Barnmaven

Yes I would

 

A very smelly dog who hasn't had a bath yet is lying almost entirely on my pillow as my husband sleeps, oblivious.  The stitches from her surgery haven't come out yet, so we haven't been able to give her a much-needed bath. 

Exasperated, I kiss the dog on the head and shake my husband awake.  "You want to move the dog?" I ask.  "If you're going to let her stink up the bed, let it be on your side." 

For a moment I think "He's lucky I love him."  It only takes a moment or two for me to remember that I'm pretty lucky he loves me.

Sometimes its something powerful that causes you to consider the depth of your feelings for someone; other times its the mundane.  Considering how often we annoy the shit out of each other, its amazing we remember at all.  But remember we do.

The other day I'm sitting in the living room quietly minding my own business and he feels the need to come in, change the channel to some band I've never heard of doing a live concert and then turn the volume waaayyyyyy up. 

Annoyed, I gather my things and change rooms, grumbling the whole way about how I live here too, you know, and not everyone wants to listen to music all the time.  Then again, its likely he feels the same way about my tendency to try on every outfit I own and leave all the stuff I decided against piled up in the middle of the bed for him to deal with after I leave for work, or to wake him up at 5:00 in the morning because I something large and furry went scurrying when I opened the garage door and I needed him to prove it was a kitten and not a rat.  And he even went along with me when I suggested that if it was actually a kitten we should probably start feeding it. 

This morning I'm putting on my makeup and he comes and leans against the bathroom doorjamb, watching.

"Why do you watch this?" I ask.  "How am I supposed to maintain any sense of mystery?  Not that there's a lot left to the imagination at this point..."

"A woman's personality is always a source of mystery" he says, laughing and kissing me.

I am lucky that my dear husband is a forgiving sort of fellow, he likewise that I am a woman inclined to seek the good.  We're both old enough to be at peace with our respective faults, which makes it far easier to accept them in others. When I finally reached a point in my life where my self-love was greater than my self-loathing, that's when I met the person who could love me as I am.  Perhaps the fact that I had come to accept and even at times celebrate my own strengths and acknowledge and forgive my own weaknesses made it easier for someone else to come along and love me too.

Even though life is busy and like most people I invest too much of my time and energy slogging through the daily grind of work, chores and bills, there are times on my long commute that I turn off the radio and pay attention.  Driving through the frozen desert and the stubbled, winter-barren crop circles, I reflect on the mystery of us and one more time am humbled by just how lucky I am, at this stage in my life, to know this kind of love.

 

I would marry this man again in a heartbeat.  Yes, I would.

Its supposed to go better than this

We were already set up for a followup IEP meeting yesterday for Race Car Man.  As it turned out, even if there hadn't been one on the calendar we would have had it anway.  Tuesday...

...He had a good morning.  He was medication-compliant.  He got dressed when he was asked.  He rode the bus, stayed in his seat, kept his hands and his voice to himself, and earned a reward:  iPad time when he got to class.

Except when 10 minutes of iPad time was up, he was not ready to be done.  He melted down, all the way to the core.  It was bad, not only bad enough that he had to be picked up but also bad enough that he said some things he really should not have and got himself suspended for a day.  In the wake of events across the country, everyone is on edge and things they might have shrugged off last week aren't getting a free pass this week.

Later that afternoon, the new dog, who had been doing wonderfully well, was unpardonably aggressive.  We are responsible dog owners.  We knew what had to be done.  We checked out some alternatives but none of them were workable.

Tuesday night was kind of a blur of sadness, frustration and fear.  Its Christmas, dammit.  This is not how I hope for the holidays to commence -- with another tough IEP meeting where I get the distinct impression my son's teacher wants him in a different placement, followed by a tough decision about the fate of a much-loved pet who cannot be rehomed and who is a danger to people.

Fortunately at our IEP meeting, I had support from the district counselor whose opinion and mine were the same:  A change in placement doesn't solve the problems.  The problems will still exist and we can't ignore the danger of disrupting a child who is already struggling.  If the accepted model of behavioral therapy is applied, we see that we are trying interventions that aren't working.  Either we are mis-reading the antecedent behavior or the responses we are implementing are not working and we need to figure out new approaches.

