the bird whisperer

R loves animals... and almost all animals love her. She is so sweet and non-threatening, that creatures just seem to be drawn to her...

Take this fledgling, for example...



R found him mostly drowned in the water trough.... When she pulled him out of the trough he was limp and lifeless, mouth open looking for air, coughing and choking.

She wrapped him in a towel and carried him around as he started to breathe again... He was alive, but barely and shaking like crazy.

She dried him, sat in the sun with him (on a 95 degree day!) and as long as she held him he was quiet and calm (although still shaking) but each time she tried to set him down he started squawking and making a huge fuss.  Eventually he calmed down though, and before long he was strong enough to stand....



... and even flutter his wings a bit.



Finally, after more than an hour...



...he had recovered enough to fly away.

R watched him go, proud of "her" baby...



... and proud of herself for saving him.

I hope R is able to work as a helper to our large animal vet... She wants to, and they have said to contact them in the fall when more volunteer positions open up... I'm keeping my finger's crossed, it would be such a perfect fit for her.

Annie's Story (our house's original owners)

I just got done reading Sherry's post on Young House Love about the history and original owners of their house. I've LOVED researching the history of our homes, and Sherry's post got me thinking I should also write about what we know of our current home's history.

(Our house, circa 1980)


And a similar view today...




First I should probably back up a bit... When we bought our home the seller didn't disclose any major defects, and it passed the home inspection... so, needless to say, we were shocked to discover (shortly after closing) that the house had major problems... It's a log home and the logs hadn't been maintained (by the previous, not original owner) and there was wood rot, bug infestation, and places where we could see light between the logs. (The inspector apparently knew nothing about log homes and just gave the exterior of the house a very quick look!) Anyway, a fair amount of panic ensued when the first estimate to fix the house came back at more than 25% of what we'd just paid for the entire house... and there was anger too.  Anger at the seller, and the inept inspector, of course... but I was also angry at the house. It made no sense, but I somehow blamed it (for not being taken care of?!) for all it's problems.

It was in the midst of all the drama and trauma of discovering the house we'd sunk every penny into was in danger of falling down, that I tracked down Annie. I guess I needed to know the history of the house to try to make my peace with what felt like a dream home turned nightmare money pit...

Annie, with her husband, built our house... their house... starting back in the mid-1970's. She was an art teacher, he was a lumber jack... She eventually told me a dozen stories about the building of this house.... about how they'd harvested the logs for the house up in the mountains and had them milled before hauling them down here to build. The logs are all lodgepole pine, and some of them have a bluish tinge to them because they are beetle-kill wood. (The beetles stain the wood...)





The living room fireplace was built from huge stones they gathered in Coal Creek Canyon and hauled down with the help of friends...




The bedroom fireplace is made from petrified wood they found when they dug the foundation.



It was a long time before they were ready to build this fireplace, so they "stored" the petrified wood under a big scrub oak in the front pasture until they needed it.



It took them two full years to build the house... When they first started building they drove out each weekend to work, during the latter part of the building they lived in a little camper parked in what would later become the garage.

The logs are held together with huge spikes and have both insulation and chinking in between each course.



Annie had one very close call during the building... She said she had been working pounding together a course of logs on the north side, towards the top of the second story. As she worked her way along, straddling the top of the logs, holding on with her legs and pounding in stakes with a sledgehammer, she worked her way to where the guest bathroom is... and not realizing that her husband had cut out the logs for that window since the last time she'd worked, she scootched forward expecting solid logs between her knees to hold onto and found the open space of the window instead. She lost her balance and slipped upside down (legs still holding on, feet locked together), around the top course of logs where she held on as tightly as she could and started yelling for help... Thankfully her husband was close and was able to get to her before she fell.

(Annie was sitting on top of the upper window on the left when she almost fell...)



After she told me that story I asked what she did after she was pulled back to safety... She said she got back up on top of the logs and kept working.

Our loft was designed to be her art studio (it has water piped into it, but has never had a sink installed) and the big wall in the family room  was designed to be a "gallery wall" of her artwork.

(The house in about 1980, Annie's gallery wall on the left...)




The family room now from about the same angle (notice the same doorbell, painted now, over the stairs...).



We have their original blueprints and cherish them. It's a quirky house, but not a haphazard one...

It is definitely one of a kind.



Annie bred and raised Arabian horses and was so happy to know that the barn is being used as a barn again. (It had been used as RV storage for years before we bought the house.)

