Pretending to Farm

Reflected Glory

You know when you’re in all kinds of pain/distress/some-other-life-crisis and you go to the doctor/shrink/Red Cross for relief and acknowledgement and, all of a sudden, your rescue person/agency of choice tells you you’re not that bad after all even though you hurt like a sonofabitch? And then you try to tell the aforementioned “professional” about your it’s-giving-me-the-vapors pain and he exchanges a look with your let’s-say spouse who at the time is doing Cirque du Soleil tricks with your crutches. Next thing you know, they have this male bonding moment and suddenly you’re swimming upstream in a sea of I-Am-God testosterone searching for someone/anyone to justify your feelings.

Don’t look at the x-ray technician. He’s a jerk who only converses with you when he absolutely must and when you mention to him that you’d like to have your knee x-rayed at the same time to save said time, he gives you one of those it’s-not-my-job Freddie Prinze, Sr. things and then has the audacity to tell you to wear socks with your big giant Frankenstein boot or else it will get dirty. The look on his face says it already is.

Don’t look at his assistant when he leaves the room and mutter about what a charming guy he is and wow, can I imagine his bedside manner. She feels your sarcasm but he is her boss and she has rent due tomorrow.

Above all, don’t go into the waiting room (completely sober and drug-free by the way) and announce to half the crowd that the x-ray technician is a dick (which he is) because that will make said spouse angry at you because you never know when to keep your mouth shut which will make him further prove his superiority by performing more intricate Cirque du Soleil maneuvers on your crutches.

Finally, if you happen to have a broken ankle, don’t let the testosterone twins discuss your x-ray together. Yeah, yeah, broken fibula, pulled ligaments, but “you should have seen the time when I got in the jeep accident and broke my TIBIA and then I broke it again (five broken bones altogether mind you) and had to put screws in my ankle which are still there today. Now that was real pain, pardner.” I am an invisible person living in reflected glory.

So yeah (pause while I have “Office Space” flashback) my fibula is broken and my ligaments are torn but I can stay in the very heavy Frankenstein boot (joy of joys) and even put weight on my foot because I am apparently A MASOCHIST who wants to suffer in blood-curdling screams. By the way, I tried putting weight on it and remembered all those swear words I thought I had forgotten from junior high. It was nice, in an agonizing, inhumane, Guantanamo Bay kind of way.

Ohmigod, I sure hope Dick Cheney’s wife doesn’t break one of her bones. Dick would just say,
SO?” And I betcha he can’t even do crutch acrobatics. (But he does a nice Penguin impression, hah, yah, hah, behave.)

Enough Ham to Feed a Small African Nation

Due to my current semi-invalid state, I have donned my Crown of Delegation and sent my minions hither and there to keep the cogs and gears of my many rat cages in motion. Although I can tell the halflings do want to help, my entreaties are met with varying degrees of enthusiasm (or lack thereof). I am living in a House of Sighs (not to be confused with Venice’s bridge under which lovers will be assured eternal love if they kiss in a gondola at sunset).

Small tasks become the proverbial mountain out of a molehill whilst the larger ones that instill guilt through all my nether regions are eagerly taken up as if a gauntlet has been thrown. I’ll never understand men, whether they be three, fourteen, or forty four. But I digress.

Yesterday, I asked Young David to snap some shots of the lambs both for my own enjoyment (because I miss them something terrible) and yours. He came back with the following. Teenagers.

You think he’s happy with himself here? He just successfully moved my truck from the front of the house to the driveway. I’ll spare you the 201 photos he took of the precisely parked vehicle.

Like the rest of the family, the boy’s a ham. It’s a wonder they haven’t made sandwiches of us all.

David, sweetheart, child of my womb, joy of my declining years (that last one came from my grandmother; it was probably her second favorite phrase next to telling the mailman she only wanted checks and love letters), I asked for lamb photos. I think you’ve spent enough time around here to know these are chickens, roosters to be exact.

Now this one is a hen, though I have to say I like the composition of this shot. It’s rather artistic.

Nope, that’s a llama. Spartacus is doing a darned good job guarding the new babies. As an added bonus, he looks like he’s going to donate some nice fiber to the spinning cause after I wash it and pull out all the guard hair. I wonder if I can spin in my current physical condition. My right knee is still killing me and I’m getting a hypochondriacal suspicion my patella is fractured as well. (I go to the orthopedist this afternoon for appropriate ridicule.)

