The Great Llama Escape!

Posted on December 28, 2024 by Kelsey

I got a message today that the llamas were in the neighbor’s back yard, a downhill slant from where the main part is, and basically unkempt, like ours is. It is a difficult piece of land to maintain, as I can attest. But anyway, my llamas were in their little pasture area. She was friendly about it, said the llamas had been there a week. I really wish she would have told me sooner. She said she has tried to shoo them back herself, but they approach her, and she is uncomfortable with that. I totally get that. People hear scary stories about llamas, and I am sure that their behavior depends on how they are looked after. Either way, it is not the neighbor’s responsibility to worry about that at all.

I went to call the llamas, and they did not come. I got the tractor and loaded some hay into it, and they did not come. So, I finally went down the fence line to where they were and crossed over to the neighbor’s field and followed the llamas back up till they were through the gate and home. Then I closed the gate, using the repaired wire I had put on to catch the gate with. So the llamas are returned and the gate fixed temporarily. I also alerted the neighbor of that fact, and let her know she had used Messenger, which is the best way to get hold of me should she have further problems.

Her opening gambit was hoping we are having a good holiday season. I didn’t address that. We are not. We are among a few families having troubles this year. Ours are not as bad as some. But they are not good, either. I am scared and hurt to see Missus hurting and going through what she is. We will be changing how we live, and things will end up reduced after, forever. There is no way around it. We will lose so much, and I don’t even care, so long as Missus is looked after and can recover.

I am putting in an application for work at the school district the girls attend school at. I am going to apply for the role of bus driver. It does not pay a lot. But it does pay some, and hopefully will allow me to keep up with some bills. It should also allow time to still try to get my own business up and running. We still want to make something of our little place, even if it is only a little. Have not given up yet!

I am a wus. I will admit that. I have learned something about what a person feels when the one they have chosen is suffering. When she is at peril, I think it is a pretty awful thing. And I hate it. I know that nobody could ever replace her. I don’t need the opportunity to find out. And I suppose that all this drama is unnecessary on my part. It is a generally recoverable situation! It sure kills to see her in the state she is in, though. It sure hurts to feel helpless. It sure is a lot worse than the llamas being out.

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Christmas 2024

Posted on December 26, 2024 by Kelsey

Well, another Christmas Day has just come to a close. The kids were home with their wives and kids, and we all had a good time together. The new little babies were there to give me an appreciation of the passing of time, and the changing of life. Missus was there despite life making a serious effort to prevent her. Our two daughters were there, holding on to our last vestiges of youth. It was a poor Christmas, and the gift exchange was smaller than ever. But it was a rich Christmas, with all there, and all the joy they have brought. Time was in a crunch for all, and I know that we finished some of our wrapping only moments before the presents were unwrapped in the late morning.

There is not a lot to share in many ways, but in the way of the great conversations and the time just being with everyone, that was the best of it all. I got to spend plenty of time with the babies, and I think I best find more balance in the future. These new little babies are sure wonderful! So, it is hard to ignore them, especially as they are so small, and growing so fast. I hate to miss a moment.

My right thumb hurts due to a split on it that feels like a knife stab, and my knuckles are raw on the same hand, so I won’t carry on any longer. I really look forward to laying my head down and drifting well into sleepy land. There is meant to be a storm in the morning. I would be excited, but the weather is not cooperating with keeping the snow, and it will be gone to mud before long. Warm night and Happy New Year!

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Christmas Eve, Eve

Posted on December 24, 2024 by Kelsey

Tonight, we had a knock on the door and when we opened it, there was my wife’s nurse from down at the General Practitioner’s Office, with her husband behind her, and a Christmas Dinner filling both of their arms! We were smackgobbed! She had said she would do it, but to actually look up our address and deliver was so much more than the kind of thoughtfulness one comes to expect. She carried through and delivered. And we had all but forgotten about it. It was no small affair, either! There was plenty on their plates to feed our family. We accepted in a stunned state. I hope that we showed its due gratitude, though I don’t know how we could have. It is such a bright spot after what’s not been the greatest December for us.

