Nesting

Why is it that somewhere in the 8^th month of pregnancy, human mothers are over-taken by a sudden and irresistible urge to clean everything in their paths? This “nesting” is not to be confused with spring cleaning. The activities encompassed by “nesting” may include such things as sanitizing the insides of cabinets, using a toothbrush to clean the grout behind the toilet, vacuuming or otherwise airing the box-springs and mattresses on all the beds and using a vacuum attachment to suck the dirt from behind the baseboards, to mention a few. Creative women will find many other cleaning activities to keep themselves busy over this nesting period that would confound the most obsessive-compulsive cleaner.

I can remember squeezing (wedging) myself between the shower and toilet to remove the scum that had built up in the crevasse between the back of the toilet tank and the wall. If my unborn child thought the accommodations were tight already, he had another thing coming until that scum was gone! I have often wondered if this cleaning spree created or otherwise affected his ability at age eight to put his ankles behind his head – a talent he loves to show off at the most unusual of times. Thank goodness I have recently been able to curb his habit of inquiring of people at the grocery store, “you wanna see me lick my nipple?”

The nesting phase can also be blamed for some of the unusual creations that appeared about my house. Though generally I can not be classified as the “domestic” type, I was guilty of sewing a quilt for my first baby. Well, it’s supposed to be a quilt. I’ve never been one for tedious measurements, or sewing straight lines. I still have the thing, too. I take it out whenever I need a good laugh.

It was at that same time that I also scrubbed the horses’ barn from top to bottom. Perhaps this was some odd form of “Mary Complex” for those of us who are concerned we might have to lay our child in a manger around tax time. Though the horses were amicable to the changes, I doubt they noticed the lack of cob webs or dust and they efficiently had the barn back to its original working condition within days.

Of course by then I had moved on to my truck. I vacuumed under the seats and cleaned the jack and lug wrench, too. I thought about having the bed-liner removed so I could wash underneath it, but gave that idea up when I realized I’d have to store the liner in the dirty basement. And that got me started on the basement! I swept the cinderblock walls and cement floor before hosing the whole thing down with bleach and scrubbing the underside of the steps.

Having bred dogs for a number of years, I noticed this behavior is not limited to the human species. Nesting does, however, take on a slightly different form for dogs. My Boston Terrier, Maggie, used to find dirty socks and old newspaper to line her whelping box. In contrast, I was washing the new crib sheets on a bi-weekly basis starting two months prior to my son’s birth. Though Maggie would sit and stay, I never was successful in teaching her to vacuum or dust during her nesting phase. On the other hand, like me, she was very good at cleaning her dish throughout her pregnancy.

Perhaps nesting with my second child will be different. As I sit here and write, I’m 19 weeks pregnant and already thinking about all the things that need to be done before the baby is born. Though we’ve already registered for the baby necessities, I still have to vacuum the back yard, steam-clean the trampoline, disinfect the cats, wash all the dog's clothes and purify one Texas lake. At least this house doesn’t have a basement!

A Christmas Story

There was good news and there was bad news. The good news was that The Jerk was gone. The bad news was that he had taken with him all the money, including my most current child support and paycheck, and left me in the first stage of bankruptcy. Gotta love dating!

He had gotten in his motor home and left without a word to me or a “Goodbye, Merry Christmas” to Jake. I had $20 in my purse and that was it. My next paycheck would not quite cover my car payment, utilities and phone, let alone food or Christmas presents. To top it off, rent would be due a few days after Christmas. My situation was about as much fun as cleaning the grout in a fraternity shower... with my tongue!

I thought over ways in my mind to explain everything to Jake. Until now he’d been a lucky little boy, getting to celebrate all the Jewish holidays with his father, and Christian holidays with me. Perhaps this year I would have to tell him that we were going to have a Jewish Christmas? We could light some candles and sing Hava Nigila while we ate stolen crackers from the local Waffle House. Would he wonder why Santa had come every other year, but not this one? I was not altogether certain how I was going to handle it, or what we were going to do.

They say the holiday season can be the most depressing time for people, and that year was one of the most depressing I had ever had. There would be no food, no gifts, no visitors, no family… no one but my son, me and some macaroni & cheese for dinner. I had been left with a bad taste in my mouth (kind of like fraternity-shower grout) and I had sworn off men completely! If I’d thought it was in me, I would most definitely have become a lesbian, likety-split. (Freudian slip?) Of course I couldn’t help thinking that since I’d finally hit rock bottom, the only place left to go was up, right?

I put on my game face and proceeded into the world like a warrior to battle. I wasn’t going to let them get me down. (I have no clue who “them” are, but it just seemed to work in this sentence.) I held up fine at work, and I was great when my son got home. It was just those in-between moments I had to worry about. Stress was taking its toll and I was unable to eat (which helped conserve food) and lost weight (which is never bad when you’re female).

I was now working as an office manager and my co-worker, Dan, noticed. As there were only the two of us in our office, we would often scatter our life stories among the idle chatter. He soon knew that I’d rid myself of The Jerk, and The Jerk had rid me of all my money. (Thank goodness I didn't have to deal with that pesky stuff any more! Perhaps I could just trade with shells and pebbles.) Knowing the bags would be empty when Santa got to our house, Dan brought in one of his son’s older video game systems and a few games to go with it. To me it was a pot of gold. There would actually be something under our raggedy plastic tree when Jake awoke on Christmas morning... and what mother doesn't want to create a new techno-addiction in her child at such a nice, young age?

