Posts Tagged ‘Cyndie’
Midnight Sun
After picking up Cyndie and Elysa at the airport yesterday, the stories flowed in rapid succession without pause. Tales about crossing into the Arctic Circle. Descriptions of a weekend at the island cabin of Norwegian relatives. Descriptions of the beauty of the fjords, the unique cruise ship, the uncharacteristic heat wave, the relief to be home after a loooong day of travel, and the ensuing jet lag.
Cyndie stayed awake as long as she could before conking out around 8:00 p.m., equal to 3:00 a.m. in the time zone they just returned from. That is on top of only getting a few hours of sleep the night before. I plan to offer her plenty of compassion and tolerance for any demonstrations of fogginess in the next few days.
Of course, at our age, it’s not clear that our mental acuity ever fully returns to previous levels after we tax ourselves to dramatic degrees.
Before Cyndie dozed into a restless early-evening slumber, she granted my wish for a few photos from her large collection documenting their adventures celebrating Elysa’s birthday, with a healthy dose of midnight sunshine.
.
.
Repair Begins
No sooner had I dropped off Cyndie and Elysa at the airport yesterday, when I found myself sanding the siding boards on the shop/garage. Our treasured log professional, Matthew, showed up to unload his trailer of tools and his ladders, just as I was finishing my lunch. We kicked off the project of tending to our weathered wood with little in the way of fanfare.
Around the edges of the entryway roof over the shop door, the siding has failed to stand up to the abuse from constant snow and water contact. Matthew will be replacing boards where needed and working his chemical magic to fill voids and neutralize decaying logs where possible.
I put in time sanding spots where the previous coat of sealant had peeled up. Everything I can do to make Matthew’s job easier is money saved, and I do like to save money. Unfortunately, I also like to get the grass mowed, and I can’t do both. I won’t be able to give as much of my time to helping Matthew as I’d hoped.
Cyndie asked me to pay attention to her strawberry garden and try to pick berries before squirrels and birds get to them. She also wants me to watch the landscape pond and keep the filters clean. Which reminds me, I need to check the horse waterer for algae growth and regularly clean it while Cyndie is away.
Having Cyndie be away for so many days raises my awareness of how many things she normally takes care of this time of year. It gives me renewed appreciation for how much she accomplishes every day.
Ooh, I need to remember to water the house plants, too.
Only ten days to go until she returns… I hope I can keep everything alive, healthy, and running smoothly until then.
.
.
Another Adventure
It is proving to be a banner year for pine cone production. Several different species on our land are dropping them in large quantities. I needed to do some raking before mowing the front lawn yesterday.
I completed all of the grass cutting and some of the fence line trimming when time ran out on home chores yesterday, and I needed to start packing all my biking and camping gear. Six, possibly seven, of us who met on the annual “Jaunt with Jim” (Klobuchar) bike trips years ago are meeting today in Onalaska, WI, for a 4-day adventure of our own on the trails of the Sparta/Elroy region.
As a result, my posts for tomorrow and over the weekend will be created on the touchscreen surface of my phone. Maybe I can force myself to use a little more brevity than is typical for my habits.
Partly due to my clumsy touch and partly to my lack of familiarity with using a smartphone to create posts in WordPress, it is never certain that the result will align with my intentions. The next three days will be an adventure in posting for me, while I am on a cycling adventure with friends and tenting on the hard ground.
If I am successful in keeping my phone sufficiently charged, you can expect to find daily reports from the trail with a few snapshots of the scenery we encounter.
May the weather gods be kind to us.
Oh, and…
Happy Birthday today, Cyndie!
.
.
Painful Dislocation
What a way to wake up. All she did was sit up in bed, and suddenly Cyndie yelped that her jaw had dislocated. We were both dumbfounded. While she whimpered in pain and desperately tried to self-analyze what was going on and how to resolve it, I felt totally incapable of doing anything to help.
I’ve had my jaw pop out of joint before, and it was incredibly painful and scary, but it was only momentary. With no logical trigger for what had occurred to Cyndie, we feared that a correction may be beyond our reach. I wondered if I would be driving her to urgent care, and whether I should try to take care of the dog and horses before going, when Cyndie reported she had managed to get her jaw back into position.
