It's a Blinking Cursor sort of day

Blink... blink... blink...

I have 2 days to finish my book, and my mind is a wall. It seems all I can do is stare at that little cursor blinking on my lonely, half empty page and wonder where my imagination has gone.

I really have no excuses.

I've already eaten a package of fruit snacks, avacado toast, a ripe apricot and an entire bowl of chocolate covered popcorn... all in a vain attempt to summon enough endorphins to get my creativity functioning.

Alas, it hasn't worked.

Gone are the days when I truly had an excuse… four little children, constantly interrupting and wanting my attention, as I tried to finish yet another book, attempting to meet the publisher's onerous deadline.

Back then, to even make such an attempt, I had to be thoroughly prepared, trying to make "writing days" a thing that my children would look forward to.

Ha!

The very memory makes me smile at the absurdity of such an idea.

It went something like this:

1.) Drive 20 miles to the store and buy the most tempting looking frozen kids meals I can find... times that by 4 and then by as many days as I was planning to attempt to work.

2.) Next, stop by the junk food aisle and stock up on plenty of utterly unhealthy sugar treats in the form of cakes, fruit snacks, chocolate covered Ho-Hos and whatever else looks completely irresistible!

3.) After that, I hit the drink aisle and fill my cart with multiple boxes of Carpis Suns in whatever flavors my darling children chose.

At this point, their eyes are popping out of their heads in delight. They join arms and sing songs of supreme joy as they skip all the way to the check-out stand, cheerfully helping me load the coveted goods into the car.

4.) Finally, we stop by the video store where I'd let my adorable offspring check out no less than 8 - 10 movies of their own choosing.

All of this results in the desired outcome that they are deliriously happy with the prospect that Mommy is going to have a writing day!!!

We had this agreement, my children and I, that if they would let me write, then I would let them eat fat, sugar and gooey preservative cakes, watching tv until their brains turned to mush or they went into corn syrup induced comas, or went crazy and ate each other… as long as they did it quietly, it was all good!

Only it never quite worked out the way I had planned.

Oh, they LOVED all the crazy TV dinners AND the movies AND the snack cakes, and gobbled them up… happily so. That part was never a problem. The detail that never seemed to quite work out came afterward… as I was attempting to escape to a quiet corner within the house, protective ear-wear in place, trying my absolute best to block out whatever noises were raging on the tv, all in a very difficult effort to concentrate.

Any authors out there know that it takes some work to get into "the zone", that amazing place where the cursor no longer blinks on an empty page, but rather where the story has finally congealed in your mind and you are writing your heart out, as fast as your fingers can fly across the keys. It’s a magical place where you can laugh at your own jokes, unashamed, cry at the imagined tragedies you've written or smugly languish in pleasure at whatever clever plot twist you’ve dreamed up.

It's not really something you can just flip off and on. You're either in there, or you're not.

At my house, all those years ago, I would get my children settled, sneak upstairs to my room and almost make it into "the zone", before it would start... Not the writing... the other stuff.

"Mommy! Barry just pulled my hair!"

"Mommy! I have to go to the bathroom and Kamaron has the door locked!"

"Mommy! Clarke won't let me watch the movie I want!"

"Mommy! Savannah keeps tattling on me!"

"Mommy! The cat just barfed all over the couch!"

“Mommy, are you done yet?”

“Mommy! How much longer?”

“Mommy! Barry let the dog in the house and she’s eating all the Ho-Ho’s!”

And then, after semi-successfully blocking all the cacophony out, then comes the one that makes your blood run cold:

"Mommy! Fire! Fire! Fire!"

To this, I finally throw the computer aside and run down the stairs so recklessly fast that I break my big toe half way down... only to find that the "Fire" is a piece of raisin toast stuck in a toaster, turned all the way up to the highest setting.

Limping into the kitchen, I retrieve the burnt toast, ban the kids from the toaster for the next 6 months and walk to a wall, where I begin banging my head against it in utter futility!

"Come on, you guys! Really!?!"

Take this scene, repeat it dozens of times and you have a fairly accurate idea of my attempts at being a writer while my children were young. I'm sure it's why I haven't written much for a while.

Fast forward twelve years:

I now have only one "child" left at home and he is 17. Gone are the distractions... there is absolutely no one to fight with, to complain about, to have to share the t.v. with or to lock out of the bathroom. In fact, he's really pretty good about the whole thing.

