Some time last year the person who taught me to shoot and i had a falling out when i became smothered and lost all aspect of independence. Thats a good way to ensure that you’ve lost me, is smother me, just an FYI for the world. I cant be consumed and i cant be controlled. Im very strong willed and i will have my freedom. Well, i’ll forever be grateful that he helped me pick out what is the perfect rifle for me and that he taught me to shoot, but the fact of the matter is, as with anything in life, if you dont use it, you lose it. Since we have fallen out, my days of going to his land to shoot rocks apart from across the dam he built, from one cliffside to another…those days are over. I dont have 200 acres. I have 2. So, if i want to continue shooting practice in solitude and not share a noisy extroverted space with others at a gun range…i have to find a way to reasonably and accurately contain my ammo and ensure its not going towards the street or the neighbors’ properties. Thus; the shooting box. Guaranteed to contain bullets from any 22 as long as you are a good enough shot to actually hit the box. Its more of a triangle really than a box. It arrived in pieces in the mail with photos of how to assemble it instead of words but because the photos are all taken in shade and the thing is all black, it just looks like a black triangular blob. The final image was indoors in good lighting so i prayed for guidance and then reverse engineered the thing from the final photo and assembled.
I know i can shoot something on the ground at point blank range. if i ever find a raccoon or a fox in the chicken pen or a rabid animal that needs put out of its misery, and by golly they want to stand still at point blank range: no problem. The question is: can i shoot something trying to escape me at a moments notice without having time to do anything but grab the rifle and go back outside? If an animal perceives you are going to end it for trying to raid the chicken coop, its not going to wait for you to set up your little rifle stand of bean bags and set the scope. I do have bags full of dried rice to set the rifle up if im in a blind and want to hunt deer but thats not what im primarily going to be using this rifle for. I need to keep building muscle memory so that i wont even have to think about the steps involved in loading, safety off, racking, anchoring the rifle against my body, pulling trigger, and expelling shell. I need to make sure that all that is muscle memory, like i could do it in my sleep, so i can focus all my senses on the animal and not the gun. I also need to know: without setting up, with wind, with holding the rifle in the air instead of on a stand, what is my window of accuracy, what is my range? That will help me determine how close i need to get before trying to dispatch a chicken predator because as it stands now, if a coon had a chicken, and i shot from the shed with the wind conditions of today, there’d be no guarantee i’d get the coon instead of the chicken. Unfortunately yesterday held 15 to 20 mph winds and today 30 mph winds. Thats why i washed the car yesterday. I thought i’d wait and do it sunday since i figured it was so windy it’d just put dust on whatever soap water i threw on the car. However, after checking the forecast i realized i had to wash the car after work on saturday because sunday would be worse. After work and washing the car and putting all the potted trees back outside due to warmer weather, my autoimmune disorder decided i was done and my body quit for the day with a full body arthritis flare up. So, constructing the shooting box got pushed to sunday. The original plan was to just construct it today and shoot another day but then i realized i was missing an opportunity. Shooting without a stand in 30 mph winds gusts…i would get an opportunity to establish a worst case scenario baseline. This would be my range in windy conditions so if the wind were still i could expect a smaller range that the bullets may spread out from my target critter. I wanted to make sure the box worked as well. It was important to me that my neighbors feel safe that when i was shooting, no stray bullets would be finding sheep or longhorns or car tires. I am aware 2 acres is different from two hundred acres and with the right to own firearms comes a responsibility to make sure they are not a danger to the neighbors or passing cars. I took 4 bullets outside with me. I shot twice from the middle of the field and then backed up and shot twice from the greenhouse shed. It was immensely frustrating because right as i’d get the shot lined up in the scope the wind would blow and the scope would no longer be lined up with my eye and i’d be looking half at a black semi circle and half at the target. I thought about going to get the rice bags and setting up on the greenhouse porch for just one of the shots, to see how close i could put the shot to the middle of the target, but i told myself that wasnt the assignment. We could deal with ego another day. For now, i needed to establish that the box indeed did stop the bullets, build some muscle memory for loading and racking the gun, and establish the distance i needed to be standing from the target to effectively dispatch a fox or a raccoon terrorizing the chickens. What i learned is that i needed to be middle of the field distance away from the target critter if i wanted to take a head shot and if i was greenhouse shed distance away, it had better be a body shot and then finish it with a head shot once closer to end its suffering. Of course, if it is still in the pen and not on the outside of the pen, im fairly certain that can be a point blank range situation at which point i wont have to worry about accidentally clipping a chicken. I will practice again on a weekend where there are not 30 mph winds and see if on a still day it could be a head shot from the greenhouse shed distance but honestly im fine with taking a body shot and finishing it up close seconds later. As long as the critter that now knows the chicken pen as a lunch buffet is not still walking around to come back later. Ive got a whole new shipment of non predator savvy chicks coming from ohio in mid march and i’ve got to be on predator duty because those tiny suckers tend to stand too close to the fence until they learn by trial of fire that critters can stick their arms through the rectangular openings. Anyways, ive got to continue the laundry and get the ladder out and start taking down the old chains and putting up the new chains in the greenhouse for this year’s lowered grow lights for better drained and vitamin d’d vegetables, but, the shooting box is set up and operational.
I decided Lucy was going to be different than my other cars. I was not going to haul trees or dogs in Lucy. If something messy needed to be transported i would schedule a rental car or put down painter’s plastic everywhere. It wasnt that she didnt have scratches or paint chips. She did. She’s ten years old. But somebody took very good care of her and i love this car so i decided she gets washed 3 weekends a month and i bought a hand held car vacuum, and thats how im going to balance the idea of keeping Lucy nice with living on a homestead with a dirt driveway. So she got her first bath. I used home depot buckets, a car sponge, auto zone soap, and my bath towel when i realized not drying her resulted in white spots from the calcium and other minerals in the well water. She’s looking shiny. :). The only clean thing on the homestead.
I have a new car. The old one was totaled by a white tailed deer. It was an eye opening experience in which a lot of profound things happened. Maybe i will tell that story one day but for now its still unfolding and its not just my story to tell. But the gist of the message is: the homestead has a new member. She reminds me of my favorite car i ever owned, a 2001 honda crv. She is a 2016 honda crv and i’ve named her Lucy. There is something about the older model crvs with the chunky smooth plastic rectangular buttons and the massive amount of space in the interior, the tray table center console and the wide windows and being able to put the seat all the way up (im short) and see everything like in a pickup…even the sound of the door lock is the same as it was on the 2001 crv. One day i will tell the story, but for now: here’s Lucy.
