How to Buy a Bull

Buying a bull is easy.

1. Pore over the catalog.

2. Pore over the cattle.

3. Nod to the auctioneer.

4. Write a check.

We used to haul our daughters with us to bull sales. They held our hands and sat on our laps, thinking more about the free lemonade and sandwiches than the actual proceedings. One time I came in late to a very large and crowded sale, one that we were just watching with no intention of buying a bull. I stood scanning the seats to try and locate the rest of my family. A young daughter saw me searching, and waved. Glimpsing her flapping arm in the sea of bidders, the auctioneer mistook it for a $2000 bid. Fortunately, a real buyer wanted the bull more, sparing us an awkward situation in front of a very large crowd.

Times have changed. The girls know not to wave at auctions, and we talk with them about genetics, about how high we're going to bid and about which heifer they should buy to build up their own small herds. They're there because they want to be. That's fun.

Happy 50th

No, these Belgians haven't turned 50, although I learned yesterday that the longest-lived Belgian horse on record made it to fifty-two. This pair is just six years old.

With a nod to the current green trend, we are recycling a mylar balloon left from someone's birthday. (If you're wondering who the someone is, it's not one of the household females. You'll have to figure it out from there.)

Horses are spooky. When confronted with anything new or suprising, their natural instinct is to take off at breakneck speed in any direction away from the threat. If you want to take draft horses to a parade, where they might just encounter a stray mylar balloon, you need to help them overcome this tendency. That's why I tied the balloon to their fence, right above the feed trough, where there's no avoiding it.

After a bit of initial skepticism, Kandy and Jess decided to risk the mylar for another bite of hay. Pretty soon, when the balloon didn't bite them, things were back to status quo.

John once told me he works draft horses for relaxation. But I work them for adrenaline, theirs or mine, I don't care. I get bored with same-old-same-old, so the next time I passed the horse pen, I grabbed the balloon and wadded it a few times. Y'know, a kid at a parade might rattle his balloon, and we can't have horses spooking. Tweaking the balloon for Kandy and Jess produced the expected result--two tons of horseflesh thundering across the pen.

They'll thank me in the long run. And if they don't, the kids at the parade certainly will.

Photographer Begets Photographer

My dad, shooting the sunset

Silence

In silence, we watched these Florida manatees, vacationing, as we were, in San Diego. Manatees are also loosely called "sea cows," and they weigh as much as any of our land cattle. But their grace in the water is a far cry from anything related to the clumsy, clattering movements of a beef cow as it jumps from a stock trailer or lashes out at you with a powerful hoof.

Silent was the best way to watch.



Earlier, we'd slipped onto a whale watching boat with a load of other tourists. Natural history volunteers in bright yellow slickers chattered on about the habits of migrating California grey whales, holding up maps and bones and posters to illustrate their points. The captain made jokes over the ship's loudspeaker; children moaned at the puns while others moaned with seasickness.

Then a whale spouted. A prolonged and total hush settled instantly over the whole entourage.

Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.

--Dionysius the Elder

In Search of Spring

Four Up

This man, Mike,

hired this man, Dennis,

to teach him how to drive four horses at a time.

This man

was asked to help with the horses. He is happy.

Driving four horses is not as easy as it looks. First of all, you have to individually move four lines, held in your only two hands.

Think about it. Your hands are connected to eight places on four horses. Each line splits and goes to the left side, or the right, of bits in two horses' mouths. If you want to make a smooth turn, you'll want your wheel team to follow right in the path of your lead team. That means you have to turn the lead horses first, then let the wheelers take a few more steps, and then turn them just the same amount. And you only have two hands.

Horses are like people, in that some would rather dive in and get the work done, while some are happy to let another pull the load. Look at the body language of Faith and Emmylou, the lead team. Faith is leaning into her collar, and Emmylou's shoulder muscles are obviously working. Bess, in the back, looks like she might be working her collar, too, but she's not. She's just testing to see if she can reach the grass. She and Homer have found a comfortable pocket between the wagon and the lead team, walking just fast enough to keep up but not pulling any weight. John's job is to tap Homer on the behind from time to time, to remind him that he needs to apply himself. Mike's job is to use his voice and his only two hands to hold back the leaders - just an inch, or they will stop completely - and encourage the wheelers to step up.

