Awkward moments, Becky

Life goes on at work and at home but it is a little awkward at times – in both locations. At work, the awkwardness stems from the fact that I know what is coming for me and yet have to maintain a sense of normalcy throughout the process. At home, I know what is coming and have to get Mama ready for a serious change of spending patterns.

I printed out a bank statement yesterday in an attempt to track down just where we are getting so far off budget. After all, I have to know where the spending holes so we can start to plug them. I was actually surprised by what I found. The overspending in not in the area of farm expenses or house repairs, although those have certainly been higher than I predicted, but rather it in our frequent trips to Walmart and Sam’s.

When I looked at those numbers I discovered we were spending more than twice our budgeted amount for grocery related items. When I added up the household items Mama buys at Family Dollar, Dollar General and the like, we were nearly in budget but still a bit over in that category. So, when I showed this to Mama last night she was a little surprised but when I told her what we were going to be budgeting for groceries and household items in the very near future, she was very unhappy with those numbers.

Our grocery budget, which we were over by double, will shrink by about thirty percent. But if you do the math, the reality is that the amount spent will shrink by over seventy percent from our current spend levels. Mama’s ready answer was, “There’s no way!” my answer to her, ‘There’s no other way.” I have not found another job yet so I really do not know what the final budgeted numbers are going to be, but I do know there is a big change coming. That change is less than two weeks away. It will be a very big adjustment for Mama.

For Mama’s birthday yesterday I bought her four cards. She was not feeling well Monday night so it gave me the chance to distribute them after I got home from church that night. I put one on the refrigerator, one on the washer, one in her Bible and one in the garage attached to the cage we are raising the chickens in. She called me yesterday morning when she had found the second of two. She called again when she found a third and I told her there was one more. We did not get anything for each other, gift wise, so I wanted to make the most of the little bit of cash I did spend on her.

Victoria is finally better and was able to go to work yesterday. She is off today and is urging Mama to take her to the Cantrell’s house so she can rescue her pup. I advised waiting until Friday to get Kira but I do not know if that will fly. Kim Cantrell says the two are getting along very well. Having Kira there seems to calm Leo - when he is not overcome by the urges of nature from Kira’s present condition.

Be praying for Becky. She called last night and told Mama she is going back to work at Walmart. That is not a bad thing except that she has a very new baby in the home. What set off the alarm bells is that the plan is for Mike to quit his job and stay home with the newborn and the children Becky is currently babysitting. That just sounds wrong – in so many ways.

She also told Mama they are going to church tonight. Pray that God will get a hold of her and Mike’s hearts. We worry for little Bridgette.

Dog news, a pig story, Mama’s birthday

Mama spent the entire day out of the house yesterday. She has been bemoaning the condition of Sam’s coat for a couple months now and yesterday she had the chance to do something about it. Sam and Sasha have adopted a large area to guard – some of which is pretty rough pasture – and because Sam’s coat is pretty knotty and course he picks up briars and thorns that get bound in his coat and wind up causing irritations against his skin. Several of those places have become inflamed and needed to have the hair cut away so they could heal. The poor woman that took on that task deserved a better tip than Mama was able to give her. But whoever she is, she did an amazing job.

This is the second time we have had this done. Each time the groomer has left the face and head pretty well untouched. Last time she left a small tuft at the tip of the tail but this time she took off all the hair up to the ears – even shaving the throat and jaw. He looks skinny and pink right now and is struggling to stay warm in these cooler nights but Mama and Victoria are able to get to the places on his skin that need attention. Hopefully by the time it is really cold he will have regrown all his hair, but he could end up being quite chilly for the next couple weeks.

Right after she got that chore done she packed up Kira and took her to Kim Cantrell’s house so she and Leo could have some time together to hopefully make some puppies. Leo is a full blooded German shepherd. Kira is half German shepherd, half Akita. From that dalliance Victoria is planning to have some little puppies to sell in the very near future.

Mama tells me it was the first time either dog had been in this delicate situation but after some very awkward attempts to figure things out they ended up succeeding. I think she and Kim Cantrell got a pretty big kick out of watching the two of them as they worked their way to understanding what goes where. Mama will be returning to get Kira by the weekend – assuming they have had enough time together. I know Leo will be disappointed to see her go.

It reminded me of a story I heard about a farmer that hauled his sow to a neighbor’s farm so that the neighbor’s boar could breed his sow. He did not have a truck so he used a wheelbarrow for transporting his sow. He returned several days later to retrieve his sow and was assured that the boar had done his duty. The farmer then asked how he would know if the sow was bred or not. “If she rolls in the mud once you get her back in her pen then you will know that she is bred. If not, bring her back and we’ll let them try again.”

The sow did not roll in the mud so the farmer took her back a second and then a third time. After returning the third time with his sow the discouraged farmer asked his wife if she would keep an eye on the sow to see if she would finally roll in the mud. The wife kept a vigil for several hours and finally came to her husband and reported that the sow was not rolling in the mud. “Well, what’s she doing?” he asked. The wife smiled, winked and said, “She’s sitting in the wheelbarrow.”

Mama’s birthday is today but it might not be a very happy one. Both she and Victoria are still not feeling well.

Today is also Chase's birthday.

Coop work, revival meetings

Mama and I had a good weekend. I stared my weekend a little early by taking off Friday.  Between Thursday evening, all day Friday and all day Saturday I managed to get a good start on Mama’s new chicken coop. We need something pretty soon because her chicks are not so little anymore. We had them in a pretty large cage but they are but they are growing so rapidly that we are having to find other cages and spaces for them to give them enough room to grow without being overcrowded.

