Complications

Posted on May 16, 2009 by Debora

Tuesday afternoon I was on my way to check on The Mighty Herd before going to a worship meeting, when my car suddenly died. I pulled off the road and restarted it. It started right up, then immediately died again. Like I’d run out of gas, except I knew I had half a tankful. I tried four or five more times, and it always started easily and then quit.

I called the Auto Club and told them I needed a tow, then called a member of my worship group who lives in that area and asked her if she could give me a ride to the meeting while my car went to visit the mechanic. She said sure, and pulled up a few minutes later. The tow truck arrived about fifteen minutes after that, and the driver asked me to describe the problem I was having. I offered to show him, and got in my car and started it up.

Of COURSE it fired right up and stayed running this time. I took it for a test ride up and down the road, and it ran perfectly.

So the tow truck went on its way and Marie and I continued on to the meeting in our own respective vehicles. I had hopes that this was going to be like that one time my car’s electrical system went out for several minutes and it wouldn’t even try to start, and then it all suddenly righted itself and never gave me another moment’s trouble.

On Thursday my friend Jenny and I had planned to go see Star Trek in Temecula, but Wednesday afternoon she got a call from March AFB (Jenny’s in the Reserves) requesting a meeting of some sort, so she had to skip the movie. We made plans to meet up later in the day for lunch, after her meeting and my movie were over. Steve said he’d pick up the kids after school, so I only had to get home in time for my Thursday worship meeting at 4:30.

Just for the record…the new Star Trek movie is Made Of Awesome. Go see it, all of you. Yes, you too! Go! This is seriously the best movie I’ve seen since…I can’t even remember the last movie I enjoyed this much. And it’s been a VERY long time since I’ve felt this excited about the future of the Trek franchise. When I met Jenny for lunch she got to listen to me chatter on like a 13-year-old fangirl about how brilliantly the whole series reboot was conceived and executed with broad-spectrum appeal for old-school fans and newcomers alike. I can’t imagine anyone not being entertained by this movie.

After lunch Jenny and I parted ways again to run our various errands, and an hour or two after that I headed back up the hill toward home.

I got four or five miles out of Temec when my car died. I was on a narrow little two-lane highway with no shoulders, but luckily I reached a turnout before I ran out of momentum and was able to pull off the road.

Restart, die, restart, die. I shut it off to let it rest, hoping that would fix it like before.

Less than five minutes later my cell rang. Jenny had passed me on her way home and wanted to know if I was okay. I told her what my car was doing and she came back and pulled in behind me, to wait and see if letting the engine rest would help.

It did. Eventually it started up and stayed running. I decided to try and make it home, and then take it to the shop the next day.

Alas, it was not to be. Maybe a mile farther up the road the engine died again, and again I was lucky to be near a turnout.

This time resting didn’t help. After a while it wouldn’t even turn over.

SO, I called the Auto Club back, and they said a tow truck would be out within 45 minutes. Jenny waited with me, because she’s awesome that way.

As it turned out, we waited for over two hours. FINALLY the tow truck showed up; it was past five by then. No worship meeting for me.

AAA’s Roadside Assistance plan only covers the first seven miles of towing, so I had them take my car to a shop in Temec rather than the 60 or so miles to my regular guy in Idyllwild. Jenny came back to the shop too, knowing I’d almost certainly need a ride home. Which I did, because the garage closed at six and wouldn’t be able to look at my car until the next morning. So we transfered my groceries to her truck and headed back up to Anza.

At some point it occurred to us that if our original plan to see Star Trek together had worked out, the day would have turned out a lot worse. We had wanted to meet up at the local casino in Anza, where she would leave her truck in the parking lot and ride down with me. If we’d done that we’d BOTH have been stranded in Temec.

The fortuitous serendipity didn’t end there: Jenny had forgotten to bring a particular piece of identification with her to the meeting at March, and had to return the following morning to finish that bit of business. SO, I had a ride back down to Temec without putting anyone out. When we got there Friday morning the auto shop said they’d call me on my cell when they knew what the trouble was, whether they had whatever parts it needed on hand, and how long it would take to fix. So I had Jenny drop me off at the movie theater and I watched Star Trek again. And it was even better the second time around. Which is good, because that went a long way toward helping me keep my happy thoughts for the rest of the day.

