Posts Tagged ‘remembering’
Varying Awareness
In an attempt to obtain my 1095-A tax form, I need to log into my Marketplace account on HealthCare.gov. It’s been at least a year since I had a reason to log in, so I referred to my password reminder and gave it a few tries. Failed. Failed. Failed. Hmm. I’m not proud. I clicked the link, admitting that I had forgotten my password even though I hadn’t.
My favorite solution is to update my password to the one that wasn’t working, yet I think it was supposed to have been. Even if they refuse that choice because their system recognizes it as a previously used password, I am more than willing to change one character just to get on with things. I never got that far.
When I clicked the link in the email sent by their system to update my password, I was met with the three questions I had chosen at the time I created my account. The instructions clearly state that I must answer each question EXACTLY how they were previously typed. Uh oh. Did I use a capital? Were my dates dashed or slashed?
I couldn’t figure it out. I’m locked out until I phone in and deal with everything that entails. I decided that I didn’t want to do my taxes after all.
Switching my attention to something less annoying, I checked the new sprout on our giant bird of paradise tree. It didn’t show noticeable growth. That wasn’t what I was expecting since all the other times, we’ve been shocked by how fast the new leaves unfurl. Closer inspection caused me some alarm because it was beginning to look like the tips of some of the existing leaves were shriveling a bit.
Maybe the time when we discovered the pot had been holding water that finally broke free and drained for days has taken this long to show up in the leaves. We figured the roots must have been unhappy, but the leaves were growing so well at the time it confused us into thinking maybe we got away with the soaking with little damage.
Now I’m thinking maybe not. I was not aware of the time-lapse of cause and effect here. Maybe we will see future improvement since we have been using a meter to measure soil moisture ever since discovering the excessive watering. We are also not certain that our two frigid weather spells didn’t cause that corner of our house to get chillier than the bird of paradise prefers.
Starting today, the forecast has us expecting six days of daytime high temperatures in the 40s(F). I’m hoping the leaves will find some comfort in that.
Seems like February is going to go out like a lamb.
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Year End
’Twas the last day of the year, and all through our house, we did a quick review through my blog to see what had mattered. It occurred to me that I am more inclined to reminisce about long-past events than the prior year. I spent time in the morning looking through newspaper articles from the 1870s. The minutiae of Pierce County, WI, in 1874 strikes my fancy more than the collection of my daily reports on the ranch.
Looking through the “Previous Somethings,” we were reminded of trips we made to the lake to supervise the replacement of a rotting log truss on the main house and to do a little DIY masonry on the satellite building we call Cabin 3. The fall I experienced at the end of February didn’t require any “remembering” because it led to a chronic shoulder problem that I am painfully reminded of every single day.
We coped with water on the basement floor at the beginning of the year and the broken power line to the barn. We dragged out a DIY landscape project to our entryways over several months. After a soaking wet first half of the year, we experienced a long drought that revealed the water fountain in the paddock had sprung a leak.
In February, we hosted Hays relations up at the lake place in Hayward with a photography contest as one of the features. I rode my bike in the 50th version of the Tour of Minnesota. At this point, I’m undecided about whether I will do the 51st in 2025 or not.
In a year when Cyndie went surgery-free, we each took a turn at having our first case of COVID-19 illness and separate bouts of pneumonia. For the most part, we are otherwise healthy, although both of us have been noticing aging is increasingly sapping our youthful vigor.
The most notable adventure was our trip to Iceland with friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus in September. That island country is a marvel of fascinating natural beauty.
Despite that wonderful event highlighting 2024 for us, I’m afraid the heartache of the results of the U.S. Presidential election in November and my resulting coping reaction of avoiding news ever since has become the predominant pall shadowing my perception of the year. I can pretend all I want that I didn’t notice, but that doesn’t change the fact that it happened, and we will all face the consequences in one way or another.
Considering all the terrible things that have happened in the world since those quirky stories of interest in the 1870s, it is noteworthy that good people still endured, coped, and found ways to survive and sometimes thrive time and again. We can do this.
Thus, my review of 2024 is complete, and I am ready to return my attention to whatever today brings, especially taking note of the many blessings bestowed upon us.
Sending love to all you readers who have successfully found your way to the last day of this calendar year. Let’s spread the love far and wide throughout the next 365 and beyond!
