Archive for February 2016
Ash Wash
One day when Elysa was hanging out with us, I wondered out loud if there was any use for all the ash from a fireplace. She suggested we Google it.
Turns out, yes, there is. Or more accurately, there are.
Two that I clearly remember: An additive to soil for growing tomatoes, and as a cleanser for washing smoky glass fireplace doors.
Smoky doors, we got. This solution is so plain and simple that I don’t understand why it isn’t more widely known. There is no reason to use some manufactured chemical when such a natural resource is so handy and works so amazingly well.
How about a demonstration? I don’t mind if I do.
All I need is water, some newspaper, and ashes to quickly clean the doors for a crystal clear view of the main attraction of our winter nights. I wish all projects were as easy and rewarding as this.
In case it isn’t inherently obvious, this chore should be done before you start a fire, when the ashes and doors are absent of any heat from a fire.
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Not Hot
This is one of the not hot compost piles in our paddock. Not much in the way of decomposition happening there. Maybe that will change this weekend when the mega-melt of February is expected to arrive.
The frozen compost piles aren’t hot, but the temperature of the air will be. Add a chance for some rain in the mix and our lawn may become visible by the end of the weekend.
Mud season!
I suppose I ought to think about getting the garden tractor tuned up and ready for battle.
This early warmup in interesting, but warmth at this time of year is a fickle thing. One moment it feels all summery and promising, and a day later we could be socked in by a foot or two of heavy, wet snow. Do. Not. Remove. Winter. Accessories. From. Your. Vehicles.
The odds of needing them stays high through the first week in May around here. I’m inclined to wait until June before finally choosing to store them someplace safe, where I will never remember to look the following November when I am desperate to scrape frost off a windshield again.
This past Monday, the horses were enjoying the last hour of our increasingly longer daylight while I was tending to the frozen manure pile closest to the barn. I have a sense that they are going to enjoy a warm spell, despite the messy footing it promises to provide.
With their coats still winter-thick, I expect it may feel downright hot to them.
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Runaway Chores
The last few times we ran the dishwasher, we found some wetness on the floor in front of it. Most recently, it turned out to be a lot more than just some wetness. We had a leak.
Fearing the worst, I hustled downstairs to check the ceiling. The dishwasher is located above our storage room, which has a finished ceiling. There was a light stain on one of the tiles. Curses!
We have some history with leaking dishwashers. In our previous home back in Eden Prairie, the leak went undetected for a long time, because it was located in the drain hose. Mice had chewed a hole in the plastic hose and the leak was not visible from the kitchen.
My fear was that it had happened again, and I prepared myself for pulling the dishwasher to look behind it. I didn’t really want to tear into that project, so I decided I should make sure the drain wasn’t blocked by debris, first. The only problem with that plan was the fact that I didn’t know how to gain access to the drain.
While I was sitting on the kitchen floor, peering at the inner workings of the dishwasher, I got a close view of the nasty buildup of gunk that had accumulated around the edge of the door and on the gaskets around the door. Could it be?
I gave them a thorough cleaning. While I was on the floor peering under the appliance, I got a scary view of places that never get cleaned. We have a cat, so areas that don’t get cleaned become an incredible mass of cat hair, which then becomes a super absorbent net that catches dog hair.
Cyndie got the small shop-vac for me and I started cleaning under kitchen cabinets. Cat crawl spaces. While I had the vacuum and was lying on the kitchen floor, she suggested I clean under the stove and the refrigerator, too. I couldn’t argue with that logic.
I pulled the drawer from beneath the oven and found enough items to feel like an archeologist discovering an ancient tomb. I had to ask Cyndie whether they were from us or the previous owners. She said it looked like a little of both.
After the stove, I moved on the refrigerator. Again, my first thought was, we own a cat. Those coils should be cleaned about 10-times more often than we are accomplishing. It was nightmarish under there. While I was grunting over that project, Cyndie started giving the oven a heavy dose of scrubbing.
I asked permission to remove some screws so we could get to the space between the windows in the oven door. There was a cobweb in there that has bothered me for a long time. Soon, we had all the kitchen appliances in pieces, and we were cleaning nooks and crannies that have probably never been cleaned before.
Delilah was incredibly patient with us, as we toiled away the entire evening on this runaway series of cleaning chores, though she failed to mask how forlorn she felt over being neglected the whole time.
While we were busy dealing with the mission creep of the oven door and the refrigerator coils, the original problem of a leaking dishwasher appeared to have gone away. After cleaning the gaskets, we put it though a test run while we worked away in the kitchen.
There was no sign of any leaking whatsoever. Problem solved? I will be keeping a skeptical eye on it for the foreseeable future.