With that as a plan I took a little coop that we inherited with the purchase of the Chico property and mounted it on a stand so that it would be easier for Mama to take care of. It is a cute little salt-box style prefab coop with a nesting box that extends out the back of the coop. It has a removable tray on the roosting area, little windows and little doors. So there is plenty of access for Mama to clean and service the coop.

We have not moved any of the chickens to the little coop because Mama is still able to carry (with help) the large cage from the garage – where the chicks are placed for the night – to the carport where they spend the day. It will not be too much longer that she will be able to do that because it is getting quite heavy as the chicks continue to grow.

We even have a separate hospital cage that now houses three birds. All three have injuries to their legs that require them to be separated from the flock. But, much to Mama’s great pleasure, all are doing quite well and should be able to return to the general population in a couple more weeks. She views it as her first successful attempt to rescue an injured bird.

What I worked on all day Saturday was the large coop building I wanted to build last year when Grandpa and Mama got the idea of building the little metal building to be used as a coop. It has done well enough but I am happy to finally be building a nicer, more permanent structure. In the new building Mama will be able to raise two separate flocks when needed. She has read that we should not raise our meat chickens with our egg layers – due to differing diet for the different outcomes.

I struggled getting it laid out by myself but finally got the rough out close enough to start digging the holes for the posts I needed to put into the ground. Friday I struggled with the power auger getting only a few inches at best into the very hard ground. So I got each hole as far as I could then filled each with water to soften the ground, reworking each later that evening or the following day.

By Saturday when I finally quit I had all the holes done, posts set and most of the stringers attached to those posts. I have enough lumber from the deck lumber I cleaned to do all the floor joists and the rafters. With revival this week Sunday through Wednesday night followed by FBI on Thursday night and RU on Friday night I will not get more added to the frame until Saturday – unless I take time off later this week.

Sunday morning in Sunday School the evangelist was making a point of how easy it was for us to share photos on our cell phone with complete strangers while we will not share the gospel. He was pretending to share pictures of his horses with me when he said, “This guy could not care less. He’s a city slicker.” That got everybody going. So later that morning I said I knew this was going to be a rough revival for me when the evangelist insults you the very first morning of the meetings.

It has become a recurring theme through the meetings so far.

Mama at the dairy, Fall

We had an interesting experience the other day. When we opened a gallon of the fresh milk we get at Dry Valley Dairy it did not taste good. None of us could tell if it was bad – as in spoiled – or if it was our taste buds so we drank about half the gallon before opening the second gallon we had bought. It had the same slightly off taste – not spoiled but definitely not good. So Mama went back to the dairy yesterday to ask about the milk and see if he would replace the gallons.

As she walked into the office there, which is just off the milking room, the owner was talking to a group of men. As it turned out he was telling them about the bad milk. Here is what happened. One day last week he hired a crew to trim fences and brush hog some places on his farm that had not been tended to that year. The farm was looking like is got a facelift as a result.

But the next morning he was finishing the chilling of the milk from the morning milking and noticed the batch smelled bad. He got a gallon from the pallet he had been filling that morning and opened it to taste it and it seemed okay but just to make sure he opened another – and it was awful. A third gallon was no better. So he dumped the entire batch from the chiller, unfortunately he had put several dozen gallons in the sales cooler already and could not be sure if he had gotten all of them back out to be discarded. Mama ended up getting two of the bad gallons. He replaced those gallons for us.

It seems that the cows had found something in the freshly cut grass and weeds of the cleared fence lines that was not normally part of their foraging in the pastures and whatever that plant was it had strongly flavored the milk. To remedy the situation he put the cows up in his lot and fed them good hay for a couple days and the milk returned to normal. He lost at least two milking’s work of product but that seemed to be the solution.

I suppose the same thing happens to nursing mothers. They eat something that strongly flavors the milk the baby is getting and we would never know it – but that poor baby would. Maybe, if the baby is not seeming to eat well on a particular morning it could be chalked up to the milk being flavored differently than they are used to. There is no good way to tell but it is something to consider.

It was hard to tell that yesterday was the first day of Fall. Mama has decorated accordingly but outside the house it still feels like summer. Days are a bit more mild with highs only into the mid-nineties but things are still and quite warm overall. Very few people I talk to are dreading the coming cool weather; most are lamenting its late return. I am psychologically ready for the cold weather but the farm is still not prepared yet.

Getting water to the animals during freezing conditions remains the biggest priority. We are still a couple months away from that but it will be upon us before we know it. Dust off the jackets, shake out the flannel shirts and start planning for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Ready or not, here it comes.

Work, travel delays, chickens

This is one of those times that I wish I could say that the days were flying by – but it is not. The hours spent at the office are more of an endurance contest than a normal working day. As the company begins to finalize the personnel roster there is an unavoidable shift to the new role assignments even though they are not yet announced. That means that everyone scrutinizes every meeting invite and every email for clues to determine their further participation within their job roles.

There is quite a bit of sensitivity around whether or not you were invited to this meeting or whether or not you were copied on this or that email. Speculations run rampant and new possible scenarios are referenced and cross referenced hourly. But the truth of the situation is that no one will really know their status within the future organization until the announcements are formally made and those of us who are going to be released no longer come to work. I cannot imagine what it is like in some of the larger offices.

On the home front, Mama is feeling better. She is not back to full capacity yet but definitely on the upside of recovery. I did advise her not to spend the day out with Victoria and Erin who have a shopping day planned this afternoon – Victoria would rather go shopping than clean the house with Mama. (That’s how much she dislikes cleaning.) Mama would be better off to continue to rest as much as possible and gather her strength for Friday when she will be watching Erin’s children all day. I will see if she can resist the temptation to tag along.

