Made a run to the WC yesterday. Attached is a photo of Dunbar Road as it passes by our barn.
We got a second opinion. It's the same. Renal failure. No hope. So we're bringing the intrepid pomeranian home to die.
We will give him plenty of love and belly scratches.
Hopefully he will not regret coming to live with us.
He loved Washington County. He would race around the pond, chasing the geese. And explore the woods. And try to pee on every vertical piece of wood.
But he didn't like being left alone at the house when we went into town.
So sometimes we'd leave him in the car while we had a beer at The Bog.
And he made a few dog friends up there. Like a black Lab who lived on the farm next door. Loci. Loki?
Who knows how you spell it. Loki was big and liked to swim in our pond...
It looks like we have to put Oreo down. He has renal failure due to Lyme's disease. I hope he didn't get it from running wild in the weeds in Washington County.
He's so sick. He looks at me as if to say, "Please help me."
Can I get some good news from somewhere?
This whole blogging thing would be more fun if there were more friends and family in our neighborhood.
This birdhouse stands in front of my house, out by the sidewalk where people often pass by in the summertime.
Originally, it was not a birdhouse at all, just a column I stuck in the ground with the notion of using it as a trellis for some kind of climbing flower. (The column was an an architectural piece I bought off the porch of an antique store. You can't make out the details in this picture, but the column is quite tall and nicely tapered.)
So one day, several years ago, I dug a hole in the ground and planted the column and then I sent away for some gardening catelogues. Time passed. Maybe seasons changed. And the column remained, well, naked...
And then one day I happened to look out the front window:
and I saw some people standing on the sidewalk, looking up at the column and scratching their heads. This became a regular occurrence. Sometimes people would gather in groups with the apparent purpose of debating the meaning of the column. There'd be two or three people loitering and talking, and then you'd see them stop another passerby. Or call out to someone walking on the other side of the street. And then they'd sort of nod quizzically in the direction of the column. There were times where I could have sworn I also saw a quizzical nod added in the direction of the house. But I quickly dismissed this thought as mere paranoia.
Then, one day, I was out in the garden, with my face in the dirt and my ass in the air, when I heard a voice. It was a man. A distant neighbor from down the street.
"What's up with the post," he asked.
"What do you mean 'What's up with the post,'" I said.
"I mean 'What's up with the post?'"
Sigh. Do you ever have conversations like this? Where speech reveals its limitations?
The man apparently shared my viewpoint, because he pointed at the column and raised his eyebrows. (Which, as everyone knows, means "What's up with the post?" in sign language.)
"It's a column," I ventured. "I'm going to use it as a trellis. For flowers."
I could sense that my stock in the neighborhood was falling further.
"I don't see any flowers," the man said, as if he couldn't decide which prospect was more offensive, that I was lying about the flowers...or telling the truth.
"I haven't planted any yet."
"Uh huh," said the man, as he proceeded down the street.
This conversation repeated itself several times over the next few months. And it became clear that the neighborhood was dissatisfied with my representation that the post was, in the unspecified future, going to support boughs of posies and a choir of nightengales.
So one day, when someone else asked me to explain the post, I said, "What post?" And then, turning, I said, with my best imitation of sheer terror, "Holy shit! I swear, that thing wasn't there yesterday. Do you think it's an alien pod? Or a piece of the Space Shuttle?"
My girlfriend at the time told me I was an idiot. And she promptly went out to a high-end nursery and bought a beautiful deep purple clematis, which flourished, climbing up one side of the column and down the other.
Afterwards, the neighbors continued to stop and look. But now I was confident that they were admiring my profusion of clematis. And that they were probably not debating my sexual preference since my then girlfriend had taken to mowing my lawn in her bikini.
But I was wrong. At least about the column. Maybe about everything else.
One summer day, I was out in the garden and someone walking a dog asked me, "What's up with the post?"
"It's for flowers," I said, weakly. "You know, like a trellis."
The dog walker gave me a blank look. And the dog reared its hind leg and peed.
The next day I went back to the antique store where I'd purchased the column and I bought the big birdhouse that you can see in the photograph.
Since then, passersby regularly compliment me on the birdhouse and on the profusion of flowers that grow beneath it.
I talked to the lawyer for West Long Branch today. (The guy who represents the Planning Board that turned down Robert's subdivision application.) Nice guy. Known him a long time. He said that Robert's lawyer did a good job. That he was very thorough. And that he, the Planning Board lawyer, would have voted for the project. But! There's always the "but." But he doesn't think Robert's chances on appeal are very strong. I talked to Robert today about my conversation. Maybe I soft-pedalled the bad news just a little. Just to keep Robert's rowboat from capsizing.
