Archive for December 2017
A Beginning
If memory serves me correctly, it would have been sometime in the summer of 1974 that a friend of mine, who had taken interest in a girl from the class ahead of us in high school, was looking for someone to join him in a long bicycle ride. We weren’t old enough to drive yet, and Cyndie was working at a home in Minneapolis, caring for a family while the mother convalesced from surgery. He wanted to go see her. I agreed to go along for the ride.
This would be probably the longest bike ride we had endeavored to complete at that point in our lives, and I think the adventure of that was the big draw for me. I didn’t even know who this girl was that we were going to see.
Struggling now to excavate details of that day, I come up with two specific tidbits, and neither of them have anything to do with the cycling. I think that is funny, but I guess it makes sense. I expect we must have needed to do some degree of planning a route, and then labored over the effort of so many miles, but I have no recollection of doing either.
I remember feeling a very specific spark the moment I laid eyes on that girl. Is that love at first sight?
I’m pretty sure it was that instant which probably obliterated memories of anything to do with the bike ride. There is an image in my mind of this alluring girl in a red halter top, up on a step stool, reaching for something in the glass-faced cupboard overhead.
Oh, hello!
That is the first specific memory. The second one is a moment of connection that felt very rewarding. We walked down to Lake Harriet with young John Magnuson, the youngest of the boys in the family Cyndie was working for, so he could go swimming.
We sat on the sand to chat while John played in the water. In getting to know each other better, Cyndie and I discovered we had both worn braces on our teeth and shared a wealth of experience in the related hassles.
It obviously wasn’t anything earth-shattering, but it allowed for a happy, silly conversation that just plain felt nice.
That feeling, and the memories of that first sight of her, provided endorphins that made everything else that happened that day inconsequential.
It probably wasn’t a beginning, but it certainly was a seed of potential.
Looking back from today, given everything that has happened since, it absolutely was the beginning.
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Getting Started
Preparations are underway for our trip with Cyndie’s family to the Dominican Republic. I’ve been enjoying creating the early posts in the series I have planned to explore events that led up to this latest adventure, starting way back with the first time I met Cyndie.
To give myself more time for planning and packing, I have decided to begin the series tomorrow. I hope you enjoy my trips down memory lane.
I will take advantage of the early break from daily posting to finish making lists and actually start packing.
Sounds like we will be getting away at a good time, as temperatures are expected to drop precipitously in the days ahead. I’m hoping that it won’t snow enough to require plowing until after we return, but it’s okay with me if the cold snap happens while I’m gone.
There was a little extra excitement around the ranch yesterday as the neighbor on our southwest corner reported he was going to be hunting coyotes and might cross our property.
Early in the morning, Cyndie came upon some lone tracks in the snow that just might have been those of a coyote scout venturing out on its own overnight.
If our neighbor is worried about his cows, I wonder if we should be concerned for our surviving three chickens.
We are really hoping the young woman who has agreed to take care of our animals while we are away won’t have any difficult problems to manage.
It’s just seven days. One week. Is that too much to wish for? An entire week at Christmastime of calm and quiet?
I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
I need to go find my battery charger for the camera. When we get back, I’m going to want to post lots of pictures of the tropical beach, palm trees, sun, and surf.
I hope you’ll be entertained by the stories I have scheduled to post while we are gone.
I intend to return to live, daily posting by the end of the month.
Bon voyage!
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Animal Magnetism
For most of my life, it was a struggle just to take care of myself, due to a condition of undiagnosed dysthymia. The additional responsibility of caring for pets every day was a burden I found ways to avoid.
Now I know why people who love horses become so passionate about it. I’ve spent the last five years learning what it is like to own horses, and it has changed me to the point I think it would be hard for me now to live without them.
It’s kind of ironic that caring for animals has contributed significantly to my healthier life. The very thing I was avoiding turns out to be therapeutic for what ailed me.
Yesterday morning, Cyndie captured this wonderful moment as our four Arabians made their way along the fence line of the hay-field back toward the barn in the enticing soft light before sunrise.
She and Delilah had just come out of the woods on their morning walk along our trails, a situation that signals to the horses, breakfast at the barn will soon be served.
As powerful an energy as the horses are for us, Delilah radiates her own compelling magnetism. She looked absolutely stunning after a grooming appointment yesterday.
