I Love To Go A Gardening
Growing Our Life in Northern Michigan
Released
EJ and I celebrated Thanksgiving Day alone, but we had a Second Thanksgiving with our son and his girlfriend last Saturday (December 9th). Both Thanksgivings were very enjoyable. Having a first and second Thanksgiving made me feel very Hobbit-ish. A few days after Second Thanksgiving, EJ struggled with his blood pressure going a bit high, but we were more careful with diet and I think it’s more acceptable now.
We celebrated Hanukkah this week by lighting the candles. It’s such a beautiful, peaceful experience.
I’ve been debating with myself for the last few weeks about when I should let the Mama Hen and her two now-not-so-small chicks leave their safe “nursery shelter” in the coop and join the adult flock. It’s not easy letting chicks leave the nest and join the adult world, but sooner or later they must grow up–whether the “chicks” are human or poultry. Finally, I figured they were big enough and I permanently opened the door to their shelter so they could go in or out as they please. It always takes chicks a day or two to gather enough courage to venture out. Then there is another day or so in which they run back to safety when they encounter the older chickens pecking them to ensure they understand their rank in society. Gradually, they find the courage to go outside..
Yesterday evening when I went to shut the flock in their coop for the night, the adults were all flying up to their roosting spots and I saw one of the young ones on the floor looking slightly confused. She reminded me of a kid who is insecure on his first day at a new school. I checked their shelter and noticed that the Mama and her other chick were inside so I picked up the unsure chick and put her inside with them. It won’t be long before the youngsters gain their confidence.
Tuesday night EJ slept in his lazy-boy in the living room because his back was causing him a lot of pain. He suffers chronic back pain from an old injury. EJ told me later that a few hours after Hannah and I went to bed, our cat Little Bear came into the living room carrying a mouse. EJ said that Little Bear looked at him with pleading eyes that said “What I do now? What do I do?” EJ told him, “You have to kill it.” Little Bear seemed upset at the thought. He dropped the mouse and it ran under a cabinet and out the side where he caught it again. “You have to kill it,” EJ said. Meanwhile, Hannah became aware of the situation and wanted out of the bedroom. I thought she needed to go outside so I opened the door. Little Bear dropped the mouse and Hannah streaked across the floor, caught it, and ate it, chewing it like she was bubble gum. Yuck. It always makes EJ and me feel a bit like vomiting. At least we didn’t see the mouse’s tail hanging out of her mouth. THAT makes it even grosser. This is the second time in a week that the cats have caught and released a mouse that Hannah caught and ate.
There was a meteorite shower on Wednesday night. We get up by 4-5 a.m. every morning so it’s difficult for us to stay up late. We set our alarm to wake us up at midnight and then we went out and watched the night sky for a while. We saw maybe two dozen meteorites before we headed back in to bed. We also heard an owl hooting in the distance. It was very beautiful and peaceful.
Breathings Of My Heart
There are thoughts I’ve been thinking for a very long time, but I’ve struggled to find the words to express them. I tend to see topics from many different angles, each connected to many other thoughts, so writing something complicated can feel impossible at times. Recently, however, someone shared something on social media that reminded me of these thoughts so I decided to try again to share them. Here goes:
I love the differences of people. I think people’s differences are like a box of colored crayons; each brings a different sort of beauty. I like people’s quirks–to me, that’s what makes each person unique. Often a person’s differences help me to grow, to see something in a different way. I love learning about different countries, customs and traditions. I love that people express themselves in different creative ways.
I have friends who enjoy different forms of creativity: photography, music, painting, among others. I don’t have friends who dance, and I’m absolutely not a dancer, but for several years I enjoyed the series, “So You Think You Can Dance.” I thought it was fun learning about different forms of dance–even the ones that weren’t exactly my favorite. I still enjoy watching videos of different forms of dancing. I feel honored when people share their creativity–whether with me, personally, or on social media. When they share their creativity, I feel they are sharing a piece of themselves. They are letting me see the world through their lens, their music, their dance, their writing. They are letting me feel what they are feeling or thinking. It’s an awesome gift.
I am an INFJ personality type, which is a rare and complicated type of introvert. Briefly: We INFJs are both logical and emotional. We love people but need solitude. We are deep thinkers. We can see through many different perspectives. We love nature and animals. We are very empathetic. We hate cruelty, deception, and manipulation. We love honesty and genuineness. Most of us express ourselves through writing.
True to type, I love to write. I don’t write to get published or gain “likes.” I just like to write. In person, I can be quiet and don’t always share my deepest thoughts, especially when I don’t comfortable or safe with a person. However, my thoughts and emotions come pouring out in writing. My fingers speak when my voice doesn’t. I like painting scenes with words instead of paint. Nonwriters could sum something up in one sentence, but I prefer to tell a story of what led up to a situation, what happened, what I felt and/or how I struggled, what the result was, and what I learned through it. Or I like trying to describe a bit of beauty or joy so that another person can maybe get a sip of it.
We live in a world where many people are threatened and offended by differences and rather than learn to tolerate or celebrate them, they demand that others change to meet their approval. Some do it deliberately to abusively destroy or gain control of others. Others do it unintentionally, without awareness of what they are doing. But, in effect, if anyone tries to pressure others to meet his (or her) approval, he is actually attemping to mold them into an image of himself. He is trying to overwrite the other person with himself. I don’t like hurting people because I feel life batters people enough without me adding to it. However, there’s so many people being offended by so many things that there’s no way to get through life without stepping on someone’s toes. If you try to please everyone all the time, you will soon find yourself emptied of everything that makes you uniquely you. I’ve struggled to find the balance between compassionately caring about others and conforming to what others demand at the expense of myself.
I feel as if all my life I have had to battle to be who I am, to not let myself be erased, overwritten, remade into a replicate of someone else. My next oldest sister, for example, has always criticized anything about me that she didn’t like, which was just about everything. However, anything she liked about me, she claimed credit for. She didn’t like my sense of humor, which is different than hers. (Hers is more goofy like Lucille Ball while I enjoy word-plays and finding humor in life like Jerry Seinfeld.) However, if I joked in a way she approved, she claimed that she was rubbing off on me. If she didn’t like a thought/opinion I shared then, ugh, that was all me. But if she approved of it, she claimed my thoughts had been influenced by her. She criticized everything I said on social media. She hated my previous blog. When she discovered it, she started telling me that I should write about this and not that, that I should say something in such-and-such a way, and why do I even write a blog? I should keep my writing private and share it with no one. She made me feel as if I were a lump of ugly clay and that I gained value only when/if I was like her. Her criticism grew worse over time until I felt I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t write. In fact, I deleted that blog to get away from her. When I started this blog, I decided that I will not ever again delete my blog because someone doesn’t like it.
To be honest, when people become overly critical, I feel like asking sarcasticly: “So, should I fill out a form, in triplicate, detailing what I want to say, do, or laugh about so that you can pre-approve it?” Sometimes I want to exclaim, “Stop writing my lines for me!” I’m capable of saying what I want to say in the way that I want to say it. Even if I had a lot in common with “you,” I still am ME, not YOU. Can you imagine if someone said to others about their talents what my sister has said to me? Like this:
- “Your music is not the type I like so you shouldn’t play it. In fact, you should only play your music privately, in a sound-proof room, where no one else can hear it.”
- You don’t take photos of MY favorite things. Why are you even bothering to share your photos on social media? If you HAVE to take photos, you should keep them private. Put them in boxes in your closet or attic or something.”
- You didn’t paint in the style I prefer and aren’t using MY favorite colors. Seriously, why do you insist on painting? Why are you sharing your art with others? Keep your artwork for your own private enjoyment.”
- I don’t like your dancing. You should stop. Or do it where no one can see you.
I don’t feel that way about others’ creativity at all. I also don’t consider people’s creative expressions to be about me. People may share pieces of themselves with me, but it’s about them–what THEY see, feel, think, struggle with. They are allowing me a glimpse into their world. The belief that everything someone does has to meet with MY approval, with MY taste, is extremely self-centered. Likewise, to be told that I should not write as I do or, if I must write, that I should not share it, is very hurtful and discouraging. Although I am determined to be myself, sometimes it’s a struggle to write about deep, vulnerable things that others might find ugly or worthless. Writing is risky because a writer makes himself so vulnerable. As Patrick McManus wrote
“Writers live with fear. Some writers cannot deal with the fear, and so they quit or refuse to publish. In order to write, you must either ignore the fear or trick it into leaving you alone. The fear is very sly, though and hard to trick. The fear in writing comes from exposing your thoughts, your emotions, your experiences, your ideas, your talent, your intelligence and ultimately your self to public scrutiny and possible scorn. The fear is by no means groundless. You have opened yourself up to the possibility of public humiliations…I sometimes wonder if perhaps the greatest novel ever written isn’t gathering dust in some filing cabinet somewhere, simply because its author could not overcome the fear of having it published.”
