Barnmaven

Only a guy would think of this

I'm driving to work this morning admiring the big black pickup in front of me.  I'm a truck girl, what can I say?  I like trucks.

Suddenly something a little odd caught my eye.  Something pink, hanging down below the hitch.

See it? Or rather, them?

Truck balls? Is this a thing and I didn't know about it?

A few minutes later I pass the truck and I notice the driver is a woman.

Now I'm really full of questions.

Does she worry about her balls getting wet when she's driving in the rain?  Or about them getting shriveled when she's driving in the snow?  

What does she do with them when she's offroading?  Is she worried they'll get bruised if she drives over a speed bump?  

Does she keep them in her purse when she's not driving her truck?

Do they come in bigger or smaller sizes than this?  Are they made of hard plastic or are they squishy?  

But the biggest question of all, really:  Why?

 

 

 

What Cowgirls do on the weekends

Saturday morning we loaded up and headed down the road a ways and across the river to a bomb-proofing clinic at one of the local arenas.bomb

Contrary to how it sounds, this is not an event where we endeavor to get our horses to calmly stand still during explosions by subjecting them to hand grenades and cannons, although from the reactions of some of the participants it might as well have been.

You can quote me on this:  There is no such thing as a bombproof horse.  Unless he's blind, deaf and cemented in place, most horses have at least one thing they will spook at or at the very least react to.  There are horses that accept most everything you throw at 'em, who you could trust to carry a toddler around on them safely - but  they are all capable of getting frightened by something new, even the most level-headed of them.  If they weren't born like calm, cool cats, the best way to get them there is - you guessed it - to throw everything at 'em.  Rinse, wash, repeat.

When we got to where the clinic was being held the fun had already started.  Right behind the fence line where the trailers lined up there was a pen with a great big black and white sow in it.  More than one horse decided to break loose and head south when they got a gander at her.  Unlike cows, who tend to be more curious than frightened of new things, horses tend to react with a great deal of self-preservation.  Until they've determined (or been convinced) that something isn't going to kill and eat them, they'll just assume otherwise and vacate the premises with haste.  Also?  (And this is anecdotal so feel free to Snopes me on it) Pigs supposedly smell very similar to bears.

Fortunately Bugsy Boy wasn'tt all too concerned about the pig.  The llama and the sheep, on the other hand, had him snorting and jumping around until the llama was kind enough to touch noses with him through the field wire.  After that, Bugs was all, hey, I don't know how to get in there with you but would you mind sharing some of that hay?

The entire facility was covered with various obstacles - bridges, gates, tarps, water obstacles.  There were obstacles set up inside the covered arena, and obstacles set out on the grounds as well.  Did you know that a water obstacle inside the barn is not the same as a water obstacle outside in the daylight?  No?  Just ask Bugs, who successfully (after a lot of coaxing and the help of a buddy horse) walked through the water inside the barn but not once set foot in the outside water.  Those plastic ducks looked pretty threatening to me too, come to think of it.  Sometimes you measure success by your proximity to the desired result. 

He did great on the tilty bridge and the "car wash" (a frame made of PVC pipes with streamers and pool noodles hanging off it).  Once he figured out he could put his head down and the streamers wouldn't touch his ears he didn't mind it a bit.  He did not like going through the obstacle where a whole bunch of plastic bottles and jugs were strewn on the ground inside of a square made of wooden poles.  The first time his foot crunched on one I thought I was going to have to pull my hat out of the rafters.  By the sixth or seventh time through it, though, he was a lot calmer.

We also successfully negotiated the Black Tarp of Death, which a couple of years ago was what I referred to as his "kryptonite."   When he put his head down, sniffed it and walked right over it I had to turn around and do it a few more times just to convince myself I hadn't dreamed it or maybe was on the wrong horse.  I was sure the tilting bridge would unnerve him but he handled it like a pro.

By afternoon we had put in a good three or four hours and both of us were ready to go home, Bugs to have a nice roll and me to have a nice hot shower.  It was a really good day, seeing old friends and making new ones. 

A lot about improving your riding and helping your horse learn is about the miles you put into them.  Except for rare cases, the spookiest of horses can be gotten used to a variety of things.  I like to expose my horse to everything I can, it just makes him safer for me on the trail - and that makes the trail a lot more fun for both of us.

