Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Mostly Waiting
Most of my day yesterday was spent waiting. Cyndie did almost the same amount of waiting, but she was anesthetized for part of it and in a pain-management-induced stupor for others. I had the easier job, despite the tedium.
Prepped and waiting, I snapped a shot of Cyndie looking her best in a very fashionable hair net and hospital gown. The procedure was a knee replacement, her second. We filled some of the wait time by chatting with her surgeon and later the anesthetist, who described a very interesting path to choosing his career. He served time on military mobile medical units and also was assigned to rapid response teams that travel to foreign cities where U.S. Presidents fly, providing “in case needed” precautions.
The woman who performed the surgery came highly recommended and lived up to a comment from one of the nurses that she works fast. For all the waiting before and after, the portion of actual replacement surgery took a little under an hour. The doctor came out to report everything went smoothly and suggested I get some lunch while Cyndie sleeps off the residual anesthesia effects. She said it would be at least an hour.
It was closer to two. When they finally called me back to see Cyndie again after she woke up, leg pain was her biggest complaint. Still, they had her up and walking moments later. After more waiting, during which they monitored vital signs and increased her pain meds, the medical transport team showed up to whisk her away to a hotel for overnight monitoring.
The view out her third-floor window:
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Maybe the new knee will turn her into an athlete. Maybe it won’t. At least they were able to make her more comfortable.
Does it show?
They had her hooked up to a machine that ran chilled water around the knee to control swelling and pain. I was allowed to end my waiting and head home to take care of animals and sleep through the night in my own bed. Nurses will be checking on Cyndie all night, something I am very happy the are doing instead of me.
I’ll pick Cyndie up this morning and take over primary care. It’s nice to have had the first night worry-free and know she was under the watchful eyes of trained professionals.
It’s one of the greatest honors of my life to be allowed to play the role of Cyndie’s closest supporter in times of extra need. The waiting part is over now. Let the healing begin!
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Final Opportunity
Yesterday was our last chance to tackle any projects jointly –no pun intended– because today is Cyndie’s right knee replacement surgery. This will make it three artificial joints: left knee, right hip, and now right knee. I’m not counting the rebuilt right shoulder, but easily could in the chronicle of significant surgeries of the last ten years for Cyndie.
I blame her Lyme Disease history.
For all the things I can get persnickety about, cleaning tools after every use tends to evade me. This is how the shovels looked when I pulled them out for yesterday’s transplanting adventures:
Good enough for me. I scraped some of the mud off before putting them away last time. At least I put them away back where we could find them again. Putting tools away after use is another habit I wish I was more consistent about practicing.
In our final hurrah at getting things done before Cyndie is put out of action for a while, we started with digging up and transplanting more of our ornamental tall grasses. I’m a tad concerned it was too easy and might end in limited success in the survival of the relocated sections. Regardless, it will be great just to have the old batch pruned down to a more reasonable size.
If we get any sprouts of tall grasses in the variety of new locations it will be a wonderful bonus.
While we were doing some of the new plantings just across the driveway, we became aware of a significant number of wild grapevines entangling the trees there. Unraveling one piece kept leading to another and soon we were on our way to the next project, completely unplanned.
I am always amazed to discover significant vine growth that was happening right before our eyes which we failed to notice despite our ongoing quest to give our trees priority over vines.
After pulling up as many as we could, we headed down to the labyrinth where we are trying to get vines to grow on the gazebo as a replacement to the old canvas that once provided overhead cover from sun and rain.
It is interesting trying to encourage something to grow only where you want after having just violently pulled it out of the ground in a location where it seemed perfectly happy to be.
After tending to the horses together, we moved on to our landscape pond where we removed the winter cover.
Any other outdoor projects Cyndie would normally be tackling this time of year are on hold for a while now. I will be splitting my time between doing what I can outside and being Cyndie’s primary care nurse and full-time driver.
We are sending love to the doctors and nurses in advance and visualizing a flawless procedure that is free of complications. Feel free to join us is conjuring good vibes for today.
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Friendly Visitor
We knew instantly that there was a visitor on our deck by Delilah’s reaction. I spotted the good-looking Siamese running by the door in our bedroom as Delilah bolted to the living room doors to fire up her most ferocious outburst at the scary beast threatening her sovereignty.
The cutie had a collar on which differentiated it from the multitude of other roaming cats that regularly cross our territory, so I stepped outside to get acquainted. Cyndie is a day away from knee replacement surgery and under quarantine since testing clean from the possibility of Covid infection, so she missed out on all the affection.
