Friday, January 31, 2014

You Should Know Me By Now

*

Two months post hip replacement surgery, I'm happy to report all is going well with my husband's recovery. When Greg started misplacing his cane, I took it as a sign he didn't need the thing much. It also brought back memories of my grandmother, when her doctor first consigned her to using a cane.

She'd sit down, prop it next to her, then get up and walk away. Fifteen minutes later, she'd say, "Oh, darn. Where did I leave that cane?" And then we'd backtrack through every room in the house until we found it. Right where she left it, oddly enough. And always in the last place we looked, too.

I'd been away at college for a few weeks and was home for a visit when she gave me a disgruntled scowl. "Did you see I'm using a cane now?"

"Nope," I said. "Been here two days, can't say I've noticed you actually using it at all."

The key point in my husband's recovery—from his point of view—was the day he was able to get into his tractor. This allowed him to follow Dad and I around and 'help' us do the chores, otherwise known as constructive criticism. Luckily, tractors are loud and there is a limited amount of communication possible, so he was easy to ignore.

He could also drive the pickup, which was great because we could make him drive to town for parts and the milk I forgot when I bought groceries. Wasn't like he had anything better to do. The physical therapist was less impressed when he delivered himself to his first appointment.

"Have you been cleared to drive?" she asked.

"Was I supposed to stop?"

Probably best I don't repeat her answer here. Family show and all that. 

One of his first errands was to pick up feed for our newly weaned heifers and bulls. It comes in forty pound bags, fifty to a pallet, so each pallet weighs a ton. At the feed store the pallets are loaded onto our flatbed with a forklift. If possible, we unload them at home with a tractor that has a pair of metal forks attached to the front of the bucket, but some of the places we want to store them cannot accommodate a wooden pallet, so they have to be hauled off bag by bag.

Such was the case with the bull feed, which we keep in an old two horse trailer parked next to their pen. The bags are slippery plastic-coated paper, so I bear-hug them around the middle, stagger to where they need to be stacked, and heave them onto the pile. Yeah, it's a picture of beauty and grace.

On this particular morning, I unloaded and stacked two pallets of bull feed. Then we moved on to the heifers. The first pallet had been loaded into our old four horse trailer at the feed store, but hauling another could've popped the bald tires, so the second came home on the flatbed.

Putting it in the horse trailer was tricky, because in addition to the straight forks carrying the feed pallet, the tractor bucket has a grapple fork mounted on top like massive salad tongs. If Greg tilted the bucket wrong, he could punch holes in the roof of the horse trailer, which sort of negates its value for storing feed.

He eased up close, attempting to line up with the narrow door of the trailer while also keeping the bucket at the exact right height and tilt. Dad and I helped by making a whole bunch of completely contradictory hand motions.

The grapple fork ripped a chunk of chrome off the roof.

The project sort of went downhill from there, with all of us growing increasingly frustrated. Finally, the pallet was inside the trailer, flush up against the first pallet…and sticking out six inches too far for the door to close. Greg revved up the tractor for a mighty shove. The whole trailer moved, but the pallets didn't budge.   

More arm waving, another chunk of chrome torn off. Greg paused long enough for me to climb up and open the tractor door. "We're gonna break something if we keep this up. You'll have to take it somewhere else," I said.

"There is nowhere else," he declared. "Just toss the bags off by hand."

Given that I'd already 'just' unloaded a ton of feed, I may have gotten a bit huffy and suggested he toss them off himself.

"I would if I could," he snapped. And then this man who's known me for over twenty years looked me straight in the eye and said, "Fine, then. Where would you like me to put them?"

You'd think he'd know the answer to that one by now.

*

Monday, January 27, 2014

Scary Stuff


*

Per an impromptu poll taken in our roping arena, the five scariest sounds in the world in the ears of  a horse:

1.  A hissing rattlesnake.

2.  A lightning strike within fifty yards.

3.  Velcro.

4.  The crinkling of a Walmart bag.

5.  Cannon fire.

Now if you'll excuse me, gotta go patch some bridle reins.


