One Year, Many Small Steps

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It is now one year of non-stop activity and stress since my best friend left us all. I had a delightful story in mind about Terry and our experiments at playing horseless cowboy cadets but I think it might have to wait a bit longer. I am a creature who needs a settled and quiet environment to bring my thoughts to paper and it has been anything but lately. Mostly towards a good end but nonetheless the current upheavals have me bouncing off the walls and finally chased into this one room plus the temporary bedroom in the cramped company of the cats, dogs and refugee belongings and paperwork teetering in high stacks.
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But a lovely and comfortable goal is nearing completion now. I have been without a kitchen for a month now but, when it is done, it will be a tidy and homey joy without rickety trailer-quality cabinets that slashed my hands from previous drywall screw repairs and appliances that only partially worked. I can't wait to show you the finished product but it will still be a while yet. I found a really enjoyable person to install oak floors over the swollen and nasty subfloors in what will be my bedroom, the hall, living room, new washer/dryer space and the kitchen. It will look great when it is done but, for now, it has been more of a tense exercise in finding homes for the furniture and boxes already crammed into a far-too-small house. My cooking facilities had dwindled to a wide-slot toaster but even it has now been displaced in the ever-tightening no-live zone. Soon though, soon!
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I suppose the most frustrating problem is that I burned out my once superior multi-tasking abilities. Apparently they are gone for good and refuse to come back. With three or four different contractors flitting in and out of the scene, I have managed to fall behind on the day-to-day household management. This, in turn, has caused more stress which is blocking my writing now. How about giving me another month to see if this immediate jumble falls into place? Right now, it is difficult for me to imagine having a settled home once again but the thought that it is near is keeping me going one day at a time. I think you will enjoy the tale of two green horns in cattle country when I do emerge from this settled and victorious. Thanks for being patient with me - it has been greatly, greatly sustaining.
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Above, the summer rains arriving last year in late July. I was now alone out at the Rat, hoping that the rains would not destroy the only road out. But the long and broad view was also comforting, reminding me that we are all at the hands of nature and fate.
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In such a broad vista, you can see the sun breaking through the clouds and traveling along foot by foot to light up near and far flats and mesas in stunning ways. When the rains wash over in pursuit of the sun patches, the smell of parched clay now moistened is a fragrance that you will never forget. That smell signals a burst of life that patiently laid waiting and soon the toads long dormant in the mud would emerge in a deafening cacophany of bobby whistles, all searching for a mate before the new pools and ponds drift away once more with the sun and wind. This brutally harsh and honest land was our most beloved home and, yes, I still miss it terribly. It is where we were both last seen truly alive. .
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Turkae Non Grata

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Like a few humans in my life lately, the turkeys have finally proven to be more of an irritation and burden in my life than any minor source of happiness. They are idiots .... period. And I now deeply resent the shin scar from trying to unload that 130 pounds of cracked corn for them. Here's why:
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I was really excited when I found a total of eleven eggs in the nesting tub. Three of the eggs disappeared over time without a trace. No big deal, there were still eight in there, all supported by great hopes on my part.

Last week, I went into the coop to add more water and cracked corn to their dishes and Rita (the darker one) raised up and spread out her wings out to hide something. It was then that I heard the faintest of chirping noises. Yes! There were hatchlings in her tub! Yes! My dream of bringing them out to the ranch was still alive!
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Rita and Hannah finally left the nest and I found two unhatched eggs and six very alive hatchlings. What joy, what affirmation of new possibilities!
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Here is one of the new turkey babes. Utterly adorable! And, yes, that is my infamously work-hardened hand holding him or her. Yep, those hands would send manicurists shrieking for cover. One day when I walked into my paramedic/rummage lady friend's shop, she said "Quick, lemme see your hands!" I obliged and she sighed in relief and said "Thanks, I needed that!"...???... ..She explained that she was feeling pretty weary about working so hard and never taking any time for her own needs and she didn't want to feel like the Lone Ranger just then. I took that as a great compliment since she was the hardest working woman I had ever met. She always paid the deepest of attention to hands, whether from when she was working for the coroner's office or to the many small town funerals she had attended. She maintained that you could learn a lot about people just from their hands. "I always look at the hands," she said, "their story is written there so plainly for me."

But I digress, as I do so often this year, so let me continue now. Those tiny turkeys were very symbolic to me; something positive to bring out to a ranch, to a dream abandoned in haste before the isolating rains came nearly a year ago.

When I went out to feed again, I found six tiny chicks out in the flight run, all deadly still upon the ground, trampled to death by idiot adult turkeys. I cannot tell you how close I came to leaving the door open and letting them all run free and out of my life for good. Or better, letting Brou have his delight into sending them high up into the trees. Instead, I decided to let the remaining hundred pounds of corn in the steel can act as an hour glass of fate; their remaining time for proving their worth sifts down by the daily cupful. If they produce more chicks before the corn runs out, they stay.
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It is the year to cast away things that have brought me sorrow and disappointment at the lowest time in my life. Losing Terry has brought that reality into painfully razor-sharp focus, brought a stinging reality to the many red flags that the ever-analytical Terry had pointed out in the past. There were those who rallied to keep my spirits up and those who rallied to knee me in the emotional groin at my most vulnerable time in life, either by their laziness to not so much as hit 'reply' with a word of sympathy or by those who did much worse and should have remained silent. I thank God for those who knew us both so well through adversity as Virgil did and remained a beloved friend to both of us and a source of life-sustaining encouragement to me. Virgil understood the deep but sometimes tumultuous bond we shared as few apparently did. On his recent stay-over here, he said "I was there through your tough times out at the Rat, there was nothing in your journal of adventures that was BS." He continued "I saw that you both had your unpleasant sides but you guys were like this ..." as he twisted two fingers together tightly. That meant a lot to me, more than you can possibly imagine. The nice thing about blogging is that you can purge disappointing people out of your blog life completely. And it makes reality that much easier to follow and putty in the wounds.

Yep, the kick-butt lady in the profile photo is back and she will be doing what has to be done without taking prisoners or granting further quarter. I am going to step away from the blog now in order to address many necessary life changes and plans in the works. I will be back on July 9th, the anniversary of the date which started me on a journey to see the best and worst of human nature.

In the interim, I will be working on this new pumpkin shell residence plus the horribly languishing legal matters and making plans for a big life change for the better. God bless all of you who have contributed your positive input throughout this, my longest year through hell to date. Remember, I will be back on July 9th, even if only for a quick bounce off the trampoline of life events ... God willing and the Creek don't rise. In the meantime, I hope you will also be out there kicking fresh butt in these widely spread trying times. If I can do it, so can you - don't forget that, don't ever give up hope.
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A Ghost Town Anomaly

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When we lived out at the ranch, nearly two hours from pavement, I got into the habit of not venturing into civilization more than twice a year. That inclination remains. Mind you, I never was one for venturing out 'just because', especially in winter. I never truly needed the company of others to satisfy some longing, some void. When I met Terry, we became a partnership of two with the same social needs. Not that we both didn't enjoy our time out with others immensely, it was just that neither of us felt driven to indulge on a regular basis. Now that I am on my own again, that lifestyle has not changed - to the consternation of some. But it is a pleasant state of contentment which is suitable and advantageous to anyone who wishes to relocate to the boonies. Neither of us needed outside contact to validate who we were or what we thought and felt. To find pleasure in your own thoughts and dreams and a joy in the immediate surroundings, no matter how simple and mundane, is a vital tool to succeed in your hinterland dreams. Who would you be without everyday conveniences so taken for granted? What do you really need? Would you be lost without your hairdryer or your convenient fast food stops? Who are you really if you lose your comfortable trappings and accessories to disaster? I'm not suggesting that you abandon your present niceties, just to think deeply, to consider the reality of who you really are if your comfortable world has been stripped away by tsunami of fate - your nice clothes, your lovely house, perhaps even your physical health and looks. Those who confront and make peace with these issues in advance will be better prepared to survive any future turmoil and be the ones with the more sound mind to lead their loved ones through adversity.
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I made a rare trip to the nearest podunk with a list of things and resources to procure. It was a fairly productive venture despite the near ghost town quality of the place. You can see my red Dakota on the right side of the thoroughfare, parked just down from the tallest building still standing in town. That building is the local bar and grill and I have taken a few visitors there when they wanted to go out for eats - a real cheeseburger plus fries and a beer for six bucks is hard to beat these days and the folks are all pleasant and friendly with plenty of amusing memorabilia on the walls to amuse yourself if you are eating alone, too. That's a real good thing lately.
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And this trip said it was a good time to investigate the statue which sits on the left side of the highway since I remembered to bring along the camera. I had seen this statue peripherally a few times before but it sat alone in a bare and neglected lot, largely hidden from view by stray pine trees. The form and style were hauntingly familiar.
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It was a full-sized bronze statue of a horse and rider, quite impressive. The ever industrious ants of the desert had found a small fissure in the base casting and built a large entry mound right beneath the horse's feet. Why was this magnificent bronze lost in a shabby lot with an ugly pro-panel building as a back drop?
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Remington - no wonder it looked so familiar! But who put it there, how long ago, what was the occasion? Surely the bar owners would know since they had been on that street corner forever. Well, sometimes your investigations end up in the lackluster back alley of revelation. The bar owner blandly noted "Yeah, the guy who owns the grocery store has lots of money, liked the statue, bought it, stuck it there on that empty lot." Just like that. My old inclination to get involved with restorations of things like houses, towns, critters and sometimes people just sort of evaporated on the spot. "I'll take the cheeseburger special then. Hold the green chili, sub the fries for onion rings, a cheap beer is fine." The dark-eyed waitress barely suppresses an eye roll of contempt at the green chili instructions but it is soothed by the extra buck for the onion ring substitution and the cheap beer. (this tale was drafted up shortly before the ulcer hit the fan)
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Oh, not ANOTHER critter?!

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Well, I never did get that 'post ahead' accomplished; probably some alert from 'the Crisis of the Moment Club' as Phlegmmy calls it, very likely another critter-related bit of melodrama. Although Terry and I had opted for an unpredictable life in the middle of nowhere, we did carefully engineer the life aspects that we had control over, like two each dogs/neutered and two each cats, likewise neutered. He would have cringed at me even temporarily adopting two old irresponsible hippies, their 100+ critters or these dozen extra dogs or the now thirty barn cats.

The good news is that while fiddling and waiting for old Rome to burn, my dental appointment finally arrived. For months, I had been nursing along a black, crowned molar that would occasionally mimic one of those bloated road kill raccoons along side of the road and then erupt like Vesuvius. I found another dentist after the first group couldn't quote me a flat rate on extracting a #31 molar. Some pain-deadener, maybe an ex-ray and an over-priced autoclavible pair of pliers, right? Simple enough, right? Or not. They finally offered "Well, it depends on your ability to pay. It could be from $100 to $300. Bring in your 2008 tax returns." Say whuh? Not only are our 2008 returns still up in the air but I have a hard time with the idea of presenting our private financial matters to a damned dentist. I don't even give anyone my social security number. You don't have to for matters not involving social security, at least from what I have heard and no one to date has protested when I write 'NON-applicable" in that line . With the rise in identity theft, avoid doing so whenever you can. Anyway, I decided that I didn't want to deal with a raging socialist medical konglomerate so I found another dentist in the phone book who seemed much more traditional and straightforward.

