Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Different Time
Here is what I heard:
“It’s madness, but it’s really fun.”
“I had average luck, but not by much.”
“Good job, Bob.”
“Losers lose, winners win.”
“It’s your spirit responding to somebody else’s spirit.”
Without context, uttered phrases range from silly to meaningless. How much of our everyday couldn’t be framed as silly or meaningless?
How many email teasers from organizations seeking my attention can I ignore in a day? No, I won’t click to see how many people have visited my high school or career website accounts I created eons ago and never deleted even though I’m no longer active.
I’m in a bull-headed contest with them to see how long they will continue to include my email address in their marketing attempts even though I never, ever open the email. The loser will be whoever deletes the account first.
My dog doesn’t have a clue what the clock indicates for hour of the day today. We are in a different time from yesterday.
I need to take him for a walk in the minutes I would have otherwise composed a thought-out blog post.
Catch ya later…
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Getting Outside
It’s only been three days since Cyndie’s ankle surgery. She is spending most of her time reclining with her foot elevated and I am outside many hours every day, walking around with Asher and tending to the horses. This morning it was particularly frosty because the overnight temperature bottomed out well below freezing.
I cleaned up some leaves yesterday that had become matted on the driveway and in the early light today it looks pretty respectable.
It’s a shame Cyndie doesn’t see it. She missed out on the neighbor’s wood furnace smoke stretching along the valley and the horses lining up in the early rays of sunlight.
As much as I wanted to stay beneath the covers with my head snuggled into a soft pillow this morning, getting outside to experience the glory of the day offers rewards that Cyndie doesn’t get to enjoy during her convalescence.
It becomes my responsibility to appreciate being outside twice as much to cover for her. It’s a tough job, but a challenge I am willing to meet.
I know my warm bed will be waiting for me again at the end of each day.
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Easy Patient
It was almost “just another Thursday” except for the fact Cyndie was only one day away from surgery on her ankle. Her extensive experience with the routine of recovering from surgeries makes her a pretty easy patient to watch over. She has been in good spirits throughout the whole process, surviving the first night with only minimally interrupted sleep from pain.
You may think she is doing so well because of the care I’ve been providing, but I can’t take credit. It’s the healed ankle bones that are all the difference. More specifically, it’s that she doesn’t have pain from the shattered bones and she is not forced to avoid putting any weight on her right foot.
Cyndie’s brother, Steve stopped by for a visit and provided good energy. He and Asher got along really well, especially when Steve accepted Asher’s challenges to wrestle by dishing out plenty of roughhouse competition.
In the afternoon, Cyndie occupied herself in the recliner by making a “snuffle mat” for Asher. My sister, Judy provided inspiration with photos of mats that she makes. The project fit well with the homemade dog chews Cyndie had just sewn for our pup.
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Asher took to it like a natural, individually sniffing out and chomping each little morsel Cyndie had scattered. It occupied him for about a minute or two.
I allowed him some off-leash time around the outside of the house while I moved all the deck furniture to storage behind the house for the winter. He was a good sport and stayed close but went nuts doing Zoomies to burn pent-up energy.
I think he senses something weird with Cyndie’s behavior and is rising to respect her space while looking toward other avenues to get his needs met. At the same time, I think he really misses the “old” version of his momma.
It won’t be long before she is back to her old ways.
Last year, I was more concerned with how soon she could return to tossing around hay bales. This year, I’m looking toward how soon she can get back to entertaining Asher when he gets overly whiny.
I really wish I could convince him to simply “use [his] words!” whenever I can’t figure out what he wants.
He is not what I’d call an easy patient.
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Plates Removed
Thank you to everyone who offered good vibes for Cyndie’s surgery yesterday. I am happy to report that everything went according to plan. We made it in and out without any complications.
Getting one of the first surgeries of the day was a blessing. A year ago, her appointment was in the afternoon and after she was prepped, we had to wait almost two extra hours due to an emergency procedure that got inserted before hers.
I snapped a photo of Cyndie in the recovery bay post-surgery.
Those aren’t her real eyes. The photo has been enhanced to preserve her dignity. She came out of the anesthesia very slowly and was not yet in control of all her faculties when they brought me back to keep her company.
Instead of having a problem with pain, this time she endured a fair amount of feeling nauseous as the drugs were wearing off. Once I got her home and she got a chance to eat a little chicken soup, her gut settled down considerably.
It became obvious very quickly that recovery from this surgery would be a lot less onerous than a year ago. The key difference is that she wasn’t able to put ANY weight on that foot for 8 weeks while the bones were healing. This time the bones are good to go. She can stand on it as soon as she feels able.
The surgeon offered to give her the hardware if she wanted it (after they cleaned it up), but we forgot about that in the excitement of leaving and they never produced the goods. We’ll have to take his word on whether he actually removed it all or not, until the next x-ray.