AS far as Grandma and Grandpa coming home, that is going to be put on hold for another month. It seems – how  unexpected – that something has come up that will keep them in West Virginia for a little longer. The plan now is that they will come down mid-October.  Seth and Norman will tow the trailers as Grandpa drives the car. We will wait to see how solid a plan that is when we get nearer to the time.

You have to understand that any delay will add an additional month to the schedule because Grandma and Grandpa order their lives on the date that his Social Security check is deposited to their bank account. That happens sometime in the middle of the month each month. That is not necessarily a bad thing; it is just the reality of their lives. So anything that holds them up adds an entire month to their schedule.

Mama is very quickly running out of room for the chickens as they grow. Two have been injured so far by getting their lags caught in the wire at the bottom of the cage they are being raised in. There is not much we can do about that without lining the cage with paper – which defeats the purpose of having the wire mesh in the bottom of the cage in the first place. So we are exploring options to give them more space but about the only course of action I have left is to build the chicken coop I have been talking about. Now Mama wants to know how quickly I can have that done.

Probably not quickly enough.

Mama, farm plans, work

Mama is still feeling sickly. She has begun to take some meds to help her deal with the fever and aches but she continues to trade being too hot for being too cold. Normally each morning she and Victoria take the cage the young chickens are housed in out of the garage and place it on saw horses set up under the carport. For the past several days the chickens have stayed put in the garage pooping on my table saw. By the time I get home there is no point in taking the cage out of the garage so I will have a mess to clean up some time later this week.

I inadvertently put Mama on high alert by telling her that I had seen a coyote on our road when I was on my way home yesterday. We have the two big dogs that stay constantly on guard but their focus is the front of the house. They spend the majority of their time running down trucks and cars that come to the gate at the outside edge of our property. They do not seem too concerned about the animals we have in back of the house. But, to their credit, we have not lost any chickens or hogs in the time we have been living at this property.

Now we are seriously talking about getting sheep. With the failed experiment we had with sheep in Bowie we are making preparations to fortify the sheepcote and the pasture we will keep the sheep in to prevent any scavenging by the coyotes we continually hear howling in the distance. It is a risk but there are quite a few people around us that have successfully raised sheep – and do quite well at it.

Grandpa and Norman are poo-pooing the idea before we even get started but the reality of our situation is that we do not have the room for the cattle they so earnestly desire to raise. Nor am I in the market to acquire more land. I need to constrict financially not expand. So given the area I do have available we will try to maximize our land use by minimizing our animal size; at least, that is what we will try.

Having said that, Mama found a rancher in Fredericksburg that she wants to buy a couple bred heifers from in the very near future. We can probably keep three to four heifers on the portion of the property I have set aside for that purpose if I continually supplement their feed. There is not enough grazing for four head and their calves but if we put out hay all year long they will get enough to do fairly well without us having to get more land. Right now we are waiting for prices to come down to a more reasonable level before we buy.

Things at work are getting very interesting. Plans are shifting, org charts are changing from one day to the next as outgoing managers and incoming managers debate the merits of individuals they are considering. From the looks of things, unless there is a specified skill set the cut off age is 50 to 55 for consideration within the new organization. That’s the starting point of discussing individual merit. From there, it is anyone’s guess.

It will be a long couple weeks as we wait.

Birthdays this week, Mama Sick, work

As we enter the last half of month of September there are several birthdates still ahead. Becky’s birthday is today. Nate’s birthday is tomorrow and Mama and Chase’s birthdays come on the 29^th. This always was a busy month for me and Mama.

Speaking of Mama she was sick through the day yesterday. It all started on Saturday evening when she got up from the recliner she was sitting in and complained of being thoroughly chilled. She spent the reminder of the night trying to get warm. By morning she was better but not by much. Through the day yesterday she had short spells of feeling pretty good but the fever always seemed to return. This morning she was fevered again. Hopefully, from here, she will get better quickly but I am not holding too high an expectation for a full recovery today – maybe by Wednesday.

This week is going to be a very hard one for those within ConocoPhillips awaiting confirmation of future employment. This is the week that managers will assign names to roles and fill out their org charts. Those persons whose name does not find a home in a box on the new org chart will be slated for termination through the coming layoff. I am, as far as I know, among that group.

We are awaiting final confirmation, but Grandma and Grandpa have been planning to leave West Virginia on Friday or Saturday this week and come back to Chico. As many of you know we will not make any final preparations until we know they are actually on the road. In ways, it will be nice to have them back in Texas with us. I think Mama is looking forward to getting them back home in spite of the friction that inevitably comes from having parents in the home with their grown children.

Grandpa continues to recover slowly. He is scheduled to see a specialist in Amarillo during the first part of October. Hopefully, he can get some resolution to the questions that still haunt him and Grandma about the underlying cause of his continued weakness and very slow recovery. As it stands right now he has been lead to believe that this is as good as it is going to get and he will have to adapt accordingly. We believe there ia probably a better answer than that, but are not sure.

All the items he accumulated for Victoria’s house while he worked with Norman in West Virginia will be brought down to Texas by Normand and Seth some time later in the month of October. At least, that is the plan right now. Grandpa and Grandma will be driving home in a car that they bought there for their return journey. I have suggested that Mama and I make a run to West Virginia to get one of the trailer loads soon after I am laid off but I have to coordinate that with fixing Grandma and Grandpa Kline’s roof in Chappell Hill and finding employment so we can continue to meet our financial obligations.

It is a time for much prayer.

