Ice

Well, I guess it's never really a good time to have an ice storm. 

The mystery to me is, if the air temperature is at or below freezing, why in the world doesn't it just snow instead? But no, It's got to be freezing rain, which then turns into ice. 

There was a pretty dramatic ice storm here some years ago, before we moved to Cooperstown. The ice was so thick on just everything, that the weight of it on the lines pulled the poles down. It was an odd thing to see, the lines still running from pole to pole, but the poles hanging at sharp angles or laying on the ground for as far as you could see up and down the road. Breaking trees sounded like dozens of guns going off, one after the other, followed by branches, small, medium, and large, crashing to the ground. You certainly did not want to be anywhere near under a tree then, and we have lots of trees here.

Fence picket with a cloche of ice

Here are some images from the current ice storm. The ice on the grass is just as thick as it is on everything else, which makes walking, even on the grass, a big be-careful. 

I took my walking-stick/cane with me when I went out to tend the chickens, and I'm sure glad I did, because I'm pretty sure I would have ended up on the ground if I hadn't.  

Here are some other things I learned:

• Ice on grass is doable, just pay attention and be careful.
• Ice on accumulated leaves is much trickier than you'd think, probably because of a combination of the ice, and the fact that the leaves will move around when you step on them.Try to avoid walking on iced leaves if you can.

Interesting configuration

•  The trees creak and crackle in the slightest breeze. That's both interesting and creepy.

•  It's well-nigh impossible to get from the house to the chicken house without walking under a tree somewhere along the way.

• Flat ground is way better to try to walk on than even the slightest incline. 

 

 

 

 




Half-inch of ice on everything.

 
















• It's astonishing how freakin' slippery the ground is, even though you'd think the grass would provide suitable traction.

Unless another wave of precip comes along, it looks like we're close to done getting it, at least at my house. 

Happy Trails, and thanks for reading!

Ordinary World

As we crowd and overtake midnight on this fourth day of November, I'm thinking this is probably why I don't blog every day - I want everything I write to be meaningful and touching, moving, impressive, stunning...I want every piece to be spectacular, but sometimes the best I can come up with is ordinary.  I'm afraid this is one of those ordinary days.

I have a certain circle of friends with whom I converse on a fairly regular basis, and some of us have had a similar conversation, where somebody wants spectacular, but gets ordinary. I say welcome to life, Darling. Most of life is ordinary. Don't discount the importance of ordinary, I tell them. Most of what happens, happens in the ordinary world, on an ordinary day, to ordinary people. We can have spectacular moments (even spectacular days), but it is unreasonable to expect every moment of every day to be spectacular. Ordinary is the Dark Matter of life - there is so much more of it than there is Spectacular. It's always so interesting to me to find myself In a position to have to heed my own advice.

So here I am, experiencing an ordinary day, wishing like everything that I had something blindingly poignant to write in today's blog post. Oh, well, as someone dear to me has been known to say, "You pays your money and you takes your chances." 

Good Evening, Dear Readers :)

V~

Art Happens!

Anyone remember back when those "Shit Happens" bumper stickers were all the rage?  You saw 'em all over the place, although we did observe you were more likely to see one on a raggedy old beat up car  and less likely to see one on, say, a new Lexus. But they were quite a thing for a while, probably twenty, twenty five years ago. My friend Roger observed that "Shit doesn't just happen, there are active (you-know-whats) out there!"

It was also along about that time, I was a practicing artist. Oh, I still had a day job, and stuff like that, but I lived in a little house where I'd made one of the bedrooms into a studio. I had a nice sturdy easel and always had several paintings going. That's how I do it - get one started, and while it's "cooking," start another one, and so on. 

I started out with watercolor, then learned how to draw (a little backward, but that's just me) then moved on into pastel, and then oils. I was active in a couple of art societies and one of the old Artisan 9 galleries, and was easing my way into festival type shows and whatnot.Oh, my goodness, how I loved making art, and I got pretty good at it.

But something switched off when I moved out of my little studio-house. I still had all my gear, still looked at everything with the artist's eye. I still always thought about what would that look like in a painting, but did precious little actual artwork after the end of 1995. Got to be embarrassing when I'd run into an old friend I hadn't seen in a while, one who'd known me as an artist when they'd ask me what I was painting these days. I'd have to drop my head and tell them it'd been a while since I'd picked up a brush.

I guess I "took my art supplies on vacation to Cooperstown," which is a good thing, because that means I didn't get rid of my supplies. I still have them. Still have that big wonderful easel, and the paints and brushes. 

So I had a little time this weekend to do a little straightening in the garage/shop/barn, and rediscovered that easel. Had a brief conference with the Universe and said, yes, I believe I will, and carried that easel out to free air, blew the dust off with the air compressor, wiped the rest of the dust off with a damp rag, and brought it in the house. 

Got a couple of canvases (because, you know, I like to have more than one at a time going) and drew some images on them Saturday night. Sunday morning I applied broad acrylic color washes for underpainting, and in the afternoon began applying oil paint to one of the canvasses. Sure feels good to be back in the saddle, yes it does.

Back in the day I used to say, "Art Happens!" 
Now my thinking is more that "Art doesn't just happen - there are active artists out there!"

National Blog Posting Month?

 I've been infatuated with the concept of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, since I first heard about it some years ago.  The object of NaNoWriMo is to get 50,000 words of fiction down in the thirty days of November. 