Speaking of cleaning things up, the doc mentioned he took a little snip of the previous scar and added an extra stitch at the bottom to improve on the look he left her with last time.
When everything heals up Cyndie’s ankle will feel better and look better, too!
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Misjudged Amount
I thought it was going to be a small amount of slushy snow coating the grass but I guessed wrong. Our first snow of the season covered everything with around three inches of windblown snow.
As ready as we thought we were for winter to arrive, this snow landed on plenty of things I intended to move. Cyndie’s door table in the woods. The furniture on the deck. Potted plants all around the house. Chairs out in the yard.
It’s all stuff that can still be moved without too much trouble. Temperatures are expected to warm up well above freezing in the next few days, but there’s no guarantee how much of the snow will disappear. I’m gonna make another guess and combine it with some hope that almost all of it will vanish.
By the weekend, it looks like a chance of some rain, which would go a long way to finish off any patches of snow that might last that long.
Cyndie landed the first appointment for surgery today, so we are heading out the door before dawn and hoping to have her back home in the recliner by mid-afternoon. Just depends on how quickly she comes to her senses, breathes on her own, and eats a little something.
We are well familiar with the routine.
While she convalesces the next few days, Asher and I can be outside putting away deck furniture. I’m sure he’d love to help me.
When we first met Asher, his foster mom told us he loves snow, so we’ve been looking forward to witnessing it firsthand. His reaction didn’t disappoint. His aura radiated “FUN!” the whole time he was romping around in the white stuff.
Thank you to all who have offered encouraging messages to Cyndie for her metal removal today. We appreciate your support! I’ll provide a full report tomorrow about how smoothly everything went.
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Solar Warming
It’s official. The growing season for 2023 ended for us yesterday with temperatures dipping well below freezing overnight Sunday into Monday. The moon still looked plenty full and the cloudless sky made it appear as if a giant floodlight was illuminating everything.
That clear sky remained as the sun showed up over the horizon in the morning. When the horses had finished gobbling up all the feed in their pans, I noticed all four of them assumed the classic position of standing perpendicular to the warming rays of the sun.
They closed their eyes and got very quiet, waiting patiently while absorbing every morsel of solar energy coming their way.
The air was calm, the horses were calm, and I couldn’t resist pausing for a while to stand with them and enjoy the serenity.
Suddenly, the blessing of having nowhere else I needed to be seemed doubly rewarding.
I can tell you this: it sure felt a lot warmer than what the thermometer was indicating at the time, and a lot different than what it is like this morning after snow blew in overnight last night.
Is this a Halloween trick?
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Arbitrary Thinking
For no particular reason on a Monday morning, my attention sometimes bounces in many directions.
- Weekend spectator sports were entertaining but the Achilles injury to Minnesota Vikings Quarterback, Kirk Cousins, looms large on prospects for our future.
- I stayed up late on Saturday night and found myself laughing a couple of times at scenes on Saturday Night Live.
- Despite media outlets marketing it as a feature, no part of me wishes to receive “real-time updates” on news feeds covering wars.
- I could listen to some foreign accents forever while I find others deeply irritating, but I don’t know why.
- I will admit to an attraction to streaming series that have actors with superb accents.
- Last week, Cyndie and I went out to dinner to celebrate 49 years since we started dating. For dessert, we ordered her favorite salted caramel chocolate tart.
- Last night, after dinner of a deep-dish pizza from the freezer, Cyndie served her homemade version of the same salted caramel chocolate tart, along with a bite of dark chocolate pecan toffee she also made.
- The quality of both treats was so impressive, they matched anything I’ve tasted at high-end shops or restaurants.
- Last week we bought tickets to fly with friends to visit Iceland next year.
- None of my awake dreams come close to the realism I experience in my sleeping dreams. Why is that?
- Sometimes when I see someone near my age with features that trigger memories of a grade-school crush, I wonder what that person looks like now.
- Is it possible that dogma is the root of all evil?
- I love that animals can tell when we love them.
- Imagine if we bathed our brains with healthy healing thoughts that primed our cerebrospinal fluid to facilitate our synapse-firing pathways for goodness.
- What if we always offered others the slices of life we would want for ourselves?
- Even though I am no longer employed during a workweek, Mondays still retain a residual stigma for me.
- Yesterday, I contemplated what cover design would appeal to me if Relative Something were a book. (I find it hard to compete with an animated GIF that has the word “LOVE” blowing in the wind.)
- Did you know I don’t drink coffee?
- No matter what variety of distractions I think about, it doesn’t change that I will be driving Cyndie to a hospital for another surgery this week. For some reason, I keep finding myself thinking about that.
