When the big hand is on the 10 and the little hand is on the 3…

This morning I did laundry and hung it out. Then I took care of the horses. I had to go to work at noon, so I had to be home to get ready by eleven. I checked the time after I hung up the laundry and–gulp–it was a quarter ’til!

I raced around, throwing things–a bale of hay, horse poop, some shavings, pitchforks, buckets, feed, etc. “Sorry boys, it’s got to be a swipe and a promise today.” I checked the stall doors one last time and ran. A quarter after…yikes!

I was halfway out the driveway before I realized it was a quarter after TEN, not eleven! So I had plenty of time for a leisurely shower and lunch, iron my clothes, pack my supper, la la la….

I usually enjoy hanging up laundry. I love the smell of clean, sunshiny clothes. I find hanging laundry out to be one of the most relaxing things. Maybe I’m weird, I don’t know. When I hang out clothes, they have to be neat and in order of size and kind. I learned how to hang out laundry from my mother, who learned from her mother, etc. I like to think that how I hang out laundry is just like how a woman years and years ago used to hang out her laundry, teaching her daughter as she went: now be sure to hang the big stuff first, and then the medium things; it just looks better that way; don’t you just love how the sheets smell after absorbing all that sunshine?

My dirty truck

It’s true, I have a filthy truck. I haven’t had a chance to give it its semi-annual bath yet, and driving up that dirt driveway every day leaves it covered in a film of dust. The worst part is the inside. Even that is getting very grimy. That’s what happens when the dog rides along to the farm.

Today I was carrying buckets of water to and fro, watering the garden. I “heard” this plaintive cry coming from the Dodge: water me!

Now my truck has never spoken to me before, so that is unusual. But these sorts of things happen all the time. I looked over at it and said “but I don’t want you to get any bigger!”

Why do these things happen to me?

And why do they happen at the start of a three-day weekend?

I had to work Saturday, and when I went out to feed in the evening, Utah was walking very tentatively. Something was definitely very wrong when I was able to walk straight up to him, carrying a halter in plain view, and catch him. He was sore on his feet, which were hot to the touch, and he stood spraddle-legged and shifting from one side to the next.

Yup, quite sure that was the beginning of laminits…and in my horse who never has problems. Great.

I hosed his feet down and put him in his stall with a lot of extra straw, and then I went home and called the vet.

And that was what I did for the rest of the weekend: hose feet, give Bute, clean out stinky stall, refill with straw. He’s getting better, but not all the way yet. I’m really frustrated that I don’t have anyplace I can turn them out without access to grass. The poor boys are stuck in their stalls for the time-being. I turn Buddy out while I clean stalls, but Utah pitches a hissy fit when he can’t see his buddy.

I bought some stall mats yesterday, but I don’t know how I’m going to get them into those stinky stalls all by myself. Ick. I’m going to try to get some stall shavings today. They’re supposed to be better for them, and everybody uses them. Nobody uses straw anymore. There must be a reason, right? I guess it’s more absorbent, and if it will help with those stinky stalls it will be worth it.

Planted

I got plants yesterday to put in the garden. I can’t wait to get at it!

I haven’t had overwhelming success with tomatoes yet, but I got several different kinds to try this year. Two of them are supposed to be good for container gardens, so that will help with my space issues. I’m also going to try some leeks. I have had great luck with peppers of all kinds–I hope saying that doesn’t jinx me–so I got several sweet peppers and some cayenne peppers.

I’m planning to spend my weekend in the garden, but you never know what will disrupt my plans. The best-laid schemes and all that.

I really need to get some fence put up for the horses. The current pasture fence is beyond pathetic and I want to replace it. Plus I want to fence off a smaller area inside that so I can make it a dry lot to keep the boys off the grass. I just keep waffling about what would be easiest to do first.

I have no idea how to actually build a fence. That’s problem number one. Problem number two is that I can’t decide exactly what I want. I’d like a good woven wire fence all the way around the perimeter, where the awful fence is now. Then I could section it off with electric fence. But if I take down the current fence to build a new one, where will I put the boys while I’m working on it? Or should I put up the electric fence and keep them in there while I replace the perimeter?

I’m paralyzed by the questions!

Yearning for a different ending

It is no great secret among those who know me that I am pro-American Indian. Some call me a bleeding heart liberal. If I got involved in the so-called culture wars, I might even, in the heat of battle, be called anti-American. That would be untrue, of course. Probably no one will ever call me anything because I have added nothing to the print body of American history.

