Archive for the ‘Wintervale Ranch’ Category
Costly Neglect
I have done it again. For whatever reason I have yet to fully grasp, I have grown complacent about adhering to my prescribed daily regiment of walking 1/2 hour per day, and doing repetitions of a few simple strengthening exercises. Along with that neglect, I have heaped on a variety of risky behaviors like lifting things that are heavier than I should be lifting, raking and tilling muddy clay, or, as I discovered yesterday, bending over to entice one of the cats with fresh catnip.
I have degenerative disc disease. In the morning at work yesterday, I noticed a twinge that alerted me to be cognizant of my condition. I took note, but only superficially. As in, I will do something about this later. It didn’t take long to really get my attention, and cause me to change my behavior, after the phone in my pants pocket began to ring, and I tried to quickly get up to leave the area and answer the call. That focus on quickly getting to another room overlooked the part about getting up out of the chair first, and my body abruptly nabbed my attention with a searing pain in my lower back that caused an immediate abort, and sat me right back down in that chair.
I got the message, or so I thought. I took some ibuprofen, and did a few bendy-stretchies after lying on the carpet in the boss’s office for a time. When I got home at the end of the work-day, I took a second dose of ibuprofen and laid on the floor to rest. After a while, I felt a significant reduction of pain, and was able to do a few of my exercises. I figured I could renew my walking routine before the day’s end.
With the pain now subsided, I absent-mindedly began moving around the house. (How quickly do I forget?) I was showing Cyndie how the cats appeared to have only minor interest in the fresh catnip I brought home from work, and leaned forward, dangling it for Pequenita…
BAM!
I think a disc blew out.
I know an expletive flew out.
That is the weirdest pain. It is like getting punched in the kidney, but not really. There is no external sensation of the blow landing. It is what it must feel like to have your innards punched. Whatever that nerve is, running along those discs, it sure doesn’t like being pressed. The muscles of my whole body seem to recoil. They want to all give out, and drop me to the floor, except, the nerve doesn’t like that either, so then the muscles have to flex. Suddenly I find myself locked in a precarious position where I can’t go up, and I can’t go down.
It’s comical, really. Unless you are the spouse standing right there, in full alarm mode, trying to figure out how to help. That part isn’t so funny.
In truth, I have learned that the body tends to over-react, in attempt to protect me from doing something that might lead to pain. At the first hint of trouble, it tenses up, pulling me back from doing anything brash. I end up walking like a little old man, taking little baby steps.
I’m grateful for that protection, actually. I’ve explained what happens when I get too nonchalant. It’s tricky, but somewhere in there, I would like to find the happy medium.
By the end of the evening, I was able to get myself walking again, albeit gingerly.
I am back to practicing being mindful of my actions, and have renewed motivation to resume the exercise routine I have been neglecting. Let’s hope.
Got Power?
We’ve got auxiliary power. Wintervale Ranch now has an automatic backup generator that will provide power to our essential appliances/services during occasions when there is a loss of electricity from our energy co-op. That is one more piece of the puzzle now in place.
It is not easy to convince me to buy something that we don’t ever want to use, but the snowstorm we suffered early in the month of May this year, which left us without power for over 28-hours, helped me to feel this would be a smart purchase. At that time, we lost the ability to pump water from our well, and keep our furnace and refrigerator running. That will no longer be a concern.
I stayed home from the day-job yesterday to supervise the installation of a unit that will kick in automatically, and run off our propane. They had to work in the rain. (What a surprise that it rained here again!) Regardless, the job went relatively easy and by mid-afternoon, we had it running and successfully tested. I was a little leery about how noisy it would be, but it wasn’t too bad. It isn’t a desirable sound, but considering the service it will be providing in a time of need, I think we can tolerate the disturbance.
It feels a lot like buying insurance. We now have a backup generator, and we hope that we never need to use it.
Creative Solution
When I got home from work yesterday, I immediately changed into grubby clothes and headed toward the barn. It hadn’t rained at all since we started packing the new loop of driveway –by hand– on Sunday, and we got a peek at the sun toward the end of the day yesterday. I wanted to complete this phase of the project while conditions were good, and hopefully take advantage of a chance for more sunny days to come this week.
It was grueling work, but very rewarding. About the time I was running out of energy, Cyndie arrived home, with pizza! I invited her to park her car and join me for a picnic. We ate right there, seated on the lumber stacked up for the hay shed.