Selling pigs, injured and recovering, coming home

Mama called me home yesterday about lunchtime because someone was coming to get a couple of the potbelly pigs. She and Victoria had negotiated with someone over Craigslist to sell the pigs for next to nothing and we thought it had fallen through but the boyfriend of the buyer showed up yesterday about 11:30 to load the pigs. Mama insisted that if they take Dottie they had to take Cloe also.

The buyer had his truck backed up to the pig building by the time I got to the house. He was convinced he could pick up the pigs and manhandle them into the large crate he had brought so we got Dottie and Cloe into the building to limit the space they had to maneuver and let him try. I am guessing Dottie weighs close to 80 pounds – probably half the weight of the young man that trying to catch and life them.

It became quickly obvious that that was not going to happen. The pigs did not enjoy being touched by someone they did not know. They rejected wholly the idea of getting picked up. So, needless to say, we did not go for the lifting approach, instead I got the crate out of the truck and positioned it in the opening of the enclosure within the building and eventually both pigs simply walked into the crate. It took three of us to lift the crate into the pickup bed but we got it in and secured without too much additional effort.

Now Mama is down to only one potbelly pig – which is acceptable for the moment but it is one more than we need. Going forward I would not be surprised to find out that she is scheming to get a male to breed Mollie in order to give her a playmate and attempt to capture some revenue. I would prefer to buy a bred regular sow if Mama is determined to see piglets born on the property. At least you can eat them.

For the moment we are considering moving Mollie to a different pen so we can get another set of feeder pigs to raise. I am not opposed to such an idea but I do not want to get too stretched out in either time or feed expenses. I would rather have a few head of sheep than more pigs, but we have not come to a decision yet. There is no particular hurry.

Kobe seems to be recovered from her tragic fall. Actually, she is not using the injured leg fully yet but she is getting around without too much restraint. Victoria and Mama are encouraged. I am ambivalent. I hate as much as they do to see an animal injured in any way but we still have too many inside dogs. Thank God we have such a large house.

Mama’s little chickens are continuing to grow well. We had to remove one from the clutch because it somehow injured its foot and was being trampled by the other chicks. I am still not certain it will survive but we have it in the bird cage by itself as it rests and tries to heal. It does not move about very much and often lays in such a way that we think it has died. But that has not happened yet.

Grandma and Grandpa should be coming back next week. Mama is in the process of getting Gracie’s room ready for them. I think I was told that they will be coming in the car they bought for Grandma with Norman and Seth planning on following later with both trucks and both trailers of materials for Victoria’s house.

We’ll see how that works out.

Accident, here it comes, sleep-over over

If you remember my note from yesterday about taking the dogs to the vet on Bridgeport, I had my doubts about the efficacy of transporting the dogs in the bad of the truck and it turned out that my doubts were justified. Kobe jumped out of the truck shortly after they got started. Fortunately it happened on our road so Mama was not up to full highway speed but it did injure Kobe to the point where she is barely able to move. Mama and Victoria are giving her Ibuprofen for pain and monitoring her progress.

I looked her over this morning as I left the house and she is alert and happy for the attention but I did not get her to move. Based on her movements last night – she was limping pretty badly – I expect she will be very limited in movement this morning. I advised Victoria to get some more pain meds down her as soon as she was up this morning. We will see how she recovers from here but I do not foresee any major complications.

Meanwhile, Kira, who should go into heat this month, continues to get out of the back yard despite our best efforts to keep her in. At some point I am going to replace the fencing, which has surpassed its normal life expectancy – but not right now. For the moment we have to hope we are far enough from any potential suitors to keep her safe from any unwelcome males while Mama and Victoria set up a union with Kim Cantrell’s dog, Leo.

At work yesterday the long awaited announcements on the upper levels of our org structure started coming out. Through the day we got a total of five emails, one of which announced the upper structure for my current organization. It was a bit of a surprise. My current boss is not on the new org chart in much the same way I will not be. His position has been eliminated. Through the next week decisions will be made to flesh out the structure down through the remainder of the organization.

I asked my boss this morning how that was going to work. If I see the org chart and it is obvious I am not on it, will I be met at my office that morning and escorted out of the building? Will the layoffs happen en mass at a scheduled time? Will we all be sitting around for two weeks dreading coming to our last day of work without knowing what day that will actually be? I am relatively well prepared but many of my colleagues are not. Many in the Houston office (500-600 are scheduled to be released from that office) are unsure how to prepare. It is going to be a rough two or three weeks.

We took Gracie and Joseph to church with us last night where they were reunited with their parents. Gracie was very reluctant to give up her room at the house and Joseph was reluctant to give up the easy access to the outdoors that the house offers. It was a sad goodbye for him especially when he was buckled into his parent’s vehicle last night. He cried after Victoria, but only halfheartedly.

For dinner last night Mama and Victoria experimented with one of our bread makers and made pizza dough. It turned out well enough that we will definitely do that again.

Busy house, sleepover, tending to little things

As I got home yesterday afternoon I had to jump right in to help Mama put together two pans of her Mexican Casserole. She was making one to go home with a young lady from our church that had spent the day with Victoria in celebration of her birthday. Her name, by the way, is also Victoria. Visiting Victoria’s mother was having surgery yesterday so Mama wanted to fix something for her family’s dinner. Visiting Victoria enjoyed both the day out of school, the meal being sent home with her and helping our Victoria babysit the Echavarria children. Our Victoria had overbooked herself for the day.

She and Mama picked Victoria up at school fairly early yesterday morning and spent the morning finding her an outfit as a birthday present. Later that day they met Erin Echavarria to get the kids. The rest of the day was spent at home. Luke was struggling with two persons with the same name so he started calling them Victoria 1 and Victoria 2. That was still the case when I got home – and may carry forward to time we spend together at church. We will see tonight.

