Horses

As The Week Turns

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Debora

Monday morning after I left the library I headed to Boot Barn and picked up some new boots and a nice shirt to wear to Wednesday’s hearing. I needed them anyway, this just let me justify the expense. Then I went to the courthouse in Temecula to file the papers.

Miraculously, there was no line at all. I walked right up and handed them to the lady.

She stamped my custody response thingy, but handed the Proof Of Service form back to me. “They missed a line. I can’t accept this.” I looked where she was pointing, and the Date and Time of Service lines had been left empty.

“I was present,” I said hopefully. “Can I just….”

“The signer has to do it,” she said flatly.

Of course she does. I trudged out of the courthouse and called Jenny on my cell to find out if we could connect before Wednesday. Turned out she was at work — in Temecula — and would get off around 3 or 3:30. I had nothing else pressing to do that day, so I told her I would go get something to eat and then hang around Temec until she got off work. That way I could run back to the courthouse and get the darn thing filed and out of the way.

I grabbed some lunch and then checked out the showtimes for Half-Blood Prince, but it’s a long movie and I didn’t quite have time to catch the next showing, so I went back to the library and hung out there for a couple hours.

Jenny got off a little after 3:30, we met up at a Chevron, she scribbled in the date and time of service on the forms, I sped back to Murrieta and got to the courthouse doors at 3:59.

And was told that the public filing department closes at 4:00. I would have to come back another day.

Yeah. That kind of week.

So I went to see The Half-Blood Prince. I was pulling into the theater parking lot when I got a call from one of the members of my worship team to say that that afternoon’s practice had been canceled. I had actually forgotten all about it, which I have never done before, but it’s been, you know, that kind of week.

Half-Blood Prince was easily the best of the Potter movies so far, but I’m afraid I wasn’t in the proper frame of mind to really appreciate it.

Tuesday morning I had an appointment to take Stripes The Cat to get fixed. Which could have been awkward because my sister works there at the vet clinic, but she was friendly and chatty and she looked like married life suits her, so that was cool.

Tuesday afternoon there was a meeting for Vacation Bible School volunteers. Yes, I am one of those. They are short on volunteers this year and once you have been in a place where there’s something you need to do but you can’t do it alone and then people step forward and help you get it done…once you have been there, after that when someone asks you for help you say “Sure, what do you need?” Because now you know that’s one of the things that makes the world worth living in.

After the VBS meeting I went back to the vet, collected Stripes and went home.

That afternoon when the horses wandered in from the pasture to be fed I noticed that Stormy was literally covered in little bumps, like bee stings or birdshot wounds.

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And her hindquarters looked like they’d been chewed on.

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I still have no idea what happened to her, but she seems okay otherwise.

I was afraid I’d be up all night fretting about the next day’s hearing, but I drank a cup of herbal tea and went to bed and was out like a light.

To Be Continued!

Categories: Cats, Family, Horses, Life | 2 Comments

On A Dime

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Debora

This past week has been very…um…I’m searching for an adequate adjective here. Eventful? Taxing? Mind-blowing?

Let’s just say challenging.

So after Wednesday’s bit of vandalism at Trinity, the owners understandably decided that they didn’t want to deal with the liabilities of this little range war anymore, and they said that The Mighty Herd would have to go. This was a rough blow, because my friend the Doc and I had just been about to start fencing off the second, much greener pasture there on the same property and gradually expand the empire from six mother cows to about thirty. This would have been my first big step in achieving financial independence. Alas, now it is not to be. But if it was Steve’s plan to keep harassing my cows until I got discouraged and sold out so that he could move back in, it has backfired on him, because now nobody gets to keep any cows there.

