Barnmaven

Carnivore

When I was in my 20's I toyed with vegetarianism for a while.  I still ate fish, but eschewed any other meat.  (For some reason, it didn't occur to me that fish are alive, too.  Perhaps I mentally disqualified them due to their lack of innate cuteness.  When something looks at you with warm brown eyes its easy to not want to eat it, but fish, well, they're coated with slime, they never blink, and would anyone want to cuddle with a fish? )

I'm not much of a vegetable eater (which in retrospect makes me question how I ever thought I'd be a successful vegetarian) so my diet consisted mostly of carbs.  Pasta, bread.  Ice cream.  It didn't take more than a year or two of staring longingly at other peoples' prime rib dinners for me to admit I was living a lie.  I wanted meat.  Even though it stung my pride to eat my words, I finally came out to my family:  "I'm not a vegetarian anymore.  Can I have a one of those hamburgers?"  Bless them all for only saying "I told you so" with the voices inside their heads.

I like my steak rare.  Once on a trip to Boston for work my then-boss took me to a little steak house.  That sirloin was the best tasting steak I've ever eaten.  I don't know what they used for seasoning, but I've never been able to replicate it.  I'm starting to salivate a little just thinking about it.  Every steak I've ever cooked since that meal has been a vain attempt to seek carnivore nirvana.

When I "accidentally" ended up with a small flock of chickens (another story for a rainy day) and they started gifting me with fresh free-range eggs, I was reminded of living on our little hobby farm as a kid.  We had our own eggs, our own garden, and every year a deer and half a grass-fed angus in the freezer.  Still, the money aspect.

Last year we had the opportunity to buy part of a steer from a friend.  It weighed out at about 700 lbs, and my brother, a friend and SG and I bought a half and sorted it out into three relatively even piles of beef.  Those steaks, those roasts, they were excellent.  Worth every penny. 

With SG on the road and earning, we felt emboldened to buy another half a beef this year, but this time a whole half.  The steer went to the butcher just after Thanksgiving, and two weeks ago Stephen went up there and brought home 325 lbs of steaks, roasts, ribs, hamburger, stew meat and carne asada.  We had to clean out the box freezer to make room for it all. 

Whenever I put a steak on the grill or a roast in the oven, my taste buds remember that perfect Bostonian steak.  Sometimes I get it right, sometimes its a miss, but always, especially when you know the meat you're eating is hormone-, pesticide- and drug-free, its better than good.  So far I've cooked a couple of roasts and made one batch of chili in the crock pot. 

I am a happy, happy carnivore.

 

The weekend roundup

For many years now, Thanksgiving has been a small affair.  Until 2009, usually just my ex and I and our kids.  Occasionally my brother. 

Such a marked difference to enjoy a huge repast with a house full of sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, nieces and a nephew, grandparents.   Well, grandparent, as SG's mom spent the holiday in the hospital.  She's all recovered now and we are so grateful for her return to health.

The food was amazing, the company warm and spontaneous.  I missed him, though, so much.  Being this far apart is really, really hard.  I spend a lot of time performing the smackdown on small feelings and on struggling with the ghosts of relationships past.  There are so many things that are hard to express fully over wireless channels.

The day after Thanksgiving is always the day I put up Christmas, and so it was again this year.  There was also a lot of house cleaning and some yard work, and some horseback riding with my daughter, and now the kids have gone to their dad's, the house is quiet, and I am downloading the camera and smiling at each still snapshot of our life.

Thanksgiving day wouldn't be complete without some time spend laying on the floor in front of the television while the food digests:

But for the C-man, the best part of the day was spending time in Grandpa's shop and getting to wear his magnifying eye goggles!

BIG EYES!

Friday morning the boxes came out of the garage, and up went The Tree:

I bought some new colored lights this year and put some up around the slider in the dining room.  I think they complement the new paint.

Yesterday we got one of the biggest eggs I'd ever seen!   Look at it, you can just tell it must have hurt like hell.  Poor chicken:

You're probably  not surprised to hear it was a double-yolker.