 

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The first week always sucks

Remember weeks ago when I said SG had a job offer here in our area? The start date finally materialized.  He had to wait until the holidays were over for the HR people, who are located in another state, to get their stuff together and get him scheduled for his background check, a DMV report and a physical.  The DMV apparently is slower than the social security office because after a whole month they decided to just get him started with the DMV report as a contingency.  (They also made him get a spinal x-ray - but no drug screen.  Weirdest hiring protocol I've EVER heard of.)

So he passes all his screens, gets his offer, quibbles over it for a few days, then accepts.  He finally started on Monday of this week.

While the weeks at a time of wrangling life at home on my own was a serious challenge, the upside was is that SG was also home for weeks at a time.  Home to get the kids dressed and fed and on the bus, the animals fed, dinner made, groceries shopped for and household chores done.  If a child ended up needing to be picked up at school due to illness or behavior, he was there to take care of it.  I got used to coming home to dinner on the stove and kids with finished homework every day. 

I was spoiled.  I had a househusband.

About Thursday of last week panic set in.  We had considered that this would mean drastic changes to our routines at home, but until it was staring us in the face we hadn't really thought it out in detail.  Kids going to before- and after-school care would be kids who needed to get out of bed and ready to go an hour and a half earlier than they were used to.  Dinners, especially when we wanted to create time at the end of our day to exercise, would need to be planned and cooked in advance.  Bedtime would need to be pushed up, undoubtedly spawning cries of outrage.  We'd need to plan around guitar lessons, obedience classes, homework and workouts. 

We laid out plans for meals, we bought groceries.  We identified who was responsible for what each morning and each evening.  We were the parenting equivalent of Rocky training for a fight against the seemingly unbeatable Ivan Drogo.

(What was that line of Dolph Lundgren's from Rocky IV?  "If he dies...he dies."  Yikes.)

Sunday night, groceries are bought and stowed.  Dinner has been eaten and put away and the kids have showered and are enjoying computer time before getting ready for bed.  I pull all the meat out of the fridge we will need for the meal plan I've written up for the next few days.

"Honey, there's only one package of chicken in the freezer.  Didn't you buy any?"

"No, I thought we didn't need chicken.  Do we?"

"I don't think four legs are gonna cut it."

Swap Tuesday for Wednesday on the menu plan and forge ahead.  Its only a minor setback, we're still on our feet and swinging.

So far we've dealt with:

• SG forgetting to set out all of his daily supplements and leaving the house about twenty minutes later than he planned and THEN forgetting his phone on top of it, causing him to have to go back to the house after dropping the kids at daycare
• Me forgetting to fill out Race Car Man's medication log resulting in a phone call in the middle of a meeting after I'd forgotten to silence my phone
• SG spending an hour on another day looking for his desk key, which just happened to be in his desk at work.  In the keyhole of his desk at work.
• Guitar lessons being missed
• I forgot to buy the M&M's for Race Car Man's class party
• Wednesday dinner being changed at the last minute from homemade Ginger Glazed Chicken to McDonald's.
• At least three separate instances of me dramatically announcing "I SWEAR I'm going to CUT MY HAIR OFF!"

On top of all of it, the Chihuahua has had diarrhea for three days which has added an extra half hour to each morning of changing crate bedding, cleaning the carpets with my steam cleaner, extra loads of laundry and lots of air freshener.  Because we were out of clean bedding last night we had to let the dogs sleep loose in our room.  Did I mention Zoey's favorite place to sleep is the bed?  Between her insistence on putting her big head so close to my face I couldn't breathe and SG's habit of hogging the covers I finally ended up retreating in a huff to the couch where Iwas then assailed by the cats trying to take advantage of available human real estate to curl up on.

Its only Thursday and I'm starting to feel afraid we're headed for a TKO.  Not to mention its Valentine's Day.  I'm here to tell you its a sheepish thing to give your husband his Valentine's Day card when you've spent the night in a huff on the couch.  To be honest, I didn't actually give the card to him, I just tossed it over onto his side of the bed after I finished getting dressed this morning.  I'm not usually this chickenshit, but I'm just wiped out.

Hey, we're still in one piece.  No one's lost a finger or gotten left behind at the grocery store, at least at the last head count.  