There's a whole culture around the process. 50,000 words in 30 days breaks down to about 1667 words a day. Certainly not impossible for a serious writer, but a pretty serious writing assignment, sure enough. So far, it's always felt like it would take more time and dedication than I've had available or would be willing to give to a project for thirty consecutive days. Cares of the world, and all that. One of these days I do intend to participate in a NaNoWriMo - but, once again, not this year.

Meanwhile, in response to NaNoWriMo, another writer has fired off a concept called National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo. This is way more my speed. So, beginning on day two, here we go! NaBloPoMo! 

My co-workers may be relieved that I have another outlet for my verbosity so that maybe they won't have to read long chatty emails from me every day...and I've just had an epiphany - maybe this is what I should have been doing all along!

What the - was that?

Cooperstown NY draws some pretty interesting characters, and you’re likely to find them doing just about anything.  For example, you could have someone who might test out at a genius level IQ, might qualify for Mensa membership if he were interested, but might be  the sort of person who maybe didn’t mainstream in the classroom all that well. Or maybe he did. Who knows. He might have had a fancy degree in some esoteric liberal subject, I don’t know. He never mentioned it if he did. This was a quirky and very entertaining night maintenance man at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum we'll call Jim (changing names to protect the innocent). Night maintenance doesn’t pay as well as, say, Senior Vice President, but it’s a lower profile position, so you can get away with more stuff, so it’s got its plusses.

Maintenance had these nice blue sweepers, and Jim named his Monica, after Monica Lewinski, and her infamous blue dress. (If you remember your fairly recent history, you should be able to make the inference.) Jim also had a blue macaw at home, which, it seems, was nearly as quirky, entertaining, and smart as Jim. I wish to goodness I could remember that bird’s name. 

Jim told a story about one Saturday afternoon that he leaned back for a nap. Apparently while he was asleep, the kids came in, put a pizza in the oven, and turned on the oven timer, because the next thing Jim knew, he awoke to this odd droning sound and someone saying, “What’s that? What is that? What the hell is that?” He arose, still half asleep, and followed the sound into the kitchen, where he found the blue macaw on the stove, examining the timer, asking what the hell it was, as it buzzed.

I remembered that story at 5:45 this morning.

Last night my phone battery was low and I plugged it into the kitchen island while I was downstairs. That phone happens to have a very handy alarm that wakes me in the morning (which I must remember to turn off on mornings that I don’t wish to be awakened at that hour).  According to the order of things, it went off at 5:30 exactly as it had been set to do. It was plenty loud enough; I certainly heard it all the way upstairs, but I wasn’t quite ready to get up just yet. Apparently Cookie the cat was, though, because the next thing I heard was the unmistakable, hearty sound of a substantial piece of glass breaking on the tile floor. This time I was the one saying “What the hell was that?”

It seems Cookie went downstairs to see “what the hell was that” about my 5:30 AM alarm and when she jumped up on the island, or tried to, it was higher than she anticipated. She caught the placemat I had set there with coffee cups on it, and pulled the whole thing forward in a precarious manner.  It wasn’t any coffee cup that had broken, though, but the glass sugar bowl. 

I came downstairs to find glass and sugar splayed out all over the place, as you can imagine. I located the broom and swept it up - thought I got it all swept up this morning, but I am still finding bits of glass here and there.

Cookie is fourteen years old in chronological years. I don't know how old that is in cat years, but I know she is young for her years. I am impressed that she is so conscientious, to attend to an unruly alarm downstairs on the kitchen island the way she did. I guess I'll be getting a new sugar bowl - and I will certainly make sure not to leave my alarmed phone downstairs again!

Morning Pages

In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron describes (among other things) a writing process called "Morning Pages." It's really sort of a blend between a meditative process and a writing discipline, recommended for accessing and encouraging creativity. It's also therapeutic, useful in helping one get to the core of a matter and/or get through stuff. I've used morning pages for all of the above.

It's been a while since I wrote morning pages on a daily basis, but I think I will return to that practice, and here's why: It helped me before, and those pages are interesting to read now. 

I came across a notebook while ago that contains morning pages from the days shortly after Steve's death. I know that somewhere there is another notebook of morning pages for some time prior to and through that event as well (although I'm not quite ready to see those pages yet).

I thought this notebook of morning pages would be much more difficult to read than it has been. In reading it, now, almost two years later, I see how much I was trying to adhere to some kind of routine in order to keep from utterly disintegrating and blowing to the four winds. Even the routine of the morning pages themselves - beginning with the date, a series of affirmations, filling three pages with writing, no matter what - this lent something of a sense of order to a time when my world had gone completely off its axis.

I wrote about the earthquake that frightened me so, and about Muffin the Cat as his health and mentality deteriorated, and about how nice it was to look out the windows in the daytime, but kind of scary at night. There is a great deal in that book of morning pages that, as I read, I can imagine having done, but do not actually remember. Woven into the everydayness of it all are touches of that spiky humor for which I am known among my friends. Not for public consumption, though. I'll keep my morning pages to myself for now, but I will write more of them, yes.

So. Morning Pages.

One from the "Well, this is Awkward" Department...

This summer I was contacted by someone on facebook with a friend request. His profile picture depicted an attractive silver-haired man.  Problem: the photo was of a fella who lives in Hawaii, but the person who friend-requested me insisted he was a businessman in England.

The old darling flattered me effusively, saying the nicest things. Now, I know I'm likeable, but almost everyone I know really only talks to me like that after they've gotten to know me pretty well. Even my dearest friends haven't gushed that much right out of the box. "To know me is to love me," keyword: Know. 