Years ago i had a custom bracelet engraved with my two favorite bible verses. One on the outside where people can see, and the other on the inside against my skin. The one on the outside is Jeremiah 29:11, my favorite bible verse, and it reads: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” The verse written on the outside of the bracelet is for me and for anyone who wishes to read it. Maybe it will have some meaning in their lives as well. But the verse written on the inside is just a reminder for me. Psalm 23:4 – “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” And he has been. During every minute of every hour of every day of this new chapter, God has found a way to remind me that he is with me always. From the truck to the cross to the billboard to the radio station: God has never left me alone during this chapter. There has been a roadmap but i only get one piece at a time, as the journey requires each next portion of that map. I am learning to make peace with understanding God’s plan for my life may not always align with my own, and when it doesnt…best to go with God’s plan, even if i dont fully understand it at the time. I’m also learning to stop planning ahead with a plan a, b, c, d, e, and f. I’ve stopped relying on my own witt and survival instinct to navigate every situation and started relying on God. It’s not my purpose to out plan every disaster that may arise and live in a state of anxiety and fight or flight. It’s my purpose to show up and do my job, live my purpose, and if problems arise, i will do my best and pray for the answers. And you know what…God’s solutions out-did mine every time. This world is a fallen and tumultuous one and the answers i receive will not always be ones that end in harmony. Sometimes trials are meant to impart lessons and nothing can be done to mitigate the pain they bring. I dont expect the path will always be easy, but it’s time to live what i preach. If i believe God is in charge, it’s time to stop white knuckling the steering wheel and rereading the map and just scoot over and get in the passenger seat. During this next chapter of life, i’m going to try to let God take the wheel and i will work on following, through purposeful thought and action, through prayer and seeking his guidance rather than relying on my own, and through trust. Not trust that everything will always work out but trust that God will be with me and guide me even if things don’t work out, that there is a plan.
Today i stood third in a very long line at the only supply store in my town (dollar general) after work, unable to check out and go home because two young men, likely teenagers or maybe 20 years old at most, were trying their luck at getting someone else to buy their snacks for them and i’m proud to say, nobody was biting on that fishing line. I see all this footage of protesters putting their arms in some kind of plaster or foam and mesh thing and letting it harden and then sitting in public waiting for the city to send someone to come cut them out because it would be pretty hard to go through life with your arms stuck in a big mesh and foam thing so of course someone else has to stop what they’re doing and rescue the person from what they’ve done to themselves in the name of a cause and i have to wonder if common sense is a thing that still exists these days. But as i stood in line i was proud of my town folk for standing their ground as i intended to. Not one of us, including the store clerk, would cover these two men’s bill. Theres reasons for that and i’ll get to them shortly but it was a win for good sense in a sea of losses these days, in my opinion. I am now part of the “older people” (strange thought) and its our job to teach the younger people how to move through the world. And we dont always do the greatest job of it. Theres a great number of hard working young people, but we’ve created a situation where those making $70,000 a year get taxed and penalized and charged $10,000 annually for health insurance and make too much money to qualify for any government assistance, credits, or exemptions. Those who make minimum wage qualify for all the exemptions, credits, food stamps, and $35 a month health insurance. It is a situation that sometimes spits out young people who think they are entitled to things simply because they breathe.
I found myself standing in line observing two sheepish young men, hunched with their legs splayed to look cool and keep their sagging pants from falling to their ankles, sporting guilty smiles and flickers of eye contact, as i had sometimes observed in the face of a sibling tattling on their brother after rules had been broken. their demeanor caught my attention and i wondered what they were so giggly about. I had been standing in line listening absent mindedly until i realized they were asking her to ring up and tell the price of each of a handful of items on the counter individually. I wondered if they just hadnt brought enough money to purchase the whole order and were trying to decide what to put back, but i was wrong. The cashier spoke up loudly in an annoyed voice, “You haven’t brought any money?” Both young men giggled again and nodded their heads no. The cashier said, “Come on now, just for these here it’s ten bucks. Surely between the two of you, you have ten bucks.” The young men grinned and giggled and nodded their heads no. One opened his empty wallet to show her there was nothing in it. The other showed his pockets. I wasnt raised as a delicate thing so my mind always goes to worst case scenario. I considered the possibility of a robbery or a shop lifting incident. One has to consider these things when men come into a store with zero cash in hand and stand at the check out counter giggling and grinning like its funny. I thought, “what is their end game here? What are these two about?” I shifted my keys to have my thumb on the button that slides my box cutter forwards and prepared for confrontation. The man in front of me had stepped aside and let me be next in line since i only held three items so i was directly behind the two young men that were holding up the line now. I didnt trust them with all their grinning and giggling. It was a strange way to behave for two people that brought no money to the store and i was just as unsettled by the fact that they were utterly unapologetic for holding things up and creating a line that wrapped around through the store while the only employee tried to make sense of them. The men kept asking her to ring up the items again one by one and tell them the individual price. She was frustrated with them because at this point she knew they didnt bring any money, so this exercise of price checking was futile when they had no way to purchase even one of the items. But they continued in their pointless endeavor. At this point the line was building notably and the cashier told them angrily that they needed to produce cash or swipe a card or she would take the items off the counter and they could leave the store. I knew the cashier. Its a small town. If i call and ask if something’s in stock before i leave work two towns away, they know who it is that’s asking just by the sound of my voice. All 3 employees that work there regularly are good people and i’d defend any one of them in a fight so i was ready now. The man behind me put his items down on the counter and i gathered he too was ready if things went south. Just about every human in the store probably had a knife or a gun on them. This is the country. You need them to shoot wild hogs, rattlesnakes, cut twine or packaging…. Because the cashier was getting agitated, we were now paying attention and waiting to see what was about to happen and if we needed to be a part of it. The man that had given me his spot in line stepped back in between myself and the two young men, void of his groceries. He was positioning for a show down. And then in the span of about five minutes all of the tension evaporated as we realized that these two had no plan other than to wait for the universe to deliver stuff to them. They werent there to commit a robbery or shop lift or get in a brawl. They were simply young people that had gotten the idea that the world owed them something because they existed and so therefore they should have. They had loaded the hand held cart up with takis, pringles, soda, gum, and cheetos. They had multiple types of snacks and two different kinds of soda. None of it was substantial food. It was all just junk, as the cashier later pointed out. These kids werent hungry. Ive been hungry. When you’re hungry you go buy a bag of rice because thats gonna go a long way for your dollar and put something in your stomach. You can season up the rice and it’ll feel nice on an empty belly. Starving people dont buy takis, soda, and gum. Stupid people buy takis, soda, and gum with zero dollars. For whatever reason, these two men who brought zero dollars with them started an argument that they thought would gain traction that the can of pringles should be one dollar. The cashier put her hand down on the counter and said, “no, baby, this is not a dollar. Theres no store in this world at this point where that can of pringles is a dollar. I dont know why you think that should be a dollar. Who told you the pringles were a dollar? Show me the sign where it says $1.” A packet of tuna is now $5. We all knew full well, whatever the pringles cost it wasnt $1, but it didnt matter and the argument was pointless considering the sum total the two young men had between them was $0. At this point the cashier tells them to get out of the store so she can check the other customers out. They take