Theories on The Worst Possible Thing

Beignet is truly attached to his balls.  Those things are papery-white, shriveled, and yet still hanging in there! 
We thought they'd be gone by the time we got back from vacation, but there they are! Ghosts of their former selves, haunting Beignet, a bull-in-appearance-only now.

watching the green flash at sunset

Our vacation to Huck's ancestral lounging house at Mission Beach was so tremendously relaxing that when they changed our flight itinerary 375 times on the way home, we didn't care.  We went through Denver, Pheonix, Seattle and from there to Spokane on a 30 second Horizon flight which served complimentary wine which we were all obliged to chug before the tray tables were snapped up for landing: it was nice.  Through it all, our luggage hadn't been able to keep up and I was told to just come back the next day to see if it had made it.

While vacating, we talked of this phrase "wanting something bad enough."  It was used to inspire my middle school basket ball team. I took it at face value;  if I stood at the foul line and wanted to make a basket bad enough, I would.  And it never, ever worked.  I wanted, oh! Did I WANT!  I LONGED to make a basket, just one!  I ached.  I stood on that line and quivered with desire to make a basket only to discover that my coach was an effing liar.  It wasn't until maybe a few years ago that I realized that the "want" only works if you translate it into practicing, like, a LOT.  And so, in that case, I didn't even want to want it bad enough. I would have been honest about that, given half a reasonable explanation of how this "wanting " works.

Pacific Beach combing

I've had all sorts of explanations for how the world works reeking havoc up here in my brain for decades now.  It's been a slow process to unravel it all. I have to take a lot of breaks so I can laugh at myself.  Here is my old-as-I-am explanation for how the world/god/fate works:

I grew up hearing these testimonies... lots of testimonies... in fact I could write a book about all the messed up junk I learned from testimonies: the importance of alcoholism, abusive childhoods, drug use, DRAMA, promiscuity, etc. etc. and what a GREAT story those things make!!!  No one wants to hear the testimony of the good, obedient daughter finally realizing the error (where's the error?  is it that speck of a swearword over there?) of her ways and then repenting, tearfully, and making a dramatic change in her um...life. BORING.

So anyway, one of the things I'd hear again and again went something like this, "I didn't think I'd ever be a ___________ (Christian, pastor, wife, human, sober, teacher, mother, etc) or do _______________ (missionary work, funerals, teaching, good stuff, dishes, etc)  And I was sure I'd never _________________ (I'm drawing a blank on this one).  But God has a funny way of MAKING (key word emblazoned on my psyche) you do those things you swore you never would!"  Knowing laughter ripples through room.  Why were those grown-ups laughing?  What secret did they know?  I determined to figure it out in the absurd isolation chamber of my little child-brain.  Late at night.  Laying awake in bed.

forts at the beach house

I would imagine the "worst possible thing" (WTP).  And I developed a very special talent for this which persists to this day!  I would then try to figure out how God would MAKE me do this or that.... would MAKE me get to the place where that would finally make sense. 

WPT:  I'd HATE to be doctor!  Touching people's bodies, blood, bones, dead people dying right beneath your incompetent hands.  And here you'd been thinking for decades about how god-like you were, saving people from the clutches of death, only to have the crushing realization one day, as Suzie bleeds uncontrollably in your human hands, that you are, in fact, impotent against the forces of death, and you realize that your life has been just an empty shell of work and student loans, a futile resistance to the one force in the universe stronger than life itself.  And so you start taking your own pills, by the handfull, day after day after day, making horrifying medical mistakes but not caring because we all die.  We All Die.  Sooner or Later.  So what's a few years off your insignificant lives anyway?

Barry's mega-castle format

Next step:  Oh crap!  Now God's probably going to MAKE me be a doctor!  Well, there's really only ONE way he could do that!

Step three:  Basically, God would have to make my mother or sister or dad or brother or ALL OF THEM die from some previously unknown disease and then I'd have to devote my life to a crusade to discover, name (that's the hard part: what would I name it? VanBoveniphilitis?) and eradicate this disease.  I'd HAVE to become a doctor!  Which brings us to...

Step four:  THE ONLY WAY to save my family is to actually WANT to be a doctor before God has to smite them in his bid to force my hand.  But then they'd never know or thank me for all that debt, medical school and depression that I forced myself to endure just to save their lives.  Maybe I could just SAY I want to be a doctor and fake god out until it's too late for me to go to medical school or study science-y things.

