Training, Mama, the business

I have been in class for the past two days. Wednesday I was an observer as an instructor I have been getting prepared to teach the class got his first opportunity to do so. He was audited on his performance and although we had a couple hiccups in his overall presentation and preparedness, he passed the audit. That means that he is certified to present the class whenever an assignment comes up. That helps me, especially as I focus on backfilling my role with this company in preparation for Mama and I going fulltime into business for ourselves. On Thursday I taught a class. It is one we do only once per quarter. It is one class that I thoroughly enjoy teaching. I was hurting by the end of the day, but it was a good class. When I got home that evening, I did not want to do anything but sit and rest my back; which does not get any of the chores done at the farm. However, I did sit for a little bit.

Mama has been very diligent to go through her exercise routine every two hours throughout the day. I can see only a slight improvement in her ability to bend her knee, but she is certainly building up her muscles in her shoulders and forearms as she struggles to pull the knee into a bent position. I have been driving the Sequoia so that Mama can sit on the tailgate of the truck and swing her leg back under her. With the release of weight on the knee and gravity to gently pulling the lower leg downward, she is able to move the knee a little more freely. It takes all the tension off the joint and allows her to rest it as she can in no other way provided in the house. I miss my truck but right now it is serving a greater purpose for Mama.

Mama has her second appointment with the physical therapist this morning. Fortunately, Victoria is off and will be able to take her to the appointment. Since she is scheduled to be there as 10:30 am and be there for roughly an hour, we are planning to meet for lunch after she is done with her treatment. I am curious to see if the therapist is pleased with the results of all the effort she has put in doing the exercises. We are still very early in the program, so we know that Mama has a long way to go before we are through. Still, there is noticeable progress. She walks through the house without the walker; sometimes outside also without assistance. We only have the walker with us when she is going to be out for an extended period. After about twenty minutes up and moving, she is pretty much done for the next hour or so. Also, she is walking more normally – slightly raising the foot, lifting the toes and planting the heal with each step. She is still very awkward with bending the knee and lifting the leg for each step, but she is getting there. In my estimation, for being 25 days out from her surgery, she is doing pretty well.

We are still slowly working our business. I spend roughly fifteen hours per week doing the required research and Mama makes most of the required phone contacts. All the houses we have wanted to purchase have been unavailable to us in one way or another, but we are still in the hunt. Eventually we will succeed. Mama is calling a realtor today about a house in Philips County, AR. From what we can in our research, it looks like a good prospect but until we get confirmation that the structure is still viable, we will not move forward. One house we looked at multiple times was still available after the auction in Hot Springs we got Becky to drive by to take pictures. It was burned to the ground. I thought is rather conspicuous that the house burned a few weeks before it would have been sold for taxes, but it could be a coincidence. Anyway, I still owe Becky a fee for her help. 

We are not seeing any great things happen on any front right now; but we are not far away from them happening in our lives. Meanwhile, I got this photo of the sunset through the storm clouds as I was going home after a couple hours at the office last night. it was worth stopping for.     

Mama’s session, Victoria, Maggie

Everything worked out for Mama to make it to her physical therapy session yesterday. She was picked up at the farm by one lady from our church and picked up after the session by another lady from our church. I picked her up at the home of the second lady – Betty. Betty is a little over eighty years old but in very good health. She has a condo in Decatur and insisted that she could get Mama and keep her comfortable until I got there to pick her up. Mama did not get any rest while she was with Betty. Betty is a sweetheart, but she is a talker. I think it worked out well. Mama needed the extended conversation after having been cooped up for the last several weeks. Mama has recurring appointments on Monday and Friday each week for the next ten weeks. On some of those days I will have to go to work an hour early, so I can go to the house at 10 am and pick her up for the appointment at 10:30. I will then have to take my lunch break to take Mama home from the appointment. On some days Victoria will be available to help. On other days there will be help provided from others, but at least we now have a plan.

Mama’s session went well. The therapist was not overly concerned about Mama’s current lack of flexibility. He used a TENS unit to get her quadriceps stirred up, but Mama could not feel the muscle at the knee. She still has very little feeling around the knee; especially on the inside of the joint. The therapist assured her that was normal for this point in the recovery. We will be monitoring it as we progress through the treatments. I still have an area on the outside of the left knee – the lower quadricep area – in which I still have no feeling from an injury to that area when I worked odd jobs in West Virginia thirty years ago. But I am hoping better things for Mama. She was encouraged overall. The therapist loaded her up with exercises. I believe Mama will be faithful to do them. She really wants this to be a full and complete recovery. So do we. The therapist told Mama that if we were not able to establish the full range of motion, the hospital could put her under anesthetic and bend the leg fully while she was asleep. I’ll be that sounds horrible. We are hoping to avoid that option. It is there if we need it.

