Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Feeling Humble
Rain in winter is proving to be our new normal in the region of Minnesota and Wisconsin where I grew up. All we can do is react to the conditions presented, but it’s an unfamiliar winter landscape to me to have water raining down onto our snowscape. It’s such a mess.
I wonder what the furry animals of the northern forest do to cope with these conditions. It must be hard not being able to burrow into the powdery snow for insulation from the cold. From my experience, dampness in temperatures that hover around the freezing point feels much worse than dry cold temperatures well below freezing.
Delilah and I discovered evidence in our hayfield that looked like a coyote may have uncovered a rabbit nest.
The wet snow is revealing a wide variety of tracks. The surface keeps changing between being very soft when the temperature is above freezing and crusty enough that Delilah doesn’t break through when it refreezes.
It is humbling to find evidence of how many creatures are wandering our trails just before or shortly after we have walked them. There were footprints on our north trail that were so large I tried to get Delilah to step into one for comparison. It didn’t work, but trust me, in real life, these are unmistakably and rather impressively bigger than Delilah’s.
I’m pretty sure Delilah peed her scent all over any other markers left on that trail.
Trespassers return at their own risk.
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Wickedly Slick
This morning the day dawned with an icy glaze covering everything after an overnight dose of wet precipitation. Luckily, we had already aborted any travel plans because of Cyndie’s continuing convalescence from eyelid surgery. The roads are wickedly slick and riddled with auto incidents as depicted by the Department of Transportation map.
No thank you. Unfortunately, Cyndie’s brother and parents had to give up on a plan of driving to St. Peter this morning for a memorial service for Fred’s cousin. We had planned to attend after first learning of the service, but when the appointment for Cyndie’s surgery popped in for the day after Christmas, it changed a lot of our plans.
Yesterday was a very fractured day. Imagine breaking an entire day into 20-minute segments. That was our routine as we strove to adhere to the doctor prescribed routine of icing, then resting her eyes for alternating 20-minute increments over the first 24-hours after the procedure. What better cold pack than a bag of frozen peas?
Today she is supposed to switch to heat pads, four times a day.
I give her credit for being a very good patient.
Too bad she didn’t get out to see the round hay bales in our fields were picked up while we were in Stillwater on Thursday.
Good thing they finished that chore before our roads became as slick as a skating rink. I wouldn’t want to try pulling a trailer of hay in these conditions!
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Playing Nurse
I am not a nurse, but I am back in nurse-mode for a while because Cyndie had outpatient eyelid surgery yesterday. A procedure that only takes an hour required over four to drive to Stillwater and then wait an hour and twenty minutes for things to start because the patient ahead of her took longer than planned.
Now Cyndie’s convalescence requires extra rest, limited activity, no lifting or bending over, and not rubbing her eyes for at least a week.
She looks a little like she stepped on a rake. Twice.
The procedure sounds a little harrowing in that Cyndie was sedated but conscious and instructed not to move for the entire procedure. That included reaching up to scratch an itchy nose. She needed to ask for help with an itch. Imagine trying not to cough, sneeze, or flinch while someone is holding a knife near your eye.
The surgeon asked for a warning to stop if Cyndie felt a sneeze coming on. It makes me wonder if the urge to sneeze gets suppressed by the sedation or if it could sneak up on a person whose face has been numbed.
I’m glad she didn’t get the hiccups.
We are happy Cyndie’s procedure did commence without complications. Our return home was late enough that darkness had already arrived and Delilah’s dinner was over an hour later than usual. I took her for a walk and we closed up the chicken coop where all the hens were unharmed and safely perched on the roost.
I had clipped Delilah’s leash to a nearby tree while securing the coop and, out of my light beam, she suddenly started barking about something. When I returned to her it was obvious she was fixated on something nearby. When I released the clip she almost dragged me away, except the point she wanted to reach was just a few more steps over.
It was the trunk of a large old maple tree and I’m guessing she spotted a critter –likely a rabbit– disappear into an opening at the base of the tree. Delilah reacted with a frenzied, but futile attempt to attack the fortress. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such a carnivorous fervor from her, except maybe the one time last summer when she had the lake-neighbor’s dog firmly clamped in her jaws.
Maybe I shouldn’t have let her keep the headless squirrel body she claimed from under a decorative pine tree near the back of our house on a walk earlier in the day yesterday. She was pre-primed to be in full-on predator mode after that.
I’m just distracted by a responsibility to focus on what Cyndie’s needs are during the recovery period. We are both going to work intensely on preventing any involuntary unconscious eye-rubbing when the healing causes itchiness. Doing so could completely defeat the surgical procedure results and the surgeon said that it happens to 1 out of 5 patients!
We don’t want her to be one of the ‘special’ ones.
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Much Joy
It all builds up to this. Apparently, there was a lot more “nice” than there was “naughty” in the family this year. Santa’s elves surely worked overtime to supply all the goods for the gift exchanges witnessed yesterday at the Edina house, though this was just a fraction of the joy. There was also laughter and mirth along with some good-natured ribbing and exceptional feasting shared by all.
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Most precious of all was the time with family. Time to just be together really is priceless. Puts the material goods at a distant second in terms of value for the holiday.
Delilah did wonderfully in her first-ever visit to the location, which was very important to us. It allowed us to maximize our minutes with the fam this year.
I chose to bring her home after dinner last night, but Cyndie stayed for one more overnight. In the moments after I got home with the pooch, I managed to lock myself out of the house with Delilah inside. Luckily, we have a lockbox with key for just such occasions.
Getting back inside and settling in at home brought almost as much joy as the Christmas celebrations that preceded our return.