I write with a variety of purposes: On social media I sometimes share my thoughts or opinions about what is happening in the world. I don’t share these things on my blog because I think sometimes people need a break from the chaos in the world. Also, I have some PTSD from abuse and writing about good things in my world helps me stay grounded. However, I have occasionally written about the things I struggle with–about abuse, about anxiety. Sometimes in writing about the “ugly” stuggles, I can gain understanding and clarity for myself. Sometimes I write about struggles because I hope it can help others going through similar things. I’ve tried at times to keep my writings private, safe. I even have a very private blog in which I write only for myself. But I rarely write in it because for some reason, I need to know that what I write is “out there.” It’s like I need to reach my hand out and feel there might be another hand reaching back. I think it’s an INFJ thing.
To non-writers, or to people who only share happy things, writing about the ugly struggles can appear to be…well, ugly, and unnecessary. But I’ve been comforted and strengthened by people who have risked sharing their stories of pain and struggle. And, over the years, I’ve had people say to me, “I came to you because I know you’ve had similar experiences and you would understand…” They know because I risked telling them. Once a man at church came up to me and gave me a huge hug. I was startled because I didn’t know him well. He told that he came home from work one day that week and found his wife sitting on the floor sobbing. In her hand was a printed copy of something I had written that touched her deeply, that was relevant to something she had suffered, that caused her to have an emotional break-through. He thanked me profusely. Things like that make writing worth the risk.
Here are some quotes about writing that I love because they express how and why I write:
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
~ William Wordsworth
“Write about the emotions you fear the most.”
~ Laurie Halse Anderson
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
~ Robert Frost
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
~ Joan Didion
“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.” ~ Stephen King
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
~Maya Angelou
“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”
~ Anne Frank
When there are too many words
inside of my head, I cannot sleep.
They rattle around making all sorts of noise
Until I pluck them out of my mind
and put them on paper.
My voice refuses to be silenced
by a downy pillow.
~Christy Ann Martine
As the Apostle Paul said in Romans 12, God has given us different abilities and gifts. One can’t say to another that their gift is bad or unnecessary. I believe that we have to be very careful that we aren’t discouraging others from using their gifts. Just because it’s not how YOU express yourself, doesn’t mean it’s not the way someone else does. Just because it doesn’t reach YOU, don’t mean it doesn’t reach someone else.
I think that relationships can’t survive where there is too much criticism. I cannot BE where there is no room to breathe.
“Do not hold your breath for anyone,
Do not wish your lungs to be still,
It may delay the cracks from spreading,
But eventually they will.
Sometimes to keep yourself together
You must allow yourself to leave,
Even if breaking your own heart
Is what it takes to let you breathe.”
~ Erin Hanson
Thanksgivings
It looks as if winter has finally arrived. It’s been snowing all day–not heavily, but steadily–and we are expecting snow for several more days. I got out my next-level winter footwear. I’ve never been one who cares all that much for fancy shoes and clothes, but I do have some for different types of weather. In the summer I have sneakers that I can slip on to go to the coop in the summer, muck shoes for going to the coop when it’s muddy, and muck boots to wear in the winter. When I take Hannah for a walk down the driveway, I have nicer sneakers in the summer, hiking boots when there’s just a little snow, and heavier, taller boots where there is more snow. I have nice sneakers and nice boots to wear when I go to town. I have similar clothing: No coat in the summer (duh), and then increasingly wear warmer sweatshirts, sweaters, jackets, and coats as the weather gets colder. I also have a light chore coat for cool weather and a heavy chore coat for cold winter weather. LOL.
A couple of weeks ago I moved the Mama Hen and her two babies from the doghouse to the bigger fancy coop, both of which are in the shed that is the main coop. I was prepared for it to be a difficult move, but it went very easily: I grabbed a chick and put it in the fancy coop, carried Mama over, and then grabbed the second chick. Easy peasy. Now the chicks will have more room to run around as they grow. None of the main flock is outside today. They aren’t particularly fond of wintry weather.
Thursday was Thanksgiving Day here in the USA. I hope everyone had a pleasant holiday. I know the holidays can be a difficult time of year for many people–because of loneliness, grief, or family conflict.
Our Thanksgiving was very nice. Knowing that we’d be alone, EJ’s work friend invited us to his home for Thanksgiving but EJ politely declined. I always loved my large family’s holiday gatherings and I really missed them when I became the black sheep of the family (long story). However, as we have grown older, EJ and I have deeply appreciated a quiet, peaceful day without drama or stress. EJ and I divide up the preparation for our meal so it’s not too much work for either of us. EJ always cooks the turkey and this year he also made a pumpkin and mincemeat pie. He also baked the squash, which he had grown in our garden. I made homemade rolls, fixed the stuffing, and did all the cleanup afterward. Friday we ate more of the leftovers. We felt as if we had a food hangover–too full and sluggish–and we took naps. EJ often naps in his lazy-boy chair, but I nap in our bed. Hannah always joins me, going under the blankets and curling up next to me. Little Bear (our cat) follows us in and curls up under my chin. It’s very cozy.
Our son works on a Great Lakes bulk carrier. During the shipping season, he works for a month and then gets two weeks off before he heads back again. He has been on the ship through most of November and will disembark around December 7th. The ship’s cook prepared a Thanksgiving meal for the crew–the day after because they were busy on Thanksgiving day–but it’s not the same as having it at home so we are going to have a second Thanksgiving with him and his girlfriend on December 9. That will be fun.
Our son occasionally calls while he’s on the ship and sends us photos and videos. I really enjoy his stories of life aboard the ship. He called last night and had us laughing with his tales–although some of them are funny because we know everything turned out well. Work on a ship is hard and dangerous–although there is beauty as well.
In a chat group I interact in at Telegram, the admin asked last about people’s Thanksgiving plans. I told about our first and second Thanksgiving plans, and about my son working on the ship. I shared some of the lighter moments–such as my son waving as his ship sailed by a webcam and his description of watching a meteorite shower in the middle of the Great Lakes where there was nothing to dim or block the sight. This eventually morphed into a discussion of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald that occurred on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975. All 29 members of the crew were lost. I think the tale might have been forgotten, just one of many shipwrecks, except that Gordon LIghtfoot wrote a haunting ballad about it, with descriptions so vivid that it feels as if you were there. There are many videos of the song, but my favorite is this one, which shows actual footage of the ship, news, radio communications, and names, photos, ages, and jobs of the crew members who were lost.
Some of the people had this to say in the comments under this video:
“I was stationed at Sault Ste. Marie, MI in the U.S. Coast Guard. I was on duty that night in Captain of the Port. The winds that day were unreal, 90 miles an hour. 35 foot seas. The captain of the Arthur M. Anderson, another lake freighter, radioed that he had lost sight of the Fitzgerald, said that it should have passed within a mile of him. He said that a wave crest came up and when it went down they saw nothing, no more lights. I remember the Officer of the Day saying, “I think we lost a ship” This kind of thing didn’t happen. I feel a sadness as I write this, remembering. It brings a tear to my eye.”
“This song isn’t only a tribute to the 29 sailors but to men of industry who’ve paid an ultimate price in pursuit of livelihood. Our country was built and is being maintained by men like these and we lose some from time to time. Songs like this are very cathartic when remembering refinery workers lost to explosions, miners who are trapped and road workers struck by vehicles to name a few. We all expect to come home from work each day and enjoy the fruits of our labors. This song pays homage to anyone lost at work.”
“Showed this today to my 7/8 grade choir as a part of history of this date, and they sat SILENT through the entire thing. Was pretty cool to see that Gordon Lightfoot did that 45 years later to a bunch of middle schoolers!!!”
Another version I like is the reaction of an Aussie as he listens to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald for the first time. He has a lot of questions, many of which people answer in the comments section. You can hear it here: An Australian Reacts to the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzerald.
In the chat group discussion, I commented that a year or so ago our son worked on the sister-ship of the Edmund Fitzgerald. A couple of weeks ago, our son said his ship had a drill in which the crew had to try on their survival suits. Lake Superior is so cold that without the survival suits, a person will last maybe 5 minutes if they go into the water. With the survival suits, they will last around 20 minutes, which still isn’t much time to be rescued. Someone in the chat group responded, “When I hear [Gordon Lightfoot] ask where the love of God goes when the waves turn minutes to hours? It breaks my heart as a former coast guardsman boat and later SAR [Search and Rescue] aircrew, we know how precious that time is to get to those in peril, more times have we never found survivors or they had perished before we got there.”
I’ve been praying for the safety of the ships and crew, but the man’s comment brought in a whole new depth and perspective so now I am also praying for the safety of the rescuers.
Practically Chicken
After weeks of rain, with a few snowflakes mixed in now and then, it looks as if the weather is going to be quite nice this week with daytime highs climbing into the mid-50s by Wednesday. There’s no rain in the forecast so maybe the chicken pen will dry out and I won’t sink into the muck whenever I walk out to the coop.
Our two little chicks are growing up. Except for their downy heads, they now have mostly feathers so they almost resemble tiny adults. We won’t know for several more weeks if they are male or female. It’s impossible at this point to tell their gender because they all look the same. The chicks are still obeying Mama and they back away when I open the door to their shelter to replenish their food and water.