This knee-being-broken idea is probably just my resident paranoia, like when NBC’s David Bloom died of a pulmonary embolism in Iraq. I was sure any day one of my varicose veins was going to send a blood clot to my lungs, putting an end to my current life here on Earth but hastening my reincarnation as a duck.

Whoa, wait a minute, what do we have here? Lambs? Yes indeedy, it’s Sean and Katie. I guess two out of four ain’t bad. Maybe after I get my permanent cast today, I’ll be more comfortable venturing into the yard of divots, sand, and BB-like animal droppings and be able to take my own photographs.

Until then… any cast color suggestions?

I Yam What I Yam

It’s the simple things we take for granted, previously unthought-of tasks like carrying hot steaming morning beverages without scalding oneself or ruining the hall rug, navigating through bloodhounds in the middle of the night whilst trying to crutch to the restroom, and, for that matter, going to the restroom period. What does one do with this cumbersome faulty appendage? I can’t put it on the floor and I’m too much of a weakling to hold the somehow-it-turned-to-lead leg in the air for more than a few seconds. And then there’s the whole sleeping (or in my case not sleeping) issue. The doctor’s instructions are to keep my ankle elevated higher than my heart. In order to do this, I have to lie on my back and use four pillows for resting the thankfully-temporary-until-my-swelling-subsides heavy Frankenstein boot. Yet, I’m not a back sleeper; I lie on my stomach to fall asleep, and then on my side to stay that way. (Brief aside: my mother trained herself to sleep motionless on her back to avoid pillow-related facial wrinkles. She’s funny that way; I’d rather have sheet wrinkles.) Needless to say, I got very little sleep last night.

All this admittedly deserved discomfort/inconvenience has my mind racing to invent ways to cope for the next eight weeks. Firstly, I need to MacGyver a way to attach cup holders to my crutches and exchange my typical coffee mug for a travel one. Next, I need a leg hook in the throne room. I don’t know what, if anything, I can do about the back sleeping issue so I guess I’ll just enjoy fewer sheet wrinkles.

Did anyone read friend Allene’s “Queen of Inappropriate Attire” comment on yesterday’s yes-I-broke-my-ankle post? Although this happened years ago, it’s one of those things I’ll never live down in her eyes. Allene and her husband Jim, David and I, and Jim’s sister Toni and her then-husband went to Palm Springs together for a needed weekend away. My first mistake was packing a turtleneck (it was short-sleeved at least) as part of my hitting the town in July heat outfit. Hey, it looked good with my skirt and beauty before pain has/had up until the past few years been my mantra. This is a part of being my mother’s child. The next day, we planned to take the tram up to cooler climes and hike. As David and I arrived to meet them, I was greeted with guffaws and ribbing. Never being much of an athlete or a hiker, I chose a mini skirt and pumps as my outfit du jour. I yam what I yam.

So, as Allene implied, it should come as no surprise that I fell off my shoes and broke my ankle. Honestly, I don’t think the problem was that I wearing “inappropriate” wedge heels; the issue was that I have spent too much time as of late dressing practically. Perhaps it’s time to get back to the real me, as soon as I figure out who that is. After I finish serving my eight weeks of purgatory, please join me for a high-heeled hike. It’s obviously been too long.

I'm an Even Bigger Idiot...

...Because my ankle is broken. I had to wait until I was 45 to break my first bone. What's up with that?

And if I wasn't uncoordinated enough already, add crutches to the mix and here I am the spaz trying to make it down the aisles of Walgreen's to get my prescription (and Ben and Jerry's, thank goodness for small favors). If I don't fall again during my "recovery" and break more bones, it will be a miracle.

This is going to take some getting used to. And it's all my own damned fault though every nurse I spoke to copped to falling off her shoes at one time or another and twisting her ankle. None of them were fortunate enough to break a bone however. I guess I'm just lucky that way.

By the way, something went awry with Typepad on the previous post and, for some reason, one cannot leave a comment there. So leave them here because I LOVE to get comments (and I need extra love right now; I'm in chagrined humiliated pain after all).

I am an IDIOT

This is my very bruised and battered knee.

This is my very swollen and painful ankle.  I think it's sprained but, since I am pretty sure I cannot drive, and since HH and Jessica are both out of town for the weekend, I guess I'm not going to make it to the hospital to find out for sure.  If anyone has one of those firm and funky ankle brace boots, I'd appreciate it if you sent it my way.