One of the most overlooked great things about Christmas is the point when it is finally over and life can return to the usual daily grind.
I hope that doesn’t sound ungrateful, but even a very good thing can get to be a little too much. We have been blessed with a lot of very good things. Now I’m ready to be blessed with a return to our usual normalcy.
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Happy Hens
We are thrilled to report that our hens are acting very happy with the last few days of above-average warmth (above freezing!) around this winter solstice. Tomorrow is Christmas and the hours of daylight started increasing again so the mood is pretty festive around here. A return to home-laid eggs can’t be far off. The day they kick back into that cycle again will bring on its own celebratory moods in our house. We’ve become spoiled with a quality of eggs that the grocery store offerings don’t come close to matching.
During the previous sub-zero cold snaps and bouts of snow, the chickens showed zero interest in venturing outside the coop when we opened the chicken door. Yesterday and Sunday they gladly made the trek back to the barn overhang where there is prime sand-bathing to be had in the sun.
For some reason defying logic, the hens have sequentially been molting for several months now. The two latest raggy looking things are getting their comeuppance for the period they were strutting around looking like award-winning specimens when others were a sorry sight.
Everybody has their day.
We are going to leave the coop buttoned up for a couple of days while we take Delilah with us for an overnight to Cyndie’s parent’s house in Edina. The Christmas tradition for Cyndie’s family involves a big dinner with cousin families on the eve, then breakfast and a gift exchange extravaganza extraordinaire on Christmas morning followed with a big dinner in the evening.
In years past, when we had the horses, I ended up driving back and forth three times in two days in an attempt to be involved in all things at once. This year, we are modifying the plan a little to eliminate a couple of trips.
A nod to taking another tiny step toward reducing our use of fossil fuels for the sake of our warming planet.
I’m not sure the chickens will be so happy about our plan, though, now that they are showing renewed interest in coming out of the coop again when it’s nice.
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Wing Patterns
It isn’t just footprints we find in the snow around here. Using the camera feature of my phone, I captured the fascinating shadows of a fracas that likely reflects the dispatching of a field rodent by an airborne predator. An owl, maybe?
An eagle, possibly?
Could be from a hawk. They are not an uncommon sight in our skies.
This is the second such scene we’ve spotted recently, although the first one didn’t have as obvious of wing patterns.
Something of reasonable size left these marks, but with no other tracks around, it could only have come from the sky.
It appears the critters in our fields are failing to avoid detection, despite the abundant cover of snow.
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Dreaded Spot
There is a speck on an internal lens of my trusty pocket camera. It showed up on images I captured this morning. I meant to feature some disappearing tracks in the snow, but I got an unwelcome distraction instead.
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Bummer!
I consider myself to be something of a hack photographer. I love framing and capturing images and cropping results for aesthetic effect, but I don’t put energy or attention toward camera details. The three pillars of photography, settings for shutter speed, aperture, and ISO are details I leave up to the auto mode of the camera.
For convenience, I long ago settled on a pocket camera so I could take pictures on the fly while out and about on my daily activities without the burden of a sensitive piece of equipment dangling around my neck or over my shoulder. I tend to be pretty rough on my equipment.
My previous pocket cameras which took fantastic pictures were Canon PowerShots, but the motorized pop-out lenses couldn’t handle the abuse of dust and debris that I subjected them to. My camera retailer steered me to the waterproof Nikon COOLPIX.
It’s been a trusty friend and has served me well, but my abuse is taking a toll. It needs a thorough cleaning.
Not a cleaning that I will do myself. I’m hoping the cost of professional cleaning is less than the price of a new camera. I don’t like the thought of this becoming a disposable item.
Most importantly, I don’t want to have blurry spots on my pictures of the morning sky on a beautiful December day.
Such a distraction.
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Many Blessings
We are celebrating Christmas this morning at Wintervale with our kids and thoroughly absorbing the blessings of peacefulness, luxury, and love that we are lucky enough to enjoy here.
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To all who follow our escapades and my particular “take on things and experiences” here on Relative Something, it is our sincere wish that you discover blessings of peace and love wherever you are in the world today!
Nurture seeds of love from within your hearts and radiate blossoms of genuine lovingkindness to those around you and beyond!
Namaste!
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Ferocious Feline
Settling into an upright seated recline on my side of the bed, I positioned my laptop across my legs as Pequenita jumped up to join me. It was time to do some writing, but not before the obligatory routine of granting our feline her daily intense head-to-toe scratching. If I don’t grant her my full attention right away, she begins a pattern of looping around my computer screen over and over again until I change my mind and adjust my priority.
Of course, eventually, I give in. Soon, Pequenita is in a trance of purring while I grind my fingernails across the loose folds of the back of her neck and drag them over her eyes and down her nose. She seems completely willing to stay and receive this attention indefinitely, but my alternative agenda usually brings the lovefest to an end.
As I reach for the keyboard, ‘Nita will stroll away to the end of the bed and give me back my space. Often, after I have entered my own trance of typing and thinking, the calm will be broken by the sudden appearance of “Attack-Cat!” Either it will be my toes under a blanket or a fabric project on Cyndie’s lap that becomes the target of our ferocious feline’s wide-eyed aggression, so we are quickly forced to take evasive action in avoidance of an incidental over-application of a sharp claw in her zeal.
Occasionally, our defense involves a scramble for the laser pointer to give Pequenita an alternative target.
Sometimes, I get back to what I had intended to write about. Other times, I just tell the story that happened instead.
rrrrrreeooOOWWW!
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Relative Something 