Happy Monday, everyone. Unless you are reading this in Australia today. Happy Tuesday to any readers down under
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Just Pieces
One year ago this week, Cyndie shattered her ankle. After surgery to hold bone pieces together with plates and screws, she has worked long and hard to get back to as close to 100% as possible. After multiple follow-up consultations with her surgeon, she has decided to endure additional surgery to remove the hardware now that the bones have healed.
There just isn’t enough room in her little ankle to fit the added metal. Cyndie has sensed this for a long time but still put effort toward figuring out ways to cope with the ongoing pain, hoping that added time would lead to improvement.
The pain of trying to walk in a winter boot recently helped her to decide another surgery was justified.
We know the routine. She will be convalescing in the recliner with periodic icing and I will need to do all the dog walking and horse care. In the last few days, Cyndie has been working feverishly to prepare meals that can be frozen and tackling as many projects as possible before she becomes chair-bound.
I’m trying hard to keep myself from overthinking what my routine will be like during her recovery period. The difficulty is that I know what’s coming. Last year there was no warning that our lives would be impacted so dramatically for months.
I’m not sure which is worse. It was an unwelcome shock last year when Cyndie suddenly got injured so severely. But knowing in advance what is headed our way is a little scary, too.
Maybe distracting my mind by assembling a jigsaw puzzle will help. I can make it a contest to see if I will find and place all the pieces before Cyndie heals enough to take Asher for walks again.
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Not Instantaneous
When we emerged from the front door this morning, there was a layer of ice on Asher’s water bowl on the steps. Today is the first time this fall that we walked out to sub-freezing air temperatures. Ironically, there was no frost on the grass. The recent rain has saturated the ground which aids in transferring the residual warmth remaining in the earth from summer.
There is no instantaneous point during the change of seasons that entirely switches things over from one to the other. This morning both Cyndie and I found ourselves digging for outerwear –and in Cyndie’s case, a long underwear top– from the closet that we haven’t used in probably 6 months.
Passing snow showers are forecast for the afternoon.
The transition to the frozen season happens in fits and starts. Below freezing at night, above freezing during the day. When several consecutive daytime high temperatures stay below freezing, the transition has progressed to a new level and all of our senses tell us fall is over and winter is on the prowl.
The loss of tree leaves also happens gradually. Some trees started shedding leaves in the second half of August. Fall colors began to burst in the latter half of September. Now, as we approach the end of October, the transition to bare branches is slowly underway.
When tree leaves fall straight down to paint a large circular swath of the grass beneath a tree, it creates a visual spectacle of exclamation that winter is nigh.
As of this morning, my knit stocking cap has replaced all my summer hats.
The leaves will continue to fall.
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Homemade Chews
Our dog, Asher is a chew toy destroyer. He loves to rip things to pieces. Since he also shows a passion for tug-of-war, rope toys give him a chance to do both tugging and destroying. Cyndie bought him a “ball” made of rope which was a genius idea for a toy.
He showed moderate interest in it until one section finally came loose so he could begin to shred it. Since then, his interest soared and he thrills in bringing it to us for some tugging that leads to holding it for him to chomp the unraveling rope.
Asher also takes great pleasure in tearing the stuffing out of fabric toys and then shredding the fabric. Watching him do this to something Cyndie just bought causes us mixed feeling$.
Well, it causes me mixed feelings. I love seeing him have fun but the idea of destroying something we just spent a lot of money on bothers my miserly mindset.
That led to an idea. I asked Cyndie if she would consider sewing together some “toys” out of found materials we have at home. I brought her a short length of natural rope and Cyndie produced a collection of heavy fabric pieces. We also dreamed up the idea of putting a hard chew he’s shown meager interest in, inside one of the toys Cyndie was sewing together.
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Cyndie then put one of his squeaky balls inside a little pillow she made.
He loved it! Surprisingly, he didn’t immediately rip the new toys to shreds. He mostly seemed to be trying to shake the pillow to death. The long, skinny thing had scrap pieces from a store-bought stuffed squirrel he chewed to pieces sewn onto each end. That seemed to fascinate him.
He spent a little more time trying to rip into that one, but it was still mostly intact as of last night.
With days of rain (plus predictions for slushy snow tomorrow) keeping us indoors for long spans of time lately, there haven’t been a lot of opportunities to get him running around outside. We keep trying to find other ways to expend some of Asher’s high-octane energy.
Methodically destroying sanctioned homemade chew toys gives him a good combination of mental stimulation with the tactile reward of chomping on something interesting.
I just hope we aren’t conditioning him to seek out any old thing lying around the house whenever that urge to gnaw on something shows up.
Meanwhile, I just finished putting together a small wooden puzzle to start my season.
Let it rain and snow. We’re good to go indoors.
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