Archive for March 2016
Real Life
Yesterday was a classically real life kind of day. There was some good, some bad, some tired and sad. We laughed and moped and tried to look at things from a balanced perspective. Things don’t always work out the way we think they should, but if that isn’t real life, I don’t know what is.
We’ve been watching Hunter for a few days, because I discovered his stall was uncharacteristically dry after a long overnight stay last weekend. When it happened another night, Cyndie decided to have the vet look at him, in case there was something amiss. Since our usual equine vet has moved to a different practice, we ended up getting the owner. Even though Cyndie expected the vet to arrive in the morning, he didn’t get here until late in the day.
Cyndie got the impression he wasn’t an equine specialist. I’m guessing he is probably an expert in dairy cows. Even though the visit sounded awkward, we feel like he was able to establish that Hunter is clear of any grave ailments. Our boy’s temperature was normal and the levels in his blood were all mid-range.
When I got home from work and was cleaning Hunter’s stall, it was obvious he had peed in there during the long wait for the vet to arrive. We also spotted him peeing out in the paddock, so he has proved to us that things are at least functioning.
It is quite possible that he just doesn’t like messing up his “bedroom.” We know a certain Ms. Barksalot who absolutely refuses to soil her kennel.
It is a little unsettling to have lost confidence in our vet of choice. I think we will be investigating other options for the future.
There was one particularly heartwarming scene that occurred with the horses yesterday. After the vet left, Cyndie let the other 3 horses out into the paddock, but kept Hunter inside while he recuperated from a sedative and pain-killer that he had received. She worked on cleaning the other stalls to give him some company while he lazily munched on some hay.
Outside, the other three were down in their favorite spot, grazing in the hay circle. I stepped out of the back of the barn to dump the wheelbarrow and Cyndie followed while telling me stories of the day. When Hunter suddenly found himself alone in the barn, he whinnied a little distress signal.
Instantly, Legacy answered the call with his own vocal response while running up the hill to the barn. There was something about the body language and immediacy of Legacy’s reaction that overflowed with the loving care of a passionate leader. It was a beautiful thing.
Cyndie went in and walked Hunter out to the paddock. She said Legacy met them right at the door and leaned over the fence to touch noses with Hunter in an extension of his caring, showing affection for the temporarily distressed herd member.
It was wet and cold outside, with more rain expected, but there were moments like that which felt almost like warm sunshine.
It was a lot like a real life kind of day.
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Yes, Shingles
For all the personal detail I freely display in my posts on a regular basis, I found myself holding back recently from blathering on about the daily progress of my shingles outbreak. I think part of it was a hope of saving you from frequently repeated lamentations over the pain and suffering I was enduring, but another part of it was my plan to give this affliction as little attention as possible. My intent was to get over this quickly and with a minimum of symptoms.
It all started on the Monday after I had trimmed dead wood from our apple tree and a nearby maple tree, using a pruning saw on an extended pole. It seemed entirely logical that I would feel sore muscles in the area of my torso after the workout I had done the day before. Upon a feeling of even more stiffness the next day, I became more assured my discomfort was a function of delayed onset muscle soreness from the weekend’s exercise.
By Wednesday I was growing normalized to the soreness and stopped thinking about it. After my shower in the evening, I noticed a red spot on my abdomen, but it didn’t mean much to me at the time. However, it seemed odd when the redness was still there the next morning. Without previously having had the slightest inkling that I might be getting sick, when I saw the spot still present in the morning, I reacted by lifting my arm and turning in the mirror.
How did I suddenly know?
There were enough splotches in a line around to my back that I instantly thought, “Shingles.” When I got to work I did a little research and checked in with my clinic back in Wisconsin. They directed me to immediately visit an urgent care site near my workplace. The doctor there did little more than listen to my description and look at my torso before confirming my self-diagnosis.
She prescribed an anti-viral to be taken 3-times a day for a week, to minimize and hopefully shorten the duration of my symptoms. She asked what I knew about shingles and began to describe the varying levels of hell that can occur.
I interrupted her to say that I did read that some people may not have severe symptoms. When she nodded in acknowledgement, I proclaimed that I would be one of those people, so she didn’t need to bother describing the worst it could get.
For the most part, I would say I achieved my goal of not having the rash erupt in multiple waves of increasing severity. It got worse for about 3 days and then began to slowly recede. There is still some residual visual evidence left, but my skin is mostly healed. The deep (what felt like muscle) pain was a chronic annoyance for about 2-and-a-half weeks, but seems to be fading now.
