Hey friends, how are you on this fine Friday? Here at the Lazy W things are finlly cool and soaking wet. We’re enjoying some lush rainfall and plenty of thunder and lightning. True October weather took so long to arrive, it feels like a gift.
How about a short and sweet Friday 5 update?
ONE, New Neon: Okay, this is not much of a life update, but I am smitten with this weird little new addition to my weird little art collection. Thank you, Handsome!!
TWO, Dad’s Birthday! Dear Ol’ Dad, aka Grandpa Dunaway, aka Joe, completed another trip around the sun!! Local family gathered at a cute German restuarant to celebrate, and boy did we laugh a lot. And eat a lot. And boy did have lots of overlapping conversations, ha! The weather was patio perfection, and we made some solid gold memories. I personally was satisfied to have made my Dad laugh all the way out loud with my gift, ha! Happy 68th, Dad! I cannot imagine life or this world without you.
THREE, Glowy cosmos: I’m just gazing at and soaking up hundreds of details in the landscape as autumn takes hold of the farm. Most plants are dried and dormant already, but the trees are wearing their finery and these cosmos are still glowing. Until about Thursday of this week, the cosmos were still loaded with dozens of enormous Monarch butterflies. I think most of them have moved on now.
FOUR, A Scare with Dusty: Early Wednesday morning, I went outside to check on everyone and found Dusty, the younger of our two horses, acting normally and campaigning for breakfast but covered in blood on the fronts of his hind legs. I also found a startling puddle of blood near his loafing shed, where he and Chanta sleep. It was the most horrifying thing I have ever witnessed here, in all these years, and it took me a moment to discern that none of it was from an open wound. It seemed obvious, I thought, that it was blood in his urine, so the googling and brainstorming had us thinking UTI or toxicity or a blunt physical trauma. We immediately started calling our vet in Shawnee and then a friend’s vet (who we thought was abulatory but was too busy) then spent the next few hours getting our obstinate boy into a halter and then even more hours getting him into a trailer. In sixteen years he has never needed to be trailered, and he was not a fan. It was a stressful and scary day, and all of that fear and worry culminated into the moment we finally saw a vet that afternoon. He examined Dusty, gave him a mild sedative to relax certain boy muscles, and was able to see the problem in that instant. It was a massive tumor that was bleeding profusely. A skin cancer on his boy parts. For a short but excruciating few minutes, the word tumor had me thinking it was going to be a sudden goodbye. With Jessica at work and Jocelyn in Colorado, my grief for them was as profound as my own grief for myself and worry for Dusty. But the vet gave us two hopeful options, one of which let us get Dusty treatment immediately, without multiple trailer traumas. What an emotional rollercoaster! So we left him overnight at the hospital and went home praying and exhuasted. Twenty four hours later, we picked him up and were amazed by how smoothly he loaded back up into the previously hated trailer, carrots and cuddles proving to be effective comfort and bait. Dusty came home happy and healthy, cleaned up and sewn up, and we took a thousand deep breaths of true relief. It is quite a thing to love an animal so much.
FIVE, Currently Reading: A novel by Stephen King to enjoy spooky season. It’s so good. Different from most of his stories, more emotional and thought provoking so far. I already mentioned the Amy Downs memoir, but it’s still on my side table while I work on a proper book review. A brand new book by Richard Rohr, which I am exploring with two of my favorite thinky friends. And a devotional based on writings by Dietrich Bonhoffer. I won’t actually start this until January, and I will start it alongside another daily devotional based on writings by C.S. Lewis. But I just received it from a secondhand Ebay seller. And isn’t the cover beautiful for October?
As always, a million details hover between these headlines, and I have a voluminous journal to prove it. Two messages I have been receiving in different ways are to “Increase my capacity,” “Trust Me,” and then “Manage it myself.” The stories around these messages are a bit messy and private, but gosh you guys… I feel like this is a big moment in my personal history. Okay. Let me know if we want to talk about this more.
What are some headlines in your world this week?
Happy weekend to you!
Just over here writing to live life twice.
XOXO
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