Unbeknownst to me, Dan had discussed my situation with one of our regular customers. This same gentleman had once asked me out while I was still with The Jerk, and though I had politely declined the invitation, we remained friends and spoke frequently. In fact I had already mentioned to him that I was no longer with The Jerk, but had not gone into detail about my situation beyond that. I did not wish to be a depressing presence to those around me during the holiday season, sob, sob, sob...

Once again the gentleman (henceforth known as L.T.) asked me out, but of course I was simply not ready for any man to be within a two mile radius of me… well, at least not in that way. He even offered to take my son and me with him on a Christmas vacation to Colorado. As innocent of a proposal as that was, I declined. First for the most obvious reasons, but also explained to him that my employer would allow me no time off. The day before he left for Colorado, L.T. stopped by and gave me an envelope, asking that I not open it until after he had left. I respected his wishes, and after he left, found a $100 gift card to the local grocery store and another $100. gift card for a toy store.

I don’t know if I can fully describe the emotions that swept over me at that moment. I felt wonder, joy, amazement, sadness, depression, anger, anxiety and happiness all at the same time. All these emotions were swirling about in my head like a great tinsel-wrapped tornado. I wanted to laugh, cry and scream in both fear and bliss. So much had been destroyed in the last few weeks, but Christmas was still coming to Jake’s and my little world.

Later that day as I was getting ready to leave the office, Dan handed me a large box filled with food. Once again I was reminded I had not been forgotten. We are all familiar with “the meaning of Christmas.” We’ve heard stories and seen TV shows and movies where people go through wonderful transformations and learn that Christmas goes far beyond the strategic commercialization of the jewelry and toy makers. Those stories have always meant something to me (in a cheesy kind of way), but I can honestly say that in the Christmas season of 2001 that feeling far transcended any I’ve ever had. While I was at the lowest financial and emotional point I’ve ever been, I was swept off my feet by the kindness of others. Awwwwwww, right?

I must tell you that I did take my son to the toy store to use the gift card we had received. After much deliberation, he chose a number of toys that he liked and we went to the check out counter. At this particular store, business is tracked by taking each customer’s phone number at the time of sale. As our turn came up, the boy behind the counter (who couldn’t have been more than 20 years of age) politely asked, “May I have your phone number?”
Jacob looked him square in the eye and said in a voice loud enough for most of the store to hear, “Ooooooooo, you want to date my mom!” We left soon after with my hand still firmly in place over Jacob's mouth.

That year Santa came to our house. Jake couldn’t have been more excited by the wonders he found under the Christmas tree. We enjoyed the company of our next-door neighbors, ate a wonderful Christmas dinner and we all played silly games well into the evening. After all the bad things that had happened, suddenly I found my faith in human-kind being slowly restored. I learned more that Christmas than in any I can remember before or since. While the lessons hurt at the time, I will carry them with me for the rest of my life, kind of like that tacky popsicle-stick Christmas-tree ornament my aunt once gave me.

Preterm Farm Labor

The January day was gloomy, yet unseasonably warm for Kansas. Our next door neighbor (who lived about three miles to our East) had promised my husband and me that he would open our eyes to the wonderful world of farm auctions that day. By 6:00 in the morning the three of us were settled on the bench seat of my pick-up truck and on our way to the farm auction in a town about an hour away. We found the seating a bit snug, not because any of us were over-weight, but because I was 31 weeks pregnant at the time.

By the time we got there, the rain had stopped and a light mist had settled over the rolling landscape. Climbing out of the truck, we found ourselves in a veritable farming wonderland. As we walked about, large tractors, stock trailers, water troughs and feeders loomed out of the mist. We could hear the auctioneer, on a mobile microphone set-up that trailed him from object to object, rattling off semi-recognizable numbers to an excited crowd. Had one chanced to see an aerial view of the process, I’m sure it would have closely resembled a swarm of locusts, consuming large farm equipment as it wound a path over the mist covered field.

We were there to find and purchase a hog feeder. That’s right. My city-raised Jewish husband who had a full-time job with the US Army thought raising hogs would be a great idea for supplemental income. Like a kid with a puppy, I had known prior to the venture who would end up taking care of the smelly, rooting beasts. I knew who would end up chasing escapees, which I had already had the pleasure of doing twice the month before. I’m sure it would have paid for my son’s college education if we had thought to capture “Pregnant Woman Chasing The Three Little Pigs” on a video camera and sent it to America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Though I was one of the lucky few who did not experience morning-sickness during my first pregnancy, being greeted by those creatures first thing each morning simulated what I’m sure other not so lucky pregnant women feel. Pig-stench tends to hit right in the stomach like a good left hook. The hope was that the hog feeder would reduce my number of necessary visits to the pig pen.

By 12:30 that afternoon our hog-feeder mission had been accomplished, but my husband was fully caught up in the excitement of the auction and wanted to stay a little longer. I started to feel a little funny and decided to go sit down in the café area that had been set up in an old shed on the property. I purchased some hot chocolate and sat down. Just sitting felt good as I had developed a bit of a back ache from standing for so long.

After a wile I began to notice what I thought were Braxton-Hicks contractions. After the third one, I decided to peek at my watch. Hmmm – odd. They were coming every ten minutes. I tried relaxing a bit more, and purchased some bottled water to sip on. Hmmm – every seven minutes. When the contractions began growing a bit stronger and coming every six minutes with no sign of stopping, I figured perhaps I should let my husband know.

