Feinsteins_Ghost

Im thankful to be alive. Im thankful for my kids. Im thankful for homegrown tomatoes and roadside peach stands. Im thankful for spaghetti bolognese and real Alfredo sauce. Im thankful for living next to an ocean where i can sit and watch the waves and tune out. Im thankful for being a tiny little spec of insignificant nothing on a mote of dust floating in the beam of a star in the middle of a cosmic vastness that brings me to tears when contemplating its vastness and my place amongst it all. Im thankful for being able to go camping the couple times a year i can afford it, its always low tech and cheap (bedsheets and ramen noodles in cheap walmart/amazon tents) but it affords me a chance to be somewhere semi quiet, semi alone and attempt some self reflection. Lately it placates the urge to go back home when im feeling needlessly wistful.

I think back on my life and there are things im thankful for. Im thankful for the year i spent in a squat in New Orleans sparing for change. Im thankful that year, and the years after spent dealing with drug addiction didnt kill me despite my best efforts. Im thankful for the folks i met out hitching the roads who showed me how to get by. Im thankful to have achieved sobriety (well, 90% anyway) or some semblance of it despite it not bringing the much longed for clarity of mind. Yet. I hope. Im middle aged so who knows. Maybe 2025 is my year.

Im thankful for this place and the mostly anonymous folks that make it up. It tempers my misanthropic tendencies and i enjoy shitposting with some real elites. It encourages me to get better at shitposting and get better at being a good person.

Im thankful i am the age i am. I am at best, halfway through my expected lifespan. Likely closer to 2/3-3/4 of the way through given all the previously referenced drugs and efforts to off myself, but still. I am learning to look back on my life less with embarassment and more with grace, i guess. Beating myself up over it will not change the decisions i have already made. There really is no use crying over spilt milk. All the same, i would not do my 20s again. Likely not my 30s either. Its taken me a long time to even grasp the concept of being comfortable with oneself, let alone understanding that eventually i can get there too. Slowly becoming comfortable enough with my own skin to no longer hide behind a shirt at the pool. Not literally, im a chubby dad bod but metaphorically im getting my swimmers body, svelte even.

Im still broke. Chronically behind on bills, always more going out than coming in. Im not thankful for that, however.

Life seems to pose more questions than answers the older i become and even more so recently than the norm but i have moments where i am happy, life is truly enjoyable, and im thankful for those too. Im trying to make the most of my time here, and despite being generally a misanthrope, and a grumpus, i see how to be happy i think. I guess we will find out.

Anyway. Goodnight yall.

I was never a real big fan of peaches until about two years ago, i made someone i was dating a peach pie and the bottom crust was likely the best one ive ever made and that pie turned me in to a real big peach boi ever since. peach ice cream. Cobbler. Peach upside down cake. Grilled peaches. Peach preserves on almost burnt toast for breakfast makes me happy. Peach tarts. And fucking peach pie? I cant get enough. Its replaced key lime as my favorite desert ever.

Its the beginning of texas peach season and last weekend when i went camping at a sorta nearby lake, i stopped at a roadside stand where this older than dirt farmer sells local peaches, pecans and onions. I bought two bags of peaches; one Early Flavorich, and one Dixieland, and ate the whole bag of Dixieland peaches and a couple of the Early Flavorich while i was camping. I saved some so i can make a peach pie ive been slobbering over like a dog for the last week-ish. Tomorrow when i get off work im prepping peaches and baking a pie. I am staying up til it sets so i can have peach pie and i dont give a rip what time it happens to be at either. I might even make ice cream to go with it if i can bribe my daughter to help with pie and ice cream.

Real peachhead hours whos awake? Anybody have a particular variety they're fond of? Does anyone prefer early season over late season? Or is it just one of those things nobody really cares about and im the only one acting like a dumbass for fruits?

Thanks for coming to my peach talk i appreciate it.

Decided to go glamping of a sort this weekend. loaded up the back of my truck with shit i never take like a ginormous rotomolded cooler, and a mountainbike, and a cot and tent instead of my hammock and tarp. I even brought my fucking ipad to watch movies from. I brought aUSB powered fan to use in my tent. How bougie am i now? I even have 50 Amperes of 120vAC on tap approx 25' away if i choose to use them.

After dinner i went for a walk on a fishin pier. Ran across almost a dozen of these snakes and maybe five red eared sliders. Im fairly sure the snakes are Diamondback Watersnakes, but im not a snake guy so im going off of sesrching moreso than my own knowledge of snakes. This was the only photo i got of the two species in close proximity together. The lake i am at has Texas Rat Snake, Cottonmouth, Copperhead, Diamondback Watersnake, and maybe a half dozen rattlers of some sort but I'm fairly sure I'm right about the ID here.