I cannot tell you how this happened to me without totally humiliating myself.  Let's just say unfamiliar 3 1/2" wedge heeled shoes, the uneven sidewalks of old Scottsdale, and drinks at "The Saddle Ranch" (complete with a mechanical bull) don't mix.  In my only defense, Jessica took me down there, that and I am incredibly uncoordinated no matter the time of day, my level of imbibement or lack thereof.  I fall down a lot, just not typically on cement.

Farm chores this weekend are going to be challenging and as sparse as possible.

I'm going to miss my frequent lamb visits.

Especially with Sugarlips Finnegan  here.  He's become quite the loverboy.

I swear, the dumb things I do.  If I wasn't in so much pain already, I'd kick myself.

Take a Walk on the Wild Side

Please excuse me while I take a brief departure from the fauna (did I hear a “phew?!”) and explore the flora side of nature here in the Sonoran Desert. Granted, it’s not the world in which I grew up surrounded by riotous displays of azaleas, dogwoods, and daffodils (oh my!) but more subtle and rare, making one appreciate what is offered all the more.

Due to a few good winter rainfalls, the wildflowers are plentiful this year and provide sharp contrast to their surrounding cacti and scrub. I love the colorful carpet they lay.

Except for the poppies, I don’t know what they are called but also don’t really care as long as I get to look at them.

I think this might be a lupine yet we are in Arizona, not Colorado, and frankly I don’t know how they could grow in such dissimilar climates.

Clover? Thistle? My ignorance does not interfere with my bliss.

Wee daisies? I love how their bright yellow contrasts against the dull rocks and sand.

There are more, many more, and I had planned on photographing them all until this guy distracted me. Sure, he was tiny but, unsure of his species, I gave him a wide berth. After meeting him, I lost my enthusiasm for snapping pictures and high-tailed it home.

HH says he is a non-poisonous glossy snake so apparently I wasn’t in mortal peril or anything. Yet I know by his presence, the climate has warmed enough to awaken his less docile and venom-filled cousins, giving an edge of danger to my morning walks. Maybe I was just meant to have a big fat arse.

Demons in Kids' Clothing

My lambs are adorable; my kids (not the goat kind) are driving me crazy. That's all I have to say today.

Finn McCool (now Finnegan)

Here he is, our Shetland giant, tentatively named after the famous Irish giant that built the Giant's Causeway from Ireland to Scotland, flung part of Ireland at a rival but missed, thereby forming the Isle of Man, and now sleeps in a cave under Dublin to awake and defend Ireland in the hour of her greatest need.

Finn the lamb was born while I was on my morning walk (of course) around 10 or 10:30. I still am not convinced that his attentive doting mom, Charlotte, does not have another in there. She was so huge (but then so is he; weighing in at a whopping 8 pounds at birth, he is the same size as the others are at one week).

By the way, the famous Irish author James Joyce wrote "Finnegan's Wake" in which Finn McCool is heavily featured. It is rumored the title of the book means "Finn again is awake," referring to his eventual awakening to defend Ireland. Where was he during the troubles, I wonder?

Maybe like his namesake here, he was just too tired.

I'm heading back out to the jug now. I still can't believe he's the only one (and that they're all brown, what's up with that? I mean I like brown but really!)

Happy Easter!

Our personal Easter Bunny, Albert, and the rest of the Dillon Family would like to wish everyone a very happy Easter filled with rebirth and renewal.

We here at Rancho Laurena are enjoying the new life with which we've been blessed and hoping for Charlotte to repeat last Easter's performance by gifting us all with more lambs.
(Otherwise, we're going to have to paint Goodyear on her sides and have her officiate sports events, poor girl.)

Baby Love

Of the three 5-6 day-old lambs, Katie is by far the most rambunctious. The girl just wants to have fun. And show off her Mike Tyson impression.

Unfortunately, the rest of the herd prefer resting under the shade beneath the Palo Verde tree on this lovely warm and sunny morning. Outnumbered, she acquiesces. She loves her mum that much.

Closest to Katie in temperament is McLovin. His devil-may-care attitude percceived on Day One has increased with his confidence. Obviously, this concerns Carmela. I've seen that guarded apprehensive look in her eyes somewhere else. Oh yeah, in the mirror. Speaking of, someone please send Jeff Corwin over to identify this rare arboreal lamb. He has a strange call; it sounds like, "Grammaaah!"