I called the Doc and he said he might be able to help a little, and to just sit tight for now. Within a few days folks were coming out of the woodwork saying that they’d heard I had beef calves to sell and that they’d like to buy one. I also got a potential offer from someone who has a relative who has hayfields in Aguanga that have just been harvested and who would most likely let my cows come and graze the stubble for as long as it lasted. A temporary solution, but a good temporary solution. The next time I spoke to Doc he said he had a buyer who would immediately take every cow that I wanted to sell, if I wanted to sell any, so that I wouldn’t have to haul them to the auction. I do love that man. (In an appropriately platonic manner of course, since Doc is happily married to a sweet and lovely wife.)

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Saturday afternoon while the kids and I were getting everything packed up for their trip to camp, a strange truck pulled into the driveway and a skittish-looking fellow stepped out, holding a sheaf of papers. I instantly knew that I was being served with Something-Or-Other by Steve in response to The Blizzard Incident. I stepped outside to have a look and the poor guy started babbling a bunch of soothing platitudes. I smiled reassuringly at him and assured him that I wasn’t upset or anything and took the papers. The top of the stack was a request for a restraining order, but that part already had DENIED scrawled across it. So I dug deeper into the stack and found…that Steve was filing for physical custody of Luke and Elizabeth.

I stopped smiling.

The server guy literally backpedalled away from me with a look on his face that I might have found funny if my brain hadn’t just seized up.

“That’s just not going to happen,” I said quietly to myself after a moment.

With one hand on the door of his truck, the server guy said I should fight it. As if there were any question.

We exchanged a few more words that I don’t really remember because my head was in a whole other place by then — although I do remember him thanking me quite sincerely for my courtesy, so I must have been nice — and then he drove off and I came back in the house and read every word of the stack of papers.

Steve was requesting physical custody of the kids from Thursdays at 4pm through Sundays at noon, every other week. He was also requesting overnight visits on the Thursdays of my week. Thursdays are their Youth Group meetings, of course. He’s trying to do to them what he did to me all those years: isolate them from social interaction with anyone outside of his own bottom-feeding social class.

The court had denied the restraining order but approved the custody request, and there was a hearing date set for July 22 so that Steve and I could hash it out in court. If I wanted to contest the matter I had to file a response no later than July 20.

This had been filed way back on the 9th, but they had waited to serve me the papers until the last legal minute. I had to get my response filed first thing Monday morning. I typed up a response and emailed it to my friend Jenny, who printed it out for me (my printer’s out of ink) and brought it to church the next day.

Church was…kind of an effort for me that day. Up till then I’d been walking around in a sort of suspended state of combined disbelief and shock, but actually telling the Pastor about it out loud made it suddenly real and sharp-edged and twisty. I cried a few tears and he reassured me that this was God at work and that when all the dust settled things would be better than ever for the kids and I. And then the service started and I had to sing with the worship team and I was really afraid that I might throw up all over my mike and I was really glad that Susan was gone this week and we had a guest worship leader that sings so loud and strong that no backup is really needed so I could just whimper along and it wouldn’t matter a bit. But the songs themselves were very comforting, and by the end my voice and my spirit had revived quite a lot. There is true power in that music, I think.

After the service I talked to Doc, and practical soul that he is, he sat me down and gave me a wonderfully long list of reasons why it would make no sense for a court to give Steve that custody schedule. Right now Luke and Elizabeth have a full, rich social life and a place in the church community and Steve has nothing to offer them but isolation and video games and late nights at Casa Gamino. And he works on Thursdays, Fridays and sometimes Saturdays, so they’d be stuck in some sort of child care situation during the day. And if he couldn’t even get through one night without drinking, how is he going to get through four days at a time? AND, the kids don’t WANT to go live with him every other week. The list went on and on. The sharp twisty thing in my stomach softened into something dull and manageable and my brain chugged back into something pretty close to normal function.

My friend the Doc is a treasure beyond price.

That afternoon I drove the kids up to Camp Wynola in beautiful Julian. We signed them in and found their cabins and they picked out their bunks and we unpacked their stuff and I put a few dollars into a spending account for them so they can buy juice and snacks at the camp store and then it was time for me to go.