The lake has these aluminum things someone welded and they dropped in to provide a habitst for panfish and larger to have somewhere to go. The lake is so low that what is typically 12+ feet below the surface has become a perch for surface life.

Anyway thanks for coming to mutual of omaha's wild kingdom

Look how they massacred my boy

Also fell asleep before switching work clothes from washer to dryer.

Goooooooooooood morning!

Mosquitos may have beat me today. They arent like Russian Taiga in the summertime bad but still, fifteen minutes is about all they need to bleed one dry.

I brought deet, picaridin, and a thermacell. I brought my hammock, which has a bug net built in. It has been treated with permethrin some weeks ago, is unwashed, and i figured the treatment would be current enough to provide protection. Boy am i wrong.

Deet applied to exposed skin to the point of being tingly. Picaridin on top. Thermacell chugging away. And still not quite enough. More of the fuckers are getting thru my defenses than im ok with. The bananas i had during my hike arent helping.

So i go get in my hammock, which is great mostly. Bugnet keeps them off my head, and the thing has been treated with permethrin so it should be helping some too. But it just isnt, really. I brought my spreader bar hammock because im a side sleeper, so the bug netting is only on the top half. Since it is in the 70s&80s im leaving my underquilt at home, which helps to keep things cool but the lack of under quilt means that wherever my body touches the hammock the mosquitoes have direct access to me. And they are biting me.

Im going to be a misshapen mass of hamburger before much longer. Im probably going to have to go sleep in my car. JFC.

Standing in line at will-call at Ferguson this afternoon, I called the office to get a PO number. Its a small plumbing shop so the business tyrants are involved with all things to some extent; since she is answering phones today, she answered when I called to get my PO number.

For some reason I said “OK I love you, bye” when I hung up, like a dumb ass.

I didnt have to call, or go back to the office before I finished my shift today, so I didnt have to hear about it yet. Nobody has texted me or called me either so maybe she didnt say anything. Or maybe she did and theyre all waiting to fuck with me tomorrow.

Anyway, thats my faux pas for the day.

Post some of your favorite noods you can find readily available in most grocery stores. I like instant noodles, and i know yall do too.

ETA or not readily available too. Ill try some good recs

I heard toothbrush joke today at work.

Hand me my basin wrench and come under here with me and watch what im doing - 'you mean our basin wrench'.

(At lunch today) Can you pass my water jug to me please? 'you mean out water jug, comrade?'

He's the new owner's 17 year old fail son.

I dont get paid enough for this shit.

Bottom text

When I'm lyin' in my bed at night
I don't wanna grow up
Nothin' ever seems to turn out right
I don't wanna grow up
How do you move in a world of fog
That's always changing things
Makes me wish that I could be a dog
When I see the price that you pay
I don't wanna grow up
I don't ever wanna be that way
I don't wanna grow up
Seems like folks turn into things
That they'd never want
The only thing to live for
Is today...
I'm gonna put a hole in my TV set
I don't wanna grow up
Open up the medicine chest
And I don't wanna grow up
I don't wanna have to shout it out
I don't want my hair to fall out
I don't wanna be filled with doubt
I don't wanna be a good boy scout
I don't wanna have to learn to count
I don't wanna have the biggest amount
I don't wanna grow up
Well when I see my parents fight
I don't wanna grow up
They all go out and drinking all night. And I don't wanna grow up
I'd rather stay here in my room
Nothin' out there but sad and gloom
I don't wanna live in a big old Tomb
On Grand Street
When I see the 5 o'clock news
I don't wanna grow up
Comb their hair and shine their shoes
I don't wanna grow up
Stay around in my old hometown
I don't wanna put no money down
I don't wanna get me a big old loan
Work them fingers to the bone
I don't wanna float a broom
Fall in love and get married then boom
How the hell did I get here so soon
I don't wanna grow up

• Tom Waits

This song came out the year before i hit highschool. Ive listen to TW off and on, he was a little out there for me during my teens but this song has always resonated with me.

Now, i am grown up. Im 46. I have children who are the age i was when this song came out. I have this overwhelming feeling like this is it. I have a home, and loans, and kids, and a medicine chest. Im floating the broom. Feeling like ive lost my way.

How the hell did i get here so soon?

Shit is hitting really hard this morning. Bricks on my chest. Anyway.

About an $1,800 kitchen faucet that doesnt interface with Alexa properly.

Im liable to take the faucet and beat him with it til his legs dont work any more. The disconnect here may as well be the Grand Canyon and im Evel Knievel.