And that’s saying something, because the rest of the day? Sucked pretty hard.

I learned that my little Saturn had basically suffered the car version of massive coronary failure and needed a new fuel pump, fuel filter and regulator.

I told them to go ahead and check the alignment as long as they were at it. The car had been pulling to the left a little for several weeks.

After the movie I wandered around the mall until Jenny got back, and then we returned to the garage. They said my car would be finished by five — it was a little past two at the time — so Jenny headed back up to Anza and I killed time wandering around other shops.

Steve was getting antsy by now; his band plays at Casa Gamino on Friday nights and he was supposed to be there by six. Parental duties aren’t generally allowed to interfere with his actual life, but in this case there was nothing either of us could do about it. I assured him that I’d rather be home with the kids than waiting around Temec for my car to be fixed, but that I had no influence in the matter and I’d get there as soon as I could.

It was nearly 6:00 by the time my car was done…to the tune of $905.91. Yeowtch. I had the money, but I’d been planning to spend it on corral panels and a bull. Now I’ll almost certainly have to dip into my savings account for those, which theoretically annoys the heck out of me. (It’s only theoretical annoyance because in actual practice I still have my happy thoughts because Star Trek was REALLY THAT GOOD.)

I got back to Anza a little past 6:30, collected the kids from Steve, and went home to discover that I had forgotten to shut off the horses’ water when I left that morning and had created a river through one end of the corral, the driveway and down the road. Yeah, that’s going to be a nice electric bill next month.

Long couple of days. And yet it all could have been so much worse — if Jenny hadn’t been there, if her errands hadn’t dovetailed so neatly with mine, if I hadn’t been able to get off that twisty mountain road both times the car died, if the garage hadn’t been able to get the parts so quickly, or if I hadn’t been able to pay for the repairs — that I can’t seem to feel very grouchy about the rest of it. All I lost was some money and a little time, nothing that truly matters in the grand scheme of things.

I wonder when Star Trek will come out on dvd. There’s a certain turbolift scene I’d like to have on hand to give me the happies whenever I need a lift. (Ha, pun not intended.) I wonder how long it will take them to make a sequel. CLOCK’S TICKING PEOPLE, MAKE IT HAPPEN! I haven’t been this fangeeky about Trek since the glory days of the Dominion War on Deep Space 9, and yes I know how nerdy that sentence sounds, and I don’t even care because the newest incarnation of the Trekverse is FREAKING GENIUS.

The last couple of days? Inconvenient and expensive but not catastrophic, thank Heaven. Downright enjoyable for a few hours here and there.

And now I need to head over to the rummage sale my church is having this weekend, because both kids need summer clothes and it may be a while before I can afford to shop for them at Target again. I’m glad they don’t care about stuff like that yet.

All things considered we’ve got it pretty good that way, you know?

Categories: Friends, kids, Life, Star Trek | 3 Comments

Gardening, Carpet Plague, Calves and Music

Posted on May 11, 2009 by Debora

I know, I’ve abandoned my poor blog again. Life is simultaneously busy and tranquil — my favorite combination! — and I haven’t felt the need to write in a while.

This time of year gardening takes up most of my time. One of the biggest reasons I’m shifting my focus to edible perennials is so I won’t have this frenzy of replanting every spring, but of course in the short-term it makes my spring even busier as I create new permanent beds and put in asparagus, sunchokes, currants, a bay tree, various perennial herbs and some unidentified “berry” bramble suckers someone gave me that I think are blackberries. But the strawberry bed I put in last spring is producing in grand style this year, and Saturday I enjoyed the first ripe strawberry of spring, and there’s a gazillion more coming along behind it. So that’s a good reminder that the results are totally worth all the work involved, even if it takes a while to see them.

