdd0127 said:
Please don't wait for me as I am waiting for others. Do what you need to do. I'll be there tonight for sure. I just got the pedal that I needed to get done finished and am waiting to hear back from the owner. I'll call you when I get into town. Most of your neighbors have seen me around before so if I get there before you can or after you're gone, there shouldn't be any issues. I'm hoping to roll out of town before or around 5pm so I'll be there around 6:30-7ish.
Ok. Then I guess you should be getting into town by the time I finish posting this. :lol:

I haven't made ti back to my house today yet, so if you can do it I highly recommend you come by here at Bill's house first, as it's five miles farther north and we can see what's what before you go over there to my house.

I already let Adam the landlord know you'll be hanging around with the RV and dogs to keep an eye on the place, and that the dogs can have free reign of the yard whenever Adam and crew will not be there; he said "ok". I somehow don't have any phone numbers for my neighbors in the phone itself and I can't find the papers I wrote them on so I could do that. :(
 
For those that might be local and reading this thread (non-ES members mostly), this is the current todo list i need the most help with, and my availability to help out:

I don't yet know what sunday and beyond will be like, but saturday (and tue-fri) this week I ahve to work--my day starts about 4am, 430 at the latest, for waking up and getting ready, leaving via carpool by ~5am to be at work by 6am, if the schedule stays the same as previous remodels, then I am off by 3-4pm and home via carpool to Bill's where I'm staying for now by 4-5pm. Tomorrow the first day is an exception, starting one hour later.

If I'm not so tired I just fall alseep, then i'd ride back to my house to keep sorting/boxing/etc until either sunset or 7pmish if I have power for lights out back by then.


I don't know next week's schedule yet--quite possible they'll have us work straight thru the weekend and then give us Fri and Sat off next week instead.


There is definitley work to do; as I said before there's a lot to get done, and it needs to be done ASAP especially now that the looters started coming. The basic order, certain parts flexible or possibly concurrent, is:


  • --move teh bike stuff I am saving into new big shed #1 for now.

    --move lathe from back room of house into front left corner of new big shed #1.

    --box up and move stuff on pallets north of fishtank into whatever space is available.

    --move big fishtank and stand from just inside back door of house to immediately west of big fishtank already outside under mulberry tree, placed to leave as much room as possible in front of barn shed.

    --sort scrap and move it away from north east corner of yard, and away from the fence so the looters can't use it to climb over the fence from the inside.

    --new step since looters started coming in: put all the bulk trash stuff that's in teh alley into the big dumpster bin instead, so they can't use it to climb over the fence.

    --empty small shed into yard, only when weather will allow building new shed in time to put those contents into the new shed before rain/winds/etc would hit it.

    --move small shed

    --build metal frame for new big shed #2

    --place on ground basically where old small shed used to be, facing east.

    --level just the parts of the ground that are under the shed floor frame and any support wood.

    --add the plywood to the frame to make the floor

    --build the shed onto the floor/frame.

    --once 220VAC power for welder is available, build shelves for stuff to go onto in sheds.

    --once 115VAC power is available for night lighting, add lights so people can work after sunset when it is a lot cooler and more people are available anyway (except probably me for the next two weeks).

    --keep sorting stuff and putting it into sheds, recycle, or trash, as it is brougth out by cleanup/repair crew.

I think there are more things but I can't remmeber right now. I will edit/update list as I get time and remember things.


Landlord is getting more security fence to put along alley fence, this should deter at least some of the looters and make it harder for them to get big stuff out.
 
when you put the wood pieces down on the ground for the floor joists, you can staple #15 felt strips on bottom of them and it would be essentially permanent in your climate. here wood rots in a few years if it is in contact with the ground. if i was there we coulda poured concrete for the floors. i have all the tools and even a mixer. but i learned how to get free concrete so that's how i finished my sidewalk rather than mix it by hand with the moxer. i have buncha treated lumber too i got for free from the house they built up the street and behind me. lots and lots of pieces that woulda worked well for your purposes.
 
well, i'm off to work at dayjob, another remodel out a t laveen, ina few minuts, my ride is on the way. dunno how well this is going to go so we'll see; didn't get much sleep and had the runs from stress again too.

i forget who it was but someone called me late last night to clarify stuff i'd put in the last todo list somewhere above, after i'd dozed off. somewhere in the conversation i dozed off aggain and the phone ended up in the floor; whoever you were i apologize for that. i just couldn't think at all when you were talkingg and asking and whatnot, being mostly still asleep. if i figure out the phone to see who itw as maybe i can cll you back after work.
 