So, why does the cursor continue to blink at me?

Blink...

Blink...

Blink...

Is it trying to taunt me?

Or is it actually just laughing at me?

*Sigh*

I then realize… I’m just missing my kids!

Putting my computer aside, I walk to the wall...

Bang my head against it a few times…

Just for old time’s sake...

And - Voile la!

I'm back on track!

... works every time!

Hats Off to the Trashman!

Human nature can be a funny thing.

All too often, we get caught up in the snarky habit of trying to be clever or funny, of trying to "one up" another person or to appear the ultimate martyr because of the horrible situations we may have to endure... our poor health, rambunctious children or rotten job, the asteroid that just wiped out our planet… or whatever the case may be.

To pause and recognize the goodness in the people around us is something that we should be doing multiple times a day, yet I know that I don't stop to recognize these things often enough.

Yesterday, our trash man never showed.

Around here, we rarely remember to put the trash out more than about once a month. Frequently we just don't have very much trash, but this past week the raccoons decided to have a hey day with the bit that we did. They tipped the can over and spread trash everywhere, making it a dreadful chore to clean up (Thank You, Kamaron!).

Eventually, Kamaron even took the trash out to the road. This is Kirk's chore, but since he is rarely here on trash day (yet another reason the trash isn’t often taken out), Kamaron very kindly took it to the appointed pick up place next to the mailbox.

There was a little plastic bag from the store that was sitting on top of the pile and each time that we came outside, the breeze had caught that little bag, allowing it to escape from the rest of that smelly trash. In the bag's defense, it was clean and didn't smell at all and I can understand why it wouldn't necessarily want to be associated with the rest of the trash, but we have recycled about 2,001 times more plastic bags than we will ever find use for, so this one ended up in the trash.

Now, before you start… Yes, to all of you who are more conservation minded than me. I know, I need to make permanent grocery bags out of recycled cloth to haul my groceries home, and someday I will, but for now I'm going off the concept of "carbon credits". In my defense, I have successfully grown hundreds of new trees this year, giving life and oxygen to the planet! But I digress...

In the beginning, when we forgot to put the trash out, our trash man was so kind that he would back his truck down our very looooooonnnnng driveway to come get our cans for us.

Wow! Nice!

However, being that we were pretty chronic in forgetting to put them out, this extra-mile service didn't go on forever. Still, I was pretty impressed at his thoughtfulness. Mind you, our trash man is not a perfect guy; in fact, he is full of funny and quirky idiosyncrasies, but this blog isn't about those things, it's about what happened early this morning.

Last night, our trash can spent a very lonely existence all by itself out at the road. On top of that, a strong wind began to blow... a very strong wind. I had asked Kam to bring the trash back in last night, but he forgot... as we all sometimes do, and that strong wind blew the trash can over.

Remember that hoity-toity store bag that was too good for the rest of the trash? Yes, it blew out too, as FAR AWAY from the can as it could get. In fact, it blew clear through the fence and into the yard.

Early this morning, as I was lying in bed, trying to wake up, I heard the trash truck coming down the road. We live in an area of rolling prairie with hills and valleys where the sounds echo so effectively that you can often hear a car from more than a mile away. School busses and trash trucks carry even farther. I flew to the window wondering if Kam had brought the can in and instead discovered the grim truth.

Out of curiosity, I stayed at the window to see what the trash man would do. Would he give it one glance and drive on? Would he stop to right the can and empty what was left in it? Would he stop, take one look at the mess and then get back in the truck and send us a note instructing us on better use of trashcan lids?

Since there wasn't anywhere near enough time to get dressed and run clear out to the scene of nature's crime, I sat perched at the window and waited the last 40 seconds or so for the truck to arrive.

He pulled up to the house and began to slow.

Then he passed the mailbox...

"He's going to keep going," I thought to myself.

Then he stopped!

He was all alone. The assistant, who normally gets the trash while he drives the truck, wasn't there at all.

Our trash man got out of the truck and stood, looking at that pile of trash, for only a moment before he righted the can and emptied it into the back of the truck. Yep. It was all that I would have expected out of any trash service.

Then, he brought the can back and, instead of flinging the can into the ditch, as he usually does, he set it down on its side at the original spot!

Bending over, he scooped all the trash around the area BACK into the can... and emptied it again.

THEN HE CAME BACK AGAIN!!