I wandered out into the throng and finally located my husband after two more contractions. He was gazing lovingly at a large, green and yellow John Deere with a hay-bailing attachment.
I tugged his sleeve, saying, “Um, honey?”
Not breaking his gaze, he responded, “Six cycle 466 CID engine with 181 PTO horsepower…”
“David, I think we should think about leaving pretty soon.”
“Three hydraulic valves, air-conditioned and heated cab, eight forward and four reverse shift transmission…”
“David!”
“Two Snyder 250 gallon side tanks…”
Thwhack! “David!”
“Hey! What do you want?”
“We need to leave!”
“What’s your problem?”
“I’m having contractions.”
At this our neighbor Brian, who happened to be a father of three, perked his ears up and asked, “How far apart?”
“I don’t know. I guess about 5 or six minutes.”
Taking matters, and my annoyed husband, into his own hands, Brian marched us over to the truck.
“You wanna see something that runs better than a Deere?” Brian asked David. “I suggest we run this here Dodge truck towards a hospital, and fast!”
“But the hog feeder…”
“Let me show you something. This here move is called throw and go. You get that end.”
The two men tossed the large hog feeder into the back of the truck, laid it on its’ side and quickly took their places on either side of me on the bench seat. With that, we were on our way… or so we thought.

After keeping the truck at a reasonable rate of speed over the two-mile gravel road up to the black-top, David hit the gas as the tires hit the black-top.
“THUNK! Creek, creek, creek”
The bottom-heavy hog feeder suddenly stood itself up in the bed of the truck and was rocking wildly like one of those weighted blow-up punching toys after a good slug from a toddler.
We pulled over to the side of the road, and in a variation of a Chinese-fire-drill, the men sped out and laid the thing back over and jumped back into the truck.
“How far apart are they?” Brian gasped as soon as he’d caught his breath.
Puff, puff, “Four minutes.” I responded, recovering from another vice-like contraction. “But no pain – it just feels like a gorilla is giving me a bear hug from behind, right around my belly.”
David sped the truck back onto the road.
“THUNK!! Creek, creek, creek, creek.”
“Damn it!”
Again the truck was pulled onto the side of the road and the hog feeder put back in place.
“We shoulda got some rope.” One grumbled.
“Well, if SHE coulda just waited…” The other grumbled back.
“Just keep’er slow.”
“How’m I supposed to do that?”
“The truck, stupid.”
“Who’re you calling stupid?”
“Could we just get towards the house, please?” I interrupted. “They’re getting stronger.”
We found by trial and error that the magic speed was 45 miles per hour. What was a one-hour trip at 70 miles per hour in the morning turned into a two hour journey homeward.

It crossed our minds to stop at a local hospital on the way, but unfortunately there weren’t any. We even considered a veterinary hospital alongside the road, but it appeared to be closed. (I was not overly upset as I was currently entertaining images of some manure-covered man with a plastic glove up to his shoulder approaching me to “Hep out a bit.”) Five miles from the house, my contractions were two minutes apart, but still not causing me any real pain.
“I just want to get up and walk.” I whined.
“You want that baby to drop out of you like groceries out of a torn Wal-Mart bag?” Brian warned me. “You best stay off your feet!”
“I think it would make it better.” I quipped back.
“Wetter.” Brian corrected me.

Once home, I lowered myself out of the truck gingerly. I was instructed to go lay down while they put the hog feeder in the pig-pen. As I started towards the house, I heard David yell, “Pigs are loose!”
I yelled back, “Well I’m not chasing them this time! You can do it yourself!” And turned and began walking again. As I had suspected, the walking seemed to ease my contractions. After a few minutes (and a slow waddle around the house) they were down to five minutes apart. By the time David came back in, smelling strongly of pig-poop, they were down to seven minutes apart.

I called the army hospital and was told that a nurse would call me back in about an hour. I laughed and said I would start heading that way. The receptionist explained there was no guarantee I would be seen without talking to a nurse first. I figured I’d take my chances, and heaved myself back into the truck for the hour drive to the hospital.

When we arrived, they were kind enough to allow us to go up to Labor & Delivery. There, a nurse sat us down and lectured us on the procedures of the army hospital and teach us about Braxton-Hicks contractions.
“Braxton-Hicks contractions are the body’s way of rehearsing for actual labor. Everyone has them and I get so many first-time mothers in here, all afraid that they’re really in labor. It’s a waste of your time and ours.” She explained sternly.
To make her point, she showed us a chart that compared “real” contractions to Braxton-Hicks. She explained that if mine were real, I would know it and so would everybody around me.

She then hooked my belly up to a nearby monitor and asked us to watch what my contractions read. As the next one hit and crested, she quietly got up and left the room. Shortly thereafter a doctor appeared and checked the paper record of my contractions coming out of the monitor.
“We’re going to do a pelvic, and if you’re even a tiny bit dilated, we’ll be doing a C-section tonight.” He told us.
“But I thought this was just a rehearsal…” I stammered. “Maybe a dress rehearsal, but not the actual show!”
Suddenly it was like a spotlight had been turned on, and was aimed at me. Well, come to think of it, it had, but a little further south than the spotlights I’d been in during other productions.

Finally the doctor stood up, and removing his gloves, said, “No baby tonight, but we need to stop those contractions!”
I was given some kind of medication through an IV that made me very drowsy. The contractions lessened but did not disappear all the way. True to army form, I was released two hours after arriving and instructed to go home and go to bed.
“For how long?” I asked through my drowsy stupor.
“Until you wake up.” I was told.
“But shouldn’t I do some bed-rest or something?” I queried.
The doctor looked at me like I was an imbecile and said “What for?”
I was far to drugged to pursue the matter and ended it with, “Never mind.”