And suddenly it seemed absolutely ridiculous to even think about abandoning my little boy there for a whole week.

I didn’t worry about Elizabeth, I knew she’d enjoy the break from home. And the camp itself looked wonderful and safe and fun. But…my boy! My snuggly Luke! What would he do without me?

I gave him one last hug and watched him skip happily back to his cabin with a careless smile on his little face.

And then I reminded myself that he’s going to be nine years old next month and if he can’t spend a week away from home by now then I have done a poor job of raising him.

Then I went back to the camp office and let the staff know that my friend Michelle would be bringing Luke and Elizabeth home on Friday along with her kids. Because part of the divorce process in California is that both parents have to attend a Parent Orientation Program to help them properly guide their children though the divorce process and Steve and I have to go to ours on Friday and won’t THAT be fun!!

After I got home I sat down and completely rewrote my response to the custody thing, this time bringing all of Doc’s advice to bear on the matter. Then I emailed it to myself. First thing Monday morning I drove to Temecula, went to the library, checked my email on the web, and printed out copies of the rewritten version.

Oh. I missed a part of my story.

Okay, baaack up to earlier in the week. I had found a website that carefully detailed the entire divorce process step by step and form by form, and I realized that I had Made An Error. I did not know that the divorce could not move forward until a Proof Of Service Of Summons form had been filed. And here’s the thing. Steve and I had still been on civil terms a month ago, so I had served him the divorce papers myself. Well. It turns out that that’s a no-no. Someone ELSE who is over 18 and NOT ME has to give him the papers and fill out the Proof of Service Of Summons form. Gaaaahhhhh.

So on Sunday Jenny had served the divorce papers to Steve all over again, and filled out the form, and I took that with me on Monday to get filed along with the other thing.

And this post is going to have to be written in many parts, because that was JUST THE VERY BEGINNING of what is shaping up to be one of the craziest weeks of my entire life.

But here’s a nicer note to part on: a post from the Camp Wynola blog!

Categories: Cats, Christianity, Friends, Horses, kids, Life, Love, Ranching | 4 Comments

Roundup Part 2: Short And Sweet

Posted on June 6, 2009 by Debora

When you have a roundup to work a total of three calves, the preparation takes longer than the actual job.

Brooke hauled Stormy and Mahogany to Trinity for me in Doc’s rig, since I haven’t driven a truck in over fifteen years (Steve never let me drive any of his), and I don’t think I’ve EVER driven a truck that was pulling anything. Doc and his two cowboy friends had just finished setting up the corral when we got there. Then Brooke took my car to her house just up the road to pick up two of her kids, and got back around the same time John and Raeanna arrived.

Bringing in the herd took the longest. They were Resistant to being corralled, and we only had five horses, and Mahogany hasn’t had much practice with cows so she wasn’t terribly helpful.

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But eventually we got ’em in.

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Turned out we actually had four calves, but the newest one was only a few days old and too little to really torment yet, so we’ll brand and castrate him next time. He was just the right size to help John get a feel for calf-handling, though.

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I love the smell of burning cowhide in the morning!

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Castrating turned out to be messier yet less nauseating than I’d expected. OF COURSE I had my first effort thoroughly recorded for posterity. Here’s one of the less-gruesome pics:

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When we were all done one of Doc’s friends entertained us with rope tricks.

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Then we loaded up the steer and the horses and headed home, where Brooke and I got the steer ensconced in his fattening pen. Poor guy misses his buddies.

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And that was my very first roundup as Sole-Herd-Owner-Person. I could not have done it alone, and my heartfelt thanks go out to the folks who helped make it happen. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and they all said they wanted to come back for the next one, so I think this cow business thing is looking absolutely doable. I want to buy my own corral panels so I don’t have to keep borrowing Doc’s, and I need to practice driving a truck and trailer rig so I can haul my own horses, but those things are also doable. I mean, if I’ve learned nothing else this past year I’ve learned that with God ALL things are possible.