On one of EJ’s days off last week, we went shopping at the thrift stores, which is one of our favorite things to do because it’s like treasure hunting AND we can buy good quality items much more cheaply than we could buy them new from retail stores. We always look for books, of course. An extra bedroom in our house is actually our home library/office. Except for the space where we have a desk and file cabinets, all the walls are lined with bookshelves full of books. A person can never have enough books. EJ and I often comment that we are very rich because we own books. The closet is filled with my yarn and craft supplies.
On this last trip to the thrift stores, I bought several pairs of jeans. The ONLY beneficial thing about high inflation is that we can no longer afford to buy snack foods and with EJ’s mini-stroke, we are being even more careful about our diet. This means that we are losing weight. I haven’t had a bathroom scale in years (because they are depressing) but I can tell I am losing weight from the way that my clothes fit. Jeans that were beginning to fit snugly are now very baggy. I have very few jeans the next size down, one of which is too ripped to wear in public and which I only wear when I have to do a very dirty job such as clean out the coop. I thought it was time to get more jeans. It’s not easy for me to find jeans at a thrift store because I am 5’4″ and regular-length jeans are too long for me but I found FOUR pairs of jeans that fit. I’m all set now.
Over the years EJ and I have gone through difficult times and have had to learn to live frugally. It’s been difficult at times, but God has taken care of us. For example, one year EJ’s company downstate gave employees a choice between being laid off or continuing to work at a one-third reduction in pay. EJ’s co-workers thought he was crazy when he chose to continue working because they were making as much on unemployment as he was working. However, EJ wanted to keep our health insurance. It would have been difficult enough to make it on reduced pay but during that time, our furnace died, our car died, and our roof started leaking badly. It was amazing how God took care of these needs with many “small” miracles. We had a woodstove to heat our house and we were able to buy slab wood from the local sawmill. The owner would put us at the top of the list whenever we needed wood. Sometimes, when we had only enough wood left for one day, a trailer full of wood would mysteriously appear. A friend lent us their extra vehicle. Also, our roof was re-shingled for the amount that we had in our savings account, which wasn’t much and was far less than a roof should have cost. After that year, EJ’s company went back to paying EJ’s full pay and, for some reason, they decided to pay him back pay as well. We’ve had many experiences like that. I’m thankful, as times are tough and likely will get tougher, that we had those experiences of learning to live frugally and experiencing God taking care of us.
Grocery shopping is really difficult because prices are so shockingly high. We winced when we see the prices of food. We almost can’t endure putting items in our cart. Yikes. But this is November, Thanksgiving is approaching, and turkeys are on sale. During this month we can get a whole turkey for much, much cheaper than chicken breasts and thighs. We can buy a turkey at around 55 cents per pound instead of chicken at several dollars per pound. Turkey is practically chicken and can be used in any chicken recipe. Last week we cooked a turkey that had been in our chest freezer since last year. When it was cooked, I cut up the meat, separated it into freezer bags, and put most of the bags in the freezer. I take out a bag whenever I need poultry for a meal.
The store limited customers to buying one turkey per visit so last week EJ stopped at the store on his way home from work every evening and bought one turkey, which we put in our big chest freezer. We now have six turkeys in the freezer and one in the fridge that we will cook soon and separate into bags for the freezer. That’s not counting the one we will buy closer to Thanksgiving Day for our feast. In difficult times, a person has to find creative ways to be frugal.
We kind of “accidentally” started buying extra turkeys in 2020. With all the shortages that year, we weren’t sure turkeys would be available so we bought a turkey at full price in early November. A week or so later, stores started having awesome sales on turkeys and we couldn’t resist buying another, and another, ending up with four. One we cooked for Thanksgiving and the others we stored in our freezer and cooked occasionally throughout the year. Those “accidental” extra turkeys caused us to think outside the box: turkeys were not “only” for Thanksgiving Dinner. After that, we bought extra turkeys every November although not so many as this year.
Apparently, we aren’t the only ones with the idea of buying extra turkeys in November. EJ read on the internet of others do the same.
I thought Hannah Joy was adjusting to setting the clock back but apparently I was wrong. Last week, at the time she used to eat (5 p.m. which is now 4 p.m. with the change in time), I was busy fixing supper and Hannah was well-behaved as she patiently waited. But yesterday, one of EJ’s days off, I was not busy when she expected to be fed (4 p.m.) and she had a meltdown. I swear that she sometimes acts like a tired, cranky toddler. She grew increasingly vocal, increasingly loud, and increasingly shrill when I didn’t feed her RIGHT THIS MINUTE because she was STARVING TO DEATH! She pawed at me and passive-aggressively got right in my personal space. She kept it up for an hour. I refused to give in. I am not going to feed her at 4 p.m. because then it would be more difficult for her to wait until breakfast at 7 a.m. In previous years I had originally fed her at 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. but last Spring when we set the clocks ahead I messed up my calculations and ended up feeding her at 5 p.m. I couldn’t remember if 6 p.m. old time was 7 p.m. or 5 p.m. new time. I think I’m going to renew my efforts to feed her at the same time of day regardless of what the clock says. I did tell Hannah yesterday that she could always write a letter to the editor–or the governor–with demands that they stop messing with time. It would make it easier for all of us.
Rant Time
The clocks were all set back an hour last night, which has put me in a cranky mood. I loathe the biannual clock resetting farce, which I think is totally nonsensical and was designed by sadistic, psychopathic politicians to disrupt life. I’ve often heard the rationalization for resetting the clocks as “It originally helped conserve candles” or “It helps out the farmers.” But it’s been many generations since we depended on candles to light our homes and, as EJ says, “Tractors have had headlights for many years, and cows are milked at the same time every day regardless of what the clocks say.” So let’s just leave the cotton-pickin’ clocks alone!
Now I have to readjust our routines. It’s difficult enough for us humans to get used to the change of time, but it’s more difficult for animals–especially for Hannah Joy, who thrives on routine. We feed her twice a day–at about 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. She’s mostly ok with her breakfast time being a little flexible if I happen to sleep a little later. She knows she’s fed after I take my shower. However, she expects supper to be exactly on time and she begins to complain if I’m late. I used to try to recalculate her supper time when the clocks changed so that she was fed at the same time of day even if the clocks said differently. But it got so confusing–is the old 5 p.m. now the new 6 p.m. or 4 p.m.?– that I finally gave up and just tried to feed her at 5 p.m. according to the clock throughout the year. That means that for a few days each year, until she adjusts, her evening meal is going to be an hour late, which means she’s going to be in a cranky mood. Join the club, Hannah dear.
Someone at Telegram shared this: “Did you know that the Sunshine Act, which would end all this clock
switching nonsense and keep us on the Summer clock, has been pending for years? 88% of the people surveyed want to quit screwing with the clock. Many states have already passed an end to Daylight Saving but it’s against federal law for them to actually stop. Such a small thing, and a popular one. Seems like something that cuts across all party and political leanings. Yet, still, we change our clocks and lose tens of millions of hours of productivity and quality of life while our internal clocks adjust.”
Rant time is over.
On August 1st we opened the gate and let the chickens into the garden. We always let them in between harvest and planting when nothing is growing. They enjoy meandering through the garden, gleaning whatever is leftover.
With colder weather, I’ve begun shutting Theo in with the chickens at night. The chickens’ body heat helps warm the coop so I thought it would be better for Theo than the big unheated garage–especially since he has no feline friends to cuddle with. The last time I contacted the cat rescue lady she said that she planned to bring the three cats we plan to adopt the “next week.” But that was early October. We’ve been waiting for the cats since mid-summer and I’ve about given up hope that we will ever get them. I’m at the point of “If she brings them she does. If she doesn’t, she doesn’t.” Meanwhile, I take Theo into the cozy coop at night. Besides being warmer, he can go hunting if any rodent is foolish enough to come out of hiding. Theo gets along with the chickens ok, but I let him out in the morning before the chickens are fully awake and moving about.
I’ve begun giving the chickens their winter dole of cracked corn. The corn raises the chickens’ body heat as it’s digested, which also helps warm the coop. We have two roosters–our alpha rooster is named Sassy and the other one is Corey. Last year I noticed that Sassy kept chasing poor Corey away from the corn so after I scattered the corn for the flock, I took a covert handful and sprinkled it in an out-of-the-way spot for Corey. He got so he used to wait for me to give him his secret portion. I was surprised when Corey waited for me to again bring him his covert handful since the chickens haven’t had corn since it warmed up last May. He remembered all these months. I think animals are a lot smarter than most people realize.
Our little chicks are getting larger. They are still very downey, but they are beginning to get their feathers. One of the chicks became bold and would rush the door to their shelter when I opened it to replenish their food and water. Two days in a row the chick quickly rushed the door and actually escaped into the larger coop area. I had to scramble to grab it and put it back in while it chirped in alarm. I don’t know if the adult chickens would harm it, but it is certainly small enough to get through the fence if it got outside. It would make a tasty nugget for a predator if it didn’t first disappear into the mud. I contemplated moving the little family into the larger fancy coop but the third time I started to open the door to their shelter, the Mama Hen started clucking angrily with ruffled feathers. I feared she was angry with me, thinking I had threatened her young one. However, it appears she was scolding her chicks because since then she’s been calm and the chicks have kept away from the door when I open it. She’s a very good Mama Hen. She teaches her young ones to behave.