Robert and I are meeting with his attorney on Monday to talk about the likelihood of success on appeal. Afterwards, I'll give Robert a fuller version of today's discussion.
Don't tell Dad.
We finally put our house up for sale. I'm a little sad. Some very, very good times... and recently some bad.
So many things in my life are complicated. Or part of a long drawn out process that never seems to end with a win.
Everything is compromise. All is ambiguity.
But not mowing the lawn. Nope. With mowing the lawn you start the job and finish it on the very same day and the result makes you feel a little bit better about yourself. (And entitles you to a beer.).
You come home and the yard is raggedy with a week’s erratic growth so you fire up the push mower and you race around God’s little quarter acre for a half an hour and when you’re done what passes for your grass is a pleasantly uniform height and, more to the point, the peculiar botanical signature of so many insidious weeds – the ones with the long reedy stalks or the flower-like heads that, with a few more days of maturation, would have turned into an invading army of airborne seed, or that peculiar cultivar which springs up overnight during the worst parch of August to run sideways through withered straw men of the home side’s opposition, so unfairly green despite the heat, and ready to propagate again and again, have been beaten back for the moment, perhaps even for the weekend; they have been tamed, managed, punished. And afterwards, if you’re feeling really good, you can get out the gas-powered leaf blower and you can blast each stray blade of grass and crinkled brown leaf and bit of accumulated dirt off every walkway, so that you property almost looks new, even hygienic. (This is perhaps the penultimate moment, where you are walking around your property like a conquering hero surveying the spoils of your conquest and you are carrying your weapon, long and stout and noisy, and you are expelling the last pockets of resistance, the last strongholds of rebellion.)
Well, I had one of those moments of male competence at the farm. And it involved a tool. And a ladder.
It’s funny, but the proper use of a simple hand tool seems to be a common denominator in these rare moments of feeling manly. And an ironic one, since I was brought up by a father who was unable to make a tea kettle work, never mind a saw or a level. And from birth I was expected to be a white collar, college educated nerd with shiny shoes and a rolodex containing the telephone numbers of various tradesmen. Which was the path I followed, at least until recently. So that I never considered embarking on most home improvement or repair projects by myself. I didn’t have the tools, both literally and figuratively.
But with the farm, I have had to learn. With two houses, two barns and several outbuildings, and with seventy-fives acres, I would go broke if I called in a professional every time something needed to be done.
But even my attempts to learn have been hampered, primarily by my dear wife’s perception that I am clueless and clumsy and a present danger to myself and others.
My wife will not allow me to get a chain saw. Or a rifle. Or to climb up beyond the fifth rung of a ladder. She says I will hurt myself. And she means it with such affectionate concern that I have not made it an issue. And she is generally resistant to my interest in acquiring “tools” in general.
Now this is a problem. In particular, it is an obstacle to my evolution as a man, to my pursuit of a new sense of fulfillment and pride. How do I explain to my wife?
Well, I try to use the process of mowing the lawn as an analogy. (As I did earlier.) Fine, she says, then mow the lawn. And when you’re done…mow the pasture too.
Sigh.
But slow and steady wins the race.
So I’ve taken on small projects. Which require few tools. And only the most rudimentary understanding. Both to build my confidence and hers.
And the farm is perfect for trial and error. (As long as any failure does not involve a fall from a great height or a gash from a power tool blade or a lost digit.) See, the farm is big and remote. To a large extent, I am free to toil without scrutiny or criticism; to analyze and tinker and revise. And it’s fun. The process, I mean. I’m outside in the weather and I’m dirty and I’m wearing boots and I’m in touch with my own physical reality.
“I am outside in the weather.” Oh what bliss. Oh what freedom. Nothing by the sky over head. And the roll of the land beneath my feet.
I sound like a sea captain trying to round the Cape of Good Hope in a gale. But that’s the way I feel.
Empowered.
So there I was, walking around the property, looking for things that seemed to need attention when I spied the drip cap over the bathroom window of the tenant’s cottage.
The “drip cap?” Yeah, it was a new term for me too. I learned it when I went down to the local True Value hardware store for some advice.
The drip cap is a slight projection some window and door frames have at the top to prevent rainwater from splashing on the frame and eventually causing water damage and rot.
Well, the tenant’s drip cap was rotten and curled and the rot was progressing into the window frame itself. None of the other drip caps on the tenant’s cottage were in this condition so I surmised that the humidity that came from the inside when she was taking a shower contributed to this condition.
Brilliant Holmes! Elementary my dear Watson!
So I climbed up on a ladder and pulled out the rotten wood of the old drip cap and I measured the now empty space and then I found an old piece of molding in the barn which was about the same thickness as the hole and I cut down the molding to the length of the drip cap with a hand saw and a clamp and then I inserted the molding into the hole. Taaddaahh.
