Night Scare
This morning, I am contemplating fourteen years that have passed since we moved from the Twin Cities to western Wisconsin. It’s good for me to look at pictures from when we first arrived to see how much the trees have grown. It happens so gradually that it’s easy to lose sight of the change.
While I was looking back, I liked seeing how the inside of the house looked before we filled it with furniture.
For the first time in all these years, I had an uneasy feeling that someone might be lingering around the house in the middle of the night. Cyndie spent the night in the Cities at a friend’s house after the costume party they attended, so I was alone with Asher. I had fallen asleep at a reasonably early hour and was deep in slumber when Asher interrupted the serenity with a sudden outburst of barking.
That alone wasn’t all that unusual, and I chose to ignore him and keep sleeping, assuming it was a passing raccoon or herd of deer that he sensed. Maybe whatever it was wasn’t actually passing. Asher kept barking. I kept trying to sleep, mostly successfully, while his shouting became my white noise.
Sometime after 1 a.m., I came to again and realized he was still barking. Poor guy. He must be getting hoarse. I got up to pee, and he noticed and came to find me. I tried soothing him, and he followed me back to the bedroom to settle down and go back to sleep. Unfortunately, I didn’t. As I lay there, my mind decided I could smell cigarette smoke.
It took a while to clear my head, but it sent me down a rabbit hole of wondering what imaginary scenario might be playing out. It helped that Asher was no longer bothered.
In all the years we have been here, there have been no known prowlers. It is a very unlikely probability. I’m writing last night’s anxiety off as a momentary loss of confidence due to Cyndie’s absence. In reality, she wouldn’t have let Asher keep barking as long as I did, and we all would have been back to sleep much quicker.
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Didn’t Do
Soon after I married Cyndie and settled into a routine of occasional dinners with her family, I noticed a pattern in their table conversations. When her father asked, “What have you done for your country today?” it was time to recite a list of worthy accomplishments you’d achieved that day. Cyndie tells me he was asking that since they were little kids.
The question was loaded with the implication that you had better have done something worthwhile or face the shame and embarrassment of receiving a disapproving scowl. I’m confident that Fred was well aware of my frequent attempts to fluff my reports by stretching my descriptions or playing devil’s advocate and admitting I did nothing.
I’m a fan of the thought that happiness is doing nothing all day and, at the end of the day, resting.
Some days, I’d like to get credit for the things I didn’t do.
- I didn’t drive my car and produce auto exhaust, and I didn’t contribute to traffic or wear and tear on our roads.
- I didn’t make any non-essential purchases.
- I didn’t take an airplane flight.
- I didn’t get into any arguments.
- I didn’t yell at any kids.
- I didn’t harm any animals.
- I didn’t send any campaign spam messages to clutter people’s inboxes.
Yesterday, I didn’t nap and barely had a chance to do nothing.
Cyndie volunteered to clear excess leaves from the grass around the barn and hay shed where I hadn’t mowed the last time I cut all the rest of the property. It looks a lot better now; cropped shorter than usual to be ready for winter.
With the mowing done, I decided to take a chance and park the mower behind the ATV in the garage, in case I’m done mowing for the season. Before I did that, though, I figured I should bring the plow blade forward to where it could be reached in case it ever snows more than a few inches at a time this winter.
We also had several packs of extra shingles that I wanted to stow away in the back of the shop garage. That triggered a full-on garage cleaning with Cyndie’s help that neither of us had planned on doing. Luckily, we were both in similar mindsets about things we uncovered that weren’t deserving of taking up space anymore.
Now the recycle bin is full, the garbage bin is full, and there is a bunch of stuff at the end of the driveway beneath a “FREE” sign.
As light was fading on the day, I hustled to finish a woodworking project for Cyndie that she needed to have before she leaves this morning for an overnight with friends. She needed a gavel for a costume party, so I offered to make her one.
It looks like it’s from “The Flintstones,” but her costume is a famous judge who was known by three initials. It’s a rustic gavel. The handle is a section from a grapevine in our woods, and the head is a piece of insect-carved branch from an ash tree.
One thing I’m hoping she doesn’t do is pound the gavel with any force because the glue hasn’t had sufficient time to cure all the way.
With Cyndie gone today, there’s a possibility that Asher and I could turn this into a do-nothing day without much effort. [see what I did there…?]
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Actively Ignoring
One of the things I find myself enjoying during this midterm election season is what I call “actively ignoring” the onslaught of messages from campaigns. Since I have never opened one of the messages to see if there is an unsubscribe feature, they just keep coming.