Life feels pretty good right now.

And now I need a shower.

Categories: Animals, Christianity, Friends, Horses, Life, Ranching | 3 Comments

Roundup Part 1: Amazing Grace

Posted on June 6, 2009 by Debora

A cattle roundup is a fairly simple thing to organize, if you have the manpower and resources and skills available. You set a date, tell your friends, and when the day arrives you usually end up with more help than you need: riders, ropers, sorters, muggers, castraters, branders, cowboys, people who like to play cowboy…it’s almost more of a social get-together than a job, and everyone mostly shows up for the fun.

Of course, if you have just spend the past year of your life starting over almost from scratch, and none of your new friends have ever thrown a rope or castrated a calf — and neither have you — then a cattle roundup becomes not such a simple thing to organize. In fact it becomes A Tad Complicated.

I had offers of help from my friends, and I deeply appreciate that, but how do you catch and hold down a calf without ropers? Well, you can buy a calf table, unless your car happens to suddenly die and require over $900 worth of resuscitation. Yarg. Also, if you understand the process of calf castration but have never actually done it yourself, how do you know for sure that you won’t throw up and/or pass out halfway through the procedure? And, oh yeah, how do you even get your horses to the event if you don’t own a trailer or a truck that will pull one? Then there’s the matter of a corral. You can’t have a cattle roundup without a corral to round them up into, and Steve had taken most of the livestock panels with him, and I couldn’t find anyone with used panels to sell, and new ones cost $140 for a ten or twelve foot section. That would add up to roughly a gazillion dollars, which I didn’t have (see: car repair bill, above).

If I let myself think too much about all this stuff I might have started worrying that it wasn’t going to work out at all, but fretting about that sort of thing is a total waste of energy. All I could do was commend the whole matter into God’s hands and trust that things would happen the way He wanted them to. I was just AWARE of the issues, is all I’m saying.

In mid-May I approached a horse vet who goes to my church, an incredibly nice fellow who had come out and treated my horses in the past. I didn’t really know him socially but I figured as a vet he’d at least be able to give me a hands-on tutorial in calf castration, if he were so inclined. So I asked him, if he were theoretically invited to a roundup, would that be just another day at the office for him or would it be something he’d enjoy? His face lit up, he said he LOVED doing that stuff, and that if I needed any other skilled help he could bring some more friends. I said I could really use a header and a heeler (cow jargon for two different kinds of roping skills), and he said they’d be there and what day was the roundup? I told him I’d hoped to wait until all six calves had been born, but that I might not be able to because the firstborn was getting so big. He said no problem, we could have one roundup now and another one later on and that way we could have twice the fun. Also, as it turned out, he had a pile of spare corral panels that he’d be happy to bring over and set up for the day.

I was SO FREAKING GRATEFUL, but he very graciously acted like I was doing him and his friends the favor of having them out, so I couldn’t even feel awkward about accepting all that help.

A few days later I got a message from the Doc’s secretary: he and his friends would be available to come out on June 6th, and did that work for me? It worked perfectly for me, but most of my other friends couldn’t make it that day. I decided that in this particular case I should probably accommodate the doc, and I’d schedule my next roundup far enough in advance that everyone else who wanted to come could be there.

That only left the matter of getting my horses to the roundup site, then getting them AND a steer back to my place afterward (the steer was coming home for fattening and slaughter). This would require the use of a large stock trailer with a center divider: we could put the horses in the front section and the steer in the back. I mentioned this need to a woman from my church who was helping me through the ridiculously complicated process of filing for divorce, and she immediately picked up the phone, called a friend of hers who lives in my general area, then hung up and announced, “Okay, we’ve got the trailer, now we just need a truck.” She was already dialing a new number; this time she was calling Geoff, the new guitarist in our worship group (I’ve been corrected on the spelling of his name). She basically told him that he and his truck would be hauling some livestock for me on June 6th. He had already promised to come and help with the calves if it was on a day he was free, so I wasn’t too awfully horrified by this casual drafting of resources…just mildly taken aback. But when I saw him the next day at a meeting he’d remembered that he had a previous commitment on the 6th. He said we were welcome to use his truck, he just wouldn’t be available to drive it, and while we were working out the logistics of that the Doc mentioned that HE had just the sort of stock trailer I needed, and I was welcome to use it AND his truck since he would be using other vehicles to get his panels and horses to the roundup.