Today I raked and bagged 30 yard-bags full of leaves and I still have four piles to do!  My little guy was a terrific helper, stuffing leaves and carrying the bags to the pile for me.  He LOVES to help, and we had such a good time:

 

The chickens came around the front yard to scratch around in the newly-uncovered grass.  C-Man loves the chickens, I frequently find him carrying them around.  They seem to really like him -- they don't flap their wings or squawk.  They just kind of sit there patiently and let him tote them all over the place.  He carried one around on Saturday for about an hour, and she honestly seemed happy about it.  The Chicken Whisperer, I call him:

So that was our four-day weekend. 

How was yours?

Tuesday Mismash

My poor neglected blog.

I was AWOL last week, but for really fabulous reasons.  I attended a conference on supply chain put on by a company whose software I use at my job.  They do their conference every year and a half; the last time was in Atlanta, and my company won an award and I had a videotaped interview about the software and the improvements we experienced by using it.  This conference I had no responsibilities other than networking and pestering other folks in my line of work for solutions to some of the issues we currently face.  And the best part?  This conference was held at the Loew's Royal Pacific Resort hotel at Universal Studios Orlando.  Yes, I found a half hour every day to bake my butt at that fabulous pool.  And there really is a lagoon with that float plane in it.  

I stayed an extra day, most of which was spent shopping for things for the kids and lounging by the pool.  I also got to see my soon-to-be-former in-laws (which I suppose makes them outlaws?) for a dinner and a breakfast. 

It was a working vacation, in many ways.  Great conference, great experience.  Lots of people that I met there to email this week reminding them that I am pestering them for things.

S stayed at the house and took care of the zoo, bless his heart.  He's so nonchalant about the craziness of my Dr. Doolittle life.  My folks and my ex managed the kids, and I had fun and even though I missed everyone, I can't describe to you the incredible feeling of sunning yourself by a pool full of screaming kids when NONE OF THEM ARE YOURS.  Tuning out "Mommy!  Mommy!  Mommy!" by turning up my iPod because they're not talking to me! 

I also got to see Blue Man Group in Orlando, which was INCREDIBLE and FABULOUS and I am telling you that if you ever EVER get the chance to go see them live, DO IT.  DOOOOO ITTTTTT.  It was AMAZING and totally worth the cost of the ticket.

By the time I got home, though, I was ready to bury my face in my children's hair and give them six days' worth of hugs and kisses.

Here comes the sad part.

Two things happened while I was gone.  Bella got adopted.  Which I supposed is both happy AND sad.  Happy because she got this family that really really loves her (to the point that the husband has Bella as his wallpaper on his phone - not his kids or his wife) and yay, no more cleaning up puddles of Bella pee but sad in that no more Bella kisses and Bella Belly rubs and calling her Hellz Bellz and Stinkerbella and BellaBellaBella.  Lexie also got adopted, but at least I got home just in time to take her to meet her new family and kiss her goodbye through tears.  I didn't really get to say goodbye to Bella.

And I didn't get to say goodbye to Cin-Cin either.

The chickens have stayed out of the yard as a general rule.  Once Penny got in and I got to her in time to save her from being gummed to death by Hercules, but I had figured that for the most part the Chickens understood that the pasture was theirterritory and the yard belonged to the big furry barking things.  Until Saturday morning.  That's when Cin-Cin for God only knows whatreason decided to venture into the back yard.  And the dogs were there.  And Cin-Cin is no longer with us.

S saved her poor little body for me and I buried her last night after I got home from work.  I cried a whole bunch for that silly little hen.  She was the sweetest thing ever.  She would let you pick her up and cuddle her, when you talked to her she would cluck and chirrup back to you, she would eat food right out of your hand.  She laid the most beautiful small brown eggs, one every day.  

I buried her in the pasture next to Lady.

Now I can go sit out there and talk to both of them.

The kids were glad to have me back, and their dad said I can have them every night this week, even though its not "my" night every night.  (I'm sure he's glad for a break.)  He told them I would pick them up after school yesterday, and I think C misunderstood and when it came time for him to get on the bus to go to aftercare he had a complete meltdown.  To the point where the school called me and said someone had to come get him because they couldn't put him on his bus in that condition.  Thank God and all the angels for K, the director of his aftercare, who when I called her to explain drove straight over there to get him, soothed him and got him through the rest of the day.  I was just about undone when I picked him up and his voice was completely gone from how hard he had been crying.  Poor little man.  We spent a lot of time hugging and cuddling last night, and had fun playing with the toys I brought him from the Universal store.