I like to move them to the trash as fast as they arrive. Bing, bang, boom. Delete, delete, delete. For all of the energy someone puts into these solicitations, it is getting effortlessly tossed aside without a glance.
That’s not entirely true. I do get some pleasure out of noticing the first few words of phrasing to “not bother me,” “not asking for money,” “not begging,” “hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” “please, please, please,” “this is the last, last time.”
It’s an attempt at clickbait that never comes close to working for them.
It reminds me a little of the NY Times games subscription campaign where they have been announcing the last day to get their “75% off price” for several years. Sure. Last day. Uh huh.
There’s a smug self-satisfaction I get from not wasting any more time than it takes to swipe left on my phone to trash each email.
The roofing crew finished every last detail yesterday and did an impressive job of cleaning up after the very messy process of reroofing. However, even after their thorough effort to pick up after themselves, plenty of shrapnel can be found by someone with a keen eye.
It’s a little like searching for jigsaw puzzle pieces, which is something my brain enjoys. Some of the scraps I found were about the size of a puzzle piece.
After the roofers left, I got a call from the company owner saying he would stop out this morning with a magnet for one last sweep and to pick up anything the guys missed, so maybe I’ll have to resort to a real puzzle to feed that part of my brain.
Not that our weather is cool enough yet to inspire indoor projects.
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Update Mode
I guess we are in update mode. Roofers started arriving to our house before it was even light out yesterday morning. While we are in the midst of getting a new roof, it came to my attention (thank you, Patty) that my Relative Something posts might not be showing up the way they had before on readers’ devices, since a software update forced me to edit in block mode.
When I asked about the widgets in the right margin staying in view all the time, I learned it is related to the WordPress theme I’ve used since 2009, created before block editing became a thing.
Just like our aging roof shingles have forced us into updating, I’m feeling WordPress is succeeding in dragging me, kicking and screaming, into updating the theme I am using for this blog. I took a peek at some options yesterday while our roof was being rocked with banging staplers and scraping pry bars, and ran into more options than my old brain can process. 1,634 Block Themes, to be exact.
It’s going to take me some time to come up with a new look for Relative Something. I hope you will bear with me if you suddenly find things unrecognizable one morning. In the meantime, I’m limping along with this old theme in the new block editor mode.
We have a great crew of hard-working, good-humored guys roaring through the project with an artistic flair that makes it appear like a choreographed dance.
Cyndie and I were thrilled with how well Asher coped with all the chaos of activity and noise. Sure, he had his moments of barking at the arrival of strange vehicles and the number of people he wanted to check out, but he settled down and napped throughout the majority of the noisy day.
They made enough progress on the first day to guarantee they will be able to finish today, barring any unforeseen complications.
The weather certainly isn’t something they need to worry about. Warm sunshine and little wind made for ideal working conditions yesterday, and the forecast for today is expected to be more of the same. Great weather for working outside.
Not particularly inspiring to stay indoors and hunt through WordPress themes for something that I want to define me for the next how-ever-many-years I can make this last. Maybe I’ll settle into that exercise when things return to the usual serenity of our natural surroundings after the roofers are gone and a rainy day arrives to give me a good excuse to not be outside.
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Manic Fixation
Lately, Asher the wonderdog has become hyperfocused on capturing mice that have taken up residence in tree cavities. Obviously relying on his nose to tell him when a rodent is home, their presence will flip a switch in him that blocks out the rest of the world and gives him super-endurance to stay on task until he gets what he’s after.
He ripped the bark off this little tree and crunched and chewed the wood for so long that I grew tired of watching him and started doing something else nearby. There was no reason to interrupt his fun. Finally, I spotted him with his prize, a big, fat mouse in his mouth. He dropped it, pushed it with his nose, satisfied himself that it was out of its misery, and then instantly lost interest in it.
Apparently, his primary interest is in the hunt more than the capture.
Later, he took a new interest in an old log that once had a mouse in it. The first time he zeroed in on it, I watched as a mouse jumped out one side and ran off while Asher chewed on the other end. The fact that he was fixated on it again could only mean one thing. There must be a new tenant. That afternoon, I did have another agenda, so I asked him to keep on task with me and deal with the log later.
He couldn’t do it. The solution he settled on was to simply bring the log with us.
That’s motivation. It was really challenging for him to hold it up and walk at the same time. I didn’t honestly believe there could still be a mouse in there, but I know better than to question his nose.
