A Year Elapsed

Today (well, tomorrow) makes it a year. On 3/13 last year I left my office, picked up my kids from Grace Academy for Spring Break…and the great upside down world of CoViD 2020 happened. Example: WFH Day 2

I was a reliable journalist for awhile, then in June I just…stopped. Overwhelmed didn’t really cut it; I was paralyzed by how much the world was changing.

The 2015-era computer I wrote those blogs on is gone, replaced by another coporate laptop from my employer after the battery decided to die. The house I wrote those in is gone, replaced by a 10.11 acre rance property with cows, rabbits, a tractor, and a new (LEASED!) Toyota tundra.

All that remains of my previous house (Sold in October 2020) are a few odds and ends in a storage unit that I pay $100 to keep climate controlled for no good reason. Just one of a thousand TODOs that owning property accretes, I guess.

Summarizing June 2020 until now seems impossible, but hitting the hightlights:

  • We closed sale on our 10 acre ranch property in July, after a stressful 4 months (for my wife: 18 months) of shopping for a unicorn property. The place was turnkey ready for animals and met most of our requirements. It’s “only” 45 minutes away from my office and the internet speed is 15 mbps. Yaay.
  • For about 2 months, I’d sleep at the property and then come back to our subdivision house in Georgetown, Texas to work using the “gigabit ethernet” to do my work. In the middle of that we moved in mid august. We used movers; my days of schlepping huge pieces of furniture by myself have been over since 2012.
  • The girls did not return to their private school in the Fall. We’re once again homeschooling.
  • It didn’t rain from July until November. October–usually one of the wettest months–was nearly parched.
  • November saw the election.
  • In November, we took a 2000 mile roundtrip to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee to visit with some of Whitney’s friends, and also rendezvous with both sets of grandparents for a week.
  • In December, my father and his cousin delivered a John Deere 3038e tractor, front-end-loader, and rear blade attachment to my house, making the full round trip from Kentucky in 3 days. I did something like that once. I was 20. My father is nearing 70.
  • Also in december, I leased a 2021 Toyota Tundra CrewMAX SR5 4wd truck after trying (and failing) to find a reasonably priced used farm truck. Thanks to CoVID everyone bought: A gun, ammunition, and a truck. I managed to find, lease, and take home the Tundra in a 6 hour period one saturday, only visiting the dealership to take possession. It rides like a brick and gets gas mileage like my mom’s 1991 F-250 4x4, but it serves the purpose.
  • January was–of course–the Storming of the Capitol on January 6th, with a mob fuelled by allegations that the election was stolen. To date, this is as close the a “Bastille” moment America has gotten, but it feels like the seal is brokent here. It won’t be the last.
  • Also in January, we got CoViD, or at least we THINK we did. There was a full 2 weeks of convalescence.
  • February saw tempreatures plunge in Texas to unprecedented levels….we had -3 F at my house one particular Monday, and it stayed below freezing for 144 hours, a record. We came very close to the electrical system in Texas failing completely and CATCHING FIRE.
  • Filing my taxes this year included a Schedule “F” and ran 44 pages. Forty-four pages.
  • Next Wednesday, I get my left eye cataract removed. I’m 42 years old. Even my Ophthalmologist is at a loss as to how this could’ve occurred. My lifelong suspicion that I’m actually 10 years older than my birth certificate age seems true.

It’s been an interminable, depressing year…and yet on a personal level, the most financially and personally rewarding of my life to date. I can’t square those two feelings. Thus the lack of updates.