*

Sunday, January 26, 2014

A Fair Wind

We complain a lot about the wind here, but the fact is, it makes for good cattle country. It keeps the flies down in summer. More importantly, you rarely see our cows pawing through snow for grass. The wind keeps parts of the pastures bared off so they can graze freely, which saves us a bunch in winter feeding. And because our winds vary from north to west to sometimes south and east, they tend to bare off different parts of the pastures from one week to the next, so the cows can use most of the grass.

So here's to the wind. Nice to know it's good for something.  



Sunday, January 19, 2014

Ah...That's More Like It

*

Finally got home yesterday evening, and I as crossed the last ridge the mountains put on an extra special show to welcome me:


*

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Here, There and On the Verge of Insanity

My view last Saturday morning:


This morning: 


Yes, I've covered a fair amount of ground in the last week. 730 miles driving each way to the Black Hills and back for a family wedding, followed immediately by a business trip to Las Vegas, because I'm smart with the scheduling that way. Since my brain is the consistency of over-cooked oatmeal, I'll refrain from trying to be witty. How 'bout I update you on a few things that happened earlier this fall, while I was too lazy to post? 

Here's one of my newspaper columns from mid-November, which will make a whole lot of other things I say here in the future make a lot more sense:

I work in the billing department of a medical facility and rarely does a month go by that I don’t get a call from someone who feels they shouldn't have to pay their bill because, "I didn't get better." I've never found a satisfactory way to resolve this issue. At least not a way that satisfies the customer. And honestly, it would be pretty cool if you only had to pay for treatments that cured all your ills. Last time I checked, though, that wasn't even an option with my auto mechanic, so I just take a page from his book and mutter, "These things are complicated and sometimes we have to try a few things before we get it right." And yeah, the balance is still due in full.

You know what else would be cool? If people came with warranties. Take my husband, for example. (No, not really, I sort of like him and besides, he does dishes.) All in all, he's been fairly maintenance-free. Two outpatient knee surgeries in twenty two years is pretty decent mileage, if you ask me. But the third operation has been a doozy—a total hip replacement—and it's no secret to anyone who's had to deal with me in the last month that I'm not coping very well. And that was before the surgery.

Despite random bouts of anxiety-induced hyperventilation, I got him to the hospital in Bozeman at the appointed time, with all of his paperwork in hand, even. The surgery went off mostly without a hitch, the sun was shining, and all was well in the world. And then it snowed. But first it rained, as it is prone to do in Bozeman. Then it got really cold and the entire city was coated in an inch of frozen slush. And stayed that way. For days. And one of them happened to be the day they discharged my husband from the hospital.

I haven’t been that nervous since they booted our five pound preemie boy out of neonatal ICU and made us take him home. Alone. All I could think then was exactly what I was thinking now: BUT WHAT IF I BREAK HIM?

The discharge nurse gave us a bag of medications and a half hour lecture about which pill does what and when, and here's everything you need to change the dressing and while you're at it look out for redness or excessive swelling and here's a whole kit of tools for reaching and grabbing and such because he's not allowed to bend over and do you know all the hip precautions and oh, crap, how are we going to get him up into a four wheel drive dually? And, oops, might've been a good idea to bring the crutches in out of the bed of pickup a few hours ahead of time instead of having to chip off the ice while he sat there waiting. Did I mention 'nuture' is not my default setting?

We got him into my sister's house thanks to a step aerobics platform and an obscenely generous coating of rock salt on the front walk. Here's hoping their condo association didn't notice on the off chance all those cool ornamental shrubs die before spring. And bonus—I can use that platform to work off the five pounds I've gained from stress-eating Milk Duds by the handful. Once he was safely ensconced in the recliner, we both collapsed from exhaustion and the sheer frustration of navigating the traditionally obnoxious Bozeman traffic on glaze ice, with a heaping helping of Cat-Griz fans tossed in for good measure (if you're not from Montana, just assume that's not good).