The lovely blue-eyed kitty was instantly passionate about rubbing against me. Surely, someone should be missing this feline companion. Cyndie brought some water and a serving of dry cat food for me to offer. Water isn’t hard to find outdoors around here, but the crunchy morsels drove the cat wild. I worried that eating too much too fast would risk not keeping it all down long enough to digest. The cat did not share my concern.
Cyndie posted pictures on Next Door but I assumed the stray must be from one of the immediately surrounding properties and haven’t seen any of those neighbors using the app. I set the friendly visitor up with accommodations in the shop while we waited and pondered our next move.
On one of my visits to check on the kitty it made a leap up to my shoulder and cuddled me as if begging us to let it stay forever. That helped to nudge me toward surveying the surrounding properties sooner than later. The only valid phone number I had was for the neighbor to our immediate south.
It wasn’t his and he wasn’t able to get me the phone number of the folks across the street from him. I was going to need to put the kitty in a crate and go for a drive. The woman across the street from him feeds cats outdoors and on the one occasion we traveled up their driveway ten years ago we spotted ten or more cats wandering their yard around the house upon a hill.
They are a particularly recluse couple so making my second trip up their driveway since we’ve lived here felt rather intrusive. It took several minutes to get a response from my knocking. I was making my way around the house to a different door when I heard a man’s voice calling out.
Wasn’t their cat. They don’t put any collars on the cats that show up to be fed. He suggested I check the property up the road and around the corner.
Another driveway I’ve never entered. Folks around these parts tend to keep to themselves. If we didn’t interact with them in the first year or two, we’ve pretty much never talked with them since. No response from that house.
As long as I was already on that street I decided to check the next driveway up because that farm’s land stretches all the way to our woods on the north and west property lines. Thankfully, he was already outside talking with someone in a pickup.
Twas their collared Siamese.
We stood and chatted at length amidst his excess of pickups and farm machinery while dogs, cats, chickens, and ducks all circled around us. There were goats inside a fence, more dogs in a kennel, and a couple of geese honked as they took flight. The very scruffy-looking Pyrenees guard dog took immediate notice of the possibility the geese needed protection and headed in that direction.
That very same dog seems to get along with all the farmyard tenants except one beautiful Siamese cat. I witnessed a chase around the obstacles that left me thinking I understand why the cat might be interested in getting away.
Something about that ever so affectionate and beautiful cat seems to stir a similar reaction from both Delilah and their Pyrenees.
By the way, he got the dog because foxes were getting his chickens.
Hmm.
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Spontaneous Trip
With only the briefest of forethought, yesterday afternoon I decided to drive up to the lake with the fire-pit benches I built last fall. It was windy and a little wet at home, but I didn’t give much consideration to how different it might be a hundred miles north. I drove right into some serious falling snow that occasionally dropped visibility to nothing but the car in front of me.
In addition to the wild weather, I rolled up to a road closure that offered very poor signage about a detour option. A simple trip to the lake place became an adventure I hadn’t anticipated.
Ultimately, I made it to the intended destination safe and sound, but as I traveled up the gravel entrance toward the house there were branches down everywhere on the ground. Then, limbs. Then, trees! There must have been quite a wind event up here recently.
Between the snow and branches, I decided not to bother immediately placing the benches I brought. They can stay in the garage for now, if I can even get them out of the car. It took me four tries to reverse Jenga® them far enough inside that the hatch could close.
They were built for the fire pit, not to nest inside of each other cleanly. The increasing width of the legs combined with the lower cross supports makes navigating the opening an exercise in advanced geometric problem-solving.
Or, in my case, trial and error.
It worked to get them in there. It’ll work to get ’em out again. No matter how many tries it takes me.
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Great Distraction
Last night, despite the hefty drama of flashing lightning and booming thunder, Cyndie and I tuned out the horrors of war on the other side of the world and the wild weather locally to immerse ourselves in the opening episodes of a two-year-old streaming television series. It is both intelligent and funny and oh so refreshing.
We have missed another real-time popularity spike of a series that everyone was talking about. It doesn’t matter which one. Our rural connection limitations leave us out of the loop with current events. We have our moments of excited fanaticism after the fact, on our own. The world has already said everything there is to be said about the shows by the time we get around to watching.
We laughed and binged our way through four episodes and only stopped because real life couldn’t be put off any longer. I feel profoundly grateful that artists produce shows like this for our entertainment and enlightenment.
As much as it pains me to know the victims of the ongoing war in the real world don’t have the luxury of taking a break from it all, my health requires I clear my head of the atrocities as often as possible.
We experienced a new tree down across one of our trails yesterday before the big storms had even arrived.
I walked around to get a different angle and discovered the hole created by the toppled trunk was completely full of standing water.
It’s no surprise the dead tree no longer had a firm enough grip on the earth to remain standing.
