Elizabeth Moon's Blog, page 37
June 25, 2011
More on the Hard Stuff
R- had his cardiac catheterization yesterday, had two stents put in, and had (by his report) a very uncomfortable night (they pulled the catheter sheathe at 1 am, so sleep was pretty much out of the question.) I get to bring him home today, but he's not recovered yet. Cardiologist appointment Monday, and then it's time to find out when they'll do the stomach and bowel resection and what recovery time is likely to be. Since the cardiologist has him on blood thinners, and blood thinners are not ideal companions for gastric/gut surgery...well, we'll find out when we find out.
Just sayin', this is not the summer we planned for.
So far today I've fed and watered horses, checked the wildlife waterers at Fox and Owl (refilling both the tanks and noting that Fox Pavilion's storage tanks are both very low...) and done some preventive mowing (ragweed) in the near meadow.
On the good side, the Eustomas (Texas bluebells, actually a large-purple-flowered gentian) are in great shape, the most we've ever had on the west end of the place. They've colonized the entire gully system but I'm also finding them remote from it. (What eats and drops the seeds???) I even found one in the west grass (east of the all-too-dry creekbed.)
We need rain. Everybody here needs rain. It would take 12-15 inches for the water table to start springs and creeks running again.
E.
Just sayin', this is not the summer we planned for.
So far today I've fed and watered horses, checked the wildlife waterers at Fox and Owl (refilling both the tanks and noting that Fox Pavilion's storage tanks are both very low...) and done some preventive mowing (ragweed) in the near meadow.
On the good side, the Eustomas (Texas bluebells, actually a large-purple-flowered gentian) are in great shape, the most we've ever had on the west end of the place. They've colonized the entire gully system but I'm also finding them remote from it. (What eats and drops the seeds???) I even found one in the west grass (east of the all-too-dry creekbed.)
We need rain. Everybody here needs rain. It would take 12-15 inches for the water table to start springs and creeks running again.
E.
New York, New York
New York has now made same-sex marriage legal--and so should all of us. As a straight woman in a heterosexual marriage, married more than 40 years, I have never felt threatened by same-sex marriage (or same-sex relationships.)
The argument that same-sex marriages threaten, attack, injure, or invalidate heterosexual marriage makes no sense at all....because it lacks any mechanism. If you ask how sugary soft drinks threaten/attack/injure tooth enamel, for instance, dentists can give a mechanism and explain how that works. If you ask how alcohol injures drivers' ability to drive well, doctors can give a mechanism and explain exactly what alcohol does to the brain to make it work less well. Safety engineers can explain the mechanism by which this or that industrial accident happens....psychologists can explain the mechanism by which group solidarity becomes bigotry.
But ask opponents of same-sex marriage how, precisely, same sex marriage injures heterosexual marriage and they can't give an answer. No mechanism exists to move from "Bob and John married," to "Bill and Susie's marriage was destroyed." Marriages succeed or fail because of the characteristics, choices, and behaviors of the marriage partners....not the sexual orientation of the neighbors or co-workers. If someone chooses to use another person's sexuality as an excuse to be a bad marriage partner (and this applies to any someone--straight or gay) it's just an excuse, not a reason. The only people who can ruin a marriage are the people in it. The only people who can sustain a marriage are the people in it.
Will same-sex marriages prosper? I hope so. Initially, I'd expect that longstanding gay partnerships, now formalized as marriages, would beat the odds and outperform heterosexual marriages, on average. But I would expect over time that marriages of gay persons would show a similar pattern of success/failure to heterosexual marriages, because the causes of both success and failure are common to the upbringing of both. A healthy marriage requires both partners to have courage, integrity, and generosity...cowardice, dishonesty, and selfishness in either partner can deepsix a marriage.
So hurray for New York and I hope the movement spreads.
The argument that same-sex marriages threaten, attack, injure, or invalidate heterosexual marriage makes no sense at all....because it lacks any mechanism. If you ask how sugary soft drinks threaten/attack/injure tooth enamel, for instance, dentists can give a mechanism and explain how that works. If you ask how alcohol injures drivers' ability to drive well, doctors can give a mechanism and explain exactly what alcohol does to the brain to make it work less well. Safety engineers can explain the mechanism by which this or that industrial accident happens....psychologists can explain the mechanism by which group solidarity becomes bigotry.
But ask opponents of same-sex marriage how, precisely, same sex marriage injures heterosexual marriage and they can't give an answer. No mechanism exists to move from "Bob and John married," to "Bill and Susie's marriage was destroyed." Marriages succeed or fail because of the characteristics, choices, and behaviors of the marriage partners....not the sexual orientation of the neighbors or co-workers. If someone chooses to use another person's sexuality as an excuse to be a bad marriage partner (and this applies to any someone--straight or gay) it's just an excuse, not a reason. The only people who can ruin a marriage are the people in it. The only people who can sustain a marriage are the people in it.
