(September 15, 2022 at 3:54 pm)R00tKiT Wrote:

(September 15, 2022 at 3:44 pm)arewethereyet Wrote: When I was having a heart attack in the back of an ambulance, I was pretty aware of my mortality.

I knew that I may or may not live to see the dawn.  

My cancer diagnosis was less of a facedown with own mortality.  I knew it would take time.  It might be a week or years, but the heart attack was right damn now...it had the potential of ending very quickly.

Read all you want...some of us have lived it.

Okay, I didn't know about this.......... I am sorry you went through this and sincerely hope everything gets better. 

As you can see, the point of the thread is not to belittle anybody's hardships, it's certainly not to pretend that theists are the "tougher" people. I apologize again if my topic is misinterpreted, it's at best of theoretical interest.

Thank you.  I am five years out from the heart attack and nearly 13 from the cancer diagnosis.  But I am 65 - something's gonna get me one of these days.

But you can't say that no one thinks of their death as being a real thing.  Some of us do and have....for whatever reason.

It looks like Kloroform has decided to make good on his threat to ignore me. Thank God! I thought I was going to have to break my 30 year streak of never putting anyone on ignore in all my time online.

Speaking of mortality, yes, it's of benefit not to be thinking about it every moment of the day. The same with undone housework. Yet somehow, the housework ends up getting done. Go figure.

I've had many brushes with my own mortality and welcomed it for 40 years as I believed that in death I would return to my home dimension and the kingdom that I had long neglected. Naturally, being preoccupied with bringing about my own demise, friends occasionally offered their perspective.

My favorite was Tad, who had been staying at a rather anal retentive friend's apartment and got it in his mind to kill himself. He sat one the couch, rested the end of the shotgun on his forehead, pulled the trigger, and missed! Instead he shot a large hole in the drywall. All thought of killing himself evaporated as he panicked at the thought of having to explain to Bill that he had blown a hole in the apartment wall with a shotgun.

I have my own occasional absurd encounters as well. One night, in the hospital while on the psyche ward I decided that I was going to end it. I had secreted enough sleeping pills to do the deed in the liner of my jacket and proceeded to execute a cunning plan. I asked the nurse to let me get my coat from the locker in my room, and having obtained it, rushed into the bathroom and shut the door, having carefully prepared beforehand by shoving part of a plastic fork in the key mechanism so that they couldn't immediately open it. I succeeded as planned, wolfing down the sleeping pills, and emerged to the confused souls who had managed to eventually get the door open, whereupon I was duly placed on suicide watch. No worries, I thought, and I lay down on the couch in front of the nursing station fully expecting to drift off into an eternal slumber. Unfortunately, through a brain fart, I'd miscalculated the dosage and had only taken enough sleeping pills to ensure a sound sleep. Death eluded me and I awoke the next morning a bit befuddled.

I have a bunch of floridian quilts, no batting, just empty space between the squares. Legacy stuff, made from my old clothes back when I was a kid. Then we've got the new ones we made for living in this hollar. Basically pillows sewn together. Got the idea in germany, I was cuddling on the floor with this girl I'd met at her friends place - and she had this blanket that weighed 50 lbs, lol. We were so warm.

Yet another thing to wake up for - skin to skin contact under a big blanket on a cold night. You gotta haul your ass, or their ass, to the place, you gotta have the blanket, you gotta be there in winter.

(September 15, 2022 at 3:54 pm)R00tKiT Wrote: Okay, I didn't know about this.......... I am sorry you went through this and sincerely hope everything gets better. 

As you can see, the point of the thread is not to belittle anybody's hardships, it's certainly not to pretend that theists are the "tougher" people. I apologize again if my topic is misinterpreted, it's at best of theoretical interest.

Got bounced around, unconscious for a week, in therapy for years.  I'm as hard as a coffin nail - cant starve me out, cant make me run..something about a shotgun.....

- and you might say that the point isn't to belittle hardships or comment on toughness...but why, then, are we asked to entertain the possibility that some harmed or disadvantage or otherwise vulnerable person is somehow incapable of finding something other than god to live for? I know for a fact that's not the case. Had an uncle with polio. He lived to fly model planes with his nieces and nephews...and to do shit people said he couldn't or shouldn't..even if it killed him (and scared the living shit out of everyone responsible for him). It didn't kill him, and neither did polio. He lived 70 full years..fuller years, I think, than many privileged people. I think that I've only ever met one person who's love for life and positivity were as intrinsic to their identity - and I fuckin married her before some predatory savage got his mitts all over the good stuff.