And it worked out great! Flat rate quoted up front and even closer to home. It probably helped that, as I swung around to drop into the chair, I noticed a very nice aircraft print on the wall despite my myopia and commented absent-mindedly "Hey, is that a P-3?" The dentist broke into a delighted chuckle and said "Well! I never would have expected any of my patients to recognize it! So ... how did you anyway?" We three (the assistant who absolutely has to be his wife) all got along famously after that. Even the receptionist said "You guys sounded like you were having WAY too much fun in there." We did. And they had wonderful senses of humor. When the assistant saw a huge prairie dog in their lot and said "Better get your gun out!" I said "Gee, just because I referred to him as a 'swabby'?" She grinned back "I hadn't thought about that but, yes, you're not going to feel a thing now, believe me." Then came time for the ex-ray. I explained my dread of this process; that someone cranks open your mouth like shoving back the lid on a trash receptacle in front of a Home Depot, shoves something barely short of a small billboard with razor edges into your mouth and then commands "Clamp down!" with a smile and disappears for God knows how long while the acute pain is causing you tears and life reviews. "Hey, anybody out there? I'm noticing the sun setting and that's probably not a good thing considering it was a 2PM appointment. Hello? Anyone?" She giggled and said "Well, that's when we both slip out for cocktails, you know."

When I said "I've always heard that old sub-hunters go into dentistry when they retire", he told me that his dad was Navy in WW2 and that he was the third generation dentist in the family. Whatever the reason, I am so glad to finally find a real dentist as I remember them. No virtual harem of female assistants either. Let that be your big clue-in to over-priced profit-centering; when you walk in and there are 20 assistants and only one pro. Or if they refer to their master money glommer as "Doctor Tim" or "Docter Who" or Doctor Bloody Whatever. If I have a problem, I wanted it fixed efficiently and at a reasonable price ... I don't want a beautiful day with Mr. Rogers and his pricey neighborhood of help. Oh, and if they have the doc's written-off copies of "Yachting Today" in the magazine racks, RUN!

This new dentist was so good that I didn't even have to slip into my 'away state of consciousness' that has had some previous dentists wide-eyed and slapping me on the cheeks to bring me back from the dead. AND they even let me have my tooth back instead of declaring "Ewww, that's bio-hazmat!" Hey, a buck (they said that was the current rate) from the tooth fairy is worth bringing it home and, frankly, if it had been in my mouth for that many decades, I resent having it called an untouchable bio-hazard. Anyway, I think I will have a long and constructive association with these new folks.
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I had been worrying as to whether the thunderstorms I had nipped through had later travelled south and caught the dogs waiting in the back yard. When I pulled up to the gate however, I found a new and welcoming face sticking out of the gate wire. "Do I know you?" I asked as I cranked the gate latches back. Apparently so for she ('she' presumably) was not restrained by the gate at all but very happy to see me and follow the truck back into the yard. Later that night, as I stepped out to check on the turkeys, she stood up and planted her front legs around my waist so I waltzed her around several times as I used to do with my beloved Rita the white dog. And I cried a little over those memories of that very special dog friend who was perhaps on loan to me from some place special and for such a short time. Eighteen years with Rita was not a long time at all.
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That was Wednesday. She is STILL here and STILL acting like she has lived here all her life. Ohhhhhhh my. But at least she's not preggers like everything else around here has been! I will have to sketch up an 'unwanted' poster to hang in the local podunk Post Office here ... soon!
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On Releasing Your Inner Redneck

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As I sat on the throne, it occurred to me that fate had dealt me an accidental but brilliant moment in redneck DAY-core. When Jimmy the Drywaller was ready to tackle one of the bedrooms here, we had to find homes for all of the sundries which had been stored there. Things ended up in any room where a speck of floor space had previously existed.
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.This Eastlake walnut piece and several stray deer antlers had all ended up in the bathroom. I had pinched these bleached-out antlers from Slim's deck up at his camp last year and brought them back to life a little with the intention of making him a chandelier. This bathroom did not come with a toilet paper holder so .... voila! The TP finally has a real classy home in the antler pile, at least until the bathroom gets a proper make-over.
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Turkey Stuff ' n More

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I want to try something new here. Rather than post a long collection of news infrequently, I am going to hopefully build up a number of shorter news updates and post-date them to pop up even when I am off chasing life's squirrels that desperately need chasing right now. I will also try to spend less time on e-mails and I am looking forward to June 12th when this borrowed TV finally goes to analog heaven. I've been putting off a lot of things that need attention now and I will reactivate the blog comments section when I feel like I have made progress in catching up. Yep, I will miss your comments and support terribly in the interim but I need to stay on track for a little while here.

Hopefully, by then, I will have also vanquished what I and the doc in the box are hoping to be simply a rather debilitating, agonizing ulcer since it would be the least expensive of maladies to cure without health coverage. Whatever it is, it has been wearing me down to the nub for the last few months.
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It became obvious early on that Brou must herd something, anything. Apparently turkeys work just fine. I could hardly complain since, as long as those birds were out there, Brou would never think about jumping a fence and disappearing (unlike Ms. Daisy or Panda). And he needed something to work off that Aussie energy plus a few portly pounds that have piled up since leaving the ranch.
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He was so intent on running non-stop circles around the coop that he built up a racer's berm in all the corners and would leap over the oblivious Panda or any one else who stood in his way. It seemed a harmless enough obsession.

I was getting tired of refilling the small water pan in the flight area; surely they couldn't be going through THAT much water every day, not by the small beak full I had seen them take occasionally. It was by accident that I eventually discovered the reason for the muddy, disappearing water when I happened to glance out there from the kitchen. It was Rita! She was insistent on taking long and extravagant baths in that small pan! What a water-wasting tart! Who would have suspected? The problem was solved when I dragged a large empty feed tub into the run and filled it to the brim with the garden hose. She now has her own personal bath tub to luxuriate in. I even thought about ordering some of those pricey bath balms for her, maybe something in a nice sage and spice direction. But poultry seasoning flavor might have been a bit alarming to her and really quite rude and self-serving on my part.
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A few weeks ago, I discovered a cache of eggs! Yes! Maybe my dream of releasing Rio Grandes out at the ranch would come true after all! At last check, there were a total of nine.

Earlier on, I took an old plastic barrel which had been previously cut down shorter and used to water horses and I placed it in the coop. Rick the Welder in Wisconsin had repaired and sent back my irreplaceable Geiger shears so I hopped the fence and cut enough tall grass for nesting material to fill the tub. And waited ... and waited. So finding these eggs was downright exciting. But who dunnit? Hannah seemed the only female curious and interested when I entered the coop.
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Not Hannah! Last week, it was Rita who I caught sitting on the nest. Mystery solved!
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Mystery NOT solved. Now I have found both Rita AND Hannah sharing the nest. They both ignored the second nest that I had arranged later. One or both of them have also managed to remove most of the tall grass after I had barb-wire-snagged my decent pants to procure it for them. Ungrateful roasters!
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Last week, while extracting nails from the well-house project debris, I very luckily caught a peripheral glimpse of an auburn butt disappearing into the coop building. ???!!!! The squawks and flap/dash of turkey bodies and growls of blood lust sent me hurtling over to the coop like a jagged comet. Brou had breached the chicken wire!!!

I became heartsick when I arrived and flung open the man door. First priority was to grab the ravaging, salivating Brou and give him the bum's rush out the door. Hannah, the white turkey, and Romeo were wide-eyed and panting for air but at least still alive at that moment. But where was poor Rita? She wasn't in the flight yard either. Then I looked over at Romeo the tom who was crammed tightly into one corner. Could it be? Yes, I could now see just the tiniest hint of Rita's feathers under his mass of torn plummage. Yes, he looked an awful wreck but he had been carefully sheltering Rita under his body and wings and taking the full brunt of Brou's assault. I got a little misty-eyed when I realized that he had nearly lost his life in order to protect her. Rita is one very lucky lady. (I figure Brigid and Christina may find extra amusement in this turkey tale, too.)
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Now, if all goes well with my new plan to post ahead for the next month or so, I will go on to the next updates and have them show up roughly twice a week. I will finish the cattle round up, too.

Aww heck, I will keep the comment options open for this one since a couple of folks might want to say something about Romeo and Rita's latest adventure.
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The Gathering

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I had already titled and loaded the photos for this next post when I received word that I had lost a special old friend to cancer. I have not suffered well the loss of precious old allies in this new millennium and my thoughts and writing reflect that troubling sorrow too well this time so please forgive any typos and disjointed thoughts from my deep distractions of the last week. I decided to leave the title as it was and add my recent loss to "The Gathering".
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May was always a bittersweet time of sudden activity out at the ranch. It was a time of fresh life bursting out in new greens and bright colors but also a time for the Colorado cowboys to wrap up their winter graze and head home. By June, the canyons and mesa tops would be empty of cattle and their rowdy, adorable caretakers and then remain deafeningly void of that delightful cowboy mischief until their eventual return with the first signs of early winter.
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So, this time last year, Terry and I headed 'up top' to meet up with Slim and a rep from a gas drilling corporation. We would take a hard right at the foot of this mesa after leaving our place and continue on some eight miles or more before arriving at Slim's place. He was either our second or third closest neighbor, depending on what roads you took. If you counted in the adjoining property lines, I suppose he was our second closest. Today would be a smooth ride up to the top; no mud bogs and the deep sands on the hill climb section were unusually agreeable to traction. The sun was hot on our arms that rested on the truck doors as breezes wisped up tiny dust rodeos around us - it was one of those many ranch days that filled us with easy and deep contentment.
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Slim's cattle dotted the fields of both our ranches and the driving was slower now due to the arrival of frisky new calves who might get a wild and exuberant hair to leap out into the road, all just for young calf grins. The anti-neighbor's ranch matron mother had warned me repeatedly that the bull calves were the dumbest and most foolhardy when it came to such things.
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While Mama Cow might be traffic wise, you don't count on her calf or the ones she might be babysitting to behave.
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This little calf had just burst from the sage and dashed across the road in front of us to join its mother. It could have easily been road kill with such a stunt and, every year, some are lost to such traffic mishaps. The gas field is probably 98% of the vehicle traffic out there and, except for the odd idiot, they do a great job of avoiding collisions with livestock. Beyond such vigilance, the pumpers (the fellas charged with the regular well maintenance) usually go the extra mile and alert the rancher to any problems they see, such as a cow bogged down in waterhole mud or caught in a cattle guard. Of course, that fine relationship depends on neither the pumper or the rancher being a jerk.
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Here is gas company rep Mike meeting with Slim. Terry and I both enjoyed dealing with Mike since he was an engineer by original trade even though he was performing the much reviled task of playing 'land agent' here. A 'land agent' is the guy who is supposed to grab your surface land into perpetuity for as little as possible. That company had bought out an outfit which had abused us shamelessly before we were able to get down there and become acquainted with price realities. Mike entered the picture later and I loved to watch him and Terry, two highly intelligent Dilberts, enjoying a fine game of cat and mouse. They each had a fine, dry sense of humor and kept the proceedings ever civil and gentlemanly.
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While Terry and Mike were using Mike's tailgate as a desk in the foreground, Slim got on to more serious cowboy matters. Here is a Colorado camera crew recording scenes from the cattle gathering. If the series ever shows up on TV, I will certainly let you know. You just won't see me in any of it. When I did an obvious duck and cover from the cameraman, Slim exclaimed "Ah-hah! I knew it! Why else would anyone live out here in the middle of nowhere ... you're in some kinda witness protection program, ain't ya?!!" Well, that got me to laughing. I guess it would seem odd to most folks that I really dislike having my picture taken and that I don't like having neighbors close enough to see them from the front porch or even in a five minute drive. Terry loved that seclusion as well and a big part of our spirits are still out there.
.After a winter of having the range to themselves, some of the horses were not keen to get back into the whole cattle work scene. Here is one of Slim's horses expressing contempt at being saddled up again after a long season off. He's heading for the secret critter escape trail up the mesa wall from Slim's fenced compound.