At least that ended her crying over the intense pain. It’s brutal to be the observer when the closest person to you is visibly and audibly suffering in acute pain, and there is little you can do to fix things.
As awful as that is, at least there’s no physical pain involved. No one goes unscathed, though.
After a morning that started like that, the rest of the day is wide open for improvement. Cyndie was able to rally and resume her planned art class in Hudson, and Asher and I carried out our duties, living a life of luxury at home.
As I was getting Asher ready to go out for a walk, I opened the door without looking to let him charge after a squirrel or rabbit or whatever threat he imagined was out there. It was after he took off like a shot that I spotted the delivery truck coming up the driveway.
As fast as I let him run, I was suddenly hollering at him to stop and grappling with the ecollar controller to push the alert button to distract his focus away from the vehicle. He obeyed just barely enough that the driver made it three-quarters of the way and rolled down his window to hand me a package. I grabbed Asher’s collar to keep him in place while the driver turned around to depart.
Later in the day, I was spectacularly successful in convincing Asher to hang out close by while I pushed the mower through the labyrinth for the first cut of the season. Mia wandered out into the back pasture to graze, and Asher made himself comfortable, sprawling out to survey the horizon for anything else that moved.
It feels very rewarding to be able to accomplish the first cut before the growth has gotten too far along. The hardest part of the job is pushing the mower over the raised ridges from the voles that think they own the place.
Cleaning the deck afterwards, I scraped as much dirt as I did grass clippings.
It was a good finish to a day that started out a lot scarier.
.
.
Lovely Feast
On the Sunday Christians celebrate Easter, Cyndie likes to shower her family with love in the form of food she spends days preparing. It was as delicious as ever. This year, she also made customized Easter cards for everyone, adorned with a variety of creative bunny faces (plus one bunny tail), which she hand-painted using colorful acrylic paints.
Having so many people to cuddle and beg for scratches is normally to Asher’s delight, but yesterday was a little challenging for him. Steve and Jessica brought their little dog, Vern, for the visit. I would describe Asher’s behavior as ‘tentatively tolerating’ in the presence of the highly active intruder who showed up in his space.
They coexisted, but didn’t become fast friends. It was actually the second time they had met, although that was many months ago. Their interactions then were pretty cute, but Vern was more of an oblivious puppy at the time, and Asher seemed to accept that nothing about him was a threat. Yesterday, Vern was more interested in Asher’s undercarriage, and that pushed Asher to become a little more wary of his presence.
Our big boy has convinced us that he has outgrown sleeping in his crate overnight. He curls up just fine in there, but he can’t fully stretch out when he wants to. A few nights of repeated (uncharacteristic) whining was all it took to earn him the privilege of now sleeping on the floor at the foot of our bed. He luxuriously stretches to his fullest extent between periods of curling up like a sled dog hiding in a snowstorm.
The photo above shows Asher keeping Cyndie company while she was painting bunnies in our den. He is neither curled up nor stretched out on the bed in that image.
It really was a lovely feast yesterday; however, the fact that Cyndie shows her love by feeding people special treats is beginning to overwhelm my limited willpower to resist. I ate way more of the foods that aren’t on my healthy diet plan than I should have. Calories consumed have not been balanced with calories burned for too many months in a row.
It’s great to be loved this much, but I am not a fan of the expanding inches of my middle.
I wonder if I could rig up a contraption so that her oven is powered by me pedaling a stationary bike. Those darn lemon or vanilla-frosted buttery biscuit cookies she just made are killers for my former ability to stop at just one. I am powerless to resist.
There is so much love in every bite, I bet these cookies could stop a war.
.
.
Mystery Trip
I’m going fishing.
Back in December of 2025, I was invited to join a March ice-fishing weekend that a bunch of high school classmates have been doing for years up north out of a resort on Cass Lake in Minnesota.
I don’t do a lot of fishing anymore, but I love northern Minnesota and the great outdoors, and I am a big fan of these guys. The thing is, I have not done anything socially with most of them. I will be the ‘new guy,’ unfamiliar with the resort accommodations and the typical routines for the guys throughout the weekend.
So, it’s something of a mystery trip, but I am catching a ride with two veterans of the event, which will give me a few hours to hear some tales of previous escapades that should give me some idea of what to expect.