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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.”
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Clever Disguise
It took Cyndie’s curiosity to draw proper attention to a volunteer tree growing by the driveway a couple of days ago. I had noticed it recently and wondered what it might be but didn’t give it any more thought than that. Cyndie handed me Asher’s leash and pulled out her phone with an app for identifying plants.
To my surprise, it showed Common Buckthorn as a result.
I went back for a closer look. Sure enough. It even had berries on it, the curse that attracts birds to help spread its seeds. How did I let this grow all summer long?
One reason is the absence of the classic dark green coloring of the leaves. This time of year, it gets much easier to spot the new appearance of buckthorn by the deep green that lasts much longer into the fall season when surrounding growth is fading.
Just a short distance away, I came upon these shoots that had sprouted from a spot where I had cut out growth a year before.
Much easier to notice and positively identify.
That tree by the driveway was cleverly disguised by leaf coloring that had it looking like any other innocuous growth present in the surrounding area. If Cyndie hadn’t taken notice, I probably would have ignored that bunch of sprouts for a least another season.
Speaking of seasons, as in years, we are now into our thirteenth year living on this property in western Wisconsin. Last week, Cyndie and I looked back at the posts I wrote in October 2012 when the moving truck came to our old home in Eden Prairie, MN, and relived some of the drama around the failed attempts to easily close on each property.
A LOT of things happened in the ensuing years. Our first spring here, we received 18” of snow in the first days of May. There was a lot of activity to change the fencing and build the paddocks in preparation for getting horses. We put a few years into starting a little business with the horses.
When that dream faded, it was replaced by a focus on providing a retirement home to four rescued thoroughbred broodmares. We’ve annually hosted a peace walk on World Labyrinth Day every May and improved or maintained various trails through our woods.
Every fall, I put my focus on eradicating every hint of Common Buckthorn that I can find within the borders of our twenty acres. This year, it is warmer and dryer than most Octobers here, which seems to be aiding some of the buckthorn in hiding from my view.
That doesn’t worry me. I’ll find it next year if that’s what it takes.
Our clever disguise is that we are starting to look like we’ve always lived here. We are happily forging ahead into our thirteenth winter at Wintervale. Despite 80°F temperatures yesterday, logic tells us winter will show up eventually.
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None Taken
“No offense,” she said. “I was just trying to make a point.”
It didn’t make any difference to me. I wasn’t listening. It was her eyes. I was lost in the mysterious feeling I was experiencing from the way they commanded my attention. It didn’t matter that she occasionally over-formed her mouth when she spoke certain words.
There was a person in there and I didn’t know who that person was. Something about her eyes seemed familiar.
For most of my life, I had no reason to consider the idea of reincarnation. I had no reason to consider New York, either, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist. For all I know, reincarnation has been happening since the beginning of time. How is it that there are infants who demonstrate abilities beyond their years?
Sometimes I wonder if I am remembering someone from one of my previous lives. What if I went to grade school with this person? Could they have lived across the road when I was a kid? What about those three months when I lived in Detroit Lakes? Who was that woman in tech school? How many people have I interacted with during my working life?
“Are you even listening to me?”
“Oh, sorry –no offense– I was just distracted for a moment there. If you were 45 years older, I’d ask if we’d met somewhere before.”
“None taken.”
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Confusing Days
Don’t be confused. Today is Sunday. The solar eclipse will happen tomorrow. The championship game of the Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament tips off today.
I don’t know why I’ve been so disoriented this morning, but I mixed these up at least twice before finally realizing where I was in time and space. Maybe it started yesterday. Cyndie and I huffed and puffed to drag the tangles of vines we’d collected up to a temporary staging area.
Before I attempt to craft an entryway arbor out of them, I will need to spread them out to see the individual twists and turns.
When I went in for lunch, Cyndie stayed outside to putter on other projects weighing on her mind. I got a text from her that she came upon a pile of vines we had missed.
Absentmindedness? I thought we had gotten them all.
It’s the kind of thing that leaves me thinking, “What else have I forgotten?”
My past is getting mixed up with the present recently because we have decided to “declutter” the remaining 100 record albums from our life-long combined collection. Long ago, I sold a majority of our library in the transition from vinyl to digital music, but I couldn’t part with the works of our most adored artists and a few one-of-a-kind records that would never be re-released.