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Another thing that’s been gobbling up a ridiculous amount of my time is The Battle Of The Creeping Spot.

Dude.

So three or four weeks ago our cats suddenly decided to spurn their litter box in favor of one corner of my computer room floor. We’re talking deep plush carpeting here, not some easy-to-clean laminate or hardwood. I ungraciously disposed of the piles of poop, but it gradually became evident that the real problem was the steadily-intensifying aroma of Eau de Cat Pee. I took way longer than I should have to attend to that (see: spring planting time, above), but finally one day I attacked that corner of the carpet with everything I could think to throw at it. Rug shampoo, spot cleaner, pure baking soda, a special “pet stain” removal product, the works.

The next morning that corner of my (very orange) carpet had turned a dark purple.

Clearly something had gone very wrong here.

I went back over the corner with more spot cleaner, and when that didn’t get rid of it I tried putting laundry detergent into my rug shampooer, and then I tried diluted dishsoap and then I just went over and over it with plain water until it was mostly gone.

But the next day The Spot was back, and twice its previous size.

I won’t go into all the tedious details of this battle. Suffice it to say that for nearly two weeks I used almost every cleaning product I could think of on this spreading purple abomination, alone or in combinations, and some days I would win and other days the Spot would win. It was like something out of Dr. Seuss, but evil. At its largest it was about six feet in diameter, and I was doing a pretty convincing Lady Macbeth impersonation.

Guess what the culprit was. Go ahead, guess!

Give up? It was the baking soda. Apparently when you put baking soda on my orange carpet and then get it wet, there’s some sort of freak chemical reaction that causes a dark purple stain to appear.

Guess how I finally figured this out.

It looked like I had just about defeated The Spot, there was only the faintest shadow left and I was confident that another hour or so of going over it with clear water would finish it off. But by then the carpet was beginning to smell just a bit mildewy, and I decided that the whole room could stand a nice deodorizing.

So, I filled my rug shampooer’s receptacle with clear water and a little baking soda, went over the whole room, and then focused on the spot in the corner — shaking some more baking soda directly onto it and scrubbing it in — until it appeared to be vanquished.

The next morning my entire computer room carpet was covered with purple smudges and the original corner was a solid, hateful dark purple swath.

I was ready to burn it.

Instead I spent most of another week going over and over the carpet, sucking all the baking soda out of it. As I type this I think I have just gotten the last of it out, but I won’t know for sure until tomorrow morning.

The good news is that the cats appear to have lost interest in recontaminating the war zone.

Or possibly they’re just waiting for the carpet to finally dry out so they can start over.

BUT my computer room doesn’t smell mildewy today, it smells WONDERFUL, because yesterday Luke and Elizabeth gave me the best Mother’s Day gifts I have ever received. They made them in Sunday school. They are apples with lots and lots of cloves stuck into them and silk ribbons tied around them to hang them with, and now as I write this the air is perfumed with the heady scent of apples and cloves. I LOVE it!

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In other news, a third calf has been born at Trinity. I need to buy some livestock panels so I can set the branding pen back up and set a date for my summer roundup. I may also spring for a calf table, since none of my new friends know how to rope (and neither do I) and it seems like a useful thing to have anyway if one isn’t of the Large Strapping Male persuasion.

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Speaking of things my new friends don’t know, they are also all tragically unacquainted with the awesome thing of immortal beauty that is Star Trek. Not a single Trek fan in the entire bunch (except for Pastor Bill who can’t go see the new movie with me because he’s married and that would be a little odd). Hello, this is CULTURE, people!! I was going to have to go see the movie all by myself, but my friend Jenny took pity on me and agreed to go with. So I think that’ll be Thursday. I can’t wait!

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Being a part of my church worship group remains one of the brightest joys of my new life. It’s amazing how fundamental singing with friends apparently is to my general sense of fulfillment. I don’t imagine that I’ll let anyone take that away from me ever again.