Gracie and Joseph, I found out a little after I got home, were spending the night with us. Gracie was very excited about the idea. I am told that when her mom arrived to get Luke and to take Victoria 2 home, that Gracie asked her mom if she would like to see “her room”. Erin got a real kick out of that. For the rest of the evening, when we were not outside, Gracie played in her room, on her bed. It was quite entertaining.

Mama had me spend some time getting feeders and waterers hung in various cages for chickens and guineas and since I had to go to the barn to get the wire I also brought back some fencing we had removed from the garden in Bowie to fortify my recovering grape vine against a further attack by Kobe. While I was at that task I also fixed the ground around it, pulling up the invading grass and putting in some prettier topsoil. I followed up the same routine on the blackberry and black raspberry plants I have planted along the back fence. Through this week I will tend to the trees in the back yard and the garden in the same way.

Mama and I went out later in the evening to get gas for her mower. She does need to mow sometime this week but I think the urgency is because Joseph wanted a ride on the mower. I am sure that will happen today. The mowing will more than likely wait until later in the week. I would like to go back to Victoria’s property and get the other half of her little acreage mowed down. But we will see if that happens or not since the forecast is calling for rain that day.

Mama had me leave the truck for her and Victoria today; even though it does not have a/c right now. She and Victoria are going to take Kira and Kobe to the vet in Bridgeport to be weighed so they will prescribe the medicines for the dogs to help us combat fleas. We do not have a flea problem and do not want to get one but the vet will not give the meds without a verified weight for each dog. The next obstacle is to get the meds into the dogs.

Victoria plans on putting the dogs in the bed of the truck. I am not sure how that will work out – especially since they have to travel on 60-70 mph roads to get there. But Victoria is fairly confident that she can make that happen. Time will tell.

I do not want any surprises on that trip because any surprise is likely to be an unhappy one.

Growing things, birthdays, work

I got to see the pigs and the chicks last night for a few minutes before we went to FBI. I am always amazed at how very fast they grow. The pigs have put on fifteen pounds or so; at least the bigger ones have. The smaller one has more than doubled in size since we got her and is better able to compete with the larger ones. I am not sure we will be able to wait until April to take them to market. They may weight over 500 pounds by that time.

It is always fun to watch the chicks grow into mature chickens; to watch their bodies produce feathers as they grow. It’s amazing. Right now they are still pretty cute. They are only just getting their wing feathers but they still look downy over most of their bodies. They have tripled in size which is good because the nights are getting cooler and we need them ready for the cold within a few more weeks.

I took a few minutes to water the trees in the garden and the berry plants yesterday evening. The rest will have to wait until this evening. With the nights cooling off and the dew settling over the plants through the dark hours the plants look les stressed than they have over the past several weeks, but they will still require a lot of attention until the rains return – if they do. The days are still hot but the temperature barely makes it to the high nineties before rapidly cooling for the night.

Mama takes animate things and cares for them while I tend to focus my efforts on the inanimate. It has always worked well for us. She enjoys the character and animation of living things – dogs, pigs, chickens, cows and hopefully soon, sheep and goats. You can easily determine their needs and meet them through a daily routine. I take the seasonal view and look after the trees, bushes and vines. Their changes are subtle and slow but incredibly beautiful; long term commitments with fruitful rewards, seasonal pleasures, lasting year after year.

Mama rushed around yesterday to get packages and cards out for birthdays. This is our birthday month. Catherine used to start us off on the 16^th or 17^th (I am never sure) but now that honor goes to Bridgette on the 11^th. Cori follows on the 18^th. My birthday falls on the 20^th. Rebekah’s on the 21^st. Nate’s birthday is on the 22^nd. Mama and Chase finish out the month with birthdays on the 29^th. It is still a fun month even though we are scattered abroad.

When I lose access to this calendar I am not sure what I am going to do to keep up with the birthdays. I am not going to commit them to memory. That is relegated to Mama and her memory. Somehow we will muddle through but it is one of the conveniences I have grown accustomed to while working for ConocoPhillips over the last thirteen years; one of the many.

I am told that we will continue working through the middle of October but I am not placing too much confidence in that. I have also been told that the layoffs will start in Houston at our main office there and the HR team responsible will work their way outward from there. That is one team I do not want to be a part of. I can only hope I will not have to make the announcements to anyone in my group before I get released.

Again, that is not something I can count on.

Urgent travel, Bridgette, Granddaddy

Thursday and Friday were quite eventful for me and Mama – and for Becky. Becky called Mama on Thursday afternoon while she was at the doctor’s office to tell Mama that they were going to induce her that evening or the following morning. Mama asked to speak to the attending nurse – just in case - and got solid confirmation on the news. So we made plans to get to Hot Springs, AR that evening.

We had to wait on Victoria to get off work because we were taking her car for the trip so we ended up leaving about 7 pm. Both of us had had very little sleep and we could feel it as we drove most of the way in the dark; arriving in Hot Springs a little after 1 a.m. We drove straight to the hospital and went through the emergency room entrance to the OB ward to find Becky.

At that time her contractions were just beginning to intensify and they were not going to induce until around 4:30 so I went to the car, rolled back the seat and went to sleep. Mama joined me a little later but was not there for very long. Becky called her to come back to the room and help her after what Mama tells me was a little less than two hours. In my sleepy state I thought only a few minutes had passed between her getting in the car and Becky’s call. I slept soundly until just before 7 a.m.

