Here's the Beef

I would have to say I am more of a city girl than a country girl so the eventual move to Westcliffe has me both excited and a little apprehensive.  I have been known to jump from chair to sofa to chair for days after a mouse is seen; at least until it's caught.  So dealing with wildlife seems a bit more intense than a measly mouse.  If a mouse can creep me out, how will I handle skunks and bobcats and bears, oh my!

So far, on our ventures out to the land, we have seen no evidence of any wild animals, unless you count rabbits and an occasional antelope.  Oh and don't forget the COWS!  The cows and I are officially at war.

My only experience with cows is my metal cow that I have fun putting decorations on and signs like Happy Moo Year and Trick or Teat.  I have not really been up close to any cows that I can remember unless you count the longhorns that resided behind our RV in Austin.  There was a fence and they looked pretty friendly but Joe assured me that they were not and that they could gore me faster than I could say Nice cow.  I had visions of playing ring toss on their horns.  Once I even moved my metal cow close to the fence to see what happened.  They were definitely curious, sniffing it and bumping it with their horns.  I never got too close though and so there was never any issue.

All in all, I would say I liked cows.  Or at least I thought I did.

Fast forward to last week.  We went out to the land to take our Christmas stuff to store in the container.  We are pretty shut down as far as working on the land, at least until the ground thaws so we can have the piers set and the containers moved.  Coming down the road, there was a bunch of cows on the land but with 30 acres they were pretty far away from our "cabin".  Pablo was not pleased but all in all I think I remarked on how cute they were.  Fluffier than I would have thought.

Imagine my surprise and utter despair when we pulled up our road and discovered that they had apparently had a party at our place.  Piles and piles and piles of poop.  Poop as far as the eye could see.  Carefully stepping around the poop which was no feat in itself, though Pablo seemed adept at not stepping in it (smaller feet than mine) I made my way to the cottage.  When I got close enough to the path, I discovered it was no more.  The mulch was either scattered to the wind or covered in cow poop.  The rocks that lined the paths were covered in cow poop.  The picnic area I so carefully constructed was surrounded by cow poop.  The trim board on one side of the cabin had been broken off apparently as they used it as a scratch pad.  The threshold to the cabin was covered in poop.

If there had been a non pooped in place to sit, I would have sat and cried.  I was distraught.  I was near hysterical.  How would we ever get rid of all the mess?  How would I  ever manage to live where the cows roamed free.

Joe wasn't quite as upset as I was.  He had been worried about one of them falling into one of the holes we had dug last summer until hitting rock stopped us and determined that we would need something bigger than a shovel.  We had even checked into fencing to put around the holes in case, but I had vetoed that because I didn't want to spend money to fence holes that would not be there forever.   Joe, ever positive, said we can scoop it and use it in the garden.  OK, uh Joe?  We don't have a garden and even if we did, cow poop is gross, it's stinky. I'd rather buy fertilizer at Lowes when we do have a garden.  OK, apparently that is what's in the bag at Lowes.  Still, I'd rather buy it in the grounded up, not recognizable form.

Sort of like my outlook on meat and poultry.  As long as it doesn't look like the body part of the animal, I can eat it.  For example, I don't like chicken on the bone.   It looks like a chicken part.  Bacon on the other hand doesn't look like a pig and therefore, I can pretend its a great tasting non animal thing.

I don't like ribs for the same reason as Chicken.  Fish, I'm allergic to which is just as well as crabs look like crabs and lobsters look like lobsters and shrimp look like shrimp. As weird as that sounds, my sister and brother Garry have the exact same aversion to chicken on the bone, etc.

My brother Jimmy, was a lifelong vegetarian.  So maybe something happened in our childhood to create this aversion.  I once asked him why he didn't eat meat.  He said the didn't like the way it smelled.  And that he didn't like that animals were killed.  Ever the peaceful soul.

I remember going to my Aunt Lyla's as a kid and they would bring in fresh cow's milk for breakfast and I wouldn't touch it.  Something about seeing where it came from creeped me out.  LOL

At Arthur's birthday party last Sunday I was telling my cousin Roxeanne about those wretched land destroying cows.  She laughed and told me a story about when she was growing up in Wyoming that she would have to make her way through scores of Black Angus gathered around their house to get to the car even.  Shooing them away with her hands.  Not to mention avoiding the cow patties and the smell.

