Posts Tagged ‘lake place’
Baby Deer
In the middle of a card game among six of us in the sunroom, a strange bird call started up. Someone suggested it was a catbird. It wasn’t a chirp or a cheep. I would describe it more as a higher-pitched “Meh!” repeating singularly. Cyndie was about to pull out her Merlin bird call ID app on her phone when someone noticed a baby deer out the window.
The sound we were all hearing was this wayward fawn, presumably calling for its momma. It was cute at first, but then it quickly loomed as a sad situation. Something didn’t seem right that this sweet little thing was choosing to wander so close to civilization when no other deer were anywhere in sight. We are not far from the heavily traveled Hwy 77, where wildlife roadkill is not uncommon.
Was this youngster orphaned?
Well, the sad reality is that when Ben and Beck arrived, they commented about seeing an eagle feeding on a deer carcass nearby. It’s not entirely an obvious confirmation, since the remains look like they have been there for a long time. Although it’s not clear that this fawn has only recently been left alone.
As evening settled in, Cyndie went for a walk and found the fawn still alone, hanging around in the woods between our place and the road. We plan to take a stroll soon to see what we might find. With luck, maybe another momma will show up and adopt the lonely little Bambi.
Cyndie put out some water in the area, but her research helped confirm that the best thing we can do is leave nature to take its course. By staying away, we actually increase the chance that another herd will come by and take it in as one of their own. However, this morning, she got a call back from a wildlife rescue organization, and they asked her to take a closer picture if possible. If there are flies around it and/or poop around its butt, it is a confirmation that no mother is taking care of it.
If that is the case, they seemed interested in taking some action.
Ben and Beck just returned from town with fresh donuts and reported that there are even more dead deer along the road, with eagles feeding on them. The wildlife must not be used to all this new traffic showing up to kick off the summer season of northwoods vacationers.
It would be best if we didn’t keep hearing the sad bleating of the poor thing for much longer today. That’s rather heartbreaking.
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Shooting Troubles
Our first day at the lake for the summer season was not one of total relaxation. In fact, it was a series of mysterious issues that required solving. Granted, some were notably first-world problems of unnecessary convenience. The electric blinds in Marie’s bedroom wouldn’t open. Since Cyndie and I are unfamiliar with this effort-saving phenomenon, she needed to contact her brother to find out how it worked.
The shades needed to be plugged into a USB charging port and then paired to the remote control. The remote needed new AAA batteries, too. There’s always one more step.
More pressing for Cyndie’s temperature sensitivities, we discovered the furnace(s) didn’t bring the house up to temperature overnight. It was a chilly 63° F indoors, which was definitely noticeable after climbing out from under the covers. There are two furnaces because a second one was needed when an addition was built to create a master suite on the main level, when stairs became problematic for Cyndie’s parents. Neither furnace was producing heat.
More calls to Cyndie’s brother, who installed thermostats that he is able to control and monitor remotely. Aah, smart technology. Too bad it’s only “so” smart.
I was impressed as heck at Cyndie’s wily problem-solving research after multiple power resets did nothing to fire up the burners. Speaking of burners, we had used them on the gas stove, so we felt lack of propane probably wasn’t the problem. Just to be sure, I trekked out to confirm the percentage of fill on the gauge on the tank.
Reading down the list of issues Cyndie found online, our memories about regularly changing the filter were triggered, and I was certain this would bring the heat.
Nope. It didn’t.
After the insanity of trying several things multiple times and expecting different results, Cyndie called for professional HVAC support. The best they could offer was emergency service after 4:00 on the Friday of this holiday weekend. She said, “Put us on the list.”
I built a fire in the fireplace and kept it stoked while Cyndie made a run to town for groceries, hoping to beat some of the Friday rush of the Memorial Day weekend vacationers. Her research had taught us what the number of flashes from the red LED on the furnace control board indicated (contact a service person), and she asked me to call the company to report our findings, in case that would help in any way.
I tried and tried, but couldn’t get through. Imagine my surprise when I looked out the window and saw one of their trucks parked next door.
There is new construction underway where the old lodge was torn down, so I assumed they might be installing a furnace. None of the guys working at the new place knew anything about the service truck. I walked into the existing cabin next door and found the man was servicing a plumbing issue. He didn’t do furnaces.
The good news/bad news result of the craziness yesterday was that a cancellation ended up freeing a furnace guy to show up early, but both furnaces needed control boards replaced, and those would need to be ordered.
They should arrive next week, when the temperatures are forecast to be in the upper 80s F, and furnace heat will be the last thing needed up here.
