Ranch Life: Burritos and Bulls

Last week was ranch life all the way. Sure other things of note happened, but nothing anyone who wasn’t involved would probably care to hear about.

Last weekend we had a couple of accidents on the ranch. One of our horses got his head stuck between some bars in the paddock and skinned his forehead and chin and one of our donkeys got her leg caught in some barbed wire. Neither injury is life threatening, or really more than an irritant to the animals, but they have needed a bit of medicine applied.

With the horse this was no problem. Stormy is the biggest attention seeker you will ever meet, and something of a bully. He’ll bite, kick, and chase the other horses out of the way to make sure that he’s first in line to get his nose rubbed and be fed a snack. Our horses are really treated more like really big dogs than anything that’s meant to be ridden or worked. So despite feeling out of sorts, he enjoyed the attention and let himself be treated.

The burros, or as my bride has taken to calling them, the burritos, on the other hand are about as opposite from Stormy as you can get. These girls are rescues from the SPCA and were brought in together after they were found wandering up the road together, so swollen they looked like they were pregnant. We don’t know much about their pasts besides that but it’s pretty clear from the way they act that they were abused. This week was an exercise in earning their trust and my bride set forth to the task with gusto.

Now these are not mean animals, just skittish, and highly protective of each other, not to mention our livestock. Just the other week we walked outside one morning to find them chasing off a pack of about 5 coyotes from our cows. These little donkeys are small and don’t have much in the way of natural weaponry but they are tenacious little boogers and incredibly skittish. After many treats and soft words, Candy, the dark furred one, is willing to let us pet her and both her and Rose know their names and will come when called to see if there’s food. They actually had a bit of a standoff with our dogs while this was all going on, both dogs and donkeys were determined to keep my bride safe from the dangerous other animals. Funniest thing ever and so sweet. They got it figured out pretty quick and Candy’s leg is doing MUCH better.

 

Topping that off, yesterday we received a new addition to the ranch. Baldy is a dinosaur masquerading as a cow, specifically a bull. This animal is taller than my bride’s car and weighs in over a ton at 2,500 lbs. He’s here to be a stud, which had me worried at first that he might be hurt one of our smaller girls. I’ve been assured that this really isn’t a concern. Guess they know enough not to be crushed. And apparently he comes from a line of low-birth weights, meaning that he and his dad were born small and grew fast. Wonder what the heck they were feeding him. At any rate, Baldy used to be this woman’s pet, but she had to move and couldn’t take him with her. He’s not exactly domesticated but he’s friendly enough!

I seem to have terrible luck when it comes to poison ivy. You would think that by now I’d be able to spot it and stick clear, but it always gets on me when I’m in the midst of working and I never notice. This is now my third time getting it on me since moving to the ranch, and if nothing else, I’ve at least learned how to get ahead of it early. It turns out I’m highly allergic to the innocuous little plant. I mean sure, everyone breaks out when its foul, serrated leaves rub against the skin, but I REALLY break out. The itching goes through my flesh and down into the bone until it hurts. So much so that thinking becomes a challenge. I can process, albeit slowly, but writing or doing math are more or less impossible.

Scratching temporarily relieves it, but it has to be heavy scratching, and the relief vanishes as soon as I quit. My first time coping with it I accidentally lost some skin I scratched so hard. Needless to say it did not improve my situation and the blisters spread faster and farther. The second time was a little better, though still miserable. I started doing all the tricks I’d learned to help right away. It mitigated things for about a week, by which point the blisters still managed to spread to both legs, both arms, and were creeping up my neck and starting to put in an appearance on my face like especially angry zits. At my mother and fiancé’s insistence, I went to see a doctor and was given prescription steroids and a shot in my buttocks.

It’s interesting to note that the shot itself did not hurt nearly so much as the sensation of the steroid moving inside of me after, forcing itself through my veins. It was like I had been punched and then somebody was pinching the resulting bruise in an effort to spread it out. The steroids were so strong they made my head cloudy and made concentration difficult. Writing and driving should have been among the first things I quit doing, unfortunately I commute to school and had my final short story due for my Creative Writing workshop. Miraculously, I avoided having a wreck. My short story on the other hand was humiliatingly horrible. The term train wreck comes to mind.

I attempted to touch upon a delicate and controversial subject and the result was about as subtle as a sledgehammer and came across as both cruel and creepy. Mercifully, my revision of the work has turned it into a story I can honestly say I’m proud of, if for no other reason than it started out as such an atrocious piece of garbage. Still, the entire process was humiliating.

That time I managed to cover myself in poison ivy while weed eating without proper protection. This, my third time, I can only speculate as to how it got on me. By now I am properly paranoid and so when I set out to paint the fences a few days ago I went out covered from head to toe despite the heat. I could not have been anywhere near poison ivy for more than a few moments, more than that, it somehow got on my arm through my long sleeved shirt. My best guess is that I rubbed up against it and was sweating so much that the oils penetrated through the cloth.

