100,000 Miles

It is increasingly beginning to appear that I am like the dependable little car that ran quite reliably (yes quite reliably, thank you) for many years, then reached 100,000 miles and ... had every single thing go out at once. 

Battery. Transmission. Spark Plugs. Blinkers. Brakes. All shot. Maybe the whole engine.

I'm afraid that is me!

And I'm only in my 40s for crying out loud. (Though it is the latter end of my 40s I suppose.)

But I thought ... well, no, I never thought about it at all actually. ... But if I had had a thought about it, it would have been a thought like this: "I will run like a top until I'm 80."

Only now?

On top of my troubled Achilles, and my tonsils having needed parted with, my TMJ has been acting up rather badly, I had to go to the eye doctor the other day after accidentally scratching my cornea (I didn't know I had scratched it, I thought something was stuck in it!), I wake up with my limbs tingling or numb several times a night, I've begun experiencing occasional tinnitus (rare, but alarming--no pun intended), and I recently injured my knee and may need surgery to repair a torn meniscus.

What's to be made of all this? What is to be done? It's an entire list! Just like that little Peggy Ann McKay.

I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye. ... 

Except I don't think my troubles will all disappear the minute someone tells me it's Saturday.

Still, it would all be tolerable (not overly tolerable, but tolerable enough) only ... running. 

Running!

If only none of it were interfering with running.

"Mostly," I told the knee doctor, "I'd just really like to be able to keep running."

(Knee doctor? [I suppose he has some more formal specialty name than that.]) 

"Yes," he shook his head and waved his hand. "You all do. Whenever I'm driving home and see someone out running, I'm tempted to just pull over and give them my card." (As if to say--"If you want to participate in that activity, it's my office where you'll end up.")

But he did tell me that my knees do still look to have few good years left in them, and that I am lucky to have run so much for as long as I have. 

And I know. 

It's true.

It's true! 

What an amazing blessing to have run through all the seasons -- seasons of weather and seasons of life (including 10 pregnancies!) -- for so many decades!

I am grateful!

But that didn't stop me from calling Mike the minute my appointment was over to moan that nothing else gets me outside so regularly in all sorts of weather, and nothing else opens my mind so, well, openly in prayer like running does. (Something about that in and out, and in and out breathing, and the steady strike, strike, strike of each footfall. It's almost meditative.) 

Mike, stinker that he is, suggested the perfect substitute: feeding the animals at the farm (outside, and in all the weather) while praying ... for our chickens. (Haha. Oh our poor chickens! We've even installed a coop door that automatically closes at night. "What more could I have done for my vineyard chickens?" But somehow they keep getting eaten. We think it's a combination of this fellow [who we have caught multiple times now on our game cam] and ... neighborhood dogs.)

Perhaps, rather than this feeding-the-animals substitute for running, I should just be put out to pasture altogether! It appears to be the direction I'm headed.

Though, truth be told, there is something about feeding the animals. (Shhh. Don't tell Mike I said that.) Especially, oddly, in the cold of winter ... and if dusk happens to be falling. It's not at all fun, mind you. That's not the word. Your fingers freeze trying to break ice or hold metal bucket handles, your arms and back ache carrying water, hay gets stuck in your clothes and makes your eyes itch, the grain can shrinks onto its lid in the cold and becomes impossible to open. And yet ... I can't properly word this at all, you likely won't know what I'm trying to explain, but you feel like you are watching yourself from a different place when you are out there in the dusk and dark, somehow remembering the chill of those nights and the sound of the cows chewing their grain (such a homey, comforting sound), even though you are doing it at that moment and it isn't memory yet, but reality. It's as if time shifts. And some future you is remembering these moments of chill, dark nights, your breath on the air, and crunching over stiff grass or frozen snow to the animals.

(Here Starling and Hans are the other evening. I'd loaded the kids up in the van to drive to the farm with me for animal feeding. It was cold and I'd told them to keep in the van, but the two of them ran out to the dock [Starling in Mette's shoes] while I gathered eggs from the [remaining] hens.)

Thanksgiving 2024

I meant to take a lot of photos at Thanksgiving dinner--mostly to just have more pictures of my childhood home, but I got so busy visiting and eating such good food that I forgot all about getting my camera out until everything was mostly cleaned up and over!

Ah well. 

Anyway, we went to my mom's this year. So many of my older siblings have married kids and grandkids of their own now that most of them end up hosting their own families for Thanksgiving. So, Thanksgiving at my mom's feels much smaller even than one of her monthly Sunday dinners!

