Category: Everyday life

It’s -1° outside right now. That’s not a windchill. That’s the temperature. The low today is -11. There is supposed to be a storm starting today lasting for three days and the wind chills will reach up to -40°F. Why am I still here? I’m not sure, but I keep saying this is my last winter here and I think I mean it this time. I don’t want to rent this house out full time, but I can’t just leave it. I’m thinking that it will be a winter airBNB rental. There aren’t any hotels around here so I know it would rent. As soon as the bathroom upstairs is done, I’m listing it and I’m out of here.

I had a friend tell me recently that she hated cinnamon. Really? How do you hate cinnamon? I felt like asking her if she also hated puppies, flowers and presents but I knew she wasn’t being contrary just for the sake of being contrary. I’m all to familiar with that behavior from my recent roommate from hell experience, so I knew she didn’t fit that bill. She is probably the best person I know. She is definitely the best mother I’ve ever seen, and does not have a negative bone in her body. She is kind, respectful, loving, thoughtful and generous, and her behavior never sway from these qualities. She must really hate cinnamon, which I can’t understand. Cinnamon is one of the most amazing flavors I can think of. I love to make cinnamon ice cream, put cinnamon and sugar on my toast, load up an apple pie with it or use it in a scent burner when I’ve had a particularly explosive experience in the loo. To each their own, they say.

I have a little beef I need to work out here. Usually I’m not for airing the dirty laundry, but I’ve tried to resolve this beef directly and I have gotten no response. Here’s what happened: The day after my last roommate moved out, he was supposed to come over to get one last load of stuff in the morning. I waited, an nothing. The afternoon came and went with nothing. The early evening came and went – still nothing. No text, no call, no show. I got tired of waiting and went to Brushy Creek to do some metal detecting with my friend Jason. When I arrived back home, he was there accompanied by a Webster County Sheriff. He had showed up after I left ( I think he had this planned out and was waiting for me to leave) and when I wasn’t there, called the Sheriff. He convinced the Sheriff that I had locked him out, and the Sheriff let him break into my house to get the last of his stuff. He broke in by trying each window on the main floor until he found one that wasn’t locked, damaging screens along the way. When I got home, I was super angry as one would be and the Sheriff wouldn’t listen to me as I explained how he and my roommate had broken the law by committing a class B felony. After the dust settled, I wrote a letter addressed to the Webster County Board of Supervisors outlining my complaint and I have yet to hear anything back. It has been 5 months now with no word. Not sure where to go next, the governor’s office?

The reason I’m so upset is that there is no way he could have proven he lived there, because on that day he did not. He never signed a fucking lease in the first place and I have written statement from the person who he was staying with that he did indeed move in there the day before. Does the Webster County Sheriff just allow anyone to break into a house that says that they live there or was this an isolated incident? I’m still pissed. Ok, enough said I just contacted a lawyer.

We have a big old walnut tree in the back yard. It been there for close to 100 years. Every year it dumps thousands of walnuts off of the ground and we pick them up and put them in buckets. Some dude comes and picks them up.

In my quest to explore options of making money off of the land that comprises the yard and is about 1.75 acres, selling the walnuts popped into my head last year so I started collecting them little by little.

Bucket after bucket was filled. Any empty container that I could find became full. Finally I started using the truck and after a few weeks, the truck was full. Time to go sell them.

As it turns out, the black walnut market ( as opposed to the legit one, I suppose) is dominated by Hammonds in the midwest. California is the largest producer of walnuts in the US, contributing 99% of all walnuts grown in the US and 38% worldwide. Hammonds has several hundred buying stations around the midwest, and there happens to be one about 15 miles away from our house.

So I take my full truckload of walnuts that I probably have spent 20-30 hours collecting to the walnut buying station. I’m required to shovel all of the walnuts out of the truck into a hopper that takes off the shell and bags them up.

My back is nearly broken in two when I’m done, but the satisfaction of doing all of this is strong and the reward is forthcoming. As the nut collector pulls out his checkbook and starts to write, he says “Well, that was about 560 pounds, so let me see here” as he clacks on his calculator. He hands me the check and it’s written for $45. I nearly shit myself. $1.50 per hour for that.

So what does a pound of black walnuts cost at the store? Around $12. So. Of that $12, 8 cents is what goes the farmer. That just pisses me off and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I’m having peanuts on my ice cream tonight.