The grace of God and the goodness of people absolutely blow my mind sometimes.

Next: the big day!

Categories: Animals, Christianity, Friends, Horses, Life, Ranching | 4 Comments

Ripples

Posted on January 31, 2009 by Debora

I think part of the reason I haven’t been blogging as much lately is because somehow along the way I’ve become reluctant to share the beginnings of things without knowing where they’re going. I don’t necessarily want to talk about some new direction my path has taken until I know whether it’s an onramp or just a cul-de-sac.

But that kind of defeats the whole purpose of personal blogging, doesn’t it? Journaling is ABOUT the path. It’s not like anyone ever really ARRIVES anywhere anyway. I think a blog should celebrate — or at least document — all the little steps that lead from Point A to Point Q and beyond.

Back in August when the new school year began, I was kind of foundering emotionally. You may have noticed. Steve and I had just had our final not-even-attempting-to-be-friends-anymore break, all of my close old friends lived in other states that joint-child-custody rules prevent me from moving to, and I was beginning to realize that the group of local friends I’d been reconnecting with were basically all part of the same…culture, social strata, lifestyle, etc…as Steve, and deep down they really saw nothing particularly shocking or even unusual in his behavior.

I desperately wanted to move forward, but I was at a loss as to how or where to go.

On a whim, I volunteered to help out with a school fundraising project. That led to meeting a woman who invited me to join her walking group. And that led to meeting other women and hearing about a church they were sure I’d like.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that school fundraising projects aren’t really my cup of tea, and I had to let the walking group go when I added up how much I was spending on gas driving to and from the meeting-place every morning. But the church was definitely a keeper, and I would never have gotten there if I hadn’t taken all those other steps that led me to it. Everything is relevant, is what I’m getting at.

I have more to say about the church and what a wonderfully healing thing it’s been for me, but I think I’ll give that its own post later.

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On the ranch front, Steve has hauled all of his cows and calves out of the Trinity pasture and will soon be taking the corral panels out as well. Right now his cattle are in his home arena; some of them will be going to the sale and the rest he will be putting in with his dad’s herd across the street. In other words, he’s not so much “getting out of the business” as “cutting me loose to sink or swim on my own.” And that suits me fine, now that I’ve sat down and planned out most of the logistics. I’m actually pretty excited about the whole thing.

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I haven’t written much about Mahogany this winter, mostly because the things I’ve been working on with her aren’t really edge-of-your-seat material. But we’ve made huge progress in that simple but crucial ability to pull a bridle over her ears without the whole rodeo thing going on. Anyone who’s worked with horses knows what a big deal that is. At the risk of totally jinxing myself, I will venture to say that Mahogany’s INTENSE ear-handling issues might be completely a thing of the past by the end of this summer. That would be pretty sweet.

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My quest to grow as much of my own food as possible is expanding this year with the addition of several new crops and edible landscape plants, but I think that merits another post all its own too. It’s a pretty big subject, and one that I have a lot to say about.

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So I guess this post is about small beginnings that may or may not grow into big changes. You make a decision to put an oar into the water and the ripples begin to spread out in unpredictable ways.

I love that life is like that.

And now I see some sunshine outside that needs to be soaked up. I’d better go take care of that….

Categories: Christianity, Family, Friends, Gardening, Horses, Life, Ranching, Self-Sufficiency | 3 Comments

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