Dayjob went ok; it was kinda hard when the vaccination clinic started up and all the dogs were there but I couldn't go see any of them because we were really trying to get stuff finished so we could leave (was already an hour over what we should have been). If I'd been on my own transportation I'd've just stayed there to see any doggies tolerant of other people, but I had to leave with my coworker to get my ride home.

We stopped by the house on the way to Bill's and saw the landlord did indeed get the back fence added, so it is as secure as it can be made in that respect.

Mdd0127 arrived, and it was good to see him and the dogs; they seemed fairly excited despite looking almost as tired as he and I were. Spent way too long catching up and whatnot, though, and I almsot dozed off taling with him a few times. I am in an unwanted second wind just now, hoping tha tistting here slurping some hot ramen will make me sleepy and I'll conk out for the night.

I also have some Valerian/etc sleep stuff donated, and i am trying that, too, in hopes I'll sleep better with less waking, as well as some anti-stress stuff for daytime.


Tomorrow after work I will stop by my house to catch up with Mdd0127 some more, and to see what else has been moved out by the cleanup crew in the past two days that I haven't been there for. Hopefully I can also pick up my backups of old stuff and softweare install media, those ones that were not in the bedroom, at least.

Lots of other stuff on my mind, but not enough time to type it all out. Public apologies to anyone I promised a reply to that I haven't done yet, there are a lot of things I am remembering I was supposed to do, only after a few days passed and was reminded by someone or something else. :( I even made myself notes to do them but I forget to look at the notebook! So I only find out I forgot when I open the book to note down somethign else. :(
 
I'm an e-mail friend of Joe (Solcar), and he told me about your losses and what a terrible time you were having. Since you are on the autism spectrum like Joe and me, I felt a particular empathy for you - especially since my husband and I (both of us Aspies) have three dogs ourselves that we depend on for emotional support. I felt so bad, that I posted your tragedy on the Asperger Awareness page on Facebook and asked that they keep you in their thoughts, too.

I hope you are able to recover. All our best to you.
 
i managed to make it thru work ok last two days, though i thnk i'm awful slow at it, nobody else thinks so, or at least theuy won't tell me.

afterw rok deb dropped me off at my house, where i met with mdd0127, and he's gettign his generator setup to run some lights so people can work after dark when it's cooler, since mostpeople aren't avaialble in the morning early enough to beat the heat, if at all.

he will also be doing whatever's possible for clearing out the small shed that has to move, and preparing stuff for the new big shed 2 to be built there, since i have everything necedssary to do that on site.

judyg is coordinating workers for the weekend; i won't be there to help them as i can't get there till after work in late afternoon/eve, and i expect most or all ofthem will have long since had to go home due to heat in midday.

i got about 3/4 of my software adn data backups boxed up; gotta get them to bill's and up to the loft at some point, but it is presently a stack of boxes as high as i am tall, and about a foot on a side. i have no idea at this point which stuff is the older and which is the newer, it has to be looked thru after i get it here. even so, i probably will need stuff from all of it at some point, as i often did incrmental types of backups, not always full backups. or i'd backup just a particular folder or type of stuff.



gotta go see if my ride to work is here, more as i ave tim e to update.
 