Will same-sex marriages prosper? I hope so. Initially, I'd expect that longstanding gay partnerships, now formalized as marriages, would beat the odds and outperform heterosexual marriages, on average. But I would expect over time that marriages of gay persons would show a similar pattern of success/failure to heterosexual marriages, because the causes of both success and failure are common to the upbringing of both. A healthy marriage requires both partners to have courage, integrity, and generosity...cowardice, dishonesty, and selfishness in either partner can deepsix a marriage.
So hurray for New York and I hope the movement spreads.
June 21, 2011
Snippet & knitting
There's a new snippet from Book IV of Paladin's Legacy up at the Paksworld blog. Also a couple of pictures of the current knitting projects--but I'm putting up a different image of Project #2 here, to show how the variegated yarn looks over the length of the piece. Project #2 is a 6 inch wide scarf, done with Berocco Comfort yarn (Sanibel Island) on size 8 (American) KnitPicks acrylic needle tips and a short cable:
I am loving this yarn--it has an incredibly soft, cuddly hand. Project #1 is in the same yarn but a different color blend (you can see it on the Paksworld blog.) I'm finding the acrylic needles good for travel because they're a bit grippier and thus the yarn doesn't slide off too easily when traveling. Otherwise I prefer the wooden needle tips because they aren't so grippy and particularly on the wide projects like #1 (40 inches wide) it helps to have the stitches move easily along the needles.
I am loving this yarn--it has an incredibly soft, cuddly hand. Project #1 is in the same yarn but a different color blend (you can see it on the Paksworld blog.) I'm finding the acrylic needles good for travel because they're a bit grippier and thus the yarn doesn't slide off too easily when traveling. Otherwise I prefer the wooden needle tips because they aren't so grippy and particularly on the wide projects like #1 (40 inches wide) it helps to have the stitches move easily along the needles.
June 16, 2011
Choir
As of yesterday, I thought maybe I'd escaped con crud at A-Kon (though escaping contact with something your body hasn't met yet is darn near inevitable in a crowd of 18-19,000 people from all over the world.) So I went to choir practice last night, thinking I was not carrying any germs to the choir...and this morning woke up feeling slugged with a viral bat.
However, last night at choir was a good experience, despite not being able to sight read an unfamiliar anthem at the speed we were taking it (and wanting to smack composers upside the head for taking a beautiful and familiar hymn and making it tricksy and hard to sing, not to mention too HIGH.) We started with a Russian composer (Gretchaninoff or something like--my music's still in the car.) The rest of the time was spent mostly with Robert Shaw/Alice Parker anthemized versions of familiar stuff...and I have a little less affection for those than our choir director does. Personally (and this is very personal, admittedly, and not the opinion of someone with a handful of music degrees) I think there's a place for singing hymns *as they are familiarly known* very beautifully. Same with Christmas carols. They don't need tarting up with twiddly bits, startling key changes, etc., etc. Let them show their original beauty--the reason they were chosen in the first place--by simply polishing the surfaces to a fine gloss.
This is, I suspect, a minority opinion.
Still, it's experience and singing and I'm glad to find I haven't backslid as much as I'd feared, in the month away from choir. Unfortunately, given the state of my throat this morning, I'm probably not going to be any help come Sunday.
However, last night at choir was a good experience, despite not being able to sight read an unfamiliar anthem at the speed we were taking it (and wanting to smack composers upside the head for taking a beautiful and familiar hymn and making it tricksy and hard to sing, not to mention too HIGH.) We started with a Russian composer (Gretchaninoff or something like--my music's still in the car.) The rest of the time was spent mostly with Robert Shaw/Alice Parker anthemized versions of familiar stuff...and I have a little less affection for those than our choir director does. Personally (and this is very personal, admittedly, and not the opinion of someone with a handful of music degrees) I think there's a place for singing hymns *as they are familiarly known* very beautifully. Same with Christmas carols. They don't need tarting up with twiddly bits, startling key changes, etc., etc. Let them show their original beauty--the reason they were chosen in the first place--by simply polishing the surfaces to a fine gloss.
This is, I suspect, a minority opinion.
Still, it's experience and singing and I'm glad to find I haven't backslid as much as I'd feared, in the month away from choir. Unfortunately, given the state of my throat this morning, I'm probably not going to be any help come Sunday.