When I got to the room a few minutes later the baby had just come and the doctor was stitching Becky up from a very slight tear; or, so I was told. What surprised me most was that Mike, his mother and his sister were in the room through the entire delivery. I cannot remember that happening anywhere else any of our babies or our grandbabies was birthed – even in West Virginia. Mama was there – as she should have been (comforting and coaching Becky) – and was the only active participant other than the doctor and nurses.

Becky was in hard labor less than an hour; complaining the entire time that they did not give her an epidural. She dilated from 2 cm to 10 cm in the course of less than an hour so by the time the nurse checked it was too late for the pain relief. The baby was crowning less than an hour after the nurses final check and the doctor on call was in attendance for less than a half hour. Bridgette weighed 6 pounds even and was nineteen and a half inches long; healthy and beautiful. She appears to be a very good baby – sleeping for long stretches and nursing well every three hours or so. Becky is very blessed.

Becky does very well with the baby. It is surprising to see her as a mommy. We were not terribly impressed with the baby’s father but he is a big step up from Becky’s estranged husband. He appears to be harmless and seems to be interested in the baby’s welfare – and Becky’s by extension. Perhaps, if they do stay together he will grow on us but it was awkward to be around him and his family. We left on Sunday afternoon after a very disappointing morning at church and after taking Becky and Mike to lunch so Mama could snuggle her two day old granddaughter one more time.

On the way home Cori let us know the Granddaddy Davis went home to be with the Lord. She and Nate got to be with Granny as he left this world; not a happy event for those close to the family but not necessarily an overwhelmingly sad event either. He’s home now.

Thank God for a blessed hope.

Rain, raising things, Becky

When I got up yesterday morning I was a little disappointed to see that there was no standing water anywhere. All I could see was that the sidewalks were wet. It was supposed to have rained pretty hard through the night; although I slept through the entire storm. I did not find out until much later that we had gotten an inch of rain. I was surprised because there was so little evidence of it anywhere. All of the rain had soaked into the very parched ground. I believe it has been four weeks since we have had any rain at all so there were cracks in the ground more than an inch wide; plenty of places to hide an inch of rain.

The weather pattern shifting to cooler nights is a welcome change here. The days will continue to be in the nineties but the nights will fall into the fifties at times with the average being the low sixties. Winter will soon be upon us. That is always a welcome change although, once again, I am not totally ready for the cold weather yet; at least not as far as getting water to all of Mama’s animals through any hard, freezing weather.

The thirty baby chicks Mama got recently are growing fast. They are at that awkward stage when they are no longer cut little fluffy chicks but are starting to get their wing feathers which makes them look like some type of missing link. Mama fools with them daily and she tells me they are calming down but I don’t see it yet. As far as noises, next to reptiles, they are about the quietist animal we have raised.

The baby guineas are very noisy cousins by comparison. While we had the guineas at the stage where the chicks are now, we had to darken the garage through the night to get the two of them to be quiet. The older of the two would make something between a chirp and a squawk with the same intense volume as Rosie’s bark. Even when they were relatively quiet we could still hear them at the other end of the house. But that is what they are for – to make noise whenever they feel threatened. They will be our alarm system for the barnyard. I just did not know they got started that early in their development.

Mama and I love to grow things and right now we have our hands full with the chickens, the guineas, the pigs and the calf. Victoria will have her hands full next week when Mama and I will be gone for three days as we go to Hot Springs, AR to see Becky. She is scheduled to be induced on Monday morning and so far we have no idea what to expect because it is difficult to interpret her news about the pregnancy.

The last I heard she was telling Mama that she is at thirty eight weeks but the baby is at thirty five weeks. I am not sure how that works but math was never her strength. For some reason she believes the baby quit growing at week thirty five and if that is true, that is not good news. But with Becky, we can never really be sure. And there is no one close to her to tell us what the doctor may have said.

She called Mama in a panic yesterday to tell her that she had bits of broken glass on the floor and her vacuum was broken and she had a baby coming this morning. (She babysits.)I do not know what she expected Mama to do but Mama told her to call around and see if she could borrow but she told Mama that everyone she knew had broken vacuums too. Mama told her that if she was in a good church, these little problems would be much easier to deal with. She called back late yesterday evening to tell Mama that she had found someone in the volunteer fire department – a lady that continues to invite her go to church with her – was going to lend her a working vacuum cleaner so she could get the glass off of her floor. Her being so isolated is probably our biggest concern; especially after the baby comes.

God supplies so many of our needs through the church family I cannot imagine life without them.

Labor Day weekend updates

Friday around lunchtime Mama and Victoria picked me up at the church so we could leave to go to Chappell Hill to see my Mom and Dad. We left the van at the church so Brittany Wycoff could use it to go back and forth from her work to the farm to tend to the animals. It was a pleasant enough drive to Mom and Dad’s after we got past Ft Worth. It took us almost an hour to cover three or four miles at the junction of the highway from Decatur with I35W. On the way home we took a very different route.

Mom and Dad are not in too bad a shape but they are failing physically in a rapid progression. Dad is having problems with his memory to the point that Mom feels she has to watch over him constantly, providing hour by hour instruction and guidance on even the menial everyday tasks; taking medicines, keeping appointments, signing the checks to pay all the bills. She even has to remind him how to write his name with each check he signs. He told me he has trouble remembering how to make the capital D in his Signature. They are relatively mobile although they do not go far. My siblings near them are getting fatigued in caring for them; in doing the little things that make their failing years more secure; grocery shopping, lawn mowing and small house repairs.

