Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Disastrous Footing
One of the things that make rain in February so awful is the aftermath. Any snow that has been packed down by driving, walking, or horse activity turns into a wobbly polished surface of slippery ice. It’s about the worst possible situation for the horses to move around on, especially on slopes like the ones in our paddocks.
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Yesterday morning, while I was doing my best to provide a way for the horses to cope with the slippery conditions, Mia made the mistake of trying to make her way downhill. It was a decision she couldn’t go back on once she made the first move. I was a bit traumatized to be witnessing such a precarious maneuver by a 1200-pound hooved beast. She slipped and stutter-stepped her way down the slope, ultimately avoiding the worst outcome and coming to a stop while still on her feet.
The frantic trip down the icy surface appeared to make it obvious to Mia that she wasn’t going to be able to move around on the ice even though she’d made it to that spot. She seemed to realize her only option was to get back up where she’d come from. After just a few seconds of hesitation, she began moving her hooves to head back up but there was more slipping than stepping happening.
She knew momentum was needed and bobbed her head and flexed enough muscle to attack the incline with some semblance of a run. Somehow, that slipping run was successful and she arrived back to the muddy surface around the overhang.
I was working on covering a pathway with old hay to provide footing to get down to the waterer.
I’d already set out buckets of water under the overhang because it was so treacherous for them to reach the waterer but offering the potential route down felt better than doing nothing at all.
I have no idea how long the icy condition will persist.
In the image above you can see the icy area is darker than the white snow in the distance. I may attempt to rake some sand and/or spread more old hay around on the slope to give the horses options for moving around. The scariest risk comes when one of the horses feels a need to get bossy and the target of their aggression panics in her hasty attempt to escape. If all four horses are confined to the limited space by the overhang, things can get a little testy.
Last night I closed gates to split them into two groups of two to minimize their bickering.
There is no place for shenanigans when the footing gets this disastrous.
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Fine Grill
Despite the dreary conditions yesterday –rain all day in February!?– Cyndie and I braved the low-visibility drive to meet our friends halfway for dinner on Valentine’s Day. Barb and Mike drove east from the far side of Lake Minnetonka and we drove west from our place and we arrived at the St. Paul Grill at the same time –ten minutes before our 6:00 reservation.
Their car was immediately in front of us in the line for valet service. What were the odds of that?
It is such a treat to be pampered by professionals on a night out at a fine-dining restaurant. The doorman wearing a deadman wool felt top hat guided us in dropping off and picking up our cars with wonderful panache. He had us feeling like Hollywood royalty.
Once seated at our table, we met our server, Hillary, who paced everything to a T with the support of a precision crew of runners and bussers.
I guess it proved the adage of getting what you pay for because this was not an inexpensive night out.
It would have been great if I’d captured a shot of the scrumptious food as soon as our plates arrived but doing anything other than eating when dinner is placed in front of me becomes near impossible.
By the time I thought to pull out my phone to capture a record of the aftermath, it was all napkins and coffee cups. You miss out on seeing the fancy Delmonico ribeye steaks, pan-fried walleye, signature hashbrowns with bacon and white onions, and asparagus spears with hollandaise.
Since it was Valentine’s Day, conversation was peppered with recollections of our first dates, engagements, and some foggy details about discovering first pregnancies. I won’t go into detail about the story of a card from a game that read: cooler of organs being misread as “cooler of orgasms.”
Our hearts were filled to overflowing with great friends and great food leading to a really great night out. We didn’t let all that rain dampen our spirits one tiny bit.
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Walking Outside
We achieved another milestone in Cyndie’s prolonged rehabilitation after the surgery to repair her shattered ankle bones. Yesterday, I invited her to take a little walk down our driveway for the first time since last October. With both crutches for support and wearing her new hiking shoes, Cyndie gingerly made her way along mostly dry pavement under warm sunshine.