Pray for Victoria. She is trying to stay close to Grandma and Grandpa but is rapidly approaching the time when she will have to put them at arm’s length. Lately, they have both begun to hound her about spiritual issues – on which they have come to differ with us in some dramatic ways. They will not go to church and consider us to be hypocrites because we do go to church. They are convinced that no one in the churches of today are really saved. They are just playing church. Part of a social club. Sadly, there is an element of truth to that argument. According to Grandma and Grandpa, if they really knew God they would not be a part of the churches of today – they would separate themselves from “the unclean thing”. Grandma and Grandpa are starting to delve into areas of mysticism as opposed to Bible doctrine. It is starting to wear on Victoria and she is very attached to Grandma and Grandpa so letting go is going to be painful. If she has the strength to let go. Right now, she is hurting – and I know Grandma and Grandpa do not know how much they are hurting her - because of the daily debates so please keep her in your prayers. In their minds, they do not want Victoria lost to the hedonistic churches of today. In our minds, we are asking, “Where sis that come from?”

Pray for Maggie. Maggie’s surgery is scheduled for Friday. She was debating even having the surgery, so I am not sure if the plan is to follow through or postpone, but it too is a matter of prayer. Any time the belly is cut into, there is a long recovery and for a mother of little ones, that can seem an interminably long period of time. There is a special membrane, the Mesentery, that keeps our intestines and belly organs in place. Even the tiniest piercing of that membrane is an injury of the highest order to the body. It heals slowly. Once it has been cut, there is a period of time in which you cannot lift any significant weight. To do so puts pressure on the abdomen and the Mesentery which could reopen the wound. It is that long recovery time that has Maggie worried. And she is a long-term worrier. She has help scheduled for the first two weeks but not for the following additional ten weeks. I am sure there is help available. It is just not scheduled the way Maggie would like it to be. If she postpones the surgery, the conflict will not change, but perhaps Aaron will be available to help. He is not available right now. I am sure it will all work out if she does have the surgery, but it is her and Aaron’s decision to make.

God is still good.

My epic fail, Mama’s excursions

Saturday morning, after feeding the goats and chickens, I lured the cows into the corral. Friday evening, I had parked the stock trailer at the loading chute so I could load Daisy and Mellow to transported them to Norman’s acreage. That was the plan. I had even taken the time to rewire the trailer lights because the cows had chewed the wiring in two. My challenge would be to make sure the calf was safely loaded. When they are that small, they can fit through some spaces that only they recognize. My hope was that I had eliminated those spaces. As it turned out, I was able to get the calf onto the trailer first. She almost squeezed through the small space between the trailer and the corral fence, but I was able to get her into the front of the trailer and shut the center gates of the trailer. What I forgot was to make sure the small gate at the front of the trailer was secure.

As I was getting Mellow loaded I found out that the front gate was not latched shut and the calf jumped out. She ran out like she had been stung and I knew I would not ger her back easily. So, I opened the trailer gates and let Mellow out. I would have to try again later. I was very frustrated. So, frustrated in fact that I hollered at the top of my lungs which resulted in my losing my voice so that I could not sing Sunday. A total fail. However, later that afternoon, after the events I will describe momentarily, I was able to get Daisy, her calf and the steer loaded and delivered to Norman’s. We needed to separate Daisy from her larger calf, but now Mama is worried that Daisy will not have any shade where Norman has her penned up. I will let the two of them work that out.

Since I had failed with the first attempt loading the cows I changed and Mama, Victoria and I went to Denton to do some shopping and to see if we would get our cell phone service moved onto Victoria’s plan. That took several trips to the Sprint store, to the Cricket store (our current provider) as well as calls to both Customer Care centers. We also called Apple Support for advice. We stopped at the AT&T store to see if they could help. No go. Five hours later we were not able to get anything accomplished. Mama’s phone, in three hours, did not fully back up to the iCloud and my phone could not be unlocked normally because the number I have was once registered to a corporate AT&T account and I do not know that account number. We could have bought new phones to make the swap, but our goal was to save money, not spend more. It was a very disappointing day for me, but it was a nice outing for Mama and Victoria since we had to stop at Chick-fil-A for lunch trying to kill some time while we waited for Mama’s phone to back up – which it never did. If it had, we could have made that sitch.