I am home.  I am glad to be here.

Heavy

Some days the weight of it all becomes unbearable. 

Its not just the things that are unique to my situation, though those are a large part of the heaviness.  Living one paycheck away from God only knows what kind of financial disaster may befall is scary.  Looking at the half-ton of hay left in the barn and Christmas rushing at me on the calendar and knowing the old gelding needs his teeth floated and my daughter wants to sign up for basketball and my life insurance premium is coming due and my son needs interventions and god, the house needs cleaning and things need fixing and I need a haircut and I forgot my meds and we're out of groceries and and and...makes my heart want to thump right out of my chest and go careening madly down the street.  There's the faces of my kids and the other inmates at the zoo who all need some portion of time and attention, which becomes harder to give the more stressed out and tired I get.  There's the ungodly amount of work waiting for me at my desk and the burden of finding a new hire before the job kills me.  There's the worrying about so many things and so many people.

There's the stuff that we all go through - am I doing the right things with my kids?  Setting the right examples?  When I make decisions about life, career, finances, am I making the right ones?  Am I OK with my loved ones?  Am I OK with God?  AM I DOING THIS RIGHT? 

So.

Thursday I will cook a big ass turkey and all the trimmings and I will sit down at the table with my kids and my ex husband (yes, we do holidays together) and I will try, for at least one day, to put these things out of my mind and remember to be damned grateful for all the things that I DO have and stop worrying about the things I don't.

I have parents who support me in so many ways you can't even imagine.  Who love and listen and care and give, time and money and hugs and words.

I have beautiful, amazing children.  Children who are funny and smart and creative and kind.  Children who are sensitive and special and miraculous.  Children who out of the blue will come up to me and squeeze me around the middle and tell me they love me "more than the whole everything."

I have friends who love me.  Friends that come get me with their rig so I can ride my horse somewhere outside of my own pasture.  Friends who drive cross country to see me.  Friends who take me out to listen to a band when I'm so stressed out I can't breathe.  Friends who send me funny emails and make me laugh.  Friends who pray for me all the time.  Friends who find little ways to pick up some of the balls I drop. Friends who live in the box on my my desk, that share their daily struggles and joys and who listen to mine.  Friends who write comments here and other places that show me they are listening and that they care. 

I have these furballs, big and small, who bring meaning and joy to my life.   The warmth and weight of the purring cat on my lap, the dogs curled around my chair as I type, the horses who rumble and look happy when I emerge from the house.  My horses who let me hug them and hang on them and who put their soft noses near my face and breathe their horsey breath on me.  My silly little chickens who follow me around whenever I'm out by the barn and who give me breakfast almost every day.

And I realize that sometimes the heavy thing that I feel is not the burden of responsibility, but a large, solid blanket of love and support that wraps me up and helps me carry the weight of all the other things. 

On friends and gay teen suicides and other random things

I haven't written a blog post in so long you probably all thought I'd skipped town with a hot young Flamenco dancer.  You did, didn't you?  Admit it.

I didn't mean to take a vacation from blogging, but honestly, I didn't have much to say.  My friend Jaimee, the original vagabond, finally showed up on my doorstep after a meandering drive West from New Jersey.  I wasn't sure when she'd arrive or how long she'd stay.  Unfortunately it was horrible timing work-wise, so I couldn't really take any days off.  When I was home and got done slogging through all the other stuff I needed to do, the last thing I wanted to do was sit at my computer when I could be spending time with one of the most lovely people on the planet.

When you're me, or when you're like me, friendships and people aren't easy.  As Jaimee would say, I'm crunchy on the outside but the crunchy layer is only there to mask my soft nougaty center.  I'd like to think that as I get older I get more comfortable with who I am and less afraid to show my feelings, but I'm sure I'm not as far along that path as I'd like to be.  People scare me.  I don't trust easily, and I have a terrible phobia of being made to look ridiculous.  The end result is that I will twist myself into the most convoluted of knots to avoid allowing anyone to see how sensitive I truly am. 