EXAMPLE 2:

I HATE Michael Dolan ( probably a nice guy - no idea what he's up to these days and I have no idea why I didn't like him... he wasn't a jerk or anything.)!  Which brings us to WPT:  GOD now has to MAKE me marry him!! YUCK!!!  Please, God, don't make me marry HIM!!!  There's NO WAY!  I'll become an atheist!  I'll hate you to the end of time if you do that! (To this day: I wonder in what sneaky ways God could have made Huck be just like Mike Dolan! ACK!)

Pisco Sours on the Roof every night!

Step Three: God will have to destroy the earth.  Mike's the last man on it.  I'm pushing 80, so there's not much time I'd have to spend with him anyway.  AND he had a brain injury that completely changed his personality.  And his acne is gone.  Then.... maybe.

Step Four: no step four.

I guess, life did turn itself strange on me.  I didn't imagine I'd be a stay at home mom. Or be married to a blond, science-y guy.  Or spend vacations in San Diego.  Or drive a Honda.  Or be Agnostic.... but then how couldn't I be? What with a god that MAKES your worst nightmares come true as a matter of course.

But as far as being a home-maker, I hadn't really imagined anything else, or actually SEEN anything else.  I kind of thought I'd only-the-good die young, so tragic, so romantic. They have the BEST funerals. And then I was 24 and maybe that wasn't going to happen after all. And, oh shit!, what if I lived to 85?  How could I afford 20 years of retirement?  God's got 50 more years to MAKE me become a doctor and 45 more to MAKE me marry Mike Dolan.  God could do that... if he WANTS to bad enough.  Let's hope he just sits around wanting and doesn't actually wake up early on Saturday mornings to practice.

Vent-age Farmer on the Dell

I have so much to say and little ability to recall it while sitting here at the computer, a laptop perched on a, literally, old school desk with an empty inkwell... the kind I sat in at school, although I'm not THAT old.  The school I went to was old, both in thought and facility.  When I sit at the computer, it's like there's this different world.  Things I virtually commit to rarely make it on my real calendar.  And things I mean to look up once I boot up the Farmer in the Dell, are often forgotten once I see the screen.  There's an impenetrable veil between the worlds.

Today is Coyote's 7th birthday.  It was a good birth, lo, these seven years ago.  It was a quick, honest three and a half hours and out came a screaming 9 pound tub of discontent who didn't talk until he was 3 and cried for several hours every day for the first... um..7 years and counting.  The only way to keep him quiet was to take a long bath with him for an hour a day for that first year. 

Pomona (the latest name for our farmette) is again basking in the afterglow of several firsts.  It's fun to have a hobby where two years in to it, I'm still having firsts. I like big, big projects.

First first: butter, thereby proving that I'm not a witch and not worth burning.  Thanks for your patience.  I'm temporarily having real cream and the butter is easy to make but intense.  Our strawberries, peas, cucumbers, herbs, radishes, etc, etc, plus butter, milk and eggs are radically flavored.  After getting over the spring shock of taste, I have a hard time understanding how everything store bought is so utterly bland.  What do they do to these things that makes them so tasteless? Do the stores have taste sucking equipment? or is that on the truck that brings it?  Does it keep us coming back for more, do they tease us with a fix and then ensure we leave less than fully satisfied?

Snow on Mt. Spokane ruins

Second first: sold a cow.  Ginger was just over one and very ready to breed.  She was short and fat with a wonky build and despite all that, I think I sold her for too little.  That's classic me: under valuing all that I have to offer. It was sad to see her go. She is my most adventurous cow with a curious and playful streak.  She seemed ready to see what came next, excited actually, as the trailer pulled away.   I was sad, but the much needed cash buoyed my spirits.  And I could actually say with some confidence that she was going to a better place with more acreage, taller grass, daily grain, lots of friends, and a bull. 

Third first:  castration.  Beignet is a little... under the weather today.  It took four of us.  Huck and Sergei to hold him down and Maria to work the rubber band machine and me to fret and ask if there was something I should be doing, over and over again.  But now I've seen it done... so I think that some day I could see someone else to it again. Only next time I could probably yell directions too: "Are they both in there?  Hold the legs tighter!  Keep his head down!  Is he still breathing?"  He was wild boy, big and strong and he wasn't that in to it.  And I have to say that I do feel bad about that too.  But I really have even less use for a bull than a steer, no matter how long his odd white eyelashes are, and how wild his soul. 