June 8, 2011
And Away Again: A-Kon
Tomorrow I take off for A-Kon in Dallas, once more on the train, but this time only a four hour journey on the train itself, plus the hour to get to the train station and having to arrive early there to be sure of catching it. Since friends drove from near here (about 15 miles away) to DFW to pick up a family member flying in from Brazil, I'm aware that I-35 is down to one lane northbound part of the way, so the train is a wonderful alternative. Unfortunately, there's only one a day. More unfortunately, expansion of the I-35 corridor does not include a set of train tracks. (For reasons known only to the politicians involved in TXDOT, the only rail they'll consider is "high speed rail" from San Antonio to Austin to Dallas, not on the I-35 corridor, and not serving any intermediate communities...which communities are not eager to support high speed rail, oddly enough, since they get no benefit from it.)
At any rate, I'll be at A-Kon over the weekend, helping to launch Ladies of Trade Town, edited and published (due to some difficulties with its originally scheduled publisher) by a friend of mine. Meanwhile, R- will continue to work on the new rain barn (Cloud Pavilion) in the hopes of finishing it before surgery is actually scheduled. Mac-horse appears to be in fine fettle, drama-queen personality and all. (We had company yesterday. He came shouldering in as if to bully the company. I corrected him, and he gave everyone a look of wounded innocence. "Me? Invade personal space? How can you even think that of a noble steed like me?")
Company last night helped us with garden produce (that is, we ate sun-ripened, still sun-warm tomatoes and home-grown potatoes. Every year I forget how much better potatoes are right out of the ground. The variety of potato that grows best here is a red one; the yield is not high because of the limited growing season (potatoes not being fond of 100F plus days and very warm nights) But wow, the difference between our red potatoes and store-bought red potatoes. Boiled, with butter, salt, and pepper, they're amazing. We'll have one or two more meals of them, and then we're done: we don't have the space or the climate to grow a lot of potatoes and store them. The tomatoes are also responding to the heat, dry winds, and warmer nights with a drop-off in flowering. But again, the flavor of home-grown tomatoes...yum. I use tomatoes a lot in cooking (canned tomatoes) but rarely eat a "fresh' tomato unless it comes out of our garden. The peas are over, of course, and the beans are slowly coming on. Corn this year was a bust: only two stalks came up. That's not enough to fertilize any ears they make: we'll have to hand-fertilize and hope for one or two ears. Onions we've got by the bunch, and the chard is now full-grown.
Meanwhile again, Bombadil the tractor is being contrary--rancherfriend thinks it's the override clutch slipping--and sometimes it mows and sometimes the power doesn't get from the drive shaft to the blades and it sort of thrashes the grass without cutting it. Since I have about 5-8 acres that needs to be taken down before it's another fire hazard, this is inconvenient to say the least. We're looking for a better fix than sending Bombadil back to the shop, which will keep it for weeks before returning it.
At any rate, I'll be at A-Kon over the weekend, helping to launch Ladies of Trade Town, edited and published (due to some difficulties with its originally scheduled publisher) by a friend of mine. Meanwhile, R- will continue to work on the new rain barn (Cloud Pavilion) in the hopes of finishing it before surgery is actually scheduled. Mac-horse appears to be in fine fettle, drama-queen personality and all. (We had company yesterday. He came shouldering in as if to bully the company. I corrected him, and he gave everyone a look of wounded innocence. "Me? Invade personal space? How can you even think that of a noble steed like me?")
Company last night helped us with garden produce (that is, we ate sun-ripened, still sun-warm tomatoes and home-grown potatoes. Every year I forget how much better potatoes are right out of the ground. The variety of potato that grows best here is a red one; the yield is not high because of the limited growing season (potatoes not being fond of 100F plus days and very warm nights) But wow, the difference between our red potatoes and store-bought red potatoes. Boiled, with butter, salt, and pepper, they're amazing. We'll have one or two more meals of them, and then we're done: we don't have the space or the climate to grow a lot of potatoes and store them. The tomatoes are also responding to the heat, dry winds, and warmer nights with a drop-off in flowering. But again, the flavor of home-grown tomatoes...yum. I use tomatoes a lot in cooking (canned tomatoes) but rarely eat a "fresh' tomato unless it comes out of our garden. The peas are over, of course, and the beans are slowly coming on. Corn this year was a bust: only two stalks came up. That's not enough to fertilize any ears they make: we'll have to hand-fertilize and hope for one or two ears. Onions we've got by the bunch, and the chard is now full-grown.
Meanwhile again, Bombadil the tractor is being contrary--rancherfriend thinks it's the override clutch slipping--and sometimes it mows and sometimes the power doesn't get from the drive shaft to the blades and it sort of thrashes the grass without cutting it. Since I have about 5-8 acres that needs to be taken down before it's another fire hazard, this is inconvenient to say the least. We're looking for a better fix than sending Bombadil back to the shop, which will keep it for weeks before returning it.