Jaimee is one of those people that can get along with just about anyone.  She's part tree hugger, part hippie chick, part beautiful, sophisticated center of attention at parties and she can put on a dress and heels and have every guy in the room wishing she'd dance with him.  In many ways you would think that we have nothing in common aside from our mutual love of nature and the outdoors.  When I left New Jersey for Washington Jaimee gifted me with a beautiful necklace - a Yin/Yang symbol made of a white and a black pearl on a silver circle.  She told me that she thought it was symbolic of our friendship. 

What we found, though, when we were comfortable with each other to actually talk about the important stuff, is that we are inwardly very much alike.  She's just far better than I am at masking her vulnerability.

So we've been hanging out a bit the last week and a half.  We didn't *do* much, really, just sort of hung around.  Sadly I was unable to convert her into a Cowgirl.  I like her anyway.

 

It was good times. 

~@~@~@~@~@~

On the home front, C started medication two weeks ago.  We've been gradually increasing dosage, and he's been doing better.  He had two days last week that he didn't get written up at aftercare, which was a first.  He's still apparently not doing all that great fitting into the routine in Kindergarten, or at least that's what the prinicipal observed to me, since his teacher hasn't communicated a damn thing.  I requested last Friday that I get an email from his teacher just letting me know what kind of a day he had - even just a sentence or two so that I could communicate that to his doctor.  Its Thursday.  Guess how many reports I've gotten from his teacher?  Yeah.  I requested the IEP testing be conducted and that's underway.  I know a bit more now than I did when this started with A a few years ago.  I now understand that the IEP is not only to address cognitive function but life-skills as well.  So even if the testing shows no cognitive impairment, under the I.D.E.A. he is still entitled to assistance in social and life skills. 

And because I'm in a good mood at the moment, I'll refrain from discussing the nightmare arguments I've had with the insurance company over coverage and refills. 

I have friends and acquaintances I've met who are very anti-medication, and friends who are pro-medication except when it comes to their own children.  Lest anyone think that my very first avenue of approach is to medicate, let me clarify a few things.

From my perspective, medication isn't always a requirement when behavioral problems are present.  As an adult with ADHD, I'm not even certain that medication is a necessity for all children who have the disorder.  I had no idea I had ADHD until I was almost 40 years old.  I spent my whole life learning how to live with it with no pharmaceutical help whatsoever.  It CAN be done...but I can tell you from experience that it's not easy. 

When it came to my own children, my first steps were to find out what was wrong and to understand how much it was a problem.  We tried things prior to going the medication route, and honestly, I'm almost sorry we waited as long as I did.  My daughter's quality of life before Focalin and Lamictal was so awful compared to how it is now that there I times I feel guilty for not pursuing it sooner.   We actually waited a little bit longer to medicate C than we did with his sister.  His issues have manifested much differently, and I wasn't really certain how he would react to a school environment. 

For my family, medication has made a colossal difference.  But I also respect that it is not the avenue of choice for every family.  At the best, though, I hope that parents of children who have ADHD, Bipolar illness, Anxiety disorder or any other neurological disorder that affects corporate governance and cognitive function will at least consider looking into medication. 

I've heard so often, "Medication just turns your kid into a zombie."  I can't promise that every medication out there won't turn your kid into a zombie -  but I can tell you that there are very likely many that won't.  We did find one medication that had results we disliked - weight gain, general listlessness - and very few positive results, so we discontinued it very quickly and found something that worked better.  I can't imagine any parent that wants their child to be a zombie.  I mean, can you imagine how hard it is to clean all of those brains out of their school clothes? 

 

~@~@~@~@~@~@~

Finally, if you've stuck with me this far, I will weigh in on the hot topic of the news, blogosphere and twitterverse this week - suicide amongst gay teens.

It is distressing and disheartening that even with all we know now about sexual orientation being an integral part of a person's hardwiring, with LGBT stars living open lives, with television shows and movies and reality shows either featuring LGBT cast or at least having them as key cast members.  Unfortunately our growing awareness and acceptance hasn't reached every family, particularly people in small, conservative towns, and the social conservatives among us have only stepped up the hate rhetoric in response to such wide acceptance. 

I hope that the hard of heart among us will be moved by the recent attention to this issue, that anyone who is a parent or an aunt, uncle, grandparent, teacher, classmate, or spiritual leader will read the following statistics and if they have been unsupportive before, will mend their ways:

According to a recent study, LGBT teens who have experienced rejection from their family are

• 8.4 times more likely than their non-LGBT peers to attempt suicide;
• 3.4% more likely to use drugs; and
• 3.4 times more likely to engage in unprotected sexual activities than their peers who have received family acceptance and support.

