Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Coming Home
Cyndie will be coming home from the hospital today! All the small rugs have been removed from the floors and I’ve cleaned away unnecessary clutter in preparation for her return. I’m heading to the hospital early and hope to have her home by noon. She’ll need to negotiate three steps to get into the house, but then she should have minimal hazards for life on our main floor. I haven’t been able to eliminate all hazards. For instance, Delilah will be so excited to see Cyndie that she will want to jump all over her.
I will be happy to have her home, but not quite as excited as Delilah. I had a couple of days of free sailing with Cyndie receiving full-time care at the hospital. With her home, I become the person responsible for her care, in addition to my other duties maintaining our property and tending to the animals. Luckily, I will have some occasional support from Cyndie’s mom and maybe even a home-healthcare nurse who can check on how the incision is healing.
Any amount of time I can safely be out of the house will now be spent constructing a couple of slow feeder boxes. Yesterday, I picked up the grates from “my welder.” They look just like what I was hoping to get. They should, since they were custom-built to my specifications.
At the rate the horses have been dumping hay all over the ground around the present feeders, I feel a strong urge to get these boxes built as quickly as possible. I sure hope my plan to scrounge enough wood for two boxes will work out.
For all those times I have saved leftover lumber at the end of a project, it would be nice to finally experience some justification for the practice, and actually find a productive use for it.
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Modern Miracle
I will admit to generally taking modern conveniences for granted, but I have a whole new respect for the modern miracle of joint replacement. 
Cyndie is looking great, just one day after having a bone in her leg sawed off and a metal rod forced into the end of it. Sure, she is experiencing residual discomfort, but she reports it as mainly feeling like tenderness of the muscles around her hip and pain from the incision.
I joined her for lunch yesterday and was able to witness her first session of occupational therapy. They are teaching her how to dress herself and move around while protecting the new hip, something she must do for the next 6 weeks of the healing process. No crossing the legs!
If a person decided to ignore every word I write here and just looked at the pictures, they would probably draw the wrong conclusion after seeing this image and the one of her upside down pickup truck, just one week apart.
Her physical therapist was rather shocked to hear of the recent rollover accident, when asking for Cyndie’s recent history.
Many thanks to all who have been sending us love from afar of late. Cyndie is absorbing it all and progressing wonderfully, just a day after completion of this miraculous modern medical procedure.
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All Good
The hip replacement surgery was a success! The only thing that I didn’t really think to plan for was the possibility that the surgeon would be held up with a prior case that went into overtime. Cyndie’s turn started about 2-hours late.
Unlike the incredible experience we had when we went to a different hospital to have arthroscopic surgery on this same hip joint, this time they whisked Cyndie away without me for the pre-op processing. I waited and waited in the lobby until almost the appointed time for her surgery, before they finally came back for me. It was ostensibly a moment for me to wish her well and send her on her way.
I was a little confused when the nurse then brought me a chair. I sat with Cyndie while she nodded off due to the prolonged wait while snuggled inside her Bair Paws forced-air warming gown. When I sensed there was some sort of holdup, I asked if we would have any warning when our case would be allowed to proceed. The nurse adjusted a monitor so that we could see it and pointed out the status icon for the surgery Cyndie’s doctor was involved in. It was a scalpel. When he finished, the icon would change to little stitches. Then they would ask Cyndie to use the bathroom one last time before wheeling her off to the operating room.
Minutes changed to hours. Lunchtime arrived. Eventually there were no other patients but Cyndie. I started receiving text messages from supporters asking how the surgery had gone. At 12:20 I finally saw the icon change from scalpel to stitches. When they ushered me out in order to wheel Cyndie away at 12:38 p.m., I found the waiting area empty. There wasn’t even a receptionist. Apparently they don’t schedule any afternoon surgeries.
I stepped out for lunch and then killed a couple of hours alone in the lobby, the last 30-minutes pacing, until the doctor came out to give me his report. No problems, very straightforward, old joint was in very bad shape, new hip is very stable. It’s all good!
I began to get a sense that he stays focused on his immediate contribution after he stated the procedure took 1.5 hours. Obviously, there was another hour of someone’s time in addition to his work. He then said they were moving her to recovery and would come get me in an hour. Over a half-hour after he said that, a nurse came and told me they had moved her to recovery now and it would be another hour before she would be ready for me to come back. Maybe the doc forgot about the time it takes to finish things after his work was done.
By this time, it was getting dusky outside and most of the professional folks had made their exit from the building for the day. If I had to wait another hour, it was going to make me really late for getting home to tend to our animals. The nurses bent their rules and let me come back to see Cyndie in recovery. She looked good, yet out of it, and in a fair amount of pain. All completely expected.