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Rewarding Things
As I was making progress with the string trimmer along the fence line yesterday morning, I had the thought that it’s one of the most rewarding things to see the fence freshly trimmed.
On my walk back toward the shop, I found Mia and Mix lying down while napping in the tall grass of the hay field. Light was doing the same thing inside the large paddock fence. I thought, one of the most rewarding things is, seeing the horses feeling so safe and content and lying down together.
Before I started packing for the lake, the backyard needed mowing. The dandelions were getting as tall as small trees. Not wanting to leave the mower deck all weekend without being cleaned, I parked the mower on two planks so I could scrape the accumulated grass clippings off the bottom of the deck the moment I finished. It led to the thought that it’s one of the most rewarding things to so easily scrape the deck clean while the gunk is fresh and damp.
We then packed the car, left Asher and the horses in the care of our friend, John, and headed to Hudson for the “Taste of the Valley.”
It was a beautiful night for a picnic. We enjoyed repeated rewards of flavors and textures. It was almost impossible to keep track of how much we’d eaten. Cyndie and I shared a lot of bites with each other.
The most rewarding thing came at the end of the day, as we arrived at the lake just after sunset and successfully avoided colliding with any wildlife when driving during the hours of low visibility. Still, we spotted one black bear in a distant field and one deer grazing precariously close to the road.
We stayed up late to watch Stephen Colbert’s last Late Show. Poor CBS. The broadcast company has become a shameful shadow of its former self. It’s been rewarding seeing how many people of good character have voiced their support of Stephen Colbert, and that his popularity has only grown since it was announced that CBS had canceled his show.
It was a good end to a very rewarding day.
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Dandelion Seeds
’Tis the season of dandelions gone to seed. In the soaking wet of morning dew, the wispy white remains crowning the tall stalks of old dandelions cling to our shoes in massive amounts.
The story in pictures:
Today, we are finishing preparations to be away from home for a long weekend. I have a small portion of mowing to complete. Cyndie is organizing things to ease the work of our house/animal sitter who will be staying here while we are gone.
Before leaving town, we have a date with friends in Hudson for the “Taste of the Valley” food and beverage event at Lakefront Park. I see 25 different providers listed for a dynamic selection of “all-you-can-enjoy” artisan foods. We plan to leave directly from there to head to the lake.
I’m bringing my bike along to take advantage of riding the less hilly roads through the forests of northern Wisconsin’s lake country. I will not lie about looking forward to having the option to linger in bed in the mornings for as long as my body desires, since we won’t have a dog to walk or horses to be fed for a few days.
If I still have an appetite over the weekend after tonight’s food extravaganza in Hudson, both Cyndie and I are looking forward to some pizza from our fav, Coop’s Pizza, and ice cream from West’s Dairy.
So, basically, I am going to the lake to eat and sleep in, and possibly do some bike riding. Any other adventures that present themselves will be icing on the cake.
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Early Return
Graced with a deceivingly pleasant October day of moderate warmth and plenty of sunshine, Cyndie, Asher, and I enjoyed a leisurely Sunday free of any responsibilities. I wasted some of it watching NFL football on TV, but when the game wasn’t going my way, I distracted myself with a jigsaw puzzle.
Cyndie rewarded me with photos from her first walk of the morning with Asher and their last walk of the evening.
When I took him exploring in the middle of the afternoon, I found the sunlight and the lake surface were far less captivating. During the weekend, we reached a point of successfully allowing Asher to romp off-leash, with the e-collar for prompts if needed. At the lake, since he hasn’t spent a lot of time here, we are cautious about how much freedom we are comfortable granting him.
Since the presence of other unleashed dogs is always a possibility that we don’t control, it’s a different gamble to have him running loose.
After dinner, while we were binge-watching the first few episodes of Season 3 of “The Diplomat,” Cyndie received a message that one of the owners of This Old Horse would be coming out this morning with a veterinarian to look at Mix. The cause of Mix’s occasional slight gimpiness in her hind end has yet to be confirmed. We both want to be there for the visit, so we initiated preparations for an early departure from the lake place before going to bed last night. The sooner we can get on the road this morning, the better chance we have of getting home in time for that.
It was a fun, uneventful getaway for a few days that gave us a chance to employ the two newest UWRF students who responded to our help-wanted post for feeding horses when we are away. Now it’s time to return to attend to all the activities on our weekly calendar of events.