The part of the loop that remained to be raked was the wettest yet, and was going to be very difficult to pack. I seriously thought about getting a big piece of plywood to kneel on, and then finishing it like it was wet concrete. Before it came to that, Cyndie returned, now in her grubby clothes, carrying one of her heavy kitchen anti-fatigue mats. She intended to use it to spread her weight enough to pack it with her feet, without making deep foot prints in the wet mud. A wonderfully creative solution that turned out to be quite effective.
It allowed us to reach our goal of having the full length of the loop smoothed out in time for the promised sun and warm weather for the rest of the week. Hopefully, that will give me a chance to take it to the next level: driving across the loop with the garden tractor in a few days time. To be safe, I just might get out that big piece of plywood anyway, taking Cyndie’s example, and put it down where I will drive, to spread the weight of the 4 wheels.
Mud Management
Through the thick and thin of challenges we have faced since we moved to this beautiful place in the country, the one thing that remains solid for us is our foundation of friends and family, near and far. Yesterday was a priceless coincidence of hearing from many of them, all in a very short span of time –primarily because Cyndie happened to check her email, and found messages from both Portugal and Guatemala. We also enjoyed phone calls from family in Boston and on the road home from Hayward, from my friends on the bike trip, and we were blessed by a weekend visit of our son, Julian, and his girlfriend, Allison.
The folks on the bike trip did indeed get wet yesterday. That is one part of the trip that I don’t mind missing at all. I was able to enjoy the rain that fell at our place, in perfect amounts to water our freshly planted grass. Unfortunately, the rain also contributed to keeping the wet spots by the barn, extremely wet.
On Friday, when Cyndie was doing some mowing along the driveway, she got herself stuck, and called me to help get her out. When I arrived, she said the front wheel dropped into a hole. Sure enough, it did. To my surprise, when we backed the tractor out of the hole, I discovered the hole was full of water! It might be hard to discern from the picture on the right, but the spot where this hole full of water is located, is uphill from the barn.
It seems really strange to me how the ground at high spots around here, holds water which logic tells me should be draining downhill to the lowest areas. How can we expect the ground around the barn to dry out, if the areas uphill from there are still saturated?
Out of frustration for waiting to be able to make progress down by the barn, I decided to see if I could advance the project, working by hand. There is just no way they can bring any heavy equipment in to work on this new drive, that doesn’t end up just making it worse. While Julian mowed some of the extremely tall grass by the new driveway loop we are trying to create, I began to fill in the ruts left by the skid loader the last time the crew was here.
We figure that when this area finally begins to dry out, we’d rather have it drying in the condition we want to see, not the rutted mess it has been thus far. After I got about a third of it smoothed out with a rake, Julian and I tapped it down with our shoes. It was so spongy, we couldn’t use anything else. We tested running the garden tractor over it, but that was too much.
The best way to describe the condition of the dirt in the wettest spots is that it is like freshly poured concrete. I was basically troweling it with the rake. I could support my weight with one foot on a spot that was a bit firmer, and then just tap the surface with my other foot, to erase the rake marks.
When it gets dry enough, I’ll go to the next level by driving the garden tractor over it. With any luck, by the time the water is completely gone, we’ll have a foundation of driveway that is as hard as concrete.
More Rain
This morning, it is raining, …again. But that is okay. We got smart. We figured out a way to appreciate the excessive wetness. Yesterday we planted grass on the two scars left by the recent work in our yards. On the back hill, we are covering the dirt left from the geothermal project, and in the front, it was the septic drain lines that were dug up and repaired.
Let it rain.
It doesn’t seem to make any difference to the area down by the barn, because it has just stayed wet, no matter what. If it is already wet, I am losing my ability to care if it gets any wetter. For as soggy as it remains down there, I’m thinking we won’t be able to have the fence work done until fall. I honestly don’t know what to expect. Yesterday, before the current precipitation moved in, there was still standing water on the driveway in front of the barn.
The fence crew cannot bring in their equipment to do the work without creating a disaster of mud and ruts. We’ve already got enough of those ruts. We will wait. What else can we do?
The only problem with today’s band of precipitation moving across the state is that it is soaking and chilling my friends on the bike ride. This is obviously not the reason I didn’t go on the ride this year, but I will admit that it is one aspect of that adventure that I am very happy to be missing.
My friends have been generous in sharing photos from the trip, giving me the opportunity to see some of the smiling faces of a few of the wonderful people who I only get to see this one time of year. They are looking great, and it gives me good energy to see them, even if only through pictures.