See the little camper in the background? That's what they lived in while they finished building the house... (the photo dates from the early 1980's)



Sadly, Annie's husband began losing his sight about 5 years after the house was finished. By the time the house was 7 years old he was almost blind and unable to maintain the house any longer and they sold it.  He passed away a few years later...

(Annie's husband ans son shortly after the house was finished...)




After I tracked Annie down and we had a chance to talk about this funny old house, I found it easy to forgive the house (for being such a wreck) and became 110% committed to bringing it back to what it should have been.

(2005 - During the exterior repair stage... log damage repaired, chimneys rebuilt, stucco... to the protect logs... going on.)


When the house was built, Annie and her husband had intended it to have stone chimneys... but the budget just wouldn't allow stone, so they finished them in wood. When we repaired the outside of the house, I used Annie's blueprints as a guide and had the chimneys rebuilt in stone.



Since we couldn't preserve the log exterior (leave it exposed) we trimmed out the house in lodge pole pine timbers as a way of connecting the "old" log home, with the "new" stucco covered one.




The first time Annie came to dinner, she walked into the house and tears immediately came to her eyes. As she wiped the tears away she said, "There's a lot of love built into this house..."  She even asked if, on another visit, she could sprinkle some of her husband's ashes out in our gully...



I wasn't sure what to say (it was an unexpected request to say the least!) but I said yes... and later that same summer she came back and walked our gully, sprinkling ashes and just being alone there. She later told me that gully was so important to her (to them) because, before this land was even available for purchase (when it was still railroad land) she and her husband had been part of a trail riding club and had frequently ridden their horses across this land... timing their lunch stop so they could picnic in a pretty little gully along the way.

That pretty little gully ended up part of the land they (and we) eventually purchased...




So... that's the story of our house. Sorry it got so long, but it seemed important to get it written down...

Anybody else have a house story to share?

A nice surprise and a big thank you!

I got a nice surprise in my mailbox this afternoon... mixed in with the bills and ads was the October/November issue of Mary Janes Farm Magazine. At first I assumed the mailman had, once again, left someone else's mail in my mailbox (and left my mail who-knows-where!) but no... it's addressed to me.

What a nice surprise! Thank you to whoever subscribed me... I can already tell it's going to be a favorite.

R and I looked through the magazine quickly (while she was doing school) and have already found a recipe for Spicy Pumpkin Warm-Up that sounded so good I've got a pumpkin already on the stove cooking so we can give it a try now and, if it's as good as it sounds, add it to our Thanksgiving menu.

Here's the recipe (so you don't have to strain your eyes trying to read it from the photo!)...

Spicy Pumpkin Warm-Up

2 pints whipping cream

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup canned pumpkin (we'll use our own pumpkin, not canned)

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsp vanilla

Garnish: whipped cream, additional pumpkin pie spice

Combine cream and sugar in saucepan over medium heat; stir until sugar is dissolved. Whisk in pumpkin until well blended; add pumpkin pie spice and vanilla. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until mixture is warm. Pouor into mugs and serve with a dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkle of spice. Serves 4-6.

Mmmm....

No more time to write...gotta go finish dinner now. :)

summertime snapshots

Yesterday was warm again here...

No... yesterday was hot.

I don't know the official high but I'm guessing it was somewhere in the 90's...

I spent the morning inside, getting the house cleaned back up after a couple of weeks of neglect, then we headed outside to enjoy the day.

R was out at the barn with Murphy while I puttered in the flower garden and set a sprinkler in the front yard. She was so hot, and the water looked so inviting, that she decided to run through. She took Murphy with her, of course... since he was hot too.





You can't do the quick runs and dashes through the spray of water when you run through a sprinkler with a horse...



... but they are very good at blocking the spray!



I'm not sure what R was doing here... whatever it was it looks like Murphy wasn't thrilled about it!



Most of the time though, Murphy seemed to enjoy himself...



Especially the part afterwards... when he rolled his nice, clean, wet, self in the dirt.





Don't feel sorry for Tucker, he got to cool off too. I corraled him in the small pen and squirted him down.

If looks could kill I would NOT have survived the afternoon though, because he was not a happy little donkey at ALL, about getting wet... and made sure I knew it! But he finally gave up trying to escape the spray of water and stood in a corner of the pen... resigned to his fate... backside towards me (just in case he got lucky and I got close enough to kick?), head down, mouth working... probably muttering to himself about the injustice of it all. Poor Tucker...it wasn't his best afternoon.