Later I learned that the primary reason I did not end up having Jake that night was because his fanny was firmly planted over my cervix like a big plug, and there was no way he was going to fall out “like groceries out of a torn Wal-Mart bag.” I was also lucky the contractions stopped completely by morning and I did not have any repeat episode of pre-term labor… even after chasing those stupid pigs one more time before giving them to Brian. I even threw the hog-feeder in the deal for free!

Four-Legged Guardian Angel

Warning: Kleenex Alert! Do NOT read this story if you are experiencing PMS or have recently lost your bottle of Zoloft!

If you were to ask my mother, I believe she would say that my first word was “horse.” If it wasn’t my first word, it was probably no less than my third. Considering that neither my mother nor father could be considered “animal people,” I believe this word may have taken my poor mother by surprise. I’m sure at the time she believed this to be a result of a popular 60’s children’s T.V. show called Mr. Ed about a talking horse, but little did she know...

Over the years, my interest for horses did not fade, but grew stronger and stronger. Every Christmas and every birthday, my first and often only request was for a horse, or if that was simply not possible, a pony. Of course as we lived in strictly suburban surroundings, an equine in the back yard was not possible, nor was it legal.

At age 6 I was finally old enough to take riding lessons at our local stables. For one hour every week, I was in heaven! I rode fat little ponies and skinny old nags, but it did not matter to me. They all had that wonderful horse smell, and if they were willing to move, I was willing to ride them.

As the years past, I found ways to keep riding, though money was sometimes tight. I worked at local barns, cleaning horses, stalls and tack in return for a lesson or two. When I was 13 years old I finally got that first pony! I spent every extra hour of every day with him, and learned all sorts of invaluable lessons, like how not to get kicked when brushing the “tickle spot” and that clean, wet ponies like to roll in the mud at the first possible chance.

At age 20 I decided to try a young, inexperienced horse. As money was tight, a critter without a lot of training was better suited for my tight budget. It was not long before a friend told me about a 2-year-old Thoroughbred who had just recently come off the race-track. He had been won in a poker bet by a truck driver named Butch who, until then, had been no closer to a horse than the picture on his “Polo” cologne. As racing and polo were the only horse related sports Butch knew of, he had the horse taken to a local polo club where he hoped the horse would earn his keep on the polo fields.

Needless to say, a young Thoroughbred with no training is about as suitable to polo as a Cadillac is to mowing lawns. The polo club demanded remuneration for the time the horse was kept on its property, and the food he was consuming. Butch could afford no such thing, so the horse was locked up with little food until the fees could be paid. At that point Butch made a call to a local slaughter house and found that the dog-food folks paid a pretty penny for healthy horses.

I got there about an hour before the slaughter house truck did. Though skinny and unkempt, there was just something about that horse that was… special. There was a certain honesty in his expression and trust in his actions that compelled me immediately. Something about his eyes spoke to my heart. I offered Butch $700 for the horse right then and there. Butch informed me that the slaughter house would pay $800 for the horse. At that time I happened to notice that Butch’s 3-year-old daughter had marched right up to the large animal, grabbed his lead rope and was taking him for a walk around the busy parking area. Butch seemed fully unaware of the danger this situation presented for his daughter, though he followed my glance and explained the horse was like a “pet” to his daughter.
I saw the weak spot and went for it like a vulture.
“Then what are you going to tell her when she asks where her horsy went? Are you going to tell her the truth, or just lie to her?”

Over the next five years, that $700 horse proved to be highly talented in the show ring, always gentle with children and small animals, and the best friend I’d ever had. We spent hours together, and could practically read each other’s minds. I felt I could almost see his soul when I looked into those eyes which were a shade of brown I had not seen before. I was offered large sums of money for him on more than one occasion, and thought nothing of turning it down. I would no sooner sell my mother, though the thought had crossed my mind.

In late September of 1995 I was near the end of my second month of my troubled pregnancy. I continued to bleed, and my body was simply not doing what it was supposed to. The army doctors told me not to get my hopes up that the pregnancy would last. It had taken me over two years to get pregnant, and this news was devastating.

As I was leaving for work as a veterinary assistant on the morning of September 30^th 1994, I saw that Mario had gotten one of his beautiful forelegs hung in the barbed wire fence. Where other horses would have struggled to free themselves, he was standing patiently, waiting for me to come help him. I threw the truck into park while it was still moving and jumped out to help him. Seeing that the wire had cut deep into the leg, I told him to stand still and I ran to the barn to grab some wire cutters. He stood patiently while I ran back and gingerly cut the wire on either side of the gaping wound, leaving a six inch piece embedded in his leg. I knew pulling it out could do far more damage than leaving it where it was, at that point.

I tied him to a nearby tree and ran to the phone to call my neighbor to bring a horse trailer as quickly as possible. I then called the veterinary hospital at Kansas State University to ask them to prepare for our arrival. I bandaged Mario’s leg around the wire to prevent the wire moving further, and led him slowly on to the trailer.

The veterinary team at Kansas State University took radiographs, and had him in surgery within the hour. It took them three hours to remove the wire and close the gaping wound. I had already been warned that the damage could be too extensive to repair, but I had to try everything I could to save my friend.

For the next three days Mario lay with his head in my lap. Of course I was warned by each shift of veterinarians that sitting with a horses’ head in my lap could end my pregnancy should he get startled or decide to move quickly. I told them all that I knew my horse well enough to know that he would never do any such thing. He was always so gentle, he was incredibly careful with me, even when he was lying in unfamiliar surroundings, poked full of IV needles and had a huge, metal brace on his leg. He barely even wiggled until I was ready to get up or move.

