Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Reorienting Optimal
Pursuing optimal health is a noble goal, but one where “optimal” isn’t a static state. It changes over time. Physical health can change significantly as we age, so what was optimal for me during my athletic peak isn’t a realistic goal for me anymore. My current optimal involves less speed and agility and more rest and recovery.
Same thing goes for my mental health. I stopped playing guitar not only because of benign hand tremors and pain in my hands, arms, and shoulders, but also because I could no longer remember all the chords or verses of songs I played and sang for all the years before. My fading memory and physical discomfort made playing less rewarding for me.
So, my version of optimal health has morphed from playing guitar to an increased appreciation for listening to my library catalog of musical artists who have inspired me over a lifetime. It allows me to cultivate more love for other musicians rather than dwelling on frustration or sadness about relegating my hobby to the past.
Since I believe that love can be telepathically beamed to others, I acknowledge that negative thoughts and feelings would just as easily get projected into the world. It would be great if I didn’t do that, but when confronted with evidence of the awful things people can do to others, my reactions are involuntary. It creates a train of thought that takes commitment to interrupt.
That is something I have some experience doing. Long ago, I learned to recognize and redirect the dysfunctional thinking of depression as a method of defeating the disease. Overcoming depression is probably the most significant stride I’ve taken toward my optimal health.
Learning of people I know who are dealing with memory loss, I am confronted with the question of how “optimal” gets reoriented when our faculties become diminished. What is optimal mental health for a person in that stage of life? You can’t focus on what is no longer possible. Energy needs to be directed toward what is achievable in the here and now.
My here-and-now involves being back at the lake in Hayward, WI, with Cyndie and her mom. We tried to visit a restaurant we remembered well for a Friday fish fry last night, but to our surprise, it had closed last fall. After we dealt with the confusion, the next easiest option was The Steakhouse & Lodge next door, which we’d never been to before. A good time was had by all. I ate too much because it was so delicious.
I should reorient my optimal diet back to healthy portions when eating out. Let me just put that on the list of things I’m trying to remember as aging messes with my metabolism.
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Disappearing Branches
As planned, we spent the bulk of our day yesterday sawing, hauling, and sweating while trying to avoid the poison ivy and scary-looking flying insects that seemed to have an invested interest in the freshly exposed wood of the willow tree. There was evidence that carpenter ants had taken up residence in part of the decay that had been blasted open by the first large limb that gave way last summer.
I sure am glad I got the back pasture mowed the day before. We took another crack at cutting off the weeds before they could go to seed, hoping to give the grass of that field an ongoing advantage. Research revealed that mowing regularly can be the best way to prevent the pasture from being overtaken by undesirable weed propagation when purposely avoiding the use of toxic chemicals.
It always looks so great when freshly cut. Unsurprisingly, the weeds show up soon after because they grow taller faster than the grass. We repeatedly battle the emergence of Queen Anne’s Lace, Sour Dock, and Thistle among others.
With that mowing project behind me, it was all hand saws, chainsaws, and hauling yesterday.
That’s a lot of wood that needed cutting and even more long branches pointing in every direction that needed to be dragged away.
In all fairness regarding the state of Cyndie’s garden, the long, hot, dry spell we have suffered this summer is responsible for putting it under stress before the tree fell onto it. Smothering it with willow branches just made a bad situation worse.
I’ll close with a memory of how beautiful the garden was earlier this summer. Those were the days!
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Disintegrating Willow
Timberrrr! We weren’t there to witness the drama, but on a last walk of the day with Asher, Cyndie came upon this sight:
The third section of our big willow tree has collapsed before I even got around to cutting up the second one that fell.
The portion jutting to the left in the above image is the second one. The big chunk to the right just let go last evening.
It fell right on top of Cyndie’s “Elysa Garden” of perennials.
There will be no putting off the work of clearing this fallen portion. If the garden plants aren’t already smashed, I fear we will end up trampling them while doing battle with the chainsaw and extracting the cut sections.
It’s hard to trust the remaining portion that is still standing, but we are going to take our chances. I may cut off the one limb that is at an angle to leave just the one trunk that stands straight up.
We know what we will be doing today. Unfortunately, it wasn’t what we had planned.
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Fast Day
Another day flies by in a blink. One of the fastest ways time passes for me is in conversation with people at reunions. Yesterday was not part of Cyndie’s class reunion events, but we did host a couple of her classmates in a visit that swallowed hours of the day in one big gulp.
