Late night ponderings

It seems like the only time I can write any more is late at night. My head gets going with the various "what if's" of life, and then there I am.

Anyway, I sit here with a probable case of mono, damnit all. My daughter was diagnosed with it two weeks ago on Friday, and I'm having the same symptoms (majorly sore throat, tired, achy all over). I'll probably not go to the dr, but I know that I can't be over doing it much either. I ran about 2.25 miles last night, and felt awful. I've not been running on a regular basis since June, and not truly regular since probably last year sometime. I know it's good for me, and I know I need to do it, my motivation has just disappeared.

My thoughts tonight, how do I make this little piece of heaven even more of a self-sufficent type of place. As you may or may not know, I'm firmly in the "doom and gloom" camp, and do not have much faith in our current system, or where it's going. Add onto that the fact we've either reached or will reach peak oil production in the very near future, and we need to do something to make ourselves less dependent on our own car, furnace, etc and all the gas/oil that is needed. Because of this, I'm also in the camp of being as self sufficient as possible. Now, this does not mean I'm making my own clothing, hauling water from the creek, and eating dandelion roots. But it does mean, how can we cut our own consumption, and create things here that either have value to us, or value to other we can trade/sell?

One thing I think we'll be doing is adding on a "sunroom" to our home probably next year. I want something big enough to sit in, have a chair or two, a place to hang out a bit, have a wood burning stove, AND a place where I can being some seedlings in the spring time. My wife, while not in that doomer group, still thinks this is a good idea, so we are looking at the finances of how we'd get this done without breaking the bank. Once my raise kicks in, I'm planning on almost every penny going into something that can help us here. My 403(b) sits, unfunded, and while I should fund something, right now, it's about getting physical things done here.

A second thing we'll get finished is fencing to continue to build pasture here. We did some on Monday with my parents, and while it wasn't much, it was enough for us to realize "damn, we can do this". That's always been my problem, not the doing, but getting over that scared, oh crap what if I fail thing. I'm sure every one has that, but it just seems to be something that's always hindered me.

If things go well, I think we should have something in place by the time snow flies, which means I have to get started on my last thing, building pasture. We've got one end of this little land that works well for pasture, but the middle part, what we'll be fencing soon, is a combination of weeds, really big weeds, and a little bit of grass just because. I need to get things tilled up, and some seed out there to see if we can get something into the ground with good roots before it gets too cold. We'll see how it all pans out, but even this part, the fencing and pasturing can get done, that will make next spring even that much more exciting.