Since I am new to this affair, Cyndie has kindly provided me with a contribution that might buy me some goodwill with the boys, should I come up short in any other way.
A cranberry-orange-pecan coffee cake…
and three different kinds of cookies: Oatmeal Raisin, Chocolate Chip w/ Pecans, and Ginger Shortbread.
If it turns out that I make a terrible ice-fishing partner, I figure Cyndie’s baked goods should earn me a modicum of cred in an alternate capacity.
.
.
Projects Delivered
There is a special satisfaction that comes with seeing our handiwork reach its intended destination. Yesterday, we held our traditional early gift exchange and feast with just our kids and their loves before the Christmas gatherings of extended family planned for later this week.
I have already featured a project I had been working on, sharing photos of the progress on two mirrored hearts I made from one Y section of the oak tree that fell last summer. I gave them to Elysa and Julian to have and hold.
It’s a little redundant to give someone your heart when they already have it, but these offer a more tangible reminder, no?
There was one other project underway in our house that I have not shared photos of in order to preserve the surprise.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Cyndie took on the task of sewing two quilts simultaneously for the kids. Seems to me that one quilt with a hard deadline would be enough of a challenge, but that just shows another example of how different Cyndie and I are.
Crafts such as this are one of several ways Cyndie shows no fear. It is a way that her sometimes unique version of logic is revealed to be a superpower, because it was not logical that anyone would be able to pull this off in the short amount of time that she did. Now two kitty-loving families have similar (you could almost say mirrored) handmade blankets of whimsical cat silhouettes to stay warm under.
Projects delivered. It’s definitely a massive joy to gift others with items crafted by our own hands.
Of course, Cyndie had so much more to give. After presents were exchanged, we feasted on Italian beef or seasoned jackfruit sandwiches she whipped up, after we had already test-tasted her first-ever homemade almond kringle. Sides included a fancy lettuce salad with homemade candied nuts, fancy roasted new potatoes, and cut fresh fruits, finished with a unique pile of marshmallow-corn flake wreaths that were supposed to be a tree.
Turned out to be more of a Christmas bush than a tree.
Here’s looking forward to whatever the next project is that she comes up with to deliver, despite there being only 24 hours in a day.
Happy winter solstice! Ho ho ho!
.
.
Probably Done
Despite the relentless drizzle saturating everything not under a roof yesterday, our contractor, Justin, showed up to complete the framing on the shade sail and remove the ground supports.
It looks a little spider-like due to the funky way I persuaded him to attach the 45° braces above and below the header boards on the four corners. I’m satisfied with the unconventional look, but wish we’d have achieved more stiffness from those additions.
There are two more things we can do to bolster the header boards, but it will take an additional lumber purchase, so I am choosing to wait and take those steps if we discover a need.
As soon as we removed the temporary lower support boards, I took down the barrier to allow the horses full access to the small paddock. They were way more interested in the grass that had been untouched for a couple of weeks than the strange canopy overhead.
Since they’ve watched it go up and probably viewed it in my head the whole time I’ve been imagining it, I suppose it’s not all that new to them.
Horses can be so matter-of-fact sometimes. Weirdly, they can also simultaneously appear somewhat flighty, so figure that one out.
I did some calculating to get an estimate of how long a braid I will need to wrap the 6×6 posts for a span of about a meter to discourage the horses from chewing on the wood or catching their tails or manes in splinters as the wood dries. I’ve completed only a third of what it will take for one post using the cut pieces of poly bale twine we have accrued.
It’s time to up my braiding game. Should have done that a long time ago.
Cyndie made use of several of the hollowed chunks I cut from the fallen maple tree.
They are becoming flower planters. I like! See why I am so smitten with her? Not just things like that, but she lets me make crazy things like the shade sail frame, and then tells me she likes how it looks when it is done.
I’m a lucky guy.
.
.
Driveway Series
Imagine if Thursday the 13th was a thing. Today would be that day. Maybe it would have a good connotation, leading to “Happy Thursday the 13th” salutations! Maybe not. Just a random thought.
Walking back from the barn Tuesday afternoon, I spotted some things that prompted me to pull out my phone camera.
The first was the way icicles from a drip off the corner of the shop garage were forming on the branch of the pine tree there. There was just enough wind blowing around that corner that it caused the icicles to spread at a variety of sideways angles.