They ride north out of Ashby, MN, this morning, pedaling through the rain to Frazee, which isn’t far from Detroit Lakes, MN, just east of Fargo, ND.
Since the precipitation appears to be moving from south-to-north, maybe the wind is at their backs.
Consolation Prizes
I still sort of want to tantrum, but not quite as much as yesterday. By the time I am writing this, my friends have probably already ridden double-digit miles, on the first leg of a week of cycling. There is some consolation for my not making the trip, in which I will attempt to find solace. I got to sleep in my bed last night. I was able to “sleep in” this morning. I will have a week with my wife that I didn’t expect, and it’s a week that is completely open and unscheduled –except for that pesky work thing that is the whole point of my needing to miss the trip in the first place.
Lately, the previously shy and reserved Mozyr has taken to hanging out with me when I’m not in the bedroom. If you recall, he is virtually banished from the bedroom by his sister, Pequenita. Now Mozyr likes to pace around and through my legs, rubbing as much as possible, when I am in the kitchen or bathroom. He has taken to sitting beside me on the couch when I settle in for a while there. He stands on the edge of the tub when I shower.
In the last few days, he has even jumped up on the counter when I am at the mirror in the bathroom. This is a surprise, because it is so out of character for him, from what we know since we brought him home last fall. In fact, it is very Pequenita-like behavior. But, maybe just to out-do her, he decides to take it one step further. He not only gets up on the counter under the mirror, he settles into the sink, making himself comfortable while keeping me company.
It makes it rather complicated when I’m trying to brush my teeth, but it’s great to have him as my new buddy in the evening bathroom routine.
Now, if I could just get him to make me laugh as much as all my cycling friends do…
Forward Momentum
I’m not confident that I can adequately convey how thrilling it is to finally have our septic issue resolved. On Monday, as I pulled up to the house after work, I spotted Cyndie out in the yard, shoveling dirt into the channels of the drain line. The repairs had been completed earlier in the day, after over a week of waiting for the weather to dry up enough to allow the work to commence.
The two projects that were underway on the high ground, around the house, have been able to proceed, while everything at lower elevations has ground to a halt. Our geothermal furnace installation is complete, and the septic system is fixed. All that is left is, to grow some grass over the two dirt spots.
When we got the septic lines re-buried, and raked out all the dirt, it was possible to finish mowing the remainder of the front lawn. Since we were dressing up the area, I cut down the dead pine tree that had been staring at us since the day we moved in. I wanted to wait, to be certain there were no signs of life. We are certain.
We put the new trimmer to a good inaugural use, and then Cyndie raked out a big section to de-thatch the grass.
It looks great!
Overall, it may be a modest set of accomplishments, but it is forward momentum, and that has significant meaning to us lately. I’m hoping something might rub off on other projects. Maybe we could see something of a trend develop. Forward progress would be a very welcome phenomenon.
Cat Nap
When there is too much going on in life, it is not uncommon for people to drop something from their days that seems expendable… hours of sleep. Even though I know better, sleep is one thing I sacrifice all too often. Now that I have been spending significant hours on the highway in a commute to and from work, lack of sleep has become a scary hazard. That afternoon drive home has been a real struggle for me, more times than I care to admit.
Regular readers here will be able to recognize the times when I needed to cut short my time for writing, and post a quick picture or poem. I love to write, and will admit that it is too easy for me to borrow hours from the block meant for sleeping, to play on the keyboard, hunting for words.
The other day, in a pause between other commitments, I tried to do a little work on the laptop. I was probably composing a poem about slumber! I think Pequenita recognized I was doing more napping that typing, and decided to join me. How could I resist? Cyndie ran for her camera when she discovered this scene of my nodding off in front of the computer, and being kept warm by a napping partner.
Some Days
Some days, you eat the bear, some days, the bear eats you. I am growing weary of the wetness that has ground our projects to a halt, and have noticed a sense of dread settling in. That bugs me, that sense of dread, because it is so familiar that it carries with it a feeling of being “right,” even though, now I know better. I don’t like how comfortable I am with that feeling of doom and gloom. That is where I spent a good part of my life, so it is not a surprise that my simply deciding to think and act differently, hasn’t immediately erased the years of memory.
There has been some added stress at the day-job, which is pressuring me to the extreme, and looks like it may continue for an unknown duration. The ‘not knowing’ feeds into my stress, partly because it is putting other plans at risk. I was supposed to leave for a week of biking this coming Friday. I have no idea how that is going to work.