In other news... ;)

A good friend of mine (and former next door neighbor), gave me a little birdhouse last year when she moved away. I was bored one day and painted it and then hung it up for decoration on an old shepherd's crook I had laying around.

I never imagined it would actually be used as a nesting box... but this tiny little bird has been "moving in" for several days now and seems to have decided to call it home.



She's just a little bigger than a hummingbird, but I have no idea what kind of bird she is...  I can't wait to see the tiny babies she has.



And finally...

I got a package in the mail yesterday from my sister.  I love surprises... what a treat to find one in the mail box!

She knows I love old glass bottles and jars, and sent me a wonderful little antique bottle. The bottle says "Lakes Celebrated Radish Denver Colorado" and has a picture of a horse head on it.



Thank you Jackie, I love it!

Hurray, we're home!

M was discharged yesterday afternoon, and the ambulance brought him (and I) home...



A deep and heart felt thank you to everyone who kept him in their prayers, came to visit, or sent him cards and things...



It's wonderful to be home... R is very happy to have us all together again, and the dogs were happy to see us, but my biggest "welcome home" probably came from Murphy. He's been aloof since we got him... he seems to tolerate us, and do what we ask him to, but not to be very connected to us. Since he has a history of being abused, it makes sense for him to not to be quick to trust and become attached to us... But part of the joy of owning a horse, especially when, like me, you don't ride often... is the connection between horse and human. Anyway... Murphy always seemed like he could take us or leave us, he didn't really care much one way or the other.

When I went out to feed last night, he was up on the hill above the barn and when I called to him to come for dinner, he came running down the hill... bucking, tail held up in excitement, whinnying. Needless to say this is NOT his usual reaction to dinner. I think he was happy I was home... He must trust us and be connected to us more than he lets on.  This is just huge for me... I wasn't sure that he'd ever learn to trust humans again, or have a true connection to us.

So... we're home but it's going to be a challenging month or so. M isn't nearly as independent as I anticipated him being. He isn't able to bathe, use the bathroom, or move around at all without help. He's also at great risk of falling (he moves very impulsively, often forgetting he can't use one leg) and he needs pain meds every 4 hours round the clock.  The good news is he's in good spirits (despite the pain medication making him sick to his stomach), psychiatrically he's still stable, and he's home.



When I woke up this morning it was snowing, the big pine trees are frosted with white, and little by little the dry winter prairie grass is being covered by the soft pure whiteness of the snow. Just before sitting down to the computer, I looked out the dining room window and saw a small herd of mule deer in the back pasture... does and their mostly grown babies... including one young buck with his little two point antlers. As I watched, two of the does stopped to groom each other, while the others wandered past... nibbling and walking... always watchful, but at the same time seeming almost serenely calm.

It's very good to be home...

I'm sitting in M's hospital room, enjoying a quiet moment amidst a morning filled with medical people coming in and out, machines beeping and needing to be reset, and M asking for this or that.

M's surgery was yesterday, and overall it went well. The surgery ended up lasting about 4 hours... The anesthesiologist had been concerned about keeping M's blood pressure up during surgery (his blood pressure is unstable and can drop quickly and for no apparent reason), and they did end up needing to give him blood pressure medication twice during the surgery when it started to drop, but each time it came back up and settled down again. Unfortunately there was more damage to the joint than the surgeon anticipated, so... he was able to make it much better... but there is already permanent damage done to the joint and M will probably always have problems with it. He should be able to get back to Special Olympics though, and enjoy the sports and all the fun he's be missing for the past six months.

He's still hooked up to two IV's, a catheter and has an epidural in (they just turned off the meds going into the epidural, trying to transition him to oral pain meds). The central line is out though, and he doesn't need any extra oxygen... so that is good.

How he does with oral pain medication, and how well he can get around (once he's back on his feet) will determine when he (we) go home. Maybe tomorrow... but maybe not until Friday.

A very cool thing happened just a little bit ago...

Yesterday, when M was in the pre-surgery area one of his nurses was "S"... and in typical M fashion he talked to her about his favorite food, his girlfriend, what he wants to do when he grows up, etc. He said he was adopted, and she said that she was too (and then they high-fived each other!). She was just a wonderful person... so kind to him... and seemed to genuinely enjoy M's company.

M in the pre-surgery area, laughing about the funny hat he had to wear...

Well, just a few minutes ago, there was a knock on M's door and Nurse S came in. She had a card and gift for him! As he opened his gift she told me that she had been very touched by M, and had thought about him all night... How he has so many struggles and yet enjoys life so much and is such a neat kid.

