A Series of Unfortunate as well as Fortunate Events

 I knew full well fulfilling my obligations to be a ride judge last weekend in Missouri would be tough, as I sit here slumped in my recliner, sipping coffee…

NATRC is a dying sport, populated by aging women of various descriptions: a few athletic & vigorous like Alaina, Jonni or Lynn - but many more closer to my decrepit state (Lucy H, Marsha, or Helen - although you should hope you’re still be able to ride when you achieve Marsha or Helen‘s age). Nor do you have any right to glance askance at Debbie Starr, whom I presume is a T1 diabetic, loading up on “sugar bombs” -  candy & fruit - when she’s much more mobile & active than Yours Truly…

My weekend got off to a bad start when I beheld the outrageous security line early Friday morning at DFW - in retrospect, I should’ve started squawking earlier & fought my way to the front of the line, but I arrived 2 min too late, missing my flight as they had already locked the access door. I noticed several others suffering the same predicament at other flight gates. Fortunately, I was able to place myself first on the standby list for the next flight which was going out in 2.5 hrs, so all was not lost. In actuality, this worked out for the best, since I had to dive in immediately - settling into our cabin then going straight to work checking in the horse & rider teams. (Pretty much a walk in the park since we only had 14 riders for Saturday - as I mentioned above, NATRC seems to be a dying sport: you can’t sustain the degree of effort it takes to put on a ride, gather all the volunteers, do all the paperwork, etc. for a mere handful of people)

North Fork River Ranch is a small, rustic equestrian facility tucked into the wooded hills of south-central Missouri catering to trail riders - it reminded me that I’ve “planned” to return to Brushy Creek, which was the endpoint of our Ozark Trails endurance ride in years past - but somehow that has never happened?!? Gotta get busy living vs my recent months which have dragged into years of “survival”…

The ride itself went smoothly - the weather was superb. I was just a little saddened by the fact that I had neither horse nor dog, let alone friend or spouse for company. My NATRC friends remain friendly & welcoming - I speculated that I might give Baraq a try at this sport, even though we would lose (many) points on the obstacles! I need to face facts, that I can’t keep up the pace at an endurance ride anymore - instead of next month’s return to Louisiana, I’m going to step back & go to the trail ride at Bandera, another beloved place I haven’t been for several years.

Sometimes I feel like I’m dying at dawn/ And sometimes I’m warm as fire
But lately I feel like I’m just gonna rain/ And it goes over, and over, and over again
Too many flames, with too much to burn/ And life’s only made of paper
Oh, how I need to be free of this pain! But it goes over, and over, and over again…

Ronnie James Dio

"Judgment Day"

Intolerable Cruelty

 I keep on putting off my mini day of reckoning: like Gus McCrae, it’s easier to own up to my mistakes on a day-to-day basis as if getting a dry shave! Typing it out here makes it seem more permanent, even if no one is reading it…

I’ve quit tracking the weeks of Val‘s adjustment to the New Normal bcz it’s pointless - this is just my life now. Of course Z still calls me when he needs something: 2 wks ago he & V took another 4-day weekend - a Florida beach trip, good for them! But they needed me to dog-sit & for some inexplicable reason, I let Z convince me that Tyson deserved another chance to be a farm dog…

That didn’t even last through the first day - it’s as if he’s got a mental short-circuit; he got overstimulated & instead of standing up to his brother Luke**, he turned & attacked poor ol’ Winston before I could get my slow, stiff ass out of the chair. Not quite as intense as the last dog fight on the premises - after all, Tyson is getting older & he didn’t get that firm a grip on Winston‘s shaggy neck. I still had to holler for Peran to bring me my medical bag so I could sedate him & I got bitten once in the R calf. Winston & I are still limping a bit - needless to say, this has derailed my gym plans!

** as much as I hate the responsibility for poor harmless Winston getting mauled (could've been MUCH worse, after all!), it probably would've been a true bloodbath if Tyson & LUKE had gone to war

I continue to stagger around with increasing shortness of breath; my next appointment with the pulmonologist I believe is the first week of November? Not that I’m expecting much relief, I’m just going through the motions. Z has now dangled movie-date options in front of me 3 or 4 times, only for plans to change - he’s made mention of tomorrow (I guess V must be working late) but I’m not expecting anything. Gotta get on into work - updates to follow!