When I walked in the door and reached down to pet her while she was leaning into me in her overly affectionate greeting, I asked Cyndie, “Did you just brush her?”
Oh, no. That was a full-fledged professional job that gave her the silky smooth coat.
Later, I glanced at our beautiful Tervuren under the old Hays family table and caught her paw draped over the antler chew she found in the woods.
Yeah, it can be a lot of responsibility, but I think I’m getting the hang of this animal magnetism they seem to have.
What a rewarding blessing it is to be healthy and have the added benefits of the positive energy our animals inherently provide.
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Waffle Pattern
Did I mention that I have sensitive skin?
Last week, I went shopping for shirts that would work well if I happen to suddenly find myself in the tropics for a week at Christmastime. Gladly, there will be no ugly sweaters packed in my luggage for this trip. Tropical materials were not all that I found.
I couldn’t resist a long-sleeved zipped mock turtle neck shirt that would be ideal for winter days on the ranch. It has a waffled lining fabric that offers a small insulating feature.
The thing is, the shirt is cut in a form-fitting design. At the end of a long day Saturday, I pulled it off to a startled exclamation from Cyndie.
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Oh, and an urge to scratch my back like you wouldn’t believe.
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Nice Day
Saturday was a pretty nice winter day on the ranch. Even the chickens –all three!– came out to enjoy the day. To celebrate, Cyndie raided the kitchen for some grapes to reward the occasion of the Buff Orpington venturing a distance away from the coop.
They even veered off the plowed paths into the fluffy white stuff, traveling interestingly close to tracks of an adventurous mouse. Was that coincidental?
I wonder if that little rodent knew who was lurking about when it scurried across the top of the snowscape.
On Friday, while I was splitting wood with Delilah leashed nearby, I spotted her flinch suddenly. Looking up, I caught sight of a beautiful bald eagle floating at a menacingly low elevation, just above the treetops.
I wasn’t too worried about Delilah, but I did wonder where the chickens were at the moment.
The horses appeared to be mesmerized by the warm December sunshine, spreading out and soaking up the solar energy with a contagious calmness.
In a switch from the situation last week, this time it was Legacy who was out in the hay-field all by himself.
We still think he is behaving uncharacteristically distant at times, but there doesn’t seem to be any unnatural anxiety showing from the herd, and periods of normalcy generally rule.
It was a beautiful day and we feel blessed with the luxury of simply enjoying it to the fullest.
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Happy Splitting
With additional flurries making their way across our region overnight, I didn’t waste time yesterday cleaning up the random inch or two of snow that had accumulated over the previous week. That will be today’s project.
Instead, I made my way back to the wood shed to put in some quality time splitting firewood.
Hoping to keep me from wandering off to some other more enticing opportunity, in case the splitting didn’t turn out to be rewarding enough, I decided to build a fire.
It helped to create an inviting atmosphere and an occasional distraction which enticed me stay on the task for most of the day. Working alone, my momentum wasn’t very consistent, so the day-long effort only produced a fraction of a day’s result, but it proved to be mentally rewarding.
Any progress is good progress.
Throughout the process of trying to make piles of logs disappear, it occurred to me how our focus changes depending upon what we are trying to achieve. When cutting limbs and branches of a fallen tree, the goal is to get the wood into manageable pieces, working at whatever angle is available. The focus is on not getting the saw pinched or having a limb fall on you.
When my focus shifts to splitting, I want logs with a flat, square cut that will stand nicely on the base of my splitter. It would be great if I had avoided leaving a joint right in the middle of the piece, too. When splitting, I quickly discover the cutting involved a very different focus.
The same thing happens when I’m plowing snow. In the winter, the goal is to get the snow removed from the driving surfaces. Sure a few rocks might get pushed into the grass. It just isn’t enough of a priority to matter that much.
In the summer, when we are trying to rake all the rocks out of the grass to facilitate mowing, the focus is very different. Suddenly I care a lot more about that detail.
Similarly, when I am stacking wood in the wood shed, I just want to fill it to the top, grabbing whatever odd pieces are in reach and plopping them on the row. As the wood dries, it shrinks. The stack shifts. The wind blows. The stack leans. Eventually, the stack topples over into a messy jumble.
As I am re-stacking the firewood, I always question why I couldn’t take the time to split the logs cleanly so I could stack the pile sturdy enough to hold up.
