Kate miscarried two weeks ago. I doubt I’ll ever forget walking into the bathroom to see her sitting on the toilet with a tiny fetus cupped in her hands. We brought it home and buried it in the small orchard.

I needed to pick up a couple pieces of equipment in Massachusetts and New Hampshire that Sunday, so we stayed with friends on their farm in Massachusetts that night. It was a night of strong sadness, watching over Kate’s emotional and physical health, combined with curing ignorance about the process of miscarriage and some comedic interlopers as well.

I suppose it’s been like riding a roller coaster on top of another roller coaster. As I’ve been talking to J again I’ve been spending more time thinking about change and how much of it there has been.

It’s hard to separate all the change up until Kate getting pregnant with the change thereafter. I’ve wanted children for a while and I remember talking to H about it years ago. We’re still planning on having children soon enough, perhaps once things settle back out. I suppose at the end of the day it’s just hormonal programming to reproduce, but I suppose everything is. Still, I want to be a father, and I want to be a good one.

My body is fighting me. It’s pretty terrible. I’m having terrible migraines brought on by putting pressure on the back of my skull, most commonly from rolling onto my back in my sleep. My rectum itches madly, probably from a fungal infection like candida but I don’t know. The medical profession has been effectively shrugging at me. The only test they’ve run is an ultrasound on my neck to check out a nodule, but no CT scans or rectal samples. I’ve been trying to get a second opinion, but it’s really hard to get an appointment with a doctor here.

I once had another medical problem. I knew what it was, and went to a doctor for it. I thought it was cured, but it wasn’t. I went to another doctor at a neighborhood clinic who looked at my disheveled appearance, decided I was homeless, and decided it was something else. My symptoms didn’t go away, so I got an appointment with a specialist who told me what they were all doing wrong and solved the problem. The process of getting an appointment with that specialist was so easy, I just looked him up in my insurance company database and made an appointment. Now, all the doctors “aren’t taking new patients” and I have no idea how to find someone to help me.

I bought a Chevy K3500 Chassis-Cab with a 9 foot rack body recently. Dad’s Ford F150 plow truck keeps wanting more work and the plow is a bit residential for me. The Suburban doesn’t get much use except as a tow vehicle. Living in the country again and driving every day, it makes more sense to have a car for moving people and a truck for everything else. That said, we currently have two cars (Subaru Forester and a Honda Civic) and four trucks (Dodge Dakota, Ford F-150, GMC Suburban and Chevy K3500). The Suburban and F-150 are going to be replaced by the K3500. There’s some shuffling to make all this happen though. I got the Ford online for sale this week.

I’m building a radio tower. About 75′ next to the garage to get 2M, scanner and 2.4ghz antennas up over the tree line. This is a huge project.

We currently have 21 chickens and 3 guinea hens, provided our 1 dog lets them live. I still haven’t finished fencing the coop, but I did go out and cut cedar posts in the woods and drag them by hand up to the cut road. Now I’ve just got to go get them, if I can find time between everything else.

There’s also other projects around the family land, yet to begin. I’ve got to finish working on the IH 3616 tractor so we can use it to tear down the old Ice House and also to get a garage bay back.

And then there’s work.

And having a child!