June 3, 2011
Back Home
It appears that Twittinesis has gone the way of the dodo--can't get a view of the website and it's not copying my tweets to LJ anymore. Sigh. Something that actually worked the way it was supposed to...now doesn't.
Anyway--I'm back from Balticon, where I had a great time, not only at the convention itself but on the train trip there and back. The scenery from the train, from Pittsburgh (dawn) through the mountains into Maryland and then D.C. was stunning. Down as far as Harper's Ferry, it was newsworthy gorgeous along one river and creek after another. The convention produced several delightful surprises--the Needleworkers' Tea, for instance, with really good tea and cakes (and cucumber sandwiches, all beautifully served) and a lot of us knitting, crocheting, spinning and chatting--and a chance to re-connect with Yoji Kondo's daughter Beatrice, who took me to lunch at Baltimore's Best Ribs (The Corner Stable, IIRC)....and they WERE the best ribs, maybe of my life. Also met up with Mel Tatum and Chris Merle, whom I hadn't seen since their move to Arizona from Oklahoma. Mel has become an accomplished songwriter and filker and I got to hear her perform several pieces....including one she wrote about Paksenarrion (I almost cried, but didn't.) And I had a brief hi-goodbye with Ann Crispin, who was (among other things) launching the new Pirates of the Caribbean novelization, and a slightly longer chat with Michael Capobianco. My agent took me to dinner and we got drenched in a thunderstorm during what was supposed to be a quiet stroll back to the hotel (it was an adventure!); we also had breakfast one morning with his other clients Jon Sprunk and Myke Cole, during which Myke determinedly lectured Jon and me on the values of social networking.
When the convention was over, I got back on the train(s) and had another chance at the scenery from the other direction (it was dark, though, before we reached Pittsburgh) and saw a different view of Illinois since our southbound train was routed east of its normal route. More farmland and fewer towns. Even (to my delight) draft horses in harness, working (a hitch of four Belgians abreast pulling a hay wagon.) And draft mares with foals! And a boy sitting on a fence post eagerly waving at the train.
On the trip I made progress on the book in hand, as well as two knitting projects. Unfortunately, an accident resulted in a loss of stitches on the large project--and the train was too bouncy to fix them there (I didn't have great light, either.) So that will have to be done later. But both are much larger than they were when I left.
Got home yesterday and today made it out to the new rain barn under construction. The flush of wildflowers from the rains just before I left is already past prime and the land's turning brown again, except in the deep soil along the south fence, where there are lush stands of vine mesquite and Bermuda grass and abundant forbs still blooming. In that knee-high area, bees, wasps, and butterflies tend to the flowers, and a great crested flycatcher was attending to anything it could grab on its repeated flights back and forth to this area.
Anyway--I'm back from Balticon, where I had a great time, not only at the convention itself but on the train trip there and back. The scenery from the train, from Pittsburgh (dawn) through the mountains into Maryland and then D.C. was stunning. Down as far as Harper's Ferry, it was newsworthy gorgeous along one river and creek after another. The convention produced several delightful surprises--the Needleworkers' Tea, for instance, with really good tea and cakes (and cucumber sandwiches, all beautifully served) and a lot of us knitting, crocheting, spinning and chatting--and a chance to re-connect with Yoji Kondo's daughter Beatrice, who took me to lunch at Baltimore's Best Ribs (The Corner Stable, IIRC)....and they WERE the best ribs, maybe of my life. Also met up with Mel Tatum and Chris Merle, whom I hadn't seen since their move to Arizona from Oklahoma. Mel has become an accomplished songwriter and filker and I got to hear her perform several pieces....including one she wrote about Paksenarrion (I almost cried, but didn't.) And I had a brief hi-goodbye with Ann Crispin, who was (among other things) launching the new Pirates of the Caribbean novelization, and a slightly longer chat with Michael Capobianco. My agent took me to dinner and we got drenched in a thunderstorm during what was supposed to be a quiet stroll back to the hotel (it was an adventure!); we also had breakfast one morning with his other clients Jon Sprunk and Myke Cole, during which Myke determinedly lectured Jon and me on the values of social networking.
When the convention was over, I got back on the train(s) and had another chance at the scenery from the other direction (it was dark, though, before we reached Pittsburgh) and saw a different view of Illinois since our southbound train was routed east of its normal route. More farmland and fewer towns. Even (to my delight) draft horses in harness, working (a hitch of four Belgians abreast pulling a hay wagon.) And draft mares with foals! And a boy sitting on a fence post eagerly waving at the train.
On the trip I made progress on the book in hand, as well as two knitting projects. Unfortunately, an accident resulted in a loss of stitches on the large project--and the train was too bouncy to fix them there (I didn't have great light, either.) So that will have to be done later. But both are much larger than they were when I left.