Thom and Paul joined Cyndie and her friends in a variety of activities as they were leaving high school and entering college. We laughed as Cyndie reminded Thom that he had planned a backpacking trip to the Grand Teton Mountains in Wyoming, which he ended up not being able to take with them. A short time later, Thom pointed at a picture and asked when it was taken because it looked like it was his sleeping bag in the image.
Cyndie: “Yeah, that’s the camping trip you planned but didn’t go on. You even gave us your sleeping bag to use.”
Too funny.
The pictures that Cyndie shared led to a few instances in which they all recognized what they were seeing, but without actual memories of the occasions. Witnessing mental files being rummaged through that probably hadn’t been accessed for decades was entertaining.
It was a wonderful day to be outside. Asher was on his best behavior and made sure everyone had a chance to pet him. Cyndie worked her incredible magic in the kitchen and served both breakfast and lunch for our guests. We walked some trails in the woods, visited the labyrinth, and spent quality time with the horses.
Thom took a picture of us with the horses. That was nice. We don’t have many pictures of ourselves together with the horses.
After our guests departed, Cyndie had to leave for an appointment, and suddenly it was just Asher and me. Time slowed down a little bit. We walked to the lookout spot on the first hill of the driveway to enjoy the nice breeze and watch the sun descend through some clouds.
Just like that, our fast day faded toward its end at a more logical pace.
We had a treasure of a day, at every speed.
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Reunion Tales
Now that I’ve had a whole day of not going anywhere, life feels faintly familiar to the norm to which I have grown accustomed. Cyndie drove to the cities to visit her mom, so I had a quiet day with Asher. We went for a walk after breakfast and then took a nap when we got back to the house. It’s going to take me a couple of days to pay back the sleep debts I accrued last weekend.
The highlight for today is going to be a visit from two of Cyndie’s classmates who heard plenty of stories about our property. I wish we could host all the people who show a sense of wonder and interest when we describe our place. It is rarely a convenient opportunity for most people, so we are thrilled that this particular time it appears to have worked out just a couple of days later.
I got permission to share a story of Cyndie’s from an interaction at her class reunion. She was looking forward to talking with a guy whom she remembered had poked fun at her buck-tooth and thick-glasses appearance when they were young. The memory had always seemed curious to her because the guy was the only other particularly noticeably buck-toothed, thick-glasses kid in her year.
Turns out that it wasn’t him. At least, he has no recollection of it and doesn’t think he would’ve ever done that. Now Cyndie is questioning her memory. Was it someone else teasing both of them, and she mistakenly placed it on the other victim? We’ll probably never know.
The eventual outcome is the best of results. The two of them ended up having a wonderful exchange and quickly bonded in their shared experience. I might add that he turned into as good-looking a guy as Cyndie did into a beautiful woman. They might not have even talked if it weren’t for this mysterious memory.
Happy surprises like this are one of several reasons I am a big fan of reunions.
I enjoyed reuniting with the horses yesterday. They don’t offer up grandiose gestures of being happy to have us return after several days’ absence like dogs do. Asher doesn’t hide much with that wagging tail, licking kisses, and leaning into us for scritches. No, the horses are much more subdued in their acknowledgment.
Swings just stood stationary when I put my face to her nose to exchange breath and stroke her neck. Staying put was her way of telling me she was happy to see me.
The amount of food I found spilled beside her bucket last evening was more than I’ve seen before. We need to start soaking her food to help her cope with failing teeth. Do they make dentures for animals? [not a serious question]
Moments after I took that picture, Mix moseyed over to eat most of what had been spilled.
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Older Faces
So, I accompanied Cyndie to her 50th High School Reunion yesterday after driving home from the lake at 5:30 in the morning through varying levels of fog. My poor brain is a little sleep-deprived and mixed up with rekindled memories from so long ago and seeing dozens of mostly recognizable faces that are decidedly older than how we all looked in 1976.
I tried to capture as much knowledge as I could grasp on the fly from the folks on their planning committee and classmates who had traveled from far and wide to use in planning next year’s reunion for my class.
In the end, I have a sense that there’s not all that much we can control in determining attendance at the event. It’s great seeing those who showed up, heartbreaking to see whose lives have ended, and sad to find out who didn’t make it for any number of reasons.