I'm sure we'll have this down in a week or two.  I just hope to God the Chihauahua's butt dries up.

 

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Carnivore

When I was in my 20's I toyed with vegetarianism for a while.  I still ate fish, but eschewed any other meat.  (For some reason, it didn't occur to me that fish are alive, too.  Perhaps I mentally disqualified them due to their lack of innate cuteness.  When something looks at you with warm brown eyes its easy to not want to eat it, but fish, well, they're coated with slime, they never blink, and would anyone want to cuddle with a fish? )

I'm not much of a vegetable eater (which in retrospect makes me question how I ever thought I'd be a successful vegetarian) so my diet consisted mostly of carbs.  Pasta, bread.  Ice cream.  It didn't take more than a year or two of staring longingly at other peoples' prime rib dinners for me to admit I was living a lie.  I wanted meat.  Even though it stung my pride to eat my words, I finally came out to my family:  "I'm not a vegetarian anymore.  Can I have a one of those hamburgers?"  Bless them all for only saying "I told you so" with the voices inside their heads.

I like my steak rare.  Once on a trip to Boston for work my then-boss took me to a little steak house.  That sirloin was the best tasting steak I've ever eaten.  I don't know what they used for seasoning, but I've never been able to replicate it.  I'm starting to salivate a little just thinking about it.  Every steak I've ever cooked since that meal has been a vain attempt to seek carnivore nirvana.

When I "accidentally" ended up with a small flock of chickens (another story for a rainy day) and they started gifting me with fresh free-range eggs, I was reminded of living on our little hobby farm as a kid.  We had our own eggs, our own garden, and every year a deer and half a grass-fed angus in the freezer.  Still, the money aspect.

Last year we had the opportunity to buy part of a steer from a friend.  It weighed out at about 700 lbs, and my brother, a friend and SG and I bought a half and sorted it out into three relatively even piles of beef.  Those steaks, those roasts, they were excellent.  Worth every penny. 

With SG on the road and earning, we felt emboldened to buy another half a beef this year, but this time a whole half.  The steer went to the butcher just after Thanksgiving, and two weeks ago Stephen went up there and brought home 325 lbs of steaks, roasts, ribs, hamburger, stew meat and carne asada.  We had to clean out the box freezer to make room for it all. 

Whenever I put a steak on the grill or a roast in the oven, my taste buds remember that perfect Bostonian steak.  Sometimes I get it right, sometimes its a miss, but always, especially when you know the meat you're eating is hormone-, pesticide- and drug-free, its better than good.  So far I've cooked a couple of roasts and made one batch of chili in the crock pot. 

I am a happy, happy carnivore.

 

If its Halloween I must be hiding in the dark

This year's Halloween was the epitome of anticlimactic.  I took the kids costume shopping a few weeks ago.  Amazon Girl wanted to dress up in a devil outfit.  We couldn't find a child's costume in her size, so we found the one adult costume that didn't look like it needed fishnet stockings  and six-inch fuck-me stilettos to go with it.  She looked absolutely adorable in it, but nobody will believe she's satan.  She's just too stinking sweet.

Race Car Man went as Atom, the robot character from a movie about fighting robots the name of which escapes me at the moment and which I am absolutely too lazy to bother Googling. 

Our parenting agreement says we each get two hours for Halloween.  My ex texted me to say he wanted to have his two hours early.  Well, from my perspective that really makes no sense. Its HIS week to have them, they're getting off the bus at my house.  Is it really going to be an enjoyable Halloween for them to get picked up, trick-or-treat for two hours, get driven back to my house to trick or treat for two more hours and then have to make yet another twenty minute drive back to dad's house?  On a school night?  And still have showers and homework?  Yeah, I didn't think so either.   

I decided to just opt out of my two hour slot and let them go to enjoy their evening with their Dad.  Our rural street is lousy for trick-or-treating anyway - there aren't any streetlamps so its pitch black out, and most of the neighbors either don't celebrate Halloween or go somewhere else to do it.

