Farm Monday vs Office Monday

 I'm grateful that every day at the farm is different than the last.  But, I'd be OK with a boring Monday every once in a while.  

Breakfast of champions before we all descended upon the barn.

Check out my 45 lb paperweight!  She can spend the whole day sprawled across my desk.

Post-It note guardian.

This Monday was acting normal-- it was a ruse.

We scoop, on average, 7 muck buckets full of manure and pee every morning.

So far, so good.  Horses fed, water tanks changed, million and one administrative and HR tasks handled,  workers off on the tractor picking up after yet another storm, the neighbor leaving to haul one of our mowers to tow for servicing, finally I was ready to tackle my daily jobs.

All was well in the world.  My plan was to mow with the Big Daddy mower.  Until, it wouldn't start.  While wrestling the battery out of it to put it on charge, I managed to arc the terminals with the wrench and the metal pin in my finger.  It felt great. 

Yes, I'm supposed to be wearing a bandage over it at all times.  I tried for 2 days.  I can't keep my hands dry and even if I could, with temps almost at 100 today, the bandage turns into a wet oven mitt..

Checking jobs off my list, I was feeling confident.  Next task: spray a few tanks of RoundUp.  Easy peasy.  Wrong.

On my third full tank, a gasket somewhere failed. The chemical solution started to travel down my back, filling my underwear and then my shoes. It takes a minimum of 30 minutes to pump out a full tank.  I think I did it in 20. 

Completely saturated.  All my clothes were tossed in the pickup and I pulled a Lady Godiva to hightail it back to the barn.

The temps had dropped enough to let our 2 residents patients out of their air conditioned stalls after their supper.  I fill 8 buckets every evening when both our Ice Box stalls are in use.

There's usually spare clothes in the barn, the communal sweatpants must've walked off.  I was improvising.

Jesus take the wheel

Whatever it takes to keep the asthma and Cushing's horses at the highest quality of life.

Last check on the horses and I can finally go home and wash the chemicals off me.

Lacking their regular runs, the dogs have been restless.  Suki had yet another surprise for me when I got home.

I'm not even going to bother to sew it at this point, I've discovered it taunts her even more.  Besides, I had an important Accounting Analytics project due at midnight.  I'd worked it and reworked it for 3 nights. Utter futility.

I submitted it at 11:58 PM.  I do not understand these complex Excel formulas that seem second nature to the other students in the class.  Yeah, genius here weaseled her way into a graduate level accounting class to discover she's the only one who's never worked as an accountant and most of the students are already practicing CPAs. This is going to be double diamond ski hill steep learning curve.  

They say you become more eccentric with age.  I can see that.  I already have an intolerance for TV and all its noise, apart from Pippins occasional barking, my house is a quiet refuge.  My phone goes on mute at 8 PM, zero interruptions after I get home.  And yet, it's still not quiet enough,  I wear the sound cancelling ear muffs when I study. 

I've heard people describe silence as 'oppressive'.  To me, it's 'embracing'.  All in your perspective.

I take a nap until 4 AM and start all over again.  

The Trouble with Pinkie

Who knew a useless pinkie finger could cause so much trouble. Three months ago, I broke it. So, off  I went to my orthopedic clinic.

Tip of my pinkie broken off.

Best practice is to put a pin in it to set, but my insurance required us to try a variety of splints... on a pinkie finger...for someone who works on the land.  Brilliant waste of two months, while my broken pinkie, cocked at an off angle kept getting caught on things.  After proving the futility of splints, my insurance approved surgery.

These past two weeks have been pedal to the metal to do all the farm tasks the I won't be able to do for a few weeks with my dominant hand in a wrap.

The day before surgery, I discovered a huge oak that had fallen on my back fence.  The manner in which it lay almost parallel to the fence and how hung it was in other trees, made it an especially difficult tree to cut.  At one point, I had both chainsaws bound in the tree.  Sorry no pics.  I thought I was going to pass out and Luke wasn't far behind me.

We weren't stopping for lunch until it was done.  I had my fence back up by 1:30. Farm Team gettin' er done.

I love these old hands.  Their strength lets me live the life I love. 

D-Day, 4:20 AM, Adjanie picks me up at home and drives me to the hospital.

By 6 AM, I'm first in line for surgery.  We had agreed that they'd do a a nerve block of my arm and leave me awake because of : a) my heart, b) general anesthesia scrambles my brain like a shaken Etch-A-Sketch, c) I had to write my an Auditing midterm Friday evening.  They prep you for general even if the plan is for local, just in case.  Welp, by about 6:05, I had a tube in my throat and I was out like a light.  Apparently, my blood pressure was wonking out and my finger was broken in more places than the original break.  Well, that's what ya get for leaving me with a finger pointing in the wrong direction: it gets caught in things.