The gathering will continue on through that week. Slim's friends and family will help him gather in the cattle from the far reaches of the grazing lands, corralling them in for the next phase - the roundup weekend when all the new calves will be branded, counted and prepared for the big ride back up North for the summer. It will be the time when a rancher can get a first glimpse of whether he will be running in the black or the red, if his cowboy passions pay off that year.

Next post - the branding party.
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An Old Friend Gathered In

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Before pulling down the driveway for the last time as we headed off to New Mexico, I checked the mailbox one last time. I retrieved a small box and hastily put it under the seat in my Dakota. It would remain there until we could settle into the Rat trailer a month later.

When I opened the package, I beamed with a chill of delight. Two small jars stated that they were from "Bob's Kitchen", the line below further announcing that they were "handcrafted by Bob Sinclair". On his last visit, shortly before we made the big move, he said that he would send us a little something that he had made and here they were in the fruity flesh, two glass jars promising a tangy joy within. Terry laughed as I stowed them away on the new pantry shelves he had just finished building. "Saving them for the Queen's visit, are you?" He knew me so well, that boy did. As my grandmother and mother before me, there were just some things which were too precious to consign to the mundane. I had many such things that we so regrettably never got to enjoy; rather, they disappeared down the driveway of the old life with acquaintances when the moving van supposedly ran out of space. These precious jars had survived only by fate of timing and they would be the start of my comforting new 'save for best' collection.
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Since the first week in May, I had watched this borrowed television set with dread. The graphic news coverage of the Santa Barbara fires brought horrid thoughts and worries with it; I had an old friend out there, one who was battling cancer.

Being the fighter he was, he had surpassed the original due date offered by the specialists by over two years already. But it became apparent in the e-mails of the last two months that he was slowly losing the fight when the cancer started to metastasize to other regions. It had attacked his brain with that stunning 165 IQ and my heart knotted up in sorrow as his once meticulous written English started to decline in recent messages. I wanted to scream and pound the ground with outrage at this sadistic, unjust turn of fate.

I e-mailed both Bob and his wife, Anne, with my concerns but I held the dreaded suspicion that only Anne would reply this time. I waited and worried and the reports of the raging fires taunted me with every new report. My heart ached in agony for Bob and I imagined dear Anne dealing with so many losses at once. Then I got an e-mail reply from Anne last week which started off with "It is with a heavy heart that .... ". The fire had started just one road over from their house and Bob had to be evacuated to a hospice facility for his last days; he didn't even get the chance to remain at home, surrounded by his family, his border collies, his native fish collections or his garage full of vehicles he enjoyed so much. Damn this mortal realm, damn it all to Hell anyway. Yes, I have anger issues with life and fate right now - psycho-babble sound bites of the moment be damned - deeply do I live, feel, care and hurt over others. I will painfully miss genuine old allies when they depart. I care not to change that ever.
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Here are a couple of photos that Bob had shared with us over the years.
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This is Bob and Anne at a Saab Rally in New Zealand a few years ago. He was such a dedicated auto enthusiast that they popped up all over the world to join other like-minded souls.
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Here is Bob on the East coast, picking up his last two-wheeled acquisition before riding it back to California. His passion for riding and driving had him crossing the continent several times a year as much for the pleasure of each road mile as for any destination itself. He told me about driving his 360GT across the country and back and how it got sand-blasted in a freak New Mexico sand storm on the way home, playfully adding that he now called it his 'Ferrari beater'.

If you enjoy reading about amazing people, please try this link which I hope will remain active for some time to come:
Legendary Saab exec Bob Sinclair dies: AutoWeek Magazine
This is one article where even the comments are worth reading through for more insights.

On his last visit, he kept us spellbound with stories of his adventures and years in the auto trade. Despite my best badgering attempts, he would not consign his incredible memoirs to paper and I consider this as an incredible loss to us all. Now, Anne, I will tattle on Bob and I know that his devilish humor will have him chuckling at the very idea; we happened to have an unopened bottle of Courvoisier around and cracked it open that night. Terry grinned and whispered that the visit from the Queen had finally arrived as I quietly handed him the dusty bottle from the cabinet. Although he protested at first, Bob would impishly sneak back to the kitchen later for a little refill with that naughty cat-like grin. The tales got even more spell-binding and I think he slept very well that night before his planned 800 mile ride the next day.
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Last weekend, a rummage through the refrigerator had that last jar of Bob's preserves pop into view and I picked it up and cupped it in my hands like a gold chalice as I thought about the events of the last weeks, of the last few years and of the last 30 years. I reflected sadly "It's just time, isn't it, old friend?" as I reverently emptied the last of the precious contents onto some beautiful sesame seed Italian bread toasted. I had saved it for the best of best reasons. God luv ya, Bob, and thank you for remaining a keenly astute, faithful and understanding long term friend, even after Terry left us. Not all did.

But I will leave you with a bit of good news here. Despite their home sitting in the birthplace of the fires, it survived. I had to thank God profusely for sparing Anne yet another heartbreaking upset to deal with.

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And I will now pass along a so timely bit of sentiment that I just received from my old friend, Moose in Alberta, here. This is belatedly for Bob and also for my true friends that remain. God bless you all, especially in this interesting year ahead.

There comes a point in your life when you realize:
Who matters,
Who never did,
Who won't anymore ...
And who always will.

So, don't worry about people from your past; there's a reason why they didn't make it to your future. Give these flowers to everyone you don't want to lose in 2009, including me, if that's what is in your heart.
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Free to a Good Home

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"Free to a good home" ... if I was a truly pragmatic soul, this would be an ad for myself rather than for the offspring which have been liberally falling out of almost every animal which the previous owners had left behind. As adorable as these plentiful little creatures are, I am somewhat overwhelmed by the activities it has involved.

And I just realized that I dieseled on well past a monthiversary of my last post. I should be doing some crow bar and hammer work and some framing work before the drywall guy shows up tomorrow but I wanted to let you know that I am still breathing.
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The Panda update: As you can see, the pups have grown enough to start wandering out of their original nest behind the skid steer. The look on Panda's face tells you that she is nearly as tired of being mauled by ten adorable little furballs as I am. This is the puppy stage that I have dreaded, the one where you cannot walk beyond the yard enclosure without the likelihood of drop-kicking or running over a zealous little fuzzball ... or four ... or ten.

The bad news is that W&G have not been proactive about dealing with their dog and her pups as originally promised. The good news is that I inadvertently swiped a copy of a regional newspaper from the zoning and planning guy at the county seat and later found a phone number for a dog rescue in it. The bad news is that the lady said the pups will need to stay with their mother for another two rambunctious weeks to learn "manners and discipline" from their mother. The good news is that she will take them all thereafter. The bad news is that they now respond to the sound of any critter feeding at all with earfuls of high-pitched yipping joy and a full tumbling assault in my direction. The good news is that keeping ahead of this fuzzy pack is becoming a regular source of speed training for me despite any bad knees.
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Thankfully, it's been a fairly quiet place since I arrived. I missed last year's stand-off between police and a guy who used to, most disturbingly, ride his bicycle around the area in the nude and eventually created a pillbox within his decrepit old trailer with concrete block, leaving only Medieval arrow slots in place of the original windows. W&G said that it was quite a show and a few friends joined them with lawn chairs and popcorn for the big smack-down show that day. This story pointedly reminded me of why we so enjoyed being five miles from the nearest neighbor out at the ranch.

The only run-in I have had so far was with a chubby gangbanger on foot who was far too nosy, glancing back over his shoulder as he passed and then flashing me those moronic, belligerent gang signs when he saw me watching back. He returned later that day with a full carload of his buddies, cruising at case-the-joints speed, all rubber-necking at every house. My new friends filled me in on many useful details about such vermin and were greatly concerned about my old habit of facing filth head-on. Not to worry though, I haven't seen this gangbanger crud since.
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And so it was unusual to have the quiet recently broken by a helicopter landing in a field not far from here. Brou was beside himself with excitement ... finally being able to alert me to genuine low incoming air traffic at our new pumpkin shell of a residence.
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Great amusement indeed for both of us as one red-suited occupant of the helicopter jumped into a Sheriff Department SUV and disappeared westwards down the dirt road to our north. Then, despite a loud explosion which may or may not have had anything to do with the helicopter landing, the activity dried up and scattered away piecemeal on the dry winds of the day.

It was the winds that day which sadly reminded me of Slim, our cowboy /grazing tenant at the ranch /fireman /EMT. He had told us a story of a rescue incident in the Colorado mountains which continues to haunt me. They had to call in a helicopter rescue for a badly injured logger. As the helicopter was about to touch down, it suddenly flipped sideways and fatally crashed into the mountain. More upsettingly, as the follow-up helicopter arrived, the crew flew over and saw the first wreck just before it also flipped and crashed. No chance, no survivors. Slim may be that classic tough cowboy who doesn't like to talk much about bad things but you could tell that those people who died that day while trying to help others would be riding not too far behind him, forever. I hear the low thump of helicopter blades quite differently now.
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The winds of Spring: Yes, the winds have been impressive for the last month but I've only had one sizable tree limb fall so far and it landed in a very benign place. I did have to correct some of W's ten penny nail work with screws when the homemade doors to the shed blew open and threatened my truck parked right outside. Nails should be abolished, period.
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This small pile of tire-killing debris which I had been slowly picking up since my arrival caught me off guard. It had originally been carefully deposited in an old galvanized tub which came with me from the ranch. What a minute ... where did the tub go?
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I finally located the tub; it has been blown along a good hundred feet before it's airy journey ended abruptly against a section of wire fence. The tumbleweeds, however, will see much more of the world before stopping, especially if I toss them up in the air during a good wind after they have piled up against the fences. This sport requires thick leather gloves since many of them have very vicious barbs - the goats-head bush is truly vile and its spikes will puncture thin-walled tires (or shoes!) without hesitation.
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Here is a view of how the tumbleweeds typically pile up. The puppies have heard me and are now piling out through the gate to help me take photos ... oh joy of joys.
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More tumbleweeds, more puppies - both are omnipresent lately.
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I had often wondered where these tons of weeds end up and I just found out, thanks to 'Jimmy the drywaller'. They come to rest up where his brother bought a house east of here, often covering his house up well above the eaves. I had driven nearly out to that area in the plains one day but the dust storms were so bad that I could not see the road in front of the truck 30% of the time. I have been in white-outs and fog-outs aplenty before but never in a dusty 'brown-out' like this one and I cringed at what was happening to the air filter on the truck.
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While Jimmy was working here last week, I pointed out the above dark plume to him and asked what he thought it was. His first guess was a fire (not a good thing at all since the region is a dry, dry tinderbox at the moment). Then he noticed that it was moving along quickly. "Wow, THAT is the biggest dust devil I have ever seen!" Unfortunately, I only caught a photo of this devil in its waning stages. It had been so dark and distinct that you would have expected to look up and find it connected to a black tornado cloud but it climbed upwards to connect to nothing but the blue sky above.