I was reading a periodical novel yesterday and it mentioned stacking cow patties to use as fuel in the winter. Didn't that smell?   I remember working in Checotah and thinking that the annual Frontier day celebration's cow patty bingo was nuts.  Who would want to stand around waiting for a cow to poop, hoping that it was in their square?

Next's week adventure to Westcliffe will involve trying to get posts into the solid frozen ground and putting up solar powered electric fence, at least around the cottage and well, the freaking holes.  That's all I need is a dead cow in my yard.  I'd be scarred for life.

I'm sticking to my metal cow.  He doesn't poop, is always smiling, doesn't chase Pablo and keeps me amused.

I'll leave the real cows to the professionals.

Fatty what?

After about 6 weeks of feeling bad and having a lot more bad days than good in regard to how I felt, I went to the doctor. I put it off because being diabetic, every day is a challenge. I’ve spent the last 13 years trying to get control of this beast. The doctor decided that my symptoms were probably something other than my usual complaints and felt we should run some tests to find out what was really going on instead of just prescribing one more med.

The blood work was a piece of cake. Being poked with needles daily is a routine. Peeing in a cup was a breeze.  I drink so much water that I can pee on demand. The poop test was particular yuck. Not that I had visions of it being anything but. When they hand you a hat shaped piece of plastic, vials, biohazard bags and a spoon! Anything but routine and reinforced my “I could’ve been a nurse if I didn’t have to deal with bodily fluids, etc” statement. Doing the drug screens as part of my duties as a business manager was barely manageable!

So after the pee and poop and blood tests there was only the usual results. High blood sugar, high cholesterol (the bad kind) and a slightly higher number on the enzyme scale for enzymes secreted by the pancreas.   Once again diabetes rearing its ugly head.  Next up an ultrasound of my gall bladder, pancreas and liver.

All sorts of scary thought are going through my head. Since my mother died of pancreatic cancer, that was my biggest concern. I found myself mentally planning my Funeral. I start obsessing over cremation verses caskets. I worked myself up into a stress filled ball of nerves…which didn’t help my situation.

Finally, the ultrasound. The stoic look on the tech’s face. They must have to have a class on that. The usual “we will send the results to your dr.  It will take a few days”

So when I get a call from them before I even got home saying I need tot schedule an appt asap with my dr I felt my heart drop to my toes. Then she went on to say that the test showed hepatic parachymal steatosis. I went silent. That certainly sounded bad. The she said “ its also called FATTY liver disease. I bristled!  already have fatty body syndrome. Now this. Is it not enough to have a liver disease without being insulted too!!

Of course I googled for the next 2 hours and then made an appt with my dr.  Once I found it was not really terminal unless you didn’t change your diet etc I felt a little better. Then I googled the 10 foods to eat to repair your liver and I hate most of them. Then I googled the foods to avoid and I loved all of them. Visions of plates of broccoli and kale without salt or cheese filled my head.

I once did a comedy thing about pills for my pills.  Something like this: I have high blood pressure so I take a pill for that. But the pill gives me a stomachache so I take a pill for that. That pill gives me constipation so I take a pill for that. That pill gives me a headache so I take another pill for that. And I have diabetes so I take 2pills and 3shots a day for that. And one of those pills causes me to break out in hives so I take 2 pills to counteract the hives. And I drink a lot of water because my diabetes makes me thirsty so I pee a lot and so I take a pill for that. And the pill for depression because taking so many pills just to function makes me really sad.