out their smart phones and begin calling someone. I cant understand what they’re saying as i am not fluent in the language they are speaking but from what i do know i gather that they are first talking to one of them’s father and then two more people afterwards and they are shopping around for humans with pulses and wheels to come down to the dollar general and buy their snacks for them. I’m leaving an important part of the visual out here. Not only do these two have smart phones. They have sunglasses and one of them is dripping with heavily layered silver chains around his neck. If you have money for ear piercings, chains, and sun glasses, starving you are not. My thought was that they could sell some of the bling if they wanted to purchase food and hadnt the funds to do it but i suspected if they were buying things like sun glasses, they were just trying to get someone to pay for them because they could, not because they needed it. Theres a difference between someone in need and someone in want. I can usually spot the difference with regular common sense. Someone in need does not spend on frivolous things before food, they buy bulk items that will go further, and they may be short on the amount needed to cover an order but they dont show up with zero money to begin with. I would be so ashamed to be covered in that much bling with my pants falling off my ass, grinning like a drunk ape and seeing if somebody would just give me stuff for free because i wanted it. Ive covered many a bill that was two to five dollars short just because the person didnt have it and you could see in their face that they needed the items, but i wasnt covering the order for these fools today and nobody else was either. We were not amused. We had all worked all day for the money in our pockets and these two clearly hadnt learned any sense of pride or what it meant to work for what you have. Somewhere along the way their parents had failed them but we would not fail them now. They were going to have to learn: if you want to eat, you work. They looked around the room in anticipation but not one of us spoke or moved from where we stood in line. We all stared at them, unwaveringly. They were waiting for one of us to get fed up with standing in line and in an effort to get things moving again say, “oh step aside i’ll cover it, here.” Nobody did. We stood patiently in silence, staring at them as the line grew. If “for shame” was a vibe the whole store was full of it. The cashier became fed up and began clearing the items from the counter. The taller of the two boys clawed desperately at the items saying, “wait wait wait wait….” In spanish he had an argument with the shorter man about whether the pringles were absolutely necessary or could he live without them. The shorter man shook his head and wore a very serious expression as he claimed the pringles were absolutely necessary. The taller man called his father again and asked him to load money onto his smart phone so he could pay for the snacks. To my surprise, the father agreed. He then told the cashier that he could pay now. She bagged the scanned items and handed the bag to the shorter of the two guys. He then stood there, not scanning his phone. The cashier was upset now as it looked like they might dash after all and raised her voice, “i gave you the items dude now either enter a card or scan the d*mn phone.” They made some half assed attempts at pointing the phone towards the card reader like a magic wand or swishing it around like a light saber. Finally the taller man stopped and just scanned his phone like normal and a receipt printed. She handed it to the man and both of them exited the store with their snacks in tow. She shook her head as she quickly rang the rest of us up one by one, “Geez, those two guys come in here with no money and its not like they’re starving, its all junk. Nothing but junk and snacks in their basket.” I was proud that we had all collectively decided the lesson being taken away from the situation was more important than getting the line moving. Teach young people that a stunt like that works and they’ll try it again. Why fix something if it isnt broken? If they can get hard working strangers to buy their snacks just cuz they want them and they think they should have whatever they want, they’ll never work a day in their lives. Why should they? Now, to the father who transferred money in the end so they could buy the snacks…you missed an opportunity. If they hadnt been able to procure the snacks, the chains, the sunglasses, the truck outside, or the smart phones…they might have had a reason to go to work. As long as you do for them, they’ll never have a reason to do for themselves. Let them struggle. Let them be hungry. Let them see what life without income is…they will get a job and do for themselves. We need adults who contribute to this community, not live off it like a parasite. Coming up short is something we’ve all done at one point or another in life and those around will pick you up and set you back on your feet but showing up to the dollar general with zero money in hand or pocket and expecting to leave with a basket full of snacks and soda…boggles the mind. They have no shame.
Let me just preface this by saying i was aware winter storm Fern was coming. She wasnt a surprise. Everyone in a 500 mile radius was running around panicking buying every single item in every grocery store whether it was foot fungus cream or light bulbs. They just felt we needed to buy. Buy everything in order to prepare. Im constantly amazed by the panic buying. What the **** is extra light bulbs or memory foam shoe inserts going to help you with in a winter storm people?! Slow down and come back to earth. While everyone was panic buying i was making a few preparations of my own. I brought the home depot bucket toilet inside from the shed, got the old down comforter out of the shed (because its straight feathers rather than the newer blends of feathers and foam), bought an extra gallon of water to put with my 6 three gallon water jugs i keep around in case of emergency, and started covering everything with plastic where i intended to put the chickens. I did go to tractor supply and get some water bottles for the chicken crates but they wouldnt hold any water. They were cheap and they just emptied it all onto the crate floors in rapid dripping streams. I had to go to stoneware bowls instead. The take away message here is that you dont know what you done know. Im a firm believer in the sentiment that each new winter storm teaches you something, and it does that, mainly in the form of breaking new shit that you hadn’t previously envisioned as a potential problem up until that moment. So you can probably see where this story is going, but i’ve left out a bit of context here that is pertinent to understanding the full scope of the adventure that was weathering winter storm Fern at our house. One of the dogs had a partially torn ACL and wasnt supposed to be running or jumping at all until February 1st, in an attempt to give it a chance to try and heal on its own. This meant that the Australian shepherd had to be let out on short leash only and carried up and down the porch stairs during every potty break.
I settled on the front left corner of the house as the place for the chickens, mostly because it was the place they could do the least damage with poop flinging but also because it would be drafty in front of the door and the chickens had proved in previous ice storms that they could huddle together and make the air in a stock tank 80 degrees while it was 34 in the house so i decided it’d be better to give them that area than the dogs who were probably better off in the area next to the bed sandwiched between the crates and a number of potted redbud, crape myrtle, and pecan trees as well as some herbs, rose bushes, and aloe vera plants. Keenly familiar with the birds’ habit of pooping, and then scratching in that poop looking for bugs and seeds, resulting in the flinging of chicken feces with a velocity that could cover half the tiny house…i took down the curtains, folded them, and placed them at the back of the house. I replaced the curtains instead with a series of trash bags zip tied together, hung from the curtain rod, and taped to the door. I cut several ziplock freezer bags down the sides and then taped them over anything hanging on the wall in the designated chicken area. Then i laid out a plastic drop cloth my artist friend had given me. I tried to have it cover the floor and any nearby furniture, such as the metal basin used as a bath tub. It usually faces the pantry but i turned it sideways to hold the drop cloth out a further distance from the “chicken high-rise condos”. I used a wooden frame with wire mesh stapled to it as a baby gate to separate the dogs from the chickens so there would be no canine type vacuuming of the drop cloth (ingestion of chicken shit and bird seed are both recipes for explosive green diarrhea in the house in the middle of a winter storm…not the time you want that). I set up three crates, put a nesting pad in each one, stacked them on top of one another, and zip tied them in place. I cut off the tails of the zip ties so the chickens would not be preoccupied with sticking their heads through the bars and trying to eat the strange black plastic snakes. I tried putting livestock bottles against the side of the crate, kind of like a bigger version of a gerbil’s, but they dripped non stop without the chickens touching them and i decided i could google how to fix that or just go with the tried and true. I gave the chickens my bowls and they drank water out of those.