In this photo, you can also catch a glimpse of the mountains living far to the East of here. There have been days in this windy season when everything beyond those buildings has been obliterated by a dense curtain of brown dust. Thankfully and forever what reason, this small pocket on the plains is sheltered from the worst of the wind's bluster ... so far at least.
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And here's John, eighty years under his belt already and still kicking butt. He still has the fortitude and pluck which secured him a spot on the US ISDT team years ago on a BSA. God bless him, he remained a friend to both of us and he stopped over on his way West recently. I felt so bad that I still don't have a guest room set up but he was reassuringly gallant about sleeping on the too short Chesterfield even though he takes more of a set overnight these days than he used to.

He was the first contact here to want to sit down and encourage me with positive dialog to get me up out of my slump and consider the future again. I so hate to ask for unpaid help but he also insisted on helping out where he could. He helped me move the 100 plus pound dressers and unwieldy building supplies that have been forever in the way of my next projects and then went out to start up Terry's truck and check it over. He would have kept going and going and going had I not felt so awkward about his very welcomed thoughtfulness. While I no longer miss human company other than Terry's now, I have never felt so all alone in my life and his arrival was a true blessing. John has always been a deep and independent thinker, always observant and sensitive to the big picture and the priorities of the here and now and Terry and I always respected his thoughts and opinions completely. God bless him indeed for showing up when he did in my darkest hours.
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I've got lots of photos and updates that have been languishing amidst my doldrums and sorrows but I will try to post again in the next week if all goes well. I have been beset by a couple of physical maladies which even I can't ignore too much longer but watch for my next post soon ... God willing and the Creek don't rise. And, very genuinely meant, thanks for sticking by me.
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And a P.S.: Alltel absolutely sucks ... more details and rant likely to follow (it's not just their TV commercials that irritate beyond belief).
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Treading water in a clawfoot tub

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The single highlight of this week was the return of the prodigal tub. With any luck, it will assume its permanent place in this house, likely the last place I will do a house make-over since I now consider this house and locale quite temporary. Back in the 70s when house restorations became popular, someone wrote "There is really only one house restoration in all of us." Some five or six house projects later plus those done for a living, I am finally running out of heart and steam.

I had looked and looked for a four foot long cast iron tub for ten years before finding this one. The four footer is ideal to serve as a period shower base in a small bathroom. There were ample supplies of the five foot long tubs but not the more coveted four and six foot lengths, at least none that hadn't been buried vertically and converted into a yard shrine housing a Madonna years ago. I once knew a fellow who had photographed each kitschy tub shrine he found in New England and he had contrived a hilarious although sacrilegious title for each one in his collection.

This one was remarkably well preserved when I found it; usually abrasive cleaners and unchecked faucet dips ruined the porcelain over time. I had found this one at a remote rural old hippie yard sale. It even had the hard-to-find brass drain plumbing on it and, for $75, the guy even helped me load it into my tiny pickup. This was not a find that I could stash away in the barn/work shop by myself so, after giving me 'the look', Terry helped me unload it. I spent considerable time slowly rasping away with a metal file during the following weeks to wear down many casting glitches on the tub and legs. The big moment of satisfaction was when I was able to apply primer to all the parts to stop further rusting.
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Long story but a couple of acquaintances showed up this week with the tub and I cannot tell you how excited I was to see it again! Yes, like the Katlady, I have a passion for iron castings, truly, literally a heavy burden if you ever have to move. The return of the tub brought nothing more than later having to pry out a chunk of white porcelain from my forearm after a warning of a leg falling off went unheeded. No back miseries ... delightful!

I am kicking myself for not taking pictures of the incredible DC motor driven lift platform that Brian had placed in his standard pick-up rear receiver for the event. He even had me stand on it for a demonstration and gave me a lift up and down. After having a 130 pound can of turkey feed drop off my tailgate, effectively taking the skin off my lower shin and ankle upon landing, I was all ears about this incredible device. He said that it was rated for lifting up to 500 pounds to tailgate level and that it was able to heft a refrigerator with no problem at all. Better still, he had found it on sale from Harbor Freight for $199. Of course, we had to discuss all the mods and tweaks to cater to specific needs. As of that visit, the Harbor Freight catalogs will definitely find their way back to the toilet tank library.
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Catching up on old news, here is Wayne demonstrating the right stance for catching chickens, ducks and pigeons. It's not as easy or pleasant as you might imagine.
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And here is Gayle tackling a reluctant turkey. They were ALL reluctant in reality. Her grimace reflects the joy of being whipped in the eyes by sturdy feathers. Not being involved, of course, I found the whole process hilarious. Then Gayle let out a whoop of despair when one turkey hen escaped. When I said "Oh my, now how are you going to catch and cage her?" she replied "Uhm, actually that's one of the ones you own now" as we stood there and watched this hen take off like a road runner to parts unknown. When I suggested that the turkey-obsessed Brou be let loose to tire her out, Gayle noted that the wings on these birds had not been clipped and that we might be staring up at a turkey high in the treetops if he startled her. Really, what was I thinking in adopting inedible old turkeys in the first place?

After an hour of sprinting after a turkey adept at ducking and dodging, we herded her back towards the trailer and Wayne was able to corner the bugger and toss her back into the pen.
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Here is Wayne stuffing the first of the highly resistant turkeys into the cage on their trailer. You have to give W&G an 'A' for tenacity and eventually all their flying stock was captured and loaded up.
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You met Hannah already, now here is the rest of my turkey homies. This is Romeo (hey, I did NOT name these birds, okay?) . He is the Tom (male) of the pair of NM natives. This time Gayle reiterated their species name loudly and clearly as if addressing the profoundly deaf and daft - it was fitting and much appreciated. "THEY ... ARE ... RIO GRANDES!" And so this time, the info stuck.
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Here is a close-up of Romeo's plummage. A photo simply cannot do justice to the effect of the bright New Mexico sun reflecting off his feathers when he struts his stuff. I rather like that boy since he never fails to answer my "Booga-booga-booga!" when I walk out to the pen. And if the sun is out, it's likely that he will puff himself out as shown above and drum me an almost ELF ranged "shtooommmpphhhh!". A turkey hunter would know and love that sound well. He's a pretty cocky, cool bird.
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And here is the third bird. Again, don't blame me for the names ... meet Rita! She is the Rio Grande hen of the pair. She is the one who had us playing turkey round up when she escaped and the only one who ducks into the coop when I arrive with food. Rita definitely has a stubborn, defiant mind of her own.

According to W&G, I now need to find some good nesting straw and they will start laying eggs. While I really enjoyed the duck and chicken eggs that W&G shared with me before the bird exodus, I am tempted to raise enough native turkey hatchlings to release them out at the ranch some day. It's either that or (as I discussed with Harmonica Joe) raise and train turkeys as bird of prey substitutes just to utterly annoy elitist falconers. After being the only volunteer to ride in the back of a station wagon with the hooded falcon in Utah once, I became thoroughly enchanted with falconry. Being the frugal and pragmatic sort though, I think I might be able to replicate the same hunting function with a vaguely domesticated turkey, thus avoiding all that long apprenticeship and pricy licencsing ... whaddya think? I know, I know; they look more like a buzzard than a hawk but they sure can kick butt when motivated ... just ask Gayle. And it appeals to my growing eccentricity to ride the ranch someday on a Percheron, in a suit of armor with a faithful turkey of prey perched upon my gauntlet. If you are going to offend or annoy everyone eventually anyway, you might as well do it with an outrageous flare.
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The puppy update: Panda is definitely a deca-mom. You may not be able to account for all of them from this photo but there are ten little pups all piled on here. Panda has been doing an excellant job of taking care of them. That's a good thing since W&G have silently dropped below the radar since I sent them an e-mail announcing their arrival. That e-mail also contained a compilation of your many congrats and well wishes on Wayne's surgery and I am sure that they were very appreciated.
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And I discovered today that Panda is a shameless photo ham. Upon hearing her name, she presented me with new poses for every camera click until the batteries wore down.
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And to wrap up this photo tour, here is a snap of the wall that I stare at a lot when trying to write a new post. The student lamp, the wall clock and the pheasant all contain pleasant memories. The pheasant, in particular, has its own very special place in the memories that Terry and I shared. We called him Phred and no one can dampen or take the joy of that particular memory from me ... thank God, truly.
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The Problem with Panda

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The majority of W&G's livestock and creatures have now been moved over to their new place. What remains are eight barn cats and . . . Panda.

Panda was a young dog that a friend had brought them from his very remote ranch, a pup born to a stock dog who took her patrol job seriously and generally had very little exposure to humans. It was rumored that there was some strong Great Pyrenees in Panda's genes - a most beneficial and admired breed of hound for livestock stewardship. What W&G weren't told was that they instinctively have a much wider territory range than W&G's five acres. Out at the ranch, it was not unusual to see the anti-neighbor's great hulking woolly white Pyrenees a mile or more away from their ranch house so I was not surprised in the least.
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And, to their frustration, that she would be incredibly aloof. To my frustration as well. When I arrived, no one could get closer than four feet from her before she would bolt like you were wielding a butcher knife with deadly intent like a scene from Psycho.

It was agreed upon that Panda move to their new place ... IF they ever caught her. They continued to bring her dog food for a while but after a stunningly ill-conceived attempt to place her food in a large cage and rope-snag the door closed behind her, she never entered the cage again and eventually they stopped bringing her any food at all. Being a fairly recognizable sap, of course, I began to take up the slack while fervently maintaining the "That's not my dog, monsieur" position, especially for a hound with obvious magnetic pole repulsion syndrome.