As we arrived parallel to the barn, Mia took immediate notice and began prancing back and forth, studying what she was witnessing. At first, we took it as a sign of excitement over the discovery Cyndie was actually alive but then it occurred to us Mia was probably startled by the strange metal appendages being used for balance. Anything out of the ordinary always draws intense scrutiny from the horses.
After we passed the hay shed, Cyndie was feeling confident enough to navigate her way over the softening snowpack of the plowed pathway to the barn so she could greet the horses up close.
It was wonderful for me to see Cyndie with the horses again but the whole exercise revealed how far she is from being functional on two feet yet. She has made so much progress moving around in the kitchen I start to think she can do that anywhere. I think the convenient support of counters surrounding her in the kitchen is the secret to how confidently she stands and takes steps there. Now, if she could just take those counters with her when she walks outside, she’d do great.
All joking aside, she is making good progress and we both expect that to continue and become more impressive with each passing week.
There won’t be any athletic sports footwork in her near future, but I bet she will transition away from needing crutch support surprisingly soon. Especially after I hide them and claim I have no idea where they are.
I wouldn’t do anything as devious as that. Especially when she’s just as likely to misplace them on her own and decide to just move on without them.
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Still Melting
Sunny afternoons have become the norm and the melting of snow continues. A larger section of snow has broken off the garage roof.
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I left it lay and headed inside to watch Superbowl hype. I wasn’t very invested in the activity surrounding the game but enjoyed that the scoring was as balanced as it was. It provided a welcome distraction from more serious matters in the world for a few hours. What’s with all the unidentified objects getting shot down from our skies?
If my home team was one of the teams in that game I wouldn’t have enjoyed the stress. I probably would have gone out to shovel snow away from the garage door and read about the outcome after the fact.
I felt a little melted, myself yesterday. Our night out to Chanhassen on Saturday had us up well past a healthy bedtime. We arrived home well after midnight, which cut deeply into my hours of sleep. There is no sleeping-in beyond the normal feeding time of the horses in the morning, so hours of sleep lost at the beginning of my nights are not able to be paid back after sunrise.
It was grand being able to turn in at a decent hour last night. Unfortunately, it still feels like a Monday this morning, which is weird because, in my retirement, there is no real difference from one day to another.
Maybe since it is Monday the 13th it feels spookier. Why didn’t that become a thing? Sounds a lot more ominous than Friday the 13th to me.
I hope you don’t feel melted this morning, especially if you celebrated a little excessively for the big game last night. Congratulations to Kansas City fans!
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Prom Night
It might be a little early in the calendar year for the school prom but that’s where we were last night. Cyndie, Elysa, and I made the long drive to the Chanhassen Dinner Theater to attend a performance of “The Prom” because a Hays relation is in a leading role.
Elysa got us discounted tickets provided to MacPhail Center for Music which led to a festive number of connections throughout the evening.
In a wonderful web of fewer than six degrees of association, Cyndie and I met Austin Wahl. See if you can follow this:
- Our friend, Gary Larson hosts periodic music evenings in his home and invited me to play guitar.
- On one of these occasions, we meet his friend, Ned Wahl who also plays guitar.
- We soon learn that Ned already knows our daughter, Elysa through his interactions at MacPhail.
- Ned’s son, Austin takes a position teaching at MacPhail.
Elysa was exchanging greetings with multiple people from MacPhail connections early on. When she said, “This is Austin Wahl,” Cyndie and I exclaimed, “Ned’s son!”
That was a wonderful bonus on top of the main attraction of our night. Monty Hays performs in the role of Emma, an Indiana teen whose prom is canceled because she is a lesbian who wanted to bring her girlfriend as her date.
Monty’s dad is my nephew, Beau Hays, son of my brother, Elliott.
Family resemblance? If not clearly apparent in our faces, the mannerisms tend to be revealing.
We guessed that it has been 13 years since we have seen each other. Beau reminded me that he has yet to visit our place in Wisconsin because he missed the big family gathering in 2014 when a tire blew out on his way here.
We’ll have to remedy that because brief greetings amidst a swirl of energy during the opening weekend at a dinner theater among friends and multiple generations of family relations is a tad chaotic. They need to come to hang out with some horses and linger with us.