5-9-13 partial update:

i'm not getting much sleep; am getting up at 430am to be picked up by 515am to be at work by 6am, off work about 230-3pm and dropped off at my house around 4pmish, so i can continue salvaging what i can and deciee what to keep and w hat to get rid of, working until dark, and now that mdd0127 has a generator working and lights available, maybe even later. so i get home to bills about 8 or 9pm and maybe get to sleep by 10-11pm, and wake up lots.

anyway, yesterday john k came by to help; another friend i haven't seen in years, and he pretty mcuh got everythign on the pallets mvoed to one shed or the other, so that it will be easier for people to move the fish tank and the lathe thru there.

also, the breaker popped for the fridges sometime during that day, dunno when, but i heard one running after i got there and sometime later they were b oth out. they're still running on neighbort's power, so i went over and asked if she could check the breaker for it. i did tell her that if she foudn any breaker looking different from teh others in position to turn it all teh way to off and then back on, but i guess she didn't understand, and just turned it back on which doesn't restet it.

so we ran the generator after mdd0127 spent a few horus rebuilding it cuz it woudln't start, it's on loan from someone else and i guess hasn't been maintained. but he got it running just fine, and now can be used to charge his solar since it's been cloudy here, and run lights or whatever else at my place.

as it got dark we needed to shut off the genrator, it's pretty loud and we didn't want complaints from the neighborhood. i went back over and the neibhgotr did reset teh breaker this time but said that one has popped before even with nothing on the outlet so i decided i coudln't trust the power suply to the fridges, and had bill come down so i could take the food up to his place and had to buy a small chest freezer from frys grocery, $150 isn't too bad as i wanted one anyway, and it is a bit more than the space i ahd in my fridges' freezers combined.

so by about 1030pm or so we were finished setting it up on his porch and transferringg the food, so i coudl finally get to shower and sleep, after taking care of yet another batch of the runs, which i have had lots of problems with due to stress the last couple weeks, and it will probably be that way for a while.


there were a couple local people looking in their storage areas for deep freezes, and bill said if they find one he'd buy this one from me as he watns one anyway, so any of you reading this don't stop looking.


gotta finish getting ready for work as my ride is on the way, so more later.
 
Just have to say thanks to Bill and his family! He sure is a great friend for doing all he is to help and support you. Please let him see this and know that "your friends across the globe" are very, very appreciative of what he is doing!
 
We're going to need a few more strong backs here to get this done. I'm doing all that I can but after moving half of a scrap pile today, my head/neck is already killing me. Mainly, I'm scaring off potential looters and just being security. There is just a bunch of stuff that needs a couple strong people to take care of and it's stuff that needs to be done before other stuff like building sheds can be done. Hopefully, we have a crew tomorrow and can make some big steps. Mike is doing amazingly well with everything and is being extremely careful about he spends the donations that you guys so graciously sent.

On a side note, if any of you have any friends or relatives in the Phoenix area that might need something repaired, I'd love to help them and I really need to start bringing in a little cash while I'm down here. I don't want to be any kind of drain on Mike. I have all of my tools and can basically fix anything ;) I can check the sphere with my phone but it takes forever to reply!
 
Judy G is recruiting local people to help, and working at scheduling them so enough of the right people can be there to move heavy stuff, etc. I don't really know any of what's going on on that front, because I am terrible at organizing such things, so it is better that I just leave it completely to her, and then whatever can get done, will.

Myself, I still have to work tomrorow till late afternoon, so can't even be there till early eve probably. I *might* have all of Sunday off, and if so I'll be there to do waht I can.

Monday the cleanup crew starts again and will be moving stuff out of the house if anything remains after the weekend local help does wahtever can be done.

So the main thing that *must* happen this weekend is the moving of the small shed and the building of the larger one in it's place, preferably leaving the smal shed assembled so that it can still be used to "house" things that would otherwise just be in teh open--even if it is not weatherproof anymore, it is better than leaving stuff out, and it doesn't look as bad to the neighborhood.


(There has already been one person that asked mdd0127 when the burned stuff in teh front yard was going to be cleaned up because it made the neighborhood look bad. :roll: Yeah, well, it's more a priority to save the unburned stuff than anything else, for me, and I don't know what the cleanup crew's priorities are.)


EDIT: added:

According to my back neighbor, the looter guy has been back by, but even though I'd asked everyone to, he didn't call the police as they had asked me to do if I saw him (or anyone else suspicious) around. :( Since mdd0127 is now there with his dogs, the guy heard or saw the dogs and left without trying to get in. But the fact he came back at all is saddening.