Well, here we are headed into the first night of Fern, a friday. I’d finished work and gotten all the outdoor plants watered with 3 watering cans of water because if its going to be 11 degrees, you should make sure everything is over-watered. don’t ask me why but it will keep the tree from freezing to death. I know this because ive seen it work. Covering stuff? Useless. Leave it uncovered. Dont waste your sheets. Drowning it? Worth it. Works every time. I have a couple friends i can think of who know more about plants than me who could probably explain it but honestly i dont care why it works as long as it does. I learned it from a plant nursery. Well anyways, i got everything watered and i was doing a load of laundry because Friday night was the last time the temperature would be above freezing before monday and i figured i had better have something to wear to work for the following week. The dryer vent used to open and close by itself. For the past two years it has been a manual vent. It opens by itself but requires you to close it. No amount of WD-40 fixes the problem so i can only conclude that as the ground has shifted and the house is not completely level (i know because i had a leak in the roof once that was running from the front of the house to the back before dripping down the ceiling because the front of the house is now slightly higher than the back so it ran down hill along the piece of metal that is the ceiling) the frame of the vent is not completely square, and so it doesnt close without human help at this point. So, it was raining, light but steady. It had gotten dark. I had moved the chickens into the high rise chicken condos, and the dogs were in front of the heater. I was waiting out the dryer, ready to go manually close the vent, when i fell asleep in the rocking chair.
This is like photo 48 of a series of 50. One is an aussie and the other is afraid of eye contact. The idea that both of them would be still and stare forwards in the same photo is a pipe dream. So they each have their own photo in which the other is a blur.
When i woke up it was pouring. I wasnt sure how long it had been pouring but i had just woken up and my brain was not braining. I didnt even know what time it was. All i knew was that the display on the dryer was dark, meaning the cycle was over and wrinkle guard was done and now we just had a hole in the side of the house letting cold air in and hot air out for no reason. (In the summer its also a vehicle of entry for scorpions). Anyways, i rushed outside with an umbrella in my pajamas and flip flops to close the dryer vent. As i stepped off the porch into the darkness i went down into ankle deep water. My pants were instantly wet. The umbrella was pretty useless against the wind driven rain which was so heavy and dense that it stung upon hitting your skin. I realized pretty quick i should have brought the head lamp as i could see nothing. But i wasnt sure how water proof it was so maybe it was better in the house. I made my way along the side of the house with the sound of rain hitting standing water as a thunderous applause all around. I snapped the vent shut with wet fingers and turned to head back to the house.
Photograph courtesy of kerr county sheriff’s department
At least in the town where i live theres a lot of rock and dirt. some of the water can get soaked up, even though theres more rock than dirt. In nearby kerrville it is increasingly more asphalt and cement. The first night of winter storm Fern, Kerrville got enough water to flood. I did too but my tiny house is on pier and beam and my sheds and well house are raised as well. Everything is up on wood skids or cement blocks and the well house is on a raised cement foundation. Necessary to avoid disaster in a place that is mostly limestone rock, even though my little plateau is on the top of a hill.
I took off the wet clothes immediately and changed into something dry to keep warm. Then i stood in the kitchen trying to make sense of what happened with my carefully planned storm prep timeline. The conclusion i came to was that i fell asleep. Friday night was when i began feeling really sick but i still spent over an hour out there hauling the watering can three to four hundred feet from the well to each tree cuz a home depot wagon is not in the budget right now (one day); Only for nature to dump an enormous amount of water on the yard and render all that nonsense i just did futile. It turns out several patients at work had covid and i would lose my sense of smell and taste after winter storm Fern so thats probably what i had during the whole of it. That’s right. Amongst the disasters that cropped up during winter storm Fern was the detail that i was mind numbingly sick throughout the whole thing. I was doing my best to remain in charge while high as a kite on cold and flu meds and miserable with coughing and sinus pressure and then vertigo but the dogs and the chickens had no intention of making that easy. I folded the laundry and hung some of it up, set the alarms, then went to bed with the chickens in their high rise tower, the dogs in front of the tractor supply heater baby gated in with a step stool, potted trees, and a wooden framed mesh rectangle, and the window unit and tractor supply heater working in tandem, the freestanding one set two degrees higher than the window unit, to keep the stress off the window unit which was more fragile and prone to past problems with the compressor overheating. That meant the window unit would only kick on when the freestanding heater needed help, thus giving the window unit a break periodically when the desired temperature was reached. I woke up sick as a dog. The electricity was on. I was praying it stayed on the whole time because i, at this time, cannot afford to add a generator to the homestead which would require making a cement platform and then spending over $3000 to get one that could support both the well house and the house. So, without a generator, its imperative the electricity stays on or the heat lamp in the well house goes off. Though nearby bandera electric had a three hour outage. Kpub came through and delivered non-stop uninterrupted electricity throughout winter storm Fern, which i greatly appreciated in my circumstance. The biggest priority was keeping electricity to the well house.
Photograph courtesy of kerr county sheriff’s departmentPhotograph courtesy of kerr county sheriff’s department
So this is what we woke up to. It looks like snow but its not. Its actually ice. First all that standing water froze. Then precipitation continued to fall on top of it in the form of tiny ice balls. i find snow much easier to drive on than ice. This, was not to drive on. There were many jackknifed 18-wheelers who no doubt had a deadline that wouldnt wait, a 20 car pileup on the highway, and a truck that hit a snow plow and took it out of commission. A coworker just tried to face his car towards the sun in his driveway to melt the ice and went sliding down the driveway and pulled the emergency brake. This was not to drive on.
The ice balls
There was a significant amount of ice accumulation on the trees (i forgot to mention that while coming down with covid, friday night i went around and cut all the low hanging branches near structures, chicken and dog pens, sheds, and the laundry line down so that if the trees sagged they’d have room to not be touching stuff i wanted to keep) and no one knew whether the electric companies were going to be able to keep the power on throughout the storm so warming shelters were set up all over texas.