There are people who want to argue that the bible preaches against homosexuality.  I'm no biblical scholar, and I won't pretend to be.  There are plenty of respected scholars out there, though, who have researched the etymology and original context of the earliest writings the bible was translated from, and who have concluded that the writers may have been speaking about something entirely differently than the current commonly accepted meaning.  Issues of biblical scholarship aside, as a Christian, I find that my understanding of God and Christ are so much bigger than what one can find in a book.  If you want to see the love of Christ in living color, all you have to do is look at the eyes and hearts of the people around you.  In my belief system, each and every one of us is a child of God and each and every one of us is loved equally.  I could say more about my opinion of people who aren't biblical scholars, have never researched its many translations or read all the many versions and scholarly treatises regarding it, but are absolutely willing to take the word of some pastor or religious commentator that it is the unequivocal word of God and only the one translation they're reading from is the "right" one, but I won't.  It would be a waste of breath.

Science has taught us that being gay is not a choice, that it is the way people are born.  How can it be a sin to be born gay?  Seriously.  God doesn't make those kind of mistakes.  If God thought being gay was sinful, people wouldn't be born that way. I am so tired of Christians who need to feel morally superior to other people.  Stop being so damned judgmental, will you?  Your hatred and fear are, literally, killing our teenagers. 

~@~@~@~@~@~

 And finally, in other news, the chicken is off the nest and happily wandering around the yard eating worms like all good chickens should.

I know this was long.  I'm sorry.  I missed you.  How have you all been?

 

Mime as performed by a chicken

I'm reading my posts over the last week or so and I tell you, I've whined so damn much that even I'M disgusted with myself.  So.  Let us speak of chickens and imaginary eggs.

This summer, as I was contentedly perusing Craigslist, something I should never be allowed to do when my bank account balance exceeds $50.00, I noticed an ad in the Farm & Garden section for a pet chicken. As she was an almost carbon copy of my adorable little Penny Hen, I immediately called the owner and asked if she was still available. She was.  So the next day after work, I stopped on my way home and added yet one more animal to my little farm.  Because obviously I need more animals.

Cin-Cin (short for Cinnamon) is a very friendly little banty hen, and she was lonely at her old house because there weren't any other chickens.  I was hoping that she would find a life of happy companionship with my two girls, Penny and Indigo, but alas, it was not meant to be.  The other two hens took one look at the new girl on the block and BALLISTIC. It was worse than Mean Girls.  For the two days I tried to coop Cin-Cin with the other hens, they beat the crap out of her every time she so much as MOVED.  I felt so sorry for her I invited her to move into my feed room, which offer she took me up on immediately and picked my saddle rack as her perch.  Which means I have to buy another saddle rack.  For my saddle so my $5 chicken can use my other one.  Le sigh.

Up until two weeks ago, Cin-Cin perched on my saddle rack every night and laid an egg in my hay every day.  She's also a friendly chicken, one you can pick up and carry around, unlike my other two, so of course I've become attached to her.

About two weeks ago, I went in to say goodnight to her after putting the horses up and could not see her.  I went over to her traditional laying spot, and there she was, on the nest.   I picked her up and there were two eggs under her, which she clearly wanted to get back on top of.  Yup, she'd gone broody.  I took one of the two eggs, figuring I'd let her keep one and hatch it if she could.  For about a week and a half she faithfully sat on that egg.  Then one day last week I went out and she'd moved.  She was still sitting, but the egg wasn't under her, it was still in her old nest.  I don't know why she moved, but I picked up the egg to check it, and you know it was stone cold. 

Now I was torn.  Put the egg back and let her sit on it until it gets stinky?  Or take the egg and hope she decides to go live the life of a spoiled chicken again? 

Have you ever smelled a rotten egg?  No?  Lucky you.  I took the egg and got rid of it.

A week and a half later?  Cin Cin is still sitting on that damned nest.  On nothing.  Nada.  NO EGG.  Brooding her little heart out for all the world as if she were sitting on ten damn eggs.  Every day, to her protest, I pick her up off the nest and carry her over to the waterer and the feeder, where she eats and talks to me.  As soon as she's done?  Back on that empty nest.