We were back home about 3:30. A couple hours later – after the coop was cleaned - I was curious to see if I could try again with the cows. I took the other half of the bag of cubes and walked into the corral with Daisy and her calf, the steer and Mellow hot on my heels. The skittish heifer stayed out of the corral. That worked out well for me. Since Mama told me after my morning failure that she did not want to send Mellow. I got Mellow out of the corral and moved the feed bucket into the loading chute area and closed in the steer, Daisy and her calf. A few minutes later they all walked onto the stock trailer and I closed them in. All gates were secure this time. I was able to get the trailer moved with the tractor, hitched to the truck and ready to roll a few minutes later. When I went to the house to let Mama know my progress and to have her call Norman, I found her already on the phone with Norman. Victoria had looked for me and had seen me connecting the truck to the trailer. I was back at the farm with the empty trailer by 7 pm. Just in time to water everything before I sat down for the evening.

Yesterday, Mama was anxious to go to church, but I asked her to wait until the evening service. It would be a shorter time at church in case she was too uncomfortable there, and there would be less children to bump into her. She agreed. Everyone was very happy to see her and she was thrilled to be there. It really filled out her weekend.

Today she has her first physical therapy session. One of the ladies from church will pick her up at the house and take her to the appointment. Another of our church ladies will collect her from the appointment and take her to her house where I will pick her up this evening. Mama was looking forward to the appointment last night but not so much so this morning. She was hurting badly when I was leaving the house this morning.

Please pray it goes well.

Minor setbacks

Mama has had a couple bad days. The pain she is experiencing is not centered in the joint but rather everywhere around the joint and especially down the calf of the recuperating leg. Her nights have been rough, trying to find a comfortable position to sleep. Her days have been lonely – confined. We were toying with the idea of going to Hot Springs for the county tax auction but have at least had to abandon the idea of Mama making the trip. It is too much too soon. As much as she would like to get out, it would be an exhausting trip for her. I am less than enthusiastic about going without her. Too many snap decisions to be made without some consultation. We were told by our coach that we had to learn to be patient and that is definitely proving to be true. I have until tomorrow to decide if I will go to the auction without Mama, but I am leaning heavily toward not going. If I am away Monday and Tuesday I am not sure how we will get Mama to her physical therapy appointments. I am sure we can find help, but I must decide on my travel plans before we conscript helpers.

We have to decide where when can attend an upcoming auction if I do miss this one. With my schedule filling up at work, it is becoming more and more problematic to fit this business into our lives. Since we do not have internet at the house Mama is not able to help with the research, so I have to squeeze out time after work to get all the computer work done; after I feed, water and otherwise tend to our flocks and herds. I spend an hour almost every evening watering the plants just before dark, close up the chickens a little after dark, clean up the kitchen to keep the ants from invading full force and then go to bed.  It has not been an easy road. That, and we are having a hard time finding realtors willing to help us when we need pictures taken of houses we are researching. Small considerations, but they add up to make our cumulative net gain of 0 feel like a heavy loss when, in actuality, we have lost nothing so far. We’ve just not gained anything. That will come eventually if we stick with it.

Meanwhile, back at the farm. We are going to try to get Daisy, her calf and our steer loaded up and delivered to Norman this evening. Mama and I found out that Daisy’s ten-month-old calf started nursing her again. We are not sure how long that has been going on, but it would account for the way Daisy is looking – gaunt and boney. My back is screaming at me right now. It has been worsening for several days but there has been nothing I could do to appease it – especially with Mama down right now. I would appreciate your prayers for a quick success getting the three bovine loaded and an easy time getting the trailer hooked to the truck. It is never an easy task when being done alone. Hurting as badly as I do throughout the process will be an added level of frustration; however, these things normally work out just fine if we have the tenacity and patience to keep working at it.

Brittany did not make it down for the 4^th. One of the twins got sick the day before she was scheduled to leave. It probably worked out for the best since Mama is not in shape to hold the little ones now. Hopefully soon.

Quiet 4th, auction ready?

Mama and I had a quiet 4^th of July. Fireworks, we found out, were done on Sunday evening. Not that Mama would have been up to going out to watch the display, but she was a little sad to have missed it altogether. I was off for the day, so I used the morning to water out plants, replant some vegetable plants in the garden and to weed eat around the house and in the garden. I took a lot of extra time with the animals. Victoria has had to hurry through the morning feedings and neither of us have been diligent about cleaning out the waterers like Mama normally does. So, yesterday, all of them got scrubbed clean. Fresh water was given in the morning as well as in the afternoon. Maybe the chickens notice. Maybe they don’t. But Mama wants it that way.