Photo courtesy of Spotsylvania Sherriff’s OfficePhoto courtesy of Spotsylvania Sherriff’s Office
The sherriff’s facebook page stated that crates were set up and that people shouldnt hesitate to come because they dont want to leave their pets behind because well behaved non aggressive crated dogs and cats were welcome. All i said was “just for personal knowledge, are non aggressive crated chickens allowed at the warming shelters?” The question was not appreciated. I guess warming shelters will never be a thing i utilize. Not sure how i’d get there anyway. I’d probably be better off under the down comforter than trying to drive in this sh*t, and i was pretty sure they wouldnt have appreciated my feverish ass bringing them all contagion anyways. No, we were staying. Chickens still are not welcome at warming shelters so we were in it for the long haul no matter what.
I cant remember if this was day one or day two. Its all a blur with the timeline because i was off my rocker on herbal and western medicine the whole time and had joint aches and a splitting headache ache and the sweats for a whole 24 hours before i got the right combo of meds figured out to keep the fever at bay. Oh, i forgot to mention that this is the time i had blocked out to do 36 hours of continuing education courses online if the electricity stayed on, because i knew i’d likely be cooped up in the house for at least three days anyways. Every two years an occupational therapy assistant has to log continuing education units into a website to prove they’ve learned something new, are keeping up with the times, and deserve to keep practicing in the field. I have to renew in August so i figured id take the opportunity and go ahead and learn something while iced in. I have adhd so i do much better making a hyper-focus weekend out of it with a bunch of tasty junk food snacks than trying to do a course here or there. So i had bought all the junk food and now couldnt eat more than half of it because i was sick and you dont eat coconut sugar or agave when sick unless you want to be more sick. But i ate the potato chips and tater tots, the salty part of the snack food, and trudged on through the courses between cold medicine induced naps. The chickens were a complete and utter nuisance during these courses. Every 30 seconds one or more of the five chickens had something to say, at which point i had to pause the video until they were done squawking or just put my face very close to the keyboard to hear the instructor. It was exhausting and i was ready to end everybody in that little one room tiny house with me by the end of day 2. I finished all my ceu courses and saved the certificates in a folder on the desktop. Honestly, i dont know how. I was absolutely miserable. Refusal to be defeated? I dont know.
Photo courtesy of Kerrville Police DepartmentPhoto courtesy of Kerrville Police Department
During the day the sun would peek out and melt some stuff which would then refreeze but as solid non textured ice rather than ice balls that crunched when you walked on them. Each time it melted and refroze it became slicker and slicker.
Photo courtesy of Fox 17 News
Yep, i got to stay home but the nurses and cnas had to go to work, regardless of how undriveable the roads or how dangerous the situation. because they were considered essential workers. The elders’ lives depended on them. So, they dont get a choice whether they want to risk wrecking their car. I just want to take a moment to give them what is due because many people dont understand that they do not get a choice. Someone licensed has to administer meds, doctor wounds, and be there to give resuscitative measures in the event that they are required. If the roads are impassible, the nurses still have to drive/slide them, even if it just means they call 911 and request rescue from a ditch after the car is totaled instead of not coming to work because they’re safely in their house. I live outside the “city limits” of our town so there is no “plow” up here, only ice. The main road of a small town will be plowed but how are you getting to it?
No idea which day this was. All a blur. 0/10 do not recommend having covid…any of the strains. Again, looks like snow but i can assure you this is ice.
The dogs had to be taken out potty one at a time so they wouldnt rile each other up and cashew had to be on leash and carried down and then back up the porch stairs to avoid leaping. It was a lot of work and opening and closing of the front door, letting the warm air out and the cold air in.
Okay here is where i realized we had yet another problem. The rain had fallen into the window unit, as it always does, but at some point rain had frozen into ice on the inside bottom of the unit, blocking the drain hole on the bottom right of the unit. All further rain that fell in there had no path of escape and unbeknownst to me, had been accumulating in a block of ice in the interior of the window unit. Simultaneously, icicles were forming on the inside of the unit, hanging from the top air vent slots. Those were hanging down and periodically getting chopped off by the rotating blades. Well then the sun came up and started melting the beefy icicles hanging from the tin roof. Those fat b*stards were dripping with reckless abandon into the slots on the top of the window unit and then freezing upon hitting the block of ice inside. The block grew to 2.5 inches in height and it was at this point that the window unit made a weird rattling noise and sputtered to a halt. I turned it off immediately upon hearing it stop. I hurried outside in flip flops to check on the problem that had developed as i was aware our main source of heat had just “stopped” and without warm air blowing from it, the window unit was just a giant rectangular open spot to the outside air. I arrived at the window unit to discover the problem i described above, which i was previously completely unaware of. I hurried to the dog run and grabbed the toy box lid i used to cover the dog bowls. But there was a problem. It was covered in thick ice. I went inside and threw open the tool box to grab the hammer. The dogs were all excited. I ignored them. We had a real problem at bay. I took the hammer outside. I broke all the ice off the exterior of the window unit with the hammer. Then i broke all the ice off the toy box lid with the hammer. I placed the toy box lid on top of the window unit. The damage was done. The interior was full of ice and the temperature was such that any water i poured would have frozen on top of it and added to the problem. Boiling water would have cracked and broken things i needed intact and melted others i also needed intact. I needed the temperature to be above freezing to use water to thaw something that had a drain under 2.5 inches of solid ice. The window unit was out of commission, so why the lid? Well, the window unit was becoming heavy laden with all this extra ice and it was held in the window sill by four screws and some plaster against the window above it. In order to not rip the window sill off, i needed to stop the accumulating extra weight. Every time a large icicle fell or a gust of wind blew i would have to go out and reposition the toy box lid on the window unit but it was naturally a sloped surface so it was draining the excess melt water onto the ground. As the icicles melted in the sun they began falling off the roof in big chunks. They would hit the side of the house or the window unit on the way down and make a loud noise. Cashew thought we were under attack. Normally id just let her outside to see what was going on but i couldnt because she was supposed to stay off her leg and not run or jump. So i kept her inside at which point she started incessantly barking. I put her in the crate. She barked from the crate. I put a sheet over her crate, like people do to put parrots to bed. The sheet was mine, from my bed spread. I see movement out of the corner of my eye and the sheet is being twisted and pulled inwards from the outside to the inside of the crate. Sure enough, Cashew has my sheet in her teeth and is running in a circle in the middle of the crate. I snatched the sheet away from her and told her she was a bad dog. It had slobber all over it. I set it in the laundry machine to be washed another day, hoping she hadnt ripped or torn it. She barked and barked and barked as icicles fell all around us. I covered my throbbing head with my blankets and tried to plug my ears to drown her out.
