Posts Tagged ‘status report’
Quiet Here
There isn’t much happening, which is a good thing, really. But it takes a bit of the wind out of my sails when it comes to chronicling the hilarious goings-on around here. Last night under the dramatic glow of the big moon it was all calm and quiet.
I tried to understand short-selling and all the excitement over the wallstreetbets sub-reddit escapades. We turned on a rerun of “Vera” on the local PBS station. I assembled the border of a new puzzle while Cyndie put together another scrumptious dinner featuring a homemade lentil soup that was aromatically simmering on the stove when I walked in the door after work.
Delilah harassed Pequenita in-between grinding her fangs on a beef knee cap treat. Only two eggs appeared in the coop nest boxes for the day.
The television news featured citizen reports of difficult attempts to get vaccine shots. I talked back to the tv, imploring them to recognize demand out-paces supply. If you want to be one of the first to get a shot, it will involve extensive effort or brilliant luck. The other option is to be patient and wait for the supply to increase.
Plan for the worst, hope for the best.
If one chooses to be patient and wait, it is good form to avoid whining and complaining about things at the same time.
By the time sleep pulled my eyelids closed at the end of the night, all was quiet on the homefront.
You won’t hear (read) any complaints from me about that.
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Changes Afoot
This week I am back at the day-job to cover for my assistant while she is on vacation. By coincidence, this week also happens to be when Cyndie starts a new job in education administration. In fact, today is her first official day in her new role as Chief Academic Officer of the Anoka/Hennepin School district, the largest district in the state of Minnesota.
How do these things happen? I don’t know. It’s not like we planned for her to land such a demanding position so far from our home. The opportunity arose and Cyndie peeked in at it, getting quickly swept in for another shot at solving the world’s problems through helping improve another public school system. Can it be done? I hope so, because she always gives her all in trying.
What does that mean for our plans at Wintervale? Probably that our efforts to launch a self-sustaining education and retreat center here will be a bit more drawn out. For me, it means that I will need to do a better job of again reducing the need to travel across the cities to my old day-job gig. My primary responsibilities will shift to managing things at home. Heaven forbid, I might be forced to finally do the grocery shopping and dinner prep for the two of us.
I have already started my unintended plumbing apprenticeship. I’m daily growing more comfortable with animal care: horses, dog, and cat. I’m getting the hang of using tractors and gas engines. Most importantly, I’m making connections with the farmer neighbors and local business owners who will become the new co-workers I will be interacting with to accomplish whatever needs attention on any given day around here.
We think it is a glorious opportunity for both of us.
Happy first day of July, 2014!
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Let’s Summarize
I have no idea how far back into the archive folks explore when they discover Relative Something for the first time, but for me, as much as anyone, something has inspired me to do a little summarization. If you are new, let it be an aide to fill you in on the background that has led to the latest saga appearing in current posts.
Back in the fall of 2008, I began planning for a trek in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal. My son encouraged me to create a blog to write about the trip, and share pictures with all my friends and family. That is the origin of Relative Something.
I was happy to suddenly have this vehicle to also publish some of my poetry and creative non-fiction, as well as some of my photography. My wife suggested I put some of my poetry on my photographs, and the series, “Words on Images” was born.
I wanted to add content on a daily basis, and that commitment has proved valuable to me in more ways than I imagined. I have chosen to manage depression without medications, and thus, have developed a variety of healthy habits that I must practice daily. Writing to the world is a good exercise for me. Being able to write and share my experience with depression is healthy for me, and hopefully of value to others. It’s a win/win!
In the fall of 2010, Cyndie and I traveled to Portugal for, what turned out to be, an experience of a lifetime. A life-changing experience for the both of us. We went to meet Ian Rowcliffe and his family, whom we only knew online. He and I had met in the online discussion community, “Brainstorms.” The story and pictures of that amazing adventure became easy content for me to post to the blog.
There is also (usually) my annual week of biking and camping that happens in June with a large gathering of wonderful and amazing people, many of whom have become precious friends. I love describing those adventures for the blog.