The group is still kind of finding itself. We had a magical combination for a while — two guitars, bass, drummer, three vocalists — and it was heaven. But then we lost our best guitarist and our male vocalist within a couple weeks of each other, and we’re feeling the loss. But there’s this nice sense of fellowship among the rest of us, a sweet sort of feeling that we’re all in it for the long haul and that one way or another the people we need will find us and the group will eventually be complete again, and meanwhile we still have this wonderful core group of friends to sing and play and worship with.

Tell you what though, last time we sang in church it was a train wreck. There’s a young boy who is learning to play the bongos, and from time to time he likes to join the group onstage. It’s not been a problem before, but this last time two things went wrong. One, the bongos had just been tightened so they were louder than usual, and two, he set them up between the drummer and our remaining guitarist, so they couldn’t hear each other well enough to stay in synch. It…wasn’t pretty. We have learned our lesson. Bongo Boy is still welcome to play with us, but from now on he goes down at the other end by the vocalists.

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I wanted to talk about how the Sunday school teaching thing is going, but I think that’s going to get its own post somewhere down the road.

So I guess that’s it for now. Life in my little green corner of the world is blooming, and keeping me busy. If that Spot is still gone tomorrow morning I will have nothing much to complain about.

If it’s back I may have to rethink my decision to give up profanity, because I have nothing else left to throw at the blasted thing.

Categories: Animals, Cats, Christianity, Edible Perennials, food, Friends, Gardening, kids, Life, Self-Sufficiency, Star Trek | 6 Comments

Sam

Posted on April 25, 2009 by Debora

sam

Last night I went to a going-away party for someone that none of us wanted to say goodbye to. Underneath all the laughter it felt a little like a funeral.

Safe travels, my friend. You are loved and you’ll be missed.

Categories: Friends, Life | Leave a comment

Lost Stuff

Posted on April 24, 2009 by Debora

Pastor Bill expressed some disappointment that I haven’t blogged about a funny incident that happened earlier this week. I don’t blog about every little thing, particularly the ones that are EMBARRASSING and make me look like a complete ditz, and also “funny” is such a subjective concept, but I suppose this story is blogworthy by association with larger events. So.

I guess it really begins in March, the day before the kids and I left for our Disneyland trip. It was a Sunday, and after church we drove out to the Trinity pasture like we always do to check on the cows. It was a chilly day and the kids wanted to stay in the car, so I hiked off into the pasture alone to search for The Mighty Herd.

When I found them they moved off like they always do, but I had time for a head count. I came up one head short: the smaller of my two yearling steers was missing. And his mom was hollering for him at the top of her lungs, all wide-eyed and disgruntled.

I waited for him to hear her calling and wake up from his nap somewhere and trot out of the brush, but he never did. Very odd. He was a year old or nearly so; too big for coyotes to mess with. Besides, there was no sign of vultures or ravens or any others of nature’s cleaning crew. But if he was anywhere in the pasture and able to respond to that bellowing from his mother, he would have.

So I had a missing steer. Had someone stolen him? He was still small enough to load into a pickup truck; a rustler wouldn’t even really need a trailer for him. The pasture gate was locked and supposedly the only two people that have keys are me and the Trinity caretaker, but Steve could have easily made himself another copy before he gave me his. I had had a rather difficult week with Steve, so this possibility presented itself fairly easily to my mind. He has friends who could put a fat steer to good use, most of whom wouldn’t trouble themselves much about where it came from.

On the way home I called Steve as usual to tell him that I’d be dropping the kids off with him in a few minutes. I mentioned the missing steer and asked if he knew anything about it, and he said no. Then I said that I’d have to make a police report about the incident and he completely FREAKED OUT. Started yelling about how hopelessly crazy I am and blah blah blah, and generally making himself look very guilty. So I told him that I’d be out of town for two days with the kids, and maybe the steer would find its way home again while I was gone, and then I could be spared the trouble of getting the police involved.

The following Wednesday I went back to Trinity to see if the prodigal steer had returned. But this time there were vultures, and his body wasn’t hard to find. Or his skeleton I should say; he’d been completely cleaned out by then.