This guy can't possibly know me that well, and I am traditionally suspicious of anyone who goes on too much too soon.

I guess he caught me in a weak moment. Oh, sure, I was cautious, but, yeah, I chatted with him on facebook. He sent me more photos of the same guy. I noticed that the photos he sent me all looked like upscale clothing catalog shoots - nothing that looked like a personal photo taken with one's own camera.

Bold declarations of love, eternal love, talk of making a life together. Playing the sympathy card with talk of having been orphaned at a young age and having a four year old child whose mother died in childbirth. Asking me questions, and then telling me how oh, so very much we have in common. He was pretty slick, but there were several things that didn't feel right. He didn't Skype, for example, (and wouldn't), and while he wanted to exchange phone numbers, apparently a phone call was impossible as well. Really, I do know better, but it sure was fun to have someone make a fuss, you know?  I must say, I enjoyed the rush!

It's a six hour difference between England and Oklahoma, so our window of opportunity to chat was either in the middle of my night (his early morning) or the middle of my work day (his evening), and for some odd reason, my employer actually expects me to work when I'm on the clock! Go figure.   The Institute actually has an official "No Personal Texting" policy, which all employees had to read and sign. Personal texting on one's smartphone is an activity for which one could be fired on the spot. I'd like to think surely they wouldn't actually fire me, but it is the policy, and I don't want to force them into that decision. I don't have to be Norma Rae today. 

Meanwhile, my daughter and her daughter came in for a visit from New York. I'd told my grown children about my "new friend," and they were both very suspicious. My sister had given me a most frightening warning about this sort of thing.

Unfortunately for this would-be relationship, this fella never gave me any information that I could verify through other sources. There was absolutely no activity on his facebook profile, and I was his only facebook friend. The timeline of the story he told me was wobbly, with the only constant being his bold and effusive declarations of  eternal cosmic love. Listen, if anyone came on that quickly and with that intensity in person, I'd be looking for the nearest Order of Protection. This was too much too fast! I'm thinking the reason I didn't shut this guy right down immediately was that there was, in my mind, a sense of safety in distance. Six time zones away, he's not likely to show up out at my gate asking to be let in without me knowing about it in advance. Well, that, and how pleasant it felt to be flattered so. I'm afraid this may be one of those times where "my ego is not my amigo."

So how did I find out about the photo?

When my daughter comes for a visit, she likes to throw a get-together. The day she arrived, she had invited my niece over for a visit. My children were teasing me about my "new boyfriend," so I showed Kandice a couple of the photos of "himself" that he'd sent me. Next thing I know, she's snapping a photo of these pictures with her smartphone and telling me about a way you can Google images. I had planned to follow this up later when I had a minute after things calmed down, but it seems she got to it before I did. 

She was mortified, afraid I would be angry with her, but I know she loves her Aunt Vicki and doesn't want to see me get hurt. She called my daughter to discuss how to break the news to me. Later that night, the kids came to me and said, "Hey, mom, we found something you need to see."

A little surprising, but, then again, not really. Whoever this guy really is, he's pretty good at what he does - most of the time. 

I learned a lot about what is actually an industry of Internet Romance Scammers. They use flattery and pretty pictures to get your attention. They are astonishingly crafty. The rhetoric escalates, usually including talk of a visit, and then they have an "emergency" and need money. Of course, they never come to visit, because they are not at all who they represent themselves to be. It's all about the money. They target men and women. They are almost never the demographic in which they represent themselves.

I actually did "break up" with him when the kids showed me what they found, but he kept messaging me, so I played along a little bit longer, just out of curiosity. It took about six weeks from the first contact to the "emergency" request - an urgent request for a "loan" of 10,000.00 British Pounds, which is almost 16,000.00 USD. 
No, I didn't send any money.

Bright sides:

• I had a clue
• I had savvy family members who knew how to find out about these things
• I listened to the people who love me
• I didn't send anybody any money

Maybe the biggest bright-side of all for me is that this really shook me out of the doldrums. I am delighted to discover that I can feel again, and with that door opened, a new chapter awaits....

Happy Birthday Steve

     Today, this very day, July 29, marks the birthday of my late husband Steve Newby. If he were still alive he would be 63 years old today. He wouldn't want anyone to know it was his birthday. He would allow me to make a fuss if I did so privately, but he would still protest. The whole time I knew him, he was genuinely irritated when people made a big fuss over his birthday, although he did like the phone calls from his children and grandchildren. I never did understand it, but eventually came to accept as part of his Steve-ness. Anyone who knew Steve is undoubtedly smiling at the thought, as he was certainly one of a kind.
     What he would prefer, then, was to find something or someone else to celebrate, take the focus off himself. Our anniversary, for example, was the 27th (would've been 15 years) and another special day for me comes up on August 1. Those would be the things he would have made a big hoopla over.      
      Before we moved to Cooperstown we liked to plan a get-together, inviting family and friends over for a cookout and visit. We called it our Annual Gratitude Celebration. We'd have this somewhere around the last week of July or the first week of August, right around this part of the year. Of the last one I remember, Steve, Grandma Susie, and Grandma Margaret have all gone to Heaven now. Becky's in a nursing home, we're not sure where Ron is.  Of course that's not everybody, but it's probably about a quarter to a third of the number who were there that day.
     When we moved back, that was one of the things we were looking forward to doing once the remodel was complete, hosting our Annual Gratitude Celebration Cookouts. Oh, we cooked out a few times, Steve and I, just the two of us. Steve was a bit of a perfectionist (he considered this an insult, but I never meant it as one) and to his way of thinking we weren't "ready" to have a bunch of people over, still too much not done yet.
     Steve made such beautiful cabinetry that everything looked perfectly well finished just as it was, but the next thing on his project list when he departed this realm was drawer fronts, and then cabinet doors. I did find someone to make cabinet doors; the drawer fronts are still pending. Some things have just been hard to push through.
     All this and so much more is rolling through my mind today on the anniversary of Steve Newby's birth. I've known other families who would get together to celebrate the memory of a departed character, and I've thought about doing something like this, but just haven't been able to push through and make it happen. Meanwhile, Life is what happens when  you'e made other plans, or even whether you've made plans or not. Right now this memorial message is the best I can do. Were he alive, he would not like me to mention publicly that it was his birthday, but by golly, he's not here! Happy Birthday, Steve Newby!