Of course "much smaller" is still big by most standards I suppose. There were 24 of us there this year. But it did feel like a relatively small crowd. Particularly since my family made up nearly half of the attendees. We had all of us, except for Goldie of course. My mom. Rob and Amber with their two younger kids. Rob's son Joey and his wife Cyenna with their baby boy. And Shannon and Jason with their youngest three.

(And truly so much good food and so many wonderful pies! I was sad to not have taken enough leftovers to last me every meal for a week! Luckily Mike insisted Daisy triple his mom's crescent roll recipe, so we did have quite a few rolls leftover!)

I did get a few measly photos at the end:

Cousins playing games in the pit. (There is a little sunken area at the far end of my parents' kitchen--just past the table that seats 13. It has built in couches, a woodstove, and the record player that we used for Christmas music, etc. all my growing up. We always called this area "the conversation pit" or just "the pit" for short. You can even see a glimpse of some of the World Books and the familiar Family-Night board--each of us painted on it with squares overlaying us, waiting for assignments to be put on them.)

And a bit more.

Abe and cousin Joey.

My sister Shannon and my brother Rob.

We stopped by Mike's parents' after and visited for a bit. His siblings had already all left, but it was nice to see his parents. Then we drove back to Logan in the dark with Christmas music playing and some of us even singing a few of them out loud together for a spell. 

At home we put the little kids to bed and watched a movie with all the older kids. (So nice having Abe and Daisy home!)

Entering the Christmas Season

Christmas started the weekend after Thanksgiving. (Well, I had draped lights above the windows in mid-November, ... and started occasionally turning on Christmas music, but it started in full the day after Thanksgiving.) 

We put up Christmas decorations and went with most of the kids to some downtown-Logan Christmas events. (Chalk coloring, a little Christmassy famers-type market, Charlie Brown Christmas at the old theater, etc.) Ice-skaters were happily circling around the outdoor rink, a band was playing and singing Christmas songs, and about every fifth car driving along main street seemed to have a Christmas tree tied to their roof or hanging out of the bed of their truck. And I made everyone stop quickly for a group photo:

Only afterwards did I realize the sign we were happily and excitedly posing under. Haha.

We also had Anders' and Mette's first piano recital at the old Mendon Station. Lots of Christmas songs. (Somehow we've been out of music lessons for several years. Well, that's not totally true. Penny has had some voice and guitar lessons. But covid hit as our older kids were sort of outgrowing lessons anyway. And then we just got busy, and there were lots of needy tiny people demanding most of my focus, and then we moved and didn't know who or where the good teachers were anymore, ... and suddenly it had been four years. But! Summer is learning violin in orchestra now and we've stuck Mette and Anders in piano with a sweet lady in Mendon. And, while it's a bit of a pain to enforce practicing, it's nice to see [hear] kids developing musical talents again!)

Last night was our ward Christmas party. A nativity in the barn of a couple in the ward. My teenagers had been to the barn for nearly all of the last three or four youth activities--spreading straw across the floor, setting up, practicing their parts, etc. (Poor Jesse needing his inhaler and Benadryl every time!)  They assured me, when I wondered how the entire ward could fit in a barn, that that would not be an issue. And they were right! It was enormous! With hay bales set up everywhere for seating. (That alone would have been a huge task!) There was stage-style lighting, and heat, and a stable, and, of course, a camel!) A Christmas party in the Tolman's barn is a memorable thing indeed. It makes me a little sad that we will be in a different ward next year!

Mary arriving on her donkey.

Mette and Hans were across from us sitting up there somewhere where they'd clambered to join friends.

Penny in the angel choir. (Third from the left on the top row.) (I didn't know any of those girls last year! Now, thanks to girls' camp, I know every last one of them by name.)

Anders as a shepherd. (The one at the back.)

The camel!

(Note. You've rarely heard anything louder than a braying donkey in a closed barn. Haha.)

Moving on.

It took us longer than usual to get a tree, but we loaded up this morning and drove to a local tree lot. It's actually in the backyard of someone's home. It looks like the cheeriest family business you could possibly have. Trees being set up on metal stands all over the back, evergreen garlands and wreaths sold by the foot, smaller trees stuck in red buckets full of rocks, the occasional sound of a chainsaw cutting the base off of a tree, and the smell of pine everywhere. (Other trees don't have much by way of smell. Why are evergreens so wonderful? I almost had to dash back into the rows of trees just to breathe it all in one more time before we left.)