Anyway, I'm doing a lot better, I think work is helping, though I still have some pretty bad moments now and then, especially when I see a dog that reminds me of one of mine in some way, which is not as common as you'd think, fortunately. But then there are happy moments, like yesterday, helping some poeple with a little 3-month old boxer/somethign mix puppy, who wandered up to their garage one day not long ago.... She even looks a little like a non-fuzzy Hachi at that age, but she is shy, unlike Hachi who was never shy to me. :lol:

I was half hoping and also half afraid that they were going to say something like "and we're not sure we can keep her", because I would have immediately gotten myself in trouble by volunteering to give her a home with me. :oops: But they didn't; they seemed to care about her a lot, which is good...but I really was secretly wishing they didnt' want her. :|




And now back to my irregularly unscheduled involuntary nappy times.
 
amberwolf said:
dogman said:
Your mulberry trees will grow back very quick, in fact, the pruning will help them grow more this season. but it's a real shame you had to lose some shade right now. Crazy hot yesterday.
Good that you had a lot of help yesterday.

Hang in there, and if you run out of help, let me know. I'll come out and pitch in.
I won't put you thru all that; i'm pretty sure help will continue, even if timing doesn't work the way i want it to cuz people still have jobs and lives and existing plans. Any help is still help.

The trees...it's not really anything except the emotional trauma of yet more major change right in front of my eyes (but would have been much worse to suddenly come back to that drastic a change). I don't do well with changes to my routine or environment, and it takes me a long time to readapt. Just moving my bedroom from one room in the house to another was so hard on me that only a few months ago did I finally settle into it and feel safe and at home, about the time we had the cold snap I guess. And now...EVERYTHING is different, or gone.

I know it is not easy even for normal people, but for people like me it can be almost traumatic just to have to get up at a different time than usual, or not have my favorite spoon to eat with, or not be able to eat the things I'm used to, etc. Sometimes when these sorts of things happen I get so upset I can get hysterical if I don't keep myself calm; usually the dogs would know I was panicking and help me out. I know that hardly anyone here will really truly understand that part...but that's just how it is for me, and autistic-spectrum people like me.

But to have all of this happen at once? All I can do is cry it out, talk about it, suck it up and go on, though. What else is there to do? I want to retreat into a corner and rock myself into oblivion, and I think I almost went that way, that first night, but it won't change anythign or fix anything or make it any better, and it won't help anyone else either. If this were ten years ago, twenty...I'd probably still be rocking in the corner right now, not having said a word to anyone after coming home to that.



MitchJi said:
A very wise man once told me (paraphrasing) that life is like a road, it's impossible to remove all the thorns from the road, but it is possible to wear strong boots. I hope you have the inner strength to make it through this ordeal as easily as possible.
I guess I usually have Slime Soul Liners or something. But these thorns are more like tent stakes, so if it weren't for the patching all of you and others have been doing, and pumping me back up, I'd've gone flat already and fallen off the wheel.


dnmun said:
does everybody use their grey water to water the bushes?
I doubt that even one in ten thousand even thought about doing it, probably less than that. I get shocked looks from most people I've discussed my "efficiency" and "cost control" methods with because it never even occured to them they could do those sorts of things.

Most people have automatic sprinkler systems and the like, or just stick a sprinkler on a hose, etc., and never even think about saving water like that.

I havent' had time to discuss it with the landlord but I wanted to see if they could alter the plumbing to put the grey water outside instead of down the drain.


is the swamp cooler mounted on the roof?
No, but I guess it must not be clear from the pictures that show it sitting on the metal frame against the side of the house. Too much tree in the way still I guess.


marty said:
Last summer we had a family vacation in your neighborhood. It was 120° :shock:
That sounds like a nice cool summer here. Just remember; at least it's a dry heat. ;)


I am off now to get ready and ride over to the house to start screwing shed parts together for a couple hours before it gets too hot. Meant to get up earlier but I keep forgetting I don't have my usual alarm clocks anymore, and I am not used to keeping the celphone with me to use it as an alarm yet. I still have to read the manual to figure out how to set that (and turn off a lot of other thigns that annoy me). (I did it accidentally when trying to figure out how to set the clock when I first got it, before discovering there is no way to set the clock because it is automatic as long as its connected to the cel net, but I havent' found the place to do taht since then).