Mama and I will be going down in a few weeks to do some roofing for them. It has been an ongoing project for over a year and Mom is very discouraged about the money she spent on shingles that have sat in their way under the carport for all that time. My brother Danny who was supposed to have done the work has abandoned the project. We did bump into Danny after we took Mom and Dad out to eat right after we got there Friday evening. We talked well into the evening Friday and finally went to bed a little after 10 pm.

I had to borrow the cushion from the small couch they have in one of the front rooms of the house so I could make a pallet beside the double bed in the bedroom where Mama and I were sleeping. After nearly thirty years of sharing a king sized bed it is very difficult to share a normal sized bed. We were all up fairly early the following morning and out the door to go to Rogers, TX to spend the afternoon with Sarah and Fabian, Tim and Janet and all their kids. As an added bonus Chase and Makaila met us over there on their way home from a cruise. We left Sarah and Fabians about 3 pm and got home in time to water the plants, tend to the animals and get set up for Sunday.

Monday we all went to Victoria’s house with Mama’s mower and chewed up some of the tall, very thick grass on her little property. We got half of the property – about an acre – done in the two hours we spent working there. I took the weed eater and tried to clear around obstacles Mama needed to avoid while Victoria worked cleaning out the chicken coop. One more workday like that and we will be able to keep up on a normal basis. Victoria was excited about the effort – even though we did not have time or energy to do it all.

Monday afternoon I took the sink out of the laundry room and prepared it to replace the sink in the kitchen while Mama and Victoria watched Luke, Gracie and Joseph for Erin and Sam. Then on Tuesday morning I took out the very yucky kitchen sink and put the stainless steel one in its place. I ended up calling Lee to replace the supply valves under the sink because I could not connect the pre-plumbed faucet to them.  It took him less than an hour to sweat off the old valves and put on the new ones.

Mama is very happy with the change.

Pleasant friends

Mama and I had a very pleasant evening yesterday. The Wycoff family came over and brought sandwich items with them for our dinner. The intent of the visit was for Bro. Daniel to help me roof the pig shelter but in addition to that we also went to get a couple round bales of hay from a nearby farm. He and I attached the trailer to the truck and I was in a big way of talking with him and forgot to retract the stand post. It got slightly bent on the return trip with the hay as it drug against the road; nothing major but I will have to straighten it before I feel better about it.

They are thrilled about the growth in the feeder pigs – one of which is theirs. All of them are putting on weight very well and they are very welcoming to Mama when she comes around. Mama, Mrs. Wycoff and Brittany stood around for most of the time Daniel and I worked on the roof just enjoying the antics of the pigs – both the potbelly and feeder herds. I will need to build a very strong loading chute for the feeder pigs when the time comes to haul them out. We are planning on raising them to about 600 pounds by next spring and it does not appear that that will be an issue.

Dinner was fun. They are a family very much like ours in their interactions and mannerisms, even in sharing drinks the way we do. They bought five or six different kinds of deli lunch meats for the sandwiches and used French bread for the bread. Mama told me later that she was wondering how they would make sandwiches with French bread because she could only imagine one way to slice it; like she would for garlic bread – in thin strips.

Instead they sliced the long loaf into four pieces about the length of a standard slice of bread, and then they cut through the center of each portion lengthwise to bisect it, top and bottom, so that we had a very nice sized French roll to make a sandwich on. It is something Mama and I will repeat in the future. The only drawback was that the sandwiches were almost too large – but we suffered through that pretty well.

After dinner we took them to Victoria’s house to show them around. We had looked on Google Earth at the property they are considering buying in relation to our property and then in relation to Victoria’s property. Their property is pretty isolated but is almost connected to the property owned by the people who live on the private road behind Victoria’s little house. All three properties are within only a couple miles of each other.

While we were at Victoria’s house the owner of the property behind her stopped to talk to Mama. They own several hundred acres and appear to be very well to do. The neighbor and her friend talked to Mam for about a half hour. They exchanged number and other information – you know Mama - while I talked with the Wycoffs sharing plans Victoria has for her two acres and little house. Meeting the neighbors is something that I have been praying for since we bought the place.

I finished out the evening watering the trees and berry bushes. It was a good evening.

Announcements, pigs and chickens

Several announcements about the pending layoffs came out yesterday. None of it was unexpected but  the news was not welcome either. The company refers to the process as a staff reduction – which sounds somewhat more businesslike than layoffs though the end result is the same to the affected parties. Though we are all too aware of the pending severance, the announcement made it a little more immediate, more serious than it has been to some so far.

The formal timing is for early to mid-October. The worst part of that timing is the tax burden that will result from the severance package (which is a mixed blessing) being given to each person laid off. The announced number of potentially affected employees in my division of the company (Lower 48) is 600. Things are looking more and more like those who are laid off will be the real winners in this effort but time will tell. I am counting my blessings. Whether I am let go or retained by the company, God will take care of me.

The feeder pigs we bought are growing very fast. I am glad that pigs are not normally aggressive toward their pens because I am not sure if the pen I built will hold them when they get to the weight we need them to get to for “processing”. That’s a softened term for…you know what.

Mama and Victoria are really enjoying them. They are finally settling down and adapting to the three of us as their caretakers. So every time we fill their water trough or put feed in their feeders they do this crazy-time dance for us; running in circles and spinning while making what amounts to “happy noises” for pigs. It is quite entertaining.

What makes it even more hilarious is when the chickens have gotten in their pen during this time. They chase the chickens around the pen while the chickens are making very unhappy sounds, flapping their wings, darting right then left then right to avoid the charging pigs. I have been tempted to catch a few chickens and put them in with the hogs just to watch it happen. But Mama has not allowed it so far.