We ended the meeting with some plans in place -- my ex will be spending time in Race Car Man's classroom on his weekday off.  The district counselor will work with the teacher, the aides, the school counselor and school psychologist to implement some different positive interventions.  We have an appointment with a new behavioral therapist and a plan to access some skills classes for both my son and for us as parents.  Clearly we all need some more tools for our toolboxes, and although the timing is unfortunate, we've got to move forward with intention and resolve.

I left that meeting to attend another work-related meeting that lasted the rest of the day.  I welcomed the chance to concentrate and engage with a cross-functional team of adults on everything BUT autism and dog problems. 

When I got home last night I spent some time engaging Race Car Man about what happened on Tuesday.  I'm always struck by how honest he is.  He admits his behaviors.  He doesn't try to deny what happened, but tells me he can't control himself when he gets that upset.  And he's right, he can't.  He doesn't have those skills yet.  So we talk about what are things it is OK to say when we are mad and things that will get you in big trouble, and I know we will have to spend some time helping him to practice using different words when he is angry and upset so that the next time it happens he has more tools to reach for. 

I suppose I should be feeling worse than I am, but despite the heavy baggage of the last couple of days, I have a sense of relief.  We have a plan and we have a good team to help my son.  I know that a lot of his issues are temporary -- he will either grow out of these behaviors or he will receive enough therapy to help him improve them.  Naturally, these problems will simply be replaced by other problems, but that's true for every person who ever lived, autism be damned.  I am terribly sad about our dog, but its spilled milk;  I can't undo what happened and I can't take chances with my family or with other people's families.  I salve the wound by offering to foster again after the grandpuppy goes home with her dad, who is spending Christmas with the Washington State family next week.  We are all very excited about seeing him.

And finally, with all that has happened the last few weeks, we've gotten a break in an area where we really needed one:  SG interviewed for and has been offered a job HERE.  ALL THE TIME HERE.  Knowing that I will not be dealing with the upcoming months of February and March without my husband at my side makes a lot of things a lot more bearable.  Its not that his presence solves all the problems, no one can do that.  But his presence means I have someone here who's got my back, who loves my kids, who fills an empty space in my house I didn't even know was there until I met him.  

Happiness tempered by sadness tempered by excitement tempered by fear.  That's life.  That's OK.

First

SG and I got married a year ago today.  Yay us!

I'm very distressed, though, because the gift that I made sure I picked out and mailed early enough to reach him has not yet found its way to his hotel.  Interestingly enough, the absentee ballot I also mailed to him on the same day got there two days ago, so I'm a bit perturbed. 

His gift to me arrived on time, of course, in the form a a beautiful dozen long-stemmed roses.  I'm not normally a flowers-and-jewelry form of female, but even cynical me has to admit red roses are really the most romantic bouquet a man could ever give a woman.  I love them.  I'd trade them in a heartbeat to have him home, but since that option is not available to me I'll just enjoy the roses and look forward to seeing him in a few weeks.

I've wondered a few times before and since if we rushed into things, getting married just a hair under a year after we first met.  I've always been a creature of impulse, but as I've aged I've learned to question myself.  Oh, I still do ALL THE STUPID THINGS but at least I question myself while I'm doing them. 

I'm not one of those who thinks that every venture in life can be carefully planned so as to avoid making any mistakes.  So we didn't date for ten years or have a five year engagement. At this stage of our lives, are we beyond that sort of thing?  Is it OK to just say the heart wants what it wants, you make my girl parts hum with joy and you love me and you love me kids and all of that put together adds up to more than enough?  So we hitched our wagons together and we learn as we go, we grow as we learn, and over time we come together more easily because we've built a future on a base of love, trust and very real passion.  The faults we didn't recognize in one another we are learning to accept and forgive. 

Being a little older, besides giving me a nice antique feel, helps me understand that life and relationships have a degree of ebb and flow  SG and I, we accept that there are days we won't click or feel very close, and we have acquired the patience to get through those days with the sure knowledge that the tide will change and we will soon be back in sync.  We are in sync far more often than we are not. The not-syncing times can be unpleasant - we are smart, we are emotional, we both think we're right and we're both alpha types.  That makes for some pretty spectacular clashes, but the making up part is also pretty spectacular.

Happy First Anniversary, babe.  I'm looking forward to many more.

 

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?

 

Dog + Bone = Me

As much as I throw it out there that letting go of things is a healthy way to exist, I'm not always so good at being a person who lets go of things.  I have a tendency to perseverate.  My husband and I will have a disagreement over something, and days later I am still stuck on a particular thing he said that I thought was wrong, and having repeated conversations with myself where in I roleplay both of us and stick my point to him over and over until he falls over from the sheer brilliance of my superior mind. 

