Tuesday, June 28th 2022

You’re not going to believe this. It is not even 6:00 a.m. and my asshole neighbors are running a weed wacker. Have you ever heard anything like this in your life? Not even 6:00 a.m. in the morning and these assholes are running a gasoline-powered machine at top volume. I tell you, you cannot deprive these people of their opportunity to kill things. They cannot create a skinhead aesthetic to please… well, I have no idea who they think they’re trying to please, but if they cannot be pleasing, they just feel worthless in the world. My question is, what in the fuck gives someone the idea to run a weed wacker at 6:00 a.m.? Not even 6:00 a.m.!

I was up anyway and I wasn’t doing anything particularly attention deserving. I think the only thing I was doing was debating how much effort I was going to put into today and eyeballing the newest weather report. They say we are supposed to get some rain today. Even two thunderstorms. Of course it comes in a storm. It can’t just be some light precipitation that drops a little love on all things growing. The conservative fascists of this country don’t like anything kind. Everything has to be brutal or they just don’t understand it.

I honestly feel like talking to this guy. I would like to know where on the planet he thought that getting up bright and early and doing his most important work came to mean running a weed whacker before the clock even turns to 6:00 a.m. . I can live with farmer mentality, burning Sun, up and at ’em, etc. But have they no regard for human beings who run on some sort of schedule? Isn’t there some sort of 8:00 a.m. limit or 9:00 a.m. limit for these sorts of things? I hear that in Germany, former fascists now overtly telling people of their new enlightenment, they have laws against doing work with these sorts of instruments on the weekends. You can’t do this sort of thing there because Wonder of wonders, it unnecessarily disturbs people.

I think I’m going to get up and go take a look at them. I really want to know who this offending person is. I can’t see from this window but I think it’s the deaf people that live across the street. Apparently the deafness has crept in a little deeper into their craniums. I wonder what kind of brain atrophy they are suffering from. There are all kinds of debilitating diseases that lead to dementia. My guess is, you have a better chance of really getting deep into the vegetation if you spend most of your life demented. You get a head start that way.

I tell you what, if it turns out to be the state people, you could probably consider this an act of War. This might exactly be the battle call telling these chronic village reprobates that it’s time to pretend they’re in their twenties, tuck their pot bellies into their old army uniforms and be ready to give their lives for mother Russia. That’s the thing about getting involved in wars if you’re Belarusian you know. These are exactly the president’s words. In times of War, we have to be willing to die. We don’t have to be willing to be reasonably friendly. We don’t have to be willing to be sensible with our advice should it be needed. The important thing is our willingness to die. I think the person that came up with that philosophy spent too much time standing over a gasoline powered weed wacker.

Six motherfucking am and this asshole is cutting his grass.

You know, I cried from that butterfly incident yesterday. I have lots of bugs come and bump into me. There were a couple of carnivores who kept buzzing around me. One or two of them got me and I think I got a few of them. But when that butterfly came to say hello, he really wanted to be with me. 

At first he flew right onto my shirt and just stayed there. I said a few hello words to him and he said hi. He was pretty happy. There’s a lot to eat and the ragwort, and absolute butterfly singles bar is popping exactly now. The dude was excited. Life was good on the butterfly front. I think he was going caterpillar happy.

The gratitude part of the conversation actually came before that photograph. But when he was in the middle of bonding with me, he really just didn’t want to leave, I asked him if we could do a selfie. He didn’t really understand the concept of the selfie but if I wanted to, he wanted to. Butterflies agree that they are very, very beautiful things. Perhaps it’s a little egotistical but then again, if you were as beautiful as a butterfly, you might be proud of it as well.

So I took a moment to transfer him to my hand. He didn’t actually understand what I was doing. He did not feel any sense of violence coming and certainly I wasn’t swatting him away. I don’t know whether he was aware or not that I am perfectly adept at killing carnivore insects. I get a lot of practice out here and I don’t mind one bit. Not that one more itch here or there matters anymore. My skin is well chewed on already. I’m just saying that I SWAT flies like swatting flies.