Age and eccentricity allow me to converse with any critter I darned well please and, frankly, they are generally much more polite listeners than humans. And so Panda got an earful at each feeding about how I was far too pragmatic to feed anything 'just because', that there would have to be some other reason to keep an aloof stock dog around on a property that no longer had stock. Maybe she understood her new state of unemployment because she eventually started to edge a little closer in towards me and I tested the waters occasionally with a hand while talking gently and casually to her. She finally realized that I would not abuse this newly forming trust by grabbing at her.
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Then came the breakthrough one day when she came in close enough that I was able to reach out and scratch her benignly as she wolfed down the food I brought her. All in patient baby steps over the course of many weeks but now she will come over for scratchies even when I don't have food for her. W&G showed up at feeding time one day and Gayle let out a loud "I don't believe it! Wayne, take a look at Panda!" as Panda ate, unconcerned that I was scratching her ears. Gayle's next shout was "So ... you have a new dog now?" N-n-n-ope. I usually avoid inheriting stress from other folks' bad decisions whenever possible. I certainly do not keep un-neutered pets around since I don't like loitering around high traffic areas with a box that reads "Free puppies" or 'Free kittens."

Now Panda even knows to make one full circle while I put her food down. It was a family tradition which Brou, Daisy and even Beautiful Dave the Cat and Ming abide by. It gives me a chance to put down food without a bowl being knocked out of my hand and they all politely oblige. What is most curious is that the two dogs have interpreted this ritual as a form of saying 'please' and will spin around wildly to confirm when they want something badly. I'm easy, that works, too.
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I let Brou and Daisy out as usual this morning but, rather than bark with the usual exuberance, Brou ran to the far end of the yard nearest the open shed with Terry's skid steer in it and stood fully upright against the fence with his head adorably cocking from one side to the other, listening intently to some new and totally baffling noise. Since the eight barn cats were also oddly absent, I went out to investigate.
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So here is octo-mom this morning with at least eight new puppies. I really don't hold it against her ... she has the expected intelligence and instincts of a dog, of course.
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Wayne's final surgery occurred last Thursday. The operation was a smashing success considering all the unknown possibilities before going in. They are comfortable that they got all the bladder cancer and Wayne will not have to live with any external bladder replacements. Yessuh!!! Better still, they announced that he would not have to alter his diet and intake permanently either so I can stuff them with whatever I darned well please when they show up.

Now ... how do I break it to them that Panda celebrated by making them doggy grandparents eight times, possibly plus? Ahhh, oui ... mais you forget ... that is NOT my dog, monsieur!
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Better times and make-overs from the past

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The days have turned into weeks and now months as I sit here waiting for any labor help with good references to catch up on their backlogs. It's hard to believe that there is a severe recession upon us but perhaps those people with a good work ethic, skill and pride in their work will never run out of work, no matter what.

Terry and I had accomplished some wonderful make-overs together in the past and although he would say "You are the mechanic, the visionary, the carpenter - I am just the brawn so hand me that wrecking bar and tell me when to stop", he had developed so many skills and a laudable finesse over the years we were together. He was truly a man who could have mastered anything he set his mind to, an impossible act to follow when I look for hired help now. It doesn't help that the few times when we contracted out a task, we often ended up doing it over again ourselves after paying shamelessly high amounts for very shoddy work.

So we'll look back at brighter times; I will take you for a tour of our last project in the home we sold to move to NM. It's a warm and quiet Sunday here and I'm in the mood to wander back into very satisfying memories.

Below is the dining room of the old place as it was when we first moved in. It was a lifeless room done in the long-faded pop culture flavors of the 70s. Neither of us spent much time in there, just threw in some antiques to get them out of the unheated barn really.
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The four soul-less Anderson windows had always bothered me. I was inclined to more interesting fenestration, especially in a 100 year old house as this one was. With this modern arrangement, all I saw was four lash-less glaring eyeballs staring back at me. And while pricey barn board may still have its comfortable place, I prefer it where it belongs ... outside, on an old barn.

Oddly enough though, it was that plastic-bumpered metal spiral staircase on the left of this photo that initiated a make-over after an unsettling incident which could have claimed my life except for the help of strong unseen hands. Then, after hearing stories from the original owner about greasing the heads of small children who had become lodged in the iron balusters, it seemed a good idea to eliminate this ugly hazard once and for all.
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Since we both had a great fondness for Medieval, Gothic and Renaissance styles, we decided that our last room make-over would be a fun and whimsical exercise ... but done on a shoestring budget as usual. Oddly enough, as soon as we decided to do it, suitable furniture, lighting and accessories started to show up at yard sales and on serious retail clearance so I was already having a blast before it had even begun.
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Above: Here is the same room view as the first but after we finished the project.

The project started with Terry carefully removing the fake box beams from the ceiling and the barn board from the walls. Then he cut and hung drywall over the exposed stud walls and I taped and mudded the seams. I chose a Ralph Lauren crackle finish in claret over gold, broken up by rectangular panels of solid gold metallic latex paint. There are much better quality metallic latex paints available now but I was stuck with Lauren's product at the time. It had so little pigment for coverage that I had to resort to scanning a sample of that gold and have them mix up a flat, solid color to use as a base first. That saved many, many applications of the thin and expensive metallic paint later.

Once the entirety of walls had been coated in the opaque base and then with the metallic gold, I marked off sections to be left as gold panels and applied the crackle-effect medium to the rest. Drying time and thickness on the crackle base coat was critical before applying the top coat of claret paint - OMG, I had never been so pressed and stressed with a paint job in my life - the one armed paper-hanger was blessed by comparison!

We decided to go with a textured wallpaper on the ceiling. As someone with that experience under his belt once said "Hanging wallpaper on a ceiling is the ultimate test of team work and ANY relationship!" As with many challenges, amazingly, we survived it in our own odd way and went on to paint it in a flat grocery bag beige but Terry came into his own with the final touches. With his six and a half feet of height, he was able to apply metallic gold to the raised highlights with a hard roller without the aid of any ladder or milk crate. The same task would have taken me three times as long by having to move around height aids, interrupted by frequent trips to the chiropractor for stirring up old whiplash injuries.

It's a shame that these textured wall coverings have all but disappeared now. They were the poor man's substitutes for the traditional Anaglypta and Lincrusta papers from eighty to one hundred years ago. These modern papers were also so much easier to work with since any traditional embossed papers could easily flatten out and stretch if you were not quick in setting them in place once they were wet. This new style was ingeniously made by applying a layer of thermally expanding foam on a flat sheet and very, very hard to mess up while applying. And all you needed was patience, imagination and a hard roller to create some incredible color effects. You could even paint the wall rolls and borders as they lay on a table before hanging them. I truly lament their decline.

Next, we installed full thickness solid oak flooring. Rather than hammer slam it in with nails as is the standard, we carefully pre-drilled each piece and used small-headed Roberts (square drive) screws to secure each piece to the floor. There wouldn't be any loosening and squeaking in OUR wood floors! I finished off the floor with a light golden oak oil stain and let it dry and harden a long time before the final urethane finish.
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Then I started on the wood work. I was determined to break up the look of the old windows into something that looked more like two smaller windows side by side. I made grills (faux muntin bars) for each glass panel and devised a larger frame separating the halves of each window. I band-sawed out Gothic ornaments for the corners of each and a friend sawed out opaque cathedral glass for each quatrefoil cut-out. All the woodwork would be made with off-the-rack pine lumber to keep the price down. I had picked up a set of molding cutters for my table saw at a yard sale (dirt cheap!) and that supplied the incised cuts to take the lumber beyond the mundane.
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Later on, I added material window coverings for more softness and privacy. Walmart's reasonably priced crushed velvet stock at Christmas supplied the swags and I bought an airy gold metallic material to sew up into sheers.
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And, finally, the lethal spiral staircase was tamed! The now solid surrounding walls were nearly a foot taller (to preclude any absent-minded perching of posteriors) and the corners were cut-off to regain some floor space at this upper level. These solid walls were also a great place to hang more theme decor to ponder as you descended into 'the well'.

As I noted previously, between the oddities I had already amassed and was able to rework along with the items which showed up at yard sales, auctions and retail sales as we went, we were able to redo and furnish this room on the relative cheap. There really is something to be said for your own determination, patience and faith in your own abilities; if you don't count the labor of our own hands, we had less than $1,200 in the make-over of this room, from the materials in the room itself to all the fun furnishings and trappings.

Well, I guess the whole point of this tour was really to explain why I am so plagued by angst with the prospect of hiring outside labor to help me now. Oh, if only I had the strength and stamina I had thirty years ago, I would do it all by myself rather than tempt the unknown for disappointments.
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A new angel and lesser winged creatures

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About a month ago, I became owner of the two 'querkey turkeys shown above. No, not in my wildest dreams did I ever fancy owning turkeys some day. But W&G needed feed money and their turkey buyers had not shown up as promised so ... well, you get the idea. I said I would buy the two above since they are supposed to be native to New Mexico but don't ask me what they are called because I've already forgotten as I do with so many details lately. They are all too old and tough for dinner and they may or may not be young enough to even produce offspring. Just consider them corn-burning welfare pets as I do. The Katlady might at least get some good feathers for her costume projects.
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Now meet Hannah (above). Okay, so she might not be a classic good-looker unless you are another turkey but she at least has a personality and has become my turkey pet number 3 and my favorite homely bird.
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It all started when W&G asked me if I would feed their remaining critters here one day. Hey, I'm willing to try anything once so I marched out to the two pens after Gayle gave me instructions on who gets what quantity of cracked corn, etc. The first enclosure held assorted ducks, chickens and MANY flying rats (W&G call them pigeons) which flapped around with horrendous noise and air currents in front of my face as I tried to dole out corn in many small piles. It soon became obvious that any orderly distribution of feed was lost in the flap and I retreated after flinging the remainder of the corn in a broad pattern as cover fire.

The turkey pen was a little more civil although they have a number of pigeons, these are a racing breed, in there as well. Have I already mentioned that I really don't care for pigeons? It has something to do with Terry and I once donning surplus Israeli gas masks and ascending into a 120 degree barn loft to shovel a hundred or so pounds of pigeon guano out the second story window, guano laced with histoplasmosis which had nearly killed the pigeon owner who left that mess of crusty turds and bird skeletons in situ. But that is another story from another time.
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I didn't know her name (or that she even had one) at the time but when I told Wayne about the unusually tame white hen turkey who had let me pet her incredibly soft white plumage in return of a heads-in first dibs on the corn and later went wild over the black banana which I had sliced up skin and all, he told me all about Hannah. She had been a spoiled pet until she got huffy when the fellow didn't share part of his lunch with her as was customary. She thrashed and clawed him about the head in a vicious tantrum. W & G ended up with her and had let her have free run of the yard until she also attacked Gayle who was innocently milking goats at the time. Gayle said that Hannah became a regular penned turkey from that very day forth. They noted that Hannah had lost a lot of that rude-itude once she was demoted to joe average yard bird and forced to keep the company of other turkeys but that she still has her testy moments.
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Above is Hannah working on an attitude. They warned me to watch for this telltale sign of blustering and puffing up. The advice was well taken and I left the coop immediately after taking this photo. My face and limbs had endured enough fang and claw attacks that I have little interest in tempting fate.