He collected a few more pieces of trash and even reached clear through the fence to retrieve that high and mighty shopping bag, thus cleaning up every single item of trash in the area!

Never, in my life, have I known a trash collector to go to such efforts to do his job... especially being alone, behind schedule and, for whatever reason, lacking his normal support!

I am impressed!

Today, I will write him a thank you note for doing such a great job... and the next time he brags about how his house in the biggest and nicest one in town, or complains about how our gravel road made his truck dirty, I will listen and smile kindly... I may even agree with him.

The bottom line is that he threw a proverbial pebble of kindness into the still waters of life this morning, causing a ripple of gladness that made me smile with sublime surprise.

That one act not only made me happy, it made my day(!) and filled me with the desire to be kind to another person in return.

I think I’ll call my mom to say hi.

I may even give Kamaron a break on a few of the hours he’s behind in his school work.

Maybe I should give the last of our oats to the horses.

I should send a donation to whatever organization encourages world peace!

And so the world turns... kindness begets kindness… it is a happier day than it might have been… and all from one act of smelly kindness.

So, hats off to our trash man!

“May the road rise up to meet you and the wind ever be at your back.”

Chilvary's not dead... at least not in the chicken yard!

Agrarian colloquialisms (or “farm sayings”)... we've all heard them:

"You're such a chicken!"

"He's just henpecked."

"Don't disturb the pecking order."

"Make hay while the sun shines."

"Cocky as a rooster..."

“As snug as a bug in a rug.”

"You would've thought she was having a cow!"

Have you ever seen an animal have a cow? I have; in fact, I've pulled a few of those 50 lb creatures out of the back ends of my Jerseys when they got too tired to push. Sometimes, as they're birthing that gigantic mass, yeah, they let loose and "have a cow" over it.

Poor things!

Living in an agrarian environment, I frequently think about these near endless sayings. They were lost on me as a young person in the city, but here in the chicken yard it's a whole other world.

We've had roosters, at times, that were just plain "squirrely", (see, there goes another one). They would wait until your back was turned, strut up behind you and attack while you weren’t looking, then run off all helter-skelter before you could kick them across the yard. What most people don't know is that it's only a few obnoxious breeds that behave this way.

I tend to go with the quieter varieties. The hens are content and happy and the roosters are pure "gentlemen"!

Right now, my Resident Rooster is "Babe, a giant ball of smoke colored plumage known as a Blue Cochin. The feathers grow all the way down his legs to his toes and when he struts around, he looks like a big rolling ball of fluff. He is also SO Gentle and kind. He will never eat if the hens are around until they had their fill. He chases off anything that will bother the girls, always clucking around them as if to ask whether there was something more he could do to make their lives comfortable.

My most gentlemanly rooster of all time was a Light Brahma named "Leopold" (after the story of "Kate and Leopold"). He was awesome and amazing, going into the nests and tamping down the fresh hay to make it more comfortable for the hens. He would then cluck to them, encouraging them to come, try out their new beds. Once on the hay, he would coo to them some more, as if singing little songs and they would fluff up and cluck back. It was just cute!

Once they were comfortably settled, he would head off to see who else in the flock he could help. It was fun to just sit in the hen house and watch him work his way around, helping all the ladies to be comfortable. It reminded me of a story Kirk used to tell about his grandpa. He said that he used to always take the smallest piece of chicken and then pass the plate around to everyone else. Gentlemen!

I love those gentle roosters! They are perfect examples of chivalry. However, you never hear someone say: He was as chivalrous as a rooster! In fact, if you did, you might get punched for someone thinking you were flinging an insult their way.

Another one I really like is: “Make hay while the sun shines”.

I never understood this saying until buying a hay farm. I had no idea that the hay, once cut, shouldn't get rained on. Oh, it happens every now and then, mainly because the hay needs to be cut at practically the rainiest time of year… but it's only really fit for the cows if it does. If it gets a good rain after it's been cut and then baled, the summer sun begins to bake the bale and, soon, the mold grows inside. That mold can kill a horse, but the cows don't seem to mind it at all.

"Filthy rodents."

Have you ever wondered why rodents are called filthy? Have you ever watched them. They like to get into everything from an available bread drawer to a barrel of corn. Once inside, they "mark their territory" by peeing on the food. Deeesgusting! Yep, filthy!