It was at this point that i checked in with my best friend and neighbor who lived ten minutes up the road by car. The tractor supply space heater was now heating the space on its own and with a giant hole and accordion blind in the window, the temp was going down one degree every five minutes. It was not going to be able to do the job on its own. I checked if there was a way i could close the shutters on the window unit and there was not. They would turn left or right to direct the air flow but it was not made to close. They werent that kind of shutter. They were tall and skinny and didnt reach across to the next piece. I immediately grabbed my bath towel and the towel i used as a bathroom mat, the hand towel and the kitchen towel, an old shirt, and a previous cat sling from last year. I stuffed them against the accordion blind things on either side of the window unit where air was just coming into the house in a rush. I placed one in front of the window unit itself and duct taped it there. My friend asked me how things were going. I said, “not good. The window unit just quit.” I filled her in and she said she had towels and an extra space heater i could borrow. I was very appreciative but neither of us could figure out how the space heater was getting from her house to mine. We argued back and forth about who was not going to go out. She didnt want me to get stranded in a ditch while sick and i didnt want her to wreck her car. I said “its going to be closest to freezing at 3 pm. Its going to be 27 at 3 pm. Hopefully the sun will melt some of this and i can try to make the drive to your house. Im going to lay down for a nap and ill try the drive at 3 pm.” The sun came out for 30 seconds at a time and disappeared for 10 minutes at a time. It melted nothing. My friend made an executive decision without me.
I was trying to get a little rest before the 3 pm scheduled brush with death and car insurance when i got a phone call. It was my best friend hollering about i had to go outside and something about hitch hiking. I was confused. I asked, “you’re hitchhiking?” She said, “no! Your heater is! Go outside and flag them down. They’re coming in a truck. They’re going your way. I told them how to get there.” It took a while to piece together what she was talking about. I think in the moment i understood someone was bringing her heater to me in a truck but i didnt fully understand how that came about until after the fact when she said she heard a truck and went out in the yard and flagged them down and begged them to take the heater to me because my window unit had quit and i had an injured dog and we needed to stay warm. Well, my first thought was that if they were driving on this sh*t, i didnt want them to have to try the hill to get to me. And there was no turn around spot. The road would dead end at the drug and rehab facility if they even made it onto the hill. I wanted to go down to the intersection and intercept them so they could keep the truck on flatter road and facing the direction they were intending on traveling. That’s the first time i ate it. I went down like a sack of potatoes on my right hip and sat there on the ice processing for a minute before hearing an engine in the distance and renewing my dedication to the purpose of getting to the intersection before they got there. Luckily, they were moving as slow as i was so i had some time. I got to the intersection right before a dark colored pickup truck pulled up with a rolled down window. The woman in the passenger seat said “are you laura?” I shook my head emphatically, “yes!” She handed me a bag of towels. I showered them with a chorus of thank you’s. Then the man driving got out and placed a tall skinny box into my arms. It was the space heater. I said, “Thank you thank you thank you thank you so much!” They told me i was welcome. They maneuvered their way through the ice to get back straight on the road and headed on towards bandera while i picked my way carefully up the hill and climbed over the fence, as the padlock and chain on the gate were encased in ice and frozen shut. I carried my treasures back to the house and immediately began setting up our plan c with so much gratitude in my heart and thankfulness i didnt have to try to drive on the ice. I dont know how that couple did it. They were literally the only car engine i heard for probably the span of 6 or 7 hours. They must be from up north and know how or have special tires or something. All i know is that they dropped into my friend and i’s lives like angels sent from heaven. I didnt have to go an hour without before they showed up with a heater and towels and they were complete strangers that had never met either of us before. Good people.
I set both heaters up in the kitchen to combat the air coming through the gaping hole that was now the out of commission window unit. I asked grok if it was temporarily out of commission…if it would turn back on when the ice melted and grok thought it would. Pretty quickly i tripped the circuit. Both heaters could not be on the same circuit so i had only one choice. I had to sacrifice the toilet as a stand for the second heater and start using the home depot bucket as the toilet (the second heater was not like the first heater and the whole thing got hot so you couldnt move it with your hands once it was on).
So now i had a space heater in the front of the house pointed towards the back and a space heater in the back of the house pointed towards the front. It was a plan.
I used the extra towels and some duct tape to further block the cold air from coming through the window unit.
It worked. The temperature started rising again and then i even had to turn down the heater in the back of the house half way or a third of the way depending on the changing temperature outside because it would go above the set temperature. With both space heaters we were now maintaining the interior temperature nicely but given that the window unit was an open gaping hole in the window that the heaters had to work against, i enacted a “open the door minimally” policy which dictated that we all go out potty together. This was a mistake.
I opened the door, clad all in winter gear, one dog in my arms, and the other in tow. Everything went awry when i set Cashew down carefully on the ice and said to both dogs, “wait” which in dog language must have meant “mush!” because before i knew it i was on my ass. I went down hard as she took off full speed, got the wind knocked out of me, landed mostly straight on my left hip and butt cheek, and then got a good road rash on my left palm and forearm where i was trying to hold onto the ice as she dragged me. All the hollering and screaming finally got her attention and both dogs stopped and looked back at me as if to say “you good?” At which point i lost my shit sitting on the ice holding onto the edge of the nearby iced over fire pit, pulling back on the leash as she repeatedly tried to resume “mush”. I cried and babbled about how neither them nor the chickens had listened to me once throughout this whole storm and they should listen to me because i have good ideas, like dont mush, and dont eat chicken sh*t. But nobody listens to me and im so tired and so sick and so cold and i told you to wait and you didnt wait. I finished my loopy monologue and then sat on my butt and cried because i was in a ton of pain and i couldnt tell if it was “tissue bruised” pain or “hip fractured” pain and i guess i didnt want to know yet. I just needed a minute so i sat and cried. The dogs cared not. For whatever reason, my resident nurses that help me through every endometriosis day decided covid was not a thing that required nursing and they were total and utter brats throughout the entire storm. Cashew would pull me down on the ice a total of three times during winter storm Fern. So i ate it a total of 4 times. My butt is a kaleidoscope of blue, green, and purple, and apparently i have great bone density (good thing). Enjoy below some pictures of the yard and the dogs i was mad beyond words at.
I plead the fifth.Yey ice!Getting bad ideas…Still trying to hunt deer with my partially torn ACL and on leash connected to an extremely pissed and vocal mom advising me not to do it.Headed into the coldest nightRoad rash from the first ride on the ice using my butt as a sledYou can see Cashew pulling the sheet into the crate at the front there. I was so sick and miserable and they were so loud and bratty. A moment of beauty amidst so much misery.
Monday it got up to 41 briefly for an hour but it wasnt enough to even put a dent in the ice. As soon as it hit 41 it dipped back in the thirties and was freezing before no time. The ice remained, especially because the window unit was in the shade and the ice was on the inside. I had to call work and say i couldnt make it because the window unit still was encased in a block of ice internally. It was set to make it to 55 on tuesday so i told them i was confident i could make it in wednesday.
Some ice melted.
The chickens were cold hardy to 17 degrees so as soon as it was only getting into the twenties at night and not the teens, i put those chickens back outside, where all of us collectively wanted their ass*s to be. They were loud and i was too sick for all that racket and the poop flinging was about as charming as you are imagining it to be.