Asher got away from us yesterday afternoon while we were working on clearing the drainage swale that forms the southern border of our property. Cyndie walked off to locate him, and I soon spotted her driving down the driveway to search for him along the road. Suddenly, I thought I heard yelling at a neighboring property; the one with a horde of cats, indoor and out.
It sounded like, “Go HOME now!” which made sense if it was Asher.
As I was calling Cyndie on the phone, her car came into view, and she was passing that driveway. I told her what I thought I was hearing, and just as I got the words out, I saw Asher running out of their driveway.
“He’s right behind you!” I excitedly said.
I’m assuming we’ve burned up some precious goodwill with those neighbors for a while. May need to bake them some “apology cookies.”
I much prefer Asher being fixated on rodents in our woods over the place down the road with cats.
“Property!” I keep reminding him whenever his attention strays to anywhere beyond our boundaries. When I say it sternly, he quickly turns his focus back to our pathways. Unfortunately, the word and concept don’t seem to stick when we aren’t around to reinforce the command.
I can’t really blame him. The enticing odors wafting in the wind certainly aren’t constrained by property lines.
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Forced Learning
Here goes nothing. It’s not that I didn’t see this coming. The WordPress software I use to publish this blog has updated again in a way that has made my old mode of composing disappear. The world wants me to use Block mode to create my web pages, but I prefer the Classic mode.
When I selected a host for creating a website for my high school reunion, I had to use Block mode. The “efficiencies” this technology offers are cumbersome to me and do not make it easier to control the way things look.
WordPress offers a block called “Classic Editor” that apparently fools me into thinking I am in classic mode while typing inside one of its “Blocks.” I’m underwhelmed.
Here is my attempt to insert an image:
I was previously able to modify the border width and color, but that feature has disappeared from where I used to find it.
I’m going to pretend I’m not bothered by the software changes, in an attempt to look like the calm and carefree horses in the image above.
There was a little excitement regarding the horses last night when Cyndie received a message that “This Old Horse” has a plan for replacing Mia when she is adopted at the end of this month. Since we don’t know what the plan is, Cyndie will be checking with folks to find out what she can learn.
She is hoping to have a chance to meet the horse before it is brought to our place. I’m thinking about what the dynamics will be like for the other three horses when these changes happen. We will be closing some gates to keep the new horse isolated for a time while they all adjust to the new situation. It’ll be all new for me, as I’ve never been involved with these kinds of changes among members of a herd.
Hopefully, it will be easier for me than getting used to changes in software that eliminate features I used and force new ways of doing things that I don’t find intuitive at all.
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Mulching Leaves
As we near the latter half of the season of falling leaves, with the grass continuing to grow like summer, I find the sight of our freshly mowed lawn and leaves doubly rewarding. Mulching the leaves with the mower is a two-step process, usually, but it’s so, so worth it. With the mower deck rigged for mulching, I will mow some sections twice, crisscrossing the cut at a ninety-degree angle for best results.
I’d like to be able to say it beats raking, but there are places where the leaves get too deep, and I have to get off the mower and do a cursory sweep with the rake to get things to a reasonable level the mower can effectively chew through. It helps to run the blades at the higher speed setting, but I do that sparingly, or it’ll drain the batteries faster than I can finish everything I’m trying to accomplish.
Maybe the reason I find the look so appealing is that I know it won’t look like this for very long. Leaves will continue to fall, and grass will continue to grow. The last month of mowing grass these days comes with a question each time as to whether it will be the last time for the season or not. I always hope it’s the last time, but too often it turns out to be not so.
Thankfully, there are more areas of our property where leaves are the preferred ground cover than there are places I mow.
As we head into our 15th year here, I am a little surprised at myself for not converting more areas from mowed grass to natural ground cover. To my credit, I have stopped mowing plenty of areas that were mowed when we first moved here. Each spring, I try to select an area where I can reduce the dimensions of mowed grass by some reasonable percentage.
It’s a bit of a balancing act, because both Cyndie and I want some mowed grass, but we both equally appreciate the natural areas.
Here’s hoping it won’t be long before I stop writing about mowing for a few months. It remains to be seen whether the subject of plowing and shoveling snow will come up this winter or not, given the super El Niño intensity I keep reading about.