Or some drama on the internet will settle hooks into my gray matter and no matter how useless it may be, I find myself idly drawn to hunting down more tidbits of information or opinion.  Sometimes its not even an issue I particularly take sides in, but part of me just can't help but watch it unfold.  I pick up nuance and opinion and data and start playing them on an endless background loop. 

My shrink said that I do this in order to distract myself from my deeper feelings of fear and loss, of self-loathing and shame.  I would counter that as I age I find less to loathe about myself, but I can't help but admit that I still struggle with all of those things.

If life were fair and if life unfolded according to my plan...probably we'd all fall off the surface of the planet because I would have forgotten to make sure we always had gravity turned on.

So then you'll agree its probably best I'm not in charge of this whole shebang.

I'm struggling lately with feelings of loneliness and fear.  By the time my husband comes home from this job he will have been gone...a lot.  Putting numbers on it doesn't really do anything but make it seem worse.  Lets just say gone more than he's been home.  And I'm selfish.  Even when I know that he, as a capital-M Man has the same drive that I have to shoot the biggest mammoth I can in order to provide for my family, I still at the bottom most layer of it just really want him to not be gone.  I want someone besides the Betta Fish on my kitchen counter to talk to in evenings when the kids are at their dads.  I want to go out to breakfast with SG, not alone and certainly not with the kids.  I want to come home to my husband's arms and his being glad to see me at the end of the day.   

And I find myself being childish and petulant about it. 

I think of my son, upset because he can't play his beloved game.  He makes it into a Supreme Court Case.  "If you really loved me you'd let me play."   "My life is ruined right now and nothing will make it better."  "I hate you."  "Global warming will end if you just let me play my game."  (No, he didn't really say that.  I made it up.  But how cool would it be if he DID say that? How utterly cool?)

I catch myself being dramatic even in my thoughts. 

I'm always alone.

No one will ever really love me.

We're all going to die in a fiery explosion because I have to be celibate for three months.

IF HE REALLY LOVED ME HE'D GIVE UP EVERYTHING JUST TO BE WITH ME.

You know, stuff along those lines.  Real sane, level-headed, purposeful CLEAR thinking.  Ha, I crack myself up.

And I'm not really sure how to make that thought cycle stop. 

Help.

Sometimes you need to fly

Tonight my husband leaves again.  He will be back in six weeks, give or take. 

We spent the weekend trying to get in as much quality time together as we could as a couple and as a family while still making sure that he wasn't leaving me with a house full of dishes and laundry and a yard that needed more attention than I would be able to provide flying solo for the next month and a half.

I think one of the reasons SG and I click so well is that we share so many traits.  We are absent minded, we are easily distracted.  We always mean well, but we are often clumsy. For example, last week he and Race Car Man managed as a morning project to drop my almost-brand-new laptop on the floor off the breakfast counter.  Its about a three and a half foot drop. 

As you might expect, the laptop did not appreciate this Big Adventure and all of its internals went on permanent strike to protest.

We made three trips to the big box electronics store over the course of the week to drop off the machine, drop off rescue disks, and ultimately to pay to have the hard drive removed and sent off to another location to have its data recovered because it could not be powered up to do the recovery locally.  In the meantime, I've replaced it with something no one but me is allowed to touch, and when I have the time and funds to get the old one repaired, it can become the laptop everyone else gets to use.

Driving back and forth to the big box electronics store involved much negotiating with the Littles.  Two parking lots away, the traveling carnival was in town.   When its 8 pm on a weeknight and a 4:30 alarm clock is staring you in the face, the last thing you want to do is the carnival.  But when you're seven years old and the lights of the ferris wheel fill up the sky, the ONLY thing you want to do is the carnival. We put them off and put them off, but finally yesterday afternoon I agreed to spend a small fortune on ride tickets.

While Amazon Girl and I rode the ferris wheel together, SG took Race Car man to ride the Jet Planes.  When it got to be his turn in line, though, he was too scared to get on.  After Amazon Girl and I got off the ferris wheel, I talked to him about the ride.  I told him his sister would go on it with him if he would feel better.  He thought that might be fine, so we got back in line, but when we got to the man running the ride, we were told that my Amazonian Princess was actually too tall for the ride.  Race Car man would have to go it alone. 