    

Carrot Cake

I am part of a group of friends that meet at each others' homes every Monday night. We typically have some kind of baked good and ice cream for refreshment. One of the kitchen-challenged yet creative fellows brings frozen treats from Braums Ice Cream and Dairy store when it's his turn. When these interesting characters admitted me to their fold, I promised them that when they came to my house I would make Carrot Cake.  I make a really good carrot cake, as anyone who's ever had it will heartily affirm. This is not a quick task for me. I love that we get together on Monday, because I can make the carrot cake on Sunday afternoon. The last time everyone came to my house, it was because one of the other guys had an emergency at his house and, asked to trade Mondays with me. I said, sure, but I wouldn't have time to make a carrot cake. I was in a bit of a time crunch myself that week and had to send my son into town to grab some store-bought baked goods for everyone. A couple of the guys gave me some good-natured ribbing about almost not coming when they heard there would be no carrot cake that time.

So it was my turn to have everyone over this week. I had plenty of notice, and set Sunday afternoon aside to make the Carrot Cake. Made sure I had organic carrots, grated them by hand. I have a food processor, and it's really fast to run them through there, and I would certainly do that if I were grating more than just the two cups for one cake, because then there's all the food processor parts to wash up and put away. Perhaps the labor evens itself out, what you exert grating carrots and rinsing the grater or mandolin versus getting the food processor out, putting it together, dropping the carrots in and grating them, zip zip, dis-assembling the food processor, washing all the parts, and putting it away. It might be fun, some time, to do a side-by-side comparison with a stopwatch and see how long each process takes to get two cups of grated carrots, start to finish, but for now the first option seems simpler for my small scale production run.

While the layers were baking, I got the brilliant idea to message some of my Cooperstown friends that I  know love carrot cake in general, and mine in particular, and tease them a little bit. I messaged them on facebook to say that we'd be having carrot cake at my house the next evening. In the time frame given, they could drive straight through, or catch a plane. As a plan B, I offered that the next time I visit Cooperstown, I would prevail upon my daughter to let me use her kitchen to make a carrot cake to share with them. We all had a lot of fun talking about the idea, and now everyone involved is looking forward to it.

Four of my friends rode out here together and arrived first. Joan already knew I had made carrot cake because we'd talked about it earlier, but the fellas were happy to hear about it. Then the next two guys arrived together, and when I told the story about teasing my Cooperstown friends with "you have 24 yours to get here," I saw those two high-fiving each other like a couple of little boys grown tall. 

Then they shared that on the way out here, one of them said to the other, "Do you think she's going to have that carrot cake this time?"

"Ooh, I don't know."

"Well, I think if she doesn't, we should charge her mileage for the trip to her house!"

I'm glad they didn't have to do that.

Everybody had as much as they wanted, and there was still about a third of the cake left, so it looks like my son might get a piece after all!

Here's how peaceful it is at my house:

A little brown wren has built a next in a soft storage box right outside my back door. I open the back door, I could touch her nest with my hand. She's got about a half dozen eggs in there, about as big around as my fingertip, kind of cream colored. She flies away every time I come or go through that door. She's beginning to see that I mean her no harm, so she's not in a big hurry to fly away, but there's no need to distress her, so I will refrain from using that door this week.
This is not a photo of "my" actual bird, but this is what she looks like, a little brown wren. Sweet little mommy bird.

King Daddy

If you're not lucky enough to have a broody hen who will set a clutch of eggs and hatch them, or whatever enough to have one of those incubator machines to hatch your eggs, you most likely get your chicks from your local farm supply store when they have them, usually available once a year, or your mail order poultry supply, usually available most of the year. When you buy chicks, you can specify "pullets," which is supposed to be all girls, or "straight run," which, in a perfect world, would be what ever you get when they hatch, supposedly 50/50 boys and girls, but in practical terms is probably what's left when they glean the pullets. How ever that happens, when I got my chickens, I asked for six red pullets (and have six red hens) and a straight run of barred rocks (and got two hens and four roosters). With the other two roosters I already had, that makes six hens and six roosters, which is about five roosters too many.

King Daddy, lord of the hens

Now, I do know how to slaughter a rooster. And at least one of those barred rock roosters has exhibited behavior that has brought roosters to the dinner table before. I guess I'm just not up to it right now, though, so I have separated five of the roosters from the rest of the flock. One rooster, affectionately named King Daddy, is lord of the hens and he is a good rooster. 


