Archive for November 2014
Memory
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it might as well
be a fleeting thought
gone as quick as it comes
memories lost
to time and happenstance
senseless stuff all shiny and new
claiming attention
for no particular reason
at the expense
of more valuable personal views
leaving lucid dreaming
to grasp for threads
of meetings from the past
with precious people
more spirit than face
feelings that endure
minus basic facts
hope loiters
wishing for some purpose
that it’s not just soot
from smoke
that randomly wafted past
clinging to the walls
along the hallways
of my flimsy mind
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Day After
It feels like an accomplishment to get through the day after Thanksgiving. It has become such an event unto itself. My preferred way of coping with the bombardment of consumerism-run-amok is to not go anywhere or do anything that could in any way be construed as partaking in the buying frenzy.
When Cyndie appeared from the bedroom yesterday morning, she informed me that I would be making the 1-hour drive to the city to pick up a prescription for her. My plan for the day was foiled from the get-go. In addition, daylight had revealed a new covering of snow that arrived overnight, so I had some plowing and shoveling that demanded attention as well.
It didn’t end there. As I was driving home from the pharmacy, I noticed some rain drops on the windshield. We were receiving sporadic bouts of timid precipitation all afternoon that alternated between wet drops and icy shards. Never enough to make a major impact, but enough to leave a trace. If it got any worse, I would likely need to put the horses under cover of the barn overnight, which meant I needed to clean the stalls from their previous stay.
Such is life on the ranch in the winter. When Cyndie returns to full activity, these projects will be minor demands on us. Prior to that, the combination of tasks needing simultaneous attention complicate my routine significantly. I am not able to help Cyndie at the same time I am out doing chores.
I walked in the door this afternoon and found her working in the kitchen. As time passes in her recuperation, she begins to grow weary of asking for assistance and naturally tries to do more and more herself, as she feels able. I begin to feel like a nag from frequently asking if she needs my help, but then think I’m neglecting my role as care giver when she has worked past her comfort level.
We make a great pair. You’d think we were married or something.
Friday came and then disappeared in a blink. I safely navigated traffic for a few hours on the road, then we enjoyed a flatbread pizza Cyndie created for lunch. I got the stalls cleaned, Delilah walked, driveway plowed, and trash/recycling wheeled down to the road.
In the end, I decided the horses didn’t need to come in overnight. I’ll find out this morning whether they were okay with that plan, or not. It wasn’t exceptionally cold overnight, and the prediction is for above-freezing temperatures today, so I’m hoping they aren’t finding the weather too bothersome.
If I’ve got the energy for it today, there is some old firewood that needs to be hauled to the house and new firewood to be split and stacked. With a little luck, maybe I’ll even get back to that slow hay feeder box project that has been stalled for a few days now.
I’m happy to have it be the day after the day after.
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Concocting Thankfulness
Amid the backdrop of societal problems of racial injustice, religious violence, political corruption, patriarchal rape culture, unbridled banking industry crimes, insane sports and entertainment industry salaries, over-commercialization of holidays, and overall people’s misplaced priorities, we pause in the US today to give thanks.
Our Thanksgiving holiday harkens back to a time when one tribe of people gathered together with the indigenous people whom were seen as lesser-than, to feast over their bounty and good fortune. Somehow, the feast became an annual tradition, despite the despicable behavior of the dominant group that whitewashed deeds to allow themselves to feel okay with their means to an end.
Today I enjoy the luxury of living with horses. They give me many reasons to be thankful. I am acutely aware of the privilege that contributed to the opportunity for me to achieve this luxury. It requires some mental exercise to get beyond the guilt and shame over the behavior of the people who came before me to pave my way.
Our horses help me focus on the present moment. They live without pretense, ask for little, and give to no end.
For the American holiday of Thanksgiving, I struggle to identify with the thanks being brandished about, but for the genuine art of being thankful, I am all in.
There is much love and plenty of family and friends to be thankful for, and in that regard I am richly blessed. My solution to dealing with all the ills of the world is to send love equally in all directions. Where I don’t feel love, I can produce it. From that effort comes genuine feelings of love, suddenly manifest. It’s not unlike thankfulness.
Love and thanks are not far apart. I am thankful for very many things, and today I will contemplate that. I send my love to you all, and hope that you find much to be thankful for, too.
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Relative Calm
For the most part, calm prevails on the ranch as we settle into a routine of rest and healing for Cyndie. With neither one of us needing to go anywhere, we can operate at a very comfortable pace, guided by the regular intervals of animal feeding times which I must act on.
