My birthday and other marvels of the modern age –

I actually almost wrote: “and other marbles of the modern age.”And if I had, I’d have left it, in the spirit of the way things have been rolling along.This is the third installment of the Month of Weirdness, or whatever I am calling it.  And this one starts with my birthday—which was a strange sort of affair, tucked under the rug as it was in honor of Scooter’s hospital stay.  It’s not actually that bad to get your birthday strung out in bits and pieces.  And when it ended up settling on Saturday and getting me exactly the present I wanted, I had no regrets.

This was my birthday wish: a clean, dust retardant tack room in the barn.  I wanted everybody to help me clean the place out first—wiping and spraying and soaking everything.  I you weren’t born in a barn, you don’t know that, even when you DO close the doors behind you, the kind of dust that horses and hay can raise can easily be classified as: dirt.  Plain old top soil, all over the saddles, the meds, the tools, the boxes – well – it’s like storing things in a self-salting sandbox.

So M and the Chaz and G all pulled together.  The boys put a floor in (we had been on smooth pea gravel, which does not keep irrigation water out) and clear top wall extensions.  The Chaz, using some kind of bleach cleaner, stripped the skin off her hands, trying to clean the grain bins.

Chaz, teaching the colt to “pony” or follow behind.  He really likes doing it.

Ah.  Not so hard after-all.

In the end, I had a spiffy new space – but best of all, it had been the fam all day, working together.  My favorite thing.  One year, I wanted them all to sod the back yard with me for my birthday.  And they did it.  For this birthday, before the mission and the coming home and the weddings that will inevitably come, I had my children with me, working the day away together.

The results were swell, but it was the process that was the gift.

The next big thing that happened was the Frazz coming.  His other grandparents made it out to the Great Double Graduation from UMKC and brought our kidlet with them.  He stayed mostly with the brave and noble other grandparents (who are no braver or nobler than G – they are all saints).  Not that Frazz is scary.  Just busy.  I had procured (who can resist toys at Christmas – even when you’ve got no kids?) a wooden car city for him, which he seemed to enjoy very much.  When he came to me, we sat in our library, where the windows give out on the fresh May greenery, and explored the wonders of the little city.

Most wonderful – the fire station.  It seems that Frazz had never really acquainted himself with the true function of such a place, so he was winging it with this one.  A fire station, it turns out, is a place where – when you stick something, say a car or your hand, into it – things spontaneously combust.  The charm of this is that you then have to run around shrieking till you are put out.  The car catches on fire, which makes your hand catch on fire – and only somebody blowing on it or pouring a massive amount of pretend water on it will quench the flame.  And if you are  not careful when you are putting out his burning hand, you will go up in flames yourself.  You can actually go up in flames over twenty times in fifteen minutes.  I know.  I’ve seen it done.

Busily catching on fire – 

May, as it looks through the library (not so grand as it sounds) windows.  Not that the Christmas lights are still up?

Wii bowling with all comers.  It’s very interesting when you happen to throw the ball backwards.  Later, his folks took us real bowling.  It’s interesting when you throw the ball straight up in the air.

Getting our arms around the M while we yet can . . .

We also loved riding the bike.  Frazz has a swell bike at home; his father is a pro biker.  This is besides being a dentist.  But all bikes for Frazz still have four wheels (except when they are connected to the back of the Daddy bike).  Our tiny blue bike, suitable for – man, who did ride that thing?  It was back in the day when little bikes were cool, I’m thinking.  Anyway, it has no extra wheels.  So G became the Human Training Wheels guy.  Which worked out okay.  Limiting in scope, a human turns out to be – but better than nothing.

Human wheels.  What will they think of next?

 Frazz was out here for the week and some it took his parents to drive their life to Rhode Island, and then unpack it all.  Frazz was glad to see Sultan, sort of, when he got here – Sultan had been with us for weeks by then.  But gladder by a long shot when his parents finally showed up.  These people are not that used to being apart.

A portrait of May – 

On about the seventeenth of May, there was a children’s lit conference at the Provo Library; Chaz and I had been invited to read from our new novel and were on our way there in two cars – mine in front.Just before we hit University Ave., I looked in the rearview mirror and wondered where they heck my girl had gotten to.It took one glance, a double take, and then a long stare before I realized that I was seeing her tail lights, and she was headed the wrong direction in the lane behind me.

The honorable library – stock photo.

Then her door fell open and she was sort of poured out onto her knees – getting off one weak wave my way.

I backed up at about thirty miles per hour, swung around, stopped and hit the pavement running: somebody had jumped his stop light and T boned her Saturn, hitting the driver’s side back.  In the end, we are learning a lot about insurance (she actually had been working in the agency that handles our insurance), spinal compression, axels and how to talk to lawyers. Hmmmm.  Lawyers and insurance.  And he was so nice and cute, that kid who hit her – on his way to medical school in the fall – I actually asked him if he was married yet.  (He was engaged.) Can’t blame a girl for trying.

When I say, “lawyer,” I am not suggesting that we are trying to sue anybody.  It just turns out that, if you have medical bills and they offer you less for your car than you could get for it on the street, the only way to handle an insurance company is to find a Big Dog.  Our own agent has been a family friend and guardian angel for more decades than I will admit: if you want a great woman on your side, call Kim at Multiserve.  NOBODY messes with her clients.

The car, named George (M’s identical car is Fred), is dead.  A hip replacement turns out to cost more than he is worth (ouch – but they’d say that about Chaz’s neck if they could get away with it).

 I think it was a couple of days later that I, sure – so SURE – that this whole spat of adventure had to have played itself out, went to the pasture to take in the horses and found my gorgeous buckskin dun colt with his forehead bashed in.  No blood, if you don’t count what was coming out of his nose, no hair missing—just the bone, collapsed into the sinus behind the forehead.

If it hadn’t been for my buddy, Geneva, who drove her rig up to get us from two cities away, I’d be standing there still – blinking on the driveway and completely unable to take it in.

We  had horse surgery.  By the time that happened, I’d processed the thing.  It was interesting, the way they deal with 1000 pound patients.  And he is still wearing the strip of silver metal they sewed onto the outside of his face as a sort of cast.  It itches, by the way.  Or so he says.

Low light in the recovery room.  Dr. Cody – another guardian angel.  How many have I mentioned in just this post?

 If all’s well that ends well – we still have a Scooter and we still have a Hickory and a Chaz. But from now on, I am not getting any too far away from wood, let me tell you.

Our borrowed wolf.  If there’s one in the house, surely there will not be one at the door???

I’m almost through all of this storytelling.  I seem to have to make sure the past is settled and recorded – I’m doing hard back printings of every one of our family picture albums from the beginning, and of my genealogy – all the old pictures and stories.  I think this is pitifully psychological.  I will write about doing the photo books later – coolest thing on the planet.

But I’ve got a lot of moving forward to do, too – closets, dressers, desks, attics to go through, a million pounds of behind to be jettisoned.  Books to write.  Horses to train.  Trips to be taken (I want lunch with you, Rosemary!!)

I will get to saying goodbye to M.  But not yet.  We’ve gotten our first letter and first email, though.  And that is surely one of the marbles of our time.

(to be continued . . .)