They could very well survive on the bugs and plants they graze on when they're outside, but I supplement their diet with chicken feed and kitchen scraps. Chickens will eat anything. Seriously, they are like pigs that way, only nowhere near as messy.


King Daddy looks out for his girls. He is always looking for some little tidbit on the ground that he thinks one of them might like to eat. He makes the cutest little fuss, to try to get them to come over to see what he has, "Chirp! Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!" If no one runs right over to get what ever he's trying to show them, he picks it up and drops it, like show-and-tell, and chirps some more. Picks it up again. The smart hens run over and get whatever he's showing them, sometimes plucking it right from his beak. It's very endearing to watch.

King Daddy lets his girls know when there's danger. There's a special sound for danger overhead, like hawks, owls, and the like. He makes another sound when there's a four-footed predator. There are certain movements that freak them out, and then they all go on and on, like a crowd in hysterics. Wave anything red at them and they go freaking nuts, you can't shut them up. There are some scenes in  Monty Python's Flying Circus that remind me of these chickens when they go nuts like that.

Today the roosters are out. When I went into the chicken pen to fill the waterer, somehow one of the barred rock hens escaped, the little ninja. I'm pretty good at keeping them at bay, but somehow she got through and I totally missed it, but, boy, as soon as she was out, here came all five of those roosters, as if to prove, once again, why they needed to be separated. As soon as the first one jumped on and off, I grabbed that hen and carried her back into the hen house. I imagine she had some 'splainin' to do when when got there, but at least she's safe again.

A Unicorn Named Roger

Most mornings I take a few minutes to go through a directed meditative process aimed at strengthening my intuition and developing my creativity. During part of this process, I visit a nature scene in my imagination. This nature scene is uaually similar from one day to the next, but I am likely to see some unusual things there sometimes. A "Marshmallow Tree," for instance. (Marshmallows as we know them do not ordinarily grow on trees.)  So, it seems, another thing I get to do in this process, is to ease up on "The Need To Be Right," and to allow more of the sense of wonder.

I am learning that when I get something unusual, to just go with it, and observe and remember, because when I come back to the ordinary world, I can look things up, maybe see what that means. It's been very informative, very interesting.

For example, the other day in my meditation I got the children's book, Green Eggs and Ham. I could see it as clearly as if I were holding the physical book in my hands. I opened it up and flipped through it. All the pictures and words were there. I thought, Green Eggs and Ham? Really? Okay, but why am I getting this? Stupid, I thought. 
But something said there's a reason... So when I came back to the ordinary world, I googled Green Eggs and Ham, and here's what I found out: It's about 
     Being presented with an idea                     
     Resistance
     Persistence                                            
     Resistance
     Persistence
     Resistance
     Persistence    
     Resistance
     Persistence 
    All right already, I'll try it, even though I know I won't like it, just so you'll shut up - hey, wait a minute - this isn't as bad as I thought - as a matter of fact, I like it, I like it a lot! I want some more!

This was a mind-opening experience for me. I can see that a worthy goal for me would be to excise most of the resistance out of the middle.

So this morning I had just arrived to my Nature Scene (the Marshmallow Tree is still there) and immediately in my face was a unicorn! Not distant or mysterious, not wild or skittish, but right there, face to face, blinking his big eyes at me. He was so close I could see he had freckles.  I thought, Unicorns have freckles? and he said, "Why not? Unicorns can have freckles."  I thought, I wonder if it has a name? and he said "You can call me Roger!" Roger? What kind of name is that for a Unicorn? and Roger threw his head back and laughed like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, and then he said, "Green Eggs and Ham!" and ran away!

When I came back to the ordinary world I looked up Unicorns, which most people know are a legendary animal, generally depicted as a white horse with a single long horn coming from its forehead. Often considered to to be quite wild, the unicorn was considered to be a symbol of purity and grace, and the horn was said to have the power to to make poisoned water drinkable and to heal sickness. 

Then I looked up the name Roger, and guess what that means? Famous Spear! I got a Unicorn named Roger. My universe definitely has a sense of humor.

Tomorrow's Girls

     I was away last weekend. While I was away I left the roosters out (on purpose, because they can perfectly well fend for themselves) and left the hens (with one rooster) in the the chicken house with access to the enclosed chicken yard.
     It rained at least a little bit and sometimes a lot every day that I was gone, so the roosters got wet (sorry, boys), but that's the way it is sometimes.

     When I'm here, I gather eggs every day. I have six hens and get six eggs almost every day. Every once in a while one of the girls takes a day off, but only rarely. Sometimes one of the red hens, and I suspect it's the same one, lays an egg on the floor of the hen house or on the ground out in the pen, just right out in the middle of everything. Maybe she gets distracted, doesn't know it's coming, doesn't want to be bothered, I don't know. I don't bring those in the house. Don't be offended - the chickens have no idea what they're eating.
     A way back when we built that chicken house, we got hold of some nice galvanized nest boxes, a set of ten. I fill them with either wood shavings like I put on the floor of the chicken house, or shredded paper from my office (Reduce, Re-use, Recycle!). Most days when I go to gather eggs there will be one here, one or two there, and so on. I collect them and bring them in.  
     While I was gone, the girls laid most of their eggs in two specific next boxes, so these two boxes were full of eggs, as if they someone was thinking about going broody, as if chickens think. Oh, sure, they're smarter than they look, they're trainable - I wish I could train one to go broody and set a clutch of eggs, but that is an instinctual behavior. These girls are about a year and a half  old, now. I'm pretty sure if anyone was going to set a clutch of eggs, she would have started by now. They always did before. 
     I haven't dealt with those two nest boxes of eggs yet, but I'm going to have to soon, or they'll start to go bad. Do you know how nasty a rotten egg is?