No fear. Whatever you want, Adam. You’re the man.

He finally figured out that I wanted him on my hand and delicately stepped off of my shirt and let me transport him a few steps to where my phone was lying in some tall grass in the shade. I sat down on my chair, I like to have a chair hanging around when I’m out working, put the phone on my right thigh, opened up the camera app and snapped a series of photos, four in all. Mr butterfly was a natural model. Like I said, they are well aware of their beauty and he tried to give me a few looks as long as I was snapping away.

Once I had my pictures, there was a bit of an awkward pause. You know when you’re in the middle of  a conversation with someone and suddenly, you can’t really remember why you’re talking to them? I mean, I like butterflies and apparently butterflies like me. Well, butterflies like sweet flowers and I am absolutely not one of the local human beings that wakes up before 6:00 a.m. to run weed whackers to make sure there are no wild flowers. But in terms of intellectual conversation with wildlife, I really can’t see any communications other than:

1. Are you food? 
2. Are you danger?
3. Can I rest here?
4. Do you mind if I lay eggs here? 

And then possibly,

5. Are you okay?

I think the ending of my conversation with the butterfly was pretty much number five. It was very reminiscent of meetings with my father. After a while, he would forget why it was so important to call and would briefly ask if everything’s okay. Sure, everything’s fine. Good and that would be it.

Believe it or not, I learned a lot about the wild Kingdom from my family.

After this, I got one very strange message. Somebody asked if I had gotten hold of marijuana. Apparently, if I am talking to butterflies, this must mean that I’m high on drugs.

I wish.

No, let me make this clear again. I don’t use drugs. Well, maybe that’s not true. I eat sometimes when I’m bored, upset, depressed or any other particular mood happening. I use food as drugs in this way. Pretty much anything you do, and this will absolutely include running a weed wacker at 6:00 a.m. would constitute drug seeking behavior. You cannot tell me there’s any business involved in 6:00 a.m. weed whacking. This is a person that does not want to face their own fears.

There was a time in my life where I drank vodka. I don’t anymore. I don’t like what alcohol feels like and I don’t like the effect. I also don’t like alcoholics and dollars to donuts and all the money I have in the world on the table says this mother fucker with the weed wacker is an alcoholic. You would not know the difference between the Mona Lisa and your grandmother if you didn’t understand this guy was an alcoholic. They breed alcoholism here. It’s socially acceptable insanity. Like I said, they live for the brutality.

As far as the commonly understood things that can be taken that are commonly known as drugs, I really have not had wide experience. I don’t really think it will do anybody any good to relate my history but I have tried opiates, these would be legally acquired. I wouldn’t say that I was addicted to them but I would say that I use them for medication purposes to keep pain at a minimum. I tried cocaine once when I was a teenager. I’ve never bothered to even make an acquaintance with any of the Wonder drugs of the Midwest and the deep South. I never tried meth or crack or whatever ridiculous nonsense those guys like to play with. I’ve never touched heroin and I’ve never tried any of the local modern deals. I was given LSD one time unknowingly when I was in Eugene Oregon, a gift from some drug dealers that decided it was important that I try it. If you want to know what happened, I talked a lot about my family with a friend. They dosed my dog too. I guess this is one of the reasons why I don’t do drugs.

I like marijuana though. I like it a lot. It kills the boredom, anxiety or whatever else. It takes me just slightly askew and brings back a love of life and a bit of physicality for me. It’s a lovely, lovely thing to have available because it just makes me feel good and adds a touch of happiness to my life that otherwise isn’t here. It’s an absolute positive and I do not suffer from paranoia at all. 

As far as debilitation goes, I agree that sometimes I can get a little lost especially when I’m trying to execute some kind of a technical problem. I find that I can solve the technical problems eventually. I’ve never actually studied this but completely straight, I also get lost in technical problems sometimes and it takes me a while to figure out what I want to do. It’s just that if I have a bit of marijuana, the quest for the answer is humorous and when I’m completely straight it’s just the dull pain of having to solve yet another problem.