Opening night of “The Prom” was Friday but Monty’s parents, Beau and Katy, were out of town until yesterday, so this was their first time seeing the show. We gathered in the bar after the show to greet Monty where emotions ran high at the sight of not only Mom and Dad, but also unexpected relatives.
A rare sighting of these five Hays relations in one place at the same time.
Monty’s performance is stellar and the musical is an entertaining dose of humor, real-life drama, live music, great singing, and impressive dance routines.
A STORY OF LOVE, ACCEPTANCE AND EMBRACING THE PERSON YOU WERE MEANT TO BE!
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Slow Slide
Life for me on the ranch is slowly moving away from needing to be Cyndie’s primary caretaker toward our usual partnership in life’s adventures. Her recent advances in regaining independence, by way of driving again, allowed her to attend a gathering of some of her friends and to spend an overnight with another which granted me a little time on my own.
I found an entirely forgettable shoot-’em-up cowboy movie to watch last night that she wouldn’t have enjoyed.
It was the first time I have been truly alone in the house for over a decade because we no longer have any indoor pets. Of course, I miss Delilah and Pequenita but it would be misleading to imply I don’t love the freedom from the responsibilities of tending to them.
The warm February weather has restarted the snowpack’s slow slide from the shop/garage roof. In the shadow of late afternoon yesterday, I saw that a chunk had fallen to the concrete apron below.
This morning, the crust on the snow was frozen enough to support my weight as I pulled broken branches out of the pine tree that suffered the most damage from one of the heavy snowfalls. There were a LOT more branches than I realized.
The tree looks a little worse for the wear but not as bad as I feared. I plan to trim the remains of the broken limbs back to the main trunk. Don’t know if that will make it look any better, or not.
Yesterday afternoon there were hunting dogs roaming our woods and howling off and on between scrambling around with their noses to the ground. These are from the coyote hunters that patrol the area and as such, are always a welcome sight. From my vantage point, it looked like they were roughly following the usual traffic pattern of the elusive fox that roams this area. That doesn’t mean the coyotes don’t travel the same pathways, but I’ve yet to catch sight of those ghostly predators.
At least I’ve seen and have pictures of the fox.
Never did hear any gunshots so their level of success yesterday is unknown.
It feels like we are on a slow slide toward the end of winter. Knowing full well that doesn’t mean we won’t experience more winter weather in March or April, I am holding back on any wild plans for our landscape post-snow.
I’m just going to lean back and enjoy riding the slide.
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Survivor’s Guilt
Every time incredibly tragic situations are reported in the news for days on end I begin to question my luck. How is it that I was born into the comfort I enjoyed throughout my lifetime? Lately, it has been the crumbled concrete buildings in Turkey and Syria that are causing me to wonder about how my life experience compares to a baby found alive in the rubble, still attached to its dead mother by the umbilical cord.
How many challenges lie ahead for that child and the rest of the survivors in the damaged areas?
Secure in our warm house with a solid roof and sturdy walls, I tucked myself beneath comforting blankets in a wonderful bed and slept safely last night. How do I deserve such luxury?
Even while a large number of people were attacking my nation’s capital in an attempt to overthrow our democracy in 2021, I was safe at home experiencing no physical threat. I felt a lot of shame and embarrassment, but otherwise, the impact on me at home was imperceptible.
People around the world live in situations of war, droughts, famine, overcrowding, poverty, or crime that impact their daily existence. Why have I been able to live free of these challenges? Obviously, there is no guarantee that I won’t suffer this kind of fate in the future, but at my age, I will still feel lucky that I had so many good years if things all of a sudden turn bad now.
There but for the grace of God, go I.
I gained a new insight yesterday about how the hay boxes get pulled away from the back wall of the overhang. Don’t know why I never considered this before. I had set out the feed pans for the horses and while they were eating, I was scoopin’ poop and filling up my wheelbarrow. I didn’t see what provoked it but I looked up just as Light was lunging toward Swings.