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Hot Compost
I continue to enjoy with fascination how much heat is created by the microorganisms in our compost pile, especially when the outside air temperature drops to double digits below zero (F). I took a picture of the thermometer reading on Saturday morning when the polar vortex had us in a deep freeze.
Our sh*t is cookin’!
That pile consists primarily of what has been cleaned from the barn stalls.
We are also collecting manure in the paddocks and piling it in several spots out there. Although I attempted to swiftly establish healthy sized piles, hoping I could get them to also start cooking, they are all frozen solid.
I’ll be experimenting to see how long it takes for me to bring ’em to life as winter wanes.
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Floating Along
It’s the middle of February and a life at the ranch is humming along with a reasonable sense of normalcy. We had a fun gathering with Julian and Elysa yesterday for a Valentine’s Day brunch. Julian brought his hoverboard for us to see and test. In a brief lesson, while standing with my hands on the back of a chair, Julian guided me through some steps on the basics.
It only took one quick loss of control where I practically dumped the chair, to decide I was good with just standing on it. I’d had enough and was comfortable simply watching Julian move around the house and spin in circles.
Later, Cyndie took a turn figuring out how to stand on it, while holding the back of the same chair I used. I decided to kneel in the chair as ballast, while watching her. She got about as far as I had before coming to the same conclusion… that was all she needed to experience, thankyouverymuch.
For some reason, her quick exit brought me a renewed confidence to give it another try. Soon, I let go of the chair and was wandering around the house on it. What a gas.
Julian stayed close and moved a few things out of the way to give me greater clearance. I took a couple of spins around the center island in the kitchen, turning in both left and right directions, one time coming in with a bit too much speed. That provided a sense of how one could find their body leaving the board and continuing in the direction of the last momentum.
I decided to complete my initial experience before meeting with any catastrophic failure. Having not practiced dismounting the board, I headed back to the chair. I wanted to try to get off without holding on, but have it within close reach, just in case.
It took many tries to convince myself to lift one foot, without tipping the other forward or back. I pretty much had to leap off, and found myself automatically grabbing the chair at the same time, anyway.
It was a lot of fun. While all that was going on, we also helped Elysa brainstorm ideas for a party she is planning to have at Wintervale this summer. She has a birthday milestone approaching this year and plans to celebrate accordingly. It took a couple tries to adjust our thinking to the fact it will be light out until almost 10 p.m. and there will be leaves on all the trees.
Before they needed to head home, we took the kids on a walk with Delilah through our woods and stopped to say hello to the horses at the barn while wispy white flakes floated down.
It was a super way to share the day with those whom we dearly love!
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Additional Animals
We are caring for George’s animals this weekend while he is out of town, so we have additional mouths to feed during morning and evening chores. When we planned for this earlier last week, nobody gave much thought to the approaching polar vortex dropping our temperatures below zero.
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By Friday morning, when we stopped over to review procedures with George, it was clear that conditions would be extreme. George warned us about the hydrant in the barn not draining well and being susceptible to freezing. He listed several other options, should that occur.
That helped greatly when the situation arose Saturday morning at about the coldest hour all weekend. The pump handle did not want to move and I didn’t want to force it. We used the 2nd option, and hardly lost a step in getting everyone their morning rations of food and water.
By last night, after 3 visits in 2 days, the animals all seemed to understand what was about to go down when we pulled up again in my car. Dinner was about to be served! You can almost feel the creatures smiling when you present them with precisely what they are longing to have.
The ducks and chickens were particularly anxious about getting a drink of water. Their pans for water are not currently heated, so when their liquid becomes a solid, they have to leave the relative warmth of walls and a roof, and venture outside the barn to one of the troughs that have heaters serving the larger animals. A number of them seemed to prefer waiting until we arrived, based on their eager impatience.
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After tending to all the animals that needed something from us, it was time to add wood to the furnace. At the temperatures we were experiencing, the furnace seemed about as hungry for wood as the animals were for food and water.
There was not much energy being wasted by any of the sheep, horses, chickens or ducks. Everybody was in full conservation mode, huddling up with each other or hunkering down against the bitter bite of Arctic air pressing down from the clear sky.
George, rest assured that no one was left wanting for anything over weekend, and everybody was well-behaved, despite the harsh conditions.
I’m sure your faucet handle will thaw out again by June sometime.
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Embrace Change
Is it possible to fully understand the vast number of worlds and details of lives to which we have, at best, limited exposure? Not that we are supposed to. How often are decisions made, despite an honest comprehension and acceptance of how little we are actually aware?