After I told Wayne about Hannah's mad obsession with banana slices, he rechristened her "Hannah Banana". That name is a definite keeper.
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Now you're finally going to meet Virgil face-to-face, along with his new and first child; a beautiful daughter. If you are not familiar with how Virgil made our life in the middle-of-nowhere bearable, enter "Virgil" into the search engine thingy at the top of this page. He and Jenny quickly became family to us in that first extremely tough year off the grid so I feel like I nearly have a grandchild of my own now, only wishing that Terry had been here to see her, too. He had loved them both as dearly as I, and he and Virgil traded some amusing mutual calls for aid when the wash mud got too deep as well as tackling some daunting ranch projects together.
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Looking over the beautiful baby girl is Earl and Skeeter's little orangy tiger cat which Virgil adores. Earl is another of the 'angels of the gas field' as one neighbor aptly calls them. Those neighbors were also considered 'outsiders' in the canyon by the multi-generation ranchers and suffered in deeply hurtsome and unwarranted ways from the venom of our mutual anti-neighbor in particular. For them, too, the good-natured men of the gas field were always a dependable blessing.

One day, I need to write more about Earl - particularly his high-speed response to my call for help on Terry's last day. I do apologize, I cannot continue this tale ... it is as though someone is gripping my heart like an over-ripe orange and squeezing until the pulp explodes outwards. Maybe someday but not now, not yet. I have since learned a painful lot about how clueless and insensitive humans can be but the consistent shining exception has been those rough and tough boys, our angels of the gas field. And if I die 'before my time', I'd very much like to watch over them if I can, to return that love and loyalty they gave us without expectation or judgment. May you also have such rare gems come into your lives some day and, more importantly, may you recognize and appreciate them for the incredibly caring beings they are.
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A friend sent me a collection of cute critters expressing various sentiments. I liked this one the best:
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Snow, Pigs and Slackers

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We finally got a snowfall that stayed around more than a day. The usual for this new place has been an inch, maybe slightly more, but it melted away the next day. This is the third day after and it is all pretty much still there. Fortunately, I had decided to make the bi-weekly supply trip as the clouds were beginning to press in over the far northern mountain ranges. I called it close enough that the snow started coming down while I was only 4 miles from home but an inch of snow had already fallen by the time I got the truck unloaded. It would be a fine night to try out the wood-burning stove for coziness. Just the day before, Red had stopped out on his monthly rounds and spotted a wood seller on our way back from a lunch outing. Within two hours, the man had delivered a New Mexican cord of wood (one a little shy of the genuine 4x4x8 full cord I am more familiar with and considerably more expensive and one composed of soft wood that any self-respecting Northerner would consider unburnable). At that rate and price, I doubt it will save any substantial money on heating but we will just have to wait and see. In the meantime, it is a great incentive to fussy around with the vacuum cleaner more than I have been. Time is not so kindly that I have forgotten the ever-present ash dust and bark rubble nor hauling in 300 pounds of good red oak (at 100 pounds to a sling-full) each evening to heat a three-story Victorian. We would have gone through this pile of NM wood in about a week!
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Above: one lone gray barn cat on a mission in the new snow.
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Above: three fours-leggers hoping that I emerged from the warmth to bring hay. Sorry, not my table. Wayne & Gayle still show up every day or two to feed their remaining stock here. I feed their eight barn cats and, very thankfully, that's the extent of it.
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Go figure, we finally get some real winter weather and the cranes decide to head to the Northwest today, by the hundreds! I was able to catch photos of them thanks to Brou's 'heads up' bark. He's been a little put off by the lack of low flying military aircraft that we both loved to see out at the ranch so migrating birds will have to do for excitement now.
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Above: W&G getting ready to lure those greedy little pigs from their pen with a bucket of cracked corn.

The previous Saturday was a great day for progress. W&G showed up with a borrowed trailer to move the pigs (4 each) to their new place. They had already relocated two dozen goats but I reminded them that I considered removal of those pigs as the main priority. These creatures offended my sense of decorum on a regular basis, especially after the introduction when they flicked blobs of pig dung on my scarce 'go to town' clothes. And I grew to resent their crucial role in putting off most previous interest I had in pork products with an overwhelming raft of indelible visual, audio and olfactory impressions.

Now I can hardly wait for them to remove the Angora rabbits plus the old Morgan stud who is creating vast ponds of urine and hard matter in the stalls which I need in order to store our unsheltered lumber. They did clean out most of their belongings in the big out-building last week but the cold weather will keep me from moving much of the 45' trailer contents into it until Spring. With Wayne's long needed surgery now scheduled for the 15th, they have a lot on the plate to finalize before his long convalescence hits home.
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Strictly a W&G Service Announcement: Anyone interested in buying a 1954 Chevy dump truck project for 2 grand? I like having this classic bit of New Mexico yard art around but they are short on cash right now, even more so than usual. If you leave me your contact info in a comment, I won't publish it but will pass the info on to W&G.

It looks like I might be a little scarce on new posts until summer. It's not that there isn't plenty of news to share but that I am going to need more time to organize, settle and deal with the many, many pressing legalities and business that the hired guns have not. It's a hideously daunting prospect that has caused the stress levels to build up to panic levels. The few pros that I have hired have only increased the stress by doing jack - what this here country needs is a one-stop bonded service for the bereaved which takes care of every daunting matter quickly and properly while hand-holding and reassuring. If there is such a service, I certainly haven't found it but rather a vast and confusing a la carte menu of nose-pickers supreme. It is heavily tainting and retarding the progress and enthusiasm for this new place and this new uninvited and unwelcomed life. Wish me luck ... at this rate, I will most certainly need it!
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Merry Christmas!

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Hoping you have a great Christmas!
(just don't forget whose birthday party it is)
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A peaceful morning of first snow out at the ranch.
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Snow falling at the new place today (as viewed from the back steps).

And thank you so much to Cat and his wife for the Christmas dinner invitation! But the weather outside is frightful ... the critter food supply's delightful! Let it blow, let it hail, let it snow!
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Working in the latest coal mine

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Progress on the new place has nearly ground down to a complete stop but I will show you what I had managed to date.
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Office (before): This was the first room to eventually empty out. And since I needed an office and place for the computer as a priority, it was my first project. Note the four strange marks on the floor that form a square. These are from an old trunk with broken casters which rested at the foot of their bed. According to the half to three quarter inch deep gouges in the subfloor, it had been moved everyday to make the bed. It took almost an entire tub of Elmer's wood filler to fill the gouges back up to level and could only be done a little at a time in thin layers. The cleaning, prep and caulking needed before fresh paint was considerable to do a proper job. Although not my preferred window style, the windows were of a reasonable quality and now slide easily and lock after a thorough cleaning and maintenance session.
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Office (better): Although this rooms still needs proper window framing and trim and a chair rail in natural wood stains, it is comfortable enough for now. The vibrant gold on the top of the walls tells me that I have lost my old ability to judge a wall color from a small paint chip. I was looking for something in a very warm and creamy French vanilla - and this wasn't it! But close enough for now since I dread having to cut in a new top color. It felt so good to finally have an office space of my own again since so many pressing matters had been languishing in moving boxes. I'm STILL trying to catch up.

Note for the Katlady: Does the dark oak office chair look familiar? It is your dad's infamous GDAPC (butt-pinching chair) that he had fallen out of love with when the seat plank split and pinched him right proper.
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Guest Room (before): Here is what the eventual guest room looked like for a couple of months after buying the place. Apparently not a lot of packing progress occurred while I was coincidentally left stranded out at the Rat. Okay, as you can start to imagine, the place did not 'show well' while on the market. It saddens me that they left a lot of money on the table for lack of even rudimentary sprucing up but that ain't my problem. Even if they were not palaces, the houses I have sold in the past were always intriguing crowd pleasers, always surprising jaded realtors on getting a good or better than expected price in a quick turn-over time.
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Guest Room (better): Yes, Phlegmmy, one day hopefully soon, this will be the official guest room with an antique brass bed and some golden oak dressers. For now, it is home to the big Eastlake walnut bed until I can start on the main bedroom in the slightly bigger back room. It felt SOOO good to have a real bed after a few months of just the mattress on the floor of another room and my creaking knees thank me daily without fail. Also, Daisy the amazing hair throwing dog had decided that a mattress at dog level was simply divine but I was not as taken with that bed-share arrangment at all.
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Living Room (before): As you have probably guessed already, this was the state of the living room when I finally arrived. Mind you, I was grateful to see that our Chesterfield had been moved in and covered with heavy moving blankets (left side of photo). I realized just how important the moving blanket coverings were when I saw one of their Corgis hike its leg on my antique copper boiler stored off to one side, adding a little unwelcomed patina to the copper. Their cats might have committed other unmentionable affronts to the leather Chesterfield as well without the coverings. I slept on it for the first two nights until the burlap got very old. That's when Wayne helped me move enough of the heavy furniture in one room to make room for a mattress on the floor. Hardly the Ritz but a vast relative improvement.
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Living Room (better): Here is the room after I had managed to remove about one quarter of the heavily soiled carpet and deal with the critter urine affronts before giving the exposed sublfoor a quick coat of paint to seal in the past. Only a few of our furnishings are present until I finish removing the carpet entirely. I had wanted to have oak floors installed throughout but that might be fantasies too lofty unless the stock market recovers. So, in the meantime, wood filler and off-the-rack Wally World floor paint might have to make do. At least it is progress.


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Happy Thanksgiving!

.Happy Thanksgiving wishes from the turkeys in my new back yard. These birds are certainly thankful since they will not appear on a dinner plate any time soon. I suspected that they had turned into more pets for Wayne and Gayle to feed so I sent W&G home with a turkey that I had managed to buy for only 29 cents a pound! Okay, turkeys, you owe me one now!
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Watch This Space!

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Today I have come to the conclusion that I will continue to live the ongoing half-life for some time to come so I will take a sabbatical from this blog to the end of October or longer. I wanted so badly to show you the photos of the new place but do not wish to impose on Gayle and her computer any more than I have to. The three of us are getting along remarkably well considering that we were bought together in the course of fate and an otherwise standard real estate transaction but we are all looking forward to the day when we can re-establish two separate nests once more. We are all living and working in the rug canyons between piles of full moving boxes, both theirs and mine. It sort of reminds me of once living in the Katlady's boarding house in a huge brick Victorian ... well, except that she had no intention of moving anywhere at the time.

Wayne is doing the classic frantic rush to get the heavy and nasty jobs done at their new place before his surgery next week and Gayle is doing the related fruitless fretting and damage control. The good news is that I have convinced Gayle to start a blog about their new start-from-bare-earth homestead. She writes very well and will have plenty of stories about their shoe-string adventures as they develop. All I have to do now is remind her to take her camera along, right Mushy?