Either my bird has gone whack-a-doodle and thinks she's sitting on eggs that do not, in fact, exist, or she's involved in an elaborate form of chicken mime, in which case the entertainment value totally escapes me.

What's even worse is that I'm not even a little bit close to being as dedicated a mother to my real children, who walk and breathe and eat, as that hen is to her imaginary eggs.  Not. even. close.

 

 

Also, if anyone has any ideas about how I get her to abandon the imaginary eggs and get a life again, I'm open to suggestions.

Random Tuesday Crap

Random Item 1: Can you say DEAD CHICKEN? Good! Now, for the really difficult part of the quiz (I bet you didn't know there would be a quiz, did you, or you probably wouldn't have visited today!): Can you say "Dead Chicken" TWICE? I knew you could! Gold star for you! None for the chickens, sadly. The rooster I don't mind much, I've been begging the neighbor to have him for dinner ever since he started attacking any human that crosses his path. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happened to him, but have to confirm that. On a significantly more tragic note, I found a bunch of feathers out in the front pasture, and the other two hens huddling in the coop. Apparently whatever got the one scared the other two so badly that one of them actually laid her first egg of the year.

Random Item #2: PLEASE for the love of all that I believe in, go here and read a post by Mocha Momma on overt racism and all of the comments that follow. It is a wonderful discussion, sadly it highlights the disturbing and disgraceful fact that racism is alive and well in the 21st century, despite the fact that WE SHOULD FUCKING KNOW BETTER. Ahem.

Not-so-Random Item #3:  My daughter is brilliant. Yes, I am an incredibly biased mama. BUT. Amazon Girl had a terrific report this time around for Parent/Teacher conferences. She got "exceeds expectations" in nearly every category under "Behavior." I realize that for many parents this would be a reasonable expectation. NOT FOR ME. I nearly cried in the meeting with her teacher. I am so incredibly proud of my baby. Everyone please join me in standing on your chair and yelling WHOOP!!!!!! at the top of your lungs! The penultimate, the most wonderful, the INSANELY AWESOME thing about it is to see how proud she is OF HERSELF. I know my mom friends who read this will recognize that palpitation you feel around your heart muscle chest when you see your baby, your offspring, your child, RECOGNIZE that they are good at something and feel joy and pride in themselves. Child A has discovered that she is a WRITER. Her class publishes stories every week, and she is writing above grade level. She wrote a story about the passing of our beloved Lady that actually made her teacher CRY. Then came home and told me about it, grinning from ear to ear. I know. You get this.

Random item #4: Little Man did NOT have to go to school in his PJ's today. By the skin of his teeth. And I didn't even yell at him. Score one for both of us!

Random item #5: My newest foster dog, Rosie, is successfully housebroken! I am pathetically grateful for this, most deeply because my own two dogs came down with an intestinal upset last week and I spent more hours that I want to divulge cleaning up SHITASTROPHES.

Random item #6: *Congratulations to Andria on her new arrival.

Enough randomness for one day. Peace out.

On the nightstand

I'm a huge fan of Temple Grandin.  I can't even remember how many years ago I heard her on NPR being interviewed about her research into animal behavior and how she was consulting with slaughter yards across the U.S., helping them to evaluate their environments and practices in order to create a fear-free environment for our food animals.  The interview itself was interesting, and without knowing her story I could tell by the way she spoke that there was something a little different about her.  As it turns out, Grandin is autistic.  I suppose its not suprising that there are highly functioning persons with autism in our world, I have family and friends with kids on the autism spectrum who function so well that people don't understand they have the disorder.  What is remarkable, to me at least, is just how high-functioning she is.  She holds a Ph.D. in animals sciences, is a tenured professor at Colorado State University, and has authored four books. This in addition to her consulting work.    She is passionate and articulate, and she was influential enough to convince the CEO's of five of the biggest fast-food chains to visit their own slaughter vendors, which had (and will continue to have) enormous and lasting changes on how these companies produce meat. 