Maybe that’s why they’re running a weed wacker at 6:00 a.m. . It’s not really conspiracy theory but perhaps the thinking was that if they ran a weed wacker at 6:00 a.m. and I was actually high on weed, I would burst out of my house screaming at them and perhaps they could call the police on me and say that I was a psychotic Savage again. This is exactly what got me into those multitudinous street fights when I was younger. I don’t like to be pestered and if I am smoking marijuana, because I do feel physically better than I do without it, it is like returning to my youth and physical punishment is the first thing that comes to my mind. Isn’t that wise of them to know how to fuck with me if this is the truth?

Isn’t it lovely living in a country that is preparing for war? Aren’t people just delightful to be around during such wondrous and beautiful times?

Well, no such luck for me. There is no marijuana around here. I had a friend who was pretty good at hooking me up for a long time but then I made the mistake of giving him the money before getting the product one time. Traditionally, I would meet with him and he would give me some product and tell me what it would cost and then I would give him the money at a later date. This is not really drug dealer mentality. It’s just not a superstore and you never know what you’re going to get, right? One time, I decided to trust him and pay him up front and he just screwed me and that was pretty much the end of the friendship. After that, he tried to be friendly. Perhaps just when I was out of the hospital but he could not quite wrap his head around that I was immobile. It was up to me to find him regardless of physical confinement. 

After this, there is no conversation anymore. No more conversation, no more marijuana.

Fuck You very much Republic of Belarus for being the biggest dick heads in the world on this particular point of business. You’re a bunch of stupid assholes for not understanding that it’s a natural product, it is not any of the above mention drugs in any way shape or form and would go along, long way towards being extremely helpful for quite a few of the debilitating diseases that your new modernization product is leading to inexorably.

But I digress.

I usually find mornings a bit more meditative. I know I said or at least I made a promise to myself to do this writing project this year. I’m certainly not doing a whole hell of a lot to advertise myself. My web presence or even my desire to be published or contributory to some popular publication has not really been with me. I’m suffering from a lack of movement this year. There is pain and a lot of pathos is required to get up and do things. Consequently, unnecessary things or things that I do not feel have adequate odds for success don’t get done. My preference is pain avoidance. Yesterday was pretty damn painful. Today, I genuinely thought I’d be taking it easy especially if we’re going to get some rain.

I really do want to take a look at them though. I really want to know what a genuine genius looks like. You don’t really get to shake hands with Elon Musk or Einstein or Benjamin Franklin very often. You don’t really meet people with absolutely vibrant mental capacity. I wonder what the story is here. I don’t really take it personally. That’s just something to talk about here. I mean, it’s not really conspiracy theory unless you’re paranoid. I’m not paranoid, I’m just used to having people conspire against me in reality. There’s a difference.

I really would like to know though what drives a person to start running a weed wacker before 6:00 a.m. . This is just one of these things that could drive someone back to the universities in a quest for knowledge. An aberration of selfishness and stupidity that so far outreaches any of the standard deviations on the subject. I’m not going to say but this is the equivalent of the Russians firing missiles into residential neighborhoods in Ukraine. That is certainly some next level Russian shit. But I am saying that this bullshit is in the family. This is a symptom of that same mentality.

You know, if you talk about alcoholism you have to understand that it’s sugar. That sugar cycle is perhaps the number one drug in the world. They give it to children here. They like to press that pleasure button before they start breaking them down mentally and destroying their personalities unilaterally. The up and down cycle of sugar addiction is well understandable. And these assholes are definitely from exactly the same cultural mode.

Anyway, I just had one more thought. I am definitely changing my diet for the summer time. I’ve been thinking of having more smoothies and drinking my morning meals or even my evening meals when it’s too hot. I’m not really a smoothie guy now but if we have fruit and greens and nuts available, I think smoothies might be a wonderful solution to beat the heat. 

But now that I understand that locals allow for loud mechanical work even before 6:00 a.m., I think these people can listen to my blender at very early hours and I should have absolutely no reason to feel bad about that at all. That’s excellent. If I wake up in the middle of the night and have an urge for something healthy, crank up my 98 decibel blender to the max because nobody observes reasonable clock hours in this neighborhood at all.