As with our long down times at the ranch, my imagination has been in high idle with all the possibilities and potential here. All must be planned around the recent market tank and a new tight budget in mind now. Lots of bang-for-the-buck projects on the slate so watch this space come November! Red's uber-geek son promised to come through for me with something reliable in the way of a computer system and then I will be back in full blog force! Hopefully he will also be able to retrieve all the cool unpublished photos which I had taken previously on the ranch. .


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Made It Out of the Canyonlands!

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This is a short update just to let you know that we finally made it out of the canyonlands on Monday. I am on a borrowed sticky keyboard which has knocked my typing words per minute back down to my old high school levels of a negative rating after subtracting for mistakes.

It was a long day for Steve, Vicky, myself and all the fur critters, a VERY long day. They had set off at 4AM from Albuquerque for our last day of moving and were ready to kick butt for one last mission and it was a full-out, non-stop mission. And I was dreading that last long look around so badly; my supply of stress adrenaline depleting rapidly now after three months nonstop. The fur family was the last to be loaded up, followed by Terry's cowboy hats on the headrest and his shoes on the passenger side of my Dakota although barfing Ms. Daisy would ride shotgun with me, too. True to form and despite a dose of Dramamine, she performed one very colorful flash of stomach contents before setting down which I have still not addressed. I would like to vegetate for a full week or so after yesterday's emotional exodus.

They led with Terry's big Ram diesel pulling the red 16 footer across the washes and down the choppy and often deeply sandy roads at a snail's pace since we had packed the last of the Rat's contents hurriedly and much less professionally than Wayne had done. Two hours later, we reached the highway and I had managed to stop long enough along the way to each back and wrestle a number of aspirin from the box beside the yowling cats' crates and the disturbing ailments subsided reasonably by the time we reached pavement. Then the pace picked up considerably. Even so, we were all exhausted by the time we arrived at the new place. Once essential critter comforts were addressed, it was time to quietly sit in a stunned and breathless manner for the rest of the evening with good and jovial company.

Hopefully, I will be back within a week; right now, I just need to sleep a little and then adjust to a reality long postponed.
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Still here ... Part 2

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Sigh, Babzy's right with her last comment; it's been a whole week without an update. I was doing pretty well for a while but the last two weeks have seen a rapid decline in my health and I have been getting very little done as a result. New moving rescue plans have come and gone like the passing of the sun out here. And I just can't write all I wish to when I am this down on all levels.

Mind you, the day started out with a pleasant surprise. Brou and Daisy got me up at dawn to let them out (which is not a pleasant event for a non-morning person) but when I opened the door, we startled two mule deer grazing 30 feet away. The dogs could not have been more pleased and spun themselves into a yapping, yiping torrent of blurred fur which soon disappeared in a fruitless pursuit. I briefly thought about all the hunters out here in the canyons this weekend for the mule deer hunt who just spent the night shivering in tents and I gleefully dove back into the still pleasantly warm bed.

The latest plan calls for moving help tomorrow but I am not really prepared for it in any way. I am just feeling gawd-awful physically sick right now. If we do get the latest kinks worked out, if they do arrive and if we do get the place finally packed up, I will be off-line until probably some time in October unless I make it over to Red's to borrow his computer for an update. We'll just have to play that by ear, I guess. It may take a while but I will be back as soon as I can.
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Still Here .... Sigh

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Yep, I am still here. This weekend was supposed to be "Moving, Part 2" but it didn't happen. I won't say that I wasn't upset when I found out after 5PM on Friday when it was too late to call around for other resources. It was pretty devastating news, in fact, after thinking that this one source of great stress had been covered. And, had I known just a day earlier, I could have stocked up with the bigger bag of dog food, more generator gas and beer at least. As it was, I blew my back out on that supply run so I had little to lose pain-wise by lugging greater quantities of supplies at the time. But Wayne was not in great health to begin with, tried his best for me and will undergo surgery for possible bladder cancer on Tuesday, right as their own plans for a new homestead get underway. I will have to write about his trials after he left here late last Sunday with the big trailer - never a dull moment, I tell you. They are both great people and have their own plate full to overflowing right now - please send them your best thoughts, too.

After a week of threatening thunderstorms, this weekend was as weather-perfect as I could have hoped and prayed for; cool with absolutely cloudless blue skies. It's definitely the beginning of Fall in the high desert here with the temperatures falling into the 30s at night and rising into the comfortable 70s during the day. I am feeling very guilty about prolonging our exodus since the gas field, the road maintainers and the BLM have been so generous and committed to keeping these roads passable for my departure. Please send your thoughts and prayers in keeping the washes and creek dry until I can find new help with the last of the move out.

I will start calling around today in earnest to find suitable work-arounds to complete this move. One part is hopefully already in motion thanks to Virgil. He and Jenny came out yesterday with a buyer for the big welder so that is one less heavy item to find trailer space for or worry about leaving to the inevitable scavengers. He was feeling awfully bad that his own truck is laid up but he has come through for me like the ultra dependable friend he always was to Terry and I. If all is going well today, he has hitched a ride into Albuquerque and will be driving Terry's big Ram and the gooseneck trailer back out here for the next reload. Red will be flying out to a B52/tanker reunion shortly so I can't rely on his calm-under-fire logistical thinking this week but everything will work out according to some big but seemingly nebulous plan for the best ... of that, I have no doubt.

This is just a quick update in the midst of vast uncertainty so no need to leave a comment this time - I know you are all still here with me and it's truly keeping me going. Hopefully the next update will be done from the far end of this new journey.
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Moving Away from Our Dream, Part 1

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Firstly, I want to thank our blog friends who have stuck by me even though I have not been making my rounds of my favorite old blog haunts since 'that day'. Hopefully I will be settled in to a largely different, somewhat daunting new life alone by October. Can I say that I am looking forward to it? No, I will not lie to you; the prospect embraces practical reasons more than anything right now and little more. The best friend I ever had is gone now but I am trying my best to move forward, as much for the well-being of our fur family as anything. I was doing quite well, in fact until a cascade of events on Sunday caught me off guard emotionally. But let's get on with the moving tales since some incredible people had intervened to help get the dreaded move progressed to this point. The number of widely divergent folks who have helped with this move has left me in awe, a needed reinforcement of my faith in humanity. You, our blog friends, have been a crucial part of this transition as well.

Red and Wayne arrived last Thursday in Red's venerable little Jeep. We really didn't get much accomplished that day; it was more a time for exchanging tales and settling in and to eat a good dinner, the first real effort that I had cooked up since Terry left. It was a necessary gentle lead-in to the hectic days to soon follow.

Friday saw the beginning of the packing up even though we all enjoyed stopping to chat far too much. It was still a good and appropriate pace that kept me from stressing out emotionally. I only had one particularity bad moment that day when we had to look for something in the bed of Terry's truck. His truck, his skid steer; those are particularly haunting since I still see him so clearly in both and his big cat-like grin of satisfaction as he commandeered them. I thought Red hadn't noticed that I collapsed into tears before I could jump down from the tall bed of the Ram but he returned shortly. By then, I was standing on the Rat porch and so we both sat down on the steps, his arm around my shoulder, his other hand grasping mine tightly. He had been there before, he remembered the pain and understood how I was feeling all too well. He said "It's okay, you are going to have these times. Don't avoid them, let them happen, it's absolutely normal." I hope you all have a friend like that if the seemingly unbearable happens some day.

On Saturday, our extra help arrived. I was hoping for just a couple of young and brawny lads to help us aging, creaking old farts with the lifting and loading. What we got instead was two full truckloads of help. I only regret that I was too frazzled to remember to take a photo of the second truck with the five young lads.
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Above is a photo of our friends, Dan and Virginia and their family. Like the five young lads, they are from the local Mennonite community. We had met them through ordering the two new buildings for our new Rat Town dream. Dan had not only helped me out with making other plans for the two buildings which they had already built but not delivered but also arranged for the brawn for loading day. We could not have gotten as far as we did without their serene and obliging help. And I have never been more impressed with a religious group than I was with all my dealings with the Mennonites; they walk the talk like none other that I've ever dealt with. If Terry and I had ever decided to commit to a particular sect, it would have been them, no doubt about it. I will hopefully write more about our dealings with these lovely, non-judgmental people some day when I am settled in as well as all the other folks who came to the fore in this unexpected new life drama. They all deserve mention and credit. As promised, even the road out was fixed well enough to accommodate rolling the big 45' trailer out of our canyon. I will take a photo of that effort for you if I can in the next week.
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Sunday morning: Here is the tractor of the kindly neighbor hooked up to the 45' trailer. This was a particularly emotional time for me, seeing this original container of our surviving life's belongings being readied to vacate our dream land. Terry's Ram is jump charging the trailer's lift-gate battery.

Above; Red , Wayne and John are clearing out the debris which had grown in around the 45 footer in the last three years ... there was a lot of it, too. Everything that was settled and comfortable was now being uprooted, much like our dream.

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I will write more about the big move but, for now, I am depleted. Sunday was a draining day emotionally and my immune system predictably collapsed. There were so many things left to be done here but I am not up to it physically now. Yes, I stayed behind with the fur family, awaiting the return of at least one trailer emptied for we ran out of trailer space in deed. And I did not want to leave the Rat in this state of utter mess and chaos. I also wanted time for the fur family and myself to adjust for a few days before the next and final phase. Leaving the dream behind so abruptly, so traumatically, was simply not an option despite the threat of new wet weather. It will work out, we will be fine ... not to worry, okay? A thunderstorm just rolled in - time to shut down the generator and unplug it from the Rat. Daisy just bowled me aside and dove under the desk as is customary. But we will all be fine, I'm not kidding.
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Racing the Rains Home

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I had planned to show you intriguing photos of the ghosts of metal victims of the running washes but this was probably my worst emotional week since Terry died. I had been carefully avoiding anything that might trigger the worst of the sorrow that I knew I could not deal with yet since the stress and the upset of this rapidly approaching move from our canyon will certainly provoke its own lion's share. That didn't work out as planned however. So, instead, I will share photos with you of our access road condition which weighs so heavily on me right now after last night's rains.
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The rain had mostly held off for my three solo trips out of the canyon. And other than seeing this odd bird (above) on Friday which appeared almost double-winged, the trip in went well and without too many excitements other than the usual one or two oncoming vehicles sliding into sudden view from blind corners at impressive speeds. An adrenaline rush trumps coffee any day for waking up fast and fully.

This necessary trip on Friday let me almost beat the storms home. I had made it across the creek and was only a mile away from the Rat when the skies dumped their full load suddenly. I could now see the Rat and picked up the pace, fish-tailing a little here and there on the newly slick dirt. Having picked up Virgil's bed full of moving boxes, I didn't want to dally in the deluge any longer than necessary and heaved a long sigh of relief when the Dakota finally dove under the shelter of the barn's tin roof. Good, only the top layer of boxes had been soaked so I now ran to the Rat in my favorite go-to-town moccasins through the mud slime. I should have brought my tall rubber boots with me, I knew better than to leave them at home, in fact. At least I had remembered to bring a flashlight and a roll of toilet paper just in case. You will only need the items you don't remember to bring - it's another quirky law of the wilderness.