On the third day, the vets came to me with bad news. The damage was so extensive that the chance of recovery was almost zero. The only way to keep him alive would be amputation, which would mean my beautiful horse would never leave his stall again. He would never run with his neck stretched out and his mane whipping around my face. He would never walk with me through the sunset, back towards the barn at the end of a long ride. His freedom would be taken away completely, and he would be in pain for the rest of his life.

I made the hardest decision I had ever made in my life that day. It was up to me to decide my best friend’s fate, to kill him or condemn him. The best choice was by far the most painful. I could make no other choice but to say goodbye to Super Mario that day.

Mario followed me willingly down the corridor on his three good legs to a room with padded walls and floors. I held his lead-rope in my hand as the doctor injected a clear liquid into his neck. I watched as his eye clouded with confusion, and as his knees gave way under his beautiful, athletic body. I was with him until his heart stopped, and his spirit was set free from the bonds of his injured shell. I wept on the neck of his beautiful, lifeless body, taking in his smell so I would never forget it. I said goodbye to the best friend I had ever had.

As Mario’s heart stopped beating, another tiny heart grew stronger. The next day I went in for a prenatal check up to see if the tiny life inside of me had made it through the stress of the last few days. The bleeding had stopped only that morning and the cramping had gone away. For the first time, the heartbeat could be heard clearly on the monitor. My own heavy heart skipped with the joy of hearing my baby’s heartbeat for the first time.

The following March, my son was born. In those first few moments of life, they set him on my chest, and he opened his eyes and looked right into mine. I noticed immediately that his eyes were the most amazing, deep shade of brown… a color I think I’d only seen once before.

In memory of all angels.
Super Mario: 5/15/87 – 10/3/94

How Victoria’s Secret Got Out

It was a beautiful spring day in early 1994. I had 3 horses at that time, and often enjoyed the beautiful, empty country-side from horse-back. It was perfectly safe to ride along the gravel roads because few vehicles ventured that far out into the boonies. A car could be heard for miles before it got close to the house so there was always plenty of time to get off the road if necessary. The house was so far removed, in fact, that I rarely thought anything of wearing a bathrobe out to the barn for morning feeding, or less than that out to look at the stars at night.

One Saturday morning in the summer while my husband was off doing some army thing, I was awakened by the sound of mooing. It took me less than a minute to shake off my dazed sleep-stupor and come to the conclusion that this sound was not being made by any one of my three equines. On top of that, the great noise seemed to be coming from at least 300 animals of a bovine nature. The nearest cattle ranch was about 4 miles down the road, and I was pretty sure the sound was not carrying quite that far.

I jumped out of bed, still wearing the cute little Victoria’s Secret string-bikini undies and spaghetti-strap midi tank top I had slept in, and trotted down the stairs to be affronted by a horrific view out the large picture window in the front of the house. A large heard of cattle had found the lush patch of grass over my septic system, and were slowly and methodically crushing my lateral lines into oblivion.

With thoughts of the backed up sewage seeping into my basement, I quickly headed out my front door to chase the offending cattle away from that area before all hopes of flushing went completely down the drain.

The grass was thick and green, and the cattle had little interest in my requests that they move on to less-green pastures.
“Haaaww Cow! Haaaawww Cow! Git! Giiiiiiiiiiiiittt!” I yelled at them in vane.
Soon I found myself standing in the middle of the herd, and some of the bovines finally started to move off a bit towards the grass around my driveway.

About this time, I started to realize that cows en mass are prolific producers of natural fertilizer, and that they are also quite loud! Not only was I covered in manure up to my bare knees, but I was half-deaf as well. I kept right on chasing, and finally had the majority of the creatures away from the danger zone.

As I emerged from the midst of the wayward herd, I bumped right into…
“Milt!”
“Hey there. I see you come accrost my cattle. I wanna thank you for… for taking care of ‘em for me.” (Cough, chuckle.) “Was they on your… lines?”
“Um, yeah.” I stammered as I made the dark realization that I had just exposed Victoria’s Secret to my 75-year-old cattle rancher neighbor. “I’ll let you take it from here.”
With that I quickly slunk back into my house, knowing that the manure foot-prints might not be the only thing that would follow me around for a while.

My fears were realized later in the day when I went into town to buy gas for my truck. As I walked in to pay the clerk, the crowd in the little café area grew deathly silent. The clerk flashed her smile at me, took my money and said sweetly, “I hope you didn’t get your cow-pokin’ duds too dirty this mornin’. In fact, a couple of the guys was wonderin’ if you’d just call ‘em up nex time so they could get dirty doin’ some pokin’ with you.”
With that the crowd erupted, and I made for the door, all the while looking for a large rock to crawl under. Over the next few months, I made the trek up to Topeka to do my shopping. Now, years later, I wonder what stories they tell in that little town about the strange lady from back East who got caught chasing cattle in Victoria’s not-so-secret attire.

What Back-Breaking Work Martyrdom Is!

After three months in ugly-shag hell, my husband and I found a wonderful house way out in the Kansas countryside. It was a 5 bedroom, 2 bathroom house with a wrap-around porch situated on 25 rolling acres. There were outbuildings suitable for the horses and even a pond. The price was outrageously low at sixty-thousand dollars.