But I am pro-Indian. I have always been fascinated by the history of the Indians in Ohio, and the rest of the US as well. Tecumseh was my hero when I was younger, and I still admire him. Every time I reread his story, I hope for a different ending. I know it’s not possible for a book–especially a history book–to suddenly acquire a different ending, but still I yearn for the day when Tecumseh does not fall at the Battle of the Thames, when his Indian confederacy remains strong and manages to stand up to the US and say “this land, here, is ours. Go away.”

I don’t believe the dispute between America and the Indian nations was an either/or situation; unfortunately that’s how it turned out in Ohio. A series of treaties turned Indian landholdings into a hunk of swiss cheese, and then the settlers gobbled that up too. The Wyandots were the last tribe to leave Ohio, in 1843.

Here’s what I find so frustrating. Before they left, the Wyandots owned a twelve mile square hunk of land in present day Wyandot County. It wasn’t even all of Wyandot County. The Americans had all the rest of Ohio: 87+ counties out of 88. Couldn’t they have left the Wyandots alone on their 12 mile square remainder?

But no, they had to have that too.

Just think, if the Wyandots had kept their Ohio lands, we could have had a casino in Ohio today. (I’m being sarcastic about that, but seriously…it would have been a small price to pay for the US to have maintained some sense of pride for having acted morally.)

I’m not crazy–I like being able to live in Ohio and I’m glad my (white) ancestors were able to settle here. I don’t think we should have turned around and gone back to Europe. I like being American.

We’re coming up on Memorial Day, when we honor those brave people who fought and died for our freedom. I am grateful to them for their sacrifice.

I don’t believe it diminishes that gratitude when I remember another, less often honored, sacrifice that enabled the United States to exist.

The American Indians gave up everything. They had been living here, developing communities, civilizations, economies, cultures, everything that makes humans human, for a long time before Europeans came. And because of some freak circumstances, an unbelievably massive percentage of Indians died, just because of the nature of the germs. Devastating. And then came the wars, and the religious challenges, and the cultural clashes. And still Indian communities tried valiantly to do the most basic thing human beings do:

They tried to live. They tried to stabilize their communities, to maintain family ties, to strengthen their economies. It’s hard to persevere when the ground your everyday life depends upon suddenly becomes as unstable as quicksand. It’s hard to plan for the future when you don’t even know if the land you own today will be yours tomorrow–it’s amazing (and heartbreaking) that the Wyandots built houses and planted orchards–orchards–the ultimate long-term investment!

Before I gallop too far ahead on my favorite hobby horse, let me say this. Indians are still here. I don’t want it to sound as if I’m contributing to the Noble Disappearing Savage myth. There are even Indians in Ohio–and I’m not talking about the team on the lake.

I think I’d better just fade away for now.

Scatterbrained

I’m sorry I jump around so much from thing to thing here. I know they suggest you focus your blog on one particular subject, but I just don’t care! This is the way my brain works anyhow; different stuff percolates to the top at any given moment. Sometimes nothing comes up at all.

How I discovered Buddy has metabolic syndrome

Buddy had an appointment with the vet yesterday. He was supposed to come sometime between 12 and 4 p.m., so I went to the farm and worked around while I was waiting. I spent most of the day digging up those damnable burdock weeds that are growing in the pasture.

The vet never came, so I checked my messages and found out that he had several emergency calls, so I had to reschedule. That sort of thing happens, no big deal. I’m just thankful that I didn’t have an emergency. I hate horse emergencies.

Buddy and Utah were going to get their spring shots, and I was going to have him check up on how Buddy is doing.

Last fall the vet did blood work and we decided that Buddy has metabolic syndrome. Even the vets don’t know much about this condition yet, and it’s definitely beyond me. But here’s how I understand it: it’s sort of equivalent to a human becoming diabetic. His system isn’t getting the glucose from his food into his cells properly. Instead, he is storing the sugar he eats on his body in weird fat deposits here and there. The condition is also linked to problems with his feet, including a tendency toward laminitis.