Its an interesting discussion for me, this question of animal happiness and quality of life.  And no, its not just because I'm an animal lover (NO, you say?  REALLY?  YOU LOVE ANIMALS?  I hadn't a CLUE!), its the awakening somewhere in my cerebral cortex in recent years that there really are people who fall in between "HUNTS TO KILL SHIT" and "PETA" on the spectrum.   I've at times in my life gone vegetarian, was a member of PETA for about three seconds when I was in my 20's and still naive and impetuous.   Eventually, as happens to many people, my craving for steak overrode my desire to see animals die for my consumption.   I understand intellectually that meat comes from animals; I can see the plastic-wrapped packages of beef in the grocery coolers and I know the process whereby that meat is derived - I've lived in the country for long enough and seen my dad butcher enough deer, elk and other game to not have the need to mentally separate the end result from its origins.  I mean, when we bought two yearling steers from our black-angus-raising neighbor, we named them "Chuck" and "Strip."  I know where meat comes from and I'm no longer ashamed to admit I eat it.  AND ENJOY IT.

So anyway, big fan of Temple Grandin's. And I'm two chapters into her newest book, Animals Make us Human.  The book delves into available research and Grandin's own hypotheses around what emotions animals actually feel, how they are similar to the reactions of humans to similar stimuli, and what various kinds of animals in our lives require in order to be "happy."  I've just finished the chapter on dogs.  God, I love my dogs.  Grandin has some interesting and potentially controversial things to say about how dogs interact with one another in various situations - she talks a lot about Cesar Milan (also a huge fan of his) and his theories on dog behavior.  I guess I was surprised when she parted company in her interpretation of the necessity of dominance structure.  She agrees that with a pack like Cesar's, where he has 40-50 dogs in his center at any given time, that like captive wolves, who are often put in groups far larger than they comprise in the wild, a dominant leader is necessary to keep equilibrium in the group.  But she offers that in smaller groups, family-sized groups of dogs, that a more reasonable and necessary function of the human is to act as a parent, much as wolf family groups in the wild function.   As with our human children, Grandin promulgates the idea that we serve our dogs better when we teach them to handle frustration with equanimity, since much of dog life with humans involves the frustration of natural dog behavior.  Now, as a woman whose life is partially ruled by three very large, friendly dogs, I agree that its important for dogs to tolerate frustration well.  God knows it has to be frustrating as hell when my children dress them up in hats and coats, or tie all three of them together with winter scarves to make a driving team...and its remarkable to me almost daily that my dogs don't just finally say "Done" and take off a limb.  So yes - I see how frustration tolerance is a key element of dog behavior.  She believes this is more important than the concept Cesar teaches about teaching your dog to be submissive to a dominant alpha.  Applying my approach with my own dogs, I can see how I do a little bit of both.  My dogs know who I'm boss...although they don't always choose to listen.  Hercules, he talks back a lot, but he usually complies.  Roscoe?  I can give him a sideways look and he immediately rolls over on his back and does his best imitation of a pathetic little love-starved puppy (yes, all 70 pounds of him.  Puppy.  Heh.)  Lady is a being unto herself.  I have never met a dog more stubborn and willful and yet at the same time completely dopey and loving.  She is the most single-minded dog I've ever seen, fortunately her mind is mostly set on sleeping.  And eating.  And having her belly rubbed.  Lucky, fortunate, because even at a small-for-a-bullmastiff size of 93 pounds, she is a formidable enough dog that if what she *really* wanted were to make you not be in her way any more? Not hard to accomplish. 

I read after I adopted Lady that the bullmastiff was originally bred to control poachers on the large game estates of very wealthy Lords in old Britain.  They are very quiet dogs, not big on barking.  Their job was to locate a poacher, sneak up on them, and restrain them physically until the Game Warden could some slap the cuffs on and throw the miscreant in the pokey.  Watching Lady sometimes this doesn't surprise me at all.  She doesn't move a lot, but when she wants to, she can move FAST.  When she plays with Roscoe I wince.  He is all legs and he's whip-fast.  He can outrun her any day of the week, but she knows this.  All she does is wait for him to come flying at her, then she drops her shoulder and takes him OUT.  She doesn't even have to try...she's so big and solid that he just hits her, WHAM!, and goes rolling. 