We purchased the house and set up the dates and times to do the paperwork and move in. Unbeknownst to me at the time the arrangements were being made, my dearest, kind, caring husband set up the move-in date for the day before he was to leave for a month on an army maneuver... in California. This probably would have been all right had we also hired some movers and a truck, but using “saving money” as an excuse, David decided that we could be self sufficient this go-round. The day before David’s departure, he kindly got a friend to help him move all the “large” furniture to the house, and set it in a large pile in the middle of the living room. That was it. He was concerned about tiring himself out prior to his army adventure, and did not want to over-do himself, poor baby!

Now I’ve always been the strong, self sufficient type, and even at this time I was unwilling to admit that I’d been over-loaded. I stubbornly moved forward, never complaining to my lawfully wedded Bozo-Head that he’d shafted me. Oddly enough, I felt that if I did, I would somehow be admitting a weakness that would make me less attractive to him. Blond moment?

Along with many boxes of books, clothes, dishes, knick-knacks and other items for the house, I was also responsible for moving 17 panels of metal pipe fencing that would be used to complete the broken barbed wire fence around the perimeter of the property. This was rather important before the horses could be turned out in our property. Each panel was 10 feet long by 5 feet high and weighed approximately 100 lbs. each. They had come with the house but had been left down in a wash-out area that was inaccessible to motorized vehicles. The closest I could get my truck was about 30 feet from the wash-out.

One by one I started moving the panels, slinging them over my back and walking sideways through the brush, up the embankment to my truck. At the pace I was going I realized I wouldn’t get the horses out of the barn before my husband got home. In a stroke of brilliance I started moving two at a time, and then three at a time. At 5’0” of height, I’ve always taken pride in my strength. I was really proud of myself when I was able to hoist 300 pounds of metal pipe on to my back and get it up a hill and into the back of my truck. Perhaps this wasn't the most intelligent thing I've ever done, but without my faux pas, I'd have less to write about.

I could practically hear an imaginary crowd of impressed and loving husbands cheering me on as I got the work done before nightfall. Everything on my body hurt, but I was strong, and I knew I’d be fine in the morning. I got the horses turned out and finished the evening by loosing consciousness almost immediately after collapsing into the water bed I had erected myself that morning.

I awoke the next morning and WHOAH! Stupid me, but I had unknowingly made the mistake of trying to move. There was definitely something very wrong. I could not move any part of my body without pain shooting through my back like a flaming bullet. I had no phone service yet, and no one to call even if I had. At the time, personal cell phones were almost unheard of and there was no true internet (not that we owned a computer, anyway). I was a million miles from nowhere (well, maybe 50 miles) and I was very, very stuck! I started to imagine my dried-up carcass being discovered by authorities the following month after my husband finally realized he hadn’t heard from me.

S-l-o-w-l-y I edged one leg to the side of the water bed. After about 20 minutes I had my knee bent over the side and I was gritting my teeth against the pain. Another 20 minutes and I had swiveled myself around enough to get my other foot over the edge. An hour went by and I was s-l-o-w-l-y moving my body to an erect position. With every movement, my breath stuck upon some knife seemingly wedged under my left shoulder blade. My only thought was that somehow I HAD to get myself to a hospital so I didn’t die panty-less and alone in my ugly night shirt.

Upon the success of the ginger removal of my body from its potential water-bed grave, I came to the gloomy realization that I now needed to figure out a way to get afore-mentioned panty-less butt into some sweat pants. The sweat pants took another 30 minutes, and then I had to conjure upon a creative way to get my heap of aching bones down the stairs.

Three hours after I awoke that fateful morning, I finally sitting delicately on the seat of my pick-up truck and driving down eight miles of gravel road on my way to the hospital. I can not tell you in words how driving down a gravel road feels on a back that’s already on fire. Not in words I want to have published, anyway.

I arrived at the Irwin Army Hospital semi-intact with a new goal of getting myself out of my truck and into the emergency entrance. I drove around for quite some time before concluding the nearest parking place was about a half mile away in the lower parking lot. The heck with that! In my gutsiest move yet I parked illegally in the fire lane next to the ambulance doors and wriggled gently out of the truck and on to the pavement. From there I scooted in a bent (or more accurately, broken) fashion up onto the sidewalk and through the doors of the emergency room. At the time it felt like the gates of heaven, as the relief of not being in my predicament alone any more swept over me.

I held my keys out in front of me as I slowly shuffled up to the receptionist.
“I need someone to help me out a bit. My truck is illegally…”
“We don’t offer valet parking, ma’am.” She informed me, gruffly.
At that point the flood gates opened. In broken sentences I attempted to tell her through my tears that I’d hurt my back and I couldn’t make the walk up from the nearest parking place. A passing doctor must have overheard and suddenly there was a flurry of activity around me. I was pushed gently into a wheel chair and taken directly back to a room. I can honestly say that in all my years as an army wife, that day I was given the fastest and best service I’d ever had at any army hospital!

Within an hour a doctor was tending to me. X-rays were taken and the conclusion was ominous. I had torn and separated a large mass of muscle around and under my left shoulder-blade. If this wasn’t bad enough, the muscles on the other side that were still attached were also injured and contracted, pulling everything that remained intact out of alignment. I was informed that I was to be admitted immediately, and might have to stay in some sort of traction for up to six weeks! Holy cow! Holy Horse! I had abandon my horses in a pasture miles from the nearest civilization and couldn’t recall if I’d given them enough water to survive the next day, let alone the next six weeks.

“I’m sorry. I’d love to stay, but I simply can’t right now.” I told the doctor politely. “My husband is at the desert training center for the next month in California.”
“Ma’am, I don’t think you understand. You’re hurt pretty badly and we’re not supposed to let you leave the hospital. We will have to have your husband sent home.”