Cyndie is capable enough now to take care of many things herself, so I don’t need to constantly be in her immediate vicinity. Plus, we continue to be blessed with the added assistance of her mother’s occasional visits, or the home-care nurses and physical therapist.
We received a dusting of snow after last weekend’s melt, making our views a bit more photogenic again, at least for this time of year. I was going through a bit of a picture-taking drought for a while there.
After walking Delilah yesterday morning, I grabbed my camera and headed back outside to see if I could capture some of the scenes that had caught my eye moments earlier.
The horses were so content, messily chomping away on the hay in our two feeders, that I was moved to take some extra time and linger among them. Both Legacy and Dezirea had rubbed their manes into a tangled “braid” that defies logic. I have yet to see how they do it, but it is a recurring phenomena —more so for her than him. They tolerated my interest in detangling their hairdos, continuing to munch at the feeder while I worked.
Delilah patiently waited for me in the barn, where I left her while getting hay. It’s a good day when she quietly waits for me there while I feed the horses. Too often I feel rushed to get back because of her sharp barks of protest for being left longer than she wants.
The only other thing that has disturbed the peace and quiet we’ve been enjoying is an invoice that came in the mail from the city of River Falls. In addition to needing to pay for the towing and repairs to the truck after Cyndie’s little rollover accident, we are also responsible for paying the public service emergency responders for responding. It costs $500.00 to have an accident in River Falls. It adds insult to injury.
Don’t do it, folks. It is not worth it. That money is better spent on groceries. It irks me to no end that they show up and park their cars with flashing lights while the tow truck works, and then bill you five hundred bucks. If they are going to charge you, they should at least inform you, and give you a choice of having them respond or not.
Talk about a dis-incentive for calling for help. Something is seriously messed up if our tax dollars are not sufficient to fund public services. And they have a monopoly. We should have a choice of more affordable options. If they want to charge for services, then privatize it and let us shop for a responder who charges the fairest price.
I told Cyndie that she is not allowed to have any future accidents in or around River Falls, WI. We can’t afford it. We’ve got horses to feed.
Speaking of the horses, that reminds me, it’s time to go back to grazing. I’m going to return to that place of calm. I don’t have to pay an extra fee to do that.
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Foreign Object
I don’t really feel like telling this story. I’d rather that the memory of it just go away. It was unpleasant, to say the least, but it’s just the kind of experience that I would write about, so here goes nothing…
Sunday night, after a scrumptious dinner that Cyndie’s mom prepared, we were enjoying her fresh-baked apple crisp for dessert by the fireplace. After my very last bite, I took a refreshing swig from my cup of ice water.
My favorite drink in the whole wide world is water. I gained a huge amount of respect for drinking water after experiencing a kidney stone some thirty years ago. I move through phases of drinking water with, or without ice. Lately, I have been preferring it with ice. I like to let the ice get soft and when the water is gone, slowly consume the pieces, one after another.
I took in a few ice chunks with that swig of water after my apple crisp, and was letting them crumble under the weight of my teeth. That is when I noticed an unpleasant taste. For a second, I was reminded of a time I bit into banana bread that hadn’t been mixed thoroughly before baking, and having hit on an unfortunately large pocket of undissolved baking soda. I hate when that happens. Kids, don’t forget to mix in the baking soda really well.
I wondered if this could have happened with the apple crisp I just enjoyed. This is how the brain works. My brain, anyway. Maybe I’m a little slow. I then wondered —and keep in mind, this is all in a span of a couple of microseconds— could a piece of rotting food or an infected tooth have just come loose in my mouth?
Then, among the remaining honey-combed ice crumbles tumbling between my teeth, my tongue found a foreign object. In way less than a microsecond, my brain conjured an image that matched what my tongue was feeling, and my fingers jumped to extrication mode, plucking the foreign object from my mouth and throwing it on the empty plate setting on the end table beside me.
I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to know what I suspected just happened, had really happened. From a distance, I could see what was on my plate.
Ladybugs, or Asian Ladybird Beetles, make a strong showing around our house in the fall. For the most part, we just tolerate their presence. Our home is a rather dry place in the winter and the beetles tend to die of dehydration when they get inside. However, there are always a few hardy ones that survive and make a general nuisance of themselves.
Quite possibly, this now-deceased trouble maker thought he had found a way to stay hydrated and alive. I’m really sorry to say that I unknowingly squashed that plan.