What can one individual really expect to grasp of the full range of issues and disciplines at play in the world? Let me see how many I can leave out by failing to mention…
Starting nowhere in particular, …medicine. Pharmacies. Hospitals, patient care, insurance, finance, facility maintenance, emergency management, legal advice, illegal gambling, addiction, recovery, psychiatry, academia, higher education, childhood education, reverse mortgages, home construction, plea bargaining, coupon shopping, fuel additives, auto sales, product placement, advertising, manufacturing, shipping, travel, cultural sensitivity, political ambitions, mathematical odds, gravitational waves, electron microscopes, archaeological mapping, district boundaries, city planning, manure management, religious zealotry, emotional manipulation, theater production, recording industry, music licensing, athletic training, team building, volunteerism, broadcast journalism, pain management, nutrition supplements, insulin, scar tissue, therapeutic massage, skin grafts.
Demolition, trucking, forest management, bear hunting, bird migration, traditional celebrations, sleep deprivation, common misconceptions, in-depth investigation, maintaining confidentiality, healthy intervention, interior decoration, retail product purchasing, industrial scale food production, buying fabric, spinning yarn, nailing crossbeams, laying foundations, paving highways, recognizing symptoms, healing psychological wounds, making amends, raising children, caring for elders, predicting the weather, creating complex spreadsheets, coding software, upgrading hardware, saving lost data, creating historical records, storing precious documents, managing a bank, growing wealth, affordable healthcare, establishing a fair tax.
Proper shoes for walking, insoles both firm and cushy, camping gear, college years, immigration, negotiation, land management, proper drainage, flood mitigation, product liability, instant gratification, adequate illumination, mineral rights, engine displacement, performance enhancing drugs, commercial sponsorship, codependent relationships, legal guardianship, adoption, acting, directing, angel investors, screenplay writing, sky writing, stunt flying, flight instruction, ground rules, ruling parties, parting ways, space exploration, deep-sea diving, grant writing, non-profit organizations, managing foundations, educating the masses, bullshit detection.
Historical re-enactments, religious interpretation, traditional hymns, learned behaviors, family bias, class divides, social acceptance, criminal negligence, healthy confrontation, anger management, pet care, pest control, toilet training, Oedipal complex, renal failure, clogged arteries, plugged drains, drain fields, debt manipulation, cosmetic dentistry, animal husbandry, oral history, re-framing history, flagging industries, recycling precious metals, fabricating complex machines, publishing magazines, controlling military spending, black-market weapons dealing, lifting economies, deep sea fishing, car racing, long distance putts, fire protection, lumber harvesting, crop raising, hospice care, librarian, business consulting, museum curation, sculpting, designing, choreography, judge, cook, baker, candlestick maker.
If you chose to read every last word of those paragraphs, you might consider serving in government somehow. I also think you’d make a good editor.
I shudder over the number of instances when I have heard political arguments or strong opinions expressed with fervent finality, when there are so many more pertinent details worth considering in the world than can realistically be included. No one person can know everything there is to know.
I feel like the general population of the United States is looking for a person who does know everything, when they think about electing a President. Others are just looking for a candidate who will constrain decisions to a narrow band of specific interests.
I’d prefer the kind of leadership that is allowed to be flexible enough to respond to the latest information available and make decisions based on a combination of historical reference and what is known now.
Since the world is constantly changing, it makes sense to me to embrace the change, rather than struggle in resistance against it.
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Mysterious Shriek
I was already on edge Wednesday night, after the close encounter with the traffic fatality earlier in the day, so the blood-curdling wail that arose in the darkness beyond the bedroom door to the deck easily startled me out of bed. It was around 10:30 p.m. and the mysterious cry that began surprisingly similar to the sound of our teapot on the stove actually had me questioning how the water could possibly be boiling at that hour.
The distressing shriek just kept going like a siren, causing both Cyndie and me to climb out of bed to investigate. I grabbed a powerful spotlight that I keep next to the bed for just such occasions, and scanned as far and wide as limitations of view allowed.
There was no sign of any activity, even as the suffering victim continued to scream. It was chilling. There was no pause for a breath. I was wishing the predator would just finish the job and end the misery. It lasted somewhere between one to two minutes long.
I strained to get a sense of the distance, or any other identifying impressions. The sound seemed to move away and then come closer. I wondered if it was airborne. Did an owl grab something? What would react to attack by emitting such a piercing cry?
I didn’t trust my senses enough to feel confident about the apparent movement. Maybe it was just resonating in a way that made it sound like it was flying around. Since it was carrying on for so long, I had time to step outside for a better vantage point.
Are you kidding!? I wasn’t about to expose myself to whatever savage beast was out there in conflict mode. Well, actually that’s exactly what would have happened, since I was “dressed” for bed at that hour. But what I mean is, I wasn’t going to put myself at increased risk by stepping outside into the darkness, not having a clue what was out there.
When the sound finally ceased, we climbed back under the covers and I pretended I could fall asleep, despite the rambling thoughts of what the heck just happened outside. Soon we were both wondering out loud about what animals, both the predator and the prey, were most likely responsible.
