If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.

Friday, August 7, 2015

Bushman's Summer in a Nutshell (so far)



I am not dead, merely stagnant.  

I keep telling myself that stagnant is Ok. 

I don’t believe myself (never a good idea to believe your own excuses) but a good excuse paired with a few cold beers will just about fix anything. 
At the very least, it shows exemplary standards of becoming the King of Procrastination.

Without looking it up, I do not know the date of my last blog post.  I know it has been awhile and I have been off kilter for some time now.  My last regular schedule (not that kind) was back in April, with the A to Z.

It has been a bit of a bum summer.  Not the beach bum kind either. 
It started off great and then declined faster than Fox news and the recently televised debates.

So here it is, in all its glory:
#1.  The engine fails in my truck and I have to have a new one installed.

#2.  Perfect start to summer.  Excellent weather, no bugs, the lawn looks great, the garden is awesome.

#3. Weather goes ballistic, rain for 40 days and 40 nights, mosquitoes so thick you have to wear a bandanna to breathe through.  Cannot go outside.  If you do you risk severe blood loss and eventually death as the mosquitoes drain away your life essence and the rains wash away your shriveled carcass which is then disseminated throughout the forest by rabid coyotes and wild-eyed raccoons.

#4. Unable to tend to the garden it falls into such a state of disarray that the thought of burning it to the ground haunts my every peek into the backyard.

#5.  Finally, the rains quit.  I receive my order of mosquito control (which parallels to Agent Orange in its toxicity to everything in the natural world) and I spray the entire yard and surrounding woods.  With this spray I mix in my summer application of weed control for the lawn. 

#6. The mosquitoes are at bay, I can get back into the yard.  I begin to make amends to the war-torn acre.  The flowers in the hanging baskets are shriveled and mostly dead.  The garden is overgrown with weeds and the tomatoes have such severe blight that I will not even get one jar of canned tomatoes.  The peppers refused to grow in the cold and rainy weather.  The cucumbers, squash, and zucchini, however, have done well and I harvested bushels.

#7. Drought has overtaken the land.  No rain in sight, the lawn is crisping up and because I sprayed weed killer on it and it hasn’t rained yet it looks even worse.  Bug have taken over my cucumbers and they are almost all dead.  The sweet corn was doing OK, but now the ravaging raccoons have torn down most of the stalks only to take a few bites from each cob.  They just want to make sure I don’t get any I suppose.

#8.  I am 6 days away from leaving on my Canadian fishing trip and I still have not received the necessary paperwork to enter Canada. 

You see in the eyes of the Canadian government I am deemed a criminal because of a driving infraction I received over 6 years ago.

Yes, you cannot enter Canada with one of these on your driving record.  I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about.  I have been on a hoop jumping event for so long now that I forgot when it even started.  I am so fed up with passport cards, passport books, bush attorneys, paperwork, fingerprints, FBI clearance certificates, State criminal records, court records and the ever present filing fees, mailing fees, records fees, fingerprint fees, FBI fees, California penal system fees and the ever imposing threat of a massive ulcer.

Today I just decided that I will say FUCK IT.

I don’t care anymore.  The lawn can die, the mosquitoes can suck it (LOL) and if I don’t get my paperwork in time then so be it.  I’ll head to the border and hope like hell I slide across or they grant me amnesty. 
The garden?  Piss on it. 

So let’s end on a good note.  I don’t want anyone thinking I’m stressed out, depressed or anything of that nature. 

I have had a few things go right and have had some fun so far this summer.

I installed a new brush guard and fog lights on my truck.


I fixed the broken window on the truck cap and put that back on the truck.

I installed vinyl rocker panels on my truck.  They are camouflage!





I had a great time up north over the 4th of July.



I built an awesome pergola over the back deck.



I have a sweet new lawn mower.


Best of all I still have my sweet, loving wife of 13 years celebrated just last July 6th.




So there you have it.  My summer, so far, in a nutshell.

I really hope to have better updates in a few days or weeks but alas, fate and Murphy’s Law are intertwined deep in my veins.



Cheers,
Bushman

5 comments:

  1. Congratulations!
    I like your pergola.
    Your sucking experience with the mosquitoes sounds like mine. They always find me, no matter how much bug spray I use.
    Hope you get the paperwork in time. Sounds like you need that fishing trip.

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  2. You and your wife make a beautiful looking couple! Happy belated anniversary; wishing you two lots more! Boy what a summer! How interesting to go from all that rain to then drought. Never a happy medium I guess.

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  3. sounds like a few good things and a few bad things. Canada trip sounds awesome.

    please email me at thebuskerdog@gmail.com I have something I want to send you for getting me a job with your friends in Sparta.

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  4. Where'd the bottom of your truck go? Isn't it unsafe to drive with the entire bottom missing?

    My dad once tried to visit Canada while on a work trip. He was still under the impression you could get in with just your driver's license. It was a simple mistake, and yet he still was forced to talk to border agents for FOUR HOURS and received all kinds of terrorist-related questioning before he was allowed to turn around and leave.

    And here I had always thought as a US citizen we could just practically walk right on in.

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  5. Jeff got through the boarder in 45 seconds. All the worry and pouting and driving me crazy for nada!! I thought you would all like to know he is getting to enjoy his trip!

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