That left me free to do whatever I wanted for the evening.  Except I'm not really high on everyone's social invite list what with me never going out to anything anywhere.  At the same time, I really didn't want to deal with the low-level anxiety that always accompanies a Halloween where we entertain trick-or-treaters.  Every time the doorbell rings or someone knocks, there is a chorus of angry barking from the House Pack.  Since I always keep the cats inside on Halloween, inevitably one of them will try to make an escape while I'm shoveling candy into buckets which then necessitates me wandering around calling "Heeeere kitty kitty kitty" for a half hour.   Its absolutely nervewracking.  And because of the aforementioned Reasons My Neighborhood Sucks on Halloween, the reality is that I could sit there and be anxious and keep my poor dogs in the crate all night and get no kids at the door at ALL.  Or I could get one trick-or-treater or I could get ten.  There's never been any consistency to it. 

Since I couldn't be bothered to take my "Middle Aged Woman who can't decide what to be" costume and go out somewhere, I decided to roll over and play dead instead.  What with the events on the East Coast which have affected so many people, including close friends who still don't know if they have a house or any of their belongings left, it seemed appropriate to keep a quiet evening. 

I turned off all the lights in the house, including the front-porch light, made sure all the dogs and cats were safely inside, and then made sure for the rest of the night the house looked as if no one was home.  This entailed holing up in my kitchen with only the light over the stove and the light of the laptop; bathroom trips involved first quickly looking around the corner and out the living room window to make sure there were no little goblins and witches standing at the corner of the yard trying to decide whether to ring my doorbell and then using the light from my cell phone screen to make it down the hall so I could pee in the dark.

I felt a lot like the Halloween version of Scrooge, but it was still better than handing out candy while the dogs raised hell and the cats tried to dash out the door.

How was your Halloween?

All its cracked up to be

Someday when I write my autobiography - or someday when I'm dead and someone has the notion to make a television sitcom about my life - the title should be "Six of one," except I'd be borrowing the title from Rita Mae Brown and it wouldn't be a fictional funny drama about one woman's coming out story.  It would be the story of the woman whose life story seems to consistently be pointing how life is this continual mishmash of good stuff and hard stuff - ALL THE TIME with the good stuff and the hard stuff.

I suppose that's my blog theme.  I wish I'd figured that out a few years ago.  Here all this time I thought I was writing about horses and special needs.  See what the wine does?

I hit the grocery store yesterday after dropping the kids off with their dad (hint:  if you take your kids halloween costume shopping do not finish the trip by dropping them off with their other parent.  Kids with new halloween costumes want to go home and put them on, not leave them with you and go to their other parent's house).  Since my Mom has been picking up the kids after school , she does their homework and feeds them dinner, which makes my grocery list rather sparse.  Unless there's someone to cook for, I don't cook.  What's the point?  Its cereal for breakfast and dinner is eggs or soup.  So I'm at the grocery store and putting my things on the moving belt at the checkstand and I realize that everyone in line behind me probably thinks I'm a middle-aged single woman with no kids and a house full of cats. I was half tempted to throw a True Confessions in with everything just to say "La la la, I don't care what you think!" but actually no one even has True Confessions on the shelf anymore and I at least just managed to establish the fact that I'm getting a bit long in the tooth.

Its a big silence to wrap my thoughts around, those first hours after the kids have gone.  With SG on the road everything is at the same time both more and less meaningful.  I put away the groceries, empty the dishwasher, wash the few dishes in the sink.  I have six more hours before I have to go to bed, and I can pick and choose how I want to spend the time.  I'm lonely and not lonely, all at the same time.  I do realize that with a house full of pushy cats and large, noisy dogs that I'm never really alone, but since I'm the only one who can actually talk, its a lot quieter.  Being alone with my thoughts is a really dicey proposition.  I'm one of those people who can go either way -- and sometimes its a matter of a few minutes between happy as a lark and sooooooo lonely and sad.

Is this just part of the human process, learning how to accept while still retaining the option to complain when we don't like what's happening?  There's a distinct line between "doormat" and "punch life in the face." 

Last night life gave me a 90 pound puppy who thinks she's a lap dog and a 22 year old horse who was on the verge of colicking, a chicken intent on sitting on eggs I do not wish her to hatch and a husband whose phone couldn't get a clear connection to give us a chance to connect for five damn minutes.  Life also gave me a nice bottle of wine, a friend on the other end of the phone to be a substitute shoulder, and a nice cold evening to make my dinner of soup ever so enjoyable.  So who am I to complain?

