Archive for December 2020
Various Tidbits
It took wearing a face mask at work to discover how often I find a stray hair or fuzz on my keyboard that I want to purse my lips and blow off. It’s no longer the solution it used to be.
Sometimes, I wonder what the lesson is for me to learn as a selfish driver cuts directly in front of my car without bothering to signal. I watched him then make two more equally selfish lane changes without signaling as he navigated his way through traffic as if he and his vehicle were all that mattered in the world.
Speaking of driving, last week I was stuck in a traffic backup caused by a crash. Eventually, at a crawling pace, I reached the variety of emergency vehicles surrounding a car on its roof amid a scattering of debris. I hardly batted an eye. Just made my way past in the quest for a return to highway speeds. Why didn’t I feel any immediate concern for the victims of the crash? When I realized that, it bothered me. I’m afraid maybe I’ve been doing the long commute for too long if a flipped car is no big thing to me anymore.
I hope our unplanned rooster Rocky Roo will do an outstanding job of protecting the girls from predators in times of need. I want to have something to offset the trauma of watching the ladies becoming the undesiring victims of his “affections.” It happened yesterday as I was lolling around the coop waiting for them to hit the roosts. I heard squawking from one of the girls and found Rocky on top of a Light Brahma, biting her neck to hold her down while he jumped her. To my surprise, the Buff promptly showed up to convince Rocky to knock it off. For now, he yields to her. I’m guessing that won’t last.
On Wednesday this week, Cyndie described an instant of classic convergence of two things that rarely happen both occurring at the same time. At the very instant she was involved in a virtual meeting and a key point was about to be made, someone came to the door and triggered Delilah into a fit of barking. Cyndie had to apologetically excuse herself from the meeting for a moment to answer the door and tell the stranger, who just happened to be a neighbor we hadn’t met yet, that she couldn’t talk because she was on a business call. The speaker in the meeting hadn’t waited, so Cyndie missed that point and also wasn’t able to find out what the slow-talking neighbor wanted. (Subsequent inquiries with another neighbor we do know revealed the person was searching for a dog that’s been missing since October.)
These days, Cyndie has few occasions for business meetings –even virtual ones– and we almost never get strangers venturing up our long driveway to knock on the door, less so since the virus pandemic.
I don’t really have a point to all these tidbits. They just are what they are. Maybe I wrote them out to see if they would lead me somewhere. At the very least, typing them out might free them from cluttering my headspace. That will make room for whatever new tidbits show up next.
If they lead you anywhere in particular, let me know. Maybe that will reveal a reason I chose these snippets of my take on things and experiences today.
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Big Boy
During the recovery phase after Cyndie’s knee surgery, we’ve enlisted the assistance of our animal sitter to help with outdoor chores on the days when I am at work. Yesterday, she reported to Cyndie that we should check on the Buff Orpington hen because it looked like maybe she’s getting pecked, most likely by Rocky.
This didn’t startle me at all. I’d already witnessed those two square off and challenge each other’s perception of dominance. First, the Buff fluffed up all her feathers to look twice as big and stood up tall. Then Rocky did the same exact thing to pretty much equal her size. Since that didn’t decide anything, they took turns jumping on each other’s back.
There was a little pecking exchanged by each, and after a very short time, it appeared that both agreed to call it a draw. Calm was restored very similar to the way our horses would immediately return to grazing seconds after a spat.
The possibility that Rocky was starting to gain an advantage over time was not unexpected.
He’s grown into a very big boy. How would you like to be prowling the territory and suddenly find yourself face to face with this menacing looking guy?
In the afternoon yesterday, Cyndie ventured outside using a walking stick to look in on the chickens while I walked Delilah. She couldn’t find the Buff. By the time I returned to see what I could find, the Buff was standing right in the middle of all of the chickens. In fact, I wondered if Cyndie had mixed up the adult hens somehow because I couldn’t find the Wyandotte anywhere.
When I closed in on the chickens, I found just what Anna was talking about. The Buff looked like she had been mugged!
But, I have seen this look before. She is molting.
A short time later, the Wyandotte appeared. All 14 chickens accounted for, safe, and sound.
Hopefully, Rocky will see no need to challenge the Buff for however many weeks it is going to take for her to get her new feathers in. According to what we’ve read about molting, the new feathers are highly sensitive and touching them can be very painful.
I would expect a true protector to know how to respect her situation for the time being.
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Wandering Nonsensically
In that moment, when the time had finally run out, it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually prepared for the end. The end of the dream. The end of the song. The end of ideas that made any sense. The end of innocence.