I was shocked and greatly saddened to read of your loss of your lovely friends. I am an old man and have had many dearly loved dog and cat friends and have outlived most of them. Each one that has gone before me has left me greatly saddened, so, believe me, I understand your grief.

I rescued Angel cat when she was a thrown away kitten smaller than the palm of my hand and gave and took love and friendship until she finally wore out, like all of us will, and left this woeful world to live with Jesus after 14 lovely years. Then I rescued Sweetheart cat and shared friendship until I had a much longer than expected hospital stay and had to place her with my sister and mother. Now I am sharing lodging with Sweety Pie Tiger, another rescue, a very lovely fellow of a cat and a fine feline gentleman. After Angel left us, I had a sadness that was relentless. I know of the feelings you have been thrown into.

There is another dog, another family of dogs, that need the kind of love that you are proven to be able to give them. You will find them (often I believe that they find us!) and you will again have a loving dog family just as I have again had a loving cat family.

You wrote: "I doubt that even one in ten thousand even thought about doing it, probably less than that. I get shocked looks from most people I've discussed my "efficiency" and "cost control" methods with because it never even occured to them they could do those sorts of things.

Most people have automatic sprinkler systems and the like, or just stick a sprinkler on a hose, etc., and never even think about saving water like that.

I havent' had time to discuss it with the landlord but I wanted to see if they could alter the plumbing to put the grey water outside instead of down the drain.
"

I have a secret to tell you. It is a thing that I started doing about a year ago when here locally we began to have an unusually hot and dry summer. It is based on the fact that a large amount of a house's gray water is bathtub water. I kept the bathwater in the tub for a little while and carried out buckets of gray water for a day or two to help out my small flock of Mimosa trees. They seemed to appreciate it because they are blooming enthusiastically in this spring weather. Your landlord or your city government never has to know about you carrying buckets of gray water out to your thirsty trees and bushes. Or petunias.

I have already prayed for Lord God to give you comfort and blessings and will do so again. You will feel better. Trust God.
 
I arrived too late to meet and thank anyone that helped today, and I don't even know who all was there, but poeple started coming to help around 8am today according to mdd0127, and they got the stuff out of the small shed, small shed moved out of the way, the fish tank and the lathe out of the hosue and into shade/covered / shed, amongst other things. And the four dryer/washers recycled.

I have no way to properly express how important all their / your help is to me, doing all this. I coudln't do any of those things myself, nto now--maybe before all this, I coudl have...but not now, not yet.


I took pics of the work done so far, but am too tired to get them posted just yet. So when i wak eup from my nap I can feel coming, I will upload and post teh pics.


I also wanted tos ayt aht today at work i had a very dificult day--around the time i arrived, a dog showed up at the back and some other people took it in and got it in a kennel with food/water, and did the things needed per company policy/state law/etc., contacting the county animal control/etc. so they can pick it up and quarantine it / try to find it's owners.

Normally that'd be a good thing, but in this case i'm certain her owners don't want her--she's obviously had puppies a month or so ago, and is a little older, and a pit mix of some type, maybe about 50lbs, scarred up, chewed on, etc. she's been in fightsand probably is all wore out to them, so they jsut threw her away,d umping her somewhere and she wandered up to the store.

The thing is, I feel certain that she wandered up there to find *me*, but I'm not allowed to help her--I didn't even find out she was there until she started yipping/barking to be let out so she coudl go find her puppies (was obviosu she watned to), almost an hour into starting work. She's a super sweet girl, and wants to snuggle right up and slobber on ya. The thing that got to me so bad was that her bark was EXACTLY like Nana's when she was hyper-excited to see me and really wanted attention so much she just could't control herself anymore.


But i couldn't jsut walk away from what I was doing to go see what the noise was, especially since it was almsot certainly just one of the dogs brougth in for grooming (which is open before the store in general is); they're very commonly noisy and loud cuz they're being left by their owners and as far as they know beign abandoned, no matter how many times the've been threr and picked up.