As long as I had the phone out, I saw a series of interesting shapes and designs as I walked toward the house. They have become my “Driveway Series.” It’s always difficult for me to single out one image, and in this case, I think they all belong together, to be viewed like links on a chain.
There is a story I remembered that I wasn’t able to tell before yesterday’s interview ended. I’ve hesitated to share it because it is really Cyndie’s to tell, but we have continued to laugh about it long enough that I think you all will get a chuckle out of it, too.
While in California last week, she and her friends visited a Korean spa for special salt-scrub massages. Cyndie and one of the friends had experienced a luxuriously dreamy steam and body exfoliation treatment on gold marble at a Middle Eastern spa in Vancouver years back and had visions of reliving that experience. However, this traditional Korean sauna did things differently.
Some highlights that Cyndie pointed out include the mandatory absence of any covering on their bodies to keep the water clean for all customers. After showering, they soaked in a hot tub that was so hot, Cyndie needed to sit up. She was instructed to get back down all the way into the water. When it came time for exfoliation, Cyndie said it felt like the tiny Korean masseuse put on gloves with 60 grit sandpaper and proceeded to “sand” Cyndie’s flesh from top to bottom, front to back. No time for tears, as the scalding hot coconut milk was poured over her and she was told to wash her face with it.
Then Cyndie was sent to the showers to wash it all off. Upon returning, it was time for the hot oil massage. She was ready for the soothing and relaxing massage, but received a bruising, sharp-elbow deep muscle massage.
Now, the part that we’ve been laughing about since. While massaging her, the masseuse finally commented, “Must been bad car accident, eh?”
Cyndie chose not to explain all her scars from joint replacements and other surgeries and simply agreed. Then, while her eyes were closed, she received an unexpected slap of a freezing cold seaweed facial.
The wonderfully sincere Korean woman then commented as she peeled back the seaweed mask, “You must have been very pretty when you were young.” She meant it in the nicest possible way, which makes it all the funnier to us.
The whole experience sounded like a rare massage where Cyndie came out a little tighter than when she went in. At least she came home with a memory to laugh about.
I must say, her back did eventually feel really soft after all the tiny scabs had flaked off.
.
.
Gathering Facts
Taking advantage of Cyndie’s reduction in activity, we spent some time while she rested yesterday, creating a chronological outline of the medical issues she has experienced throughout her entire life. If each one were a chapter in her autobiography, the book would be more than 40 chapters long.
We came up with 15 surgeries and 3 or 4 medical procedures, starting with one before she was even a year old and not counting two pregnancies or the time she stepped on a rake and split her eyebrow open. In some of the occurrences that have happened since I started blogging, I was able to hunt for and find exact dates, including pictures.
I wonder if I have a picture for every surgery.
After searching, we couldn’t find evidence that I had blogged about the concussion she had that took us days to figure out because she didn’t remember what happened when she hit her head. She picked up a friend the day after and remembers telling her of having a severe headache. The day after that, Cyndie was home, and we were hosting a visitor. Cyndie looked fine in the morning, but in the middle of the day, I noticed Cyndie had developed a profound black eye that extended from her forehead to her chin.
Why I wouldn’t have written about that is a mystery to me. I was also hoping to find a picture of how vivid her bruised-looking face had become. That led Cyndie to make a doctor’s appointment, which resulted in her getting an MRI of her head.
She loves telling the story of the technician asking ever so gently if he wasn’t also supposed to get a view of her face since it looked so bad. Both of us laugh about her having already signed up for a Master Gardener class that she tried to complete despite the concussion but, in the end, wasn’t able to remember much of anything she learned.
It was a very interesting day-long exercise of dredging up past events and then trying to compile a chronological outline with dates so we could have all the information in one place. So many stories that we’ve told and re-told over the years, but never before locking in dates or the order of events.
It paints quite a varied portrait of incidents, both dramatic and mundane, in her medical history.
Now that we have the outline, I’m eager to capture some of the interesting details that can present a fuller story about what her experiences were like for each of the different incidents.
Maybe I’ll end up amending the subtitle of this blog to “*this* John W. Hays’ take on Cyndie’s experiences.”
.
.
Relative Something 