Finally, with our kids grown, and the seeds of possibility planted by our experience with Ian and family in Portugal, we decided to put our suburban home of 25-years up for sale and hunt for rural property where we could have horses. Cyndie had always been fond of horses, but they were not really her primary focus. After reading Linda Kohanov’s book, “The Tao of Equus,” which explores the mystical nature of horses and the magical connection between them and humans, and after spending 2-weeks with Ian’s horses, Cyndie enrolled in an apprenticeship program with Linda’s Eponaquest Worldwide.
For the last year I have be posting chronicles of our adventure to sell our home, to discover the property beyond our dreams, then move in and make the transition from the suburbs to the country, and now achieving upgrades and modifications in preparation for the addition of horses.
We have dreams of creating a space where we can host workshops to share the things Cyndie and I have learned. The horses will be integral to the whole operation, but we envision the future addition of a dog, or dogs, and probably chickens.
If I had no other new adventures in my future to write about, the simple story of our daily experiences with this place we have named, Wintervale Ranch, will provide content that easily fills my goal of posting something daily.
Yesterday, we did chores around the house. Cyndie hung laundry out to dry on the line. I cleaned off the covered gutters.
I’m honored to have you all reading and following along.
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.
In Case
Just in case you are following my saga of solving the problem with my beloved hand plow, I have progress to report. The best thing I did thus far is write about it, and talk with as many people as possible about it. My ideas for ways to add support to prevent future bending, have expanded significantly with the input I have received from a wide variety of sources.
The solution that thrilled me the most, and was much easier than fabricating a bracket, is simply attaching a length of angle iron and using ring clamps to secure it.
I drew my idea for a brace, on this image, in red: 
It was suggested that a bracket underneath, in the area I was considering, should be much longer, to reach further up the handle. Here it is with the suggested bracing:
Laying a piece of angle iron over the top and clamping it seemed like a much easier plan. I stopped by the hardware store on my way home yesterday, and picked up parts. It didn’t take me long to realize an oversight. There is a plastic piece that needs to float back and forth for adjustment of the blade angle. I won’t be able to clamp the angle iron over that. Unfortunately, it is in the exact area that most needs to be braced.
Luckily, it was also suggested to me that if the fit was right, the angle iron could be inserted inside the tube. Walaa! That will work nicely! So, that is the avenue I am pursuing. I think I am close to succeeding, but I still need to work out a problem in one spot where the angle iron is interfering with my getting a bolt through.
I have some work-arounds in mind for that, and hope to be back in business by the next snowfall.
Wish me luck!
Cat Report
It has been a while since I gushed over our adopted kitties, Pequenita and Mozyr. I am, admittedly, slowly being pulled from my previous Scrooge-like attitude about cohabitating with feline critters. We’ll see how that holds up when I eventually step on a freshly upchucked hairball, unceremoniously deposited in the middle of the night on the path to the bathroom. Hasn’t yet happened. With Cyndie home often enough to handle the majority of feeding and cat-litter duties, my exposure to the chores I have minimal tolerance for, is fairly limited.
The experience thus far has not been entirely vomit-free, but, lucky for me, Mozyr seems to be happy to clean up after his sister, …and it doesn’t bother me to let him have the honor. Such situations are much the exception, and not the usual routine. They are behaving as if thoroughly happy with their situation here, and seem to be getting along well enough. They still have bouts of conflict that I am unskilled at interpreting as being battles for dominance, or simple playful combat. Whichever it is, I take solace in the fact that as quick as it starts, it ends, and they can be found lying side by side, in harmonious bliss. I’m pretty sure they have a game of ‘tag’ or ‘chase’ in their repertoire of playtime activities, which explains at least some of the frantic running, sliding, and banging shenanigans they get into.
We tried an experiment of banishing them from the bedroom, after it seemed like I might be experiencing some allergic symptoms, but it turned out to be related to a cold, and cleared up in a reasonable amount of time. We ended up with a pretty good compromise, in that they developed a fondness for the bed across the hall in the den, yet can come and go as they please, to check on us. Unfortunately, it is Pequenita’s habit to do her check-ins somewhere between 4 and 5 a.m., being very thorough to stomp and knead all about our heads in search of a face to which she can press her cold nose.
Yesterday, I walked into the den to connect my laptop to the printer and fired it up, making all sorts of noises that would typically startle them, without realizing they were even in there. As I was about to step out, I spotted Mozyr, sprawled in one of the little beds Cyndie recently brought home for them. It looked like he was out cold. Pequenita was so curled up, I almost missed her, entirely. I went and grabbed my camera.