Six of one.  Half a dozen of the other.  It all balances out in the end.  Its all good.

Pick your cliche'.  Any one of 'em will do. 

 

Bounce

Sometime around 5:30 this morning I went to take the garbage bag from under the sink out to the bin.  It was still dark, and as I lifted the lid I lifted my face away from the stink and scanned the sky.

About two blocks away I could see an enormous billowing cloud of smoke, full of sparks and backlit by orange flames and street lamps.  "Oh, crap," I said.  Because, you know, I'm all eloquent and shit like that.

I grabbed my coffee cup (when your dad is a retired firefighter, fires are spectacles, not events), stuck my flip flops on my feet and moseyed up the street.  I don't really know the people who lived in the house, but their outbuildings were ablaze and they were frantically spraying water on their vehicles and their roof to keep their house safe.  Its an old farmhouse, and probably would have been in as bad shape as their garage and barn except right about then the first firetrucks arrived.

By the time I left for work, the fire was pretty well out.  I stopped and got out of the car to see if they needed anything.  They had an old skinny horse tied up to a tree, and I inquired if they needed a place to put him.  The two young guys that were there said the man who owned the horse was at work, and they didn't really know.  I checked him over - he was a little shocky, but more concerning he was clearly underweight and his feet looked like they hadn't seen a rasp in about 10 years.  He was very kind and patient and let me look in his mouth and pick up his feet without protest.  I suggested they get him some water and then I went back home and threw a bale of hay in the truck to give them.  He was eating and drinking water when I left, so I was encouraged.  By now I'm late for work, but its not every day you wake up to a fire in the neighborhood.

Yesterday SG left for Nebraska.  Oh, I know we thought he'd not have to go back on the road, but at some point the not-finding of the local work and the pile of bills (not to mention getting hay put in for an embarassing number of horses) dictated otherwise.  He'll be back mid-November.  If there was anyone as conflicted as this man about leaving for a job I've yet to meet them.  Granted, it was a short notice scramble as he got the call about this job on Wednesday for a Monday start.  The adrenaline rush gets you booked and packed before you've had a chance to really think about whether you really want to go to Nebraska of all places in October and November.

Still, it was three or four in the afternoon on Saturday, his flight was leaving at 10 am Sunday and he was still waffling on whether he was staying or going.  I finally threw my hands up in despair and headed out to the barn to escape the anxious pacing and the muttering.  

It shouldn't be THAT hard a decision to go to work or not, especially in a down economy.  You just don't question the gift of paying work - even if it DOES require packing your long underwear.  But then you think back to the last couple of outages which all went much shorter than they were supposed to, which meant the private contractors didn't make nearly as much bank as they were counting on, and you count weeks and paychecks and you think that maybe it won't pan out - but in the end its still a job, and so the decision gets made.

And so we kiss goodbye before his folks come to take him on the two hour drive to the airport and then later on that afternoon the kids' dad comes to get them and suddenly I'm alone, trying to decide if I'm happy about it or not.  On the one hand, there's all of the ALL that is our crazy little farm and that's challenging when there's two adults to handle it.  And there's the lonely part of things, especially on the nights when the only warm bodies you can find to cuddle with are furry and don't have opposable thumbs with which to rub your back.  But then you think about how nice it is to have a bathroom to yourself and how much less laundry there'll be, and dishes too, and then you wake up to see your neighbor's whole life going up in flames.

And then you read a post on Facebook from a friend you've known for years who just lost her husband.  And you realize pretty quickly how good you have it.

My man might not be home right now, but I still get to talk to him and hold him again in a few weeks' time.  My house might be a little quiet and empty, but it is standing.  My husband might not get as much work out of this as he wants, but it is still work. 

This is how you bounce back.

 

Passages

Over the years I've fallen in love with so many blogs.  Every so often I'll see someone I really look forward to reading stop posting with any regularity, and I wonder if they're OK, if this is the beginning of the long decline to the end of blogging altogether or just the silence while they weather a crisis or a dry spell.  When I first started blogging I was so enthralled with the form and the media I couldn't imagine ever wanting to stop.  I'd see someone I really like put their blog on haitus or take it offline entirely and I'd be so perplexed...why would anyone want to go silent like that? 

