Good morning. This is Morning Fire 223. My 5th day of Mail Trail delivery. This might be the last fire. Now I see they're talking 77 and sunny tomorrow. That wasn't the case yesterday. The impermanence of weather. I am thankful for it Hayden (16 years old) worked for my great uncle yesterday at his sawmill. He came home with 20 bucks cash and fresh cut pine boards to side the doors he's building for his forge shelter. He was out there working on them until 9:30 last night. The kid put in a day. Both of our boys have been homeschooled. When they get into a project there's no slowing them down. They work like lions, then rest. Nothing like how ants work. Thoreau warned us about that. Don't work like ants he said. Dang, I gotta go. Words are flowing this morning. I hope you have a great day! 5.23.26 #gm #coffeechain

Good morning from the front of Morning Fire 222. I leave for the mail trail soon. Hopefully my day starts off better than yesterday. My white mail jeep started on fire. Some wires, that previous owners added, shorted out underneath the hood. Thankfully it didn't catch. It would've been quite a bon fire. My jeep was completely full of mail, newspapers, and Amazon packages. I started it up in the Post Office parking lot to leave for the route and smoke immediately poured out around the hood. Plastic and copper on fire. I'm off to the mail trail. I hope you have a great day! 5.22.26 #gm #coffeechain

A visitor while doing stomach crunches. #countryliving

Good morning. It's 6:20 AM. I took the fire photo at 6 AM. Did some writing by hand after that. A writer friend posted how it's better for your brain to write by hand. That's according to a neuroscientist. I long to someday write pages and pages full of words, edit it, and publish it. The point would be to become more clear in my thinking and surprise myself with what comes out of me. Right now finances and family take precedent. I'm off to the mail trail. I hope you have a great day! Morning Fire 221 5.21.26 #gm #coffeechain

Some are saying The Big Print is coming. #Bitcoin

GM🔥 In front of Morning Fire 219. A day or two of fires, and that'll be it. I will miss them. Off to the mail trail in a bit. It's after two days off with rest. Napped both days. Feel refreshed. Hope you have a great day! 5.19.26 #gm #coffeechain

#bitcoin

GM🔥 It's 9 AM. Just closed the fire down. Probably didn't need one today. But I like sitting in front of my fires. I have sat in front of 218 of them this burning season. Burning season is coming to an end soon for us. It's late. Usually I am writing on this thing around six. Morning is half over from this vantage point. There was a message from my neighbor when I turned my phone on. He's working on my mail jeep. Before he started buying parts and putting money into it he wanted to make sure it was okay. A half hour later we hung up. I'm blessed with good neighbors. My neighbor, the mechanic, helps us keep our old vehicles running. Just down the road is the neighbor I pay a monthly payment for the jeep currently being worked on. She didn't have to finance it. And in between them is a neighbor who recently gifted us a bunch of homemade Italian sausage and plants native plants from our nursery. Like my mechanic neighbor said to me this morning, "We gotta get through this thing together." That was a good reminder. I needed to hear that. I'm off to make the most of my Monday off. Tomorrow it's back to the mail trail. 5.18.26 #coffeechain #gm

That's Hayden. He's 16. One of my sons. He built this coal forge with help from my neighbor and family. He sought out a mentor in our community and learned how to forge steel and weld. He's never been to school. Homeschooled, if you want to call it schooling at all. I don't fully understand the process. Because I spent 14 years in some sort of schooling or another. I just read about homeschooling in my mid twenties. It made sense. And I like to try things that make sense to me. So we did. I understand it's not for everybody. I am glad schools do exist. I am also thankful we have the freedom not to send our kids if we don't want to. 5.17.26 #homeschooling #proofofdad

