Dissonance, pachyderms & sunshine

I woke with a start from a dream – one of those cacophonic symphonies of seemingly unrelated events and even less related to my waking life. This certainly isn’t the first and I’m quite sure it won’t be the last, but it is usually the harbinger of some pending craziness just waiting to dart from the shadows. I’ve learned to heed these particular dreams; however, I don’t put out the welcome mat.

I went through the house counting cat noses and all were accounted for – including the new, yet-to-be-named, think-it’s-a-tom stray that was sleeping by the water trough. It was warm so I stepped out the back door and stood on the deck, sniffing the air for smoke. I scanned the edges of the light thrown onto the understory from the deck lamp and four bright, amber pairs of vulpine eyes were in attendance on this night; watching, waiting and hoping since I’d left several lights on in the house. They didn’t break cover so I ignored my tendency to toss them some bread treats and, besides, they had already been treated earlier in the evening.

I had talked to “B” a couple of hours earlier, who was in LA on business for the week, and all was well on the left coast … except the weather. I decided to sit for a while with a new book, Water for Elephants, and try to gather the sleep that had left the premises. Three hours later I reluctantly put the book down, leaving the kinkers, roustabouts and my new love, Rosie the elephant, to their own devices. Though still perplexed, I did gather enough sleep together to last until morning.

The next day brought sunshine in abundance, more 80 degree temperatures, additions to an early season tan and a nagging, persistent, virtual cloud from the previous night’s cranial contrivance. The fusillade started that evening.

While using a drive up ATM I noticed a familiar smell, an automotive odor that I couldn’t place, much less process. I went on to the farm supply store for critter feed and decided to check on the offending smell after I came back out. I didn’t have to look long as there was a constant drip of coolant emanating from beneath the hood. Further investigation revealed a small hole in the shorter section of a 2 piece lower radiator hose. I know this hose intimately and was loathe having to replace it since it’s an 8-12 hour job at best without dealer’s tooling. I was already envisioning the scattering of the front half of the engine all over the garage … blek. It was late on Saturday so the chance of finding someone to repair it was nada, so I walked down to the auto parts store and pick up the hoses, deciding to replace the other section as well. I prayed the 12 miles home that it would get no worse. Vesuvius erupted as I was backing into the garage. I thanked the responsible deities and walked into the kitchen answering the cell phone.

2½ hours later I hung up from our oldest daughter and east coast inhabitant, studied the non-existent bug on the ceiling, poured a Scotch and mulled over the conversation. Seems they are going to separate and I’m checking my reactions to the revelation – both internally and the awareness of the cascading financial and emotional ramifications to such an action. Apparently it is amicable at this point, but distressing none-the-less. I consider calling “B” with the news and decide to wait a while. I draw a bath, grab my book, freshen my drink and escape to the circus once again.

The phone rings again. This time my heart sinks; although, I don’t know what I’m expecting.

The youngest from the left coast is now on the phone and another 2 hours have passed while bouncing our digital voices off the maze of towers in a circuitous conversation. I hung up with a heavy heart, absorbing her news. She and her mate have to put their beloved dog down this week – not unexpected, but extremely sad none-the-less. I realize that our familial unit has lost all 4 dogs within 10 months – 1 in each family. The bath is cold, the drink is weak and my interest in the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth has now waned.

I really have come to dread these seemingly prescient, crazy, tattered dreams.

I really hope the Law of Threes still applies.

We are shaken.

The Explorer is fixed.

The daughters are in mourning.

The sun still shines.

The Show must go on!

Midnight Moonlight Tour

Did anyone else get out in the full moon tonight? It was so bright that I could walk about sans flashlight, which is usually a pretty treacherous adventure given the stone population here. There is just something magical about moonlight and walking about in our woods I half expected to see creatures of fancy and fantasy gamboling about in the glades – fairy lights and wood sprites and such!

I came back for the camera and the tripod and set off on a photo safari. I am amazed at the color that appeared; colors that we don’t see with the naked eye in the half-light of the moon. There is also texture that isn’t apparent in the bright light of the day, texture that is accentuated by the high contrast of this kind of lighting.

So, take a midnight moonlight tour of Vulpini Manor. Watch your step, but leave the flashlights behind!

Click on and enlarge these last 2 shots and you can see the stars in the sky. The sky in all of these shots look more like daylight because the thin cloud cover reflects the moonlight with such long exposures.

Critterlicious

See what our deer left for us day before yesterday???

Too bad they caint spel wurf ship!