I also remember being a woman without children and I'd watch people who were parents say and do certain things and I'd be absolutely flummoxed why parents were so crazy.  I, after all, would never say or do such things.  I'd never buy my kid a happy meal just to make him stop crying for one goddam second.  I'd never fill my kids rooms with plastic crappy toys or ignore them just so I could have one minute of sanity in the bathroom or let them wear clothes made in third world countries by indentured servants to the smiley face or...and so on.

I gather this is the standard process for most people.  When something is new or not yet experienced, we bury ourselves under the weight of uninformed opinions and find ourselves surprised when we one day find out just how little we actually know about anything.

The good news (depending, I suppose, on your point of view) is that I'm not planning on falling off the web into that large graveyard of discontinued blogs.  The bad news, if there is such a thing, is that I have no current urge to write much at the moment and no idea how to solve that problem.  Or even know if that's actually a "problem."   My health has been a bit difficult of late, work has been very challenging and stressful, and the things that need doing far outnumber the hours of time available.  In truth, my attitude about blogging and bloggers has changed dramatically over the last year or so, and my reasons for writing, such as they were, are no longer the same.  My goals for blogging have changed significantly, and my self-knowledge of my place in the world of blogging has clarified.  I'm ok with where I am and who I am, and I'm less worried than ever about accidentally offending anyone or even whether or not anyone "important" is reading, because I DO get, frankly, that everyone who takes the time to come here and read my continuing attempts at writing has given me a great gift of time and attention, and I'm grateful for every single one of you. 

Lately I'm in a state of wonderment at the ability life has to be simultaneously amazing and awful.  Or joyous and depressing.  Or stressful and flatlined.  Pick your metaphors, they all fit. 

My friend Debbie, who has taken the reins over organizing my barn, my pastures, my horses and trying to convince me to implement ten thousand fabulous ideas all at the same time, says constantly "Its amazing how you're just so normal!"  I think she has it ass-backwards.  I think we get along really well because on a certain level we have brains that work the same (wrong, not-normal) way and we don't get frustrated by the tangential nature of practically every conversation we've ever had.  Over the course of the summer we've repaired stall doors and expanded so that I now have three working stalls.  When there was only one stall functional and three to four horses being fed with different requirements for supplements and each with the right to be able to eat without someone else chasing them away from breakfast, things were a little crazy out there.    She's also picked my dry pen clean of weeds and rocks.  She's found someone to haul away the manure pile.  She's found someone to put up wall racks for tack and someone to paint.  She's cleared the area behind the barn where all the scrap lumber and fencing materials used to get tossed (don't look at ME, the old owners started it, I just kept the tradition alive) and put down pallets and tarps and quadrupled our ability to store hay.

She also drives my husband a little batty because he is used to being along much of the time and she is by nature a very chatty person.  I can tell he likes her though. 

The kids this summer...what an amazing change in both of them.  My daughter is getting taller and more beautiful by the nanosecond.  She's taken two sessions of swimming lessons, gotten to level three and only needs to perfect two things to get to level four.  She's at that stage of transformation between little girl and startling long-legged tween and she's just stunning.  That's not even subjective mother-pride.  Its just God's honest truth.  What I find fascinating is her ability to verbalize her understanding that she knows she's growing up but she's not in any hurry to do so.  "I just want to be a kid, mom.  I don't want to grow up yet," she'll say, and my heart melts with love and pride and bittersweetness all at the same time.  She will grow up whether I will it or no.  I know that little girls can change dramatically as they age, and I hold onto the firm hope that the person she is, the things about her that make her so awesomely her will stay intact.   She gets more out of my reach every day, and as I let go with a heart that strains under the hope and fear, I simply pray that God lets life be gentle with her for as long as possible.  In les than two weeks she will be a fifth grader. 

My son is learning to negotiate.  His anxiety and ODD issues make certain things difficult.  He hates taking showers because he doesn't want to get any water in his eyes, but baths take too long and his anxiety informs him that soaking in your own dirty water is just YUCK.  So showers were always a struggle, until he came home from his dad's one weekend and announced that he and his dad worked out a deal:  Daddy bought him swim goggles and now he doesn't get upset in the shower.  I'm not sure who thought up the idea, but hot damn if it hasn't made getting the little dude clean a much less stressful event.  Hallelujah and pass the cornbread!  He's gotten tons more compliant about taking his meds, and he's learned to negotiate that as well.  We've also had to learn to listen when he starts to refuse things - sometimes we have a hard time remembering that his anxiety makes certain things far harder for him to tolerate than we can understand.  