     Meanwhile, I did gather two perfectly good eggs that I will have for breakfast (or brunch, now, as it's already after 10:30AM). On the way in the house Steely Dan's Tomorrow's Girls tuned up in my head. So I'm gonna go turn on some music, cook some eggs, and thank my hens for breakfast (or brunch), and hope that "Tomorrow's Girls" refers to the chicks that the broody hen of my dreams will hatch soon, even though I know that is not what that song is about!

Fireflies

Ran some errands earlier this evening, returning home just after dark, and was delighted to see my woods just sparkling with fireflies!

I Will Not

     Went out of town to take a class, which takes place on Friday evening, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday. After class on Friday I went up to my room, turned on the TV, put on my night gown, and got under the covers.

     I had just found some local news to watch when, at straight up 10:00 PM a siren went off.  Oh, brother. In a few seconds it stopped and a voice came over a speaker I hadn't  noticed before, saying, "Attention, attention! An emergency has been reported in the building. Please leave your room, do not run, proceed to the exit, and leave the building," and then the alarm came on again, followed by the announcement and so on.

      I looked at the red speaker on the wall and said, "I will not," and I sat right in that bed.

     I heard my neighbors up and down the fourth floor of the hotel evacuating as directed. I wondered what the emergency was. I checked in with Intuition and got that it didn't feel like fire. The hotel was chock-full of families with children who had been running up and down the halls all afternoon, going to each others rooms and back and forth to the pool and whatnot. Could one of those little yahoos have thrown a fire alarm, maybe to see what would happen? No, it didn't  feel like kids.  I thought of that movie where the character throws the fire alarm in a hotel to prompt an evacuation so he can get somebody, and Intuition said, interesting, but not tonight. It said, look, go or don't go, it's up to you. I was already in my nightgown, cocooned in the bed. I wondered if they would search the rooms, find me there, scold me for not leaving as directed. I decided I would take my chances. The alarm continued on for about ten minutes.

     In about thirty minutes I heard activity on the floor. I thought, well, either it's the room by room search, or they've let people back in. When no one pounded on my door, I knew it was my neighbors returning to their rooms. Everybody got all settled in, I had just drifted off to sleep, and about an hour later the alarm went off again, second verse, same as the first. I stayed put, just like before. When that alarm shut off I went back to sleep and son-of-a-gun if another alarm didn't go off about an hour later! 

     The next morning I learned several things:

          1. The good news is you definitely wont sleep through one of those alarms. 

          2. Indeed, it wasn't any of the kids, nor a fire. It was some defect in the alarm system.

          3. The manager on duty that night promised that night would be complimentary, but the manager the next morning didn't know anything about it (interesting).

Surprise Tomato

Surprise Tomato

I’ve been building these little beds in my garden. The bricks are pretty heavy so I just do one a day when I’m doing them. I got to the third one today and discovered a tomato plant! I think it’s the one that I started indoors, and if so, it’s the only one of the plants that I started indoors that has survived. “Carrots love tomatoes,” so on the next day that’s good for planting (according to the moon) I’m going to plant carrots in the bed with this tomato.
 
A surprise tomato. It’s a small thing to be happy about, but I’m happy about it.

I'd seen on the news that Friday would be a day of meteorological instability, with probability of dangerous tornadoes, and that the storms would likely spark from just west of where I live (and head east). They predicted that the storms would likely begin to boil up about three to three thirty in the afternoon, the weather would really take off in the 5:30 to 6 pm drive-time, and probably last until nine or so.

5-31-2013 5:02 PM

About three PM I turned on my 4WarnMe App and clicked the [Watch Live] button. It showed a map like the one I had seen on the morning news. In a few minutes, here came Mike Morgan, saying that the cap was about to break and, oh, when it did, Katie bar the door! Then he went to some of his storm chasers, who said nothing had broken yet, but it looked like it would any minute.
The live broadcast ended and they went back to the map.

Probably about 3:30 - 3:45, Mike Morgan came back on live, and now the cap had broken and a huge anvil cloud was forming out near or just west of El Reno, which is about ten miles west of me. I knew this would develop quickly, and I did not want to be stuck in traffic on the highway when it rolled into town. I headed home about 4:30. Son Michael had already gotten the chickens in for me, so I just made a cursory walk-about and came inside to get ready.

I follow the progress and track of storms on an app called WeaterRadio with iMap Radar, which displays an interactive weather radar. I have a pin in mine to indicate where my house is, and I can display my current location, too. I have been following the progress and track of storms in this way for a few years, now, and have noticed a phenomenon. I have noticed that typically when weather (of any kind) is headed toward my place, it either veers off to one side or the other, goes around, weakens, or breaks up and goes around on each side sometimes reconvening once it passes. As bad as weather can be and often is, the full force of the worst of it simply doesn't bear down on my place.

This is not something to take for granted, though. Acknowledge, respectfully observe, but don't take for granted. And given the devastation of the Moore tornadoes just a week and a half earlier, and that the weatherman was saying weather conditions on this day were highly conducive to even more intense weather, I was certainly wary.

So I'm watching the radar on the WeatherRadio iMap, seeing where it is, where I am, hearing what the weatherman is saying, and talking to a friend on the phone. My friend said, "Oh, it's going to go north of you. It's not going to hit you at all. You'll be lucky to get rain out of this." I didn't argue with her, but it looked like she might be mistaken. Then the sirens went off. She offered to keep talking to me, but I have a plan and needed both hands to pull everything together and get tucked into my safe place, so I got off the phone.