Deer season begins on November 15. EJ usually goes hunting for a few days in the 100-acre woods that his friend’s family owns, but he decided to hunt here at home this year to save money. Every day when I walk Hannah Joy to the mailbox, I see flattened grass where deer have bedded down for the night. Occasionally, EJ sees the deer in the morning as he drives off to work. He’s even seen the Monarch of the Glen, which is what we call any massive deer with large antlers.
With hunting season nearing, we’ve begun wearing hunter’s orange hats when we go for walks and I dress Hannah in her hunter’s orange coat so she isn’t mistaken for a deer. The coat covers the length of her body. Besides the velcro and buckles that hold it in place on the front part of her body, it had elastic straps to go around her back legs so that it wouldn’t slide off her rump. You can see the bands and elastic straps in this photo from a previous year:
Hannah didn’t like the elastic straps so last week I cut them off and sewed on another strap to go under her belly back of the center of her body. At first, I sewed on a velcro strap because it would be faster to fasten and take off, but the velcro wasn’t strong enough and kept unfastening. I removed the velcro and instead sewed on a strap with buckles. It’s working fine. She looks lovely in her hunter’s orange coat.
Early last week we got a little snow–enough to cover the ground. Then the temperatures rose a bit (into the mid- and upper-40s) and all the snow melted. Tomorrow more rain is in the forecast. Our trees are now all bare except for a few that are stubbornly hanging on to their leaves.
Factory Reset
I’ve written a few times before that in the autumn, the trees in our Enchanted Forest surround us with various shades of gold to such an extent that it feels as if the air itself is golden. I’ve tried to take photos but I’ve been unsuccessful. I think that some forms of beauty cannot be captured in photos. However, I finally was able to take a photo that does pretty good at showing what I’m trying to describe. I used no filters or anything. Isn’t it beautiful?
The day after I took this photo, many leaves fell and the trees became noticeably barer.
The temperatures have been very warm–in the low 60s–but we are still getting rain, rain, rain. The chicken yard is saturated with water and I sink deeply into the muck with every step. I told EJ yesterday evening that if it continues to rain, I’m going to need waders. I’m surprised the chickens don’t sink into the muck, one by one, and disappear forever. I checked the forecast and it’s going to rain until Sunday evening…when the temperature plunges and the rain switches over to snow. It will soon be time to get out my warmest winter coats, hats, mittens, and boots.
Yesterday morning after we returned from EJ’s gym session at the hospital, I went out to the coop to remove the unhatched eggs from the maternity ward/nursery. I expected it to be a very dirty job so I wore my oldest ripped jeans, thinking that a hazmat suit might have been nice. I took a cat carrier with me in case I needed to put the Mama hen and her two chicks in it while I cleaned their area. I also grabbed an empty poultry feed bag from the garage as I headed out. Once in the coop, I laid the feed bag on the floor to kneel on because I didn’t want to risk kneeling in chicken poop. I actually didn’t need the cat carrier because Mama and her chicks moved aside as I reached far in for the unhatched eggs that were buried in the straw. Once I had retrieved the eggs, I put clean bedding in the shelter and replenished their food and water. The job only took a couple minutes and I didn’t even get dirty–although I put the jeans in the laundry anyway, just on principle.
Once each week for the last two or three weeks, I’ve been finding large dog treats in our mailbox. I thought the letter carrier was leaving it for Hannah, which was sweet, so I made a thank you card and put a (human) treat inside. On our way to EJ’s gym session yesterday, we paused to put it in our mailbox. When we returned from the gym, we noticed a dog treat wedged in our neighbor’s trash receptacle–the one the trash pick-up people provide. Then, suddenly, I realized that the trash people had left the dog treats and our neighbor who doesn’t have a dog had been putting them in our mailbox for Hannah. Our neighbor had tried to tell me last week that he was doing that. He shouted it to me while he was standing a ways off in his driveway. I couldn’t actually hear him–only a couple words like “trash” and “mailbox.” I didn’t want to go closer to him to better understand him because Hannah is such a handful around unfamiliar people and I knew the neighbor had once been bitten by a dog similar to her. So I just smiled, waved, and shouted back “OK” and moved on. I wonder what our letter carrier thought when she found the thank you note and treat? LOL. I feel rather embarrassed.
My phone had been increasingly announcing that it was running out of storage. Apparently, this is a common problem with Android phones. When I got that message in the past, I researched how to gain more storage, which alleviated the problem quite a bit. But this time I kept watching my storage steadily decrease even though I had deleted app caches and junk files, had all the apps I could move to my SD card along with my photos, had my photos backed up to the cloud, deleted almost all my apps, and even used the 9900 code to delete the log/cat files. At best I gained only a few MB and my storage continued to decrease until my phone screeched that storage was 100% full and my phone might not work properly. The next step was to do a factory reset to return the state of the phone to what it was like when it was new. I live-chatted with the cellphone company and the technician verified that I had done everything possible, a factory reset was needed, and doing so would resolve my storage problems. After making sure that doing a reset would not totally screw up my phone, after making sure my data was backed up, I took a deep breath and did the deed. It wasn’t that bad. I lost very little data. I now have all my favorite apps re-installed and still have approximately 15GB of storage available. It was a huge success and I forgive my phone for being so troublesome.
My favorite birthday gift is making memories and we spend the whole month of October enjoying the beautiful autumn, which is why we declare that we celebrate my birthday for the whole month. As October draws to a close, I’ve been thinking of other wonderful intangible gifts EJ has given me. One that comes to mind is the gift of “being angry.” That doesn’t sound like much of a gift, but it is. I remember as a child that when I wanted to confront a sibling about something, my Mom would say, “Let it go. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t make it worse.” I don’t get angry often but unresolved hurts/problems would remain hidden where they would slowly accumulate into a bigger problem that when finally expressed would be explosive. I learned that expressing anger was hurtful and I hate hurting people–or being hurt when someone explodes at me. But one day EJ told me that he would prefer that I express my anger, resolve the issues, and move on. We rarely get angry and we are still careful about causing unnecessary damage when we are, but it’s very freeing and healing to be able to say “You hurt me when you did this” and have the other say, “Oh, I’m sorry! I’ll try not to do that again.” Or, conversely, to recognize that it was ME that was in the wrong because I misunderstood what the other said or did. Whether he is wrong or I am, the issue is addressed, resolved, forgiven, and forgotten. That is a gift.
I don’t enjoy it, but I don’t mind if someone confronts me about something. However, I find it very frustrating when a person confronts me but refuses to allow me to also confront him/her. I’m thinking of one of my sisters who, even as an adult, used to occasionally get mad at me and completely rip me to shreds. She vehemently listed all the faults, failures, and sins she felt I had committed and then she’d finish with, “Now that we’ve addressed this, let’s promise to let it go and never mention it again.” Fine, only SHE was the only one who aired her grievances. She never gave me an opportunity to offer a response, an explanation, or a defense. Finally, after many years of “letting it go and never mentioning it again,” I told her that I loved her very much but we BOTH needed to have an opportunity to air grievances because otherwise the issue is not really dealt with. It remains hidden, festers, and eventually would ruin our friendship, which I didn’t want to happen–and which eventually did. It hurts me deeply to be unable to address and resolve issues. Unresolved issues erode and ruin friendships. Relationships grow stronger when both are free to confront and clear up hurts and misunderstandings.
I think it’s very similar to having a phone whose internal memory is being clogged with hidden issues which eventually causes the phone to work improperly. Sometimes we need to delete caches, junk files, and other storage stealers–and maybe even do a factory reset–in our lives as well as our phones.
Just something I’m thinking about.
Autumn Gold
We’ve had days of rain. Weeks of rain. Perhaps as much as a month of rain. Once in a while, we get a break from the rain. Like today. But then it’s back to rain, rain, and more rain.
The chickens scratch up the dirt in their pen and the rain turns the dirt into a morass of smelly muck that sucks at my muck shoes. When not covered with mud, my muck shoes are a cheerful yellow with drawings of chickens on them. I try to scrap the mud off the shoes before I enter the house with limited success. I used to take the shoes off in the hallway, but Hannah Joy likes to lick the boots so I switched to taking them off in the pantry/storage room where she can’t get to them. The pantry door is next to the garage door so I actually track in less mud. I’m certain the term “boot-licker” must come from dogs licking boots. It’s a disgusting habit.
The temperature is chilly enough now that we keep our furnace on and we wear our coats whenever we go outside, although it hasn’t yet gotten cold enough for us to wear our warmest winter coats and mittens. I thought that the days of warmer temperatures were over until next Spring. However, later this week the temperatures are forecasted to rise into the 60s. Michigan weather is temperamental.
We are now into the peak color of autumn, which is breathtakingly beautiful. The trees of our Enchanted Forest tend to be various shades of gold. In the early morning and evenings, the gold of the trees turns the air itself golden, which is beautiful. I tried to take a photo of it, but photos pale in comparison to the true beauty of the trees. I love autumn.
Our garden is pretty much finished for the year. I think we still have some squash to harvest and then we can let the chickens back into the garden to glean whatever is left. We have some green tomatoes, but they will never ripen so we are leaving those also.