After 45-50 years of holding most of these albums, we are ready to send them back into the world. Since our collection wouldn’t bring an impressive amount of money from buyers, Cyndie sought (and found!) an interested party who would appreciate them in a spirit commensurate with how we feel.
I’m not agreeing to this step cold turkey. For one particularly rare Eric Clapton album, I checked online for the availability of every song and then created a personal playlist in the exact order for my digital library. Attaching the artwork to the file gave me the comfort of a memory that will serve as a special link between albums of my youth and the digital library I’ve switched to as I age.
We’ve successfully saved our children from any guilt they might feel if they had to throw these away after Cyndie and I die.
Now, what else am I forgetting?
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Here Today
In moments of wondering about the ways of the world, my mind seamlessly bounces from comparing to the past and trying to imagine a future. I suppose my current need to select a version of Medicare insurance that suits me is contributing to my pondering how long I might live and what serious illnesses might force me into expensive services from doctors, clinics, medical labs, or hospitals.
It’s a crap shoot and I am not all that concerned about simply rolling some dice and maybe flipping a few coins for guidance.
More immediately, I’m aware that mass consumption of the Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament games on television this weekend has me remembering what high school was like for me and how it compares and contrasts with the experiences of the kids in the stands and on the ice this year.
Plus, long-time play-by-play color commentator, Lou Nanne has announced this is his last tourney because he is retiring after 60 years in the booth, so the broadcasts are filled with flashbacks honoring him. It’s like looking at a scrapbook of how the world looked throughout my life. I remember that!
Campaigns for the 2024 U.S. Presidential election are cranked up and that has me wondering (and a little bit worried) about this country’s future. Top that off with the increasingly treacherous climate warming and my greater concern becomes the future of the entire planet.
I’ve contacted a local landscape company asking for a quote to address the settling of the earth around the foundation of our house. This is one of the recommendations that arose from the inspection visit by the neighbor I called last month. Taking care of that will remove at least one of the variety of possible contributing factors leading to the wet basement we experienced after it rained last December.
Seems like we’ve eliminated all the other causes we initially suspected. Updating the landscape around the house will not only be good for moving water away, but it should also make the place look sharper. If you can improve both function and appearance, it’s a win-win!
Who am I kidding? I know what really has my brain all muddled today. My least favorite weekend of the year is the one when the powers that be force the seasonal changing of our clocks and tonight we adjust one hour forward to Daylight Saving Time. That’s one less hour of sleep for humankind, one giant leap for our natural body clocks.
Cyndie and I have decided on this occasion, we will alter the time we reference for feeding the horses and Asher so that their internal clocks won’t experience any change. We have the luxury of adjusting our times because we are retired and don’t need to align our activities with jobs out of the home.
The times today or tomorrow are no different for animals. I wish I could say the same for me.
Remembering Mischief
Scanning headlines yesterday, I saw the following from NBC News: “Fake Joe Biden robocall tells New Hampshire Democrats not to vote on Tuesday.” My first thought was to personalize it and wonder if I would fall for a fake robocall telling me to do, or not do, anything. Who goes through the effort to create such a scam and do they think it will succeed in whatever it is they are hoping to accomplish?
Foreign rabble-rousers probably hoping to sow seeds of doubt in U.S. elections. Good-for-nothing troublemakers, whoever they are.
Now, I’m not entirely innocent when it comes to clever shenanigans. There was a time when I took great pleasure in using the lowest-tech of kluges to pull off my own –I think harmless– ruses.
My siblings may remember when I made a copy of a legitimate news article on the subject of Frito-Lay products and altered the wording to claim Frito corn chips smell like dirty socks. We were on a road trip together and the subject had come up in one of our conversations. Don’t ask. I don’t even remember the details, anyway.
Everyone knows it’s true, that is what Fritos smell like. Especially if you’re not the one eating them. But it’s not something you expect to read in the Business section of a newspaper. That’s why I thought it would be hilarious to tweak the article by altering one sentence and creating believable evidence supporting the assertions I posed in that road trip conversation.
They didn’t buy it. None of them fell for my keenly crafted perfection in matching the font.
