The Fair! Clean pigs and our "zamb".

Tomorrow is the official start to the County Fair. 'Round these parts, and I am including my family in "these parts", The Fair is a week unlike any other. It is part Christmas, part final exams. It is the week that takes more effort to prepare for than any other week of the year. And, unlike Christmas, I am not the only one exerting great effort. This Fair week, my three children will be exhibiting 16 projects. That includes 8 livestock projects (and taking 12 animals), three cooking projects and...others (this is where I get a bit vague). My 4-H children (our club of 81 members) are taking somewhere in the nature of 165 projects to The Fair.
For two intensive days this week, Middlest, heading up the Fair Booth Committee- jointly with Emma J., worked hard with their crew of Club faithful to create a Fair Booth with the prescribed theme of "Sew it, Grow it, Show it". The committee chose to do a fairytale spin on this, and created a lovely booth, featuring a "4-H Fairytales book" full of posters showing what the kids learned in their miscellaneous projects.



Chairpersons



The Fairbooth Committee!

We have been deep in all Fair preparations, and somehow, felt it necessary to also sneak in a Pony Club Rating this morning, where Middlest and Patches were able to earn their D2 rating! The camper was also collected this morning, outfitted with the necessities (pretty sheets and flowers to counterbalance the "camperness" of the thing, and then moved to the fairgrounds. Huz was on this detail, enlisting the help of friend and truck owner, Paul to collect the living quarters for the next week. Huz also went on a Homer-style Odyssey to find a hose splitter- there are never enough hose outlets to hook up to water, and made a side trip to fill the fridge with artisan beer. Hmmm.
Back at Cowfeathers, the hens got bathed, the sheep got bathed, and February got "slick sheared"- this means right to the skin. The hogs got scrubbed, tack trunks were outfitted and loaded in the truck, posters were made for miscellaneous food science, veterinary and nutrition judgings, and the barn got a good cleaning courtesy of Nick- who is helping me out this summer.
Tomorrow is "move-in day" this means many, many trips to the fair grounds to deliver animals and equipment. Hogs go first in the early am. This, mainly because we don't have much hope of being able to manuever our big trailer in the crush that will be evening arrivals. The sheep are amenable, and can be walked from distance. The hens and the ducks can be carried. The dogs don't "move in", so stay here until they show, and for the first time in many years we are not taking a horse to the fair. This turns out to be a relief. The horse gets not a real break though, as the day after fair, she moves to Pony Club Camp, to be ridden three times a day. But that is a whole week away, plenty of time to plan....



Middlest putting her hand to shearing February.



Baby geese are the cutest!



Poppy, one of our eldest ladies, surveys the barnyard, and thinks of her evening constitutional to the garden and compost bins.



Youngest gives Wilbur's head a scrub.



Getting cleaner!



After shearing February with Middlest, Kendra show's Middlest how it's done. Making our wool sheep look like a market lamb! He has extraordinary zebra stripes. If a horse/zebra is a "zorse", then this is a "zamb".

SHAVING HOGS????

Well, perhaps I should've been more specific about the "I plan to be useful" statement. I didn't mean so soon.
We have been on a Ferris wheel that is being driven by a maniac carny, with a sadist's sense of time.
I worry that I might secretly be the carny. Which would mean the whole thing is masochistic...but I don't have the time to figure it out.
I spent three days last weekend (okay, just that statement gives you how our "time" is working) at Middlest's Pony Club Show Jumping and Dressage Rallies in northern Ohio. That is worth chapters of blogging, oodles of blogging , and many wonderful pictures...but the darn Ferris wheel won't stop and let me off, so we are onto Fair now. We are so onto Fair, that at this moment, Youngest, with the help of our Hog Experienced neighbor, is shaving his pigs.
(This is one of the moments when the Ferris wheel stops at the top and lets you swing back a forth a whole minute.)


SHAVING HOGS??????????????

Yep. I hadn't really thought of hogs as hairy. But, they have longish hair on their bodies, and for show you shave them down to about a 1/2 inch of hair. The "processor" likes to have some hair, because, it apparently allows them to get a better grip on the hide. And yes, Wilbur and Willis are going to the "processor". Bacon and Ribs. I'm not really vegetarian by choice, but in this instance....

Even their little piggy tails get shaved.

One of the things that I was curious about was; how does one get a hog to stand still and be shaved? The answer, apparently is; food.

And, one for the road- for soon, not only do the hogs hit the road, so does little February. Our first market lamb.

I plan to become Useful.