I spent the afternoon in the office working on our current list. I have to decide today or tomorrow if Mama and I will attend the auction coming up next week, if I will go to the auction by myself, or if we will wait until she is able to go to an auction with me. When I was just about finished with the research I needed to get done, Mama called. I was going to grill hot dogs and hamburgers once I got home and we needed a couple things to complete the dinner. Mama suggested that I could either go to Walmart and get a few items or we could go together to Brookshire’s. I chose the latter, but the outing would require that Mama be able to get into and out of the Sequoia. We experimented once I was home and Mama was changed.

She was able to get into the back seat from the passenger side using the rails on the vehicle. It was not a quick process, but it did not seem too cumbersome. With her foot propped up on the console, we headed out.  At the store she was able to scoot across the vehicle and exit from the driver side; once again stepping onto and down from the rails on the vehicle. The little power scooters at the store were in far better condition than those we normally find at Walmart, so Mama was able to get around easily. Unfortunately, the aisles were not as wide as at Walmart and she almost took out a couple of endcaps. Everyone was quite forgiving. Once home, Mama rested a bit. I fired up the grill, chopped up onions, jalapenos, mixed the ground beef with ground turkey and got Mama setup to make potato salad, chili and slaw.

I put some chicken on the grill and pattied out the meat. Mama finished the potato salad and sat down to rest. Once I got the meat on the grill I started getting the kitchen cleaned up. Mama got up and made the chili for the hot dogs. Then she sat back down and rested. Once up again, Mama made the slaw. Then she sat back down and rested. She fussed about having to rest so much. It is to be expected. I explained that the body does not react well to the extent of surgery it has been put through and resting equals healing. After all, she is recovering from a surgery in which the doctor as much as cut her leg off and reattached it. Not a small procedure and the body recognizes the extent of the injury far better than we can understand. We really are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Right now, I can see that she is doing more than she was even a few days ago. Whether or not she will be up to making the six-hour trip to Hot Springs, spend the next day in the car searching out properties and then sitting through the auction the next day followed by a six-hour ride home after the auction, we have not decided. It all seems a bit much.

There is one outlier. There is a home on the left-over list that we are trying to get a realtor to look at for us. It is in the same general area, so if we go – or I go by myself – we can look at the property ourselves, but we need to see it before we take any action. It alone would be enough to get us started but we are not getting our hopes up. A property of this caliber on the leftover list generally means there is something physically wrong with the house – fire damage, a serious structural issue or the like. That is why we need to see the property. So far, we have not gotten a realtor to look at it for us. Maybe Mama can get that done today.

So, for now, we are making slow progress on various fronts. It is not the pace either of us hoped for, but it is still progress.

Keeping up

Mama did okay her first day on her own. I went home on my lunch break and ate a quick meal with her. By the time I got ready to head back to work, she was ready to go to bed for the afternoon. That worked out pretty well for both of us. When I got home after work, I saw the bedroom door open, so I knew she was up. When I go to the bedroom door I saw her sitting in my desk chair leaning forward on the walker; lost in thought. My greeting startled her so badly I got soundly scolded. You know Mama. She got over it almost as fast as the fright passed and I got my usual “welcome home” kisses. I could tell she was hurting. I could also tell there was something else bothering her. She told me later that the meds were affecting her. She was having bad dreams. Seeing things that were not there. Catching glimpses of people who could not possibly have been in the room with her. It is clearly time for a change in prescriptions.

I fixed myself some soup, quickly tended to the animals and shaved and showered to go to a viewing for the family of a friend of ours at church who died on Sunday morning. It was one of those expectedly unexpected deaths. Walt was in his mid-eighties, failing health, asthmatic. But he was faithful to church. I had talked to him, as I did every week, Sunday a week ago. He went into the hospital Monday of last week and had a rough week of better and not better days until Sunday morning. Now he really is better. It was not a somber gathering at the funeral home. What a hope we have! I only stayed for about a half hour before going to the office to work on a list for the auction coming up next Tuesday.

