May 25, 2008
And now to start the long tale. Tales are bound to be long when you keep living the chapters so quickly, you never get a chance to record them. And I am getting weary, trying to keep hold of time’s collar, dragging on it with all my weight to slow it down. The result is that my own little stripe of time may slow, but the rest only whips by faster.
So here is a sum of the time we’ve been living through lately. Details and pictures to follow, which is to say, to be stacked on top of this one so that, in blog, the whole thing will read totally backwards.
Early to Mid April: I am taken with an obsession: putting together photo books with blurb.com. These are hard back, beautiful books, printed at 300 dpi. I have done one for all of 2007 (278 pages worth – over 900 photos. Do I love digital? Ah, yes). Two for Max (one a reader). Two for Murphy (his Eagle court of honor, and a record of all his friends and stuff all through high school). I begin to scan every page of the analog photo albums I’ve been keeping since 1978. This is not a big job. It’s a monumental job. But who knows when the fire/flood/earthquake/meteor will hit? Gotta get these things recorded and into the hands of the kids. Yeah. So, like, working every day, eight hours, I should finish in – oh, maybe five years.
Do I eat? Do I sleep? No. I scan. And color correct. It doesn’t help that Gin has become a photographer fabulous, and I am stirred to remember my own passion for the art.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ginnahendricks/
April 21-25
The four of us go to Disneyland. We did this a year and a half ago and had the best time ever. Now, with so little time left, it was a desperate escape from reality. Wonderful time. Wonderful, wonderful. Disneyworld, back in October, was supposed to be the great Last Family Excursion, but everybody threw up, so it didn’t count. Drove down to LA because M wanted it to be the way it’s been for us since time began. And drove back. Woo-hoo. Bought tons of Disney pins, ate bad food, had a great time. When we got home, we were dead.
April 26: Sultan is delivered to us. The grand-dog. In the way of the grand move, so he’s with us, and we are all happy about it.
April 27: I flew out to Kansas City on Sunday afternoon with one small bag, and slept on the sofa bed while Gin and K slept on the floor as they had unexpectedly already sold their bed. Ate at the Tacoria for the last time.
April 28, 29: hang with Ginna. Go to Max’s school. See my great grandfather’s house from the inside. Have dinner with my aunt-Godmother, the beautiful Jeannie (who is an astonishing 88), and my cousins who I love and hardly ever see.
April 30: get up, go the airport. Wed morning, fly home. Southwest. It only does you good to check in right away on-line if your airplane lands on time and your connection is in the same terminal. Ran into niece Erin, for whom I held a seat in the plane (gave the nice Mormon lady the window). Got home in the afternoon. Picked up by my male child.
Spend Wed evening and the next few days wondering who I am and where I am. And with this nagging feeling that I’ve got to do something important before I have to leave again. Have to finish the preparation for the baby shower, Saturday morning (am I good at this kind of thing? That’s a NO.)
May 1, Thursday: First thing in the morning Cammon calls. “We’re about to have a baby, any minute now,” he says. They are not due till the 12th. I was hoping maybe Scooter would come on my birthday. May Day is swell – but what about the shower? Was given two hours before we could come to the hospital. Got on the treadmill, only to be rousted off—had forgotten my monthly un-stressing massage. Run for that. The rest of that day spent in the hospital.
May 2: We’re supposed to have a huge family dinner at my brother’s house – my niece and M, both leaving on missions right away. MY family in town, which is a rare event. But Lorena gets terribly sick, and we cancel. So my sis from Texas drives an hour and a half down from her daughter’s just to see us, eat at Burger Supreme with the fam, and see the spanking new Scooter in all his tiny glory. Had a great time—the remaining cousins, all pummeling each other joyfully. Then they are gone – and not coming back for the shower, next morning, after-all. Go buy horse feed. Call BYU bookstore about books ordered. Thought about paying bills, but would have to dig for them.
May 3: Saturday. Had the shower. Rousing success. Scooter is sent home from the hospital, and stops in state in front of our house, to receive praise and adulation. Many friends and family there. Kari made the fab cake. A great time had by all. Stake conference.
May 5: We are getting tired and cranky. I run around buying baby stuff still needed. Chaz yells at M for spending fourteen hours a day at the animation lab at school, when we are all aching to spend time with him. I start to put up the electric fence in the pasture – a long, lonely job. And call the scary water master to find out the flood irrigation schedule (I hate flood irrigation). We get a call: Scooter is back in the hospital with heart murmur, or maybe pneumonia. We get there in time for the electro-cardiogram. I am entrusted with L’s sentimental diamond earrings, and immediately forget that I’ve got them.
May 7th: first irrigation. Stan gets the water for us, because we are in the hospital with Scooter. He can’t find the water—finally finds it way up river, turns it on – and nothing comes down the ditch. Two hours after our time, the water comes bursting through, pushing a huge plug of dead leaves and trash in front of it. All over my grass. Terrible thunder storm. Lightening hits our neighborhood and knocks out half of the power. Irrigation nearly floods us out. We take the dogs, in the middle of all this, to get their two month over-due rabies shots.
May 8: my birthday – deferred till Scooter is freed from all his monitors and IV. We went to see Iron Man, which M loved and Chaz didn’t. Spent time at the hospital. Not a heart murmur after all (after all that MONEY spent). Just pneumonia, which can be deadly, they say. Oh, yay.
May 9 : The other two horse women of the apocalypse want to take me to lunch. I am too sad, so they bring lunch to me, a Philly Steak, and give me a stunning little silver leaping pony pendant (with beads) for my birthday. How I love them. Geneva’s Caleb is cranky, though – and it turns out that he, at my house, is suddenly taken with a fever. So I wear a mask at the hospital from now on. Gin graduates from UMKC with her MBA (and Kris with his Doctor of Dentistry). We are not there, but Kris’ whole clan makes the trek out there to cheer.