How about "according to the pecking order"? In every hen house, she who has the sharpest beak wins. Of course, that usually also amounts to the largest beak… but not always. Occasionally, those "gentler breeds" I mentioned before are a bit faint hearted to boot and a younger, scrappier hen will push her around. Overall, they really are gentle animals though... loyal and sweet. They eat our bugs and as a thank you, they lay an egg for us each day. Who couldn’t love such an animal.

Then there are the "Dog Days of Summer". I saw this recently on a poster for an activity in May and had to laugh. The dog days of summer happen around August, when it's hot and muggy and even the dogs don't want to do anything except lie around in the shade, panting and looking forward to the fall.

It goes further than that though. It may be hot, but you can't swim in the lakes anymore because they've become stagnant in the late summer heat, developing dangerous bacteria and other disdainful scummies. All you can do is lie around and try to cool off some other way.

Of course, modern pools and air conditioning have replaced the good old lake for most... and even for some lucky dogs… which is probably where the saying “what a lucky dog!” comes from.

So, the next time you accuse someone of having a cow, think about it...

I guarantee, you wouldn't like to have one either. :o)

Clarke

So, today I'm sitting here thinking about my son, Clarke, and decided to blog.

He recently took a new job in a distant city, a very busy job that is requiring 70 hour weeks out of him... on salary. Surely, it will slow down in the winter (hopefully) but in the meantime he is pretty tired.

A couple of weeks ago, we kidnapped his wife and 2 babies, bringing them down to our house. They all missed their daddy/husband and I'm sure he missed them... but his loss was our gain. He has the most adorable wife and the absolutely cutest little girls and we just never seem able to get our fill of them, so we devised a plan where we would bring them home for special events and then fly Clarke home over the long weekend of Memorial day. It was Barry's wedding and we had lots of family in town.

While he was alone, Clarke was still working very long hours at his very demanding job. On top of that, just because he is so sweet, he decided to take the few extra hours he could have spent sleeping and used them instead to unpack all of their moving boxes, organize the entire house and even buy and install bookshelves as a surprise for his wife when she got home.

Needless to say, he was very tired when he finally arrived late the night before the wedding. He hardly told a soul about what he'd done, fearing that someone might spill the beans and spoil his wife's surprise.

On the morning of the wedding, he got up early, helped get the girls ready, and they all took off to the temple. Then, he had a flat tire on the way... and then the baby needed to be fed and burped... twice... and then, he was so exhausted that he fell asleep at the wheel. Fortunately, those blessed rumble strips woke him up before anything horrible could happen.

He arrived at the temple before we even made it into the sealing room for the wedding, but he thought he had missed it... and was feeling terribly about that. As fortune would have it, they waited and we finally found him and he made it in.

Our family was complete for the day!

What a great guy!

And Caro LOVED her surprise.

Dear Blog

Dear Blog,

I just wanted to take a moment to complain here...

My allergies are driving me CRAZY!

I thought I was in such good shape... up until the night of Barry's wedding. On the very next day I wasn't even able to go outside anymore, at least not without goggles on... and washing my hair afterward.

Now, another week into it, I have to stay upstairs. Even just opening the doors to go in or out kills my eyes with itching and swelling until I want to dig them out of my face.

WHEN are they going to HARVEST the GRASS?!? Gah!!!

Okay, I'm done now. Thanks for patiently letting me write all over you.
See ya later.

It must be the last days or something...

Earthquakes in divers places, fires, floods, whirlwinds, great hail, the sea heaving itself beyond its bounds, wars and rumors of wars... yeah, it's all happening, but (as my mom likes to say) it's been happening for a very long time. Her mom used to tell her that same thing when she was a little girl and, who knows, maybe her mother's grandmother used to say the same.

Stepping back, however, and observing a few recent points could be interesting.

For instance, did you know that there was actually a storm in China that produced 80 lbs hailstones? (The Book of Revelation measured them as a talent, which is 75 lbs, btw, and which has always been thought to be a physical impossibility). These ice boulders plunged through roofs and stripped huge branches off of trees, leaving the area where they struck looking like a war zone… and I worry about dime sized hail and my garden plants?

Closer to home, we could look at floods as another example that, just maybe, things are a little different than they were 100 years ago.

I live in the Midwest, between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers... on very high ground, thank you very much. During "rainy season" (which typically starts in earnest around May 1st) flooding is common enough. If you're smart, you just make sure that you don't live, work or frequently pass through any major flood plains.