I jettisoned the mud-caked shoes on the porch and all dogs and cats were on deck to witness me blow through the door and collapse breathlessly into my wing chair. They had been very good, not leaving me any 'chocolates' of desperation to deal with. The five of us just sat quietly listening to the thunder and the roar of rain on the Rat's tin roof. Then it subsided unexpectedly within a half hour and the dogs were able to go out to execute their withheld duties with exuberance. I was just thankful that this sudden but short-lived downpour might not force the creek to run that day.
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The creek had been a major, ongoing source of concern for us this year since its meandering course had begun to claw away ruthlessly at two sections of our road in. It had been narrow but sturdy and nicely passable upon our arrival here three years ago although the man who moved the Rat in for us had noted that we lucked out in buying a 14' wide trailer and not a 16' wide one because of those narrow road widths.
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This photo was taken during this last dry spell, well before Sunday night's downpours. I don't have the heart to drive down there to see what's left of the road today. News, good or bad, will reach me soon enough.
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So call me a wimp but I don't like the thought of having a section of road collapse beneath me as I am driving over it, especially when it's a long way down to the creek below. It could ruin your sterling insurance rates in a hurry. I find it even more disconcerting when it involves a heavy vehicle full of your treasured and often irreplaceable belongings piloted by even more irreplaceable friends. The water haulers announced last week that they would no longer let their tanker drivers cross this section of road. This news did not impart a warm and fuzzy feeling to me at all.

We have planned the big move for this coming weekend. This might just be my biggest unofficial heart stress test coming up. Please keep us all in your best thoughts and prayers this week.
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Made It Home Safely

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Once the critter sitters were briefed on the quirks of our off-the-grid arrangements, getting ready to leave the canyon by myself for the first time was the hardest part of my journey. It seemed foreign and completely unnatural. And in the back of my mind, I fretted about the Dakota's acceleration once I reached pavement. That pack rat's nest episode in the engine compartment coincided with my gut feel that I had been robbed of genuine speed and I thought that maybe some obstruction was restricting the gas pedal movement. These dirt roads don't allow for an acceleration test beyond 35 miles an hour and only briefly at that unless you want to slam down hard and then launch yourself aloft in one of the many deep key-ways in these dirt roads. Both of us had incurred headliner bruises and nearly worn the heavy Ranch Hand bumper grill like braces from previous feats of bravado and brain farts out here on these weather-pocked roads. And I had only vague recollections of the directions to get out of the canyons when heading south.

I loaded up all the documents, clothes and gas cans that I needed and just hoped that I wasn't forgetting something ... which I did anyway. Turning the ignition key was one of the hardest things I had ever forced myself to do; I felt like I was abandoning Terry (Mark), our dreams and our fur friends in horribly callous ways. Concentrating on the rough roads for the next 25 miles helped soften that tension and remorse. I eventually eased up beside the old Indian trading post and hit it out on to the highway. "Hitting it" brought forth disappointing results. For the next couple of hours, I was mortified at being passed going up hill by semis at 45 mph. It was going to be a long drive so I poked the radio seek button and found but one station, a country western venue, and the miles droned by. And I felt so alone. Then a song called "Remember When" came on. It is a bittersweet, lilting, slow lovers' waltz and gentle kind of piece with lines like "... we won't be sad, we'll be glad, for all the times we had ... remember when ..." And for the first time since Terry died, I started to sob quite uncontrollably; no one but me in the truck, no critters and friends to be strong and stoic for, just me alone on this quiet four lane highway. I looked over through my dappled vision to my right and reached out to pat and grasp Terry's leg affectionately, just as he had done so many times before when I was riding shotgun. But in reality, I now knew that I was truly alone in this stark and beautiful desert, that landscape which we both fell in love with not that long ago. It still held its rugged but scarred beauty proudly; it's defiant cliffs bleeding from exposed slashes of incredible colors. I would have to be like those cliffs we loved so much now - stubborn and defiant. I was suddenly snapped out of my lost thoughts when I noticed traffic overtaking me and wiped blindly at my clouded eyes lest they somehow see my heartbreak and I repeatedly stabbed my soft-moccasined foot hard into the gas pedal to no avail.

I survived the drive through Albuquerque on the interstates without acceleration capabilities quite nicely. In any other major city, I might have been slaughtered in the rush of commuters going 30 mph faster but not here. Perhaps that is why we loved this place; it wasn't unnecessarily frantic and fast 'just because'. After climbing their mountain highway at an eye-burning 35 mph, I pulled into Red and Sally's just before supper and it was like joyously arriving home again from a very tough trek.

With their help and encouragement, we got a lot of necessary things done that week and we had some fun as well. And when they retired each night, I would remove to the guest apartment on the second floor of the building next door. I guess I needed that time alone and away from the ranch and the rest of the world to sit out on the deck, to look up at the skies, to pretend that Terry was seated beside me on that rough bench and to talk with him about many things unsaid up until then. And to cry, to cry deeply when there was no one else around - neither friends or creatures to hear and be further disturbed and hurt by my laments. As I gazed up into the skies, I would sometimes be pelted by sporadic rains crying down to join my tears, sometimes see shooting stars etch short but dazzling paths across the firmament, just as Terry had done. I had so desperately needed that quiet time of reconciliation, of putting this horrendous but unavoidable new reality into some sort of perspective.

The days flew by far too fast but we accomplished many things and the three of us found a couple of new and special friends in the process as a delightful bonus. It looks like I will be taking over their small farmstead in September if all goes as planned. Better still, Wayne was a professional mover for years and I can hire him to help pack and load up our belongings at the ranch. Since they are both of the same breed as Terry and I were for collecting odd-ball and sometimes heavy funky stuff, I doubt I could have found a better person to orchestrate the move. Yes, a small light has started to shine on what needs to be done before winter sets in and more pegs are falling into place now. I am so thankful, not only for this break in that onslaught of disasters but for your thoughts and prayers in getting me this far. We are starting to get somewhere now ... finally!
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I'll Be Back!

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Just a heads up to let you know that I, God willing and the creek don't rise, will be heading into the big city this week to look at possible alternative homes a little closer to civilization for the remainder of our Rat pack. It still has to be rural, no half acre lot will do now that we have lived out here in solitude and loved it so completely. Hopefully many necessary things will be accomplished during this, my second trip out of our canyon this year. It would appear that the 2nd nearest neighbors have come to the rescue by finding me a critter sitter (including the guy's ex!?) for this event. This still may beat having to battle Ms. Daisy (the extreme travel barfer) to get her into the truck and drop her off elsewhere. Please wish me luck in every way on this venture ... I am SO severely jaded on melodrama.

Red will just have to wait a little longer to find out just what he said and did during our unplanned but most excellent wake for Terry up at Slim's Cowboy Hotel. You bet, we did it up in the most fine of Irish traditions possible all right.

Remember; I may be off-line for a while so your comments may not show up for a bit.
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First Cavalry Arrives Again

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Reality Warning: Philosophical material to follow
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As I watched their taillights disappear over the last visible far away stretch of our canyon road at dusk, I realized that I had never taken their photograph and I sighed heavily in regret. Now I could only hope that Virgil and Jen's return trip home was safe and uneventful. They had brought me desperately needed supplies without hesitation and even though I still have no means of paying them. This was their second trip into our far boonies. They had already come to the rescue within two days of Terry's passing, being there as both family and friends to quietly share in trying to make sense of this unfathomable turn of fate.

This post is for Connie, Virgil's mom. In her many caring and encouraging e-mails, and like so many of you, she has worried about my predicament alone out here and she lamented not being able to help, wondering what she might be able to offer in this very challenging time. Connie, you have helped in more ways than you could ever imagine; you have shared your son with me - so I thank you, deeply and from the heart.

Virgil came to us from the gas field. He came to us via their good neighbor policy but stayed to become our loyal friend throughout this and so many toughest of times. He did not abandon us when fate transferred him so far away from us either. So many people who cross your path in brilliant comet-like colors will fade away quickly when circumstance and convenience change; he did not. Nor did his equally sincere wife, Jenny. If you can count such people as friends on even one hand at the very end of your life, you have been extraordinarily blessed. I feel as though my two hands are full and am now running out of toes to tabulate such blessings. This is what keeps me going when unseen influences do their best to beat me down to my knees and shove my face into the dirt as they have tried so many times before. And as long as I can feel even a small amount of a goodness and love in mankind, I will keep fighting that good but often discouraging fight. I may retreat into the solitude of my aerie when the sum of events become too burdensome but I bring your caring with me as a balm for heart wounds which might otherwise prove fatal. We all bear the responsibility for mankind's future by caring for others in genuine and selfless ways ... don't drop the ball and then point a lamenting finger at the rest of the world. For all we know, there may be a scale of planetary proportions with a preset point waiting for the day when just one good soul dying away will be enough to set the cogs of our fate into reverse.

That was my big philosophical rant; thank you for indulging me. With any luck and blessing, I will be back to the utterly mundane shortly. In the meantime, get defiant and fight your own good fight; never let them get you down for long because rising from your knees to victory is the finest of life's wines that you will ever taste and remember. If I can do it, so can you - don't ever, EVER forget that.
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A Techno Heads Up

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Here is my warning that my may be cut off from on-line activity soon. This is my new joy for the day apparently as this computer, Terry's, is starting to act up and shut-down. Since mine lost its on-line ability the night before Terry died, when this one goes, I will vanish without warning. Bear that in mind, please.

The cluster bung continues unabated and I have never seen so many dropped balls in my life. With the exception of a couple of folks, the expression "If there is anything we can do to help ..." is one not meant to be seriously redeemed. And some help adds more stress than alleviates it. Still no word on when our access road might be repaired and made passable again after last week's horrendous rains and run-off. So far a no-show on the folks who promised to pick up my empty propane tanks and gasoline cans and deliver them to Virgil who will eventually perform a supply run. If the propane runs out, I will lose the freezer full of elk meat and other foods. If the gasoline runs out, no more generator electricity. Those supplies and the dog food will run out in less than a week ... hope the dogs don't get too much flatulence from eating thawed elk meat and the last of Terry's much loved ice cream. The diesel fuel tank was upended and fell off the stand in the BIG rain storm (the required containment tanks will float when immersed in a pool of flood waters - a brilliant idea). The water pump at the water tank died. Without the water pump, no bathing, no dish washing and the evaporative cooler will not work in this 90 degree heat spell so the fur friends and I just sit around swooning a lot, trying not to move at all. Aside from one night of sleep-over guests, it's been three weeks of being alone through the night and most of the days unless Earl stops by briefly on his well run. Hopefully the scumbags that stole Terry's ID have been finally stopped. And there are other upsetting, worrisome things that I care not to mention. There, that's just so I don't hear any "Hey, sounds like things are really coming together, babe, let's do lunch some time." Sorry if I sound unusually discouraged but July has sucked in record-breaking ways. Shall we see if August brings something better? Why not ... something has to give sooner or later ... and hopefully it won't be me. No comments needed on this one - hopefully I will be back soon with better news.
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