*******************************************************************

I did attend my cousin's mini-family reunion last weekend at the beautiful Lake Bob Sandlin in E Texas - I realized later that Cousin John had thoughtfully planned it around what would have been (my dad's big sister) Aunt Sue's 100th BD. The weird thing was camping out WITHOUT horses - I actually came home Sat night so I could get in a short ride Sunday morning. It's important to keep up appearances, after all. I don't want to know which ride might be my last.

                                     Dude enjoyed his first privileged expedition as Camp Dog

The Pursuit of Happyness

 I remain as firmly convinced now as I was 35 yrs ago when I first took up the sport, that the purpose of endurance riding is to help one appreciate first world luxuries. “The little things”: flush toilets, hot showers, air conditioning in the summer & heat in the winter… Granted, I do enjoy those amenities in my little “home away from home”, the RV-style living quarters in my horse trailer - but once I step out the door, I am at Mother Nature’s mercy.

I had originally signed up to do the 25 miler at yesterday‘s endurance event, but wisely downgraded to an intro as we finally received several weeks’ worth of precipitation in the form of torrential rains yesterday! 9” in Athens - the ride was called off at 1:30 PM as trail conditions were becoming treacherous. Twoie & I soldiered through our 10-mi loop which took about 3 hrs as our average speed took a precipitous drop about halfway in, when the deluge commenced. I started the ride with 3 NATRC friends who had come across to “see how the other half lives”. C made the astute observation to me as we trotted down the road that I needed a better sports bra - yes ma’am, I do! I actually own 2 of the heavy-duty, Brunhilda-style contraptions - I told her I had to let the weather get a little cooler bcz they are so hot & cumbersome…

I rode the second half of the ride with a nice young lady on her stout Appaloosa mare & her daughter on a darling pinto pony…. The trails were running ankle-deep in water like miniature rivers - someone sarcastically posted about “Athens whitewater river rafting”. (The city of Athens itself suffered some significant flooding) I will post some photos when the technology cooperates.

It’s just as well that Catie had a marching band event (for all I know, that may have been rained out too?) and Christina had an in-law family reunion. I had about 6 hrs of “forced leisure” as I watched the rain pour down**, but by about 6:30 the rains had receded - as I watched two other big rigs get out, I knew I could too. My neighbor Blake had been competing in the 50-mi championship but was pulled at 43 miles. He told me he will be granted a completion & they will use some sort of formula to determine the placements. **I was very lonely in my trailer as dear little Tina Fea suffered a massive seizure 10 days ago, which obviously inflicted irreparable brain damage - she became comatose & passed away peacefully the next day. Tears were shed, but I certainly did my best to give her a good life in the relatively short time I had her (22 months). I doubt she’d have lasted through the end of that day if we hadn’t managed to capture her on the backstreet of Ennis!

I had company in my trailer Friday night, since my friend Carla (who was serving as steward for the championship ride) needed a place to sleep. It was great to see her but I didn’t sleep especially well - I was grateful to get home last night to my own bed. I am interviewing candidates for my next camp dog. Izzy, of course, graciously volunteered but I need to get things set up for her…

Dude the Dobie-doo would love love LOVE to be a camp dog, but that would be a lot! I can hardly take a step around the house without Dude being glued to me like a stick-tight.

“Sanity”

 Only time for a “quickie” this morning side as I juice up for my workday & survey the short stack of self-help books I have bought to ease me into this new phase of reality with my adult son…

“SANITY” is one author’s acronym, which I really like - with some skepticism over the “Y” - “Yield everything to God”?!? Unfortunately this brings back grim memories of our (Z & myself) forced participation in 12-step addiction programs which have a phenomenally low success rate. ANYWAY -

I will start diving into these resources today; hopefully they are helpful. Z called me Saturday night (I was in San Antonio at the state veterinary conference with my girls; a very good time was had by all!) to let me know that his good friend/former roommate Josef had been arrested for marijuana possession plus an outstanding traffic ticket. (He probably would’ve been led off with a warning for the pot if he had just paid the previous fine) I spoke to him Monday, advising him to hire a good lawyer because the one thing he cannot afford is to wind up with a felony conviction. This could tank his career prospects permanently!