As I worked through the list I have to admit to being a bit discouraged. Since Mama and I went to the auction in Oklahoma, it has been obvious that there is a serious competition for the houses available on these lists. With the current level of competition, Mama and I are at a slight disadvantage financially. Don’t get me wrong. We have enough money if we can end up at the right auction. I am not sure if the one coming up is the right one. I will finish my research on the list tonight and make a decision whether or not to take the vacation days from work to attend this one – or wait for another. With limited vacation time, I can only attend one more auction this year. I need to be pretty confident about the chances of getting a property to bet it all on this auction. I am not there yet. Besides, I want Mama and I to be a team at these auctions. We do better when we are together and right now, that is not an option.

When I did get home – a little after 9 pm – I went out to close up the chickens. My normal nightly routine. It was only then that I realized I had not taken the time to water the vegetable plants in the garden. It was late. I was tired. I let it go. I have a soaker hose on part of the garden and it had run the entire time I was in town, so that part of the garden will be okay. I will see tonight if any of the plants I normally water nightly survived. I am not optimistic, but if they did, I will pick up tonight where I left off - when I get home from my extra time at the office. Tomorrow, the 4^th of July, is a work holiday for us. If I still have live plants remote from the soaker hoses, I will transplant them to benefit from the soaker hoses. It will seriously crowd things, but if we can help them survive and produce, it will be worth it.

I still have to water the fruit trees, berry bushes, the grape vine, and the flower beds. It is becoming a challenge to keep up as Mama recuperates.

Brittany, Andrew and the twins will be here tomorrow. That should be fun.

Catching up

Thursday evening, I was planning to go to Norman’s to pick up a couple bales of hay but got a call from Bro Danial asking if they could borrow the utility trailer to get some hay. Since I have the gooseneck trailer, I let Danial take the utility trailer. It was only after I finally got hooked up to the gooseneck trailer that I noticed that the tags were out of date. I knew I had a sticker for a trailer on my desk, so I retrieved it only to discover it was for the stock trailer. No current stickers for the gooseneck. I left the truck still hooked up to the big trailer knowing I could use the Sequoia to get to and from work the next day and called Norman to let him know I would not make it over until at least the next evening. When I got to looking around at the things that needed to get done for Mama and for the farm, it was obvious I needed to take a day off to get those things done. There were too many to squeeze into lunch breaks or rush around after work hoping to find offices open when I got off. I called in to work the next morning and spent the entire day running errands.

At 8 am, I headed to the tax office in Decatur to get the trailer tags. I thought I was going to have to go to the driver’s license office to get Mama’s handicap placards and I was not looking forward to that. That office is always packed. But while the lady was working on the two stickers I needed for farm trailers, I asked about the handicap placards and was told that I could get them there. Praise the Lord. I paid for everything and was home again by 9 am. Once the stickers were in place and I had eaten some French toast with bacon, I disconnected from the gooseneck and headed to Muenster for feed a little after 10 am.

Once the feed was loaded, I swung by the meat processing shop in Muenster and picked up some pork breakfast sausage. Mama and Victoria really like that sausage and we have been out for quite a while. Next time we are able to process a pig, we will have to request more of the meat be processed into sausage. Anyway, they only had nine packages available, so I bought them all. From there, I swung by the dairy and got two gallons of fresh milk. We have not made that trip in many months. Although none of the sausage got eaten over the weekend, almost half a gallon of milk was consumed. Once I got home and put all the feed away, I set up the truck and utility trailer to go to Normans and got busy on little chores at the farm. I did not get to pick up the hay until about 8:30 pm but it all worked out because I had to work on the lights on the trailer. I needed them in working order to be able to travel home after dark. That took me some time but by the time I left everything was working properly. I got home a little before 10 pm.

Saturday was almost as much running, but we started the day with Mama’s biscuits. Victoria and I took Mama to Walmart for her second outing of the week. I teased her about her hairy legs as I helped her get into and out of the back seat of Victoria’s car. That night she had had enough, and she and Victoria concocted a plan to get Mama into the shower. We wrapped her leg in Saran Wrap and duct tape and I set up a step for her into the shower in the hall bath. Grandma had helped her get cleaned up and get her hair washed several times over the past two weeks, but this was her first shower in that time frame. She was delighted. I fretted the entire time. Some in play but mostly seriously. Any little slip would have been disastrous. Fortunately, we got through the shower without incident. Mama took great pleasure in the fifteen minutes under the running water.

Today, Mama is on her own for the first time in two weeks. I will go home at lunch and check on her. Other than that, she is her own caregiver for the day. Tomorrow we go to get the staples out of the incision. She is relieved and terrified all at the same time. It should be over quickly and once that is done, we can start physical therapy.

We just have to figure out how to get her to and from those appointments.