Another knock came at the door later, and there stood Roger Stewart, calling me by name, though I could not quite recall who he was at that moment, but I did casually ask. He had a bag of caramel popcorn for us and asked after us. I realize he may have been sent by the people at the Church. Usually, we get invitations to Easter and Christmas, and occasional Ward parties. I cannot answer those, for I cannot be made to believe in their beliefs. But I am happy to accept friendship from any, as long as they can accept that. Roger was fine, and kept it on that level, and I welcome his visit. I am a bit saddened though, as it has been many years that we have lived here, and there have been so few visits from any around here. We have always felt like the outcasts. And I am saddened that I suspect ulterior motives. Keeping it secular will be just fine. And he did, and I am so thankful for his kind stop!

Then I got a text wishing a Merry Christmas from my kid’s school bus driver. I cannot say enough about how amazing the guy is. He was worried about us and how we are doing with mother on the mend. What a great guy! I cannot say so much about him, as he is a genuinely great guy, and I think that it’s best kept private the kindness he has shown my family, as he would never do what he does to show off, but just to be a decent man.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. This year it has come up so fast. It was beyond our capacity to prepare for it. So, we will hobble through it and do the best we can. The early December trip to the hospital, and through nine days of it, has led to a long recovery period here at home. I am to the point where I cannot stay at home anymore. To support us financially, I will need to go to work. I will need to leave Missus here, and I am not comfortable with that. She is still frail. But I will need to reconcile hospital bills and daily expenses, somehow. My earning potential is not half what hers is, even if I were to work two jobs full time. What a lark! But it is my time to shine! However dimly.

I’ll get word out right after Christmas.

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Christmas Flu

Posted on December 23, 2024 by Kelsey

Feeling sickly at Christmastime, again. I am pretty sure we did this last year. Yesterday I woke up feeling like death warmed over. I eventually stumbled down the stairs, and found one of my daughters lay across the sofa, feeling much the same. Two of us down with the flu! Missus lay there recovering from her infection that sent her to the hospital early this month. My other daughter was making some food for everyone to eat and coughing those deep horrible coughs that send crowds of people running. She was the hero of the hour, even though the cough betrayed her as feeling worse than she really was. Thankfully I was able to hold down a few sausages and then go lay back down. When I came down again, I felt like the truck had hit me. It was like that yesterday. There was no joy. There was hardly any movement till afternoon, when I did feel well enough to do some dishes and catch up that ever-growing pile of mess next to the kitchen sink.

Around 7:30 the girls and I started watching A Christmas Story. It has been a couple of years since we have watched it, so it was wonderful to see it again, and remember the nostalgia of the time it was set in, and the time when I watched it as a kid. Obviously, I am too young to remember the time it was set in, but I am familiar with history, and what came before me.

When it finished, I was good and ready for bed. I hate this part, when I am ready to try to move on from being ill and hoping it will pass rather than land back on me. Woke up again at 1AM. I am feeling the residual still. Garrison Keillor is playing on the bedside tablet with The News from Lake Woebegone. A few of the channels on YouTube play edits with music in it, but there are one or two that just have the News only. One of the musical numbers woke me up and sent me down to the loo. It feels warm and dry here in the house. It’s barely cold enough outside to have a fire going in the woodstove right now. Christmastime does not feel like Christmastime. It is too warm, and there is no snow stuck to the ground. Not like I would have expected there to be considering the winter solstice has already passed. The warmth does not feel great alongside the flu.

Time to try to go back to sleep. Maybe tomorrow will feel better.

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On Becoming Old

Posted on December 21, 2024 by Kelsey

The kids are a growing, Missus has been ill, and I have noted a couple of horrible crashes along the highway that we travel on to get out of our neck of the wilderness that has taken more than one life in the stretch of a mile or two and left others in the balance. Death feels like it is hovering close to the place in which I live. It is a heavy feeling. Little ones have come to us recently in the form of grandchildren, and I cannot help but worry for their future, and for the hope of their lives ahead to be long, and happy. It is a deeper place in me where the knowledge is kept that is mindful that with the good comes the bad, with life comes death, and with pleasure comes pain.

Pile on top of this, I have come to a point in life where I need to go to work somewhere, doing a regular job, and supporting my family. I have no particular specialty. But I need to find something to do, and to spend my time away from the darlings I most treasure my time with. This is hard. It is difficult as hell. I value the time I have with these people, and with my wife. There is not a sum of money that equals this value. But there is a necessary sum. So, what am I to do? I am trying to thing where I should apply to spend my time. Where can I go to apply myself?