I miss getting an enormous tree like we would every other year at the Pleasant View house. (We can barely fit a tree at all in the rental.) But we will have huge ones again at the new house (maybe maybe next Christmas even ... fingers crossed), and, in the meantime, it's kind of nice to not have the lights and red beads be quite such a task! (I really need to get one of the other kids to take over that job!) Here it is--lighted up and ready for the kids to decorate just as soon as the boys get back from pounding in our official address street sign at the farm! (Another requirement before you can build. There's no house, but still, ... fun to have an official address. I suppose I could even order a package to be delivered to the farm. They could just ... drop it off by the metal signpost.)

I like that our tree ends up a hodgepodge of Mike's childhood, mine and our kids'. The red beads were the ones my mom used every year on our childhood Christmas trees. And we have little bows, red balls and knit (crocheted??) Santas, snowmen and carolers from Mike's childhood tree decorations. And of course we now have a host of ornaments we've picked up here and there and that our kids have made over the years. Fun and happy to look at a tree and feel so nostalgic.

The girls have just turned on David Tolk's Good King Wenceslas, and ... if I could just finish up the shopping (still quite a lot to do there!) and get Goldie's Christmas package mailed, it would feel like we could just read Christmas books and watch Christmas movies without a care in the world until the 25th. As it is ... there are still a fair number of cares. Ha. But good to be in the holiday season all the same!

A Herd of Two (And Oxen in the Mire)

Last Wednesday I got a text from Mike informing me of a steer butcher date scheduled for 1/8/2026. 

Later, when I shared this text with the kids, Abe commented, "1/8/26, a day of unending tears and sorrow, after which many children will likely refuse to eat their pot roast."

Haha! That is likely true, only, what was most interesting about Mike's text was that ... we had no steers!

Had being the key word, I guess, because by 6:30 that evening we did have our first herd of cattle!

Oh all right. Not a herd. 

Two. 

We had two little steers. (Which we all keep calling cows even though technically cows are girls.)

Within the next few days they managed to escape twice. (Once when the kids exuberant running and hollering to greet the new additions to the farm scared the steers so horribly that they bent and clamored frantically over a fence just to get away from our terrifying children. And once when we thought they might do all right in the big, fenced pasture [rather than in the smaller pen they were in] and they climbed through the barbed wire strands to wander to the nethermost corners of the farm.)

There is nothing that makes you feel more amateurish than driving over to check on your cattle only a few days after buying them ... only to find no cattle to speak of anywhere in sight!

It was a Sunday after church when we discovered them missing from the pasture. Eventually, after driving around and around and asking every neighbor we saw if they'd seen them, we spotted them in a low corner of the property. We went home to change out of our church clothes and returned to slowly herd them a great distance back to some stronger panels to keep them contained until they are either more used to the place ... or big enough that they can't squeeze through barbed wire!

In these distant shots you will see one or the other of us trying to guide the fellas back. It was a mixture of hemming them in from going the wrong direction while not getting so close that they panicked and ran all helter skelter anywhere they could get. Blocking them while keeping a non-threatening distance, guiding them while not scaring them into flight. 

We managed it quite well I thought. And I felt rather pleased to realize that for the first time in my life I had an ox in the mire (steer in the alfalfa field) that was ... quite literal!

It does feel like a rather momentous thing to have gone from hens and goats to cattle! We're not even joking around anymore. (Though I do still feel rather like we are pretending!)

The herding crew ready to go. (I was also part of the crew mind you.)

It was so funny when we went over to where the cows had wandered. All these horses came running (yes running) to the fence to watch. It sort of felt like they were saying, "Oh man. This is going to be good. I told you those steers were going to get it!"

Jesse stopping them from trying to cross the canal.

A tricky point when we had to get them through a gate. Mike being patient and unthreatening from behind as they waffled nervously back and forth.

Carrying some panels to a new location for the cows.

Penny not being afraid of farm work. (She says she's a city girl, but she can't really help it. The country is in her DNA.)

There's a metaphor in this smaller enclosure here seeming related to teenagers. So much freedom we were trying to give our steers in the big pasture ... if only they'd respect the few boundaries we set. Hmm.

Is it a pile of manure? Or just dirt? Does someone pile up manure? Will we someday? And if so, why? I just don't know. Yet.

Making a cozy bedding area for the stinker steers.