***

Well, I went out and talked to this private crew. It was indeed my neighbors who do not live here anymore. This is the same nonsense as last year. At least they were kind enough not to butcher their front property on a Saturday. This led to a giant skirmish that no one has forgotten. Actually, I’ve never forgotten it and the fact that I really have no kindness or heart for my neighbors anymore means that they never forget it either. Seriously, I doubt they can pinpoint it to anything other than me. They like the meat. But anyway…

Their response to my question as to why they were running a weed wacker before 6:00 a.m. was to tell me that it was already almost 7:00. I don’t know why alcoholic sarcasm should be effective. There were three of them in the crew working one machine. That’s about right. People like to drink with their friends and if my nice neighbor lady is kind enough to give them money for alcohol, they are happy to get it. Ample reason to wake up before the sun also I’m sure.

My neighbor has a bigger property than mine. I would love to acquire it both to move me further away from the chicken people and to have access to a lot of property. They haven’t cared about their land for quite some time. At one time they were beekeepers and had fruit trees laying around. But you can see that they haven’t cared about anything in a very long time. These grass cutting sojourns come up every year probably just to keep appearances. Like I said, people don’t have any vibrant reason for anything they do other than they are working. This was another thing that the alcoholic told me. He was pretty good at naming traditional excuse phrases. Russians are extremely good at explaining things away by using set phrases. Ask Mr Putin about this.

But with the perfunctory bullshit session out of the way, the three of them put their minds together to come up with their inane responses that said they didn’t give a shit about what I said to them. I’m a jew, I’m an American, etc etc. There’s no possible way any noise that I could possibly make would make sense to them. I’m as dismissable as a potato beetle.

Speaking of dismissable potato beetles, the thing about being outside is that it reminds you how many things you actually need to do. I guess that’s the problem with Land Management. Once you start managing it, you never really get to stop. I have hope that I can establish comfortable systems or that my systems become comfortable to me. As of the moment, it’s right back to problem solving and movement.

I didn’t actually mind the movement. I guess I’m kind of like my sugar beets and cabbages. In the afternoons, they look like they are about dying of thirst in the heat. The leaves become wilted and start to fall and it looks like the entire Garden is on its knees in the middle of the desert praying to God that a mirage is actually an oasis. In the morning though, whatever dew, cooler temperatures or morning Sun does for them comes into full effect and they are vibrant and full of life. All plants are sun worshipers. I guess by the late afternoon, they are sick of worshiping mom.

I started getting busy but then the chicken people started getting busy too. I first heard them because the chicken woman started bok bok boking at her mercilessly handpicked husband and she had him climbing a ladder into the Attic of their house. In this regard, I can see how the plants feel. If this woman was in my life, I could see myself splashed out like a puddle on the floor by the end of the day. No thanks. No plans for vacations to Uzbekistan in the near future.

So I moved a barrel and put a pallet finally under the new acquisition place in the back of the house. I’m not taking any chances with unleveled barrels. This leaves me two barrels under The Root cellar roof and two under the back side of my house and three in the front and three in the barn. If I need more after this, I guess I can add to this system. I have room for two more barrels on the pallets.

Theoretically, we’re going to get some rain this morning. 40% chance they said. According to the weather, we might even get two showers today. That would be nice. If we don’t get rain at 10:00, I’m going to move a tank of water from the well to the barrels in the back of the house. Both of them are going to be bottom fed and I still have to drill the second one and put couplings in there. I don’t really like working at the bottom of the tank because you have to crawl in there to put the coupling in place. It’s not the end of the world but I’m just not really the right size for crawling into water barrels. It is much more accessible than it would have been in an earlier incarnation of myself. It’s also not anything that makes me paranoid about being trapped. It’s just not pleasant to crawl inside a plastic barrel if you can imagine.