Mt Kit Carson

I think I also wanted to say something about the light switches in this house.  It's an old house and apparently, back in 1901, they really didn't get lights or switches or the whole concept.  They thought, "Why would you want to turn the light on as soon as you walk in to a dark room?  Why not just stub your toes all the way across the room, like we always used to, and rub your hands up and down the walls until you find the most unlikely possible place, and THAT will be your switch!"  And I find this affects me when I go to hotels and other people's houses.  I walk in to a room and immediately think, "Where's the worst possible place to a put a light switch?"  And my hand instinctively goes there.  I can see how 110 years ago, people might be new to this and hadn't worked out all the kinks.  But in '97, the house got all new electrical wiring and I can't understand how they didn't think to fix this insanity then.

And since it's summer, I also wanted to address body hair, which I have hanging out all over the place here.  Women always confide in me, "Oh gosh, I wish I could go without shaving too.  It's such a pain!"  And I always think, "Wait, do we have the Taliban... or Caliban or whatever here?  Do you get stoned to death in the soccer arena for not shaving legs? Or are you full of shit?" I can't even believe it's an issue.   Ladies: you don't have to shave.  Period.  Stop pretending you do. There's not even any blow back. No one has ever said a critical word to me about it... almost never.  I had a boss who made me shave my legs to keep my waitressing job (see why I don't want to work!?).  And my friend once asked me to shave my pits before clubbing, which I felt was fair enough.  But as far as me waltzing around town in short shorts and a tank top: no one has ever said a thing, grimaced, spat, scowled, NOTHING.  It certainly doesn't seem to put a dent in the assessments from the males.  And the only thing the women ever say is: I wish I could go without. Then do.  You're hair will start out dark, and you'll never get the original downy fluff back, but then the sun bleaches it and most people don't even notice.  And the only comment you'll ever get is:  I wish I could go without shaving.  And if someone has a problem with you being a post-pubescent mammal, you don't need them.  Now... I will say that if you aren't ready to do this, if your family is a little outspoken with their disgust at people being hairy, mammary-glanded animals (unlike mine who would be alarmed if I did shave), and if you don't care to engage in that conversation with them, by all means, let them bully you into wasting hours and hours and hours of your life dragging razors over your skin and numbing yourself to the breezes of life.  Don't envy me.  Don't hate me just because I don't give a shit. Just please stop lying about it.  You too can stop shaving.  Now.

Gotta go birthday party now!

If it pleases you...

Sukey, world's best cow

oh pshaw!  I hasn't been THAT long since I last monoblogged.  It's summer vacation, the kids are home, the garden is lush with weeds, the cows are needing all kinds of help, and I've been sick.  And in the midst of it I've got massive cerebration going on up here.  I've been changing so fast I'm just a blur even to myself.  I've been busy shedding my people-pleasing, one layer at a time. Not to say I've totally mastered this new skill, but mostly, I think I'm over the change-hump. I've been waiting a long time for this.

Lots of thinking and reading and some good therapy...  I have a long simmering brain and my back burner is where it's at.  So here, right now, I'm busy.  But things I learned a year ago are sinking in.  I'm like that.  Art has been a good, physical manifestation of this.  Every year I don't work on something makes it richer and better and finally I go back to it, and every thing I learned technically years ago is in full flower, actualized. My motions one with the thought.  So don't worry if I learn something new but can't apply it right away.  I quit working so hard, put it in the crock pot and when I get home from church, it's all savory and melts in my mouth. (This is how, over the centuries, countless hoards have tried to convince me to get a crock pot.  Like I'm all about roast beef.  I get bitchy just at the thought of adding one more thing in to the morning while cajoling kids in to underwear and clothing and making sure they've gone pee before we go because I hate the crotch-grabbing-dance they have no qualms about doing in front of large, and largely anonymous audiences... So OKAY - I am not making ROAST BEEF for lunch at 8 am when I'd rather be showering.  But I've realized that if I stop the discussion and tell them how NOT interested I am in crockpots (there's also the minivan-like cliche-mom issue and the not-enough-enough-cupboard-space-for-yet-another-too-specific-giant-piece-of-crap concept to consider) then we end up with even more vehement crockpot-proselytization... Just give me the damn recipe which I can write down as "blah blah blah" in a way so that no one can really read my hand writing.  Or maybe I should just slap them until they shut up. Okay, perhaps my new personality needs to go in my mental crock pot for a few more years to get a little more toothsome.  Or perhaps that's just the people-pleaser in me that's thinking WAY TOO MUCH about you and your love of all things crock pot.)

Too many cows

Farm Notabilia:
Hendrika gave chocolate milk for a good 10 days.  We did not drink it.  Because Chocolate milk actually from cows is not made with chocolate.  When her milk came in, her udder stretch a little too much, blood vessels were burst and viola: chocolate milk.  We turned it in to eggs, however.