He took a few minutes to think about that.  His desire to ride on the green jet finally overrode his fear and he clambered aboard.

This picture doesn't really do justice to the expression on his face most of the ride.  It was a combination of joy and awe.  He loved every second of it, almost as much as his sister enjoyed the ferris wheel:

Its hard to be unhappy about anything with that kind of joy sitting next to you in a bucket car.

As we were winding down, the little guy decided to spend his last ticket on another ride in the jet plane.  He enjoyed it so much the operator let him stay on and have yet another ride even though he didn't have another ticket.  I hope he knows how much his small act of kindness meant to us.

Sometimes I get my nose out of joint when I hear people talking about kids behaving poorly in public, blaming parents.  I have a tendency to expect people to react negatively when we are having a particularly bad day with anxiety or sensory issues.  But I have to admit -- people are often far more accomodating than I expect them to be.

It was a good way to cap off our Sunday afternoon.  A little sunshine, a little fresh air, some carefree time laughing and soaring through the air -- sometime you just gotta fly.

Brighter days

Its almost seven a.m. and I need to get up and get moving.  The farrier's coming in two hours and then the vet, and if the girls get the all clear, I can get them vaccinated and wormed.  The oldest of my guest horses is the slowest gaining weight.  Getting her teeth floated helped, but I'm hoping that once I can worm her we'll turn the final corner and start seeing some roundness to her.

I've been sitting in bed watching Gizmo chew on Roscoe's ears.  He does this weird thing where he'll start chewing on the end of one long floppy ear, and then he gradually pulls it all the way in so he's got a mouthful of ear which he masticates with eyes half closed, clearly enjoying it.  After chewing blissfully for a few seconds he spits it out and starts all over again.  By the time he's done (or I speak sharply at him to stop), Roscoe's ear is absolustely soggy with Chihuahua saliva.  He patiently lies there the whole time Gizzy's chewing on him.  I can't tell if he really likes it or simply tolerates it.  Dogs are simply unknowable at times.

SG comes home today.

Yes, it was a surprise.  He picked up a cold that turned into a bronchial infection the last week or more of the job he was working.  He'd been to the doctor and gotten antibiotics and such, but as he was packing to head to the next job, he still wasn't feeling right.  He went back to the doctor and his blood pressure was really high, which is worrisome.  But the doctor wasn't comfortable with him driving 2500 miles to work six twelve hour days a week for several weeks, so we talked it over and he made the decision to come home.  Fortunately he may still be able to go to the next job on a delayed basis, so if he gets the all-clear from his doctor here, it won't be a complete wash.  He'll get the work AND I get a conjugal visit.  We all win!

I've been on vacation most of the week with the kids on spring break.  I've managed to do at least a few of the tasks I was hoping to accomplish, which means my house and yard have begun to approach "acceptable" status.  They'd look even better, but I wisely chose to use as many days as possible this week to ride Bugs.

Its hard to put into words just how satisfying its been to ride him.  He is progressing so nicely right now.  Mentally he's become a more reliable and mature fellow.  Physically he is beginning to understand and respond to my requests to collect and round his back.  As he begins to collect and round for longer and longer segments, the pleasure of being the person on his back becomes indescribable.  There is something intensely pleasurable about riding a horse who is completely collected.  His face is at the vertical, he's flexed at the poll and his neck is nicely arched.  His feet are underneath him and the action at his knees and hocks becomes more obvious.  If  you're watching him from the ground you can hardly take your eyes from him because he just looks so great, and if you're lucky enough to be riding him, you can't keep the grin off your face because you know he feels and looks spectacular.  My cheeks are actually sore from the grinning this week. 

We also worked on some trail obstacles in preparation for our riding clinic tomorrow.  Michelle dragged out some old tractor tires and we took the black plastic from her garden and made a "black hole of death" obstacle.  Bugs negotiates the tires quite well, and even when he's stepped on the side of a tire and it flipped up and banged him in the hocks he did not get perturbed.  I can run him through them on the ground or on his back and he's a tire-crossing demon.  The black tarp of death is an entirely different matter.  He's pretty sure its going to kill him.  We made great progress with it, and yesterday I had him standing on the tarp while I flipped and rattled the edges of it.  He didn't like it much, but he stayed put. 