After giving all the necessary information to the hospital staff, and worrying about how mad my husband would be at me, I finagled my way out of the hospital to just “feed and water my horses and dogs before returning.” I had strict orders to be back to the hospital by that night, and was warned that I left at my own risk.

As luck would have it, my phones had been connected in my absence. I got home and s-l-o-w-l-y fed my critters. I got back into the house just in time to receive a call form my dearest, caring husband all the way from California.
“What’s going on that you needed me to be pulled out to call you?” He inquired in an angry manner.
“I’m sorry.” I said quickly. “I seem to have hurt my back…”
“Do you realize what being sent home right now would mean for my career?” His tone was growing angrier by the word. “If I can’t complete this rotation, I might as well just forget about everything I’ve worked for in the last two years! Now I’m supposed to come home because you pulled a muscle or something?”
“I…”
“Whatever!” He practically shouted. “So what’s the real deal? Do you really need me to come home and ruin my career, or is this some sort of attention thing? I can not believe you had them call me here!”
“I guess I’ll be ok…” I stammered. I was a good girl and certainly did not want to be the cause of such a career ending move as he described. “I’ll be fine…”
“Great.” He said flatly. “Maybe if you REALLY need help, you can get the Jamesons to come help you once a day.”
“It’s 50 miles…”
“I’ll give you the number.”

Happy to have me out of his career’s way, my loving husband told me he loved me, and that he’d see me in a month. I now held the number in my hand for another army couple that lived 50 miles away, but had some knowledge of horses. All I had to do was pick up the phone and explain how stupid I was to some people I barely knew, and ask them to drive a 100 mile round trip to feed my horses so I could lay on my couch doing nothing when I was supposed to be unpacking the house. Great. Just yippee-kiaye great! I would savor every moment of this phone call. After the tears of frustration and loneliness passed, I gathered my courage up enough to call the Jamesons. I was happy to have some help, and having the neither courage nor heart to ask for more, I bravely told them I was sure that three or four days of help would be just wonderful!

Needless to say, I did not return to the hospital. I kept as still as I could on my couch for a few very lonely days. The T.V. got one station which I had no choice but to watch as I could not hold up a book for more than a few seconds. I made my own meals and shuffled down to the barn to tend the horses as best I could. I was miserable, yet proud that I could be such a martyr for my dear, loving husband.

What did I expect form my stoic actions? I expected to be praised at length when my husband got home for being so strong and good natured about everything. I expected to be held in the highest regard for my sacrifices. I expected that my husband would love me more and treat me better for being so understanding and supportive of his career. Did any of that happen?

Rolling on the floor laughing out loud! What happened is my husband realized he had an easy target. He found out that if he treated me poorly and with disrespect, there would be no ramifications for his actions. He learned that I expected to be treated poorly and I would not fight back. If I did put up any fight, I would back down quickly to keep the peace. I’m sorry to say it took quite a few years before I developed any senses to come to. Being a martyr is back-breaking work.

As I write this chapter of my life twelve years after the fact, I still feel the burning ache under my left shoulder blade that never quite healed itself. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, I know now how that phone conversation should have been different.
“What’s going on that you needed me to be pulled out to call you?”
“You made the choice to leave me here by myself to finish moving heavy objects, and now I need lengthy medical attention. If you’re not at this house in the next 24 hours to help me, I won’t be here when you do get back. If your career is more important than our marriage and my health, you don’t need me to stick around longer than that, anyway. Do I make myself understood?”
I rather doubt he would have left me miserable and alone after that. I suppose it took a back injury and a lot of years for me to "grow a spine" but at least I have one now... albeit a slightly crooked one.

Mother Nature’s Revenge

I graduated from college and was then faced with the dilemma of what to do next. Taking my fore-mothers as my example, it seemed a logical thing to get married. In hindsight it wasn’t logical at all, but at the time I somehow thought it was something I was supposed to do. I couldn’t imagine life without some male figure making me miserable, so I said “yes” to an offer from a man who would become an army lieutenant in the October following graduation.

I had just a few months to throw together a wedding in the D.C. area where both my fiancé’s and my parents happened to live. Why rush in? Simple. He was to leave for Oklahoma in October, and everyone knows that good girls don’t live with men before they are married! I had dated him for eight months and I couldn’t just drive off into the sunset with him unless I was legally bound and gagged to him, could I?

I wasted no time and requisitioned my parent’s house for the reception, found a pianist and a caterer for the event and bought a size two wedding dress off a tiny window mannequin at the local bridal boutique for $200. The tailor cut the bottom three feet of fabric off the dress, sewed in a huge amount of stuffing where my breasts should have been and I was good to go.

In barely more than an instant I was married and off to Oklahoma. Oklahoma was… OK. I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it. I learned my duties as a military wife (barf) and attended the officer’s wives meetings on occasion. I worked at a crummy local day care center for lack of “real” jobs in the area. My husband was only stationed there for six months, so it was barely worth sending out a hundred resumes to all the local establishments. In Lawton, Oklahoma, the busiest industry at that time dealt in dancers of an exotic nature, and was not exactly my stiletto of tea, anyway.

I had brought my horse Super Mario from college, and we acquired a Boston Terrier and two more equines while in Oklahoma. My non-horsey husband simply could not be outdone by his wife and had to have a steed or two of his own. At least the extra horses gave me something to do once I quit my job at the crummy day care.