I also took the trouble to go around a couple of my boxes. I found six instances where potato beetles had laid their eggs on the underside of the leaves. This is like an orange jelly and your job is simply to wipe them out anyway you can. I think I offed a dozen or so today when I found them. There are several different varieties of insect that live in the box. It is the potato beetles that I react to. Most of the others in there seem to have no detrimental effect on the plants whatsoever. They eat a few holes in the leaves but they don’t destroy the plant the way potato beetles do if you let them get out of hand. Again, I haven’t used any insecticides so far this year and I don’t see any particular damage that is in any way stopping life. Especially in the cabbages this is true. But I think it means at least one serious trip a day around the box to keep things orderly.

Two things that I got out of this if I don’t count my gratitude if not living with the chicken woman. The first is that big breakfasts should definitely be for days off during the summer. If you put too much food in your belly, you stop yourself from being able to move. I’m not saying that we need to be perpetual dynamos of movement. This is especially true if you think work requires gasoline either to move your body or to destroy things unnecessarily. I just mean it feels nice to have something to do and a reason to move around. If you can do this quietly and ecologically, please feel free to work.

The second thing is that I can see where I could systematize spending time especially in the mornings in the boxes. It really doesn’t take much attention to keep things in order. Even an hour a day makes all the difference in the world. I guess everybody needs some attention.

A while ago, I talked about a ball team that I ran. I learned a lesson about management during this enterprise. 

I didn’t start out as the team’s manager. I was just invited to play and I had skills so they gave me third base and batted me forth or third. But then one day the team’s manager called a meeting and said that he was quitting. We were just too unreliable and it was too much of a headache and he was fed up and he didn’t want to manage anymore and maybe he would agree to play for a space for us or maybe not but basically he was at his Wit’s end and we needed to know that he was quitting.

We all looked at each other and somebody asked if anybody wanted to manage. Nobody else said anything and I said I would do it. Natural inclination to leadership perhaps. Or maybe it was just how thunderous I was at the plate.

It wasn’t much of a vote but there were no dissenting opinions and it was my turn to talk. I thought about it for a minute and I said “okay, here’s the deal. I’ll manage this team but we are going to have a few rules that everybody must follow like religion.”

Nobody looked too happy at the institution of rules but I went on without too much of a pause.

“Firstly, I make out the lineup and there will be no arguments about it, agreed?”

Everybody agreed that this was fine.

“After this, if anybody strikes out foolishly, you have to buy a case of beer for the team.” We were a club that liked to drink after practices and games together. Call us what you want to call us, at least we weren’t running weed wackers before 6:00 a.m..

Everybody thought that was a great rule too and with that we started our season. Like I said, we ran into a local Hispanic team and played games against them until the season started. Everything I mentioned before was true and we did make it all the way to the playoffs before our Hispanic friends took us out in the first round of the playoffs. That was our entire epic year.

As for the alcoholism, this is probably one of the main reasons why I stopped drinking in the states and probably even why I don’t drink now. During that season, we used to go to a bar after games and I think my usual was 12 tequilas or so with some beer. We got kind of raucous. After that, I would ride my motorcycle home without a helmet. I had a motorcycle. I was fearless.

I quit drinking the following year basically because of statistics. I think I’ve told this story before so I won’t go into it again. I was reading my statistics and saw that I was very much like the current New York Yankees. I had a very high batting average and could hit home runs but all of the statistics that called for running, the doubles and triples etc were empty. Just thunder or nothing and no extra effort.

As you can imagine, most everything gets me thinking and I started to wonder why it is that I was playing a lackluster game. Where was my enthusiasm? Where was my expression of youth?

I decided it was from the alcohol and promptly agreed to give it up. I have never been into any kind of drugs for escape. I just drank with my friends like this trio of losers here this morning. It was a social thing and at that time of my life, it was probably the coolest thing that I had going for me. Hitting bombs and getting wrecked with Friends, what better way to say that one is alive, right?

And then there was a moment right after this decision when I showed up at the ball field sober for several days. As I got to the dugout, I had a good hard look at the guys I was playing ball with. Complete reptiles. Maybe this was the first time I looked at the world with a doctor’s eyes but they definitely did not look very good.