These feelings are harsh, and depressing. They are heavy. They sure don’t combine well. But here they are, nonetheless. I feel as though I have been hollowed out, and my insides are spread on the ground in front of me, exposed and raw, and somehow, I am still in the shell, looking at it all with confusion, and vulnerability. This is me, becoming an old man.

There is nothing I can do to control what happens in life. I can only ride this great piece of dust in the eternal sea of vast nothingness that comprises the majority of our universe. It’s as though we could ourselves remain unfound among the gunk on a slide under a microscope, just a broad universe hidden among a billion more next to trillions more under a cell among thousands in a sample, unfindable, unnoticeable, and unscalable. In this, I learn to enjoy the moments, to feel the little blisses, and to be a part of something so small as my life hidden among the mass of it all. Where in all the greatness of it all, I am happy to be able to enjoy my little piece and make this little joy among what conspires against my every hope for it. It’s not just contradictory, but my hope is in contradicting it.

So it is here, I say goodnight. Happy contradictions.

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Not-So-Social Media

Posted on December 13, 2024 by Kelsey

I have been thumbing down through Facebook for a couple of weeks now. I changed my profile picture, and got some likes, and felt the dopamine hit that comes from that. As I scroll, I have found that there are so many feeds suggested that are just stupid shit. ‘Shania Twain wore a dress and fans were disgusted.’ Paraphrasing, and hating even bringing it up as an example, because I have more respect for Shania Twain than that. Secondly, this is Supermarket checkout stand gossip rag quality material. It is low and stupid. It has been despicable since the National Enquirer and the like published stories about things like Lizard Aliens meeting with the President, or there is a face on Mars, and it is Satan’s, and it appears to be talking. They got hold of the weak-minded idiots in this country with that crap, and demonstrated to the likes of Rupert Murdoch that there is an audience for absolute garbage, as long as it is put in an authentic looking wrapper, and sold as truth. Zuckerberg must be so proud selling his soul down the same river of filth in the name of easy money. I remember when Facebook was “social media.” Social? I think not. The friends are just there to add another layer of motivation among the ads and the honey-scented bullshit that piles onto a user while they waste their lives away, scrolling, and following the rabbit trails that lead to nowhere substantive.

This is not my intellectual assessment of what I have done with the last few weeks of scrolling. It is just an opinionated summary of it. Trouble is, I need to get word out that I have services on offer here from a home-based business. It is a fairly inexpensive means to do a little of that, but it is not an effective one, especially as Facebook does not put business posts in front of people, and I am not even sure the ones it does are people I even know. I keep my social page, and my business page, and when I have put my post on both, I got almost no engagement at all on the business page, but plenty of opportunities to “boost post.” The personal post got a normal amount of interaction as I think I could expect compared to something like, say, updating my profile picture and receiving likes and comments. Facebook demands I pay to play on my business page and barely shows me to my friends on my social page, best I can tell.

Well, if I want to be ignored and only paid attention to by Russian bots, then I have this page for that. And my other webpages. I pay for those myself. I can post what I like. I get no interference from ads and from other rubbish, such as gossip or outright lies that the user has to filter through in order to see what matters. I have always prided myself on maintaining an ad-free environment on all of my webpages. I have also prided myself on honesty. I may not share everything openly here as privacy is my prerogative. But what I do put is the truth to me, and I try to operate a good BS filter in life, dismissing the gossipy horse manure, and brushing aside the stupid conspiratorial-end-of-the-world garbage that seems to get people reading from wasted paper and poorly used electricity. We have something so astonishingly sophisticated as computers all networked together to form a global machine and use it to read that a dead singer is not really dead, but has been sensibly abducted by aliens, who apparently have the same awesome desire to misappropriate their highest technological accomplishments as we do! Be buggered. That sounds just like human inventiveness to me!

So, if anyone is interested in something like, having a log sawn to boards, or buying some candles, or commissioning some photography, I have opportunities for that. My wife can help with artistic creations. Together we have many ways to help others that we are interested in sharing. No scrolling, no filtering. Just us.