But the best part was that I found an old piece of copper flashing in the barn too and I cut that with a pair of tin snips and I inserted the flashing behind the clapboard and above the piece of molding so that in the future it wouldn’t rot.
And then I told the tenant she couldn’t take any more showers and that she’d have to bathe in the pond.
Just kidding.
When Pam and I first started looking for property, we were shown a horse farm by a realtor.
Did you ever notice how the average realtor finds out what the wife wants? (The wife doesn’t want shelter; the wife wants a lifestyle.) And that gets our happy realtor into a higher price range.
Did you also notice that realtors show you “properties,” not houses?
Anyway, the realtor talks my wife into looking at a horse farm so deep in the middle of nowhere that I’d have to commute two hours each way to get to the closest non-farm sector job.
See, I’m practical. I know we have to eat. But that’s another story.
So we get to the farm. And it’s quite lovely, with a white clapboard house, several barns and a big pasture full of horses. My wife is ecstatic. And I’m doing the numbers in my head and I’m thinking that this move to the country isn’t going to reduce my stress level; it’s going to kill me outright.
The realtor shows us the house. Wide-plank floors. Slate roof. Big, updated kitchen. And a rocking chair front porch overlooking a three acre front yard, a narrow country road and rolling woodlands.
Holy shit, I’m thinking. Where are termites when I need them? Or the toxic mold? Some blemish that I can seize upon and use to talk my way out of this folly?
So I’m a little distracted when we start off towards the barns. And then there is horseshit on the ground everywhere, which I am trying not to step in. And, of course, the realtor didn’t warn us about Tornado.
The realtor is working his show. He’s taken my wife up to some gentle brown beast called Buttercup. Or Kitten. Or something similarly benign. And the horse is playing her part. Tossing her head. Blowing air out of her nostrils. Nuzzling. Then the realtor takes a carrot out of his pocket. And Buttercup goes all weak in the knees and does everything but say, “Please buy the farm and give me a good home.”
And as I turn away from this contrived scene, slightly nauseated, I see twelve hundred pounds of iron shod, ungelded, unhappy horse flesh loping towards me from the far corner of the pasture.
Tornado.
Quickly, I glance over to see if the realtor has this development under control. Maybe he’s got another carrot in his pocket. Or a pistol.
But, no, he’s not paying attention. He, my wife and Buttercup are walking into one of the barns.
What are you supposed to do in this situation?
There should be a Dummies book for trips to the country.
The Dummies Field Guide to Terrifying Barnyard Beasts and Rash Producing Plants.
But, of course, there isn’t. And who would have time to flip through it anyway?
Let’s see. Horses. Wild. Charging. At close range. Page 324.
Yikes!
So I just started running towards the nearest fence.
Squish, squish, squish. (That’s the sound of my feet stepping into the mounds of horse manure that I no longer have the time or inclination to avoid.)
The fence wasn’t far away. Maybe twenty feet. But I couldn’t seem to get any closer to it, no matter how fast my feet were moving.
But finally, there it was, just beyond my grasp.
The fence was about six feet high. With several spaced horizontal boards running between its posts. It was too high to jump, but the spaces between the boards were too narrow to dive through. I decided to jump as high as I could and pull myself the rest of the way over.
One, two, three!
Now these old country fences – which look so romantic and quaint from the road – all weathered and grey and dilapidated – apparently don’t get a lot of routine maintenance. So when I reached my first perch, thinking it would be a firm platform from which to spring over into salvation, I was wrong. The board broke. And the fence posts on either side began rocking back and forth like a thin tree in a gust of wind.
So there I was, swinging back and forth, a regular horse piñata.
God’s teeth!
But then the backward swing of the fence shook me loose and through the hole where the broken board used to be. Just ahead of Tornado’s gnashing choppers.
“Honey, be careful,” my wife said, a moment later, from the dooryard of the barn. “Can’t you see that he’s mean?”
I should mention at this point that my wife grew up with horses. And that she has a gift for comic timing. Usually unintended.
I looked at my wife.
“Oh really? What makes you say that?”
“Look at the way his ears are back.”
“Mean? My, gosh, no,” I said, as I dusted myself off. “He’s just spirited.”
I found my hat and put it back on top of my head.
“I love a spirited animal,” I said, more to the world at large than to my wife. “Yes, I do. Especially if they’re large. Or venomous. Or possessed of sharp teeth. Yes. Hah, hah. Hee, hee. Even better if they’ve got me trapped against a fence. Or stuck in a small, dark pit. Or out in open water without a boat. It’s lucky for him that I left my cowboy boots at home or I’d teach him a thing or two about manners. Yes, lucky for him. Hah.”
With this I went back and sat in the car. With the doors locked.
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