One second later, everything else in the universe continued on as if nothing would ever end. Things just continue changing as much as they always have. Memories, merely snapshots holding certain aspects in suspended animation.
Inspiration absent motivation. Ideology of avoidance intent on grasping nondescript constructs. Vested interests in vast expanses of physical voids in intellectual realities.
Fruition that cannot be reached.
So, we drive on, in the offhand chance we might eventually reach an end, rarely recognizing how often we probably already have.
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Sleep Interrupted
I was sleeping so soundly, Cyndie couldn’t rouse me on her first try Sunday night. Her pain and concern were growing as the night went on and she wasn’t getting any rest. She re-read the information sent home after the knee surgery to confirm instructions if she suddenly experienced pain in her chest.
At midnight, she successfully woke me. We would be making a visit to the emergency room to find out if there might be a blood clot that made its way to her lung.
Despite our somewhat rural location, our health services are only 10-minutes from our home. We quickly received a blunt introduction to the strict COVID-19 protocols in place. Segregation, isolation, socially distanced to the extreme. We couldn’t even get in the door until Cyndie located the phone on which she was grilled with a 20-question virus threat interrogation, the result of which turned me around and sent me back to wait in the car.
In the cold.
By myself.
Why is this all about me? Only because testing confirmed there was no blood clot and Cyndie was discharged a couple hours later to wait out the pain at home. Two possible causes were “compressed tissue” from duration of anesthetization slowly uncompressing or muscle pain from distorted sleeping position during her two-days of narcotic couching it.
Let’s get back to my plight. It was the middle of the night before a Monday workday and I was stuck in a cold car in a deserted parking lot. ‘Just sleep while I wait’ was the logical choice. How hard can that be? Don’t allow yourself to start wondering if it actually was a blood clot.
When the voice on the phone finally gave Cyndie permission to enter and the double doors swung open, I stood and watched her limp down the long deserted hallway alone and thought of all the coronavirus patients who take a similar walk alone and never see their family again.
Biding my time alone in my car, I had the opportunity to practice, over and over, returning my mind to the present moment and recognizing I was just fine and Cyndie was in the care of trained professionals.
Thankfully, upon returning home somewhere after 2:00 a.m., I was able to quickly fall asleep in the comfy warmth of our bed and reclaim the wee latter portion of a healthy night’s sleep, aided by the knowledge that Cyndie’s pain wasn’t caused by a blood clot.
By bedtime last night, I’m happy to report, the pain was becoming more tolerable and her spirits were improving accordingly. That afforded us both a much better and well-deserved full night’s sleep.
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Appropriately Festive
There was a lot of nesting going on in the days prior to Cyndie’s knee surgery, much of it cleaning nooks and crannies that haven’t received a similar level of intense attention since the days we first moved in. She wore a headlamp to better see the dust clinging to the seams of our tongue-in-groove paneling.
If she would be stuck convalescing in bed, it sure as heck wasn’t going to involve looking up to see the horror direct sunlight reveals this time of year. The low angle of the sun has a unique way of exposing gaps in hospital-level cleanliness.
At least the surroundings are currently as germ-free as the best of recovery rooms in your average hospital. Well, they were for a day, anyway, before a certain dog and cat made their way back in to scatter their hair and dander every which way.
After all the cleaning was done, Cyndie moved on to the Christmas decorations. As the days counted down to the appointed surgery, she accomplished the greatest of feats in making it look as festive as ever around here.
I even found boughs strung with lights staged by the barn!
There may be a pandemic out there squashing the best of our holiday gathering traditions this year, but you’d hardly notice from inside our home.
Merry Christmas Everyone!
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Frosty Start
After an initial scare of Cyndie’s foot not working for a day after her knee surgery, she has regained the ability to wiggle her toes and walk like normal. She is playing the good patient and raising and icing her knee while otherwise resting to allow for maximum healing. That leaves the walking of our dog solely up to me at the crack of dawn. It’s the least I could do for her since she has been gifting me the pleasure of waking up slowly in bed on weekends on a regular basis.
Delilah’s body clock does not like to sleep in.
This weekend I am getting a fresh dose of starting the day in the crisp pre-dawn frost of snowless December days.
The pandemic is contributing to a mind-numbing distortion of normalcy with a bizarre mix of isolation combined with displays on television and the internet attempting to make it seem like everything is just fine and Christmas will be the same as always. Advertisers can attempt to make us believe that, but beyond wishing it were so, I don’t think anyone is buying that ruse.