I came racing back from San Antonio Sunday afternoon, just in time to take Karen out for a slightly-belated 60th birthday dinner for her (her birthday was Saturday). A court date has not yet been set for her eldest daughter’s assault hearing - C & M got into a drunken brawl where the sheriff was called. Younger sister has a restraining order against Melissa; M is couch-surfing while Karen continues to raise her granddaughter. (It’s been a mess)

But we had a great time at the state veterinary conference - you can always teach an old dog new tricks! I managed to stump along slowly with my hiking staff & did what I needed to do with many rest breaks. Tomorrow I return for a follow-up visit with my cardiologist, not that I think he’ll have much help for me - I foresee a referral to a pulmonologist next.

S = stop enabling, stop blaming yourself & stop the flow of money

A = assemble a support group

N = nip excuses in the bud

I = implement rules & boundaries

T = trust your instincts

Y = yield everything to God (mkay, as I said I will read with an open mind)

Updates to follow!

                                                      Tower of the Americas at dusk

                                                           Scooterin' around San Antonio

                                          My Wild Bunch ready for a good time Saturday night!

Looking for the Way Out

 I seem to have an unavoidable attachment to revisiting this trauma; I don't seem to be able to shake it off & move on down that proverbial road...

Motherhood was a BFD to me as I had to be persuaded; this made it even more of a shock to my system, to have my commitment & sacrifice be so fundamentally disregarded/disrespected as M went off on his merry way w/his "soulmate", determined to re-create his own version of The Perfect Family

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Steve Benton

3d ·

Gentle reminder: A man isn't a great father if his treatment of the mother of his children causes emotional, physical, or financial harm. No matter how well he behaves in public.

True fatherhood is not a part-time performance for an outside audience; it is entirely rooted in the safe environment he builds at home.

When a man actively shatters the mental health and stability of the woman raising his kids, he is directly attacking the foundation of his own children's well-being.

You simply cannot claim to love your children while systematically breaking down the exact person they depend on for their daily survival and emotional security.

A few public photos or weekend trips mean absolutely nothing if his private behavior fills the house with anxiety, manipulation, or financial ruin.

Children absorb the quiet tension of their environment, and watching him mistreat their mother silently conditions them to accept toxic dynamics as normal.

A genuine man understands that honoring and protecting the mother of his children is the most fundamental, non-negotiable requirement of being a real father.

Silver Anniversary (of 9/11)

 I’m in a somber mood, a little tired & strung-out after a week of puppy-sitting… Suitable for this somber “Silver Anniversary”, I suppose.

A little strange that I drove up to find P pulled off to the side of our road (about half a mile from our driveway) taking a phone call when I came home tonight, & he’s now left to show moral support to the firefighters who are putting on a display on one of the highway overpasses. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to ask him about that mysterious phone call? P & I will celebrate our own Silver Anniversary next year.

On 9/11/01, we were seriously involved - “exclusive” but not officially engaged yet, in what was probably  the easiest stage of our relationship since Peran was a Road Warrior at that time, generally flying out on Mondays & flying back home Thursday night or Friday… he had flown out to the East Coast, was subsequently stranded, eventually snagging one of the few remaining rental cars & driving home to Texas with a couple of his coworkers. Of course I had been worried sick & was thrilled to death to get him home safely. I remember the eerie emptiness of the skies during that time that flights were grounded - especially since my farm sits under the flight path for many inbound planes which are coming into DFW.

Z & V celebrated this week with another mini-vacay “Return to Vegas”. Once again, I am concerned at their escapades but I’m certainly staying the hell out of their business; I’ve got enough problems of my own! I went ahead & went in for my echocardiogram yesterday, not that I think it will yield much useful information: my next specialist’s visit will likely need to be to a pulmonologist, as the 3 different inhalers prescribed by my GP have seem to be of little usefulness in slowing down my progressive shortness of breath & this distressing “heaviness” in my chest.