SG has been a stay-at-home stepdad all summer and has had both kids pretty much every day of the week since their dad and I are both working, and I really believe his even-tempered nature has had a positive impact on both of them.   Their dad and I both tend to moodiness, and I sense that our unpredictability has been stressful for them.   They have evened out much, both of them, they fight with one another a lot less, and its clear that they both adore their stepdad.  School starts soon, so my husband will be joining the ranks of the employed unless I either get a highly unexpected and very large pay raise or I actually buy a lottery ticket and it turns out to be a winnah.  He's been my rock the last month or so while I've struggled physically and mentally.  That's love for you.  I am not afraid to admit that my patience is thin and my attitude bad, and he has endured it with a great deal more grace than I would likely exhibit were I in his shoes.

We lost Mojo kitty this summer.   He disappeared in the spring for a few weeks and when we finally found him he was so skinny and deteriorated we weren't sure he would make it.  He recovered for a while with special food and supplements and monitoring, but then he went suddenly downhill and we had to make the tough choice to say goodbye.  I suspect it was cancer.    He's joined Hercules, Lady and our little old banty hen Cin-Cin under the tree out in the back pasture.  I think I've learned pretty well the last few years that people and animals too often leave our lives far sooner than we are prepared for them to do, and it reminds me to make a point of taking time each day for each animal to have some attention, for me to be more vigilant about picking up the phone, and to treasure every opportunity to play with my children and create memories to sustain me when they have grown up and begun lives of their own.  It will happen sooner than I think.

How's your summer been so far?

 

Lessons Learned Chapter 28

Just because your husband leaves you a voicemail that says he's heading home shortly and by your most generous calculations he will be home by dinner doesn't mean he actually will be. 

If no one else will eat the tomato pie, you probably shouldn't either.  You might end having it come out of you in the form of hot lava for the better part of the following morning.

Just because you've had the same crappy Blackberry with the cracked clitoris (isn't that what those buttons are, really?) for three years don't assume you're going to be on the replacement schedule sooner than the guy who's only had his for a year plus two months. You haven't been cultivating the IT department like you should.

Don't wait until the betta fish starts swimming sideways to clean the tank.  It is much less traumatic to keep the current fish alive than to live through the waterworks and wailing when you have to replace her.  Apparently it is possible to LOVE a fish.

Even though your enormous rottie mix is completely gentle when playing with your Chihuahua does not mean he will extend the same courtesy to your cat.  Or your chickens.

Never ask your kids what they want for dinner.  Tell them what they're having and then become selectively deaf.  Its louder but it saves you an hour when you don't have to cook three separate meals.

If your dog asks you to go outside at three o'clock in the morning, let him.  Opening the door to let him out and then back in again takes less time than cleaning up the massive pile of vomit he'll leave next to your new pair of shoes.

Your husband has learned nothing from the last thirty times he left the water on and flooded the dry pen. 

You - and your horse - are capable of so much more than you know.  If you're willing to give the relationship time and trust the guidance of a good trainer, you'll find out just what.

Flooded pasture aside, you know the relationship is forever when you'll let your husband have a look at the ingrown hair...well...THERE.  And he actually will without complaining.

Go ahead and drink the really expensive bottle of wine for no particular reason at all.  It will taste better and be more memorable than you think.

Life can be really awesome.  If you let it.

 

 

 

 

 

So, it wasn't ghosts

For months now we've been having problems with our electricity.  Weird problems.  The lights will flicker dramatically for a few seconds and then half the house will lose power.  It will stay off anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours, and then pop back on like nothing ever happened.

None of the circuit breakers trip when these power losses occur.  Flipping the breakers on and off does nothing to make the power come back on.  Occasionally, like yesterday, it will come on if you flip on a single light -- the light comes on and so does everything else.

But the parts of the house that go out are not all on the same side.  The TV in the corner of the living room goes and the entry way light - but not the table lamps on the other side of the room.  The hood light on the stove goes out - but not the stove.  My bedroom lights and my bathroom lights go, as does my bedroom TV and the hall light, but the kids' bathroom right next to mine and the kids' rooms all work fine. 