Somehow, I have let the date of the anniversary of our move to Wintervale pass without fanfare. October 18, 2012, was supposed to be the day, but signing the paperwork was delayed by a few. We can now say we are entering our 14th year here.
It’s been a pretty good run. A lot has happened in the last 13 years, and it’s all been captured here in my ongoing memoir of a daily blog: the fun, the sad, and the embarrassing.
Here’s hoping the coming year will be filled with more fun than sadness. And lots of love, too!
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Protest Day
Just show up. If you do nothing else today, especially if you are one of the millions of Americans who neglected to vote in the last Presidential election and have noticed the current administration is operating more unlawfully than any previous one in the history of our country, join with your neighbors to voice your displeasure.
I OBJECT!
I object to EVERYTHING the Republican politicians and every last one of those who support them are allowing to happen to our country. Cyndie and I will be attending a gathering in Hayward, Wisconsin, today to stand up and be counted among the citizens who are upset about the simultaneous violation of people’s rights and the unabashed profiteering via all manner of grifts and bribery. The constant barrage of “Look what my right hand is doing while I use my left hand to enrich myself at all of your expenses” is heartbreaking and crazy-making.
Here we are in our favorite getaway spot, where it is about as peaceful as possible, living a life of luxury while our fellow citizens in states across the country are under constant threat of being kidnapped in broad daylight by masked thugs masquerading as legitimately trained, law-abiding officers. Hah! As if.
It is unknown how many of the local rural residents of this community will take offense at a democratic demonstration against the racist, homophobic, and transphobic biases that the current despicable President is flaunting, but we are hoping for minimal conflict at the Hayward gathering.
We don’t prefer to leave the precious sanctity of the lakeshore to stand along a highway on a beautiful fall day, but it will only be for a couple of hours at noon, and it’s for an unprecedented cause. Today’s protests are an attempt to turn the tide and light a fire under anyone and everyone who occupies positions of power to hold this administration accountable.
We will need to leave Asher on his own at the log house overlooking the lake, where he can bark at anything that catches his attention while we are away. It will give us an extra incentive not to hang around too long at the protest, even if we find it a treasure to mingle with people who openly agree with our disapproval over what is happening to our country.
Getting back to our paradise on the lake will be a soothing chance to unwind from the intense focus on the awful things we are objecting to and reinvigorate our goal to send LOVE out into the world as a healing balm.
I hope many of you will join in making your voices heard and your wishes known on this national day of protest!
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Work Dreams
After you retire, if you want to know how to start dreaming about bizarre work challenges again, just drive the commute to your old day job to walk through the workplace and visit all your former coworkers again. I did just that last Tuesday and was rewarded doubly.
I enjoyed the pleasure of seeing their precious faces again, while they applied their trade skills in a spiffed-up facility under new ownership and management. As a bonus, I was rewarded with a mostly unrealistic dream a night later, involving imagined situations I was supposed to play a role in, while having no idea how to proceed.
It was a treat to see them all looking as good as always, and have everyone still remember who I was. Of course, it helped that I brought a batch of Cyndie’s home-baked scones, fresh out of the oven, to distract them from any lingering memories of why they hoped to never have to listen to my lame attempts at humor ever again.
– Lynne, I’m sorry it took barely a few minutes before I came up with some snarky remark to poke fun at you. –
In the years since I retired, I haven’t noticed missing the work, but I frequently miss being with these people. We spend more time interacting with coworkers most weeks of a career than we do with our families. The folks I was lucky to be with for many years were a very special work family for me.
If only I could convince the staff that they should hold their next company picnic at Wintervale Ranch. I’m sure I could talk Cyndie into baking some desserts for the occasion. I would even promise not to make the manure composting area one of the main features I’d show off.
After a day up at the Wilkus’ cabin in the middle of the week, Cyndie and I have taken advantage of an opportunity to get away to her family’s lake place for the weekend. We brought Asher along, too, so we only needed to find coverage for twice-a-day horse feeding for the few days.
Since we prefer to wake up at the lake whenever possible, we drove up last night under the cover of darkness. I think it might have helped me avoid any more dreams about the old workplace.
When can I expect to start having dreams about weird situations of being retired?
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Couldn’t Fly
We drove home. The weather didn’t clear up enough in the Cities for us to fly Mike’s plane back. Not for lack of us trying to will the clouds to lift. We checked for promising progress frequently throughout the day, but that didn’t seem to help. A watched weather report doesn’t necessarily clear.
The focus of our dual-purpose trip shifted more toward the speedboat motor getting serviced and the boat being brought back to the storage building on their secondary property.