In her moment of panicked reaction, Swings’ emergency evacuation from the vicinity cause her to knock the hay box almost 90°. The repositioned box had nothing to do with frivolity or overzealous efforts to consume hay. It was simply collateral damage from a dramatic escape.
I verbally shared my unhappiness about the incident with Light but she showed little interest in my opinion about the issue, whatever it was.
Ending on a positive note, I’m pleased to report that Cyndie has recovered enough to drive a car on her own again. It’s been 3-and-a-half months since she drove a vehicle. That’s a very large step in regaining her independence.
I can say that my survival of being her full-time chauffeur during that period has been entirely guilt-free.
However, there have been moments of wondering how I’ve been so lucky as to not be the one who broke an ankle last November.
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Fun Frolic
For those who don’t have concerns about melting temperatures during winter, yesterday was gorgeous on the ranch. After feeding two of the horses an extra portion at noon, I decided to walk out into the hay field to see if any of them might follow me out into the deeper snow.
Light and Mia took immediate notice of my unusual behavior, walking to the opening in the fence to think about their next move. Mia decided to approach me. Light turned around and took a few steps back toward the barn.
Mia made her way right up to me and stopped for an exchange of greetings, sniffing to make sure I was who she suspected me to be. Then she decided to just keep going and walked past me further up the hill.
When I turned back around toward the barn, I was shocked to see that Light had made it all the way up behind me without making a sound. I have no idea how horses are able to approach so quickly with such stealth.
I stayed put as the horses meandered off on their own, heading toward one of their favored corners of the field. Making their way toward the fence line, Light started to pick up the pace. A trot became a run and after making a turn, the two chestnuts broke out in a glorious top-speed sprint back to the paddock.
After navigating the sharp turn through the gate at high velocity, they vented all their amped-up energy by rearing on their hind legs and vigorously turning around in loops. It’s incredibly invigorating to witness up close, horses choosing to exert themselves to such extreme on their own terms.
I think I had as much fun watching the horses as they had frolicking in the uncharacteristic warmth of the beautiful afternoon.
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Winter Lull
We are enjoying a pause in the harsh, cold winter temperatures this week. It truly is a welcome relief for those of us who have to do things outdoors every day no matter what the weather is like. Hanging out with our horses, cleaning up around them, and feeding them, I get a very good sense of how much more at ease they are now that we’ve come out of the latest blast of extreme cold.
Those wicked cold mornings have the horses looking so stoic as they stiffly brace themselves against the stinging bite of the frigid air. They do very little moving to conserve what little warmth is lingering under their winter growth right up to the moment they prepare for the delivery of their feed pans by romping about, running, and kicking to jump-start their circulation.
In contrast, their lack of stiffness yesterday morning energized me. The horses radiated a feeling of ease and contentedness that stood out more than usual because of how different it was from just days before.
There has been a lull in snowfall for many more days than the cold temps, and the snow in the paddocks is getting thoroughly beaten down as a result. It remains deep enough in the fields that they have barely ventured beyond the fences but there are some tracks out there.
It’s unclear to me how many of those footprints are evidence of new activity or old tracks emerging as sunny afternoons have started to shrink back some of the coverage.
Yesterday afternoon, I lingered for a long time, leaning against a gate to watch their activity after they had all finished eating from the feed pans. They were just being horses with no urgent agenda.
It made me want to be a horse along with them —a horse during a warm spell on a February day.
When it’s cold again, I want to be a human living indoors.
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Just Like
The Grammy Award for Song of the Year went to Bonnie Raitt on Sunday night for the title song of her latest album, “Just Like That.” I’m willing to bet that most of you haven’t listened to the song. I hope you will use five minutes of your time to listen while following the lyrics. She has written a precious heartstring-puller.
Before you decide to focus on the song, watch this video of her reaction to the announcement of her win and hear her acceptance speech:
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You can read the lyrics while listening to the song here:
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You might want to have a tissue handy.
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Relative Something 