After I got both images on my computer screen, side by side, we realized the cats appear to have each picked the bed that matches their color. Cyndie said she wasn’t even aware of the potential coordination. These were simply the least expensive beds, and the only colors available.
Their adorable appearance, while making the absolute best use of a cold and snowy afternoon, won them a blog post on this particular day.
This Moment
Is it apparent that I don’t write as much about living alone? I am definitely noticing how the situation is feeling less significant for me. Part of me thinks that might not be all good. There have already been moments of frustration when a certain someone returns for a visit and my latest routine suddenly gets disrupted. What if I find that living alone becomes more appealing to me than living with my wife?
It that happened, I think Cyndie would gladly find space for me in the barn.
I don’t remember if I mentioned that Cyndie is coming home today for the weekend. It is supposed to be our final push to prepare our home for showing. I hope that goal is accomplished. However, I am detecting moments of feelings of insecurity as we get closer and closer to the reality of having our home of 25+ years sold.
Part of that is a result of not yet having actually seen any properties that inspire me as being potentials to meet the vision of our dream. If we don’t find a suitable place, after we sell this house, the teasing I have done about becoming homeless would turn into reality. My stoic front projects a readiness to deal with the inconveniences, but the little boy inside me feels more apprehension about the realities and the potential for extended duration.
They are just feelings. Feelings can be ameliorated.
I have less success managing my unconscious behaviors. I think I am clenching my jaw more lately. In the past, I have experienced bruising of my teeth from the pressure I exert. It can feel just like a cavity or other tooth problem. The tooth even becomes sensitive to hot and cold. When I am doing that, I’m obviously not relaxed.
I might be taking a calm walk on a beautiful morning, stopping to capture images that strike me, and at the same time, I am firmly clamping my jaw, without knowing it.
The day-job is in the midst of an extended period of amped-up stress, my chores at home exceed the capacity of my time and energy, and life as I have known it for a long time, is slowly being pulled out from under me, a little at a time. I clench my jaw.
I am also cognizant of the loss of my thrice daily endorphin fix from exercising, in the form of play amongst good friends that make me laugh. I am in need of some serious cycling time, both for the exercise and for the conditioning to prepare me for the annual week-long trip in June. The heavy load of the day-job responsibilities and the house renovations are conspiring to preclude access to pedal time.
One solution there, is to get organized enough to bike to work. Maximizes efficiency by providing exercise while getting me to the day-job. I just need to be sure I don’t need vehicular transportation during the day. Currently, that’s not something I am able to be sure about.
One simple solution: Live in the moment. This moment, right now. It’s all good. I smile, jaw relaxed.
Invention Needed
It’s funny how easy it can be to live separated from my wife, for varying spans of time, and then, suddenly, it becomes overwhelmingly burdensome.
One thing I noticed this week, that seems to have dragged my spirit down, is a brief call from Cyndie that announced the end of the workshop she had been at; one which had put her out of contact with me over the weekend.
Actually, that doesn’t read right. It wasn’t that phone call that brought me down. That call was incredibly energizing. I knew she would be flying back to Boston that day and I was really hoping she would call. I was absolutely thrilled to receive it and hear her joyful voice, filled with a vibrant sparkle created by her experience at Linda Kohanov’s place in Arizona.
The problem was, it was just a brief check-in to let me know she had safely arrived in Boston. We both had things going on that evening and so we hoped to catch each other later.
It didn’t happen.
Now another day has passed and I expect that she is deeply entrenched in the heavy grind and long hours that is the reality of her work in Boston.
I think the situation that has created my current pouting is that all-too-brief moment of bliss, when I heard her voice, which brought my excitement up, followed by the dashed hopes for more of the same, because the night ended without our connecting.
The higher the high, the lower the low.
Her absence in the days following create a weight on my shoulders. Each successive task seems increasingly onerous. I become less and less interested in the options I have before me, because none of them involve talking with my wife.
I like living alone. It’s just that I’d like to live alone and live with my wife at the same time.
I don’t think they’ve invented that yet.
Some Thoughts
How about some spontaneous Sunday morning thoughts? A post of very little forethought.