My friend Mike has always been an outspoken genius of a man. He seemed to understand the expression on my face at a glance.

“Oh no, don’t do that Goodman. Never stop drinking and then take a good look at your friends.”

Like I said, Mike was a genius. I miss him sometimes.

The truth is I’ve lived most of my life without bothering with alcohol. Yes, there was a time here where I did quite a bit of drinking to get away from some miseries that life had handed me. I was not handed these things because of alcoholism. I don’t believe I’ve ever been guilty of losing something because of addiction of any kind. I lost what I lost because I am jewish, an American and a viable source of income passively in the mind of the person who decided to affix themselves parasitically to me. We are not in the same boat rowing in the same direction going to a mutual goal, I am a source of income and I need to be quiet and passive about it. After that, I got drunk for a while.

I also got drunk towards the end of my relationship with my ex-girlfriend. She’s still drinking socially. I don’t drink it all anymore. I really don’t like alcohol and I don’t really have any need for these group gropes anymore. This sort of bullshit socializing is for idiot young people. It’s what passes for mating rituals. We all get drunk and stupid and end up with people we will eventually not be able to tolerate. We are the stupidest people in the history of History if I haven’t said that before.

As for what anybody thinks about me and my relationship with my ex-girlfriend, we really don’t talk anymore. I tried to open up a line of conversation but we don’t really seem to have any mutual interests. She’s happy I suppose in her current incarnation. She has words to explain away her inconsistencies. Between us, whatever it was is really not anymore. I don’t have any desire to prostrate myself on the floor and beg for her company and she has little or no use for me. Basically, sometimes I find something on the Internet that I think might be amusing and she puts a like on it. I guess we can call this equity.

As far as today, I guess I will quietly spend a little time in the boxes. Some thoughts about what I’m going to do with this Garden next year have come into my mind. I don’t think I’m going to grow potatoes at all next year or perhaps ever. Potatoes are lovely to have and they are a good calories and a fine start but there are much, much better things to eat. And besides, if I really needed potatoes, I could buy them by the sack at certain points in the season, throw them in my root cellar and have as much as I want. They are not expensive to buy in bulk in season and if you ask me if all of this worry everyday about the damn potato bugs is worth it, it’s not.

I wrote about this specific thing in a play I wrote called Nadia/Hope.

Exactly.

I do believe I will dedicate a box to sweet potatoes. I’m also going to move some of the beans and peas that are now in the lower gardens up into the boxes. I can see doing cabbages a lot but I can’t see why a little help in the soil wouldn’t have them happier in the middle gardens. I guess if I truly felt ambitious, I could take the trouble of putting potatoes back on the bean field. This is where they were for me last year when I hand planted and harvested that entire section. I’m still eating the potatoes though I am definitely getting to the dregs right now. Or perhaps better, in the spring when we’ve done with the lentils and beaten and dug all of that green manure into the soil, lentils are nitrogen fixers, I could see planting some more fruit trees there. More fruit trees and more berry bushes. 

This has been my plan almost from the moment I got here. I got derailed by local alcoholics to plant those potatoes last year. Yes, I will not lie that during times of serious financial worry, I was absolutely thrilled for having several exploding volunteer zucchini plants and a field full of potatoes. This was a huge percentage of my diet for a while last year for good or for bad. Excellent against starvation.

Maybe if the war comes, I will regret this decision. If the war comes, it will be very wise to have a bunch of potatoes to stave off starvation. Unfortunately, this is a very real thought.

Yeah. I keep forgetting that they are murdering people in the next country over and that this country is currently being called to fight for the bad guys. Most probably, we are exactly stupid enough and alcoholic enough to do it.

Yeah, they run weed wackers before 6:00 a.m. here sometimes. I understand they also shoot missiles at 5:00 a.m. . Welcome to the Russian empire. We are known rapists. We find this texture appropriate.

