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Book Writing

5/21/20 We Are Not Failures

May 21, 2020 by Tyler

The Tiny Terrorist went back to day care this week! All parties involved were ready for this to happen, but I’m not going to lie, there was some anxiety on the part of Caitlyn and I.

For the last 2 months we have been taking care of Grant without a lot of outside assistance. Yes, my mom did help out, as did Caitlyn’s mom, but there were no reprieves from him that weren’t logistically necessary. So, he has picked up some of our habits, and not all of them are “daycare friendly”. Yes, he is peeing in the potty more often than not now. He also has become mesmerized by CSI and Eureka… But his tendency to poop his pants and his love of the word “Damnit” were worrisome traits to send him back with. That being said as we were walking away on Monday we heard another child shout “shut up” at the top of his little lungs. So, we may be failures as parents, but at least we aren’t the only ones.

Speaking of not failing, the weather has still been actively working against me making progress on the house. For the last 2 weeks its either been raining, cold, or both. That being said, Dad and I have still made progress on the house.

At this point in time we have replaced the stone half-wall, the old wooden siding, the old school underlayment, and repaired the water and ant damage on 2 sides of the house. We replaced the underlayment with OSB and the wood siding with cement board, so hopefully this doesn’t need to be done until the Tiny Terrorist’s grandkids are old enough to do it. We still need to put the trim on these sides, and put the stone back on, but at this point I think that will be waiting till we have the siding done on the entire house.

With all of the rain, it seemed like the right time to put in a rain catch for my garden. So, I acquired two 275 gallon IBC totes. Pretty lady took the drive to Spencer Indiana with me to pick them up. She took one look at them and then asked if I was sure that the two of us could lift them into the truck. I am happy to say we did fine and in fact, I managed to stack them next to the garage myself. Once they were stacked, I spent 2 days figuring out what combination of adapters it took to get from the threading that they had on them, to a garden house. it also took 3 trips to town to figure out a way to get the water from the gutter into the tanks. If you look closely at the photo, you’ll see a prime example of hybrid redneck engineering and theatre magic. Yes, I am more proud of this thing than I should be.

The garden however is not something I am proud of at this point… for now it is still covered in the plastic I’m using to kill the grass. You see in Indiana the dirt is mostly clay, and there is no way in hell i’m going to even try to cut through the sod and till a new garden with all the rain we’ve had. hopefully it’ll dry out in the next few days and I can get out there.

Until the weather cooperates, my small plants are going to be growing in the part of the house I haven’t started on yet… I currently have assorted peppers, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans and a couple of watermelon plants in what will someday be the main kitchen for the house. They aren’t planted in the garden, but as long as they are still alive, I have not failed yet!

The only other thing I have to report is that I have finished the first few chapters of the book. If you’d like to get a teaser of it, I am going to start randomly sending a page or two to the people on my emailing list. So please sign up for notifications below!

Days Unemployed: 61

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Would you like to hire me to write for you? Please email me at amanajeepnorealplan@gmail.com

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Book Writing, daycare, garden, Home remodling, tiny terrorist

5/13/20 Alcohol and Fire Don’t Mix, A Birthday Trip, and a Business Plan?

May 13, 2020 by Tyler

So from time to time when in the DeLong Tavern (a.k.a. A Man, A Jeep, No Real Plan World Head Quarters, also known as my garage) enough adult beverages are consumed that poor choices are made. Due to this well known fact Pretty Lady has issued some guidelines. Guidelines include things like no power tools once the third beverage is mixed, no betting on any “stupid human tricks”, if it makes me giggle for more than 5 seconds… we must wait for adult supervision before trying it, and most importantly I do not get to decide who counts as adult supervision. Oh, and as of a few nights ago, no accelerants are permitted while starting a fire once the second beverage has been mixed.

To be fair, the first time we, yes we, I do not drink alone, but yeah, the first time tried to start the fire, it did not start due to the fact that there was no small dry wood, only old wooden siding, gasoline, and it was raining. So an unnamed party decided to poor more gas on the fire when they thought it was out. Well, it was not out, so the can caught and was thrown. At which time I went into the Delong Tavern and came out with a packing blanket in hopes of smothering the now flaming gas can. It did not work… At this point in time we determined that it wasn’t going anywhere, so we’ll just let it burn out. Upon going inside I am proud to announce that I told Pretty Lady all about the incident and requested that she ignore the scorched mark in the lawn when she saw it the next day.

Unfortunately when she saw it the next morning, I was immediately put in time out. I want it to be known that just like the Tiny Terrorist, I did my time and upon release immediately started looking for some different shenanigans.

With things starting to open up, I have decided that my first adventure will be happening the weekend before my Birthday. Pretty Lady and I are going to leave the Tiny Terrorist behind and spend a long weekend trying to score some adventure points in Kentucky and Tennessee. This Adventure will be celebrating my birthday and will be known as “33 Years of Bad Ideas”

Speaking of bad ideas, I’m trying to figure out a way to make my adventures a tad bit more economically friendly. I am contemplating several different angles. I could start charging to access to the archives, but that’s really not my style. I could start selling advertising on the site, but it’ll probably be a cold day in hell before I do that. I could sell bumper sticker space on Jeff though… I may have to look into that one. Another idea is the fact that I do have some swag I made for myself… I mean all I have at the moment is bumper stickers like the above…

But I do have literally thousands of photos that I could have prints made of to sell… I could also do things like coffee mugs, shirts, posters, and other swag… Or I could take my adventures and write a book… I am kind of torn between selling swag and writing a book. Perhaps I’ll do both? Or maybe I’ll write a book and give away the bumper stickers? I don’t know… But if you see a store pop up on the site, no it’s not a scam.

Days Unemployed: 55

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Would you like to hire me to write for you? Please email me at amanajeepnorealplan@gmail.com

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 33 Years of Bad Ideas, Adulting fail, adventures, bad idea, Book Writing, DeLong Tavern, Fire, Prints

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