Pay for it now, or pay for it later.
I wonder what I’m neglecting to appropriately pay for today, that will show up demanding collection later. Gosh, it’s almost like a life lesson.
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Old Photos
When the project is to write stories and the time to do so is very limited, getting sidetracked down a rabbit hole of long-lost images for hours on end can be an exasperating diversion, despite the value of memories it rekindles. It’s both good and bad, all at the same time.
I can’t help myself from sharing a few random gems discovered in the archives. To be honest, it feels a little like preparing for my own funeral slide show. Maybe if I share them now, these won’t be so shocking when they eventually appear in a memorial service someday.
Who am I kidding? I’m not going to show any of the shocking ones while I’m still alive.
Before I even get to photos of me, here is a wonderful, candid capture of my father, Ralph, at Christmastime in our old Intervale Ranch farmhouse on the edge of Edina and Eden Prairie, MN.
I’m not sure what he is saying, but I would rate his expression as leaning more toward amiable than not, which was a precious thing due to the preponderance for his attitude to be otherwise. When I miss my father, it is his good moods I like to remember. This shot does a good job of causing me to miss him.
I found this gem of me sitting on Cyndie’s bed in her bedroom in their house in Edina.
I would tease her today about all the myriad clutter adorning her walls and on her bed, except it happened to be strikingly similar to the way my teenage bedroom looked. Maybe that is one of the reasons we felt that early soul connection. For all our outward differences, the most intimate parts of ourselves were a good match. Our bedrooms were a manifestation of who we were becoming as we careened toward adulthood.
Here is one of my early visits to the northern Wisconsin vacation lodge club, Wildwood, which the Friswolds and a group of like-minded other Twin Cities families shared as an Association.
With my trusty old Alvarez guitar.
Finally, a shot of me modeling a birthday gift of new waders, while sporting one of my father’s old bowling shirts.
This was during my brief period of dabbling in the art of fly fishing. I think I was feeling pretty chuffed about my birthday haul.
For the record, that is the pre-remodeled kitchen of the Friswold’s home on Comanche Court as a backdrop.
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Hmm. Composing all that wasn’t too hard. Maybe I will succumb to the ease of narrating photos for my vacation-week posts. It’ll be like the old (dreaded) vacation slide shows people would foist upon unsuspecting family and friends.
“Here we are, standing in front of Niagara Falls…”
Time –or lack of it– will tell, …whether text or images will dominate.
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Just Reward
I don’t know how many times I have good-naturedly poked fun at Cyndie when her glasses somehow make their way to the floor beneath the bedside table in the dark of night.
Since she can’t see anything without her glasses, she asks me for help.
I just can’t restrain myself. I always end up asking why she puts her glasses down there in the first place. If she can’t see them and she can’t reach them, that seems like a really illogical place for her to put her critical specs.
Cyndie never thinks that’s as funny as I do.
Well, until last night.
While she has had glasses for most of her life, I breezed along for almost fifty years before finally joining the club. I’m still struggling with the routine of keeping track of my growing variety of readers. 
As I stood up from the bed and turned to set my glasses on the bedside table, they slid. My cat-like reaction triggered the reach reflex, but I missed. Instead, I succeeded in pushing them further off the surface, where they were able to tumble down to a spot on the floor that requires an extra joint between the wrist and elbow to reach.
Cyndie was way too mature to ask me why I put them down there in the first place.
Unfortunately, something tells me this serving of humble pie won’t successfully dissuade me from blurting out the same dang question to my love, next time she needs me to rescue her glasses again.
I may be getting older, but it doesn’t guarantee I’m maturing.
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Divided Three
I know there are a lot of divided opinions in our country lately, but what does that have to do with our three chickens? All summer long, that triumvirate operated as an impressively cohesive unit. 
Now, that seems to have changed. The Buff Orpington appears to have decided to break from the group, choosing to stay close to the coop while the Barred Plymouth Rock pair go gallivanting off in search of adventure.
Look at them just struttin’ their stuff on the freshly shoveled path Cyndie cleared of the paltry 1-inch NUISANCE amount of snow that fell yesterday.
I think the Buff is just being chicken.
Is it possible our yellow hen is being rebuffed by the other two?
Sorry.
What can I say?
It was a slow news day on the ranch.
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Relative Something 