May 10th: Saturday. The present I have asked for: everybody’s help, cleaning out the filthy tack room (horses + hay + arena = massive dust). Walls extended up around the room (to keep out dust, raccoons and saddle stealers) and floor laid down. It takes all day – who woulda thought? – and Chaz burns her hands on some Clorox product with – surprise – extreme bleach in it. But the tack room rocks. And so does my fam.
Have given up the wait on my birthday feast: Chaz makes a run for Cocolitos’ chimis. We watch movies (M wants to see all of his classic favorites before he goes).
May 11th: Scooter comes home.
May 12th: Max comes home on the airplane with his other grandparents. He is now forty minutes away from us instead of two legs of a plane ride. His parents have packed up their moving truck and are driving to Rhode Island for stage (3? 4? 5? ) of their life. We still have Sultan.
May 13th: or maybe even later. I finally sit down and try to collect all the bills I’ve been ignoring. A fairly frightening experience. Spend most of the day looking up customer service numbers so I can pay with my card before all the utilities are shut off. (I am still finding stray bills, stuck between the pages of the picture books that dominate my desk top. Still scanning.)
May 14Th and 15th: Max comes to stay with us for two days. I haul out all the huge toys I’ve been saving for him. I remember why I was glad when we decided we were too old to have any more children. Lots of love. But oh, the energy.
May 17: Chaz and I set off to do a reading from the Miko book at a Children’s Lit Conference. On the way, as Char – driving her beloved Saturn, George – behind me – crosses an intersection and is T-boned by a young man in a hurry. I discover this as I pulled up to a stop light and look for Chaz in my rear-view mirror. First I don’t see her. Then, alarmed, I do see her – or at least George’s rear-end – all cock-eyed and in the wrong lane. As I try to understand what I am seeing, the driver’s door falls open, and Chaz kind of pours out onto her knees, waving weakly at me. George is totaled.
Chaz is safe, but badly shaken. Still, she manages to do the reading. It turns out I had the schedule wrong, and we didn’t even have to be there till an hour later. So, looking back, this was all my fault.
I spend the afternoon doing my first appearance as Grandmother/babysitter for Scooter. At the end of two hours of holding him, I find out that M is home with a 102 degree fever.
May 18th, Sunday: Night irrigation. Stan does this one, too. He is incredible. Finds the water at five in the morning and all goes well. Till somebody turns it on again unexpectedly during church and floods his arena. I lead the music at church, give a talk (unpopular subject, but fun), teach Sunday School – but go home to be with sick Murphy.
May 20th: Chaz is without a car. Murphy is quite sick. Gin flies into Salt Lake and stays with her mother-in-law (who I love). My house makes Gin sneeze. Horse does that. I am sad. I have spent several days banishing all traces of horse from the house, and she will come and stay later. Take M to the BYU health center – it’s a sinus infection, not contagious. Relief.
May 21st: Gin comes down to be with us. A frigid, stormy day. We run errands and go to Burgers with the fam. Spend the afternoon playing with Max. G lets the horses out. I go to bring them back in. I notice that Hickory, the gorgeous 3 year old colt, looks odd – his forehead has collapsed between his eyes. His skull has evidently been kicked in. He looks at me like, “What?” and goes back to his grazing. But I am in utter shock. My Geneva drives all the way up here with her truck and trailer to pick us up because I have ceased to function intelligently.
G’s kind clients cancel their session and Chaz catches the vet before he leaves. G and I drive down with Geneva. The vet can’t figure it out – the frontal bone broken – pushed back into the sinus. But no blood, not a scratch, no hair disturbed – as if he were made of clay. We leave him there, sadly. G and I have dinner with Geneva and her kids.
May 22nd: Gin goes to play in Saint George with her fortunate mother-in-law while Kris meets biking friends in Moab. In my house, we (those who are not G and M, who are working) take a day off from Life: Chaz and I go to Home Dept to find pipe insulation to pad cross beams in the barn, in case that’s what broke Hickory’s head. We slow down a little and start shopping paint and tile, making plans to re-do some rooms in the house (like we’ll ever really get around to it). We all go see Prince Caspian in the evening. When I come home, it’s with the feeling that somehow, the apocalypse has come and gone – and everything should be fine from now on. Ha.
May 23rd: Chaz finally realizes that she’s entitled to a rental car.
Reality finally hits the fan and so do I. I have to drive very carefully down the freeway to the vet to observe during Hickory’s surgery. Was very interesting. Blood doesn’t bother me. They are able to pull the bone back out again, and Geneva saves his lovely forelock by braiding his mane back to his withers. Now, Hickory has a silver bar sewn to the outside of his forehead to protect it. He’s not home yet. They are keeping him, administering meds and keeping an eye on him. That’s good, because I’m afraid of what might happen next.
Scooter cost about seventeen thousand dollars (my own babies each cost about 3500 total – must be the rise in gas prices. And of course, none of them had pnuemonia). Hickory’s hospital stay only cost about 1600. But what they hey – we’ve got a great economy.
I get a cancellation on our commercial insurance policy. Evidently, that bill is still buried somewhere on my desk. Grateful for grace periods.
May 25th – today: Scooter visits our house for the very first time. Yesterday, we went to visit our little horse, who was too distraught to acknowledge us. Today, the weather is changing again. I am finally writing all of this down, hoping to shut the door on this period of adventure. But that is more than wishful thinking: in three weeks, Murphy is gone. Tomorrow – or some day – I will post the pictures that go along with these events.
If I wake up in time.
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