I dredged up images of the old rooftop faces of our schools in the 1960s from historical aerial photographs the University of Minnesota provides online.
The top photo above is the view of Central Elementary that eventually became our middle school. If I have my dates correct, in 1971, Cyndie’s and my class started the year at what was then the high school with grades 7-12. In the middle of the year, they moved us back to that elementary school that had become grades 6-7-8.
The bottom photo above is the view of our high school. I just looked at the satellite view on Google of the way our high school looks today. It has now become the middle school and has been significantly remodeled, but parts of the old core are identifiable.
The two main courtyards have been cut in half, so there are now four courtyards. It’s still possible to discern what the 100, 200, and 300 wings were, as they were called.
I’m feeling a little older today for some reason.
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Leaving Early
I am departing at dawn this morning to dash home early from the “Golf Weekend” in order to then drive more than an hour west for Cyndie’s 50th high school reunion. They are starting with a boat cruise on Lake Minnetonka, then coming back to Eden Prairie for an “after party.”
The plan seems a little dizzying to me after my last two whirlwind days of activity and conversation with the regular crew of the annual weekend that Cyndie’s brothers host at the lake place.
Yesterday started a little rainy, but that didn’t stop the golfers.
I waited until late afternoon to head out on the bike with two other riders. We got dripped on a little bit, but returned to the house before it rained hard enough to get things wet. Nobody crashed, so that was a win.
Dinner was grilled meats, corn on the cob, and a few sides. Since they realized I would be leaving and would miss the big fish dinner tonight, they thawed a little fresh-caught Alaskan Salmon for me that Ben’s son, Beck, brought from his recent fishing trip.
More delicious food, keeping up a trend of good eats I’ve been feasting on lately. I’m not confident that I’ve done enough pedaling to justify my higher-than-normal calorie consumption of late.
I made a few more adjustments to my gear in a search to quiet my noisy bike. Putting the battery back on appears to have ended the annoying click I was experiencing in the vicinity of the bottom bracket, but that just made what seem like new squeaks extra irritating. I rode yesterday without my seat bag of road repair gear to see if that was adding to the squeakiness. It may have been better, but it wasn’t silent yet. My right shoe was doing some squeaking, so I’ve got a little tweaking to do there.
I think the problems might be a moving target that I’ll just have to learn to live with.
We ended the evening with a card game that involved dealing only one card to each individual. You just have to beat one other person, with the lowest card being the loser. Each guy started with three chips. The first person to lose three times and run out of chips gets to return to the game with one chip when play drops down to just three people left.
Last night, the person who earned that dubious honor came back to win the whole thing. It was highly entertaining.
The camaraderie is something I will miss, but I’m heading to a big night of visiting at Cyndie’s 50th reunion this afternoon and evening that I expect will fill the void nicely.
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Active Day
Yesterday started a little earlier than usual for us because the farrier was coming to trim the horses at 7:30. Asher was confused by us getting out the door so close to sunrise. We wanted the horses to be finished eating their servings of feed to avoid any unnecessary distractions by the time they were supposed to be cooperating with the farrier.
After I cleaned up all the manure (equine fecal relocation), I took Asher back to the house for his breakfast and ended up missing the entire trim appointment. Cyndie said that Light was very cooperative. That makes us really happy, because it hasn’t always been a sure thing with her. I think it’s fair to say that we’ve been seeing a positive trend of willingness from Light in the last year.
Cyndie supported my decision to take my bike for a spin before heading up to the lake for a few days of her two brothers’ annual golf weekend. I’ve concluded that my bike is still noisy and now my new shoes squeak, too. That clicking is an issue that I’m tired of battling, so I may end up living with it. There are still one or two things I plan to test, so a tiny glimmer of hope remains.
The route I chose for my short romp ended up bringing me to a monster of a hill climb that had me in serious oxygen debt. It was so bad that I never fully recovered for the remainder of the ride. It didn’t help that the temperature was reaching the uncomfortably hot levels at the same time. When I finally reached home again, I was thoroughly pooped. I grabbed the pulse oximeter to see what my numbers were. Yikes! That explained why I felt so lousy.
The highlight of our day came at dinnertime. We picked up our neighbors on the north edge of Pierce County, Ann (Herzog) and David Drewiske, and headed to LoLo American Kitchen & Craft Bar in Hudson. David gave us a wonderful tour of back roads to avoid traffic caused by ongoing road construction. The menu at LoLo is laudable for the quality of every offering. I recommend it highly.