After the Oklahoma stint was done, it was on to the lovely state of Kansas. All I knew of Kansas prior to moving there was that it was flat and that without prior warning one could be whisked off in a tornado to a strange Technicolor parallel universe inhabited by musical animals, vegetables and minerals. In its defense, certain good fairies with annoyingly high, wavering voices, have thought it wise to send lost girls back there, so it couldn’t be too bad, could it?

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the north east portion of Kansas actually has rolling hills, real trees and no portals to other worlds. Even better it was the country life-style I had always longed for growing up in the D.C. and Philadelphia suburbs. It was easy to find our “starter home” with almost four acres and a barn. It was the first house we looked at and it was perfect!

The house was barely one thousand square feet, but it had everything we needed. We went to the closing and started signing our way through the sky-scraper of paperwork. I distinctly remember laughing upon finding out we could add flood insurance for a whopping twenty-five dollars a year. “You don’t need it,” the lender advised us but for that kind diddley amount we figured it would be fun to purchase just for the heck of it.

I had once seen an aerial photograph of our quaint little house and its land. I noted that our house was nicely nestled in a picturesque spot in the “Y” of the Blue River and the Missouri River. Other than finding the area strikingly lush, I never gave the geography of local irrigation a second thought until the summer of 1993.

Having tried my hand at car sales and selling men’s fragrances at a local department store, I had moved on to selling very “hip,” hip-hop clothing to adolescents and their forty-year-old parents with the Peter Pan syndrome. One afternoon I was exercising my brainpower to the max, making certain that all the team logo sweatshirts were folded in exactly the same way when the store manager called me over to tell me I had a phone call. As many of my co-workers were adolescents or suffering from the Peter Pan syndrome, there was a strict “No personal phone calls” rule that I was overtly breaking.

My manager stood glowering at me as I picked up the phone. “We’re being evacuated for a WHAT?” I slammed the phone back into its cradle and looked my manager in the eye.
“I have to go home now. The army reserves are evacuating us because there is going to be a flood.”
My manager clearly did not believe a word of it. It was made clear to me that I would most certainly be fired if I was making this up to go to a concert.

I rushed home to find military vehicles blocking off the roadways to my house. After showing my driver’s license to a uniformed male who probably didn’t shave yet, I was allowed to continue homeward. There were no outward signs of rising water what-so-ever, yet we started the task of moving everything off the ground. We stacked photo albums and books on chairs and the chairs on tables. We stuffed garbage bags full of clothing and necessities. We were in the process of throwing everything into the cars when we had to stop and wonder. Where were we going to take all this stuff?

We also had two cats, three horses and four dogs to move. The horses were taken to Kansas State Veterinary Center who had generously offered up stalls to animals misplaced by the flood. A veterinarian at the school offered to take our Great Pyrenees dog. That left us with just the smaller dogs and the cats.

The sofa and love seat were hoisted into the hayloft of the barn. All other hatches were battened down to the best of our abilities before the “get out” deadline hit. Making one last pass through the house was like leaving a dog at the vet to be euthanized. It was a beautiful evening when we said “goodbye” to our starter home.

Within days the house and barn were standing in four feet of sewage-laced water. It was truly an adventure canoeing home to visit the carnage. For safety reasons, no one was allowed to venture into the swollen river. Army Reservists were strategically positioned around the once-inhabited neighborhoods to prevent residents, thieves or thrill seekers from entering. We cleverly outsmarted the reservists by sneaking down to an empty corn field to launch a boat. Canoeing through corn stalks is odd enough, but it became truly surreal when we started boating past the houses of our neighbors and friends.

The first thing we noticed aside from our new indoor swimming pool was that the trees were full of every kind of critter imaginable. There were feral cats, mice, rats, bugs and even snakes seeking refuge in the branches. The flora was now about thirty percent fauna in my estimation. A kitten clinging to a Styrofoam cooler lid had washed up in a corner of the house by the back door. She had an insect infestation the likes of which no veterinarian has ever seen. There were grasshoppers in her ears and roaches covering her back. I wasn’t going to leave her there, but I sure as heck didn’t want to touch her! As cruel as it sounds, I upended the small, populated island with a stick and dumped the kitten and her residents into the water. As the kitted surfaced, I grabbed her and swatted off the remainder of the bugs. Though angry, frightened and wet, the kitten never thought about trying to jump ship on our way back to safety.

My husband and I had taken up temporary residence with some local college students. They gave us a room and allowed all our pets into the house too. After a few weeks when it became clear there would be no moving back to our own soggy house, my husband found the nastiest, trashiest, most dangerous trailer park in all of Junction City Kansas to move us to. The single-wide trailer was approximately sixty years old, but luckily it had been redecorated in the early 1970’s. The carpet was a lovely thread-bare, burnt orange, brown and green shag, though it more resembled the head of a burn victim. The trailer came fully-loaded, with holes in the floor (air-conditioning) and a leaky roof (shower).

I know somebody else in the trailer park had keys to our new abode because each day while I was at work, the sticky-fingered elf would pick a few things to permanently borrow. There were train tracks within fifty feet of the trailer, but luckily there were about thirty trailers in between ours and the tracks. That helped cut the noise down from the hourly trains. There were lots of children in the park, though I rarely saw any adults. Things like that always made me wonder.

We lived in that trailer for about three months. I say “we” but my husband was away for much of that time playing “soldier” with his army buddies. He assured me I’d be just fine, and even adopted yet another dog from the pound to “protect” me. The dog was huge, not house broken and barked non-stop for the entire three months. On a positive note, nobody ever complained about the noise. I doubt anyone could hear it over the roar of the trains!