This is annoying enough for obvious reasons - blow-drying your hair in the morning when there is no power anywhere near your mirror is a seriously inconvenient thing to cope with.  Many a morning I've had to stand in the kitchen with my little round magnifying mirror.  Not being able to watch a show when the kids have everything else tied up - or even worse, having the bedroom DVR shut off in the middle of recording this week's episode of Game of Thrones -- that's seriously impacting my world.  But the worst, the absolute worst part of it is how it impacts the kids.

My son's classroom is designed around helping children with autism learn social and behavioral skills.  Everything is based on positive discipline.  The kids have several tools to earn prizes.  Sticker books for a toy out of the classroom toybox, a penny board for bigger rewards at the end of a day if enough pennies are earned.  Race Car Man's challenge has been to earn the letters K-I-N-D-L-E every day.  If he displays an expected behavior - complying with a request, transitioning from a task, being kind to another student, working on the task at hand -- he earns a letter.  If he earns all of the letters, that evening at home he can do his favorite thing -- play Roblox on the computer, or Skylanders on the Wii.  It started off as earning Kindle back when I first got the Fire and he wanted to play on it all the time.  Currently he is obsessed with gaming, and it is enormously motivated to earn the privilege of playing. 

Imagine a day when he has been great -- TERRIFIC in fact, and he comes home excited to continue the level he had to stop in the middle of on his Skylanders game last night because it was bedtime.  He turns on the Wii, turns on the TV, powers up the Portal of Power, and puts the chosen Skylander on it.  He starts playing, and he's having a great time.  "Mommy!" he'll call out.  "Look what I got for Gill Grunt in my upgrade!"  If I don't come running, he'll pester me until I look.  He's enjoying his reward, rightfully earned.  Suddenly and without warning, the power goes out and his game cuts off. 

This would be hard enough for a neurotypical child.  For a child with autism, it is akin to the end of the universe.  You can imagine the screaming.

If we were lucky, the power would come right back on.  If we were not, it would be out for hours and my son would be nearly inconsolable.  If he and his sister were playing the game together I 'd have two upset children howling at the same time.  You probably don't want to check my store receipts to see how much the consumption of wine and comfort food increased since this started happening.

We had some very miserable nights the last few months.

Our first assumption was that it was spikes or lags from the utility district.  We've had a lot of new construction in our area the last few years.  A 5 acre field that used to have grapevines on it was turned into a small development for about 12 big houses, and there are similar developments popping up everywhere.  After all, the additional users has had a huge impact on our internet service.  Five o'clock rolls around and the internet slows to a damn crawl anymore.  (Hel-loooooo Charter?  Upgrade your lines already!)

I called the PUD and they sent a guy the same day.  He looked at the power pole in the pasture and the transformer on the street, took some readings at the box on the house, and told me he could find nothing wrong.  He determined the problem must be in the house.

I called an electrician.  They dispatched a technician to diagnose the problem.  He couldn't really find anything but made a couple of recommendations.  When I had the money to implement, I scheduled the work.  The guy came out yesterday and did his thing.  I paid him and he went on his merry way.

I left shortly after that to pick the kids up from school and came home 15 minutes later to find half the house was dark and unresponsive.  SHIT.  I flipped a few breakers, went to my bedroom and turned the light on - and everything came back.  OK.  Hopefully this was just a fluke because someone was working on the box?  Of course not.  We went to Race Car Man's therapy appointment and came back again to a house without half its power.  My son had earned his reward in school and been very good for his therapy appointment, and he was itching to play Skylanders, so you can imagine the level of meltdown.  I called the electrician back.  He said he would come as soon as he could.  The power didn't come on for a couple of hours, but managed to resurrect itself ten minutes before he arrived.

Figures.

He still couldn't find the problem, but while he was looking, it went out again.  He tested the incoming power to the breaker panel and guess what?  We were getting almost nothing in on the left side of the panel from the lines to the house. 

After a rather terse conversation with the PUD, two very nice gentlmen arrived and worked on overtime hours to fix what turned out to be corroded and loose wires at the transformer.

Somehow I don't think they're going to reimburse me the $500 I paid to the electrician for something I didn't really need, but I'll forgive them since all I really wanted was for the screaming to stop.