Mama’s new chicks should arrive late today or first thing in the morning. We are ready and the Wycoffs are standing by to take over for us this weekend as we go to see Grandma and Grandpa Kline. It will only be for an overnight visit but we need to take the time to go now. Grandma Kline is pretty worried about Grandpa Kline’s memory. It is rapidly deteriorating and she is concerned that he will not last too much longer – either physically or cognitively. It is a sad but not unexpected series of events. He will be 91 in December.

The plan for the chickens is to keep the new batch at our farm while we take the mature hens we now have to Victoria’s place. That will require a lot more time and effort on out parts to prepare Victoria’s place for them. It will also require us to go to her little house at least daily to care for the chickens. At this point we have not gone to the house for extended periods of time but that will change when Grandpa gets back and starts his work there.

Yes, we are still counting on Grandpa Thaxton coming back.

Jake, bad timing, dogs

Mama got Jake safely onto the plane yesterday morning. It is always sad to see him go but now Mama can return to her quiet life on the farm. Jake is already talking about coming back next year but he does not know for sure if he will be coming from New Jersey or Florida. His parents are seriously considering relocating to south Florida – which is a really good idea in my opinion.

I picked up the metal for the roof for the pig shelter on my way home last night. It was only three pieces but it will be more than adequate for the enclosure. Now I am plotting a way to get water to the pigs and chickens through the winter. I have all the line and hydrants needed but I do not know if we will be able to use the well in the barn lot or if we will need to come from the well house. There is still a good bit of work to do on that – hopefully with Grandpa’s help.

Mama and I had a difficult time getting dinner done last night because of phone conversations that extended for over an hour (trying to help a friend with a difficult situation)and because the repairman who came to look at our a/c again arrived about that time also. I told Mama we really did not need to eat anyway. The a/c repair was an easy one which will require some ongoing maintenance on my part but we were not charged for the call. That was good.

I spent the evening getting Mama set up for the chicks that will be arriving Friday. She ordered thirty. They will be shipped when they are one day old so we have to get them warmed up and hydrated as soon as they arrive. With the drowning experience we had with the guinea keet we are taking some precautions to avoid that with this brood.

We plan to use the large cage we have used in the past and shuttle them between the carport and the garage. They will need the warmth of the garage through the night but Mama and I prefer them to be outside as much as possible through the day. That way our garage does not take on too much of an odor. At least, that is how we are trying to arrange it.

The rest of the night I spent watering plants and trees. Kobi chewed up my lone grapevine over last weekend but I am still watering it hoping for the best. That was really frustrating after all the effort I have put into getting it back to health after the first time she chewed all the leaves off of it. It may be a lost cause but I have no chance of replacing it before next spring so we’ll see how good a root system it has and whether or not it will bud out once more before the warm days are gone for this year.

Mama tells me I have to understand that she is only a dog. To which I reply that dogs are not a necessary part of my life. They a marginally sufferable inconvenience and continuous irritation I endure because of the women in my life. I do not need them and, believe it or not, would be fine without them.

But Victoria’s and Mama’s need to nurture something more animated than a plant are the driving force behind the hair all over the house, the slobbers scattered throughout the house, the occasional pee we mop up when they are too excited to contain themselves, the toy stuffing shredded on the living room rug and the poop I have to avoid in the yard – front, back and side.

Yes, I could live without them...but not without Mama.

Maggie, FBI and sports, Jake

Maggie called yesterday to ask me about some issues she is still having that are more than likely associated with birthing Walter. It is difficult for me to contribute on that subject. I cannot imagine the expansion required to deliver a ten pound baby nor the pains involved in everything finding its way back to normal after the event. But I do believe part of the pains she is feeling have to do with lugging around a fifteen pound, six week old child – basically a dead weight at this point.

At least Catherine can help Maggie when she is carried – although she is largely mobile. Walter, on the other hand does not support himself yet nor does he have the reflexes developed to hold on as he is carried. That will come much later. By that time he will have doubled in weight and Maggie may look like a pro wrestler. I wish we were closer to be able to help, but that is not a current part of the plan.

Last night in FBI, since Jake and Victoria were there and both of them had excess energy during our first break, they got out a volleyball and started playing at something remotely like the sport designed around that ball. The net was still up from Sunday night when the teens get together after church and play. Very quickly Bro. Daniel and his kids were in the game but the time was pretty short.

Jake, who had been entertaining himself in the next building over, was ready at the next break – and it seemed that almost everyone else in class last night was anticipating the break also. The game started up right away. It was a nice, active change for all of us since we are all usually tired after a day at work followed by the three hour class. I did not participate but I was about the only one who did not.

Jake sat in for part of the class last night since Mama wanted to reinforce a little the commitment he made to the Lord Sunday morning in church. He went to the altar that morning alone. Mama was already at the altar and I was leading the invitational song. Pastor went down to pray with him and Jake asked Jesus into his heart. On the way home that morning we spent some time probing for answers to test the validity of the commitment and he seemed very genuine in it. So we reassured him and outlined verses he can go to when thing are not as happy or spiritual as they are at this moment.

He goes back home this morning so he had to go out last night after we got home to say goodbye to the pigs and the chickens – fortunately Daisy and Dash were not on the goodbye list. Mama got up with me this morning and was waking Jake as I was leaving. They will be headed to the airport very early to make his 9:30 flight. Mama will have to accompany him to the gate and wait until the plane is in the air before she can leave the airport but I do not see that as a hardship for either her or Jake. It will be a sad goodbye for both of them.

We know he has to go home but we are truly thankful for the time he comes to see us. It is the spiritual highlight of his year each year. We are praying he finds a good church close by his home so he can get involved somewhere where he can continue to grow.

Our prayers go with him.