So ... the 13th was our 26th anniversary! We celebrated in our typical fashion of taking the day just to ourselves, putting as much of the mundane aside as was prudent while saving going out for the next day - Valentine's. It's like having a birthday on or close to Christmas, it never really gets its full due. We were remembering that last year Taylor and I left on February 12th for destinations undetermined, save a house sitting for my cousin in Austin, and thus "B" and I celebrated our anniversary via phone as we traveled through Oregon, Idaho and Utah. We were very stoic about the separation on our 25th, but focused instead on the relocation possibilities ahead of us - this was, in fact, the charge given to me and the Buffledog as we set off on our sojourn: find us a new home.There was also a far more practical component to this ousting, the youngest and "B" needed to stage the Seattle house and trying to keep up with great mounds of Berner-fur caused from the bi-annual coat blow was going to be more than we could handle. We were also going to have to take Taylor away from the house while it was being shown anyway, so this all worked out ... 'cept for the anniversary part.

Last night we met friends at an out-of-the-way dive that has the best Cajun shrimp boil this side of Louisiana. The paper covering the table was the plate and the steaming conglomeration was dumped unceremoniously in the center. Our kind of meal. Mix it with a few beers, make a huge mess, laugh a lot, talk until we're hoarse and it was perfect.

So here we are a year later, settled in mostly, in our retreat south of Austin. We sat on the porch Wednesday and sighed a little for a lot of reasons, some obvious and some not, and toasted our 26 years together - 29 if you count the 3 years we lived together before we got married. We looked around and wondered out loud if we had "grown-up" yet - we decided we had not! Sox had crawled up in my lap and Izzy in "B's" and Zoe was busy mauling some hapless insect in the driveway - we decided that we may not be grown up, but perhaps we were content.

The Optimist and the Guard

The weather here has been wonderful for the last few days with temps in the 80s and sunshine - lots of sunshine. We are beginning to hear the sounds of the migrating birds again and the tulips and gladiolas are beginning to push their way to the surface. I know winter isn't over here, but the signs of better days are everywhere. It is amazing to live among the live oaks again, who have been tenaciously holding on to their leaves - I understand they will drop and regrow all within a 2 week period in late March. All the kitties are glad to be out, especially if the humans are out as well. So the beginnings of the spring cleanup have begun and it feels good to be working in the yard again. Good energy all around!

Zoe the optimist
(I suppose a girl has to dream, huh?)

Sox and the Fox Squirrel having a face off
(Sox looked determined and the squirrel looked mad)

HAPPY WEEK ALL!

Dipping into humanity

The head of our bed is on the north wall with a large window just above the headboard. It is always a pleasure to go to sleep watching the night sky and often when waking in the middle of the night Ursa Major is in view and ladling out the heavens. This is the first house I’ve ever lived in that had such an unobstructed view of the constellation, as the others had too much eave or the view was blocked by trees and other vegetation. I watched it for a long while in the wee hours of this morning, glad for the distraction to a very busy mind. Sometimes it just surprises me that it is there, night after night – the ever constant night companion.

In my youth it was an old sharecropper on my great uncle’s farm that pointed out the heavens and all that inhabited the night sky. We’d sit for hours in the dirt yard of his ramshackle house, Ben intermittently blowing on his harmonica or sipping ‘shine from a Mason jar and pointing out constellations by their common names and dispensing wisdom as he saw it and as his mood struck him. I thought about Ben as I watched the early morning sky and wondered about the remainder of his life. I was also grateful to have had such focused attention drawn by Ben on such a pervasive structure as the night sky that shelters us by its sheer constancy.

In the amniotic stillness of the early morning, with the rhythmic breathing beside me, the sound of my own heart and the warmth of the covers, I began to reflect on the contents of the book I had put down just several hours earlier – Mountains beyond Mountains: the quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a man who would cure the world by Tracy Kidder. It’s an inspiring journey of Dr. Paul Farmer and how his focus and vision changed and continues to change the lives of the people of Haiti as well as showing how one person can have such an impact on the solution to global health.

As I watched the Big Dipper inching it’s way around the sky I thought of Ben and his abject poverty, yet so full of kindness and colloquial wisdom. That thought segues into the plight of the Haitians and so many others in desperate circumstances and that thought landing on Farmer’s interpretation of the Haitian proverb: God gives but does not share - his interpretation: “God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he’s not the one who’s supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us.” I went back to sleep on that thought and woke on it this morning. The book is inspiring and hopeful that change can be had, not by big, unwieldy and unmanageable strokes, but on many focused efforts of dedicated and caring/daring folks.