See, it looks like snow but its straight ice. One solid thing of unmovable ice. The interior of the window unit was finally nearly melted.
On tuesday around 1:40 pm i assessed that the ice block in the bottom of the window unit had melted enough to turn it on so i decided to try it. I turned it on, the blades whirred to life, and we were back in business with a functional window unit. Add “window unit roof on 4 elongated wooden legs” to the list of things i need to build before next winter. It needs to be covered but not have obstructed air flow. So, i scribbled a blue print on another envelope and i will take that to home depot some month after i pay taxes and recover from paying taxes. Sigh. I felt mighty blessed the thing wasnt broken, i’ll just say that. God certainly did provide every step of the way with the electricity being on, the couple in the truck on the way to bandera, and the window unit not being permanently busted. We were very blessed.
Over the wind and ice. Over Fern.Boy am i glad this thing turned on again.
Well, wednesday morning i was about an hour late to work. After eating it on the ice 4 times i just opened the door and said, “you know what, have at it, run jump, do what you’re gonna do. Just do it without me.” I let both dogs out off leash and went back in the house. I figured i was making reasonable time until i realized the only way out from the carport was backwards and backwards was a massive shady spot behind the carport where it was still a thick sheet of ice. I got the car stuck and couldnt angle the wheels at all because of the carport poles. I used kitty litter to make some texture to gain traction. Boy was it a mess when it melted but it got me off the ice, so, worth it. Once i finally got the car unstuck i realized the gate was still chained. Padlock thawed, car freed, i made my way to work on dry roads while the window unit kept the dogs warm at home. It was a grueling week. I was sick for a while and when i quit needing the decongestants and cough suppressants i was just exhausted, like beyond exhausted. I went to work saturday to make up for being gone tuesday. Sunday i was supposed to sleep but i didnt. I got laundry, dishes, cooking, and writing done. Im still no more rested and still full of snot. Winter storm Fern. Memorable. Nice meeting you. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, and though it’ll be a lovely year for the peach crop, kindly dont come back.
My coworker is an artist. He makes all different kinds of wood carvings and other art such as framed chicken wire with crystal beads hanging in the window. My other coworker makes t-shirts and my other coworker’s husband makes stained glass. My best friend makes pottery. I like to collect things made by people i know. Its enjoyable to me to have something in your house made by someone you consider a friend. A small life with a meaningful circle is a good way towards enjoyment in my opinion. You never appreciate a mass produced store bought good the same way you do someone’s handmade piece of art. well, theres this house down the road that the owners painted dark green one day. It went from looking like any other cluttered shabby house to looking so sleek and elegant. The whole house was so dark green it was almost black. But i dont know the folks so i never did learn the name of such a pretty color. Cut to a couple years later i’m sitting in the office and my coworker comes through with a picture of his latest art piece. It is a dark green wooden cross; exactly the same color as that repainted house down the road from me. It was so beautiful and i jumped at the chance to have a piece in the house created by another person i knew and considered a friend. In the photograph i could see a little ceramic heart with bluebonnets painted on pushed into the wood. It seemed so beautiful. I asked if i could buy one and my coworker agreed to make me one. About a week after Christmas he brought it to work and it was even better than i had imagined. He decided it needed a white dove and 3 ceramic hearts instead of 1. The cross became a permanent fixture in my tiny house and i am thrilled to have one more item created by someone i know. The color, as it turns out, is called “Hunter’s Green”. Isnt it beautiful?
Because of the dove the weight is not completely even on each side so it does hang crooked with the metal bit but it was no matter. I used the velcro picture hanger strips.
My friend had offered to come help me construct this chicken coop, and i was thinking that’d be a good idea in case someone needed to hold a piece in place or against another piece while the other one used the drill. However, the anxiety disorder/adhd combo is a very effective pairing for getting things done. When the hyper-focus strikes, you kind of just have to roll with it lest you lose the momentum and miss an opportunity. I woke up at 7 am one morning…temperature was forecasted to be above 40 at 11 am, and i decided this thing was getting done and it was getting done right now. So i built a chicken coop identical to the one my older chickens were staying in. I put two bags of gravel down and bought a bag of grass seed for when it stops freezing so the chickens can have a bit of grass in their pen before they scratch and demolish everything remotely green.
I bought 11 pavers but they were out of them and not getting more until january 22. After the new shipment arrived i would return and buy 26 at once, put them on sheets in the back of the suv, and drive the winding one lane roads home for an hour very carefully so as not to shift the cargo and destroy the car interior.
Honestly, as many years as i’ve had chickens now, i’ve never had a legit brooder box. This is partly because i’ve never timed the purchase of chicks with the weather in my area. Not a lot of planning ever went into it. I just purchased chicks when the older batch had died and i needed a replace a few chickens gone to respiratory illness or mosquito born diseases. A brooder box is for a very specific stage of the chickens’ lives. Once they have any amount of feathers instead of just fluff, they are too big for the box and must go outside…partly because of the size and partly because there is no lid. I’ve always raised chicks in an oversized stock tank meant to hold water for livestock. Well, i have now accumulated enough things in my one room tiny house that i cant fit the stock tank in here this winter. Most of this is because i have quite a few potted trees wintering in the house because i always think im going to get done more than i actually get done during the early part of the year. I have actually done planning this time around. Its been my dream ever since i knew they existed, to have chocolate orpingtons. The one feed store around here who carried them closed permanently, so, for a while i thought that dream had died. It is also tricky when looking for an out of state source of chocolate orpingtons because some actually look like and have traits of orpingtons, and others just appear to be some kind of brown chicken with no visible characteristics of the orpington. I love their size, their fluff, and their temperament. I wanted giant, fluffy, friendly chickens with feather free legs. I did find a hatchery in ohio that seemed to have chocolate orpingtons that were right up the alley of what i was looking for. So i reserved 12 and a free mystery chick due to arrive in mid march. Im not sure how many will expire in transit. I need 6 and the free mystery chick and however many others are still alive belong to my coworker for free. Chickens are real clique-ish in that if they didnt grow up together they peck each other to death so better to get too many than get too few because you cant just order again and add a couple…the slightly older chicks would kill the newbies simply because they were new. So, i bought this brooder box and i have plans (if nature should be willing to cooperate) to put them outside when they outgrow it and have the weather be sustainable for them (knock on wood). I do have an improvised mesh lid in the shed but it remains unclear how i plan to secure it. Basically, for the longest time, the other preparations were too big a job for the time i had available and the weather (cold and windy) so i worked on what i could….building the brooder box. It wasnt hard. The pieces were precut and you just fit them together. I did have to figure out how to get the water dispenser not to knock over, since every batch of chicks ive ever had has tried to commit suicide via dumping their only water source into the shavings the second i left for work and languishing in dehydration until supper. I bought a few of those velcro picture hanger things and had the intention of securing a couple to the cardboard box and a couple to the bottom of the water dispenser. However, i quickly found out the cardboard box didn’t weigh much and could be easily tipped. I took the rest of the bucket of clay i had from a previous project and fashioned a rectangle of clay to fit on the inside of the cardboard box and hold it in place. This seemed to work. Since there will originally be possibly as many as 13 chicks (you never know…they could all survive…anything could happen), i got a row feeder. Originally i was trying to set this thing up in the living room so i wouldnt have to sit sideways on the toilet for a month again and lose all the walking space in my very tiny tiny-house bathroom. However, the only shelf near an outlet that is securely fixed to the wall is in the bathroom, which sent me down a rabbit hole of trying to design a fire safe stand to hold the heat lamp above the brooder box so that i could take the image/blueprint to the guys and gal at home depot and figure out what supplies i needed to make it happen.