About as soon as I got off the phone from my friend, my son Michael called. He said "Mom, you need to leave, you need to get out of there." While he's saying that, I can hear Mike Morgan on the TV saying, "People, get underground or get out of the way." I took another look at the iMap radar and started packing. Threw together a bag, put Cookie the Cat in her carrier, picked up Annie's leash, and headed to the car.

5-31-2013 About 7:00 PM

A right angle is the best way to travel away from a storm, and for this one, South was the way to go. Traffic was already thick but moving along pretty well, and I joined an exodus of cars headed south on Sara Road, south out of Mustang. I got about ten miles from home, checked the radar and pulled over to wait the storm out. My thinking was that the storm would play out, move on, and I could go back home. Silly me.

That storm just kept growing - continued to fire from its original location and growing to the east and the south. Pretty soon I had to move along to keep from being overtaken by the weather.

As I headed south again, I realized this was going to take longer than I had originally thought. I thought maybe I should go to my Dad's in Norman. I called to make sure someone was there, and thought about how I could route my trip. You can get to Dad's from where I was, but it's not the most efficient trip. There's a river to cross once or twice, and I-44, and Moore, and I-35, all on surface roads from where I was. Surface roads and heavy traffic, with an ever encroaching storm on this particular night. I tried to weave my way over. The storm was so heavy and so large that under the storm it was as dark as the darkest night you'd ever dread. Hard to see where you were, and hard to see how to get to where you wanted to go. Soon the storm was bearing down on Moore again, and then Norman, with me still miles away from Dad's, and in danger of getting caught in the weather. I could see I wasn't going to be able to get to Dad's.

I called to let them know I wasn't going to make it and found the first road I could, to go south. My evolving plan was to go far enough south to stay out of the storm, then circle back to the west, come up on the back side of the storm and follow it back home as it dissipated or moved on.

In this screen shot of the storm radar the point of the red pin is my house and the blue dot is where I was, about thirty miles from home. Thirty miles from home, and the storm was still freaking coming!

At about Blanchard I thought it might be good to top off the gas tank so I pulled into a gas station and reached for my purse. Couldn't find it! I have a cat and a dog and a bag ... no purse.  I got out and looked through everything in the car. Apparently in my excitement to make sure I got Annie the Dog and Cookie the Cat to safety, I plum forgot to pick up my purse! Well, I still had well over 200 miles on that tank of gas, so I was pretty sure I could make it home. Hoped so, anyway.


I continued south to Lindsay, checking the radar along the way.  When I got there it looked like I could circle back over to Chickasha; from there I would take Highway 81 back up to 152, to Clear Springs Road, and home. I anticipated that I might have to drive into some rain, but by the time I got back, the rain had moved on.

Bizarre were the lines of traffic, first heading south out of Mustang, then north on 81. As far as you could see, red tail lights in front of you, white headlights behind you. I'd been listening to the KFOR simulcast on the radio all evening so I'd heard plenty about impassable routes due to downed lines and local flooding. I saw areas dark from power outages, poles and signs knocked down and out of place, lots of broken trees, and water running across the road in several places. I saw water and heard water running in places you don't ordinarily see water. I saw a random fire hydrant laying in a drainage ditch, no idea where it came from or where it belonged. When I got home there was a line of traffic up my road as far as I could see, and water running over my driveway. I wasn't sure the gate would open, but it did, and I got home between ten and eleven.

Wow. My first choice is always to shelter in place, but if I ever have to evacuate again, I've had a practice run, and have an idea how to do it better next time.

Glad to be home, now, I can tell you that.

The Tornadoes of May 19-20, 2013

I was in downtown Oklahoma City on the third floor of the Dean A. McGee Eye Institute when the sirens went off.  Everyone in the building was directed to the basement. There was a young woman of about 20 or so, checking her smart phone, saying, "My cousin says it's in Newcastle. My cousin says it's in Moore. That's so far from here. Why do we have to go to the basement?" She was born and raised Las Vegas, Nevada, with a surprisingly sheltered upbringing, and had certainly never experienced anything like this before. She really didn't understand what the big deal was all about. I just said, "Tornadoes travel, sometimes pretty quickly. Better safe than sorry."

The next morning when I saw her I said, "Did you watch any TV last night?" Tears in her eyes, she said "Oh my God, yes! How awful!" She was clearly shaken. I said, "So you understand, now, why everyone gets so excited when the sirens go off?" She certainly does.

South Oklahoma City is my old stomping grounds, and I went to high school in Moore. The storm tracked less than a mile from my first husband's house, and even closer to the homes of some of my other extended family. I am personally acquainted with at least two families who lost their homes and everything but their lives and whatever they could grab and carry to safety as they fled the storm. There's a few folks I haven't been able to speak with yet, but I haven't seen them in the obituaries, and I have news of some of them via Facebook.

(Deep sigh) I'm going to go check on the chickens now.

Down for the Weekend

We have a little metal oscillating fan in my office at work, and I think something is a little out of round because it makes quite a racket when we use it. The other day when we had a little splash of warm weather and wanted to use the fan, I set it on the carpeted floor in hopes it would be less noisy.

It was slightly less noisy. We used it a couple of days, and then the weather cooled off. I didn't trouble myself to move the fan, because we knew it would warm up again in a few days.