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Precious Family
I am so lucky to have the support of family to help care for Cyndie during her initial recovery period. Today is the 1-week anniversary of her hip replacement surgery, and by all accounts, her convalescence is right on track. Having family here to contribute their energies to our routine is one of the reasons for her progress.
It also has enabled me to simultaneously accomplish some weather-dependent projects that were on my list of things to do if the temperature ever rose above freezing. The weekend became my chance.
I do have a proclivity for letting non-essential tasks linger untouched while my attentions are directed toward things I find more appealing. Once classic chore I struggle with is, cleaning out the stalls in the barn. It’s been a long time since the horses were last held in there, and I have been walking past the open doors for over a week without doing anything about the messes they left behind.
When the weather forecast threatened the possibility of rain and sleet, I realized I couldn’t afford to ignore that chore any longer. While Julian and his girlfriend were around on Saturday to keep Cyndie company, I was able to finally get the stalls clean and readied for occupation by the time rain arrived last night.
The horses gladly moved in.
Yesterday, Cyndie’s parents came over and I was able to fix a couple of spots on the electric fence that were arcing, and then also work on something that I thought wouldn’t happen until next spring. The warm temperatures of the last two days obliterated what little snow cover that had accumulated.
I seized the opportunity to clear out a good portion of our manure composting area to make space for the loads filled with wood shavings that come from the barn in the winter. By dumping the composted manure behind the shop garage, I doubled my accomplishment, as that location had eroded and was sorely in need of fill.
Cross two more things off my “to-do” list, thanks to family support.
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Fog
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it’s complicated
trying to find the words
to describe the fog
in a way that’s not cliché
how it makes life feel
different
by just being there
clouding every space
both heavy and light
at the very same time
it fills every void
and effectively creates
one much greater
simple
as a science lab experiment
expanded
to epic proportions
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Time Again
As predicted, this morning was warm enough that snow was sticky and melting. There was plenty of moisture in the air, but it wasn’t exactly foggy. There was something of a spooky feel to the ambiance of the ranch.
Delilah didn’t seem to care, as she pulled hard against her leash in a rush to get to the next scent that was always just beyond the one she just checked. The horses were out of the paddock, milling along the fence between the hay-field and the back pasture. They weren’t on the same side of the fence, which is nothing new.
Last night, Legacy was in the pasture and the other three were in the hay-field. This morning, Dezirea was alone in the hay-field.
Suddenly, a loud crack from a rifle echoed between the hills and the horses nervously adjusted their positions in response. I discovered that the pans of feed that I had set out last night were left untouched under the barn overhang.
A couple of the chestnuts had obviously been through the paddock to change their location, but apparently they didn’t bother to come up to the barn. It’s that time again. Deer hunting season started this morning at sunrise. Gun shots started last night. I guess they were making sure their guns worked.
More shots rang out. I’m not sure how far the sound carries, but it gives me the impression there are a lot of hunters in action in a relatively small area around us. How do they keep from shooting at each other, I wonder. And, are there really that many deer out and about right now?
If our horses are on alert, I expect the deer are just as keen to notice the sounds and would be inclined to make themselves even more scarce than usual.
I walked Delilah through the paddock toward the horses in the pasture by the round pen. Legacy responded to our presence and approached the closed gate between us. To accommodate their skittishness, I opened that gate to save them walking around to the one that we leave open. I guided them toward the hay feeder and then walked around to do the same for Dezirea from the hay-field.
More gun shots. The horses let the lure of the hay override their urge to flee. I wandered up to the barn and shook the feed pan, which initially startled their panic response, but then drew them up to eat, albeit in hurried fits of anxiety.
Delilah took full advantage of the all-she-could-eat-buffet of manure droppings that were reappearing within the melting snow, as I just stood calmly to assure the horses that they were safe. At the edge of the pine forest across the road from us, a lone figure in blaze orange appeared to be standing sentinel. His jacket must have been old and dirty, because when two figures appeared across the snowy field from him, their outfits outshone his to the point of looking electrically illuminated.
No sign of any hunting success. From the sound of all the shots being fired, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
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Sweet Home
When you get home from a hospital stay, the allure of your own bed can be too much to resist. Cyndie said she just wanted to test her ability to hoist herself up onto our tall mattress. I think she probably also wanted to test out taking a little afternoon nap.
Sure, the hospital has professional nurses providing care, but we have our cat, Pequenita. She settled right in at Cyndie’s feet as soon as it looked like a nap was about to happen. Nurses can’t offer that kind of support.
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Relative Something 