Feels a little like a metaphor for a lot of aspects of life these days. Too bad our trees can’t take a break and watch a popular streaming television series every so often to escape the hazards of surviving everything the universe dishes up day after day.
I’m on my own today while Cyndie is visiting in the Cities, so I will have to delay further binging until she returns home. I hope to delve into more great distraction as soon as I can talk her into it after she gets back.
It will fuel my reserves of love so I have all the more to beam toward Ukrainians wherever they are in the world or at home under military assault.
It’s a mystery, even as I do it. Thinking of all the people of Ukraine and escaping from endless news about them, both at the same time.
Imagining peace…
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Early Progress
Yesterday turned out to be a day of multiple small steps of progress with early spring goals. Cyndie and I started the day with a trip to St. Paul to help Elysa with a few house maintenance projects. I’m feeling chuffed for my vinyl siding fixes because I have absolutely zero experience in that area.
If the fixes survive the wild weather predicted for tonight, I will be even more proud of our accomplishments. Our favorite local meteorologist, Paul Huttner paints a pretty dramatic word picture of the potential for hazardous weather this evening in his Updraft weather blog.
Back home for the afternoon, we successfully dug out two portions of the main mass of tall grass and transplanted them to two different spots on our property. I had anticipated the separation to be much more of a struggle than we ultimately experienced. We will be thrilled if the transplanted pieces survive and thrive in their new locations.
I’m guessing it might have been a little too early to attempt this digging because the ground was still frozen under the base of the rootball.
We’ve had two days without precipitation and just enough warm sunshine that I was wooed into thinking we were farther along than we really are.
After that little transplanting task was complete, Cyndie returned to putting up barriers around the strawberry patch and I worked on rejuvenating the contents of our kitchen compost bin nearby. We let it sit dormant throughout the winter months.
We are beginning to see green sprouts peeking up out of the carpet of dead leaves. It is an incredible testament to the miracle of growing plants that progress is underway before it even seems possible.
In a flash of reverse thinking, I sarcastically suggested to Cyndie that we frame our tall grass transplant project as an attempt to get the new plantings to not grow since plants we don’t want (weeds and invasives)re seem to thrive. Wanting something favorable to grow and be healthy has produced more failures than successes so I figure a little reverse psychology might protect us from the usual outcomes.
I don’t want to get overconfident, but if these two grass transplants work for us, I have hopes of doing this on a much more regular basis. In fact, we might even think about dividing them every 2-3 years like recommendations suggest for ornamental tall grasses.
When everything seemed done for the day, I found Cyndie in the kitchen making strawberry jam from the final batch of last year’s frozen berries. I guess seeing her strawberry plants already showing signs of life when she was putting up the fencing around them spurred her into action.
We’ll have new red, ripe berries in the garden before you can say, “How did July get here so fast?”
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Small Banquet
Once again, the phrase “dined like royalty” comes to my mind to describe the homemade feast Cyndie served yesterday for a visit from our son, his wife, and their friends. Beyond her classic culinary artwork of two varieties of scones, Cyndie tried her hand at making hummus out of peas and baking naan bread for the first time.
The main dish of curry chicken and roasted vegetables was followed by her version of a turtle cake from a copied recipe of St. Paul’s Cafe Latte.
As often happens, there was so much delicious food consumed, there was little room for dessert. That’s no problem for Cyndie. She had “to go” containers available so slices of the chocolate caramel decadence were sent home to be enjoyed later.
We were blessed with an afternoon of warm sunshine that felt even nicer than the actual temperature, especially compared to our recent extended spell of rainy, snowy days.
The horses had been brushed earlier in the morning but were perfectly covered in mud by the time we all showed up to visit after a stroll in the labyrinth. While Mix showed interest in checking out the new guests, the other three paid little notice, choosing instead to linger in the altered state of almost sleeping, but not really.
The day was a wonderful celebration of sharing the wonders of Wintervale while we are mired in the muddy conditions of early spring.
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Spring Scenes
Among the range of memories lingering from our night out to see Neil deGrasse Tyson’s talk about a cosmic perspective, these have been prominent: The earth wants to kill us and the universe wants to kill us. As if supporting evidence for these statements were even necessary, Neil provided simple lists.
Earth:
- earthquakes
- volcanoes
- hurricanes
- tornadoes
- droughts
- wildfires
- floods
He introduced this segment with a reference to people who rhapsodize longingly about flowers and trees and all the romance and beauty in Mother Nature’s spectacular displays. Brings to my mind amazing sunrises and sunsets, waterfalls, ocean waves, golden fields, and gorgeous forests.
The contrast provided one of the many chuckles evoked throughout his presentation.