My recent mishap may lead some to believe I'm not in this for the long haul. That I am cavalier about my shin bone being connected to my knee bone. It is just not true. Anymore. There was certainly a time in my blush of youth when 30 was incomprehensible, and 1999 a pinprick in the distance, I suffered little from dalliance with self preservation. I lived mostly without fear, and my decisions were not always cantilevered into the wise section of the spectrum.
But I had a kind of epiphany here recently that had nothing to do with my concussion. I know this, because I had the epiphany pre-flight. I just forgot about it a while.
I recalled it in my "What should I think about tonight?" minutes after bed, but before slumber, when I have to plan, make, do something in my brain in order to have it shut down for the night. That led me to then wonder " Have I flirted with dead?" (Being dead, not "the" dead, cause that would be ick).  At first I could think of nothing I've done that was likely to end with my demise and a half-baked obituary full of typos in the country paper. Then, I thought of one thing. Jeez, what a maroon! Then, another, and another, and once the floodgates opened I stopped trying to think of them. They were all lined up right there, shaking their heads at me and saying "Lands end, Lady, your fleet of Guardian Angels got raggedy and went all Grizzly Adams around 1993. Since then, God's been working pretty hard all by himself. Good thing you opted for the marriage and children ladder." The astute might now be wondering how thoughts like this could lead to sleep.
It's that I made it to 30. 1999 came and went with only bilateral wisdom tooth abscesses that meant I had to celebrate the turn of the millennium through a straw. I had three children who amaze me, and married a man I am fascinated by. I not only wanted to make it to 40, 50, 60... I expected to make it to 80, 90, 100. Which wasn't the epiphany.
 It is Usefulness. That is what I think is the secret to longevity. The productive sort of longevity. I think when folks stop feeling useful, their bodies and minds start becoming useless. So, I started my useful plan. No, I've no idea what use I'll be when I hit 85. Yet. But, now I can plan for it.  Observe the useful elderly. There is working usefulness- like Gram still being expected to make cookies and pack lunches for Aunt Sib's landscaping crews. There is personal goal usefulness- like doing the Over 80 category in the mud run. And there is the care usefulness I see in my older clients who are, unquestioningly, needed by their tooth-challenged Chihuahuas. Who else would tolerate Paco? So they must live on!
Now, I don't want to live over-cautiously, so I hope God not only keeps up the good work, but maybe some of my Guardian Angels are ready to lace up again. In the meantime, with their help, I have about 30 years to figure out how to become Useful.

A Bad Patience

I'm here to tell you, lightning can strike twice.
But, I will not really explain that, just to say that 3 1/2 weeks after my flight from Oslo ended with a wall, I thought maybe it was time to blog about it. But I am uncomfortable doing so, and I wondered why? So, upon thinking hard thoughts, like Pooh Bear, tapping my head, and concentrating very hard, I realized; because it feels like it is not my story to tell. That confused me too, because then, who's story is it? It doesn't feel like mine, because I don't remember it, atall, atall. So, I can only relate what I've heard. That's gossiping about myself. And Oslo isn't talking. So, I must leave it to the ladies who helped me that evening, and my Huz who was an excellent nurse, and my children who looked doubtfully my way and still have to help me with my bra in the mornings. But, no longer my hair, because I have figured out how to braid it and put it up by myself.
What I can talk about it that simply put: I am a Bad Patience. This means I'm a good patient, I smile, complain very little, try pretty hard, mostly do what I'm told. But I've no patience for it. The first week was easier because all of it was terribly fuzzy. I did amuse myself by reading a book of which I've no idea what I read. If I stopped and put it down to do something else ( such as roll on my side which was precarious because on my left side, if I canted forward the shoulder rolls open and hurts and lying on my right side means lying on a broken scapula and a separated shoulder. Also unpleasant...) I would completely forget not only where I was in the story, but what the story was about and the characters. At first, I just started the book over again, but soon realized that was fruitless. So, I could apologize to the author of the book for thinking it made no sense whatsoever, but I can't recall the name of the book or the author, so I guess it's equally moot. I spoke with folks that week, and don't remember a moment of it, so if we chatted and I made no sense...well, now you know I made no sense because if I stopped to take a breath I couldn't remember what we were speaking of, or to whom I was speaking. Okay, by me because once I hung up the phone, I didn't remember I was on it in the first place. I went back to the orthopedist last week, and he greeted me like we'd seen each other two weeks ago. Crazy guy. He also showed me my films (x-rays) 2 weeks post flight. I wish I hadn't seen them. This is because now that I know what it looks like, I wonder how it ever worked anyway.



This is my excellent rendering of a normal shoulder and my shoulder. I have to point out that the collarbone is a wreck, but it isn't all from this one incident. The collarbone has been to the rodeo before (several times).

I have been cleared to drive, and work, and have been doing so, mostly left handed, but I am putting my right arm into motion more everyday. Sometimes too much, and have to silently lament my enthusiasm. At work, I have found that abdominal palpation on small dogs and cats is mostly doable, but big dogs? Not happening. I'm still good at talking (no surprise, eh?) but anal glands...well, decent at emptying the left, hopeless at doing the right. Which makes me useless for that particular glamorous pursuit. I'm competent at vaccinating, but not so at phlebotomy (the gathering of the blood). I can't open "childsafe" caps worth a darn, but I'm back to being able to type (exhibit "A" at present).
 Today I drove the truck and trailer to the Pony Club lesson for Middlest, about 1.5 hrs each way, and that went fairly well, except for backing the rig into a space, which required me to move my right arm behind the passenger seat and turn to the right to back. Believe me, I tried it five times without doing so, but gave up and went with the routine way. It made my teeth chatter and I felt like I was going to throw up, but I backed that sucker into the sweet spot.
  Okay, as for the lightning, this time is struck my friend. And, that somehow is much, much worse.  Get well, Christie. Soon. And, don't be a Bad Patience.