A couple days ago we disconnected the garden hoses so we could put them away. This means that I now have to lug water for the chickens in a watering can. It’s easier to use the hose, of course, but it’s not that big of a chore. Even if it was a huge chore, it has to be done so I shrug and do it.
We ended up with two little chicks. There were three more eggs in the nest, but the hen wasn’t consistently sitting on them so I think they didn’t make it. I keep the hen and the eggs in the maternity ward for their safety. I don’t know if the other chickens would hurt then and I know they would be a tasty morsel for predators. I’ll let them all out when the chicks are bigger. It sure is fun to watch the little ones. I took this video a week ago. For some reason, it’s slightly distorted, but it’s good enough. You can hear Theo meowing in the background. He often follows me into the coop when I go out to do my chores
Once each week for about 2-3 weeks, we’ve been finding a large treat in our mailbox–obviously from the letter carrier who delivers our mail. We’ve never been left treats before so I wonder if we got a new letter carrier? Or maybe the old one just spotted Hannah one day. Our driveway is very long so we never really see who delivers our mail. Hannah loves the treats, and it’s so kind of the letter carrier to leave them, that I made a card “from Hannah” with a treat inside. We will leave it in the mailbox on Thursday, which is the day we find the treats. That way we can be pretty certain that the same letter carrier is getting the letter and treat.
After dark yesterday evening I took Hannah outside for the final time before bedtime. As soon as we got outside, she yanked her leash because there was a large possum near the herb garden. I was so surprised that I screamed a bit. Not really a scream as much as a yelp of exclamation. EJ said that he heard me scream (yelp) and saw me suddenly disappear (as Hannah yanked me forward). He thought I had fallen so he rushed out of his chair to help me. LOL.
EJ continues to go to exercise at the hospital gym twice a week. I go with him because he likes the company and we often do errands after his session since we are in town. I would walk around the little track while at the gym, but the staff told EJ that they can’t let me unless I have permission from my doctor. I haven’t had a doctor in eight years so <shrug>. When we first moved up here, I researched doctors and had a New Patient Appointment with one with high reviews. She was so awful–interrupting me before I could answer her questions, wanting to give me a bunch of tests to try to find if I had any issues when I didn’t have any complaints, and writing a prescription for dangerous drugs over my objections–that I haven’t been back to a doctor since. I’ve been very healthy so <shrug>. At the hospital gym, I sit at a table drinking coffee while I read a book or use my phone to study Hebrew or read the news until EJ is finished exercising. I feel a bit like a party pooper because everyone else is exercising, but <shrug>.
Hello World
The world is getting more and more insane. I’ve been paying attention but I need a break so I’m stepping back from the news for a bit to focus on good things.
We have chicks!!!!!
I think a chicken egg hatches in 21 days. I couldn’t remember exactly when I suspected our hen was broody, but I thought it was surely longer than 21 days. Just when I gave up hope and was going to let the hen out of her “maternity ward,” I thought I heard a soft chirp-chirp-chirp. I didn’t see anything, though, and wondered if it had been my imagination. Then, finally, a few days ago, I saw a chick! It is very tiny. EJ exclaimed that it’s about the size of a golf ball. A day or so later, I saw TWO chicks! There are about three more eggs in the nest. It would be cool if they also hatched although the hen isn’t sitting on them as constantly as she was. We shall see.
We’ve bought chicks from the farm store several times, but we’ve never before had a hen hatch her own eggs. It’s a unique experience watching the hen with her chicks. I don’t see the chicks often because they hide under their Mama. So sweet. It’s nice to see new life in the midst of world chaos.
As you know, my son is working as a deckhand on a bulk carrier on the Great Lakes. People enjoy watching ships and there are live stream cameras set up in various places around the Great Lakes to enable people to watch them in real time. Each separate camera is aired on a YouTube channel. This enables EJ and I to watch our son’s ship as it passes the cameras. People chat at YouTube as they watch the ships. Admins operate the cameras and share info about each ship going by.
The other day, my son messaged that he was on bow watch at the front of the ship. I told him to wave as his ship passed one of the cameras. Then in chat I asked the admin if he could zoom in the camera because our son was on bow watch. He happily agreed and we saw our son waving. I took a screenshot. and was able to record that part of the livestream using my phone to video the computer screen. My son waving was also mentioned on the boat-watching Facebook page. LOL.
So then at the next camera/channel a short time later, someone mentioned that they had seen a guy waving from the “doghouse” and they wondered if he was still there. I replied, “That’s my son. I told him to wave as he went by. He’s still there.” At the next camera that the ship passed–the next day–the admin zoomed in specifically to search for my son on board, even without me asking. We got to watch him work on the ship. Before trees blocked our view, we saw him prepare to swing over the side of the ship in the bosun chair to moor it while they waited their turn through the locks. Here is an example of a deckhand swinging down in a bosun chair in this video that I found at Youtube.
So it appears that JJ is becoming a bit well-known. And, of course, the admins are beginning to know that we, his parents, watch for him. There is more of a connection when you know someone–even indirectly–who is working on a ship. I tell JJ, “People are watching for you!” We think it’s rather funny and it’s fun. Technology that lets us watch our son as his ship passes in real time is amazing.
Transition
Every year at this season, we try to see how long we can endure before we turn on the furnace. The longer we can endure, the less propane we will use, which means that we will save money on fuel. Usually I get tempted to turn on the furnace sometime in late September. However, this September was quite warm and I didn’t even think of turning on the furnace until yesterday when the temperatures plunged from 80 to the 40s. The temperature is forecasted to remain in the 40s until Thursday when it will rise to 55. We turned the furnace on last night but only very low. We want the furnace to come on if the temperature drops into the 30s during the night because we don’t want to risk our pipes freezing.
It rained yesterday and is supposed to rain most of this week. The forecast had said that we could also have a chance of snow, but then the meteorologists changed it back to all rain.
We’ve been seeing multiple flocks of geese flying overhead as they prepare to fly south for the winter. It feels as if we are in the transition time between summer and winter.
Last Wednesday EJ had his first full exercise session at the hospital gym. There is a large athletic center in the same town as this hospital, but I think the hospital gym feels better, feels friendlier. The others using the hospital gym are also older geezers who are all there for their health. There is more of a sense of camaraderie rather than competition. The staff is supportive and has both athletic and medical training. Plus, if there’s a medical issue, we are already at the hospital. After his exercise session, EJ said that he felt really good. He was supposed to also exercise on Thursday but he had to work. (He normally works four 10-hour shifts, getting Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays off.) He’s contemplating working this Thursday as well to build up our meager savings because eventually we are going to start getting hospital bills.
Friday was my birthday. Years ago I decided that the best birthday gifts are memories, not things, so we started going on long drives to enjoy the beautiful autumn colors for my birthday, sometimes stopping in at cider mills or other unexpected places. We couldn’t always celebrate my birthday on the actual day so we chose the nearest weekend or a day when we knew autumn colors were at their peak. Because my birthday celebration was spread out, eventually the whole month of October became filled with birthday celebrations. Now, anything good and pleasant in October is “my birthday gift.” Going on a beautiful drive is my birthday gift. Stopping at a thrift store is my birthday gift. Seeing geese flying overhead in a v formation is my birthday gift. Picking vegetables from the garden is my birthday gift. Everything is a gift. It’s rather fun to consider everything a gift. We tried to have a month of birthday celebration for EJ, but his birthday is in March when the weather is still cold and snowy. Instead, since we both enjoy making memories together, October has become his honorary birthday month.
For my birthday this year, we went to a thrift store, which we love to do. We also bought a small carton of Moomer’s ice cream, which is the most delicious ice cream ever. Since EJ has to carefully watch his diet, he bought himself a carton of yogurt.
Today I took the last two straw bales from the garage into the coop. I hadn’t put them in before because I didn’t want to block the second little chicken door. However, with cooler weather, I no longer open that door.
Our new barn cats are supposed to be delivered this Thursday or Friday. There’s been a long delay in getting the cats to us because of some unexpected problems–including a tornado that destroyed the home of one of the cat foster moms. I had originally thought to get only one cat as a friend for Theo, but then I decided to get two. The cat rescue lady told me that the two cats she planned to bring us were named Sammy and Prissy. Then she told me that Prissy had a close friend named Tom. EJ said, “We can’t break up a friendship” so we decided to also adopt him. Often I rename pets that we adopt, but I like these names well enough to keep them. Years ago we had a cat named Tom so EJ suggested that to avoid using the same name, we could call our new cat Tom-Too or maybe Tom-Two. I’m not sure which spelling EJ would prefer, but the pronunciation is the same either way.
Ups and Downs
September has felt very autumnish with cooler temperatures during both the day and the night. Even on days that reach 80 degrees, the mornings start out cool so a jacket feels comfortable. I dress in layers so I can shed jackets or sweatshirts over the course of the day. At this time of year, however, 80 degrees doesn’t feel as hot as in the summer months.