This was the rough draft. It started out with two legs, then went to 4, then involved saw horses and cement and in the end it got too complicated and i became too worried about it tipping and burning everything in a fire so i just moved the box into the bathroom and utilized the shelf, thus eliminating the need for invention and a ton of $ spent at home depot.
After 7 years of working in healthcare two hours away and homesteading as well ive accumulated a lot of things. I dont have time to clean it up or make the house look fancy. We’re surviving. I’ll do all that when i’m retired and the property is paid off. its cluttered and there’s not much room in here but we’re making it work and myself and the dogs are one step closer to being ready for our pending batch of baby chickens due to arrive in march. It’s strange to think that they arent born yet but we already have them scheduled to arrive. But, thats how a hatchery works. Mass production. I will purchase chick food closer to their arrival, so it will stay fresh and so there will be more room in the house for it after some of the trees go outdoors.
Life is full of surprises. You dont get to say “i’ll never miss another day of work” because you dont know what injury, car accident, or illness is in your future thats going to make that statement a promise you cant keep. Situations arise that must be handled. You dont get to choose whether or not they exist or whether or not you have to handle them. You can only choose how to handle them.
I feel like i am living in a constant state of damage control. Thus is homesteading. Let me explain: the dogs stay outside on the land while i go to work. Well, if i just left them in a crate in the house while i was gone they wouldnt have any chance to encounter porcupines, rabid animals, coyotes, mountain lions, cactus, poisonous mushrooms, poison ivy, or broken bottles people toss out of car windows…they’d be “safe”. And they’d also have a drastically lower quality life. They are enjoying nature all day while im working to make the money to buy their dog food. Because one day ill be retired, and ill work 2 days a week, and i wont have to be gone all the time, but they wont be there for that. Their lifespans are shorter than the race to my retirement. So, they ought to be able to enjoy what there is to enjoy now. Similarly, i never know what is going to be busted or in catastrophe from day to day. There’s wild hogs, field mice, snakes, armadillos….theres a lot of things to do damage to stuff while they’re going about their regular animal business. In the city, i wouldnt have that problem. I also wouldnt have the yard to dig up, the well to drink from, or the fruit trees to cage…. You can live a “safe” life in which a lot of things arent dictated by wildlife, chance, or weather…but you’re gonna miss a lot of stuff worth seeing.
I wouldnt trade this life. My goal is not to make catastrophes stop happening. My goal is to get better at expecting them without letting that make me jaded. My goal is to get so good at dealing with whatever disaster stands up and walks to the forefront of the day that i just matter of factly lay out what has to be done and set about doing it. No yelling. No crying. No asking God “why?”. Just… “welp, that’s happening now. Alrighty, step 1 is get ready for work. Step 2 is call the vet and see what day they can fit us in. Step 3 is call work from the parking lot and tell them you’ll come in saturday to make the day up. Step 4 is drive back home. Step 5 is pick dog up. Step 6 is drive to the vet…..Step 7 is weigh options and handle the problem at hand. Step 8 is get McDonalds because it has been a long day and cooking is not on the menu. Step 9 is drive doped up dog home and carry her up the steps into the house.
I think ive come to a point in life where im pretty good at matter of factly dealing with the crisis at hand. I dont raise my voice. I dont curse the heavens. I just set about the series of steps that must be undertaken until i’ve solved the problem the best i can.
To close the year out, Cashew tore her ACL and has mild hip dysplasia in both legs. She’s on sedatives currently because im supposed to “keep her still” for a minimum of two weeks at which point we’ll assess whether she needs a $5000.00 surgery where they bring in outside specialists to put a metal plate in to stabilize her knee joint. Even if it heals….she is likely to tear it the rest of the way through at some point in her life, at which point the surgery will be inevitable. So, i should begin saving now. It was suggested to me that i should just keep her in the house from now on, to protect her knee. Well, that would be a great solution if she was a king charles cavalier spaniel. She’s an australian shepherd. She’s 5,000 cats on coke in a trampoline gym. She’s pop rocks meets battery acid. she is the embodiment of the word “go”. The day i expect her to “stop”, i might as well get the shovel out and dig her a hole. She needed a sedative to lie still for an x-ray. Like, they had to full on sedate her intravenously. She is my wild child. She’s energy in the wind. She is all muscle and movement. I hadnt planned on replacing her knee, but then, no one does plan on these things. They’re life’s little surprises. Surprise.
For now i will try to keep her off the leg, hope she can heal enough to give me a chance to save up for her next encounter with the x-ray machine… the vet said if it heals i should be looking at it tearing fully within the next two years after the partial tear. It would just buy us some time.
It seems like 2025 has been a particularly dastardly year for most of my coworkers this go round. One coworker’s wife fell and cracked her knee cap in half after just getting over shattering her elbow. Another coworker’s entire family got flu, rsv, and covid back to back, the son got his braces knocked off in football and the orthodontist wouldnt redo them in a timely manner…thus losing all the progress made over time, then he had a bone infection and ended up with a picc line in middler school, another coworker’s son broke his arm, another coworker had a major surgery, another coworker got her identity stolen and had to freeze her credit, everyone including me had car trouble/repairs, one coworker hit a deer and totaled her car, another coworker got bit by his dog while breaking up a fight over the smell of blood while cleaning a deer, another coworker went into labor early due to preeclampsia and had to be air lifted to hospital, we had the historic flood in july, and another coworker’s husband ended up not able to digest most foods and suffering an unusual autoimmune response…. I guess what im saying is: 2025 has been hard. I hope 2026 is better.
Cashew has been briefed on the plan. I will be carrying her up and down steps for 2 weeks and all pee breaks will be supervised on leash. She will be crated on “chill pills” while im at work, and the objective here is mainly to “rest”. It went over pretty well. She has no idea what i just said but enjoys my amusing chatter because it means im paying attention to her. Wish us luck. We’re going to try to start 2026 without a fully torn ACL. Cheers.