I’m so close to being done with it that I want to claim victory. There is just one small problem. Even though I succeeded in willing myself to the easy end of the shingles spectrum, it appears that I am getting a good dose of a common complication: post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN).
The most common complication of shingles is a condition called post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN). People with PHN have severe pain in the areas where they had the shingles rash, even after the rash clears up.
The pain from PHN may be severe and debilitating, but it usually resolves in a few weeks or months in most patients. Some people can have pain from PHN for many years. ——–cdc.gov/shingles/about/complications
I wouldn’t exactly call what I am feeling as pain. It is more a hyper-sensitivity. At times, it feels like a sunburn on my skin. Other times it feels “crawly” like having a fever. I get frequent shivers, and the act of shivering is uncomfortable. I want to avoid it, but I can’t.
So it’s that kind of pain. Not so much a “hurt,” as a very uncomfortable nuisance.
Yes, that’s my version of shingles.
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Lacking Sunshine
This past Sunday dawned soaking wet and drizzly. By mid-morning, the rain had stopped, but the day remained gray and chilly. All afternoon I was watching for the clouds to disperse, hoping for some sunshine to bathe us in warmth.
It wasn’t until the sun was dropping below our horizon that the golden solar glow began to appear.
Better late than never, I guess.
It made for some fantastic visuals. Even though we couldn’t see the sun, there were a few brief minutes where the rays lit up treetops in the distance beyond us to the east.
It was too late to do anything about warming us up, so I resorted to a campfire out back. Cyndie had cleaned out the barn and delivered a pile of the lumber scraps left over from the hay boxes I built for the stalls.
I decided it would make good fuel for a fire.
It did..
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Ignoble Perch
Last week, when the snow was rapidly vanishing in the sun, Cyndie captured this poignant portrait of Delilah perched regally on one of the manure piles in the paddock.
It must have improved her vantage point to see the property in the distance where a certain 2 dogs who keep showing up on our trail cam happen to reside.
It surprises me that Delilah can come in the house after mucking around in the mud and manure in the paddocks for hours, and somehow, she won’t smell bad. It’s like she has a natural odor barrier that wicks off stink. Well, simple stink, anyway. The time she tangled with a skunk, she smelled awful for weeks.
Of course, it didn’t help much that one of the concoctions Cyndie purchased to get rid of the skunk odor left Delilah smelling like she’d just had a perm (hairdo).
Hey, I just noticed this image also shows a pretty clear representation of how good the footing looks where we have limestone screenings compared to how bad it is everywhere else this time of year. This solution sure has worked out well for us.
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Superb Theme
Seriously, how could I consider any other auto manufacturer when the cars I have been driving for years come from a company that uses “Love” for their marketing theme?
Apparently, I was so smitten on Friday, I completely forgot to contact our insurance company about the lovely purchase. We decided to play it safe and leave the car in the garage until they can be reached on Monday.
It was a little anticlimactic, not driving the new ride right away, but we didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks.
I have a fear that my luck for avoiding collisions with deer so far in the time since we moved to the country could run out, now that I’ll be driving a new car. That’s just the way the odds seem to work sometimes.
I’m hoping I can rely on the love to keep deer from doing anything regrettable. I wonder if that could work with other drivers, too.
It’s a Subaru. Feel the love.
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Unexpected Result
I suppose you could say this about most any day, but yesterday did not turn out anything like I thought it would when I woke up in the morning. One thing just led to the next and I ended up driving home in a new car. I credit the wise advice of my sister, Mary, who found several opportunities to urge me toward taking action, combined with Cyndie’s unwavering support.
The ultimate decision happens to be a sure-fire way to fix the check engine light that kept coming on in the old WRX.
The curious trigger that set the whole unplanned chain of events in motion was an exploding tire on the wheelbarrow we use more than any other tool. It is the key weapon in our arsenal for managing manure.
I was turning and reshaping one of the compost piles when Cyndie arrived with a fresh contribution. I took the wheelbarrow from her to dump it on the pile and she noticed one of the tires looked curious. She asked if it might be flat, so I reached down to check it with a squeeze. It burst!
Boom! It was flat now. Guess I don’t know my own strength.
That was going to need repair without delay and forced an unplanned shopping trip. After a brief debate over eating lunch first or heading out immediately, we settled on the fateful decision to eat at home. During that pause, I received a call from my auto repair shop confirming the new exhaust sound I reported on the WRX was because the catalytic converter had busted.