Okay, here is exactly the plan. It’s about 9:00 and I’m feeling a little hungry. I’m going to go out and get some greens and some dill from the boxes and then I’m going to toss them in the blender with some oatmeal, sunflower seeds, maybe some chia seeds and then drink this. Let’s see what a hippie smoothie has to say to me on this very hot day.

***

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The occupiers fired rockets at the mall, where there were more than a thousand civilians.  The mall is on fire, rescuers are fighting the fire, the number of victims is impossible to imagine.

No danger to the Russian army.  No strategic value.  Only the attempt of people to live a normal life, which so angers the occupiers.

Russia continues to place its powerlessness on ordinary citizens.  It is useless to hope for adequacy and humanity on her part.

I honestly hope that local people at least tune in for some of this. We can talk about how little we give a damn of the outside world or how everything is fake news. All of these thoughts are obviously so easy for deniers of the truth. All I’m saying is that there is a great possibility that this picture and everything portrayed in it is in the not too distant future for belarusians. I have no idea why anyone would ever vote for war. I have no idea how crazy people can be. In this case I understand that there is no vote for the general population. I understand that the decision gets made for us and the only thing we can do is jump when they tell us to.

I’m just saying that you should have a good look and think what it would feel like if this was one of our markets. Or supermarkets. Or main squares during some kind of public celebration. I’m just saying we don’t need to go there.

***

It’s 6:15 and this is just simply exhausting. This new pump is just not doing its job. I think I understand the mathematics but just getting to this point has been so ridiculous.

First of all and let me say this with complete sincerity, if your pump is not self priming, do not advertise the thing as self priming. Self priming means you do not have to unhook everything to pour water into the tank. This is what self priming means. It doesn’t mean you prime it yourself. If there is a place to tick a box and say that this pump is self priming, you do not tick that box. Or, if box ticking is too bloody difficult for you, you write the word no in whatever appropriate languages are available to you or your market. You say no! This pump is not self priming, every time you stop the motherfucking thing, be prepared to pour more water into it or you’re just going to be running it to death trying to pump Air.

That’s one side of this miserable ordeal. The other side is not the pump’s fault. This cheap 3/4 inch hose that I have is fine for my old noisy submersible pump. My only issues for that pump are keeping the hose attached to the pump itself. I solved that by pulling a clamp off of a bicycle rack I don’t use and literally crimping the son of a bitch down to the point of breakage. After that, plus another hose clamp just to be sure, the pump worked and everything was fine except for its inappropriateness for the well and its ridiculous noisiness. Well those two things and the fact that it has to stand on its end which means the last 30 cm of anything you’re pumping is no longer available.

This new pump does not bother the well in any way. Literally, there are no vibrations in the hose. The problem is that I need to have at least one inch hose of a decent quality in order for the pump itself not to squeeze the thing to the point that no water can pass through it. Literally, the suction is too much for the garbage hose I have.

Why it worked the first two times I used it, I cannot say. Maybe it is how hot it is today or maybe by the third time I use this hose, the structure itself just gave way and it went flat. I don’t know which. But in any case I was 45 minutes walking back and forth from the front of my house to the back of my house trying to fill those two new buckets. On a plus, the connection system between the two barrels is fine with no leaks. On a negative, I wasn’t able to pull any substantial amount of water out of my well. I need to be able to move water from my well as much as I can because we’re just not going to get any rain. The weather report called for two separate showers today, neither of them even thought about appearing. Literally, there were a few wind gusts and that was all. If you want to get wet, stick your head in the sink.

Theoretically we will get rain tomorrow but do you think I trust that? I do not trust that. I don’t trust that as far as I can throw it.

This heat has me completely washed out and the thought about going to town tomorrow has me utterly depressed. The thought of spending more money and buying more fixtures has me absolutely finished. I am not energetic enough to do this project right now. It’s desert hot. Even starting this stupid watering project has me soaked through my shirt already. I’m not getting anywhere fast but I can’t quit until I at least get some water on my plants.

I’m going to take a shot at watering the upper and mid gardens. I should water the trees but other than giving them some cursory moisture, I’m going to limit it to a short watering today. You can’t leave these things without water. I know they bounce back in the morning no matter how sad they look but you have to get some water in those boxes.