Recently I had shingles. Are you kidding me?  The medicine for that added to my misery.  I suffered thru the nerve pain because the thought of one more pill was just too much. I added the 4 vitamin supplements the pharmacy recommended to build my immune system. I should own stock in cranberry juice I drink to prevent uti’s
I found out my blood pressure medicine I’ve taken for 14 years was recalled for possibly causing cancer. Yippee!  I found out one of my diabetes meds  is now being recalled for causing a flesh eating genital disease!!  Omg!  Dodged that bullet. My thyroid drug has also been recalled for causing something. I am a walking encyclopedia about drug interactions and side effects

Some days I wonder what would happen if I went cold turkey on all my meds. I liken myself to a car that has broken down. Put me in the shop and run diagnostics on my system. Replace all the worn out parts, change my oil, flush my transmission and release me good as new except for the depression caused by the gazillion dollar repair bill. Sometimes I think Joe should just trade me in for a new model.

Most days I liken myself to those old punching bag clowns we had as kids. They bounce right back up only to be punched again. As my friend Tom said “they aren’t throwing dirt on us and that’s got to be a good thing”

He’s right!  The struggles are worth it though there are many days when I consider saying to hell with it. Give me a greasy burger, onion rings and a chocolate pie (not a slice, the Pie). Then a video of Hannah makes me laugh, or Liz reports on Arthur kicking in her belly, or Joe and I make progress on our land.

The little things that make life worth living in spite of the challenges. That’s the best medicine.

HOLY COW!

The year was 1951 and my mom, Betty Jean Robbins was living away from home for the first time in Dallas, TX  She grew up in Wills Point Texas where her dad was a farmer/rancher.  Her siblings, a brother Otis and a sister Ola were quite a bit older than her and she would tell me stories later about how her only friends during the summer were the farm animals since they didn’t live in town.   She particularly liked the cows.  She didn’t like the chickens because more often than not they weren’t around that long before becoming dinner.   

My dad, G.G. LaFave, who was nicknamed Frenchy was in the Air Force and had just returned from a stint in Korea and was in Dallas when he spotted this beautiful, vivacious redhead across the room.  He pursued her relentlessly according to my mom and on July 4, 1952 they were married.  Her dad was not a big fan of her choice of mate and so wouldn’t attend the wedding.  I know this hurt my mom deeply and she still would tear up talking about it 50 years later. 

He did, however give them a wedding gift.  That gift was a cow.  They sold it and used the money to pay the preacher and to start their new life together.

Fast forward 50 years.  The year is 2002 and they are about to celebrate their 50^th wedding anniversary. 

A few years before that, my mom had finally realized her dream of having a “barn” where people could gather and sing to the Lord.  My mom’s voice was not that great (sorry mom) but she sang from the heart.  On this blogsite you will find a link to her singing “I’m drinking from my saucer Lord, cause my cup has overflowed”.  She started every barn show with this.  You see, it always bothered her that only the best singers got the chance to perform at Church.  And she wanted a place where anyone that felt the desire to sing for the Lord could.  It didn’t matter if they could carry a tune.  If they wanted to sing, they were welcome to do so at the barn.  As the Gospel Barn evolved, she had really good singers and groups to perform.  And so the “start up” singers and those who fell into the category of “one song is probably enough” lol were put on the Pre-show.  That’s where I always performed.

My dad had resisted the pleadings of my mom for years to build her a gospel barn.  As his story goes, he was driving to Oklahoma City one day to make a shipment of trencher parts and the Lord spoke to him so clearly that he had to pull over as to not wreck the truck.  He recalled the Lord saying, I have blessed you beyond measure Frenchy LaFave and it’s time for you to give Betty what her heart desires.  That very day, my dad sold some cattle he had invested in and within a few weeks the barn was up and running.

So, the 50^th wedding anniversary party invites had gone out and several people were coming to the barn to celebrate.  Connie and I got busy working on the party plans.  None of us kids had a clue though what to get them for a gift.  My dad and mom had traveled all over the world so a vacation wasn’t a good idea.  What do you give the couple who had all they wanted?

And then, one day I spotted a metal cow outside a shop along Hwy 69 in Muskogee.  I knew that the cow would be a perfect gift for the barn since that was her most cherished gift from 50 years prior.  And what a perfect setting for a cow…the gospel barn.  And so, my siblings and I pooled our money and bought the cow.  When it came time to present them with their gift, they were quite surprised when the cow was brought in and put on the stage. 