Yesterday, after having driven to the city to work on a Saturday, I got home and found Cyndie had accomplished a lot of mowing. That eases my mind a bit. She wasn’t able to get to it all, but at least the place doesn’t look entirely neglected. We can’t make it look as good as we’d like because there are so many obstacles hindering the job. She has to navigate areas of standing water, huge divots from heavy equipment driven on the property, lumber piles, dirt piles, ditches, posts and ropes holding trees up, and the little flags marking where utilities are buried. We’ve lived with those dang flags for almost as long as we’ve been here, back in October. That’s how long our projects have been underway.
This long duration of things being in disarray is one of the stresses that drives me batty. I just want to turn the corner where we can start putting the things we have made a mess of, back in order again.
I found Cyndie working on the back hill when I pulled up to the house. She was working on the dirt scar left by the geothermal boring project. I changed clothes and headed out to help. It struck me that this was just one of a variety of things we have in mind to work on. Last weekend, it was the labyrinth that was on her mind. We didn’t make great progress on that, and the weather was lousy, so we switched to the landscape pond. Now, instead of returning to the labyrinth, we are on the back hill. We just chip away on whatever wins our attention at any given moment.
It all needs to be done, but my concrete-sequential mindset drives me to want to work in order. Cyndie’s tendency toward random, like the way she mows the lawn, allows her to be comfortable working on anything at any time. It is a good exercise for me to just go along with her.
The work on the dirt of the back hill turned out to be grueling. It is far from dry, and we were getting sprinkled on as we worked, eventually turning into a steady rain. The majority of what has been exposed is clay. The first goal was to just break up and rake out the ruts of the tire tracks left by their equipment. Then she wants to plant grass again. I think we are going to want to bring in some black dirt. The clay was just brutal, and stuck to our tools, turning them into useless heavy clubs every few minutes.
I gave up, when it turned from sprinkles to rain, but Cyndie kept at it, and finished the last section before coming in to wash off the mud and get dry.
What a long way we have come from the extreme drought conditions that prevailed when we arrived here last fall.
Cat Attacks
After 4 months of what appeared to be a relatively equal feline partnership in our home back at the end of March, our two cats, Pequenita and Mozyr, entered into a mode of battling for position and control. At the time, I wrote a poem about the night the new conflict materialized. It surprised and frustrated us, bringing discord where there had previously been none. At the rescue organization from which we adopted them, they had been together in a room housing multiple cats, so we surmised they would already know each other. We brought home one female and one male, spayed and neutered. They are not biologically related, but we refer to them as siblings. They are “adopted” siblings.
Mozyr, the male, took a long time to warm up to us and his surroundings, finding solace as far under our bed as he could get. Pequenita was immediately friendly and craved as much petting and scratching attention as we could provide. There didn’t appear to be any conflict between them.
In a very short time, they were both curling up on the end of our bed, sleeping nights with us. Since Mozyr was almost always keeping himself at arm’s length, having him showing comfort in being next to us on the bed brought us a lot of satisfaction.
My limited experience living with cats left me clueless about the conflict that suddenly erupted. Both Cyndie and I wanted to intercede and bring things back to the way they were during the early months after they arrived here. We have since done some reading and learned that what they are demonstrating now is classic feline behavior. We are begrudgingly working toward accepting the odd hierarchy they seem to be establishing.
What bums us the most is that Pequenita has claimed our bedroom as her solitary turf. Mozyr is absolutely not welcome, and the majority of time he respects that, laying down on the rug outside the door.
Pequenita is smaller than him, but she has been the aggressor every time I have witnessed a conflict occur. Maybe it is because she is smaller than him. She controls the engagements, and takes it to him almost anywhere in the house, …until meal time.
We have two separate bowls for wet food, and they each dive in as soon as it is served. After a few gobbles, Mozyr will walk over to the other bowl, and take over eating where his sister started. She always backs off, appearing very timid, and walks over to finish eating in the bowl he just left. He shows her that he can eat whatever he wants, wherever he wants.
When dinner is over, she is back in charge. He will be totally innocent, snoozing on a chair beside us, and she will pounce up and swat him. He doesn’t fight back. He just takes off running, usually retreating under the dining table.
I keep hoping he will get fed up and bop her back one of these days, but he seems too much of a gentle cat for that. I feel sorry for him, and want to admonish her for being such a brute, but now we know better. They are cats. They’ll behave the way cats behave with each other.
We are just their servants. Our place is to observe and respect them.
Relative Something 