I made it home after dark and found all our animals safe. They were very happy to see me. Cyndie made it to her room in the hospital and her parents and a brother arrived to provide support. Her brother mentioned she was “coherent, but in and out.”
The doctor told me it was going to be too late by the time she got to her room, for a physical therapy session, but they would have her up first thing in the morning. I can hardly wait to see her walking again.
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Waiting Day
This will be my waiting day. It’s the day when all the action happens, but all I can do is wait for it to be completed. My mind has been contemplating the possible ways our plan could be thwarted, and then either planning ways to avoid pitfalls or summoning thoughts of all the ways it will proceed flawlessly.
I will feed the horses, dog, and cat, and then put Delilah in her outdoor kennel for the day. We head out in rush-hour traffic for the hospital in the Twin Cities, and then I find ways to kill most of the day waiting for news from the doctor that Cyndie’s hip replacement surgery was a complete success.
Once that has happened, I leave Cyndie at the hospital with her family for support, and dash back to Wintervale to feed the horses and let Delilah out.
In a few days, I will bring her home and we’ll focus on recovery and rehabilitation. The next thing you know, she’ll be ridin’ horses or something. I’ll be happy just to see her walk pain-free again. That will be an incredible gift.
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Spin Happens
Ya know that theory I was jesting about yesterday? Well, it works from both directions. If you are under-prepared, that is when you will face situations that challenge your preparedness. Case in point: if you plan to use your pickup truck for commuting on the roadways during inclement weather, make sure you put some weight in the back to balance the vehicle and add traction to the rear wheels. If you don’t, the truck just might spin out on an icy patch of road and slide off the pavement, where the wheels can catch on the gravel of the shoulder and cause the truck to roll over.
Cyndie captured this on-the-scene cell phone image of the dramatic outcome.
Cyndie didn’t intentionally test that theory, but by making an unplanned decision to drive the Wintervale Ranch truck to work yesterday (since her car was in for service and she didn’t want to risk driving a rental car on the icy roads), she subjected herself to an incredible dose of adrenaline and tested her seat belt when the truck spun and slid across the oncoming lane, and off the pavement. As the truck reached the shoulder, sliding sideways, the wheels stopped and the momentum of the vehicle kept on going. Up and over it rolled, passenger door down, then over onto the roof, breaking the door window and smashing the windshield as the roof of the cab buckled.
Our illustrious hero dodged suffering any blows from impact, lucky that the truck missed a sign post as it moseyed past, and luckier still that there was no vehicle approaching from the north as she lost control.
Of course, I assumed she was probably going too fast for the conditions, until she described where the accident occurred. If that is as far as she had gotten in the time since she left the house, she must have been driving very slow. Plus, that spot is just after an intersection with a stoplight, and it is an uphill slope in the direction she was driving.
Cyndie is quick to state that the Good Samaritans who were driving immediately behind her witnessed the whole event and corroborated her claim to responding police officers that she wasn’t going fast at the time.
Spin happens.
Be careful out there. And, always wear a seat belt!
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Accepting Darkness
At our latitude, the steady transition from the extra daylight hours of summer, to the lengthened hours of darkness in winter, really begins to have an impact during the month after the autumnal equinox. That doesn’t take anything away from the initial anxiety that strikes when the trend begins to become apparent in the latter part of the summer. They are just different stages of the same phenomenon.
We tend to whine and moan when we notice the sun setting earlier and earlier, but day-to-day, the change is negligible. Early in the season, the impact on evening activity is minimal. Then all of a sudden, there comes a point when it seems like it is dark as night outside, and preparations for dinner haven’t even been started.
That happened to me yesterday, and I noticed a sensation of acceptance wash over me. Long hours of darkness are the way it is going to be for the next 5-months. Deal with it.
Somehow, I seem to find a way. Similar to how I now find myself automatically picking out a long-sleeved shirt every morning and accept it as routine, long hours of darkness becomes just the way it is for a while. It becomes normal.
Normal is definitely a relative perspective.
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Work Friends
Other than feeding our animals in the morning and again when I got home, yesterday was not a Wintervale day. I drove into the cities to spend a little time at the old day-job, allowing me the chance to again be with the fabulous people with whom I was previously employed. As wonderful as it has been to spend my full-time days managing our property, I suffer a great loss by no longer being able to work with the people who, in many ways, had grown closer to me than family.
Working 8-hours a day together for many years, through thick and thin, sharing responsibilities toward a common goal, has a way of bonding a diverse group of people. I wish I could bring them all home with me to help manage the ranch.
When done right, a healthy response to problems becomes a work of art. During my visit, an issue was discovered during final inspection, which was calmly investigated, and a solution devised. I watched the activity travel seamlessly from person to person, with ease. It was a joy to behold.