So now I was left wondering: what had happened here? An act of nature? An act of spite? There was no way to know for sure. I decided to do nothing for the time being, because it’s not unheard of to lose a yearling steer to a pack of dogs or a cougar or somesuch. But this was the first time it had happened in all the time we’d been keeping cows here, and I resolved that if it happened again I would go on the legal warpath.

About three weeks ago the first calf of spring arrived. I started going out to check on the herd two and three times a week, to keep an eye on the rest of the moms-to-be and to make sure that nothing had befallen the new baby. A week ago I got there and found two pickups parked right next to the fence. A search of the pasture didn’t turn up the owners, but it did turn up a newborn calf, the second arrival. I took photos of the new calf and the slighter-older calf, and — just to be on the safe side — the license plates of the two trucks. Then I drove back to the church, where Luke and Elizabeth were rehearsing for a spring performance with the kids’ program. When the rehearsal was over we drove back to the pasture just to put my mind at ease.

The two trucks were gone. And so was the calf, apparently.

My mind was not put at ease. I was in fact Concerned.

The only reason I didn’t call the police right then was because the new mama wasn’t hollering. She moved away from me and rejoined the herd, but in a nonchalant sort of way. So, okay. They like to hide their calves for the first few days. It was probably fine.

I went back the next day. Missing calf still missing. Mama’s udder very very full. But still no bellowing or any other sign of upset. Decided to give it a few more days.

Didn’t get out to the pasture the following day, but the day after that I was in town for my weekly counseling session with Pastor Bill. When we finished talking I told him I had to head out to his neck of the woods to check on a calf, and asked him if he wanted to see The Mighty Herd. He said sure, and followed me out to Trinity.

The cows were grazing near the fence, and the missing calf was right there with them, dozing near its half-sister. Whew! We walked over and admired them until they got restless and started to move away, and then I did a quick head count.

“Eleven,” I frowned. “There should be twelve.”

“Which one’s missing?” the Pastor asked.

“I’m not sure…it’s probably one of the cows off calving somewhere. Let me get to higher ground…” I jogged off to a little hill, but didn’t see any other cows.

“There’s only twelve,” the Pastor pointed out when I got back. “Can’t you just immediately know who’s missing?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Let’s see…white cow’s here, half-Watusi’s here, Luke’s cow, Elizabeth’s cow, the two black ones…you know what? See that big rock over there on that little hill?”

“Where?”

“Way over there next to that big manzanita tree. When I stand on that rock I can see the whole pasture. Feel like taking a walk?”

“Um..not really wearing the right shoes for this, but…okay…”

Off we set, me going over and over the roll call in my head. About halfway to the big rock I stopped in my tracks, absolutely mortified.

“What?”

“I…ah…forgot to subtract for the steer that died last month. There are only eleven.”

Embarrassing? Oh yes. But WAIT, there’s MORE!

So we get back to our cars, and I reach for my keys which are clipped to my belt loop.

Or were.

Somehow the snap has failed me and my keys have fallen off.

Somewhere in a 150-acre pasture that we had just wandered all over searching for A Phantom Cow.

Oh yes indeedy.

I told the Pastor that he should just get back to his busy schedule and I would find the keys, but like a true gentleman he insisted on staying to help me look. It took a while. While we were searching, Trinity’s caretaker showed up to make my mortification complete.

We did find the keys though. So, you know, yay. Happy ending, I guess.

Yeah, this is one of those stories that never would have seen the light of day if there hadn’t been witnesses. With some sort of misguided affinity for Full Blogging Disclosure.

Let’s all move on now.

Categories: Animals, Friends, Humor, Life, Ranching | Leave a comment

Wordless Wednesday: First Arrivals

Posted on April 22, 2009 by Debora

[Okay, a few words today: sorry about the poor photo quality. I had to zoom WAY in to get these pics, because mom cows get all weird about anyone getting too close to their babies. That’s a Good Thing…unless you’re trying to take a decent photo.]

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dscf3246

Categories: Animals, Life, Ranching, Wordless Wednesday | 2 Comments

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