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Christmas

Posted on December 13, 2024 by Kelsey

A Christmas Tree on a Quonset Hut.

In the mornings I take the kids to meet their school bus. The drive is seven miles each wat, s o I need to make it worth it. I bring along the camera some mornings and afternoons. But not always. Lately, as Christmas is approaching, there are a fair few houses with lights on for the holiday. But it is this one, with a simple tree all by itself in the middle of nowhere, that I really appreciate. It is very simple, and it is country as can be. I would like to get a better photo than this one, but for now it will do. It gives the idea.

It is hard to believe it is almost mid-December with almost no snow still. There might be some coming this weekend. Would that make a better photo? It may. I will watch for it. But I know how this composition works out. Clouds facing over the horizon like this are not as rare as one would think. I’d bet they come up like it once a week or so. Christmas will be upon us very soon. Then we just wait out the year for the New One. It’s almost 2025. I will keep working on my photos and see what I can offer for sale. So watch this space.

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The Mid-December of 2024

Posted on December 11, 2024 by Kelsey

While we are still on a pause, things around the house are going along. I admit that days like today I didn’t feel like doing much. I did some, but I did not feel like much. I did get some rubbish out and I have emptied a mouse trap, and I am sure I did some other things, too. I, uh, ate? Yeah, I ate.

So, there is a lot of nothing unusual going on around here. I have sold a couple of goats a few days back, and now I am seeing pictures of one of them showing up in the neighborhood group and people asking whose it is. Well, it WAS mine. But no more. It’s the same goat, Ivy, that has come back here and broke into our pen to live with the other goats. Mind you, none of them break out. But this one somehow came back in. I think that the posting was made after we returned the goat to her owner.

Staying on my diet is a little more difficult than it has been. Not going to lie, there has been stress, and I think that is a big part of it. I also am experimenting with carbs, and seeing what I can expect on a return to normal. I have a problem. Well, like for example, I had a Marie Calendar’s chicken pot pie for supper tonight. It was awful. I thought I was craving the pie crust, and it tasted a bit like the box it came in, instead of a nice pastry. I have been off them carbs long enough to really get disgusted by the taste of them. There are a few things that do still taste normal to me, but that was not one of them!

Speaking of stress, my hands have been playing up on me again. The skin is splitting apart in various places along my fingers. It’s all the normal thing.

Speaking of splitting. I will need to split some more wood before too long. We definitely do not have enough firewood split for winter! (That’s the second time in three paragraphs I have emphasized the word not. Third.) I have some pretty dry logs though, and I should be okay. I need to figure out why my chainsaw chain keeps dulling out on me. It seems to be doing it without cause, and I need it to cut the logs down to rounds. Easy after that. Well, that’s easy, too, if I can sort it out.

Right. There is a bit of yammering for the books. There is more to come, but not yet.

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Oompa Loompa’s In Our Life

Posted on December 8, 2024 by Kelsey

So this has been the worst week imaginable. Missus has had a serious health event, and we have had some scariness going on here at the old Peasant’s Manor Farm. A lot of what has happened is beyond what I would want to share on an online journal. But it has consumed time and resources and prevented me from keeping up with the ‘other’ things in life. Right now, my focus has been getting the kids to and from school, and making sure Missus is getting the care she needs. I also have been managing communications with people who care about her. Well, the ones who show it, anyway. I am not bothering with the ones who cannot keep up with her when things are good. Why?

So we have done some tidying up around the house, and kept the animals fed here. Kept the home fires burning, as it were. There is more work to do. But it really has been a matter of slowing the pace and doing what we can when we can while keeping the priorities up front. At some point, most everybody knows how it is.

Funny how something like this focuses the mind on what a person needs to do, not just for the day, but for after the event. I want to make some furniture but never seem to get around to it. I feel more determined right now to get at it, to set some goals and work on them. I see in my mind some things I need to change. I think I have a better path forward pictured in my head. Funny enough, I want to do some photography too. So, there is a route forming in my mind for that, too. Do the scary things make the mind more efficient at such thinking? It’s also a good refiner of thinking just to realize that one, obstacles aren’t really important, and can just be ignored, and two, that the priorities in life are about what we create. That creation obviously includes the relationships with people. But that need to leave a legacy, I think. To make a life mean something more than itself. To plant the tree others can shade under.

