Happy Friday my friends,
Well we are creeping closer to Christmas. This year has been meh right now. My mental health loves to take a dive this time of year, this year has been bad. I'm just not really feeling it, I had a spark, but then more mental health problems came and spat on it. But I'm dealing the best I can. Well one thing people love to do this year is look back over the year. Although as many have said this year has been a dumpster fire. I was actually looking through this year's photos and was reminded of a time when my folks managed to pull a laugh out of me when we were still quarantined up. This was when you could only go out for the essentials. My folks were going for a supply run and asked if I wanted anything. I said my usual joke "a big cookie", well they comeback later with a dang big cookie cake. I also remember flymagedon. We had a surplus of flies in the house for some reason at one point this year, and I would have to go through the house with the fly swat getting flies. It's funny I can squash a flying mosquito with my bare hands like nothing, but getting flies with a fly swat, not my strongest skill.
Ginseng Hunting
The most I did this year till things opened back up a bit was reading and Supernatural binging, but despite being holed up in this year we've still managed to go on adventures. My Dad and I went ginseng hunting for the first time in many years. We use to do it a lot when I was growing up to get a little extra money, well this year my Dad decided to do it so we'd have some extra Christmas money this year. I went with him in case there was problems. I found two on my own without any help for the first time ever*, one my Dad missed, in his defense it was in the middle of the dirt road, and he wasn't expecting one to be growing their, he was focusing on getting to the places in the woods where they do grow. Well we decided to go one Sunday. That was a mistake, because the mountain above our house was like I-40, very busy. Turns out we weren't the only ginseng hunters out, and the guy who does horseback rides, who I will not blast in this blog, had some riders, and there were two dogs with the riders. We were up in the woods with our dog. So my Dad decided to get further in the woods, so we ended up high on a steep bank. Now picture this from my point of view: I'm scared of heights and my ankles and feet hate banks, and we're high up on a steep bank, plus I'm trying to keep my balance and not fall while holding onto a beagle mix dog who's pulling at the leash, because he wants to say "Hi". I was not a happy human for a few minutes as we scaled that. But it was worth it in the end I found my second ginseng plant.
Snake Problems
This year involved way too many close encounters with snakes. We had one snake climb up the outside of one of our living room window and I had one cross this trail I walk. Back in August maybe after our Church Decoration day, my Mom comes home with two trash bags of flowers. My Mom and some other ladies of the church like to reuse the flowers they toss out in the special bin they have up at the graveyard, plus we retrieved our flowers that we reuse every year, cause we too broke to buy all the flowers we need each year to decorate everybody we knows grave up there. Well anyway back to my story, my folks brought back some bags of these flowers and asked if I'd unload them. So I go to do that and I move a bag and there is a graveyard snake that must have hitched a ride. I couldn't help of think of that episode of Most Scariest Places On Earth where they talked about St. Louis Cemetery Number One. It's where Marie Laveau is buried and they say you sometimes see a snake there. I'm not a fan of snakes, I know not all of them are venomous, but I'm not an expert in which are or aren't, so I'm creeped out by them no matter what. Well I go to grab a hoe if anything to get it out of the back of the truck, I don't think I have the heart to even kill a snake. So I go to get it and I think I saw it go, or assumed it went, into the wood we still had in our truck from our last wood haul. It eventually must have found it's way out, because when we got the wood later it was nowhere to be found. And finally the most scary of my snake related stories. My Mom was chilling in her comfy chair in the living room when she felt something on her arm, she moved and sitting there on the chair arm running it's tongue up my Mom's arm was, you guessed it, a snake. Yeah, I think I somehow slept through that mess. Ok, done with the creepy crawly stories.
Gratitude
Finally I'm gonna take a gratitude moment. I've tried to keep gratitude sections in my journals, but they never really work for me. I either would just be grateful fro the same things or when I tried doing it Jewel's Method, I found it hard to pull different things to be grateful for each day, because I couldn't find things to be grateful for besides my usual daily things I'm always grateful for. Last night I started thinking of things I was grateful for during this dumpster fire of a year, also I was watching a bit of this video when I was writing this section and felt it was appropriate for here. Anyway here is my list:
1: During this pandemic there has only been three members of my family, that I know of, that has had Covid two have recovered one was just diagnosed and their still doing good.
2:That we didn't have certain people living with us anymore. It was rough enough living with certain people during normal election years when their candidate won, I'd hate to be living with them during this pandemic and their candidate lost.
3: Grapes, yes weird thing to be grateful for, but I am. See my parents have been buying fruit lately and I love green grapes. So they've been buying a not, which has been good for me, because I'm prone to stress eat when I have anxiety and this gives me a healthier option to munch on.
4: Candy Cane Peppermint ChapStick®, last Christmas in my stocking I received like five of this kind of chapstick®. Well my lips were getting really chapped and I couldn't find the lip balm I'd use on occasion, which I just found. But I'm keeping them next to my computer tower to reapply every so often cause I drink a lot of drinks. The burn of it feels good on my lips and it smells so good.
I hope you all reflect on the good things that happened to you this year. Tell me what your grateful for in the comments. I hope you have a good weekend, stay safe and God bless!
*Thrifty Geek*
*When we went ginseng hunting as a kid my sister and I would follow behind my Mom mostly. Well one time she pointed at an area and said there's a ginseng plant in here see which one of you can find it. I found it. It was my first find.