We're always thinking a few days ahead at work. The first thing we have to do is make sure "tomorrow's" charts are done, and we work on the next day's charts, and so on. Every day is busy, but certain days are extra busy clinic days, with a heavier load of charts to do. Any given Tuesday, for example, might have twice as many appointments as, say a Friday.  It was Thursday and we were working on the last of Friday's charts, looking forward to getting those done so we could start on Monday's and hopefully get enough ahead to start on charts for Tuesday.

 

Jimmy John's delivers, and we'd ordered lunch in so we could work through. I had just finished a hefty stack of charts and I got up to band that giant stack of charts together and move them to the "finished" place. When I got up, though, somehow I got tangled up in that fan. In the process of trying to get untangled I lost my balance, and in the process of trying to regain my balance, became more unbalanced, almost fell, caught myself on a chart cart, and twisted the heck out of my left knee. If the chart cart hadn't been there for me to grab I would've ended up all the way down on the floor. If it, being a wheeled conveyance, hadn't been in the corner like it was, the whole story might've had a much worse outcome than it did. 

 

Knee hurting like all get-out, standing on one leg, I somehow found my chair and plopped back into it. Scared a good ten years off my co-worker. She went for help and people started piling into our little office, including one of the doctors. He asked some questions about does this hurt, does that hurt,  and if I had an Orthopedic surgeon of choice. I do, but I don't know if he's still practicing, or if he's even still alive. I told Dr. H. that all my favorite doctors are old now. He said he's old too, and we laughed about that. Someone appeared with a wheelchair and I got a ride in the wheelchair to the hospital across the street. We must have looked like quite a crew, two women pushing another woman in a wheelchair across the street like that.

We entered through the Outpatient entrance on the south side of the building and threaded our way through the building to the Emergency Room  on the north side of the building. ER Waiting was full of folks I suspect may not have come in if it hadn't been so cold outside. I wouldn't say they weren't ill, but I got the feeling that several of them might have tolerated their dis-ease without spending the day in ER if the weather had been better.

Fortunately I didn't have to wait as long as I thought I would, and the good news is that nothing is torn or broken as far as they could tell. The knee "looks" perfectly normal from the outside, with little to no pain as long as I keep still and don't stress or twist it at all. 

 

Mike and Monica came to drive me home and help me get my car home, and then they brought my recliner and twin bed downstairs so I can stay on one floor. I can walk well enough with a cane (Thank you Steve for the nice cane), but I don't dare try to go up and down the stairs right now. I already feel tons better than this time yesterday, but I can sure tell when I've moved around "too much" (like now). And while driving wouldn't be at all difficult, getting into and out of my rather tall Honda Pilot seems a little daunting yet. I can't even think about that today. I'm hoping to enjoy enough recovery to go back to work on Monday.

 

So, there you have it. Twisted knee, down for the weekend.  

 

The oscillating fan, by the way, is back on the windowsill, off the floor. We'll just deal with the noise when we're hot.

Is Everybody In?

We learned long ago that chickens who don't come in at night don't last long, and it really only takes once. If you want to keep your chickens, you need to make sure they go in at night and lock them up against predators. My chickens live in a very nice chicken house that my beloved late husband built. It has an attached, enclosed yard with a sturdy metal roof over all. I don't let my chickens out every day, but when I do, I make sure to see them all in, come dusk. 

Sunday was a beautiful Oklahoma spring day, so that afternoon I let the chickens out. As the day came to a close, I went out to see them in. I counted them: four barred rock roosters, two banty roosters, two mixed roosters, five red hens and two barred rock hens. Except there was only one barred rock hen. I counted them again, four, two, two, five - where is that other barred rock hen? I closed up the chicken house so they wouldn't get back out while I looked for that one hen and began my search.

Barred rock chickens' feathers are colored, black and white, in such a way that the birds appear to be striped, like bars of color, black and white, hence their name, Barred Rock. They are striking birds. In addition, the black and white striped configuration provides excellent camouflage. I looked and looked and looked for that hen. Wherever she was, she was well hidden. I prayed a blessing on her and came on in my own house for the night.

Later on, as usual, I let Annie the dog out one more time before we went to bed. When I went to call her in, she didn't come. I stepped outside and called again. I heard her tags rattle so I called again, but then I heard a sound I know to be the cry of a hen in distress. 

I will digress here to say that I have never let Annie out loose when the chickens are out because she gets so excited I feared she might "play" too roughly with them. Annie has brought me more than one little deceased creature - mice, frogs, turtles, even a squirrel - that she has caught and just "played" to death. I do not want this to happen to my chickens. When I heard this hen squalling, I nearly panicked.

I grabbed the flashlight and, in my night shirt and fuzzy house shoes, ran toward the sound in my fuzzy house shoes yelling "Annie! Sit! Annie, sit!" Annie had "treed" the hen in a corner between some hog wire and the chain-link fence. The hen had tried to go through the chain-link, and was stuck and calling for help. 

One very good thing about Annie is that she does sit when I tell her to, so I most emphatically told her to "Sit!" while I extracted the frightened hen from her predicament. I carried the hen into the chicken house and gently set her in one of the nesting boxes. She tolerated this very well and didn't kick up a bit of fuss, which was good because chickens are like toddlers - one cries, they all start crying.  Her being quiet saved us all from a houseful of agitated chickens. The next morning I couldn't even tell which hen it had been. Really, it was as if nothing unusual had happened at all. Funny birds.