I ordered the Miso-Glazed Coho Salmon and Cyndie had the Grassfed Bavette Steak Frites. Yum!
We didn’t linger long after eating because I was about to make the drive north with my bike stowed safely in the back of my car.
I made it through dusk and into darkness without incident, arriving at the lake house a few minutes before 10 p.m.
The sky views transitioned from the orange setting sun to the orange rising moon over the duration of my drive, allowing me to wake up this morning at my favorite destination.
I plan to go for a little bike ride before all the golfers begin to arrive this afternoon. Tradition has it that we congregate at Angler’s Bar in Hayward for dinner Thursday. Hopefully, I’ll ride myself up a worthy appetite.
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Braving Futility
What is with the gall of these poison ivy sprouts brazenly making a move into the mowed path along the western fence line of the back pasture?
Is nothing sacred?
Don’t bother answering that; it was a rhetorical question. I know the way nature works. My attempts to wrangle the persistent growth on 20 acres into submission are basically Sisyphean futility.
Speaking of futile… I failed to reach success in an attempt to retrieve data from a remote hard drive with a broken USB connector. A local guy had been advertising his tech services heavily on the neighborhood app, “Nextdoor.” Cyndie suggested I contact him to see if he could help. We like to support the local businesses.
I was so happy to connect with him that I neglected to clarify that all my devices are Apple. Turns out his first strength is PCs. Still, a hard drive is a hard drive, and he took a shot at communicating with the Western Digital drive using a docking station and two of his software tools. No go. We decided to try plugging his docking station directly into my iMac, but the drive was not recognized.
It became obvious that the intermediate circuit board from which the USB connector broke, which we had been hoping to work around, performs some necessary role in communicating with the drive. That realization led me to search for a replacement assembly and/or forum discussions related to my dilemma. It turns out that the little surface-mount mini USB connector has broken off its circuit board for plenty of other folks, as well.
Buying a replacement connector won’t be easy, but it’s not impossible. Finding a way to have a skilled person solder the 5 teeny tiny pins onto the itsy bitsy pads on the board will require a fair amount of research and likely a strong dose of sweet-talking. The number of retail options for this kind of work is pretty small in this neck of the woods.
I’ve got my work cut out for me on this one. It would sure be handy if I still worked for a business that did this kind of thing every day.
What was I thinking, moving so far away?
Don’t bother answering that.
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Parched Earth
We zoomed home without incident yesterday, except for one unsettling moment at a construction site. Signs were warning of the road work ahead, so I wasn’t surprised when traffic came to a halt. The shock came when the large truck we were following began moving, revealing many emergency vehicles with flashing lights instead of construction equipment.
There was an ambulance and a firetruck, two damaged vehicles, and a significant number of former occupants congregated nearby. Behind all the EMS personnel stood all the construction crews biding their time until the scene was turned back over to them.
The dew point temperature when we left Hayward read 79°F, with temps already in the 80s. The level of mugginess was downright tropical. I checked the reading for 125 miles away at home and found the same result. Yuck.
What we found when we arrived at our property was a very parched earth. Wherever trees shaded the grass, it looked a healthy green. Anywhere the sun was baking the turf, it was visibly brittle and fading to beige.
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Asher met us with surprising calm, acknowledging our return with a mere lean against each of us in turn for some scratches. It was a greeting we appreciated. He seems so well-adjusted and content with the living conditions we are providing for him. It helps to have great animal sitters covering our absences.
There wasn’t a lot we could do to offer the horses relief from the heat. Cyndie put fly masks on to give their eyes a break from the nagging pests and turned up the speed on the fans aimed under the overhang.
It looked like the horses might have been digging for water in the dry bed of Paddock Lake. They don’t normally mess with it after the water evaporates, leaving the bottom to become covered with a cracked, dried mud base. Now it looks a bit like they are creating a sandbox.
We need rain. I’m not exactly comforted by the forecast that suggests chances of storms on Thursday and Friday after the extremely dangerous tornado that hit Appleton and Menasha in northeastern Wisconsin yesterday. We just want some moisture to fall, and not in the form of 100% humidity. Is a good soaking rain too much to ask?
Our soil is parched, I tell ya. It needs a drink!
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Relative Something 