My job is to take pictures and enjoy.

Woot! Woot!

I am so full of joy I can hardly contain it.

I buzzed into town with Audrey this morning; she only had one class and I had to grocery shop, so I rode with her. She had coupons for two free drinks at the local coffee shop. We zipped around the drive through before her class. As I dropped her off at the college, I said, "Tú tomas café." It's a bit I picked up from my online Spanish class last night, and I thought it meant "You drink coffee." Not exactly world class conversation, but it's the best I can do in Spanish just now. In fact, I was pretty proud of myself, but Audrey challenged me with a different verb for "to drink" - "beber." We parted, pondering the meanings of Spanish verbs, and I drove off thinking about how great it is to keep learning throughout your whole life, how great it is to share small moments with your daughters. These little things, along with a dose of sunshine, would have been enough to keep me smiling all day.

On the way home, having just come from music class, Audrey spoke of Mozart, and of how utterly gifted he was, musically. A friend of his once wrote a long and complicated piece of music for him, and then played it for Mozart. Mozart thanked him and arose to leave. "Don't you want the music?" his friend asked. "Here. I've written it down for you." Mozart replied that, after hearing it only once, he didn't need the sheet music, as he had captured it all in his head. His friend challenged him to sit down and play it, which Mozart did, perfectly. And then began to play again, this time composing a number of beautiful variations as he played.

Audrey and I wondered out loud how anyone, upon hearing such a tale, can doubt the existence of God. Surely the ability to write music of Mozart's caliber, or to hear and remember it, has not evolved, accidentally, out of nothing. Audrey then told me a bit she's been learning about the transmission of information by nerves....synapses, ions, cell walls opening and closing at just the right moments.......again, all accidental? Since when did anything so delicate and so complicated come about without purposeful effort by its maker? We marvelled together about the beautiful, intricate, and intentional design we see in the world around us.

spring colors, visible via optic nerve

As if these matters couldn't produce enough joy to last me all day, I watered my garden! Yep, you read it right - my outdoor garden needed water. My spinach, planted last fall, has lived through a wild temperature roller coaster, only partially mitigated by my new hot frame. Even under the plastic, temps ranged from 99 degrees (yes! That's no typo!) to 9 degrees in one short week. A tough ride for anyone, but the little critters held on. I'm so thankful.

spring garden

Barely inside from loving on spinach and broccoli in the outdoors, I got a text message. A friend who has been battling cancer got her latest scan results....NO SPOTS ON THE LUNGS! Woot! Woot! She is soaring, carrying me with her.

spring to new life

And now, in the warmth and cool and sun of a beautiful spring afternoon, I get to go help my hubby hitch four horses to a wagon. We've not driven "four up" before. I've got to quit writing this and bolt for the fairgrounds.

Lest you think I live a charmed existence, the sour economy chawed our spring vacation to bits before we could pack the first suitcase, so we're staying home. Worse, I said goodbye last week to a friend who died of ALS. Perhaps today's little miracles seem all the richer because they didn't crop up on an unspotted canvas. No matter; my heart still sings thanksgiving.

Help for Procrastinators

"If you eat a frog first thing in the

morning,


the rest of your day will be wonderful."

---Mark Twain

Sometimes I go through my whole day avoiding a task I don't want to do. Sometimes I know I should do it next, but I don't want to, so I find piddly wasty things to do instead of knuckling down. The burden can lurk in the back of my mind all day, taking the spring out of my step and the sparkle out of my eyes.

I think Mark Twain was right: if you tackle the unpleasant task early, with gusto, the rest of your waking hours are a bit sunnier.

I'm off to eat my frog. Won't you set about yours, too? Bon Appetit!

Authentic vs. Religious

Wisdom from TJ (through JT)

In matters of style, swim with the current;

in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

- Thomas Jefferson

(thanks to Joe T.S. for the quote)

Finished Product Up Close

Someone requested a photo of how the mane braiding turned out.

"Are you lookin' at ME?"

Winter Joy

First, for our little town's winter parade, we dressed up the horses.


We sewed long, satiny mane rolls, fabric ribbons to braid in the horses' manes. We fashioned bright flowers from silk carnations, pipe cleaners and grosgrain ribbon. (Where is our florist friend Rebecca when you need her!??)