We dehorned Chocolatey Claire (also, not TRUE chocolate),  This was not as gruesome as I feared and involved ONLY: catching her, caging her, roping her, roping her again, roping her again, getting kicked and head butted, shaving her marble-like horn buds, smearing a caustic paste on them, then reading the directions, then smearing some of the paste off, and then listening to her mother (the venerable Hendrika) moo her head off for six hours until we could let her back out with the cows.  I felt remiss in not bringing in a mohel.  Why dehorn at all?  Isn't that inhumane, etc, etc?  I'll tell you what would be inhumane: getting gored.  Literally, inHUMANe.  Especially important if she turns out to be anything like her mother, by who's head (if it'd had horns) I'd have been hari-cari-ed several times over.  She did not appear to be in any pain, FYI. Claire will be my milk cow in 2 years, if all goes well.  And I want her as me-friendly as possible.

Beignet

Beignet, however, has no horn buds, he being slightly more Hereford than Claire.  He will, however, get castrated soon enough, which Huck insists I'll have to do without the dubious benefit of his likely-hysterical self.  We'll let Beignet recover from his mysterious and inconvenient illness first, however.  We were alerted to a problem when Sukey wouldn't stop mooing for a good 6 hours.  Finally, off my fevered and achey duff, I found Sukey's bag to be full and Beignet to be stumblingly ill.  His ears were perky.  No scours.  But not nursing.  Not interested in milk at all.  Thinking Sukey had mastitis and the milk was gross, I milked out her over-flowing teets, squirting some in the direction of a non-plussed Beignet.  Sukey is my favorite.  She is beautiful and perfect with a benign personality that I thought would make a great milker.  But now I realize, that a hand-milk cow is made, not born.  Sukey nearly destroyed the stanchion, the pail and me and didn't have all the much milk to spare.  And Beignet is fine now.  No idea what happened, except for a lot of worry and research on my part... and all this when Me, yes even ME, was ill.

And also, I am helping my friend run for City Council.  It was such an exciting conversation when she was asked to run!  And I couldn't help but get involved. I've been part of campaigns before, but not this close, and not this kind.  Whereas being on City Council sounds curiously interesting (although I myself live outside city limits) raising money and campaigning are, close up, even more unappealing than I imagined.  It's like Amway meets gambling: turn all your friends and family in to money and then put it all on your name.  She's a brave brave soul who's love for campaigning is honorably weak, although she rallies!, and who's name I will not mention least it be sullied by my prior dabblings in fully-clothed chore-photography.

And I am now on the Board of Trustees for our church.  It's likely as close as I'll get to the prescribe, high school future-job-match fill-in-the-bubble questionnaire.  Back in '91, the computer told me I would make a good pastor!  This cracked me up primarily because they failed to ask what religion or denomination I was which would have instantly alerted the early-type computer that I was not a good candidate based on gender.  However, I now understand that I probably answered those questions however I felt I Should.  Back then, personality was to me a matter of right and wrong.  Not for you or anyone else.  But for me there was a right way to be and a wrong way to be.  And I think I answered those questions in a way that I felt would most please my parents and would make me a "right" person... who was just like them, a pastoral dynamic duo. KA PoW!  People-pleaser, that was me.  I obviously got all the answers right!  And was prescribed the Perfect profession.  Or perhaps the computer wasn't as dumb as I thought and realized what was going on: people pleaser questing for what is right and perfect = pastor who gets a sex change to please the church.

I hope you like my blog post, even though it was a little long.  I really really hope you liked it.  THANK YOU SO MUCH for reading it!  Oh my god, I feel so blessed that you would read my BLOG.  Thanks for putting up with my self-centered moment here.  Did you really like this post?  I really hope you did.  I really really do.

Coyote knew how proud Louis was of his catch, 

so he snapped a photo to honor the moment

Of Mice and Women

Chocolaty Claire getting a scrub down

I could have stopped it.  I knew what was going to happen.  I knew what I needed to do. But I hesitated.  I sat down in my thinking chair.  And I sighed.  Because I am a mother.  And I give life.  I encourage the thriving of children and friends and plants and cows and even, yes, mice. When I saw that baby mouse, blindly feeling it's way across the barn floor, I had my opportunity to kill.  I held in my powerful hands a pitch fork with not one, but four, stabbing points.  Yes, I knew, I was unearthing a mouse nest in the barn.  I could foresee the mice, scores of them, scurrying in all directions, even over my feet and up the pitch fork handle. I could see myself screaming and running out into the rain.  I know that some day they may even give me hanta virus, and yet, I did not kill. They will eat my grain and chew off the bark of our fruit trees.  Yet I did not kill. 