That gave us time to kill, which we used for another walk through their woods.
There was a fair amount of bright fall colors in the leaves near the ground.
However, there were very few leaves of any hue left in the branches overhead.
The boat dealer told Mike they could have his motor service completed by 3:00. If flying weather was going to improve enough, Mike suspected it wouldn’t happen until around 4:00. The potential was there for us to accomplish both his main goals, even though Mike was more than willing to take care of just one and call the trip a success.
If a window of good flying weather conditions opened up, we would take it immediately and leave the boat to be picked up on a future trip to their cabin. We plotted a course of action for the day, packed up our gear, and left the cabin to walk more trails on their property.
After that, we headed to town for a late lunch and then drove to the boat dealer to wait for the service work to be completed, watching flying conditions on an app all the while.
It wasn’t improving at all.
The call to report the boat was ready came at about 2:58. We hooked it up and drove back to their property to park the boat and trailer in their storage building. Then we drove back into Grand Rapids and stopped for one last check at around 4:00.
It was obvious, which made it an easy call, despite how badly we both wanted to fly. We were driving home, and into the dark of night. The flight would have taken around an hour and twenty minutes. The drive was over three and a half hours.
However, fear not! We had each other and my digital music library for entertainment. The time passed easily, especially with Mike doing the driving. It’s a route he has traveled for 40 years, making him an excellent tour guide for points of interest along the way.
I was only away from home for 35 hours, but Asher gave me a greeting when I walked in the door like it had been a LOT longer. I suppose he was measuring my absence in dog-years.
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Seeking Normalcy
No masked soldier-looking thugs showed up to violently “detain” me over the weekend, despite my unwavering stance that their motives and methods are completely un-American and patently illegal. I’m stressed with concern over the odds of unjustified force escalating in the cities currently being targeted, either fabricated to create an appearance to their liking or as a result of threatened citizens lashing out due to fear and anger in a way that triggers an even harsher response from the goons.
It all seems like such a premeditated provocation with no valid justification, were our laws being respected in this country. There is no reasonable logical excuse that explains the actions of these military attacks on citizens. It is just plain wrong, but what is more frustrating is the fact that it openly continues to happen without accountability.
Maybe if I had just agreed to pledge my $5 a month to the non-profit political organizations that oppose the philosophy and behaviors of the current administration, this would have all been stopped before it started.
Cyndie and I are making plans to participate in the October 18 protests to stand among like-minded conscientious objectors and vent some of the frustration building up with each passing day. The absence of functional checks and balances being enforced to interrupt the sullying of our democracy is truly heartbreaking.
We are looking into the possibility of protesting in Hayward, WI, on that Saturday, as we are hoping to embark on a mid-October weekend visit to the lake place. It’s been a while since we gave Asher a chance to join us there, so we are planning to include him, too.
The possibility of rain yesterday came true for us, and as expected, it ushered in more seasonably cool temperatures. Maybe in two weeks, it will feel like October up north.
Today, we are breathing a sigh of relief and putting on long sleeves to enjoy a little normalcy for the occasion.
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Destination: Camp
We have fled the big city for the scenic forests and laid-back living of rural Maine, where Barry and Carlos have created a glorious woodsy retreat, a second-home vacation-getaway-lake-place that is referred to in these parts as “camp.”
To get all six of us here in one vehicle, we rented a huge SUV and packed our luggage to the brim. Then we stopped for groceries on the way and tucked those bags in any space around our seats. It was a quick two-plus-hour drive to camp near Cornish, ME, not far from the border with New Hampshire.
It didn’t take long for the four people with a passion for swimming to don their suits and hustle down to the water for a dip. The featured photo for today is how I found them when I made my way down from the cottage. I told them that I took a picture of them “swimming.”
Eventually, three of them made their way fully into the water, and then Barb and Barry got in their laps of various strokes.
We met some neighbors and enjoyed a wonderful visit while their hyper dogs flailed their energy in every direction. The reason we checked in with them was because a third neighbor had offered up an extra bedroom in their place, but the key they gave Barry wasn’t the right one.
The key was meant to be a “just-in-case” backup because they were going to leave the door unlocked, but the cleaner had come and locked things up when she left. Luckily, she lived close and was able to come and open up for us to use.
As soon as the sun got low in the sky, the temperature began to drop, giving us a wonderfully cool September night. Barry grilled pork tenderloin, and we dined and told stories on the porch.
Today, hiking in the region is the plan. Maybe I’ll find something to photograph while we are out and about.
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Relative Something 