I asked Cyndie to give the area out back an extra search in the morning to look for tracks or signs of a fight. She found no evidence whatsoever. George was over for dinner and cribbage last night and he suggested that the screaming was probably a rabbit, and the attacker could have been a coyote or fox. That I believe as easily possible, but if they were under our deck, I don’t know how they got there without leaving tracks somewhere.
The rabbits are plentiful around here and Cyndie did find a super-highway of their tracks in our woods. She took this picture for me to use.
We’ll have to watch that spot and see if there are one less sets of footprints showing up from now on.
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Emotional Connection
People die every day. On the grand scale, it’s too much to comprehend, so when we aren’t aware of specific incidents, we tend to remain oblivious. When it happens to people we know, the news suddenly hits home. But what about when it happens within close proximity to us, but to someone we don’t know?
On the way home from work yesterday, just as I got on the highway, an electronic sign overhead warned of an accident creating a traffic delay. I see enough of them to expect the typical couple of vehicles on the shoulder with crunched bumpers causing traffic to slow down a bit before proceeding on with little impact.
The situation yesterday was dramatically different. A very heavily traveled exit ramp had been closed and a vast multitude of emergency vehicles were gathering to tend to the scene.
When I got close, the thing that first caught my eye was the startling gash of ruptured concrete at the top of the wall that serves as barrier to the frontage road a couple of stories above the Interstate. Without time to comprehend what that meant, my car passed one of the fire engines, and the spot where the lone vehicle had landed came into view. It took my breath away.
There was concrete shrapnel strewn across an incredibly large area, shockingly far beyond the wall from which it had been torn. To the credit of movie-makers everywhere, my impression was that this looked like a movie scene, because it isn’t something you see in real life. I guess the Directors and Special Effects people who create movie crashes do a pretty authentic rendition.
From the looks of the vehicle, that was a ferocious calamity. I feared for a life, or lives.
It was as if everyone could feel it. After we moved clear of the incident, none of the cars around me demonstrated much in the way of urgency toward wherever they were headed.
I tried to forget about it when I got home. We watched a ridiculously bad comedy movie that made us laugh, despite ourselves. It wasn’t enough to distance me from some emotional connection I felt to the earlier incident. When our show was over, I checked news articles online. My suspicion was confirmed: a fatality.
Most folks won’t even be aware of the passing of one more soul yesterday. Normally, that’s the way it would be for me. This time though, the death of a person unknown to me has impacted me significantly, as a result of the close proximity of time and place.
I’m sending love to all who had a connection with this person.
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Decision Averse
Starting with my recent unsuccessful battle to solve a problem with my car that has the “Check Engine” light repeatedly coming on, I have developed a nagging urge to update my transportation. This is no simple thing. There is a reason I have only owned 2 cars in the last 25 years.
I don’t like the process of buying them.
Even the shopping portion of the overall ordeal is a burden for me, and that should be the easy part. I am known to be decision-averse. Shopping brings up nothing but choices which complicate my decision-making process.
My current car is getting on in years, and it is decidedly lacking in features that have now become pretty standard technology. I would appreciate having extras like a backup camera, controls on the steering wheel, connections for mobile devices like my phone or iPod, and most importantly, higher mileage. But, I have lived without those long enough now to be satisfied that I can get along just fine without them.
How do I decide a change is justified? And not just any change, but a very expensive one. And one which will require loan payments like I haven’t had for a long, long time.
Whatever it ends up costing to solve the current issue that is triggering my “Check Engine” light, it will be a lot less than what I am contemplating spending on an upgrade.
I struggle deciding because there is no obvious right or wrong answer. It’s all possibilities, feelings, and wants. It is possible the current car will not cost a lot to maintain after this current problem gets solved, or something else on it could succumb to age and drain even more dollars out of my pocket. It’s hard to say.
A little research revealed my car is worth a lot less in trade or direct sale than I imagined at this point in its life, so that makes me think I should just keep driving it as is. There is more value in keeping it than trading it away. I’ve come this far with it, why give up now?
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The old beast is a sad sight under the constant spray of chemicals coming off our treated winter highways. After only 2 days of driving to work and back, that is the coating that results, giving my car a two-tone look. It’s disgusting.
I wouldn’t want to subject a new car to such abuse. I should keep this car and avoid the need for a loan.
See how this works? A great way to help the decision-averse process things is to have them write out the pros and cons of the issue at hand. I find myself contemplating the importance or weakness of details I am writing out, as if playing the role of a reader who would be a devil’s advocate, offering an opposing view.
It often helps me write my way out of a stalemate of indecision.
I wonder what it will take to resolve my persistent “Check Engine” light. It appears the fuel filter was not the final fix, after all.
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Relative Something 