EJ’s spirits had been good mostly. Luke, his physical therapist, gave him a few exercises to help with his balance but after two sessions, he said he wouldn’t need to return. So he took EJ to the next room to sign up for the gym membership at the hospital. The benefits of exercising at the hospital gym are that they customize the exercises for EJ and monitor his health as he exercises AND if there is a problem, he’s already at the hospital. I’m continuing to look for and experiment with new recipes. Two of them we really liked. One–a butternut squash soup–we gave a thumbs down to. It was too sweet and not filling enough.
EJ got a little discouraged yesterday. He has to take his blood pressure several times a day to try to get it in the “normal” range. Yesterday his blood pressure was very high and he ended up coming home from work after a few hours because he didn’t feel well. Today his blood pressure is good and he’s feeling much better. Because his blood pressure is up and down, he can’t always manage to work a full day yet. I think he’s worked about four full days so far. EJ’s sister said that her husband was extremely tired for a month after his stroke a few years ago.
I’ve peeled and froze three-fourths of a bushel of apples so far. I listen to an audiobook while I work so it’s quite enjoyable to sit at the kitchen table working as Hannah Joy sits underneath and gobbles up any peels that fall to the floor. I still have to do some pears that our friend gave us, but I’m not sure what to do with them yet. I’ve never dealt with pears before. I’ve also seeded a few more heads of sunflowers. Today I’m thinking about cutting up bell peppers from our garden to freeze and also making butter.
Our one hen is still sitting on eggs in her nesting box. Our nesting boxes are actually kitty litter boxes filled with straw. They are the hens’ favorite places to lay their eggs. The boxes are on top of one of the sturdy wooden doghouses that are inside the 12×10 shed that is THE COOP. Chickens like to roost and nest on the roofs of the little houses inside THE COOP. EJ was concerned that if chicks hatched, they’d fall off the doghouse. I was concerned that the hen wasn’t leaving the nest to eat and drink. So yesterday evening, when the chickens were beginning to drowsily settle down for the night, I put a jacket over the hen’s nesting box so she wouldn’t peck me and moved the box with her inside into the other doghouse. It’s the same doghouse I called “hospice” when I put White Feather in so she could die in peace. Now I am calling it “the Maternity Ward.” I put food and water inside for the hen and shut the door. If she is broody and we do get chicks, they will be safe until they are old enough to join the adults.
Our son is heading back to work on his Great Lakes bulk carrier. I’ve been learning a lot about bulk carriers–both from his stories and from videos I’ve found on YouTube (I’ve shared several of the links on my Everything Links page.) I’ve always enjoyed learning about various jobs–they are always more complicated and interesting than you might think. I’m also learning about trains, airplanes, and other things but I now have a personal interest in ships. I’ve learned about what the ships look like inside, what different crew members do, how ships are loaded and unloaded, how holds are cleaned, what crew quarters look like, and about the foods that cooks serve crew members. Our son tells us the more personal stories of life aboard ship.
Our son has said that cooks are rotated between ships. Some cooks are bad, some are good. The cook last month didn’t go out of his way to cook good meals or accommodate the crew. He had set an hour time frame for meals and if someone didn’t make it in time, too bad, he had to scrounge. Our son said that the cook on one ship he was on served macaroni and cheese for every meal for several weeks and the crew members got bound up and couldn’t poop. However, one cook was once a strong contender on the cooking show “Iron Chef.” He went out of his way to provide very delicious meals for the crew. I believe our son said the Iron Chef cook is scheduled to be the cook on his ship this month.
Our son said that at some ports, it’s possible for family members to come aboard his ship, get a tour, and eat with the crew. That sounded awesome! I’d love to do it! Except there is no elevator or helicopter to get us aboard. Instead, we’d have to climb up a long ladder on the side of the ship. I thought our son said it was an 80-foot climb; EJ thought he said it was less. But regardless, it was a long high climb and we declared “Thanks, but no thanks.” I’m sure neither EJ or I could handle the height or have the strength and energy to handle the tiring climb. Maybe if we were younger. Sadly, we have to pass.
We have a rule in our home that we can’t get to work until the coffee pot is empty. I’ve just emptied it so I guess it’s time to get to work.
Broody?
Things seem to be calming down a bit as EJ and I adjust to life after his mini-stroke. He still gets easily tired, but I assume it will take time to get more or less back to normal. He has worked a couple full days.
Once EJ is through with his physical therapy, he hopes to join a gym. There is one located at the hospital where staff monitor participants’ health as they exercise. Memberships are inexpensive and the benefit is that if something goes wrong, a person is already at the hospital.
We’ve eaten basically healthy, but we need to make changes. We are going to follow the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) Diet. I’ve been searching the Internet for recipes and many of them look very delicious. I’ve begun printing some of the recipes out and organizing them in a binder.
I’ve been keeping busy harvesting produce from our gardens. I’ve been cutting up apples from our fruit trees to freeze, cutting up and freezing or drying vegetables from EJ’s garden, and drying and grinding herbs from my garden. I’ve also been deseeding sunflowers. It’s a never-ending task because as soon as I get one batch of whatever I’m working on completed, more of them have ripened. This is a good problem to have, however.
Yesterday I heard Sassy, our alpha rooster, sounding his Defcon 1 alarm so I went out to make sure the chickens were ok. He was the only one standing outside ready to defend his flock. All the other chickens were hiding out in the coop where, no doubt, Sassy had sent them for safety. I looked around but didn’t see any threats, although Sassy obviously was aware of a threat. It took him a long time to calm down. I wondered if he had seen a coyote or fox nearby.
Chickens are actually very interesting critters. I’ve read that chickens can recognize 100 different people, they have around 25 different “words,” and they adopt their humans into their flock. When a rooster is mean it’s because he believes he outranks the humans. I’ve always nipped in the bud any show of aggressiveness so my chickens settle down, understanding their place and that I am the boss. Roosters keep watch over the flock and protect it with their lives. When I’ve handed Sassy a treat, I’ve seen him take it, drop it on the ground, and call the hens over to eat it. He’s a real gentleman.
In the seven years I’ve had chickens, I’ve only had one broody hen–several years ago. We didn’t want chicks then, so I kept taking the hen away from her nest until she got over it. I suspect I’ve got another broody hen. My chickens are all mild-mannered, but this hen is staying in her nesting box and is in a foul mood (haha, pun intended). Whenever I try to reach into her box, she puffs herself up and then pecks at me. Hard. She acts like a woman with PMS. LOL. If she is actually broody, we will let her hatch her eggs even though it seems like the wrong time of the year for chicks. I took a photo of her today (below) and also this video. I shone a flashlight so you could see her better because even though it’s not dark inside the coop, it is a bit dim for videos. You can see her glare at me, puff up, and peck.
Returning
I think that almost the most difficult part of a difficult time is trying to return to everyday life. During the crisis, a person (or family) is in survival mode. He runs on high alert and finds the energy to do what needs to be done at the moment. After the crisis is over, energy levels crash. It’s like borrowing energy with a credit card.
I found that true when my son had cancer in 2013-2014. We dredged up energy to help him battle cancer. We had the energy to take him to his medical appointments, chemotherapy, and surgery. However, when the treatments were finished, we crashed for about a year, having no energy for anything. Then we dredged up energy to move north, and when we were finished moving, we crashed again. After that, I’ve found that we crash more easily after crises. We’ve been so tired since EJ’s return home from the hospital that we’ve been going to bed by 8 p.m.
Not every form of tiredness is physical. Sometimes it’s also mental and emotional.
Since EJ’s return home from the hospital, we’ve had to process his mini-stroke and its effect on our lives. I think both of us feel EJ–and our life–is more vulnerable. What can he do or not do? What can he eat or not eat? Will this happen again? Will it be worse? When our son had cancer, it really hit us that bad things can shake our world. A few years ago, I began calling these world-shaking crises “life-quakes” because, like earthquakes, they shake and shape the landscape of our lives.
EJ returned to work on Friday. He said everyone warmly welcomed him back. He managed to work 7 hours of his 10-hour shift and then came home. Saturday was his normal day off. He’s back to work today. We shall see how long he lasts today. I’m assuming that his energy levels will gradually increase.
I fell behind and have been trying to catch up on all the work that didn’t get done while in crisis mode. Life continues whether we are here or not. I’ve been doing a few loads of laundry. I’ve been putting them in the dryer instead of the clothesline because it’s less work. The grass was long from days of rain; I mowed it. The day I mowed was nicely cool so I didn’t feel overheated by the task. I raked in the gullies that had formed in our driveway by heavy rain. EJ and I picked some tomatoes and I blanched, peeled, cut up, and froze them. We picked ripe peppers and I cut them up. I freeze bell peppers and dehydrate and grind hot peppers. I picked some herbs and dried them. They need to be ground up. I cut off the heads of some sunflowers, removed the seeds, and stored them to give to the wild birds this winter. Already more tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and sunflowers are ripening and need to be harvested and processed again.
We have six apple trees which EJ and I have planted over the years since moving here. We planted several different varieties. EJ keeps track of when each variety is ready to be harvested because they get ripe at slightly different times–some earlier and some later. The gala apples, my favorite, were ready to be harvested this weekend. We got a half-bushel basket full. Our friend visited yesterday and brought us half-bushels of apples and pears. I need to cut them up. I’m contemplating what we should do with them after that: freeze them? can them? make them into applesauce? make them into apple and/or pear butter? Definitely keep some for eating fresh. I love cutting up apples, melting peanut butter, and dipping the apples in the melted peanut butter.