(September 15, 2022 at 3:56 pm)arewethereyet Wrote:

(September 15, 2022 at 3:26 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Right?  I like smooth reels on stiff rods and surface action.  I like the way a big boat rolls offshore.  I like the way that quilts smell when you pull them out, the first blush of autumn, from a cedar chest.   I like simmering in a greenhouse.  I cant stop moving, I have places to be and little things to set right.

Since I started making quilts there's no waiting for autumn. I make them fairly lightweight since I am in Texas...not like I would were I still in the midwest and would fill them with layers and layers of warmness.

A couple days ago I was able to open the windows...just for one day...but it was wonderful and I can't wait till I can do it for days on end.

Up here Autumn is a weird month it can be freezing one night and nearly summer the next. So I never really know which quilt to get out. 

But I tell you this nothing beat the Autumn colors.

You know what else takes off in autumn around hur? Muskie. I see the fuckers all year just loitering around my baits - never git a hit. But come autumn...they're hungry. 1k casts per - cant sit still on that. Big kit too, I throw wooden plugs in fields all summer so I can drop my baits on heads come fall and winter - and it's just about beach time while I'm on the subject. 70f days and 40f nights...front end of all the pelagic vertical migration. Fewer bites...but the biggest fish that have fed all year and not yet been caught.

(September 15, 2022 at 4:12 pm)Helios Wrote:

(September 15, 2022 at 3:56 pm)arewethereyet Wrote: Since I started making quilts there's no waiting for autumn. I make them fairly lightweight since I am in Texas...not like I would were I still in the midwest and would fill them with layers and layers of warmness.

A couple days ago I was able to open the windows...just for one day...but it was wonderful and I can't wait till I can do it for days on end.

Up here Autumn is a weird month it can be freezing one night and nearly summer the next. So I never really know which quilt to get out. 

But I tell you this nothing beat the Autumn colors.

Here, autumn seems to occur over a weekend.  If you blink, you miss it.

That is something I miss about the midwest...autumn was always my favorite season.   Winter - too damn cold and I hate snow.  Spring - too damn wet and muddy.  Summer - MEH.   But autumn was the best.

That's going to be one of the problems in the us going forward. Structures that were originally built for relatively mild and dry fall seasons are seeing that integrity buffer erased. Single family units all the way up to commercial installations. The rated lifespans and suitability of alot of construction materials depend on numbers and situations that are no longer true, within regions in which they were widely employed. When they say your roof is for "twenty years" they actually mean a certain number of hours and wind that are historically present. Good luck with that shit in future. Used to be you could get federal relief to insure a beach house provided it was made a certain way - not for long.

Yet another reason to wake up day after day and fix our shit, or stack fat knots to pay people to fix our shit. Hopefully realtively disadvantaged people that work for less per hour than we do, to maxcimize the effect of our funds.

(September 15, 2022 at 3:09 pm)R00tKiT Wrote:

(September 15, 2022 at 2:54 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: 1. Stephen Hawking.

The guy obviously had nice compensation for his physical disability : an astronomically high IQ, which enables him to have a distinguished scientific career -again, sheer luck. You and I both know most disabled people aren't that lucky. So, again, what about disabled people in general, how can a naturalistic view of the world motivate them ?

(September 15, 2022 at 2:54 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: 2. Which is why I’ll never live in such a country.

That's understandable, all people prefer their native country over the rest. Regardless of that, you should be aware of the different cultural sensitivities whenever you ask someone if they ever "met" a woman.

1. I'm a disabled people myself. I've learned to live with it. I'm also of a naturalistic outlook and have no trouble being motivated.

2. I don't live in my native country. What I meant by 'met a woman' is just that.

Boru

(September 15, 2022 at 5:00 pm)arewethereyet Wrote:

(September 15, 2022 at 4:12 pm)Helios Wrote: Up here Autumn is a weird month it can be freezing one night and nearly summer the next. So I never really know which quilt to get out. 

But I tell you this nothing beat the Autumn colors.

Here, autumn seems to occur over a weekend.  If you blink, you miss it.

That is something I miss about the midwest...autumn was always my favorite season.   Winter - too damn cold and I hate snow.  Spring - too damn wet and muddy.  Summer - MEH.   But autumn was the best.

Indeed Autumn is the best