Grandin suggests that the newer theory about never letting your dog win in games of tug-of-war, because they might learn they are dominant over you, is rubbish.  She cited a study in her last book Animals in Translation that collected data on Golden Retrievers playing Tug of War.  Essentially, the dogs' submission to the human leader was unchanged regardless of whether they always lost, always won, or were allowed to win half the games.  In fact, what would happen when the dogs *always* lost was that they eventually lost interest in playing.  Apparently dogs don't like to lose all the time, who knew?  So anway, when it comes to things like playing games with your dog, or even letting them up on the furniture, Grandin says "Beating a person at tug of war didn't make the dogs more dominant.  I wouldn't be surprised if you saw the same thing in a study of dogs getting up on furniture and beds."  OH THANK GOD.  And here I've been worried that someone was going to tell Cesar that my dogs were sleeping with me and he was going to show up and revoke my dog-ownership rights for being a lousy alpha. 

Oh, and there's actually a chapter in this book on Chickens.  Which I cannot wait to read.  Because I am intensely curious as to how it is I will be able to recognize when the chickens are happy.  I will become the best chicken momma EVER.

Mud City

When I moved to the Tri-Cities, one of the big selling points to me was their claim that they average "310 days of sun a year!"  I grew up on the wet side of Washington State, so by birth and raising I qualify as one of the Moss People.  Aging tends to whittle away at one's tolerances for discomfort, though.  I want to be able to ride my horses and I refuse to ride in anything colder than 40F, in anything resembling rain or snow or drizzle.  Of course, we also get blistering heat over here in the desert, and days when "windy" doesn't even come close to describing the gale-force winds doing their best to remove the tin roof from my horse shed.  Even so, I truly believe in my heart that I get more "riding weather" here than I would there, and so don't miss the other side of the Cascades too terribly much. 

There is one aspect in which this part of the state resembles THAT part of the state, and as we have had some unexpectedly warm December and January days (following a two-week cold snap in early December that had my chickens begging to become housepets), we have now entered an extremely early Mud Season.

The desert side of Washington has cold winters and hot summers.  In between each, they have Mud.  And its not that we don't actually get the advertised 310 days of sun a year...its that the 55 days of rain?  Yeah, they fall CONSECUTIVELY.  Or so it seems. Its almost enough to make me miss the constant drizzle in Seattle.  At least you get to experience that rain surrounded by huge evergreen trees and lakes.  Out here?   Oh, the desert has color in the late spring, when the purple sage starts to bloom and the wildflowers come in.  The trees are verdant and the warming spring air makes everyone just a little bit giddy.    But not now.  Now its just shades of brown, and its wet to boot.  Snow I don't mind, nor wind (much anyway), nor heat, nor storms.  But this?  Endless days of murky skies and being ankle-deep in muck everytime I go out to feed the horses?  Someone please take it away.

I only have what, 48 more days of this?  Someone plug in my lightbox and break out the antidepressants, or I might not make it until the sun comes back. 

Random Tuesday Musings

I'm listening to Christmas music today.  And no, you're not allowed to make fun of me for that!  Well, actually you are allowed, I just don't want to hear it.  Christmas is my favorite holiday, bar NONE.  Now that Halloween is over and the Christmas stuff is showing up on the store shelves, I'm exercising my prerogative to fill my office with the beauty of a sweet cello/piano version of "What Child is This?"    I am blissed out.

We officially hit freezing the last couple of nights.  I've got to find $59.99 to buy a heater pad for the chicken's water pretty darn soon.  Payday is Friday, so I can probably get it then.  I might need a new stock tank heater too, my old one is pretty beat up.  Zenon thinks its a toy; he pulls it out of the tank and unplugs it from the extension cord.  Then he drops it on the ground and stands on it so the wire cage is all bent out of shape. Frankly I'm surprised the damn thing still works.  Zeenie is also a master of gate latches and doors.  Once he figures out how to open something you have to find a different way to latch it or he'll go through it every ten minutes.  Its cute...but some days also extremely annoying.  I got to take him for a ride this weekend.  Mom called me Sunday as I was headed to the grocery store and asked what I had going on.  I laid out the game plan of food shopping and housework.  She told me I could wait and do my housework in the dark, it was a nice day and she wanted to come over and hang with the kids so I could go horseback riding.

Did I mention my mom is DA BOMB???  It was such a nice ride.  And I still got all my housecleaning done.