Universe:
- solar flares
- radiation bursts
- black holes
- supernovas
- asteroids
- meteors
Bringing this information forward in my consciousness had me looking at things with a fresh reference on our walks around the property yesterday. It’s impressive to survive long enough that we generally grow callous to most all of these hazardous natural threats. Some of the earth weather risks don’t get buried all that far away in our minds, but I have tended to view them as more neutral threats than as earth’s intended attempts to snuff me out.
The spring scenes we came upon in yesterday morning’s snowscape included the barn towels that were hanging out to dry from the day before.
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When the horses don’t finish eating before we head back to the house, we leave the feed pans out. It makes for some interesting finds upon our return.
Muddy hoof prints are the least offensive version of soiled pans we’ve had to clean out.
After the sun showed through the thinning cloud cover, the snow evaporated except for places that were shadowed. It made for some cool scenes in the woods.
This morning there is no snow left and we haven’t received new precipitation in the last 24 hours. A big sigh of relief for a day or two.
It looks to be another day when the earth won’t kill us. I can’t say for sure what the universe has in store.
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Cosmic Evening
Our experience last night was indeed cosmic in the colossal sense. Joined by our friends, Mike and Barb, we dined at the ever so fine Capital Grille before catching Neil deGrasse Tyson presenting his “Cosmic Perspective” at the State Theater.
Typically, I was rather lukewarm to the idea when Cyndie purchased tickets last fall. April seemed so forever away and why would I want to drive to downtown Minneapolis to sit and listen to an astrophysicist talk? Now I know why. Neil deGrasse Tyson is hilariously entertaining while expounding on mind-expanding perspectives from an astrophysicist perspective.
The icing on our cake of an evening was the fact that Cyndie included Barb and Mike in our plan and selected a fine dining establishment that shares a wall with the theater. We feasted like royalty and were lucky to be served by a sublime professional who guided our selections and timed our meal with impressive expertise, right down to slipping in a delectable coconut cream pie serving for dessert with just enough time to allow me to run a doggy bag of leftovers to the car in the parking ramp down the block.
Then, it was time for the show. From the moment Neil kicked off his shoes by the podium and addressed the crowd with his good-natured, approachable delivery, I felt myself becoming an instant fan, along with seemingly everyone else in the audience, if they weren’t already.
Almost every detail or relationship of the universe he highlighted was affirming in its scientific simplicity, even when it was equally mind-boggling in complexity. The molecules in the air we breathe and the water we drink have been on this planet for centuries upon centuries and passed through others for eons.
We are built out of the same elements as the stars of the universe. It isn’t our uniqueness that makes us special, it’s our ‘sameness’.
The hubris of thinking we are anything more than we actually are is laid bare by the multitude of examples presented from a cosmic perspective. For me, it resonates with my understanding that the more we come to know, the more we realize how little we actually know.
Neil’s sharp wit provided non-stop chuckles and frequent bursts of laughter throughout the delivery of interesting scientific details about our world and its place in the universe.
When the talk appeared to be going long, he put up a universal permission slip for us all to use, especially kids for whom it was a school night. He said to take out our phones and take a picture, so Cyndie did.
We just fill in our names and we have a ready made excuse for staying out too late.
I’m not sure it will hold much influence for our horses and Delilah if we don’t serve their morning meals at the expected hour, but it helps in our minds to feel justified in our exceptional evening.
It was truly cosmic.
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Just Wet
Make it stop!
There is nothing particularly out of character about the April wetness we are currently enduring but that doesn’t make it any less burdensome. The periods of slushy snowflakes that don’t last very long on the ground are not as much of a problem as the spells of heavy rain we’ve been experiencing.
The frost has not gone out of the ground yet and that means the top few inches that have already softened are holding all the precipitation that falls. The slop in the paddocks is really miserable to walk in. The horses are dealing with it heroically, finally showing a willingness to spend the majority of their time under the protection of the overhang.
Unfortunately, that concentrates their urine and manure on the only ground that wasn’t already sloppy mud. It’s now stinky, messy limestone screenings.
Hopefully, we’ve only got one day left of this soaking session before a weekend of sun gives us a brief respite. I fear that won’t be enough time for the mud to dry very much before the next wave of rain moves over us again. Still, any amount of time without more rain is greatly appreciated.
April with animals becomes quite an exercise of endurance. It wouldn’t be so bad if we could hunker down indoors and wait out the days of rain snuggled in front of the fireplace. We are outside multiple times a day no matter what the weather, trudging through the muck that any sane person would unquestionably avoid.
It’s just thoroughly wet outside. I sure wish it would stop raining.
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Relative Something 