random thoughts – Day 1,789 – (Saturday) – predestiny and distractions

It seems like food and weather are the life elements dominating my cranial capacity lately. It’s a lot easier to avoid facing major life issues like job uncertainty and the dread of a job search when dwelling on basic life needs like food, cooking, and eating, and survival tasks like clearing snow and ice to be able to get to the job I currently have while I still have it.

Hazards on the shady
side of the house.

Scattering ice melt pellets and chopping ice have been necessary to help facilitate safe entrances and exits from The BungaLowell. The gutter repairs that were made a few months ago have turned out to be a disappointment. 

Since being repaired, the frozen gutters with massive icicles of previous winters are now just constantly dripping gutters. The landing outside the back door and the length of the paved driveway on the shady side of the house look like an ice skating rink thanks to an ongoing melt freeze cycle that refreshes each night. Winter hazards abound.

Hitting ice with the edge of a plastic shovel is a decent arm workout, and shoveling the chipped ice is a good way to engage the core. It's more convenient and less expensive than going to a gym, and would need to be done in order to leave the driveway to get to the gym, so points for efficiency and potential effectiveness of the ice shoveling workouts.

Today, a neighbor came out while I was toiling on the ice. A couple days ago we chatted and I told her about the recent furnace replacement. Today, as I chipped away at the ice, she commented that I seem to have terrible luck. This provided an immediate flashback to when the head of my department often said that I have the worst luck of anyone he knows. He stopped after I said I don’t think about it as luck, it’s just my life. It's also possibly my birthright.

According to a book I used to have called The Secret Language of Birthdays, I was born on “the day of the long odds” which is said to mean that people with my date of birth (August 13) will generally come out okay, but it will always be an ordeal. Once I read that, it was a relief and I accepted that stupid things will probably always find me, the way will rarely be easy, but it won’t necessarily kill me. At least not immediately. Call it crappy luck if you want, or the predestination that was preached in the Calvinistic Protestant church I was raised in. I just try to not let it drag me down for too long and keep basic survival tools handy, which currently include ice melt pellets, shovels, and an appreciation for free workouts.

New distractions.

Speaking of ice melt pellets, I tried to buy more today, but Family Dollar was out. It wasn’t confirmed they were out until I already had orange acrylic craft paint, a flowerpot, and a bag of chips in hand, hoping to find some pellets in some random aisle in the most disorganized store I've ever shopped. There is currently no plant to go into the flower pot, but there is sort of an idea for the paint. The chips are predestined to disappear soon. 

None of the items bought will help with ice removal, but they have the potential to serve as a distraction for a short time. This will buy me time to continue avoiding dealing with other life issues and fretting about my own predestiny.