Well, I am lay here. I have caught up with others, my wife, her sister in the UK, a couple of others who dropped messages overnight. I have finally figured out something to write here to indicate that this has happened, and to journal it. I want to go see Missus today, as ever. The poor kid is lay there alone, and I hate the thought of it. I will be interested in seeing how she recovers and how she refocuses. I am also eager to see my kids this morning. Their little sweet hearts need tending to, and assuring that things will be okay, and that this break in the routine is only temporary, and that we will be using it to improve what we are doing, and not to let it get us down.

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What Men Live By

Posted on December 2, 2024 by Kelsey

By Leo Tolstoy

Well, if you are religious, then this little fable ought to appeal to right to you. It is an awful tale of a man going to town to collect his debts then buy a sheep’s skin to replace his and his wife’s long worn out winter coat. Collecting only 20 Kopecs, the man drinks that away and then finds a naked man freezing in the street on his way home. He was unsure of what kind of man he could be, but after a couple of false starts, he finally went to the man and gave some of his clothes to him and brought him home.

His wife was of course sure that he brought a vagrant home after drinking away the money, and she was very angry, but eventually, after a lot of telling her husband off, she decided to take pity on the man brought home, and fed him. The dweller of the house told the visitor the next morning that he is welcome to stay, but he would have to work. Over the course of six years the visitor worked well for his host, was very serious, and became well renowned for his craftsmanship.

A rich man came to get boots made from expensive German leather and threatened that they be right or he would bring misery. The visitor, Michael, took the job, and proceeded to make slippers for the rich man. It put an awful fright in the man whose house is stayed and worked at, Simon, because of the threats from the rich man. But before boots could be collected, the next day the rich man’s servant came and asked he have burial slippers made instead.

After six years had gone by, twin girls were brought to the house and shoes requested for them. Michael seemed to know them, and finally when Simon came to understand why, it was because Michael was an Angel who was fallen and sent to learn what Men live by. That was Love. He explained he was sent to take the spirit of the girls’ mother, but he could not because she wanted to keep them safe until they stood. He was sent back to take her after taking pity on her, and she died and rolled on one of the girls. The neighbor took them in, and when she tried to nurse them, she was reluctant to nurse the limp one, but did eventually, and they both lived. So, Michael saw the acts of love in the neighbor nursing and raising the children, in Simon and his wife taking him in, and that mankind may plan for a year but do not know if they will live for a day.

The story is a little more nuanced than I have put it, as it is longer than I have reported on it. But as I said, it is very much about an Angel not doing God’s bidding and killing a mother of newborns, then getting pissed and tossing him out to live six years among men to learn what they live on, only to take him back after he saw more death, and hunger, and poverty, and understand that when the boss says go leave two newborns parentless, then get at it. I am sure it means to convey a good message, but I don’t think it entirely does. Like much of scripture it teaches that man must have morals as taught them by a cruel and selfish being that rules absolutely from the skies. I don’t buy into it. But that’s me. I’d rather think that kindness is from within a person, that his wife need not be portrayed as angry and so unwilling to know what her husband has to say while he is portrayed the innocent victim of her apparently natural vile, and that there need be no all-seeing-eye looking down on us from above, and casting us out for the smallest infraction. Certainly, I don’t think there is anything moral about killing the mother of newborns, which I will add here, was in the same week their father was crushed to death by a tree. There is nothing moral about dumping your employees out naked in the cold for not performing the required hit on a woman. And there is nothing moral about poverty at all. So, the whole story fails, in that respect. But it is a Russian tale about life in a village, so it is probably from that viewpoint, right on the mark.

Over-all I did not like the story. The writing, however, especially as compared to Fyodor Dostoevsky, was much more pleasant and flowed better. The story was snappier and moved along at a pleasant clip. I certainly enjoyed Tolstoy’s style much better. I was on from one event to another before I had the chance to form a yawn. But perhaps I am still biased by the awful childishness of White Nights. What’s certain is I look forward to further reading, and will perhaps make another attempt at War and Peace now that I’m older and giving real effort to a bit of reading in the classics.

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