Got home yesterday and today made it out to the new rain barn under construction. The flush of wildflowers from the rains just before I left is already past prime and the land's turning brown again, except in the deep soil along the south fence, where there are lush stands of vine mesquite and Bermuda grass and abundant forbs still blooming. In that knee-high area, bees, wasps, and butterflies tend to the flowers, and a great crested flycatcher was attending to anything it could grab on its repeated flights back and forth to this area.
May 23, 2011
Mac's View
My name is Mac. I am a well-bred, well-conformed Quarter Horse who is consistently, and unfairly underrated by owners. That's why I've had so many. They all agree I'm attractive...and I am...but they make disparaging remarks about my feet. I didn't ask for these feet. If I had my way, I'd have been born with hooves like hockey pucks, but it didn't happen that way and it's not my fault.
Nothing is my fault. It's all the fault of humans, who just do not understand me. For instance, when I pin my ears and snap at someone, it's because they annoyed me. If they hadn't annoyed me, would a well-bred, attractive, mature gelding like me pin ears and snap? Of course not. My current farrier has even hit me when I kicked at him. And my owner let him. She's an alpha mare, that one. She can even make Mare Face, though she's got only two legs and her teeth aren't nearly big enough. She complains that I don't respect human space. Well...humans just aren't very big or impressive, are they? Puny, for the most part, and if you can get them to give you sugar or horse cookies or more oats...that's not a horse's fault. She calls me Drama Queen. She calls Old Yellow Bananaface or Boyo or his stage name, Illusion. Old Yellow calls her Evil Stepmom, because Old Yellow had a real owner-mom once. But Old Yellow doesn't try to boss people around and he says I shouldn't. Old Yellow is getting really old and now I'm the boss, so when he says that I nip him.
Anyway, it stormed this weekend and we were cruelly confined to the barn, where the rain and hail made horrible noises on the roof, and strong winds blew in and out of the open space. I hated it. Old Yellow hated it. It rained for hours. Ten feet of rain at least. When the light came back on and it was morning, the ground was all soft and squashy. That makes my feet hurt because I have such delicate, elegant soles. Old Yellow has great big platter feet and apparently they never hurt.
But then, the day after the storms, for some reason I just wasn't feeling all that great. We were stuck in the barn and small pen and the ground was wet. Old Yellow made a mess out of the ground near our water trough. Still, I was hungry for supper and ate it all up. And then...things went wrong. Very wrong. All night long, Old Yellow ate hay and put down his piles, plop-plop-plop. I lost my appetite. I didn't feel well and I felt worse in the night.
When the fat man with the manure rake came in the morning, and brought our breakfast, I didn't care. He didn't notice at first, but he noticed when I went down on my knees and lay down. He called Evil Stepmom woman out to the barn. She looked at me and petted my neck. It wasn't my neck that hurt. Then she tried to put fly spray on me. I hate fly spray. She knows I hate fly spray. What kind of evil person would try to put fly spray on a sick horse? I don't care that she had a soft cloth: it's FLY SPRAY!
So I got up and I walked--with great courage because it hurt my tummy--out of my stall. That Evil Stepmom locked me out of my stall!! Then she disappeared for awhile but suddenly a truck came right up to the fence. Two more people got out and I didn't like the look of them. Both were female. One had one of those things people put on a horse's side--one end on the horse, one end on the person's head.
Well! It was a horrible experience. The one with the very short hair and shiny things on her face stuck a needle in my neck, and then put her arm up under my tail, where nobody is supposed to put anything...and she reached in and pulled things out. That was bad enough. But then...the other one put this thing on my lip--I've had that before and I hate it. And the Evil Stepmom let her do it and then helped hold my halter and the first one started pushing a tube into my nostril. It was disgusting and it hurt and she wouldn't stop and it felt weird and horrible. I told them so with my ears and my tail and tried to move but I couldn't move enough, even though I almost knocked over a gallon jug of some thick liquid, and the tube went down and down until it was in my stomach.
I nearly died, I want you to know. I was at death's door the Entire Time and nobody had any sympathy for me except the man with the manure rake, who was outside the fence. He said someone had done that to him and he didn't like it either. Then the first one--Evil Stepmom said it was the vet--used something that made a squelchy noise and suddenly there was stuff running in the tube and it went into my stomach where it felt awful. And then stuff came out of the tube from my stomach. I never knew what stuff in my stomach looked like, and you do not want to know. Disgusting. Embarrassing. And all the time vet and Evil Stepmom were discussing it like I wasn't even there. That went on far too long, over and over, while I tried to be Brave and Noble, like the horse I really am. Then finally, the stuff in that jug went into the tube and the vet did not drain it back out. Eeeuw! And then she pulled the tube back out, the most horrible feeling you can imagine (a snake in your nose!!!) and....well....I wasn't hurting as much, and when Evil Stepmom walked me around I could take normal steps. I thought, "I have survived a near-death experience; I am a brave and noble horse of uncommon strength and fortitude."