My mom, being a little corny like me, LOVED the cow.  She put it in the back of the barn and put a sign on it that said, WelCOWme to the Gospel Barn.  Another time it had a sign that said we UDDERLY appreciate your donations.  That was the other thing that made the barn special. No fee was ever charged to come and hear the music.  They might take a collection periodically and give the money to one of the groups to help with their travel expense.  But other than the slight markup on refreshments, the barn was completely financed by their own funds.

When my mom died in December of 2004, after having performed for the last time only a few weeks before, the barn became a difficult reminder of the joy that had resided there and he quickly donated or sold off all the pews, and equipment and decorations and turned it into a warehouse.  I told him that under no circumstances was he to give the cow away.  That the cow was special and that as long as I lived it would have a home with me.   So he hauled the cow 3 hours across the state and unloaded it into my backyard where it would stay for 8 years.

When I married Joe in 2012, and we moved into an RV, I sold almost everything I owned.  I adamantly refused though to even consider letting the cow go.  So we moved it with us, cramming it into the RV at the last minute every time we relocated.  At each RV park, I would go in and show the management a picture and get permission to have my metal pet.  Though they probably thought I was a little nuts, they always agreed. 

And the cow became a curiosity to the people in the RV park.  Joe would constantly get questioned when he was outside working in the yard as to whether it was a smoker.  He would patiently tell the story of the cow.  Occasionally,  he was just too impatient to tell the story and he would come inside and say, someone is asking about the  cow and I would run outside to tell the story because the story always made me smile.

One day I got a note on my door at one of the RV Parks that said the cow had to go because it was an eyesore.  I was devastated but then  I walked around the neighborhood taking pictures of yard gnomes, and pink flamingos and beat up patio furniture and then went to the office and told them that if the cow had to go, so did those things.  I got to keep the cow.

And the cow became the object of my humor.  For Christmas I would decorate it with lights and a sign that said Moo ry Christmas.  For Halloween, a pumpkin would sit atop and a sign that said Trick or Teat.

For Thanksgiving “Cow nt your blessings.

I leaned it against a tree with a sign that said Lean Beef.  I tipped it on its side with a sign that said Please don’t tip the cow, I put branches in its ear holes when we moved to Texas with a sign that said “longhorn wannabe”  Each time we moved I would put a sign that said We are MOOving.  When the teenage mutant turtles made a resurgence, I put a bandana and a sign that said Cowabunga. When the ice bucket challenge was popular, the cow got iced.  Dogs were posed on the cow, people were posed with the cow.  When OSU played, the sign read Go COWboys and the cow had an OSU hat.  For Valentines, heart stuck to the cow and I love you to the Moo n sign was posted. 

When we moved to Colorado, there was no room in the truck or the RV to take the cow and so I took her to my sister  Cownnie’s (lol) and the cow is currently residing in her backyard.  I’ve missed my cow and the fun I used to have thinking up sayings for her.  And so now that we will have 35 acres in Westcliffe and no one to get permission from, I am headed to Oklahoma soon to retrieve my cow. My cow will then reside at the front of the driveway and may become a planter again (as it was originally). 

Joe is super enthused (not) about having the cow come home.  LOL  He humors me.  I don’t think he thinks that my obsession with the cow is normal but then I’ve never been normal.

Granny's button jar

Juliet was saying a few days ago that she was running out of ideas of things to do with Hannah now that she’s home with her all day. Which got me thinking about my own childhood and the things we did to keep us entertained.  This was long before the days of Smart phones and dvd’s and video games.  It was a simpler time..why I used to walk 20 miles in the snow…just kidding.  That was my dad’s line when we complained it was too cold to play outside.

There were no electronic cars, at least not in our realm.  The toys required our imagination to run them.  I remember spending hours playing cars with Jimmy and Garry.  We had an old rug that was multicolored and round.  And so each color became a road.  Jimmy would get out the encyclopedias (before Google) and we would stack them under the rug in various places to make hills.  Tupperware containers became buildings along the road.  We would make bridges out of Lincoln logs.  We would drive our little matchbox cars on the road and stop for gas and food along the way at our Tupperware buildings. 