Yes, I am fully aware that people have joints replaced all the time and most of them are a heck of a lot older and more fragile than my husband. His mother, for example, who's got two robot knees. Blame my lack of coping skills on my family, who has given me zero experience in caring for invalids, may they continue to curse me with such luck and good health.

With each day that passes, I'm getting a little less tense. I expect I'll be able to go off the tranquilizers any time now. But just to be safe…until I'm sure this new hip is going to work out, I believe I'll hang on to the receipt. 

*


Wednesday, January 08, 2014

What Goes Up...

*

I'm going to preface this story with a bit of explanation, so you might fully appreciate my current state of mind--at least in the matter of trains. I've been told it's more of a stretch than most people can manage to appreciate my state of mind in general.

In case you haven't heard, there have been several train derailments in the past months that have resulted in explosions. (If you haven't heard: trains go Boom! ). Turns out, the oil extracted from the massive fields in North Dakota tends to be more volatile than average, which makes any oil train mishap potentially deadly. Now, for most of you this isn't much of a concern, since you are unlikely to be anywhere in the vicinity of a train derailment. It's a tad different up here in northern Montana. The main east/west track from the Bakken oilfields to the west coast runs along Highway 2, otherwise known as the Highline. This is our version of Route 66, celebrated in song and prose, by National Geographic no less.

More to the point, both highway and railroad pass through every small town on the northern tier of our state. As a result, our television and radio news has been peppered with stories about how emergency planners and first response teams should prepare for the worst.

But our ranch is fifty miles north of the railroad tracks. So no worries for me, right? Wrong. Because I have this thing called a town job, and this is the view out my office window:


Yes, I can feel the rumble of the cars as trains pass by, at a rate of 60+ a day. I couldn't even hazard a guess how many are hauling crude oil cars one way or the other. So one might assume our nerves are in a heightened state of alert in regards to the trains. 

Come Monday afternoon, we were all pecking happily away at our computers (okay, happily might be stretch), when suddenly, ka-BOOM! From the vicinity of the railroad tracks. The earth shook. We all lurched out of our ergonomically-correct chairs, in that state of vague panic where you can't decide whether to hit the floor, run to the window or grab a fire extinguisher. 

A huge cloud of dust and debris rose up from across the street as we stared out the window in puzzlement (yes, curiosity once again wins out over good sense). Finally, it dawned on us that the derelict five story grain elevator behind Chuck's Auto Body was now a heap on the ground. 


I assured my jack-hammering heart that this was not, in fact, Doomsday, and put the fire extinguisher away. On Tuesday I reconsidered that decision. Old grain elevators have a lot of steel cable and metal siding, all of which is worth money. Short of pulling it off sheet by sheet, how does a salvage crew separate the metal from the tons of wood in one of these old structures? Well, if you're in my small town and the elevator sits on the railroad right-of-way and is therefore exempt from city policies on things like open burning, you dig a really big pit and you do this:


And then this:


And when the flames die down, you scoop the metal out of the ashes and load it in one of those railroad cars conveniently located right next to the fire pit. So for all those people who've been saying, "Seriously? It's warmer in Cut Bank, Montana than Atlanta? How can that be?" Now you know.

*

Sunday, January 05, 2014

One Cool Puppy

The only way Max could be any cooler is if I took this picture in the morning, when it was sixteen below, instead of in the afternoon heat (aka, two above).


*

Saturday, January 04, 2014

Into the White Infinity

*

Here's hoping it only looks like I'm driving off the edge of the earth.


And hey! I finally figured out how to turn the date back on. Only took me eight months or so. Yeah, I'm a real ace at this webby stuff. 

*

Wednesday, January 01, 2014

Getting High on New Year's Day

*

Other than the one person I know who's on a beach in Hawaii, I can't think of any better New Year's tradition than this one. Sending best wishes for your 2014 from the top of the Virginia City lift at Bridger Bowl. First day of the year and I'm already going downhill!


*