Bird Shit and Other Blessings

So lately the birds (probably barn swallows) have taken to nesting in my carport and shitting on my car. I've lived here for 15 years and this is the first year this has happened.

I was bitching online about the bird shit and it hit me--as I was driving my car home to park it in my carport--that there are a lot of people who don't have a car. There are a lot of people who don't have a carport. There are a lot of people who don't have a house. These days, there are a lot of people who aren't even alive to see the birds!!

If the most pressing problem I have in my life is birds nesting in my carport and shitting on my car, I'd say I am living a pretty blessed life. Bird shit is nasty and inconvenient, but it certainly isn't the end of the world.

Another blessing in my life this year is a warm house, finally. My house is normally heated with an electric heat pump that is malfunctioning but working. By "malfunctioning" I mean that the defrost control panel and monitor need to be replaced.

I have a quote for the work of $425.00 which I don't have right now. I have to run the furnace on emergency heat OR the heat pump ices over and runs continually (this plays merry hell with my electric bill, and electric baseboard heat is very ineffective in keeping this house warm)

There is a local Facebook group that is helping people that are affected by Covid 19 aka the coronavirus.

I hadn't spent much time at home before the pandemic started and did not realize exactly how cold it was in my house.

When I realized how high the bill was AND how cold I was I posted in the group asking for a space heater. I got a space heater. I also got a former chimney sweep that cleaned off my roof--it was covered with pine needles and pinecones--and checked out my chimney (said it was good to go).

I had about 1/2 cord of wood that a neighbor who was moving out of the park sold to my next door neighbor for $10.00, and the second neighbor gave me the wood for free.

This was back in 2016, and I hadn't used any of the wood since then because the roommate I had at that time was a full blown alcoholic who could not be trusted to not burn the house down, I only wish I was joking.

Once the chimney sweep told me that the chimney was fine, I started building fires in the woodstove. I heat the house during the day with the woodstove, and let the furnace kick on at night so the pipes won't freeze.

Third blessing, a friend paid for a month of a Keto boot camp. I lost 15 pounds during that month and discovered that I slept better, had more energy, and best of all--95% pain free. Sugar is an inflammatory addictive substance, boys and girls, and although giving up sugar did not cure my arthritis it sure as hell made it less painful.

Fourth blessing -- I've been spending a lot of time cleaning and decluttering my house for the last year.

I thought I was finished with this job a few months ago and then realized that I still had a lot of stuff that needed to be sorted. I took pictures with my phone of all my unframed pictures and then uploaded them to Facebook (will be uploading them to Google Drive and One Drive as well).

I went through the bathroom, the office, the kitchen, and the entertainment center that I had re-purposed as storage in the master bedroom. Several boxes of stuff went to the free table in my mobile home park clubhouse (this included multiple unopened tubes of toothpaste, 5-6 staplers, 5-6 staple pullers, cleaning rods for guns that had been sold 12 years ago, and other assorted usable stuff that I didn't need but was too good to throw away).

I got rid of nearly all of my reusable drink cups, because who needs 40 damn drink cups?

I call all of this a blessing because it has given me something productive to do while waiting for word on the THREE jobs I have accepted that are on hold because of the coronavirus. It's also a blessing to have something to do that doesn't require leaving the house and also keeps me from feeding my face 24/7.