But it wasn't over yet. Because--and you will not believe this--the vet told Evil Stepmom to starve me. "Nothing to eat until...." and she described how much I would have to produce in fecal material to get anything to eat. Nothing? And I was left in the pen with no food. They even took away the bench I like to gnaw on. Water, yes, there was water....but nothing to EAT. And Old Yellow, who had watched me when I was lying down, now wandered off--they let him into the next lot where there's grass. He didn't stay with me. He didn't come when I called. Selfish old thing. He said he was hungry....nobody had washed the food out of HIS stomach.. Nobody had put a tube down HIS nose. And he couldn't even stay with me...watch me bite his rump the next time I get a chance!! He spent the whole afternoon wandering around free and eating whatever he liked while I Suffered.
Evil Stepmom checked on me a few times, complaining that I'd messed up her plans for the day. Then she disappeared. The man with the manure fork came a few times. Finally I produced a tiny pile and demonstrated for food. No food came. Evil Stepmom returned and I produced another, slightly bigger pile. No food. Finally late in the evening, I produced a pretty big pile. Evil Stepmom came out of the house awhile later, with a flashlight, to check on me she said, and she was happy about the pile. But she only gave me one lousy handful of hay. "Vet's orders," she said. "Drink more water," she said. "See you in the morning."
In the morning I will be dead of starvation and neglect, and Evil Stepmom will be sorry, but it will be too late. I revel in the thought of how guilty she will feel. There I'll be, stretched out, desiccated in the blazing sun, a wolf pack and two mountain lions tearing at my pitiful carcass and it will be All Her Fault.
I sign this with my last strength.....(Old Yellow, are you really so stupid that you don't know I want you to push some hay over the fence?)
Nothing is my fault. It's all the fault of humans, who just do not understand me. For instance, when I pin my ears and snap at someone, it's because they annoyed me. If they hadn't annoyed me, would a well-bred, attractive, mature gelding like me pin ears and snap? Of course not. My current farrier has even hit me when I kicked at him. And my owner let him. She's an alpha mare, that one. She can even make Mare Face, though she's got only two legs and her teeth aren't nearly big enough. She complains that I don't respect human space. Well...humans just aren't very big or impressive, are they? Puny, for the most part, and if you can get them to give you sugar or horse cookies or more oats...that's not a horse's fault. She calls me Drama Queen. She calls Old Yellow Bananaface or Boyo or his stage name, Illusion. Old Yellow calls her Evil Stepmom, because Old Yellow had a real owner-mom once. But Old Yellow doesn't try to boss people around and he says I shouldn't. Old Yellow is getting really old and now I'm the boss, so when he says that I nip him.
Anyway, it stormed this weekend and we were cruelly confined to the barn, where the rain and hail made horrible noises on the roof, and strong winds blew in and out of the open space. I hated it. Old Yellow hated it. It rained for hours. Ten feet of rain at least. When the light came back on and it was morning, the ground was all soft and squashy. That makes my feet hurt because I have such delicate, elegant soles. Old Yellow has great big platter feet and apparently they never hurt.
But then, the day after the storms, for some reason I just wasn't feeling all that great. We were stuck in the barn and small pen and the ground was wet. Old Yellow made a mess out of the ground near our water trough. Still, I was hungry for supper and ate it all up. And then...things went wrong. Very wrong. All night long, Old Yellow ate hay and put down his piles, plop-plop-plop. I lost my appetite. I didn't feel well and I felt worse in the night.
When the fat man with the manure rake came in the morning, and brought our breakfast, I didn't care. He didn't notice at first, but he noticed when I went down on my knees and lay down. He called Evil Stepmom woman out to the barn. She looked at me and petted my neck. It wasn't my neck that hurt. Then she tried to put fly spray on me. I hate fly spray. She knows I hate fly spray. What kind of evil person would try to put fly spray on a sick horse? I don't care that she had a soft cloth: it's FLY SPRAY!
So I got up and I walked--with great courage because it hurt my tummy--out of my stall. That Evil Stepmom locked me out of my stall!! Then she disappeared for awhile but suddenly a truck came right up to the fence. Two more people got out and I didn't like the look of them. Both were female. One had one of those things people put on a horse's side--one end on the horse, one end on the person's head.
Well! It was a horrible experience. The one with the very short hair and shiny things on her face stuck a needle in my neck, and then put her arm up under my tail, where nobody is supposed to put anything...and she reached in and pulled things out. That was bad enough. But then...the other one put this thing on my lip--I've had that before and I hate it. And the Evil Stepmom let her do it and then helped hold my halter and the first one started pushing a tube into my nostril. It was disgusting and it hurt and she wouldn't stop and it felt weird and horrible. I told them so with my ears and my tail and tried to move but I couldn't move enough, even though I almost knocked over a gallon jug of some thick liquid, and the tube went down and down until it was in my stomach.