When it was warm outside, we would spend hours building roads in the dirt on the side of the house.  Our version of Jurassic Park was the giant cottonwood beetles that would sometimes appear as we played.  I hated those things.  We would build tunnels and bridges in the dirt.  And spend hours happily moving our cars along our dirt paths. 

And when it rained, that brought on a whole other adventure.  We would all find a stick and race them along the curb, running along side our stick and cheering it on until it fell into the rain gutter.  Then we’d start all over again. 

We made our backyard version of Six Flags every summer with cardboard boxes, blankets and imagination.  An old couch sitting out in the backyard became a ride where you sat on it and were rocked back and forth by Jimmy and Garry until you fell backwards into the honeysuckle bush.  Still one of my favorite smells.  The wagon became a ride where you were pulled along a path of various obstacles including a bush where you were shot with a water gun, and a precarious cardboard and brick hill where you were pulled up to the top and then abandoned by the wagon puller to careen into a mud puddle.  We had arcade games where you knocked over coke bottles with a ball and shot at balloons with a dart and picked a floating duck out of the kiddie pool to win a prize.  And always the refreshment stand where for a nickel you could get a cup of Koolaid and a handful of vanilla wafers.  The neighborhood kids would come to our carnival and have a great time.

And in the late afternoon, right before our moms yelled that it as suppertime, we would play tag and hide and go seek, and red rover, and piggy piggy give a signal. And catch lightning bugs in baby food jars with holes poked in the top.

Sometimes on Sunday’s we would go to Wills Point to visit my mom’s mom who we called Granny.  Granny didn’t have ANY toys or games at her house.  An old black and white tv was the only luxury in her house.  But her backyard was a wonderland with white fence all around that we used to walk on top of like a balance beam as our siblings thru peaches from the peach trees at us trying to knock us off.  We would run down to the school yard a few blocks away and climb inside the unlocked school busses and play hide and seek.  We would carefully cross the highway to the railroad tracks and put pennies on them and then wait for a train to come and smash them.  And inside the house, in a drawer of her buffet that always smelled like bananas since she kept them on top in a bowl, was my favorite TOY.  A jar of buttons.  It wasn’t a huge jar, more like a mayo jar and inside were what seemed like hundreds of buttons.  I would dump them all out in a pile and sort them by size, or by color.  Or make pictures with them on the floor, making a button cat or a button flower.  Sometimes I would get one of her bowls out and play button toss.  When Granny died, I asked for the buffet and the button jar.  Sadly, I don’t know what happened to the button jar.  I suppose that somewhere along the way in one of our moves it got thrown out or lost.  What I wouldn’t give to have that button jar.  I’d give it to Hannah when she got a little older and show her how to sort them and make pictures with them.

I told Juliet that when I come down this week I will show her how to play library and grocery store and airport which were made up “games” my mom used to play with Chris and Andy.  Though I don’t think they have a treadmill to use as the luggage carousel. 😊 My mom would play with the boys for hours using only her imagination and magical things she had in her house like an ink stamper and index cards that she would put inside books so that they could be checked out at her “library”.  And can goods that she would take out and line the floor with so they could grocery shop and then be rang up at a pretend cash register with monopoly money to pay with.  The stairs became the airplane where the stewardess (her) would bring them snacks and have them buckle their seat belts which were real belts used to pretend.   When she was into her “jungle décor” phase,  playing Zoo was added to the list since she had elephants and giraffes and tigers and zebra statues to put in pretend cages made of plastic crates.

And always, always, you would eventually feel the house shaking and the stereo upstairs in her room blasting the song Rocky Top as the boys bounced freely up and down on her bed to the beat, trying to touch the ceiling with their hands as they bounced.  I’m surprised to this day that no broken bones came from this.

What I hope most to give Hannah and eventually Arthur is the gift of imagination.  I want them to experience the wonder of making simple things into great adventures.  I want them to make the kind of memories that I have of Granny’s and my boys have of Mema’s. 

All it takes to make those kind of memories is a creative mind, a little imagination and a whole lot of love.  Check, check, check.  I think I’ve got this.