To have a good trail horse, you've got to get two things to happen.  You have to get your horse to trust you enough that he believes you will never ask him to do something that will get him killed.  He is a prey animal, and as such is highly reactive to unfamiliar stimuli.  Things that flutter or move can be terrifying.  Water looks like its a huge hole he could fall into.   A level headed horse who doesn't spook easily is wonderful to have, but more often than not a horse is not born that way, you need to help him learn to be that way. 

It is also a lot of fun to torture your horse when you think he's being unreasonably sensitive. 

Chicks arrived this week.  I've got three silver-laced Wyandottes, one Rhode Island Red, and four tiny little yellow banties.  Four layers and four pets. They're so cute and fluffy, we love to hold them and listen to them chirp.  If you hold one long enough it will fall asleep on your hand, and its almost unbearably cute.  They are doing much to satisfy my baby cravings.

Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate it this weekend, happy Spring and happy Eoster to those of you who don't.  Spring reminds me that life is a continual opportunity for renewal and redemption.  This week has certainly felt that way.

Its better if you do it quickly

I've added another guest to the pasture this week, a mare that was injured after getting her hind legs torn up in barbed wire.  The people who were boarding her didn't even notice she was injured for several days, so she was in some need of doctoring and pain management.  Fortunately her injuries are not going to leave her permanently lame.

Part of doctoring her for the moment involves hosing down her legs until the scabs are softened and then scrubbing them off with a bristle brush so that I can get antibacterial agents into the wounds themselves.  The first time we treated her there were some pretty big scabs that had to come off.  Just scrubbing wasn't working and I had to grab them and pull them off.

Its one thing to grab your kid and pull off a bandage or a scab. You know they're going to yelp, you know its going to hurt, but you have to do it fast and all at once.  And your child is (hopefully) smaller than you are and so you're not taking your life in your hands.

Its another thing entirely to put yourself within striking distance of a 1200 pound animal and do something that you absolutely know is going to hurt like hell. 

I've been fortunate in my years not to have many injured horses that needed doctoring.  Only twice have I ever dealt with having a horse stitched up.  Both of those times I just held my horse and let the vet do their job, then made sure I kept the stitches clean until they could come out.  My friend Michelle, on the other hand, has dealt with a sizable herd for a long time and is no stranger to doctoring horses.  She says that its the uncanniest thing sometimes, even horses you don't think will be able to tolerate what you need to do will actually be very quiet and patient when you have to do something that hurts.  Perhaps they realize that they need your help to get better, and so they stand still and let you work.

For whatever reason, this lovely mare allowed me to grab hold and yank some fairly large scabs from her hocks without kicking, rearing, biting or bolting.  She was an angel, and has been every day since as I clean and reopen her scabs and treat them with Betadine and a gel spray. 

I guess she knows the truth - the only way to take off a scab is to stand still and yank it all right at once. 

When SG and I got married its not like I was unaware of the fact that his current career means he is gone for weeks at a time.  I'm still getting used to it, though.  I liked having him home, having two of us doing the heavy lifting together.  Enjoying each other's company, having him there to come home to at night, to kiss goodbye in the mornings.  With him gone life seems emptier, less meaningful.  Far too stressful.  The part of me that is logical acknowledges fully the need for paying work in a down economy.  My inner drama queen, however, is less inclined to care about logic.  She's far more concerned with her creature comforts.  She wants her man home, and NOW.  She puts up such a fuss and my inner Spockette has found herself drowned out by the brouhaha.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a murmur of further jobs on the road.  Maybe months worth.  My inner drama queen blew up like a unicorn full of glitter with a hand grenade shoved up its ass. Then she stuck her fingers in her ears.

Its been a merry spectacle, let me tell you.  Tears, emotionally charged text messages.  Hangups.  And really, nothing had been decided yet. 

Fortunately, my inner Spockette and I tag-teamed her, stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth, duct taped it in place and shuttled her off to the back of the attic for the time being.   When SG called, inner Spockette and I had it all under control.  He ripped the scab off - he will be going directly to North Carolina from Arizon with no time for a visit home, and he will be gone until the end of May.  Inner drama queen made a barely recognizable muffled yelp and hasn't been heard from for a couple of days.

If you try to pull the scab off a little bit at a time it takes forever.  Every little tug hurts just as bad as the one before it and the one after it.  All you have accomplished in the end is to make your pain last longer.    Even horses know this.  Hopefully my inner drama queen has figured it out as well.