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Breakfast
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favorites
emerge organically
a surprisingly delicious meal
especially breakfasts
honey whole wheat toasted to perfection
buttered
just right
with a newly discovered cereal
whole almonds!
whole grain flakes!
pumpkin seeds!
dried cranberries!
dried cherries!
crunchy flavor potpourri
not to discount the equally delectable
lunch and dinner appeals
it’s just that
breakfast comes first
more often at home
where it’s personal
sometimes in pajamas
if a person wears them
so as not to get a chill
while reading the news
and listening to tunes
savoring each and every delicious bite
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Creepy Feeling
The month of October encompasses the anniversary of our arrival at this property in Wisconsin. The actual date is a little blurry because the closing ended up being delayed until a few days after we had already moved all our stuff in. We have reached the completion of our 14th year here. At the end of the month, it will be our 15th Halloween in Beldenville.
I had an entirely creepy experience at 2 a.m. yesterday. My bladder had already woken me, and to kill some time before falling back to sleep, I was solving a puzzle on my smartphone when I felt something moving on my forearm. Turning the phone around to illuminate the spot, through blurry eyes, I could see a tiny dot moving. If it were any other innocuous bug, I’d probably have flicked it away into the darkness and forgotten about it, but I had a suspicion that forced me to get back out of bed and return to the bathroom for some hands-free light.
Sure enough, it was a tick. So small that I suspect it was probably a deer tick.
At least it wasn’t attached to me yet. It had rained all day on Thursday, and I spent very little time outside. Did it come in off the dog? Did it get on me while feeding the horses? Why did it show up on me in the middle of the night while I was snuggled in bed? Since I hadn’t done anything strenuous on the rainy day, I hadn’t showered, a decision I now regretted, although there is no certainty it would have made a difference.
Not knowing where I picked it up and why it was crawling around on me in the middle of the night in the place that used to feel safe (ignoring tales of spiders visiting people while they sleep) has infringed on my feelings of joy over burrowing under the covers and propping pillows for hours of sweet dreams.
This morning, we signed a contract to have our roof redone. It always feels creepy to commit 5-digit dollar amounts to home maintenance projects. May this instance play out with no unpleasant surprises and minimal collateral damage. Now I need to call the other bidders to tell them never mind, adding to my creepy feeling.
One thing I don’t feel creepy about is having water in Paddock Lake again.
It looks good with leaves floating on the surface. The color makes it look like there’s a lot of iron in the water, but I think that’s an illusion. It’s probably a combination of lime screenings dust and manure more than anything else.
We had our first real frost this morning, setting the edge on the end of growing for most plants, but the forecast looks warm and sunny again for the next 10 days. I’ll take it. That’s not creepy at all.
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Daylong Rain
A short time after the Katy Trail bike trip four friends and I did in Missouri in September got cut short by flooding rain, I suggested an alternative ending. Since we weren’t able to finish the last 50 miles of the railroad grade trail, I invited them to come try riding roughly 35 miles of the hills around Wintervale to end our 2026 season of group bicycle rides.
So, it was weeks ago that we whittled down the possible days that all five of us would be available and settled on October 15th. Yesterday. While I waited through day after day of ridiculously hot weather for the countdown to reach 10 days away in order to see the long-range forecast, there was nothing but sunshine.
Finally, by October 5th, I saw that Thursday the 15th was the first day with a chance of rain. To the credit of the weather services, throughout the 9 days I watched that extended forecast dial in, the chance of rain stayed locked on the 15th. While counting the days, I saw the gorgeous fall colors waning as the loss of leaves accelerated.
When it reached two days before the planned ride, the guys and I reached a unanimous decision to cancel and reschedule the ride to next year.
Yesterday, it rained ALL day. It was cold and thoroughly wet. It was just the kind of weather I absolutely do NOT want to pedal a bike in.
At least I got to see that our new rain gauge works really well.
While the horses ate their feed in the minutes before the rain started, Cyndie convinced Mia to accept a rain sheet. Mia was reluctant at first, and her hesitancy triggered Light to stop eating and walk around to check on what was going on. By the time Light arrived, Cyndie had already won Mia’s approval and the covering was on, but we were excited to see Light showing concern for another herd member, especially Mia.
When we went down to feed the horses their afternoon serving, I noticed Paddock Lake was filled to the brim. Now I know that it only takes an inch of rain to fill up that catch basin.
Just for the record, after a lingering chance of rain today, my extended forecast shows no rain for the next 8 days. Maybe I should market my services to farmers during extended droughts. I can schedule an outdoor event at Wintervale, and rain will surely appear.
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