That news quickly confirmed it was time to take action on a plan I had mulled over for months. We altered our destination for finding a replacement tire for the wheelbarrow to a store in the same town as our safe deposit box, so I could get the title of the WRX. That car is now for sale.
It just so happened that I had applied for an auto loan at our bank a few hours earlier in the day, to see how much new car I could comfortably afford. I talked Cyndie into driving a bit beyond the bank and Tractor Supply store, so we could test drive the next Subaru I was considering buying.
At the end of the day, I was driving home in a current model Crosstrek. It has been over 2 decades since I had that new car smell.
For a guy who drags his feet making decisions, that was a flurry of significant ones in a single day, one after another. If it weren’t for that exploding tire on the wheelbarrow, I would have likely spent the day wondering what to do about that WRX.
Now that problem will become someone else’s opportunity. I’ve moved to higher ground clearance, so I won’t be busting a performance bumper on critters that jump in front of me at highway speeds, and I won’t be dragging my undercarriage on snow as often, when I leave in the mornings before roads get plowed.
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Warm Rays
When I left for work yesterday morning, there was actually less snow on the driveway than when we walked down to the barn the night before to check on the horses. The pavement was warm enough that it was melting from the bottom up. When the sun came up, the snow began to vanish. We had about 8 inches of accumulation and it barely lasted 24 hours.
From the labyrinth cam…
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Astute observers may notice the fantastic jump in temperature recorded by the trail camera. Seems the direct sunlight against the trunk of the tree and the plastic of the camera body creates a significant amplification of the air temp. I’m pretty sure it didn’t reach 89° (F) here yesterday afternoon.
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Spring Storm
Sometimes our spring storms involve rain, but it’s not strange when they come as all snow. Last night, we got the all snow variety.
Let’s review. Last weekend I was adding a bedding of manure around the base of some of our pine trees. It looked like this:
Just days later, a spectacularly defined winter snow storm spread out across the middle of our country and rode right over the top of us.
When I left work in the afternoon, there were hints of snowflake flurries, but nothing showing on the ground. Driving across the metro area, I arrived in the thick of falling flakes, but the roads remained snow-free. It was wet, and my windshield wipers struggled to smear aside the salty spray blowing up from the vehicles around me.
As I came up the driveway, I spotted Dezirea standing in the wet blowing snow, but the other three horses were wisely tucked under the overhang of the barn. Cyndie moved them all inside to their stalls when the snow began to accumulate.
We stoked the fireplace and dined on a gourmet spread of coconut chicken and rice with lentils, barley, and quoting Cyndie’s description, “a whole bunch of other stuff” that she whipped up with her typical professional flair. We watched a fascinating documentary film, “Finding Vivian Maier” that arrived in our mail from Netflix. We stayed cozy and warm while the definitive spring snow storm blustered its beautiful best outside.
This time of year, it is always a laugh to think back to whether a ground-hog saw its shadow, or how long winter would really last. Winter comes and goes in fits. It has been 70° (F) here already, and we’ve had days of greening grass and drying soil. We also have enough snow to look like it’s been here forever and the previous days were simply a dream.
I’ll venture out this morning in the darkness of the early hour, and traverse the miles that go from almost a foot of snow, across several counties to the day-job where it will still look like spring.
Thus is the nature of the narrow gradient of frozen precipitation on the north edge of a late winter/early spring storm in this part of the world.
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Commute
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try to relax
for what reason do you need to go so fast
just listen
and give me a minute to finish my pass
I’ll get out of your way
and let you sprint
the short distance ahead
at your breakneck speed
so you can then wait
behind the next one in line
who can’t go any faster
than the person ahead of them
you’re a metaphor for life
showing me what I already know
yet still manage to forget
I can’t help myself assuming
you will be a giant pickup truck
my presence in your path
being one of your greatest frustrations
though I sail along
at a computer controlled constant pace
well beyond legal limits
navigating my own field of obstructions
decidedly more timid
than I
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Not Much
I moved the trail cam over the weekend and am not happy with the results. I wanted to try a more open area so there would be less branch clutter in the foreground of the view.
I chose the labyrinth garden.
I’m not sure why, but the result was picture after picture with no discernible activity. Over a hundred in two days.
Birds, maybe?
There were surprisingly few images during darkness. However, we did get a tiny glimpse of one animal that was conspicuously absent from all the images captured when we had the camera stationed on the trail in the woods…
Shy little bugger, she. That was all the further she moved into the field of view at 4:30 in the morning.
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Relative Something 