We spent the rest of the morning braiding and unbraiding, until we got it right.

Then we dressed ourselves in lots and lots of layers. Insulated coveralls may not look very celebratory, but we went for function over fashion.

That's Erica in the back. She and Merrill were supposed to be tossing chocolates to kids lining the streets. However, most of the kids lining the streets were sitting in parked cars with the heaters running, sheltered against 15 degree snow and wind.

Somehow, at the end of the parade, the candy supply was low and spirits were high.

Still giving thanks.

These colors belong to my first cousin once removed.

I shared Thanksgiving dinner with her and sixty-five others, between the cattle and the prickly pear in Central Texas.

Sixty-five first cousins twice removed, second cousins once removed, and even some third cousins, all of them connected to three sisters born between 1910 and 1922. I knew and loved the laughs and crinkly eyes of all three sisters, once they had grown into grandmothers and great aunts. I slept on their carpets, ate in their kitchens and wrapped my lanky-girl body around their window unit air-conditioners, hiding from the scorch of many a Texas summer.

We didn't need the A/C for Thanksgiving, but we didn't need coats, either. I got up while it was still dark, making sure to slip shoes over my bare feet before padding toward the bathroom. Earlier, between turkey and dominoes, we had stomped a few scorpions on the floor of my uncle's big "party barn." You know you're in Texas when you're trying to keep bare feet away from scorpions on Thanksgiving.

When we weren't marvelling at scorpions or at how each others' kids had grown, we found time to do a lot of talking and listening,
a lot of game playing,

and a lot of laughing.

Brothers laughing.

Sisters laughing.

The sister below wasn't laughing in the cool of the morning. While John and I chose to share beds in the loft with nineteen of our nearest and dearest, Kate and my cousin started out the night sleeping in the great outdoors. Perhaps they thought the coyotes would be quieter than the snores. They were wrong.

These are my uncles and cousins, rattling the cowboy breakfast grate.
This is my one-eyed niece, Laura. She looks a little like Violet on The Incredibles. Also like Violet, she will now and then surprise you with amazing things.

Laura didn't spend much time in the party barn, as she was too busy digging bones out of the Texas scrub, asking cousin Audrey for help with identification.

Laura and her mama drove a long way to attend. We did, too---our van has made this drive so many times that it automatically stops at the best barbeque anywhere close to I-35 in Oklahoma. It also knows exactly how far north you can go and still find Blue Bell ice cream in the C-stores. We usually stop at least once for Blue Bell: pistachio almond fudge, pecan pralines and cream, moollennium crunch, chocolate mint chip.

You've already seen my best photos of the day but, if you were there and happen to want to see more, I've put a slide show up on the web. There are lots of photos and they may take a few minutes to load, so click on the link and then go stir up some hot chocolate in the kitchen while the computer catches up. http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=369nb64i.aa1zhiiq&x=0&y=-xuy9tw&localeid=en_US&cm_mmc=site_email-_-site_share-_-core-_-view_photos_button

Enjoy. And y'all come back!

1 degree Fahrenheit, 22 mph NW wind blowing across the Nebraska plains

...as long as we've no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. :)

A Woman's Mind

A long time ago, my stalwart Grandmama said to me, "A woman's mind should be well furnished. She will spend much time alone in it."

After she died, I tried in vain to discover whether the line was a quote, or original to her.

A little bit after that, I found out that it was true.

The Friendship Myth

The girl next door got married last summer. Her fiance/husband had to disentangle himself from a number of female friends that he had acquired over his few years as a young adult.

It was a bit awkward, and a bit painful for those who didn't wish to be loosed. "You mean we can't even talk on the phone anymore??" they asked incredulously. "You mean we're not going to email any more? We're not going to Facebook?"

A look back through history indicates people have long known that it simply doesn't work for adult males and females to spend much time alone together and remain "just close friends." And yet, in media portrayal and in practice, this generation seems to think that young ladies and young men can be close, one-on-one personal friends, without the dating/mating mentality and hurts creeping in.

Call me skeptical, but I still think not. I had written quite a bit more on the subject when Rachel pointed me to an article that says it much better than I did.

http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001200.cfm

It is well worth the read.

---

Kissing a lot of frogs probably doesn't find you a prince; it just makes you slimy.