I was very touched by her stopping by... it really brightened up the morning.

Simple Pleasures

Until yesterday this was our only TV.



Okay, to be perfectly accurate, this was our only TV in the house... Joe has a TV in the garage that he likes to watch while he putters.

But this was our main television. If we watched a movie together, this was the TV we watched it on. When we watched a favorite show, or M just zoned out in front of PBS, this was the only option available.

It's a small TV, but I didn't mind... I kind of planned it that way, not wanting a TELEVISION to be a main furnishing of house, and knowing that the larger that screen was, the more time we were likely to spend in front of it.

So I kept our little 15" TV and we were happy...

I didn't realize it but change started brewing on Thanksgiving when our son-in-law was here and sat down to watch a football game on our little TV. He seemed a little incredulous at first that the screen was so small. He mentioned that it was like watching a football game on a computer, and pulled his chair up to within about 2' of the TV.

As I peaked out from the kitchen I could see him leaning forward in the chair, intently watching... I wasn't sure if it was just a very exciting game (had him on the edge of his seat, you know...) or he was having trouble seeing the action.

Whatever... I had no plans to replace our TV. It worked fine, and we were satisfied.

Yesterday afternoon we were in the middle of school, when I saw my son-in-law's big black truck heading down the driveway.

Hmm... I wasn't expecting him. I wondered what's up?

I met him at the door and he came in carrying a flat screen TV... not a huge TV... but one with a screen bigger than our old TV.

He was up the stairs into the family room, disconnecting our little TV's cords within a minute, and when he left five minutes later we were the proud owners of a new TV.  (He and our daughter own several rental properties, including a furnished "ski condo" up in the mountains... They had just replaced all the TV's in the condo, and this was an "old" one... and no longer needed.)



Wow, you would not have believed the excitement in my house.You'd have thought M and R had never seen television before the way they sat glued to the screen watching some who-knows-what kid's show that was on.

I couldn't help but smile at how much they enjoy little things like this. We don't have a Wii, or any kind of fancy game system... we don't have cable, or a big screen TV, or TV's in every room.  (Those things just aren't important to us...)  The new TV really isn't that big, but the kids thought it was just amazing!

As I headed into the kitchen to start dinner, I heard R...

"It's just like IMAX in here! Let's turn off all the lights!!"

Simple pleasures are good...

E (dd#1) and son-in-law J on Thanksgiving

An early Christmas present...

I got the most wonderful Christmas present from my friend L, the other day.

She brought it over to the house on Monday, and her timing was absolutely perfect...

It's a prayer quilt.

Isn't it beautiful?

It was pieced by a sweet 90 year old woman at L's church, then L tied the quilt... and with each tie she said a prayer for our family.

It has a lot of ties.

I can't tell you how much that quilt means to me.

It's been a rough week... M saw the pdoc last Thursday, and she followed up with a phone call a few days later. Neither the appointment nor the phone call went well.

She thinks maybe M has Autism (insert rollling eyes icon here). It doesn't matter that M has been seen by psychologists, developmental pediatricians, and psychiatrists since he was an infant. It doesn't matter that he's had diagnostic evaluations by thebest, everyone from the guy who's listed as the top child pdoc for our area, to the multi-disciplinary child development team at our Children's Hospital, to a whole team (posse? gaggle? herd?) of pdocs at NIMH, and NO ONE thinks he has Autism. (I mean really... what are the odds that one individual is truly going to have FASD, schizophrenia and Autism!)

So now I have to have another assessment done, to prove to her what I already know...

 It's frustrating... I don't believe in "collecting" diagnoses, or using the DSM-IV to label every characteristic an individual has. (Although I believe it can be done...)

So anyway, I was feeling pretty down... angry, frustrated, and alone. The pdoc is our only professional support right now, and I'm not feeling much "support" from her lately.

So right in the middle of all that, L calls... and says she has to give me my Christmas present right away. I really didn't feel like company, but L knew I wouldn't turn her away at the door. (grin) And when I saw the gift, I teared up... it was just the right thing to do, at just the right time.

 Thank you L... I've been so blessed by your friendship.

Random Acts of Kindness and other odds and ends...

After living for so long in the city, having a dozen neighbors within just a couple of minutes of us, it's been different getting used to our nearest neighbor being a good 5-10 minute walk away. 

 I don't mind... 