Nevertheless I’m going to try, try again at my next nearby endurance event the first weekend  in October**. Next weekend I’ll be taking my girls to the state veterinary conference in San Antonio, where I am ominously thinking of all the walking which will be involved. Obviously I’ll need to set forth early, use my hiking staff & take as many rest breaks as I have to to get to where I’m going… I’ve ordered myself a fresh batch of Chinese herbs as I have no other bright ideas? Janay highly recommended her acupuncturist, so I’m debating whether to give that branch of Eastern medicine another try.

I also got some more somber news today, as I learned that Cyndi Davis, my friend & the lady who has brought her food wagon to many of our endurance events, has died of complications following her vehicle fire which happened in Colorado 5 wks ago. She was in transit to the beautiful Colorado ride which I opted out of** - I just couldn’t justify the time off or expense for no better than I’ve been doing. Several of my trail riding buddies are on a fun ride in Colorado this week - again, I couldn’t justify taking time off this close to the state veterinary conference.

** not to mention when I saw She Who Shall Not Be Named on the pre-entry list, that helped solidify my decision. My dear old friend Jennifer (who remarried 10 or 12 yrs ago & moved up to OK; time grows more slippery for me every day!) left me a voicemail as she was expecting me to be at horse camp when she saw the Jaffe name on the entry list. I had to call her back & say sorry, that’s the other Jaffe!

I will try to console myself with some puppy love now - we will figure out a hostage transfer for Theodore the Monster tomorrow (which BTW will be my mom‘s 95th birthday). I’m taking in a sandwich tray & a cake - it’s too disorienting these days to try to take her out of the facility so that’s the best I can do. (Feeling pretty rotten as a daughter these days also)

I need to reach out to Michele see how she’s doing (she organized the Go Fund Me); Dr M just sent a group text regarding the restaurant where she wants us to convene for our “family dinner” in San Antonio next weekend - now there’s something worth looking forward to!

No Free Lunch

 (which is admittedly tacky of me! I went to lunch yesterday with my old friend J, fully intending to pick up the check myself - when she grabbed it instead, I thanked her kindly & thought to myself, well that’s payback for all those text messages last week - “free veterinary consultation”, don’t **I** work cheap?!?)

Alternative title would’ve been “can’t get no satisfaction”, which I know I’ve also used not too long ago…  Lunch was supposed to be a dual venting/cope session about our young adult children - it’s no joke that my son & J’s daughter suffered severe harm during our tumultuous divorce & custody battles. I think that’s why Z is “settling for less” in his marriage (desperate not to fail) while A talks about having “closure” with her ex-boyfriend who strangled her, beat their dogs & threatened to kill them all (he was convicted of felony assault, did a token amount of jail time & is now out in the free world again). While I don’t think the answer lies completely with J’s solution to push her out into the dating world, A does need to know there are some decent men out there…

Running short on time so I’ll post a link to previous history w/J, & this morning’s thought-provoking essay from "some dude on FB"

Quantum Physics & Fairytales

Ian Callaghan 

5h ·

AT 58, I DO NOT THINK THE FRIGHTENING PART OF AGEING IS DEATH. IT IS DISCOVERING HOW MUCH OF LIFE CAN BE SPENT IN THE WAITING ROOM WITHOUT ANYBODY EVER CALLING YOUR FUCKING NAME.

A Gen X discussion this week asked when people first felt “the shift”.

One line stayed with me:

The clock had been running the whole time.

That is it.

Not a sudden terror of grey hair. Not buying a motorbike and trousers with an optimistic waist measurement. Not waking up one morning desperate to climb a mountain, find yourself or start using the word “journey” while gazing meaningfully across a lake.

It is the quieter recognition that time was not paused during all those years spent earning, fixing, carrying, recovering and telling yourself the real part would begin once the current load eased.

We were not waiting to start life.

That was life.

Another discussion described modern life as one long string of putting out fires.