I nearly died, I want you to know. I was at death's door the Entire Time and nobody had any sympathy for me except the man with the manure rake, who was outside the fence. He said someone had done that to him and he didn't like it either. Then the first one--Evil Stepmom said it was the vet--used something that made a squelchy noise and suddenly there was stuff running in the tube and it went into my stomach where it felt awful. And then stuff came out of the tube from my stomach. I never knew what stuff in my stomach looked like, and you do not want to know. Disgusting. Embarrassing. And all the time vet and Evil Stepmom were discussing it like I wasn't even there. That went on far too long, over and over, while I tried to be Brave and Noble, like the horse I really am. Then finally, the stuff in that jug went into the tube and the vet did not drain it back out. Eeeuw! And then she pulled the tube back out, the most horrible feeling you can imagine (a snake in your nose!!!) and....well....I wasn't hurting as much, and when Evil Stepmom walked me around I could take normal steps. I thought, "I have survived a near-death experience; I am a brave and noble horse of uncommon strength and fortitude."
But it wasn't over yet. Because--and you will not believe this--the vet told Evil Stepmom to starve me. "Nothing to eat until...." and she described how much I would have to produce in fecal material to get anything to eat. Nothing? And I was left in the pen with no food. They even took away the bench I like to gnaw on. Water, yes, there was water....but nothing to EAT. And Old Yellow, who had watched me when I was lying down, now wandered off--they let him into the next lot where there's grass. He didn't stay with me. He didn't come when I called. Selfish old thing. He said he was hungry....nobody had washed the food out of HIS stomach.. Nobody had put a tube down HIS nose. And he couldn't even stay with me...watch me bite his rump the next time I get a chance!! He spent the whole afternoon wandering around free and eating whatever he liked while I Suffered.
Evil Stepmom checked on me a few times, complaining that I'd messed up her plans for the day. Then she disappeared. The man with the manure fork came a few times. Finally I produced a tiny pile and demonstrated for food. No food came. Evil Stepmom returned and I produced another, slightly bigger pile. No food. Finally late in the evening, I produced a pretty big pile. Evil Stepmom came out of the house awhile later, with a flashlight, to check on me she said, and she was happy about the pile. But she only gave me one lousy handful of hay. "Vet's orders," she said. "Drink more water," she said. "See you in the morning."
In the morning I will be dead of starvation and neglect, and Evil Stepmom will be sorry, but it will be too late. I revel in the thought of how guilty she will feel. There I'll be, stretched out, desiccated in the blazing sun, a wolf pack and two mountain lions tearing at my pitiful carcass and it will be All Her Fault.
I sign this with my last strength.....(Old Yellow, are you really so stupid that you don't know I want you to push some hay over the fence?)
May 20, 2011
Hmmmm...and related comments
I might've noticed sooner that Twittinesis wasn't sending my daily Twitter posts here except for husband being in the hospital and then the copy edits, but now I've noticed. Haven't seen any notices about it...but dang. And their website is suspended (suspended? Huh?)
I did notice that there's another dadgum header design I don't like (light colored and busy--very distracting) at the top of my "post an entry" page. I really, really, REALLY don't like having these changing header designs that (with few exceptions) aren't anything I'd pick in a million years. Sometimes in the selections they make there's one I wouldn't mind so much, but only once has it won. Dark, people. Dark, cool colors if any, not some busy loud thing in warm colors. And especially not cute or symbolic.
And then there's this Rapture thing. I guess the people who believe that read a different Bible than I do and also don't read about all the previous times people have been sure, and sold their stuff or quit work and...the day came and went and everything was the same. Oops. Unless you believe in a God who can't stick to a plan and keeps shilly-shallying and changing the dates...previous experience would suggest that the certainty of a specific time is, um, misguided. "Yes, I know I said Tuesday at 0900 Greenwich Mean Time, but I'm otherwise occupied then and decided to do it two years from Friday at noon, Central Daylight..." Could the world end tomorrow? Sure. And I could be hit by a falling tree limb, bitten by a rattlesnake, stomped by a maddened cow, hit by a car, stung by ten thousand Africanized bees, shot by a drug-crazed criminal, or just trip carrying something out the back door, fall, and hit my head on the concrete steps...dead, in other words, in any and every way that's possible. End of this world for me. The first time I got all hot and bothered about some disaster that might happen, my mother sat me down and said "Even if the world is going to end tomorrow, brush your teeth tonight. Even if it's going to end at noon, make your bed and wash the breakfast dishes. Even if it's going to end at suppertime, do your homework before you play." There were other such conversations, because the early '50s were another time a lot of people were sure the world would end (usually with total nuclear war) and we kids worried, as kids do. I thought her advice was dull and annoyingly practical ("Eat your peas anyway--it might NOT be your last meal...") especially all that stuff about chores.