In the end, I don’t feel that I contributed any tangible value to the output of product. I served as a second set of eyes to review a completed new project. In fact, I was more of a hindrance to getting things done with all my chattering and catching up. They ordered pizza and we had a company gathering for lunch. (Don’t tell Cyndie, but it was her favorite from Gina Maria’s.) What’s not to like about a ‘work day’ like that?
It means a lot to me to not have to drive that long commute anymore. Despite the stop-and-go afternoon traffic coming home yesterday, the trip wasn’t annoying at all, because seeing them again had been such a rewarding pleasure.
They are no longer my work-mates, they have become friends from that place where I used to work.
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Rockin’ Now
I rescheduled a planned work day at the old job in order to be home Monday morning for the confluence of both landscaper and fence contractor arriving to work on our long-awaited projects. As Cyndie headed out the door for her work, I made some passing comment about my high anticipation, and the number of other mornings I had suffered disappointment for similar expectations.
After rising promptly to eat an early breakfast, and getting outside for chores that would make me conveniently available to greet the crews, I received a call from my fence guy. They were hit by a few “Monday issues” that would delay their arrival a day. Why was I not surprised?
Luckily, the landscape crew arrived and saved my day from being a bust. They started quickly and had the ditch created so fast that I thought the project was going to be a cinch. Then, the process of adjusting the slope of the ditch, with a laser as reference, slowed things considerably.
It didn’t help that the end they needed to make deeper was through thick clay soil, which made for very difficult digging. The upper part of the run involves an easily visible drop, but the lower portion levels out. That created something of a challenge for them to achieve an evenly descending slope.
When the drain tube was finally dropped into the channel and covered with pea gravel, I felt a sudden urge for more rain, so we could see how well it works.
Boy, if that isn’t an unlikely thing for me to be writing… an urge for more rain.
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Edge Straightening
Fall has arrived! That means it’s time for everything apple and pumpkin.
It may not be my officially assigned duty, but it is the moral thing to do. Cyndie baked apple crisp yesterday, and I instantly took it upon myself to do everything in my power to make sure the edges remain straight. With utmost diligence, I keep watch over the pan, taking action when necessary to assure the remaining edges, whenever a portion has been served, will always be straight and true.
It is a grueling responsibility, but for all the effort she put into creating such a work of art, it’s a way of showing my greatest respect for her craft.
I’m pretty sure the recipe she uses involves one and a half shovels of brown sugar, a pail of butter, a can of oatmeal, lots of cinnamon, and a couple of apples added to taste. It works.
Her recipe doesn’t make it any easier to keep the edges straight, but it does make the process of doing so somewhat less onerous.
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Idea Buffet
There are often times when I will share a thought or a comment with Cyndie and she will respond that I should make a blog post about it. A comment does not a blog post make.
Maybe if I string together a few of them, I’ll have something.
Yesterday, I was cleaning the paddocks while the horses were out grazing. In the morning, I had opened the gate to the area just outside the paddock, but left the arena closed until after I had given them their late-afternoon feed. Suddenly, Legacy came from the arena into the paddock, alone, and approached me. I paused for a moment to acknowledge him, and then returned to scooping up manure. He closed the gap and stood real close. I silently received his intimate presence.
After I again returned to my task, he deposited a pile of fresh manure for me, lingered a moment, then walked back out to graze. I told Cyndie that it felt to me as if he had come specifically to thank me for opening up the arena for them. The fresh pile was a secondary gift.
I am a regular Google news headline reader. I rarely bother with the links to full articles in avoidance of the frustrating ad windows and register-to-read situations that too often result. Some of the headlines can be real groaners, a few too many scream out, “Be AFRAID! All is Lost! Doom and Gloom!” Then there are those that shamelessly tease, leading on, but cutting short with an ellipsis, ending before giving…
Being a contrarian and an occasional optimist, I told Cyndie I created a game where I strike out key words of the gloomy, fear-inducing headlines and replace them with something more inspiring.
“U.S. officials fear radicalized citizens will carry out lone-wolf terror plots” becomes, “U.S. officials fear hope radicalized everyday citizens will carry out lone-wolf individual terror peace plots initiatives.” Film at 11:00.
Recently, I have been listening to Leon and Mary Russell’s “Wedding Album” and in particular, the song, Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly). Their interpretation of this song includes the lyrics: “The longer we live —dilly dilly— the more love we know.” That really resonates for me, because each time I encounter new love, it feels fresh, invigorating, unique.
From that, the thought occurred to me that ‘hate’ never feels new. It is the same damn hate, over and over —from the time I was the target of hate as a little kid, spewed from a teenager who I was surprised even noticed I existed, to the homophobic/racist/misogynistic/religious zealot extremists making headlines today. Hate may spread, but it is never new. It’s the same stale hatred that it has always been.
Thank you. Now go forth and spread some new love with a bit of contrarian optimism yourselves. See if you can get people to…
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