I like not hearing the neighbor's TV when the windows are open during the summer, or not being able to park in front of my house because someone else is already parked there. But I wondered how much neighborliness there would be with everyone so spread out. As it's turned out, there is lots of neighborliness out here and we had a great example of it the other night. 

We had just finished up dinner when R noticed headlights in the driveway. We almost never get company, so headlights in the driveway is a big deal... (The kids greet the UPS guy like an old friend, I'm lucky they don't invite him in for a dinner!) We looked out to see who was here and it was a pick-up truck with a snowplow on the front. Whoever it was, was plowing our driveway! As they were finishing plowing I dashed downstairs and outside to thank them... But they didn't stop, they plowed back up the driveway and were gone. I waved our thanks as they left, but I'm not sure which neighbor did the plowing... 

It wasn't one of our "next door" neighbors, as I know their pick-ups pretty well. And since everyone out here has a pick-up truck there is no easy way to narrow down who went out of their way to drive over and plow for us. (The roads had already been plowed by the county, so this person drove over... on plowed roads... to clean up our driveway!) Since I can't figure out who it was plowing and thank them for it, I've decided I need to pay it forward. I'm terrible at snow plowing (getting our little plow stuck more often than actually moving any snow!) so I'm watching for opportunities to do something else for someone... 

 I've spend the past couple of days looking into using branched chain amino acids to treat M's tardive dyskinesia. I found a couple of studies showing BCAA to help with TD symptoms, and since lowering M's haldol didn't work (only leading to the train wreck of a day we had on Tuesday) I've decided to look more seriously into treatment with BCAA. I thought it would be easy (but expensive). I'd just figure out the right dose, buy the BCAA (it's actually three amino acids combined), and give it to M three times a day. As it turns out that's a vastly oversimplified picture of what this is going to take. The right dose was fairly easy to find, I'm just going to give the dose used in the studies. (222 mg per kilogram of body weight) Figuring it out M's dose required converting M's weight to kilograms, multiplying by 222 mg, then converting that number into grams and dividing it by 3 (the BCAA are given three times a day). The whole formula was a little bit of a stretch for a math challenged person such as myself, but I figured it out... Then I tracked down (it took two days) the company that used to make the BCAA mixture used in the studies. 

Sigh... they no longer manufacture it, there is some kind of licensing problem. But they gave me the name and number of a company I can buy the individual BCAA powders from. The trouble is, I'll have to mix it myself... 12 grams of isoleucine, 19.2 grams of leucine and 13.4 grams of valine. She said the exact mix of BCAA's is very important...it's what gives the supplement it's effectiveness. That means I'm going to need a pharmacy scale. I haven't figured that part out yet... I wonder if I can rent one?! Before I actually start the BCAA the pediatrician wants to review the studies, and wanted me to talk to the neurologist (which I did yesterday). 

So far no one is saying NOT to try it (the pediatrician is still checking into possible side effects), so I'm going to keep moving trying to get everything in place to start the BCAA as soon as possible. Realistically though, it will probably be after the first of the year before it all comes together. Both kids are doing well right now... I think we're all enjoying the calm after the storm. After unsuccessfully trying to decrease the haldol by a tiny step (.25 mg), which led to a major disconnect, I've increased it again and it's wonderful to have my boy "back". He also seems happy to be back, and has been agreeable, cooperative, and playing so nicely with R. They hung out together all yesterday afternoon without one squabble... which is NOT something that happens often! 

 We've got more of the unending shopping to do today, it's such a blessing that M is doing well enough that I can easily take him to the store. I bought the makings of our Christmas dinner yesterday, so even if nothing else gets done we'll have our dinner. 

Which reminds me... I need to get some tamales. We have a family tradition of a big tamale dinner just before Christmas. I need to get moving and find some good tamales! Maybe I'll do that today too... (I don't make them myself, LOL, but I'm an expert at finding good ones to buy!) 

 More snow is on the way today (at least for us).... stay warm!

a quick update to the day...

So.... maybe the day didn't turn out too badly after all. We had plenty of time to get school done, dinner has been bubbling in the crock pot (and making the house smell good) for hours, and the fire has warmed the house enough to almost make me forget how dreary and icy it is outside.

I got a call today from the woman who (with her late husband) built our house almost 30 years ago. She is moving out of the area and would like us to have some lamps that they bought for this house when it was first built. She's coming by tomorrow for a visit and will bring the lamps then.

I'm touched that she wants us to have the lamps... I'll have to find just the right spot for them. (which might be a challenge for 30 year old lamps!