But here I am. And here you--reading this--are.
I did notice that there's another dadgum header design I don't like (light colored and busy--very distracting) at the top of my "post an entry" page. I really, really, REALLY don't like having these changing header designs that (with few exceptions) aren't anything I'd pick in a million years. Sometimes in the selections they make there's one I wouldn't mind so much, but only once has it won. Dark, people. Dark, cool colors if any, not some busy loud thing in warm colors. And especially not cute or symbolic.
And then there's this Rapture thing. I guess the people who believe that read a different Bible than I do and also don't read about all the previous times people have been sure, and sold their stuff or quit work and...the day came and went and everything was the same. Oops. Unless you believe in a God who can't stick to a plan and keeps shilly-shallying and changing the dates...previous experience would suggest that the certainty of a specific time is, um, misguided. "Yes, I know I said Tuesday at 0900 Greenwich Mean Time, but I'm otherwise occupied then and decided to do it two years from Friday at noon, Central Daylight..." Could the world end tomorrow? Sure. And I could be hit by a falling tree limb, bitten by a rattlesnake, stomped by a maddened cow, hit by a car, stung by ten thousand Africanized bees, shot by a drug-crazed criminal, or just trip carrying something out the back door, fall, and hit my head on the concrete steps...dead, in other words, in any and every way that's possible. End of this world for me. The first time I got all hot and bothered about some disaster that might happen, my mother sat me down and said "Even if the world is going to end tomorrow, brush your teeth tonight. Even if it's going to end at noon, make your bed and wash the breakfast dishes. Even if it's going to end at suppertime, do your homework before you play." There were other such conversations, because the early '50s were another time a lot of people were sure the world would end (usually with total nuclear war) and we kids worried, as kids do. I thought her advice was dull and annoyingly practical ("Eat your peas anyway--it might NOT be your last meal...") especially all that stuff about chores.
But here I am. And here you--reading this--are.
May 15, 2011
A Little More Excitement than Desired
About two weeks ago, my husband started feeling weaker than usual. He has myasthenia gravis, and had been pushing himself, so at first he thought it was a reaction to the work he'd done. The weakness got worse. By the following Wednesday, he was having severe weak spells and finally--while moving a board from sawhorses to the ground--he passed out. He had trouble staying "awake" while driving the lawn tractor back to the house (something over a quarter mile.) As it was quite warm, he thought he was dehydrated, and drank a lot of liquids and ate some salty foods. I convinced him to make an appointment with his doctor, but he did not reveal any of his symptoms over the phone, just saying he needed his annual physical and to talk. (He also didn't tell me about a key symptom.) He got an appointment for the following Tuesday. Over the next few days, he experienced typical cardiac chest pain when trying to do (fairly heavy) work he usually does, such as carrying a muck tub of manure to the top of the pile, but it disappeared within seconds at rest. He refused repeated suggestions that we see the doctor now, go to the hospital now. He continued to not tell me (or anyone) about the symptom that would have explained a lot.
His account of the run-up to the hospital visit had several doctors amazed, somewhat appalled, somewhat amused, and (the male docs) slightly admiring...a guy who has lost half his blood and then keeps going is (for someone his age) unusual. (I said, a day or so later, "Most people your age who bleed out half their blood are not up arguing they're fine." "Wimps," he said.)
Surgery is in his future. However, they let him come home on Friday, and we took a slow wander around the place, at his request. That was Friday evening. Yesterday, he said he thought he'd go back to the construction site and paint a few boards. After an hour or so, I walked out to make sure he was OK. This is what I found:
There is no doubt who has the Y chromosome in this family.
His account of the run-up to the hospital visit had several doctors amazed, somewhat appalled, somewhat amused, and (the male docs) slightly admiring...a guy who has lost half his blood and then keeps going is (for someone his age) unusual. (I said, a day or so later, "Most people your age who bleed out half their blood are not up arguing they're fine." "Wimps," he said.)
Surgery is in his future. However, they let him come home on Friday, and we took a slow wander around the place, at his request. That was Friday evening. Yesterday, he said he thought he'd go back to the construction site and paint a few boards. After an hour or so, I walked out to make sure he was OK. This is what I found:
There is no doubt who has the Y chromosome in this family.
From Twitter 05-14-2011
16:49:56: I went out to check on R-. Found him up a ladder working on the construction project. A picture of this is going to his doctors!!!
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
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