~o:> October Notes

When I posted on Moment-to-moment this morning, I got this for my security word:

Altrumat.

I think I’m going to be asking questions here, and wanting answers.  Question one: how would you define this word? Come on, come on – you can do it.

The front hall, as I begin to haul out the Halloween things.

I love the light in this little place.

The notes –

October 18:

The house just got a hip replacement: the 32 year old toilet in the master bath has sprung a leak. (G says it’s our second toilet in that bathroom, not the original, but you’d think I’d remember replacing something like that.)  Abe, our plumbing body guard, came and fixed all the parts – YAY!!  But after he left, more leaks ensued.  Abe came again (with a weekend between visits) and sadly pronounced the old toilet cracked and dead.  So he installed a new, nifty, shiny, thrifty one.  Each visit had cost wonderfully less than I’d feared, but add them together? Oy.

You can tell I’m getting back into the saddle: pictures of everything.  I just sat in the yard Sunday after church, seeing and shooting.  How I love this time of year.

October 14th:

Nothing like a lovely shower.  Just hot enough.  You, alone under a waterfall, eyes closed, hair lathered up—quiet, peaceful, wound about with wisps of delicious steam.  And I was all that this morning, calm, dreamy, safe and private.  Until the shower curtain rod failed and the whole assembly suddenly came crashing down onto the tiles.

Talk about a paradigm shift –

Worse than being caught with your pants down (as they say . . .).

More yard.

October 13

I was driving to the pasture this morning, listening to Tricia Story’s “I saw Three Ships Come Sailing In.”  We’d just recorded it for her.  It’s a light and joyful piece that lifted my heart as I pulled into the driveway.  I sang it to myself as I took down the last two electric fences, drained the barrels and closed the driveway gates.  The horses were stamping and nipping with impatience—and I enjoyed that, knowing I had something special in store: the full pasture, un-marred by summer cross fences, was now open to them, all four hundred feet of open grass (what was left of it).

They followed me to the arena gates, puffing and snorting and being rude to one another.  But the moment I threw open that first gate onto the grass, those horses changed into smears of ruddy light—flat out, they took the gate, and the wind of their passage blew my hair into a cloud of tiny flags.

Not the day I’m writing about, but very like.  This was a couple of years ago, when Jetta and Hickory were quite a bit younger than they are now.

They drove down the field in a thundering herd, and when they reached the end, spun on their great back legs and launched themselves back up it again.  They ran and jumped and kicked and reared and celebrated in a way I do not seem to know how to do – all speed and singing and tails like shredded banners, streaming behind them.

Even Jetta who is a horse 100 years old—she took the plunge, perhaps the girl with the most powerful engine of all, first sitting back on those mighty haunches and then propelling herself forward with her racer’s speed.  She made the trip down, did the spin and came back – then mopped her forehead and informed me that she’d prefer to eat some hay now, please.  While Hickory, the youngest, pranced himself fancy, trying to lure the others into more races.

It was something to see.  And something to feel.  I’d left the camera home, so I got to see it with both eyes.

October 5^th?  6^th?

Even the tiniest farmer has to worry about fences.  If you could just put the dang things up and forget about them, life could border on perfect.  But posts rot and ground shifts and animals test limits.  And without those simple behavioral modification devices (the fences, I mean), you are bound to have critters in where they are not supposed to be or out, ditto.  Fences save lives.

The big gate into the arena—is it eighteen feet or twenty, can’t remember—has somehow been blown off one of its hinges.  I don’t know how this happened—wind or horse altercation.  And today, I decided to fix it, me alone, without the tool wielding Man.  It’s a heavy gate, and to get the thing positioned so that I could insert the hinge pin properly (I spent half an hour looking for the correct wrench – mothers, teach your children how to use wrenches and how to put them away properly; they will thank you later), I had to lift the far end of the gate up off the ground about nine inches.

It’s hard to lift the far end and, at the same time, hammer a hinge pin into place on the near end.  I finally figured out I could rest the back end on something, but that was after I’d swung the gate carefully around into place on its one good hinge—and was holding the hole awkward thing upright only by an act of Parliament.  I looked around helplessly, then spied a couple of bricks, half buried in the gravel at the fence line.  There I was, my shoulder holding the gate upright and those bricks about ten feet away—

You’ve played Twister before, haven’t you?

Long story short: I got the bricks under the gate, chained that end to the arena fence, ran down to the other end, used the wrench brilliantly (mostly as a hammer), got the pin down in there, used the wrench to tighten the assembly down and . . . viola!  The gate was hanging beee-utifully.  And I’d done it all by myself, thank you very much.  Hanging higher than it had been for months.  It was impressive now, that gate, level, dignified, emphatic, firm.

I loved it.  Put the wrenches away properly.  Took off my gloves.  Battened down the hatches.  Then confidently opened the gate so the horses could get to the water.  It swung smoothly, effortlessly.  Until the point where it just—fell flat onto the ground.  All twenty feet of the thing, flat as a pancake.

There must be a moral to this story.  But I’m too tired to think it up.  I want you to think it up.  At least I’ll get some conversation out of this dang day –

Umm – you can count that as question two.  Please answer both questions and hand in your papers.  Then you can go.  See you tomorrow.  Be good now.