For instance, we have a creek on our farm, a beautiful and meandering little thing. Back East they'd call it a brook. It is spring fed, runs year round and is utterly lovely. During the summer you can watch the little fish, crawdads and skeeters flit about in it. The wildlife comes from far and near to enjoy refreshing drinks from its clear waters.

After a good rain, however, while much of the local farmland is draining into it, it becomes torrential and raging. You can hear the water pounding in rapids down it for quite a distance away. It is still beautiful, but in an amazing and awesome way!

We've had several bridges over this "brook". They're always so lovely to sit on while watching the gentle style waters drift away. In the beginning, they were rather crudely made of fallen trees, though (when those washed away) we soon graduated to 2x4's and planks... then 4x4's and planks... each of which were also effectively washed away in the subsequent and inevitable floods. Finally, desiring something a little more permanent, we built a more elaborate structure, raised high over the creek with expanded walkways on either side. We call it "Clarke's Bridge"... because Clarke built it for us... and, so far, it has endured.

But back to the main subject at hand: While we may have lost a few bridges due to a rookie short-sightedness, we would never have built our home anywhere near such an unpredictable water source.

Flooding on the big rivers is also interesting to me as it never happens all at once. Unless you’re living in the town of Agency, where “it floods ever' time some un' goes an’ spits up-river,” as the locals like to say… then, elsewhere, it has to be the perfect storm of events. Huge snows in the north with similarly soggy conditions further down the main waterways, followed by unusually heavy spring rains.

Since a huge percentage of the country's rivers eventually empty into the mighty Mississippi, it only stands to reason that it will occasionally flood. In fact, we had a huge flood in 1993. These floods are generally noted as "10 year floods"... "50 year floods"... or "100 year floods" for the really big ones.

The flood of 1993 was a "1,000 year flood", meaning that it was so rare, it only happened about once every 1,000 years. Needless to say, it broke all records in the known history of the area.

Some people like to build their homes in these areas. I guess they figure that if it only happens once a millennium, then they're probably pretty safe. Unfortunately for those folks, we had another "1,000 year flood" in 1995. The water from these floods was so high that it not only covered all the low lying farmland, but it washed away centuries old cemeteries and threatened national monuments.

One such place was the St. Louis Arch and its accompanying subterranean museum.

The arch sits high above the Mississippi River and overlooks several states. It's a very impressive site... until the wind starts blowing and swaying it... while you're in it... but that's a topic for a whole other blog. The museum, though underground from the arch, also sits high above the river. In fact, if you leave the arch and walk toward the river, you will have to descend about 55 concrete stairs, cross the street and descend further past the river front area. If the river is even mildly low, you can walk across several cobblestone style, ancient looking, worn and rounded, red bricks to dip your toes into that mile wide wonder. Normally this is a relaxing area, with horse drawn carriages, riverboat attractions and barges hauling goods down the water.

In the flood of 1993, the river covered it all and came up to the top two steps on the arch grounds, threatening to spill into the museum on the other side. In 1995, it came almost as high.

Now, we have the flood of 2011, which the news is saying, is already breaking the record of 1993 and might even last into July.

Hm... one has to wonder why it's called a 1,000 year flood when it's happened 3 times in the last 20 years… unless things aren’t quite “normal”. They were calling it global warming, for a while, until some hackers exposed that the scientists behind it were manipulating the data and information fed to the public… apparently, there was big money to be had on an upcoming “carbon credit exchange” program in the stock market.

Not to be undone, or risk losing their funding, scientists then began calling it “climate change”, which conveniently covered for the corresponding global cooling trend. This much broader term, technically, happens about 4 times each year in our neck of the woods. Not to be left out, there are also the “Solar Scientists”, people who, through ice cores and mud cores and a bunch of other stuff, track the sun’s solar flare activity, which they say runs in very neat and tidy 17 year cycles. The earth goes through something like 17 years of cooling, followed by 17 years of warming… or something like. Either way, they predicted this last cycle spot on… though it still doesn’t explain 3 – 1,000 year floods inside such a short span of time.

In the end, I guess it's just been a big year… or two… or ten… for disasters, so much so, that it's getting difficult to keep track of them all, from the massive earthquakes, tsunamis, record breaking tornadoes and fires, wars and oil spills and floods.

It’s all enough to make a person want to live on high ground.

…and have a bit of food stored.

…or maybe even build bomb shelter!

Honestly, I might pass on the bomb shelter.

…but I think I’ll buy another can of peaches.