I find myself a bit hesitant to go on and on about the impact of living alone. I am aware of people who have lived alone for much longer than me, and whose likelihood of that status changing is nothing like mine, and it gives me an impression that my perspectives on the topic might come across as disrespectful to them. I fully expect to be reunited with Cyndie, so my living alone is a temporary situation. Nonetheless, I am increasingly feeling the impact, the ambiance and nuances, of living alone. This will definitely provide me a deeper appreciation for the experience of others who live by themselves, which I hope I remember long after Cyndie returns back home again.
This weekend, I am getting a remote dose of family energy over FaceTime visits with Cyndie because Elysa is there in Boston for a weekend visit. I do get a beneficial buzz of connection, even though they are there together and I am here alone. It may be aided by my knowledge that Cyndie will be home to visit as soon as the end of this coming week. Just thinking about her being here in a matter of days is energizing. It doesn’t hurt that it also means I will only work a 4-day week, because I have taken Friday off to maximize our time together during this brief, 3-day visit.
With winter weather taking it easy on us this year, I’ve got no snow-related activities underway. Today is predicted to be sunny and warm. I plan to do a little bicycling. It just so happens to be one activity that I do without Cyndie, whether she is home or not. What will be missing is the part where I get home and tell her stories from my adventure and grovel for some comfort in the way of a meal or a massage of aching muscles.
I guess living alone is what’s on my mind this morning, don’t you think?
It’s not all bad! I’m enjoying the heck out of the good parts. Off to seize the solo day!
Tolerable Suffering
Now that my routine has returned to a relative normal, post the holidays, I’m going to provide an update on the status of my solo living. Even though it’s been almost 4-months since Cyndie moved east to accept a position with Boston Public Schools, it still feels a bit new. At the same time, it has been long enough to pretty much figure out what works for me. I have been getting my needs met, and am tending to the needs of the household. With only one person messing up the place, shouldn’t I be able to sweep the kitchen half as often? It does not appear to be the case.
For the most part, I am taking advantage of having groceries delivered to the house. I do my food shopping online. Thus far, I am happy with my ability to avoid relying too heavily on restaurants for my sustenance. In fact, I think I am eating out less than when Cyndie was home. Since I don’t automatically have a companion, that seems like a logical outcome to me. I expect it might be different if I was inclined to eat out alone.
The real staple has turned out to be soup from my good friend and fellow Himalayan trekker, Chef Pam Knutson. I buy soup through her Birdsong Soups business out of the Kitchen in the Market facility. I get a quart each week that her husband, John, generously brings to his work in Eden Prairie where I can conveniently pick it up. This has been providing about 4 different meals a week for me. I don’t think I will be able to eat soup out of a can ever again after this experience. What a treat! This is gourmet level eating that seems like it would only be available in fine restaurants, and I have it in my own kitchen! I highly recommend you check out this community supported soup business, Birdsong Soups.
I have also become just a bit more social since Cyndie has moved out, hosting a number of gatherings of friends at the house, and going out with others. Part of that is a result of friends offering to step up to help fill the void. Thank you, friends!
The one thing that isn’t working so well is my being able to touch base with my lovely wife with any regularity. All too often, multiple days pass where we fail to speak or even successfully exchange a text message. You’d think a one-hour time difference wouldn’t be a big deal, but I find it does complicate things, or maybe it just seems to, because Cyndie’s work hours have been ridiculously long. I was shocked to be unable to reach her on a Friday night, nor the entire following Saturday, only to find out she was working both times and had unknowingly dropped her phone under the seat of the car they provided for her use.
I figure I should be nurturing a relationship with the security personnel in her building so I can contact them to find out where she is if I want to speak to her. Nothing can really replace the small talk that has been dashed from our relationship. I miss how she would politely listen to me talk like a little kid about the excitement I enjoyed at soccer in the morning. Yesterday I would have whined to her about the owie I got when I sprained a finger playing around with a basketball in the gym before soccer started. Then I would have bragged about the success we had making multiple one-touch passes to score lots of goals, or mentioned that I forgot to use my asthma inhaler before playing and noticed some suffering as a result. Tolerable, but noticeable suffering.
Kind of like the feeling of suddenly living separated from your beloved spouse of 30 years.
Relative Something 