Work problem. Family problem. Money problem. Health problem. Roof problem. Car problem. Phone problem. A password problem created by a security system designed to protect the account you can no longer fucking enter.

There is always something demanding attention, and most of it arrives pretending to be urgent.

You deal with Monday so you can reach Friday. You get through this month because next month should be quieter. You delay the walk, the visit, the phone call, the trip, the book and the thing you have wanted to learn until life becomes more manageable.

Then another fire starts.

Put enough fires in a row and they become a life.

I understand load. I have carried enough of it, created some of it and occasionally tried to extinguish it with things that were quietly pouring petrol around the edges.

There were years when almost everything became maintenance. Keep working. Keep earning. Keep the plates spinning. Keep functioning well enough that nobody asked the question I did not want to answer.

When my own system finally broke, it was not because one enormous thing had landed on me. It was the accumulated weight of grief, isolation, unstable work, debt, poor sleep, alcohol, shame and the constant effort required to appear as though I was still managing it.

That is what load does. It rarely announces itself with a brass band and a formal declaration that you are now overwhelmed. It occupies the available space, one reasonable demand at a time, until survival has pushed everything else out of the room.

What I no longer believe is that life will eventually clear a polite space and invite us to begin.

There is no administrative end point at which every bill is settled, every relationship repaired, the body works perfectly, the house is finished, the inbox is empty and nobody needs anything from you.

Nobody is coming through the door with a clipboard to announce that you have successfully completed your responsibilities and may now start enjoying yourself.

If you wait for zero load, you will die with a beautifully organised list of reasons you never went.

That does not mean abandoning your responsibilities to “follow your joy” because a man beside an infinity pool has explained abundance while somebody else cleans his fucking kitchen.

Somebody still has to feed the dog, answer the letter, book the appointment, check the bank account and put the bins out.

The mortgage company remains stubbornly resistant to positive affirmations.

It means refusing to let maintenance occupy the entire map.

We have been trained to treat living as something we earn after completing everything else. Rest comes after the work. Enjoyment comes after the jobs. Connection comes after the emails. The thing that matters comes after the thing that shouts loudest.

Except the jobs breed overnight, the emails reproduce when nobody is looking and there is always another administrative bastard waiting behind the one you have just defeated.

You cannot complete life’s maintenance.

You can only decide how much territory you are prepared to surrender to it.

An hour outdoors is not a failed expedition because you did not summit anything or post a photograph from the top.

Cooking something properly is not wasted time because it did not become content, generate income or demonstrate personal growth.

Calling somebody is not less important than clearing another notification.

Learning, walking, laughing, cooking, making something, sitting with someone you love and occasionally doing something for no defensible reason whatsoever are not rewards issued after life has been completed.

They are the fucking life.

The cruel trick is that the things we postpone are often the things that would have helped us carry the load in the first place.

We remove movement because we are busy. We sacrifice sleep because there are jobs to finish. We stop seeing people because we do not feel like good company. We eat whatever is quickest because we are exhausted. We abandon curiosity because it cannot justify its place on the spreadsheet.

Then we wonder why the system feels increasingly brittle.

This is not an argument for pretending consequences do not exist. Some people are carrying brutal loads with very little choice about the matter. Money, caring responsibilities, illness, grief and survival cannot be solved by booking a pottery class and purchasing a motivational water bottle.

But even under real pressure, the question remains:

Has the load taken everything, or is there still one part of your life that belongs to you?

Not eventually.

Not when work calms down.

Not when the children need less.

Not when the body is different, the bank balance is healthier or the house finally looks like the one in your head.

Now.

At 58, I am not interested in pretending the clock is not running.

I am interested in no longer helping it rob me.

I have postponed enough of my life in the belief that there would be a cleaner, easier and more appropriate time to live it. Experience suggests that time is a fictional administrative department with no staff and a telephone nobody answers.

So I will deal with the fires that need dealing with.

I will carry what is mine to carry.

But I will not spend the rest of my life sitting obediently in the waiting room, clutching a numbered ticket while the clock keeps moving and nobody calls my fucking name.

What have you postponed for long enough?

Name one thing you refuse to push into another year