We look to ease our pain, and this keeps civilization moving along. Fear is the architect here. Fear keeps us working near the ark. ~ Rumi GM🔥 It's ten to eight. Sunday. The fire in the photo about burned down. No one awake yet. I've been up since 4:30. That's when I get up to go to work. To deliver mail. I waited an hour and a half to start my morning routine. A cold shower, then 40 minutes of meditation. I didn't have to be anywhere on time. So I pet the cat that purs next to my head in bed. Scratch my wife's arm. Tell her I love her. She doesn't hear me most of the time. I go in and hug my 16 year old son in bed when he's sound asleep. It keeps the worry at bay. It gets me out of myself. Relationship. Touch. A way to be home again. I know I need to be tough, stoic disciplined .I do that too. That was the past 6 days.. There's that voice in back of my head telling me I have "free" time. I should be doing this, that, and every other god damn thing. Dis ease is what it is. Sometimes I think smoking weed would fix it. Drinking worked until the next morning. Then the worry would hit harder. I really could see it when I started meditating. The worry started up again when I started working full time for the Post office. That was officially 3 years ago. But as a part timer I was going full time back in 2020 already. I have spent my whole life trying to understand this worry. Because there's something inside of me that tells me it's not supposed to be there. Always concerned about a future collapse of this or that. A coworker and I got all dystopian about the data centers and AI yesterday morning. We're both middle aged men. Our kids mostly old enough to be looking at life beyond mom and Dad. Another coworker, a young woman of 24 listening in says, "I want to have kids, but with all the AI stuff happening now I don't know." The only thing I could tell her after a bit of silence was I was dead set against having kids until I was 34. Then I wasn't. And it was one of the best things I ever did. Maybe the best. That's what's on my mind right now. I look forward to being outside working around our place and helping out with our native plant nursery. I hope you have a great day. #gm #coffeechain Morning Fire 217 5.17.26

GM🔥 I took this picture at 6AM. Six twenty now. This is morning fire 216. Don't need one today. It's supposed to hit 80 degrees this afternoon. After today, though, a cool off predicted. Cloudy. Rainy. Maybe severe storms. So we'll keep the house warm. I always think of chainsaws when severe weather is predicted. Trees falling on fences, in the yard, and other places where they're not supposed to fall. 15 minutes til I leave for the mail trail. This is day 6 of 6. It feels like a big exhale. Weight coming off my shoulders. I get two days off. A better breather than one. That's it for now. I hope you have a great weekend. 5.16.26 #gm #coffeechain

GM🔥 Off to the mail trail. It's Friday. One more day, then two days off. I hope you have a great day! Morning Fire 215 5.15.26 #gm #coffeechain

GM🔥 In front of Morning Fire 214. Leave to start the Ford in a few minutes. It'll blow blue smoke out the exhaust when it starts. Then it lets up. Been doing that since we owned it. Bought it during Covid. It's from southern Wisconsin. We got it home in the early hours of the morning. I ran it out of gas about a mile from the house. Close to the Mackey crick as a matter of fact. I went to work the next day. Annie came down with Covid. I called her to come in and help me. I didn't know the route that well. I was a sub at the time. Under great protest she came in and helped me anyway. Off to the mail trail. 5.14.26 #gm #coffeechain

#philosophy #religion

“People have beautiful things to say about you, but you must die first.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky #quotes #philosophy

GM🔥 6:19 AM. Took the fire picture at 6:02. Right around 6 AM lately is when I usually do. Today is day 3 of 6 on the mail trail. I wrote in my journal that I miss being home. I also like being in the world of work making money while I still can. Our native plant nursery, now in its 4th season, is supposed to eventually bridge that gap. I remember living with my grandparents. It got to the point where my grandma couldn't go out and work anymore. This was back in the 90's. She was somewhere in her mid to late fifties. She always talked about how she wished she could go back to work at the nursing home. That was 30 some years ago, and she's still going at home. Off to the world of work. I hope you have a great day! Morning Fire 213 5.13.26 #gm #coffeechain

6 :02 AM. Good morning 🔥 Morning Fire 212 5.12.26 #gm #coffeechain

6 AM. GM🔥 Morning Fire 211 Back to the mail trail today. Six days of delivery this week. Office is short on carriers. Looking for a job? There's work in the Post Office if you want it. I hope you have a great day! 5.11.26 #gm #coffeechain

"China knows." ~ Lawrence Lepard #bitcoin #money #gold #China

GM🔥 Morning Fire 210 5.10.26 #gm #coffeechain