I am cleaning out the barn because, as we have discussed before, Huck is deathly allergic to the 8 now-vanished tons of Timothy Hay I bought last year and hasn't been in the barn since.  So with self-interest in the forefront of my mind, I set to take on one of Hercules's Herculean labors: a full-on, no-straw-left-behind barn excavation. Whereas I was daily getting the chunks, the straw matted several feet thick.  A process so gradual, I didn't notice until now.  And so I am shoveling and forking and huffing and puffing because this stuff has become concrete and I am not Hercules.

I am also cleaning out the barn because we have two new babies who need clean nurseries!  Hendrika's came a week ago and after much fighting and a confusing Facebook vote, we've named her Chocolaty Claire.  Not my favorite, but I know when to stick Helen back in my pocket.  (Some day!  Some Day!  I will have my Helen!) Hendrika birthed loudly (she gets that from me) and seemed confused by the small size and brown color of her baby.  Unbeknownst to her, I had her bred with miniature Jersey.  I mean, I'm pretty sure she was aware of Frank-from-Craigslist having his arm all the way up her tush. I just don't think she would have picked a miniature Jersey if she'd been in charge of the mating process.  She'd probably gone with ye' old standby, vanilla, Hereford.

She and Sukey and Ginger all seemed confused.  "Brown?!"  Said my red cows, "Who ever heard of a brown cow?!"  And when she didn't get up quickly, the cows became even more skeptical of her worth.  And when she finally went to nurse on Hendrika, Sukey stepped in and started ramming her.  By the time Huck got Sukey and Ginger into solitary lock-down, the baby was scared to death of cows.  Huck fed the front end of Hendrika, while I helped the baby up and put her on a teet.  And then the bonding and happiness and joy of a new babe happened and Hendrika accepted her calf   Hendrika also ate the birth sack and placenta, raw.  She gobbled it up, belching and grunting.  And... omg... I can't even talk about it.  Because the whole process and the memory of it starts my digestive tract going the wrong direction.  NEW TOPIC!

Chocolaty Claire getting some colostrum

I read with great envy that cows give birth ON their due date.  That is almost all wrong.  Whereas Chocolaty Clair came on her due date, Beignet was nearly a week late.  Sukey gave birth quickly and quietly to an enormous bull calf who got up right away and started nursing within 1/2 hour of birth.  Sukey daintily snacked on her afterbirth... which still sent my dinner in the wrong direction. The next morning I couldn't find Beignet and set out to check on Sukey, laying in the field.  Did she have the dreaded milk fever?  Had she overlayed him?  But there he was, curled alongside her belly.  And there they stayed.  It was interesting watching Sukey become a mom for the first time.  She too seemed to have an "OH SHIT!" moment shortly after the shock of birth had waned.  That "Oh SHIT! This is mine!  I'm responsible for it!" clearly crossed her face.  Unlike Hendrika, she rarely leaves her doomed little boy.  She stares at him constantly and keeps him cuddled up next to her.

You may call this anthropomorphizing, however, if one holds evolution to be at all true, then certainly our emotions, their expression, as well as bonding hormones, et al, did not just blossom at the the moment homo sapiens sapiens became a distinct genetic entity.  These things came from somewhere, emerged at some point before the HSS human and it is only logical that such feelings would both exist in other mammals and also be expressed on their faces, much like ours are.  Unless, of course, you believe in ex nihilo creation via divine edict.  In which case, skewer me for my anthropomorphizing as you wish. 

And thus begins the season of culling.  Five cows are way too many for five acres.  I wept when I thinned my corn and I'm not sure how well I'll weather the thinning of the herd. So when the mouselet emerged, I sat in my barn-based thinking chair.  I am not well suited to the brutality of farming.  I think I would do better if I did not suspect that humans evolved with emotions and that our close genetic cousins, the mice, also have similar electrical and hormonal states.  I think farmers must believe in God and must believe in their divine right to rule these lesser beings and must believe that humans are a giant step away from animals both emotionally and spiritually.  Because when a farmer-ette does not entirely buy that line of thought, she is somewhat doomed in her efforts to dominion-ate the earth. 

I gathered my courage and I destroyed that mouse mansion made of cow crap.  And I endured their lightening quick zip over my toes by screaming and dancing.  And then there was one, toddling along, cling to life.  And he paused and crouched and appeared to put his paws together and pray.

Dear God,
Where is my cat? Where is the owl?  Where are these things born to kill? 
But for me and my shovel, we must serve the living, the children, the corn, the cows, the mice. 

We must go inside and have a nice calm cup of tea and forgive ourselves even as we forgive those that trespassed over our toes.