That’s Little Bear photo-bombing. LOL.
I’m trying to decide which task to do first today. I think I will harvest some herbs because it’s best to do it in the mornings. Then I will process them. Next, grind the already-dried herbs. Then blanch, dice, and cut up the tomatoes I picked yesterday evening. If I have time/energy, I will start on the apples or pears.
Message Received
When I got home from the hospital last Thursday evening, I got on Google Maps to consider my route to the hospital the next day. I told Google Maps my origin and destination and then moved its highlighted route to change to the street I wanted to take. Then I examined the readjusted route and noted various streets that I could take if I missed the marked route. The next morning, I told VIKI, our GPS, my destination, diverted to the street I wanted to take, and she actually easily got me to the hospital without me getting lost.
`When I reached EJ’s hospital room, he was already dressed in his going-home clothes because they had cleared him for discharge. However, we had a 3 1/2 hour wait for the discharge papers with instructions to be sent up to his room. I don’t know why everything takes so long to get done in hospitals. Fortunately, our son had messaged me before I left home that his ship would reach the Soo Locks at Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, at around 9 a.m. that morning. Some people enjoy ship-watching (including us) and they can do so on several Youtube channels that livestream ships going through various canals, rivers, and ports. When I got to EJ’s hospital room, I quickly got the appropriate Youtube channel up on my phone and we watched our son’s ship go through the Soo Locks while we waited for EJ’s discharge papers. The next day–Saturday–we watched our son’s ship as it headed into Duluth. There are many webcams along the shore in Duluth so we were able follow his ship’s progress in real time as it entered the canal and traveled to the dock where it began to unload. We saw deckhands working on the ship, but they were far enough away that we weren’t quite sure which was our son. However, he was disembarking in Duluth so we knew the guy getting into the taxi was him. The livestreams don’t save the footage but later our son sent us a video someone had taken of his ship as it went through the canal. I paused the video and took a screenshot of our son, which I marked below. I verified with him that, yes, this was him. That was cool.
When EJ’s discharge papers finally arrived, a nurse reviewed the information with us. EJ’s stroke was very minor and it didn’t seem to affect him very seriously, although it really scared us. He was told that he could drive and return to work with no restrictions as soon as he felt up to it. He decided to wait until after his physical therapy session and a follow-up appointment with his doctor, both of which were today. They agreed with what the staff at the hospital had said. EJ is scheduled for more physical therapy sessions for the next month just to make sure he’s doing ok and to make adjustments to his life. He plans to return to work on Friday.
As I wrote in my last blog post, “Being lost to me feels like standing at one of those ‘You are here’ kiosks. But it’s as if the whole area is erased and the only clear place is where I am at currently. The streets are all unfamiliar, I don’t know how or where they connect, and I don’t know exactly where I am or how to get where I want to be. It’s sort of like this:
Over the last week, I’ve pondered that during times of crisis, the feeling of lostness seems to increase in severity and size and engulf other areas of my life. In fact, the feeling of lostness seems to be very tied to anxiety and panic attacks, all of which are symptoms of PTSD. It’s not just soldiers who suffer from PTSD. Anyone who suffers a trauma, including abuse, accidents, etc., can suffer from PTSD. Our nephew, who is a veteran, once told us that “PTSD is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation.” I think my PTSD is caused by the emotional abuse by our families, our son’s battle with cancer in 2013-2014, and other difficult experiences in our lives.
Helena Knowlton wrote an excellent article on her website called, How Trauma Affects our Brain, Body, Feelings, Thoughts, and Healing. In the article, she explained that
“God made our bodies to be amazing. He created automatic body systems to help us in emergencies. If you step off a curb and almost get hit by a car, the alarm bells ring in your brain, sending a message to your nervous system to go on high alert, and then lots of things happen in your body to give you speed, strength, and focus to get yourself out of danger….This system was designed to calm down as soon as the danger is over. During abuse, the alarm bells are ringing constantly and this causes dysregulation. The calming, regulating part of our nervous system takes a back seat to our survival system, and our body gets stuck on high alert. This changes our brain and physiology and causes the symptoms of chronic, complex PTSD. Trauma isn’t just about what happened in the past. It doesn’t end when we leave the abuse. It’s the imprint that the abuse left on your brain and body.” After living with abuse, we experience the world with a changed nervous system. It takes much longer to return to baseline, it spikes quickly, and stress becomes harder and harder to handle. “It’s like our nervous system becomes a TSA agent and every circumstance or person is a potential terrorist. And when we are accused or rejected by friends, family and the church, this ingrains threat even more deeply.”
A few of the many symptoms of unresolved trauma that Knowlton lists are:
~ Anxiety, a chronic sense of panic
~ Feeling like your nervous system is on high alert
~ Feeling overwhelmed by life
~ Feeling unsafe even after you are out of the abuse
~ Having a hard time thinking, concentrating, making decisions
~ Trouble sleeping
~ Being exhausted
~ Feeling lost…
Knowlton continues “These symptoms aren’t originating in your mind or your feelings or your choices.
They don’t come from a character flaw or moral failing. They aren’t from sin! [Or lack of faith.] They originate in your body and your brain that’s been dysregulated by the trauma of abuse.
Last night I had trouble sleeping because I was worried about EJ. The possibility of losing him, the ordeal of getting to the hospital, the stress of hospitals and medical procedures, the exhaustion we felt trying to handle everything when we got home, etc., has caused panic attacks for the last week. Also, I’m anxious about hospital bills. So I fervently asked God for help. I reminded Him that He promised to supply our needs, He promised to do more than we can ask, think, or imagine, and He promised that He will be “a very present help in the time of trouble.” I told Him that I needed Him to reassure me that He will keep His promises and be very present NOW to help us.
And then…
Wait. First, let me give some background.
I love quotes and I have another blog that’s a database full of quotes I like. I can schedule quotes ahead of time so I save quotes that I come across as I browse the internet in a file and once a week or so I sit down and schedule 2-3 weeks of quotes at a time so that one is posted each day. They also are posted each day on this blog (in the menu on the right side of the screen). Today’s quote, which I randomly scheduled several weeks ago, “just happened” to be a direct answer to my nighttime prayer that God would reassure me that He would keep His promises and help us:
God can be trusted to keep His promises.
It can’t get much clearer than that.
When It Rains, It Pours
There is a saying that goes “When it rains, it pours,” and that has been true for us both literally and figuratively this week.
At 6:30 a.m. yesterday, EJ messaged me that he had felt very dizzy at work so the wife of the owner of his company was driving him to the hospital. She is a retired nurse who now works at the company. Since we only have one vehicle, which was still at work, I didn’t have a way to get to the hospital. Our nearest friend lives two hours away, which wasn’t helpful in this situation. The wife asked her husband if someone from the company could take me to the hospital, but with her and EJ gone they couldn’t spare anyone. So instead she arranged for her mother to take me, which was unbelievably gracious. Actually, the mother dropped me off at the company and I drove our truck to the hospital. The wife stayed with EJ until I reached our truck which wasn’t all that far from the hospital.
Thank goodness for GPS because I have a horrendous sense of direction. I can get lost ANYWHERE. So the GPS got me to the hospital, which is actually a complex of several buildings, but there it ended. It didn’t show me where the entrance of the hospital was or how to traverse the halls of the hospital. I wasn’t sure where the front entrance was located. From the parking lot, I saw an entrance that didn’t look like the primary entrance. It had a sign that said “Patient Drop Off” so I thought it might lead to the ER room or something. I eventually learned that that was the correct door. I wondered how I’d ever find my way to EJ through the twists and turns of hospital corridors, but the person at the information desk helped me. Seriously, I need an app to help me find my way into and through buildings and not just near them.
I found my way to EJ in the Emergency Department. He told me that he had had a CT Scan, and the results were good, but since he was still very dizzy, they were going to admit him for more tests and observations. They suspected he had had a mini-stroke. We waited for several hours until they took us to his hospital room in the Heart Center of the hospital. It was actually a nice room with a beautiful view out the window of a huge castle-like building that had once been an asylum and was now a bunch of little shops. EJ’s room is on the upper floor of the hospital and as we look out the windows, we mostly see forest spread out beneath us. A person wouldn’t even really know that there was a city under the trees with busy streets lined with stores. Here’s a photo of the view out the window that I took yesterday.
In addition to anxiety about EJ, I had to drive home through pouring rain. All summer long we haven’t had all that much rain, but yesterday it rained all day–and not just a light rain, but a deluge. We’ve heard that some areas got 5 inches or more. There were flash flood warnings everywhere. Fun fact: Not only am I severely directionally challenged, but I don’t enjoy driving in a downpour where I can’t see far ahead. It’s especially difficult if I have to drive through a rainy night because lights reflect on the wet road. Furthermore, there was construction on my route home. EJ’s co-worker told him that one evening it took him four hours to drive home. So we thought it best for me to go home before rush hour traffic and before the roads flooded.