When I woke with a sore throat and reaching around for a something to vomit in, I was highly pissed.  I disconnected myself, hopped up, wobbled around getting dressed.

I was sitting in the wheelchair when they came to pull the IVs out.  I must've looked like an old wet hen because they processed me out of there like I was in the grocery store express lane.  I even managed to detour a part-timer on her way in to work.  Back home by 9:30.  Now, if  I could just get some coffee in this joint.

I was settling in to follow doctor's orders and lay down with my hand above my heart for a few hours, when the electricians called form the lakehouse to ask where the heck the generator engineer was, who was to have met them 30 minutes ago.  "I'll be right there."  

After corralling the generator engineer and discussing the work they were to do, I tried tip toeing home, but a neighbor needed help.  I make sure every day that I do one kind act, and after this checked off my list, I was going back to bed.

The dogs had other plans.

I didn't see bed by 11 PM.  So much for best laid plans.  Plus, they had wound my hand up too tight and I had to loosen it (not just an excuse to see the work, but thanks to my heart, my hands and feet are swollen by the end of the day).  Look at the pretty pins.  

I didn't sleep worth a toss because I'd refused receiving any pain med shot at the hospital and I tore up their prescription for opiods because of my midterm and because I'm back at work today (Saturday) and I can't be in the barn torqued out of my mind. 

Get er done.

Definition of a good Day

 Tuesday June 1st: Dax's Birthday and my day off  work.  Tuesdays off are always planned for, yet scarcely achieved.  This Tuesday, no different:  calls and texts poured in from 7:30 to 9:30. I had promised my boy a run since we woke, by 9:30,  he was mad:

Our general contractor was replacing the roof on a run-in shelter.

And the pool man was requesting a status update on the pool cleaner.  Check!  We literally ran all over the farm accomplishing management duties, yet, still sort of getting my day off.  Dax most excellently tested the pool.  A+.

Snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat. Dax got his Birthday run.  All 18-1/2 miles of it.

Miss Suki stays within 10 feet of me at all times, so her GPS collar doubles as my own record.  

She and I ran 12 miles.

For the love of dogs... they keep me alive.  I wouldn't run if it weren't for them.

Their joy of discovery is my pleasure.  

The thrumming of Dax and Micah running past me at Mach 1 drowns out the sad slap-slap-slap-slap noise my feet make.  With a bum heart, reworked knee and steel plate in my foot, I'm no longer the gazelle whose feet make only the slightly plinking sound at each step.  Nope, I've turned into a geriatric moose with a gimpy gait.  

Yet, still I plod on.  The dogs always wait for me.

Sometimes I wish we didn't have to stop running, keep running, keep discovering.

I could follow these little butts anywhere.

We were heading back when I stumbled upon a cow pattie.  

The neighbors lost a cow again, so off we went looking for it.

After my second lap back around the farm, I saw 8 Hueys  flying overhead.

Yup, sign from above that it's going to be a great day.  My only ride in a helicopter was with my dog Cole, over the mountains in Tennessee.  It was pure magic.  My pilot had just retired from the military and he performed maneuvers only allowed in Afghanistan. Ever since then, when I see a helicopter, I stop, stare and relive swooping down mountainsides head first.

The perk of living between three military bases.

Happy birthday to my 4 year old Dax.

Nothing better than a good run to turn a destructive dog into a vegetable.

Remember the buggery required to remove the airplane tires from the brush cutter?

Well, inner tubes arrived and tire man wanted the wheels ASAP. 

Grumbling a little that I had to leave the farm on my day off... until I saw this on a back road:

Heirloom variety Gladiolus, self propagating in the ditches around here. Yup, gonna be a great day.

Around 3 PM, the dust settled, the phone stopped sending me notifications and Dax's birthday celebration resumed.  Meatloaf in the making.

The beginnings of my masterpiece.

The attempt was for it to be Suki's doppelganger.  

She seems unimpressed with the mashed potato frosting and sweet potato ears.

My boys, on the other hand, have more discerning palates.

Don't ever share an ice cream cone with Micah, I speak from experience. 

 We all ate way too much.  

All of them are sawing logs and I'm now, finally, about to start my Auditing and Law assignments that I had planned to begin almost 12 hours ago at 10 AM.  

Sometimes, plans need to go the way of the dodo bird and turn a bum day into pure magic.