Didn’t change the truth, though. Dirty socks. Go ahead, try to eat some Fritos without thinking of that now.
For some reason, a different font-matching ruse from my past is the first memory that came up after thinking about the robocalls yesterday. The company I worked for in the 1980s and 90s came up with a contest for the employees. It was a treasure hunt of sorts with a series of clues provided over time. I don’t recall the reason for the “adventure-tainment,” but it could easily have been an HR idea for team-building or a morale boost of some sort.
Doesn’t matter. I was eager to solve the puzzle for my group of Engineers and we gobbled up the clues to combine our analytical skills and beat everyone to the prize. Our critical sleuthing led us to a cover over an air vent but there was no new clue there. I figured other treasure hunters might come to a similar conclusion and look in that same place.
I knew where the gold paper used for clues was stored so I decided we should make a fake clue and leave it for others to find in hopes of leading them astray. Once again I used my novice font-matching skills in hopes of making the game more interesting.
Except that the game didn’t get interesting. As far as we knew, nobody ever looked for that fake clue. I was so entertained by messing with the game that I think I lost interest in the real clues. Somebody else found the treasure. We went back to thinking about what we were supposed to be working on.
A fun memory. At least my mischief wasn’t aimed at destroying democracies. Don’t fall for fake Biden robocalls!
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Eleven Years
In October of 2012, Cyndie and I packed everything we owned and moved from Eden Prairie, MN to the property we named “Wintervale” in Beldenville, WI. I am very lucky to have a record of the process and everything that has happened since preserved in the archived posts of Relative Something.
We spent a little time yesterday looking back at pictures we took eleven years ago and marveled over some of the changes. We found one of me sitting on the Ford New Holland 3415 diesel tractor with the manual open to the “Instrument Panel” information.
There is also a photo of the one and only time Cyndie drove that tractor.
The bucket is filled with debris we were clearing out from the space beneath the barn overhang. The previous owners had stored gates, fence posts, and a bunch of firewood under there. It’s been the primary hangout space for horses ever since.
On a walk yesterday, I tried to take some pictures from a vantage point similar to ones from eleven years ago. It wasn’t easy to find the exact same spot.
October 2012
October 2023
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I tried using the top part of the barn visible in the shots above to line up a reasonable comparison. There’s no longer any sign of the shop garage or the house roof from that hill. It’s nice to see how much the evergreen trees have grown. In the 2012 photo on the left, the willow tree that is visible became fenced inside the small paddock and is now nearly dead.
There was an incredibly warm day in 2012 that inspired us to cook dinner outside over an open fire for visitors, Elysa and Ande.
October 2012
October 2023
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It is easy to see that there are more leaves remaining on the trees in 2023.
October 2012
October 2023
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That spruce has gotten a little taller.
I’m curious how much growth might happen in eleven more years. While walking through the area we call the North Loop –which over the years has been cut for hay, fenced in for grazing horses, and now allowed to grow wild– I was surprised to discover several new pine and oak trees that have naturally sprouted on their own. The existing poplar grove is doing a fair job of expanding its reach and many of the existing pines are growing strong.
We look forward to shepherding this acreage toward becoming its own little forested space on the north side of our driveway for years to come. Based on clear evidence revealed on our walk, the deer are already fond of bedding down there.
Happy 11th Anniversary, Wintervale!
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Schedule Changed
The farrier appointment we were expecting yesterday was moved out a week so we had the day open to do whatever grabbed our attention. The focus became the labyrinth. Cyndie has guests coming on Friday to walk the path and we hadn’t dealt with overgrowth around the rocks in far too long.
It turned out to be a very rewarding project. A couple of days ago I wrote about how I like things to look nice, and yesterday’s effort has the Rowcliffe Forest Garden Labyrinth looking better than it did when I posted the nice picture with morning sun on the colorful trees.
As I was gushing over how good the labyrinth looked, I reminded Cyndie of the summer of 2013 when her idea first began to take shape.
May, 2013.
The medieval eleven-circuit Chartres labyrinth pattern Cyndie chose.
Rocks positioned in the center.
August, 2013.
October, 2023.
We’ve come a long way, baby.
Panoramic view –note how much the leaves have faded or fallen in just two days.
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Relative Something 