There are plenty of people who are investing energy toward making the best of a bad situation, and I appreciate that greatly, but believe it should be done without discounting the harsh reality of overwhelmed hospitals and high death tolls raging concurrently.
Without checking the authenticity of the reports, I am saddened this morning to see a change of data for the U.S. recording another death every minute to now happening every 33 seconds. (Graphic posted on CBS This Morning broadcast.)
This brings a glaring awareness to how privileged we are to live isolated from congested populations and to have our land and animals where we can get outside to breathe the country air.
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Mornin’ Chickens!
For a few days now I will be the chief chore person while Cyndie convalesces after a minor surgical fix removing problematic bone growth behind her artificial knee. It was beginning to impinge a nerve and tendon and creating unwelcome disturbances in her force.
She regularly comes in after morning chores and shares stories about the adventure, so I decided I would record the opening of the chicken door so she could see what she missed today. As a result, you get to enjoy the splendor, too!
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I wasn’t counting them as they poured out, but I had a sense someone was lagging.
The result was perfect.
Take a moment to share in the morning chicken coop routine we get to see every day!
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Almost Normal
As one who chooses to settle for only being able to see televised sporting events broadcast free over the airwaves, I miss out on watching a lot of local events that only show on subscription services. As a result, on the rare occasions when the opportunity arises, I savor the moment.
Last night, it was the second game of the MLS Cup Playoffs for the Minnesota United FC Loons on FOX. This was my first opportunity to see the Loons play this year, so I was really looking forward to the game. Unlike trying to survive the drama of the most recent NFL Vikings game, the soccer competition against the Sporting Kansas City team was much easier to endure.
For a moment, it felt almost normal to see players and coaches entirely focused on the game, showing no sign that there was a pandemic raging unconstrained throughout the country. (I have no idea how that many people in such close proximity to each other have been able to avoid an outbreak.)
After two scares for the good guys that required impressive saves to keep the ball out of our net and hold off the favored home team, Minnesota United built a 3-goal lead that lasted until the final whistle blew.
Now it’s off to Seattle for one of the semi-final matches. Unfortunately, that game will be shown on a pay service network.
It was a treat to forget all the frustrations of real life for a couple hours and enjoy a fine performance by my local club. It’s enough to leave me longing for a chance to see them in the finals, which will be broadcast on FOX where I can view it on Saturday, December 12.
All the Loons need to do is pull off another upset and defeat Seattle on Monday.
Oh, and avoid getting exposed to the coronavirus for two more weeks.
Please, don’t anyone breathe on our soccer team!
I like the part where we pretend things are almost normal again.
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Dramatic Difference
Despite those who continue to cling to a belief that the global COVID-19 pandemic is a hoax dreamed up to make the outgoing President of the United States look bad, the amount of impact on the world is unsettling. In our little valley in Wisconsin, U.S.A., I have yet to hear about anyone who has tested positive.
Of course, due to social distancing, I’ve not seen or spoken to our neighbors for about ten months. They could be sick and I’d never know.
For the first, oh… seven months of the pandemic, I didn’t learn about anyone I knew who had tested positive. In the last month, that number has jumped up to around ten. I’ve heard about two coronavirus associated deaths from people I know, but otherwise, the reports have all involved minor symptoms.
The dramatic difference in impact swinging from asymptomatic to causing death is perplexing. For the many cases of obvious underlying risks bringing about the fatal outcomes and the healthy people barely suffering, there are smatterings of too many descriptions of unexpected miserable results.
When my turn eventually comes, how will it affect me?
I may have written about the story that startled me from a doctor, when asked by NPR to share a personal example of one case that had a profound impact on him, in which he talked of preparing to discharge a patient who had recovered enough to go home but before they processed him out, his symptoms returned and he ended up dying before the end of that day.
Sure, a large percentage of deaths are occurring in elderly people in group care facilities, but kids and healthy adults are dying, too. Other healthy adults who survive are being walloped by weird and prolonged complications.
Meanwhile, most people I know take it easy for two or three days and then get on with their activities with no ill after-effects.
I’d prefer to be one of the latter, thank you very much.
I guess this dramatic difference will be one of the main memories I will carry from this pandemic. Particularly because the economic impact of the outbreak looks to be similarly disparate. While many have lost jobs and are facing incredibly difficult financial challenges, others have actually profited and are in a stronger position than if the pandemic hadn’t happened.
A global pandemic is one thing, but its impact is innumerable.
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Relative Something 