I didn’t have trouble with traffic jams but the drive home was hellish because the rain-laden clouds made the day gloomy and dark. There were periods of downpour which made the road difficult to see. Some roads were already beginning to flood with water creeping from the sides and splooshing as cars drove through. I was exhausted and stressed and I almost got in an accident. When I got home, my son called and I burst into tears. He would have come to help, but he’s out somewhere on the Great Lakes on a ship. He would have sent his girlfriend to help, but she has no transportation right now because the transmission in their car is ruined. My son is working on the ship to earn money to buy a new car.
Through the evening, there were occasional periods of booming thunder. I thought, “All I need to complete this day is for us to lose power.” Thankfully, we didn’t.
I chatted with EJ’s one nice sister after I got home and she said she’d asked her husband if they could drive over the next morning (a 2+ hour drive) to take me to the hospital because they have a very high truck that can easily get through flood waters. I felt relief at the thought of help. I didn’t find out until this morning that her husband said “no” because he didn’t want to leave their dog home alone all day. Our families are emotionally abusive and I’ve learned through the years that I can never count on them to help when we need them. Not ever. I can’t even count on the few (one) nice family to help. I muttered to myself “family totally sucks” as I burst into tears. I’m tired of always having to be strong without support.
Then I wiped away my tears, got into the truck, and made my way to the hospital. I got lost. The route home is very uncomplicated but the way the GPS wants to take me TO the hospital involves an intersection that is really quite tricky to navigate and people easily get sucked off in an unintended direction. I didn’t feel up to dealing with it. So after checking with Google Maps before I left home, I turned down a road that was easier and more familiar. That began a battle with the GPS, whom we call VIKI after the evil computer in the movie I, Robot. I was hoping that if I turned down the familiar road, VIKI would recalculate the route to the hospital. However, I suspected that VIKI kept trying to get me turned back toward the tricky intersection. So I kept half ignoring her and half following her instructions until I got thoroughly confused. At one point, I pulled to the side of a quiet street and called EJ. He didn’t answer because there were medical people in his room doing tests so I left a message, “I’m freaking LOST!” Being lost to me feels like standing at one of those “You are here” kiosks. But it’s as if the whole area is erased and the only clear place is where I am at currently. The streets are all unfamiliar, I don’t know how or where they connect, and I don’t know where I am or how to get where I want to be. I started driving again, and it turned out that I wasn’t far from the hospital. VIKI finally guided me in and I made it to EJ’s room.
While I was trying to drive to the hospital, EJ underwent a bunch of tests. We don’t know the results of many of the tests but we know that EJ had a mini-stroke and that there are signs that this isn’t his first. Periodically someone would come into the room to test EJ. One asked him a bunch of questions to test his memory. One took him on a walk down the hall to test his balance. He did very well on the memory test and has only a slight problem with his balance. He will be scheduled for physical therapy later at a closer easier-to-drive-to hospital. Everyone said that they’d approve EJ’s discharge. We had expected EJ to be discharged this morning, but we waited and waited and waited through the day and heard nothing. I asked a few nurses if they had any idea if/when he’d be discharged. They said they had no way of knowing. They said there is probably a wait for all the test results to get in. Also we’d have to wait for the doctor, who only seems to visit in the mornings. I didn’t know whether to stay or leave. We just knew that the moment I left EJ would be discharged. Finally, I left at 6 pm because I had to drive home before dark and I also had to get Hannah Joy cared for and shut the chickens safely in their coop before the night-time predators came out.
I hated leaving EJ behind and he is bummed that he wasn’t discharged today. I told him I’ll take him home the moment he is discharged.
We are both concerned about how we will pay medical bills. We are already stretched to the limit financially, pinching every penny. We don’t know when EJ can return to work, which means no income. I’ve saved as much as we can, but it’s not much. And we’ve got other concerns.
We’ve had a deluge of rain and also a deluge of trouble.
When it rains, it pours.
Days of Labor
Yesterday was Labor Day, which is a federal holiday in the USA to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the work and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States. Many people celebrate with cookouts–a last hurrah before settling down to autumn and winter. We celebrated by laboring. As EJ often says, “We worked hard and got a lot done.”
Last Thursday EJ mowed the lawn while I blanched, diced, and froze a large bowl of garden tomatoes that he had harvested. Sometimes EJ likes to can them, but when he can’t get to them in a timely manner, I freeze them. In our family, we have a policy that whichever one of us has a desire to do something is the one in charge of doing it. He/she becomes the “job boss” while the other provides “hero support” if needed. So EJ cans while I freeze/dry herbs and vegetables. He bakes bread in the bread machine while I cook most of the meals. He takes care of the vegetable garden, while I take care of the herb garden. I do the housework while EJ does maintenance and repairs. Things like that. I usually mow the lawn but sometimes EJ does it.
After the tomatoes and lawn were done, we went grocery shopping. With prices so high, we have created a “priority list” for shopping. Gone are the days when we could make a large list for extensive shopping. We now determine how much money we can spend–sometimes little, sometimes a little more–and then we buy only the highest priority items that fit within our budget. Everything else is kept on the list for another time.
During the holiday weekend, in addition to my normal chores of laundry, cooking, and watering the garden, I peeled, cut up, blanched, and bagged carrots for the freezer. Hannah Joy took up her position under the table so she could eat any carrot peel or piece that fell to the floor. She’s our cleanup crew and she takes her responsibility seriously. I also went out and carefully picked a bowl of nettles–using tongs so I didn’t touch the prickly/burning stems–which I then put into the dehydrator and later ground up and stored to use later for tea. Nettle tea has a lot of medicinal uses. I also picked some of our sunflowers and we sat at the patio table on the deck and took the seeds from the heads. I sorted through them to select the best for next year’s planting and then stored the rest for the wild birds to eat this winter. We also had to pick out the worms. I am going to have to look up how to naturally prevent worms in sunflowers. We don’t use toxic herbicides on our plants.
We’ve had several weeks of very autumnish weather, with cooler days and nights. The days were so cool, especially in the mornings, that I often wore jackets. Even when the temps warmed up in the afternoon, there was an underlying coolness in the air that felt nice. The nights were so cool (low 40s) that I put a heavier blanket on the bed. This week, however, the temperatures soared into the low 90s during the day. It was so hot yesterday that when we went out to shut the chickens in their coop in the evening, we were horrified to see that the vegetable plants were wilted. We quickly watered them and they revived quite a bit. I watered them extensively this morning to help them make it through today’s hot temperatures. There is a possibility of rain in the forecast for the next few days so I won’t have to water the gardens. Unless, of course, the rain misses us, which it often does.
The weekend was so busy that today I am taking it easy. Mostly. Which is good because the temperature remained so warm last night (low 70s) that I didn’t sleep well. Fortunately and happily, the temperatures will begin cooling again tomorrow.
On Friday I emailed the rescue woman we are adopting two barn cats from because I hadn’t heard from her in a week or two. I know she is busy and has to rearrange her schedule to deliver the cats to us, but I just wanted to keep in touch and maybe get an estimated day for delivery. The woman has several “foster families” that take care of the many cats she has rescued and is trying to place in homes. She emailed me that a recent tornado had destroyed the home of one of the foster moms and she’s been busy trying to re-rescue the missing cats. She sent me photos of the destruction. Wow. I vaguely knew there had been severe weather downstate, but I hadn’t realized how damaging the storms were. One of the photos showed that the 70-year-old foster mom’s home–it looked like a trailer or modular home–was upside down on top of a car. My heart goes out to her and I am praying for her because I was told that she didn’t have house insurance. I reassured the rescue woman that we can wait patiently for our cats while she deals with this problem. (FYI: our cats aren’t among those that were living at this home.) I merely alerted the rescue woman that our driveway becomes impassable without 4-wheel drive when winter hits.
Our son is currently working on a Great Lakes bulk carrier as a deckhand. It’s hard and dangerous work but the pay is excellent so whenever he needs extra money, he signs on for a month or so. EJ and I enjoy tracking his ship via marinetraffic.com as it travels around the Great Lakes. There are also Youtube channels that air live stream webcams in various places to watch the ships as they pass. It’s quite fun. When we know our son’s ship is going to pass a webcam, we get on the appropriate channel and watch it go by in real-time. It’s possible we could actually see our son on the webcam, although so far I haven’t. I’ve also been learning different information about ships–what types of jobs the crew does, what they eat, what products the ships transport, how they load and unload ships, the history of the ships, the canals they travel through, and so on. A couple days ago, marinetraffic.com showed that our son’s ship was going to travel to the northeast part of Lake Ontario, which was very unusual–as in, we’ve never seen him travel to Lake Ontario before. Our son later told us that someone made a mistake and their destination was actually near Detroit. However, that “mistake” made me wonder how ships make it past Niagra Falls, which connects Lakes Erie and Ontario. I looked it up and learned about the Welland Canal and St. Lawrence Seaway, which is very interesting. I’ve always enjoyed learning about different types of jobs and I now have a personal interest in Great Lakes ships. I actually like learning new things about everything, which is why I’ve been compiling my page of Everything Links. Every time I learn new things, I add the links to the Everything Links.