Anyway, i eventually had to go up to the office to print labels, and saw her there and interacted with her as much as I could spare time for. She's also a leaning snuggler just like Nana, sitting on your feet and leaning into your legs with her whole body. When I later ran into a manager, I asked, and was told the story, and i said that if they could wait i could contact some people i know that had already volunteered to foster a dog should i find one....iw as told to talk tot eh gneral manager, but he was doing something else at the time and I was still working, and can't just walk away from my job for somethign personal that shoudl be able to wait...

but in this case, it couldn't wait: by the time i could take a break long enough to do the calling around, at lunchtime, she was being picked up right then, and i asked the general manager about it, and was basically told "sorry", as thehy took her away. The guy picking her up wouldn't even respond to me talking to him; he just glared at me and turned away. :(

i'm still going to follow up with the county animal control as soon as i can on monday (which probably wont' be till llunch break, cuz tehy're not open during any available time before that), to see what they're going to do with her, so i can try to make sure they don't jsut kill her. She doesn't deserve that--she seems to have a pretty hard life already, and deserves somethign better. I might not be the person that can do that, not yet, but I am sure i can find someone that can.

I wish I had at least taken a picture of her...but I didn't even think of it until it was too late. :( Most likely i'll just have to remember her as Mama Dog (what I was thinking of her as and what I called her when asking about her since that was an obvious name anyone should know which dog it referenced, given the situation), and as yet another of the far-too-many that I couldn't do anything to help. :cry:


So my day is pretty bittersweet; it was so incredibly nice and helpful of those that came by to do all that they did to help me keep what I ahve left safe, and, it was great to at least hvae met her, but very sad to know that most like ly i can't do anythign to help her; it may well be too late already.

And now i really have to let my self sleep, as long and deeply as i can.
 
amberwolf said:
as it got dark we needed to shut off the genrator, it's pretty loud and we didn't want complaints from the neighborhood. i went back over and the neibhgotr did reset teh breaker this time but said that one has popped before even with nothing on the outlet so i decided i coudln't trust the power suply to the fridges, and had bill come down so i could take the food up to his place and had to buy a small chest freezer from frys grocery, $150 isn't too bad as i wanted one anyway, and it is a bit more than the space i ahd in my fridges' freezers combined. .

That's the same cruddy thing that happened to my GFCI breaker and replacing it stopped the problem.
 
I think I actually got some sleep; i'm still very fuzzy-minded but sharper than I have been in almost three weeks. I'm about to get ready to head out to my house from Bill's, and see what can be accomplished today.

Dunno who else will be there. I had tried to forward my last list of stuff and updates to the UFP list via a friend that's still on it, but he said he wasn't going to forward it anymore cuz anyone that cared would already know, and that I "knew" to contact a few other people directly...but I didn't know that, because I was trying to contact people as a group so they could coordinate help, as I am still not able to keep track well enough to do that. Remembering what time to get up to go to work is hard enough, and I have two alarms set to get that done. :(

So to be safe I am assuming that no one from that group will have any idea what's going on, and as apparently they don't want to be bothered with it I'll just leave them alone and let Judy coordinate anyone else that is still able and willing to help. I guess I understand since I haven't been able to make meetings of the group in years as I work Saturdays, so most of the people in the group probably don't know me if they're new, or remember me well if they aren't.

I am really hoping the second big shed can be built today; it's the one thing that has to happen this weekend--everything done yesterday (except moving the tank and lathe) was in preparation for that. Tomorrow the cleanup crew moves the rest of my stuff outside, so whatever won't fit in a shed at that point will be at the mercy of sun and weather. If they dont' finish Monday, they'll finish Tuesday. In either case, I'll be back to work Monday so won't be there for any of that till late afternoon/eve, when they'll likely have left. Then i can begin moving stuff they brought out into the sheds, except for the big stuff that needs multiple people (there are two things I can think of, most of the rest I can probably manage using 2wheel dollies and pallet straps).


Enough griping; I need to concentrate on the positive which is that I have had a LOT of help already, and will still have help when I really absolutely need it, even if it isn't at the actual best time for it--it's still help, and it's still appreciated more than I know how to say. :oops:
 
Back
Top