So I have the new pump setup over the bucket and I am hoping to get some legitimate pressure even for 10 minutes or so. If I can’t, this means I have to pull out the old pump, reattach all of the hosing to it and at least I will be able to get my garden watered. The last thing I want to do is go to town tomorrow. I didn’t think I’d have to go to town at all. The last thing I want to do is go bike riding in this Sahara desert heat on a Sahara desert service road to sit on a Sahara desert train.

Money wise, there is some possibility I can get away with 6 or 8 m of quality hose and one set of appropriate couplings. I just need to attach it to the input valve. Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but there is some reasonable chance that should the intake be without problem, we can just fire the pressure through the smaller hose and this will not destroy the pump.

Just for safety, I googled the question and a 1-in intake and a 3/4 in output will not damage the pump. Good to know. Corrosion and misalignment are the biggest problems in water pumps. More things to look forward to.

Did I ever mention that the first thing I looked for was a hand pump? I’ve even seen videos of people who have created bicycle driven water pumps. Honestly, in my early days of this project, I honestly thought that we could do this all without buying any equipment. Now I’ve got a closet full of equipment and two water pumps and all I have is misery. Seriously, if it could have been that I dropped a hose in the water and sat on my bike and started cranking and water would come out of a hose somewhere else, I would have been very happy. Really, I would have been ecstatic to do the work myself. I would have been out of my mind with pleasure being able to write about it. What kind of compromises have I made? What kind of a hypocrite am I already? Obviously this is karma biting me on the ass worse than the carnivore insects on my property. This is not a happy day.

***

10:15 and possibly the worst day I have had in a long time has mercifully come to a conclusion. I’m sitting on the couch in my office and everything hurts. Tomorrow I have even more to do and I doubt the discomfort will end. I doubt we’re going to get any water and now, apparently the only way I can guarantee at least a reasonable flow of water or the chance to keep myself filled up for emergencies is to make another trip to town tomorrow morning. I think this was the absolute last thing that I wanted to do.

Listen, I know that I am pretty Frank and honest in what I talk about here. I know some people are deeply unhappy with how they are portrayed here. Perhaps they expected some kind of difference based upon position. I’m not good at anything but trying to take care of myself and defending myself when I have to. I don’t have too many weapons to fight with. I’m not so young and foolish anymore and I certainly don’t have the body to just go punching people in the nose. Even when I did, I didn’t but the point is there are quite a few people who deserve punches in the nose.

Probably the last thing in the world I wanted was to go to town tomorrow. At the end of the day, it’s just some work to do. It’ll be hot and it’ll be draining but maybe I’m just a couple of rubles from everything working out perfectly. Maybe.

I am extremely disappointed at the performance of this new pump. The first few times I ran the thing, the obviousness of how strong it was was very pleasing. I was looking forward to getting used to higher water pressures and perhaps being able to move faster through the garden. But now I understand that it’s a merciless thing. It just doesn’t want to get started. You prime it and then you start it and you can leave the end of the hose nearby to see if it’s even pumping water. But today, I got barely a trickle from the whole thing. I could see what the problem was and I understand it. It’s just too frustrating. I have to go and redo this thing too many times. And again, if it was not sales priming, they probably should have told me and I most probably would not have bought it.

I guess I can send it back and find another. I have a guarantee and my reason for doing so would be reasonable. They wouldn’t argue with me and just simply accept that I’m sending it back and replace it with another one. But still, why does it have to be so unreliable? Why does everything have to be so bloody backwards?

Dima, the guy who helped put the gutters on the barn just called me. He wanted me to know that if I needed help of any kind I should call him. I guess that was nice. I didn’t really know what to say. When people call up and want to offer help, you figure there has to be a deal in there somewhere. I tried to explain to him that it’s hard for me to accept help because very often, I have no idea how to give it back. I don’t like being only on the receiving end. I like things to be fair.

Anyway, tomorrow’s another day. Hopefully they’re not going to wake me up before 6:00 a.m.