Practically speaking, this means my horse cannot eat grass. Completely counterintuitive, right? Horses are supposed to eat grass! Well, Buddy has to wear a grazing muzzle when he’s out, in order to limit his grass intake. He can eat hay, and the vet suggested a specific kind of feed that provides for Buddy’s complete nutritional needs while being a low sugar/carb feed. Plus he gets a supplement that contains magnesium, which seems to help for some reason.

It took me a long time to figure out what was going on.

He started to develop a cresty neck–just a little extra thickness on top. It started very slowly. His crest got very hard, he developed puffiness over his eyes, he became reluctant to pick up his feet, and he seemed to become a rather big guy. None of these things would have meant anything to me, until he started to walk very stiff-legged on his front legs. That’s when I finally put all of these symptoms together–he wasn’t cresty because he was a handsome guy, he wasn’t just muscled-up, he wasn’t just being stubborn about his feet. His feet hurt him. He was accumulating weird, kind of hard fat pads on his shoulders and butt. And he was walking like a stove-up old man.

Last September the vet checked Buddy out and pulled some blood. He said he probably has arthritis (he’s 18 years old.) Because of his high sugar levels, the vet said he is probably metabolic syndrome–sometimes called IR (insulin resistant) and sometimes called pre-Cushings.

It was hard for me to see because it happened so gradually, but the stiffness in walking was what really got my attention (finally.) I feel like a horrible horse owner because I didn’t realize what was happening. But I’m not! And I’m writing about it in some detail here so if anyone recognizes anything similar in your horse you will have the benefit of my experience.

I never was a very serious historian

I haven’t read a history book since February. Oh, my goodness!

After I got my master’s, I was so sick of history I didn’t read anything historical for a long time. But after a bit of a break, I got back into it. Not as serious as when I was in school–there is popular history and then there is academic history–but enough to feel like I was still in the loop.

Am I an historian? I have the degree, but I don’t do anything with it. Okay, I don’t make my living off history. But I use the research skills that I learned in grad school every day: I know how to define a query, search the literature, limit or expand the query as necessary, determine which hits might be useful to the job at hand, and locate the information. I just do it for other people.

The practice of history is highly linked to writing…publish or perish. I would love to publish something, but mostly I scribble stuff in my notebook, never to be seen by another person. The lack of feedback contributes to the feeling of lethargy, which leads to nothing.

I lack focus.

I was looking up some stuff on OhioLink and saw that someone checked my thesis out of the library. That scared me. It’s a weird feeling to think that someone is reading my words. Um, what do I think I’m doing here, typing this?

The benevolent leader

It’s interesting to watch how horses communicate with each other. There is a definite hierarchy to any herd. The higher ups dictate to those below them in the pecking order. The body language is often subtle, but obviously clear to the horses.

Buddy’s first companion, Laddie, was a bully. He used to chase Buddy off the piles of hay, repeatedly, just to be mean. But Utah is a benevolent leader. He chooses which pile of hay is his, but he leaves Buddy alone with the other pile. Sometimes–if Utah feels like it–both horses eat off the same pile.

If Utah decides he wants something, he gets it; if Buddy is in his way, he moves him. He does it with an eyeball. He has a look that clearly says get out of my way. But he’s good-humored about it. He’s got this confident air about him, as if he just goes where he’s going and assumes that anyone else will get out of his way. Of course.

They are a goofy pair. When I open the barn door so they can come in and get in their stalls, Buddy usually comes in first: is there food? Invariably he walks into Utah’s stall first, just to check if he left any food in his manger the last time. Then Utah comes in and, without hesitating, saunters into the same stall. I don’t know how they manage it, but there’s Utah going in and Buddy going out the same door at the same time. They are as calm as can be, going through the steps of their routine.

Sometimes they play Chinese fire drill. After they finish their supper and I open the stall doors again, they switch places.

My favorite though is when Utah moves Buddy in the pasture and you can’t see anything at all. His body language is so subtle and Buddy is so in-tune with it that all you can see is them starting, turning, and stopping in synchronized motion. It’s a communication that horsepeople are constantly striving after and so rarely master.

Bananas going

Sometimes I get a craving for bananas. But bananas are a difficult fruit to get right. If they are too green, I don’t like them; if they get too ripe, they belong in bread.

Even worse, the husband likes to eat them when they are too green for my tastes, so he scarfs them all down before they get to “perfect.” I check on them every day–nope, too green; nope, too green; eh, just a tad too green. They day they reach perfection, I look for them on the counter and they are gone.