Bored?

I'm not.  Which is why I haven't posted since Tuesday.  Since then, I've installed shelves in a hall closet, re-routed the exhaust duct for the dryer into the hallway, did some yard work, did some major re-organizing in the shed, turned the front porch into a greenhouse, and I'm still behind on a couple of other projects.  I need to build a new chicken coop from old materials from the neighbor across the road.

The body can only stand so much work, and I have to say I truly appreciate God's command to observe Shabbat so that we can lay down and enjoy some rest.   The picture on the right is me laying on the floor in the office. We live stream "24" from Netflix and it's our second time of the day to mother the chicks.  They can be pretty loud when the don't get enough attention.

When I was a kid, sometime before my teen years (It's been so long since then, how am I supposed to remember?), I once complained of being bored to my mother.  She was hearing none of that.

"Get out and do something."

It might help to know that I grew up in what most today would say was abject poverty.  My parents were hillbillies from the western mountains of West Virginia, or as they say there, "West-By-God-Virginia".  My dad worked in the coal mines and then for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad as a fireman, which means that he was the guy shoveling coal into the firebox on a steam locomotive before the diesel engines came along.  To this day I can still see in my minds eye that upside down, horseshoe shaped scar over his right eyebrow from where a brake handle broke off that he was pulling on with all his might to try to slow down the train on a grade in the winter.  It knocked him out cold and blinded him in that eye permanently.

That was back in the day when you didn't get huge legal settlements from companies.  Almost all jobs carried risks and everyone knew that.  Stuff happens.  He felt lucky to have had a job at all.  Both my parents lived through the Great Depression.  My dad was born in 1914.  At age 25 he was the only member of a family of nine who was bringing home a paycheck, working as a mechanic for a Chevrolet dealer.  Even his father had lost his job as a conductor on the railroad.

Becoming an orphan at age 13 when my mom died, growing up in an institution known as the Florida Sheriffs Boys Ranch, (a great place, BTW), I've never had much. Oh, I don't blame my circumstances that much.  A lot of it has to do with my personality and the choices I've made.  I hate the corporate mentality.  I hate lemmings and rigid procedures and doing things because some bean counter has decided that's how it should be done.  What I have always known from an early age is that you don't get something for nothing.  Which is why I loathe welfare.  Even more, I loathe the people who endorse it and promote it, because they don't realize or don't care about the damage they do to society and especially the people they provide the welfare to.  At the Boys Ranch, you were expected to do some chores just because they needed to be done.  Then you had to have a job somewhere on the Ranch that paid .25 to .75 cents an hour in order to have spending money and you were required to save at least ten percent.

I've never really been hungry or lived in squalor.  Both my parents have known what that was like.  But they never instilled in me any kind of resentment toward those who had more.  They told me to work hard for what I wanted.  My mother knew it was possible.  She was the oldest of nine children. One of her younger brothers went on to become a multi-millionaire, although I don't know the details.  There's always been a lot of bad blood throughout both sides of my ancestry.  I think I would be an orphan by choice had it not been thrust upon me.

How funny.  I got a bit off track.  My mom told me that only boring people are bored.  I didn't get that as a kid.  It is so true.  God blessed me with a tremendous intellect.  I don't take credit for it, it is a gift, and a curse.  "To whom much has been given, much will be required."  Mom taught me to read by the age of four, and they didn't have Kindergarten when I was five, or pre-school or any of that other socialist crap.  By the time I had to enroll in the first grade, I could read the most of the newspaper.  I remember making the teacher crazy and being bored out of my skull.  I began to hate school very early.  And it wouldn't be until after I graduated High School that I would discover how much I loved learning.  Now I know how much government, or "public" school is sheer child abuse.  Especially for children with potential.

There is always something to learn and do.  Today, I can fairly navigate around in a computer.  I have quite a bit of skill when it comes to carpentry, plumbing, electrical, drywall, tilework, and pretty much anything to do with building or remodeling. I've done major repair work on car engines, brakes, air-conditioning, car electrical systems.  I've maintained a factory full of complicated sewing and manufacturing equipment.  But today there are lots of people like me out of work in the corporate world.  Right now I just work on the farm.

I think the leftists who want to bring about a socialist utopia are not going to get the message until Atlas Shrugs.  I've shrugged.  I may be working the farm, but I'll be damned if I'm going to work on George Orwell's Animal Farm.  How about you?