My brother-in-law and I were supposed to head out the next morning to go fishing. This is something of a big deal. He’s a straight up Cajun playing football for the NFL and I am a nerd-tastic city slicker adapting to country life while working on my MFA in creative writing. Night and day have more in common than we do without our family and especially my sister. Both of us are making an effort to bridge the gap, and being the understanding guy that he is, he was all for me going to see the doctor first thing in the morning before we headed out.

The poor man was stuck waiting until one o’clock in the afternoon. The first clinic I went to opened at eight o’clock. I filled out all the paper work and waited for over an hour before they called me to the front desk and told me there had been an emergency and they would not be able to see me that day, could I come back on Monday (it was Saturday). I sincerely hope that whoever had the emergency came out of it okay, but waiting that long really wasn’t an option considering how fast this crap spreads on me. The other clinic was down south of Conroe, about forty five minutes to get to. My morning was long and tedious.

But at least I was early enough that I didn’t need a shot this time! So I’m popping steroid pills, spraying Ivarest on my arm (that stuff is the only topical I’ve had any success with—everything else either fails to stop the itching or spreads the oils around), and shopping for a special type of soap that the doctor said will break down the poison ivy oils should I ever get it on me again. My arm’s itched some, but between all of the precautions I’ve taken, the blisters have gone down and haven’t spread. I think I’ve got it contained! I’m even able to write and edit my novels and will be giving a presentation tonight on crafting characters.

As an aside, my brother-in-law and I did manage to go fishing. Over the course of five hours, we caught, or I should say he caught, a single catfish. I blame the kayakers who kept paddling past us. One guy deliberately ran his kayak into one of the prime fishing spots and splashed around with his paddle. And as if to mock us, the fish that stuck around after that mastered the subtle art of stealing the bait from our hooks. The afternoon was just as long and frustrating as the morning in its own way, but holy cow if this place wasn’t gorgeous. There are a heck of a lot worse ways to spend an afternoon than sipping Dr. Pepper with your brother-in-law on the side of a lake while trying to catch some fish.

I’ll be countrified yet.

First Semester Down!

So that's the first semester of grad school done! My "barndominium" now has fully functioning electricity (had to dig a trench over spring break for the wires), air conditioning, and internet. I even have a working television with more channels than anyone really knows what to do with, let alone me. We have some long horn cows who had a couple of calves while I was up here, added a couple of horses to the mix, and my dog Oberon is finally learning to mind and not go tearing off after the much larger animals. To quote Ferrol Sams, "He's a good boy, he minds well. I just can't think of enough things to tell him not to do." Two of the horses are paints, already mentioned the cows were longhorns, and Oberon...we know he's half Rhodesian ridgeback and now strongly suspect the other half is Newfoundland. 

And it turns out what I thought was easing myself into the program was actually taking double the average workload of my peers, so OOPS! That was a wake up call. A few big things happened this semester....

We had the National Book Awards on campus and I was privileged to meet Tea Obreht and Gene Yang, authors of the novel "The Tiger's Wife" and graphic novels "Boxers" and "Saints," respectively. 

Tea gave a speech about her writing process and was absolutely hilarious in person, I half suspect she was as nervous about us as we were of meeting her. Gene was incredibly cool, we talked everything from Avatar to Star Wars, and I purchased a boxed set of his graphic novels. He was kind enough to autograph both of them. 

I tell you that story to tell you this one. While attending the National Book Awards, I met the terrific individuals hosting the event, all members of Sigma Tau Delta, AKA the International English Honors Society. Guess who's now technically a frat boy? I've even talked to our professorial sponsor and she's asked me to come on as an officer in autumn. 

 

My other piece of big news has very little to do with school. I attended this year's Houston Writers Guild's annual conference. I met so many wonderful people, both new friends and old. Pamela Fagan Hutchins is doing an absolutely AMAZING job with the organization. I attended several great workshops and met with three agents. One of whom has said the work I presented him with failed to resonate with him, the other I have yet to hear back from, but the third...The third I sent the first 25 pages of two separate manuscripts to, then after speaking on the phone for around three hours one afternoon was asked to send in both complete manuscripts and three synopsis for other books. At the risk of being a cliche, I cannot put into words how thrilled I am! I'm only hoping I got them to her soon enough--finals hit me almost as soon as we got off the phone and I now know exactly why my fellow grad students take half as many hours as I did. 

So say a prayer, wish me luck, do whatever superstitious thing you do! As my sports buddies say, it's only weird if it doesn't work. 

And in still other news, this summer semester I'll be working as a TA and come autumn I'll be a tutor at the campus Writing Center! I'll have gainful employment! Am I using to many exclamation points!? Yeah, cutting that out now, but still, very exciting. 

I'm also in the process of revising a novella I wrote for Nanowrimo (arguably a short novel at 50K words) and am about half way through its sequel. The intention is to self-publish the first this summer and the second soon thereafter. Maybe come autumn? I guess it's going to depend on how my submissions go over with Jessica Kirkland, the incredibly nice--insert list of positive actives here--literary agent I met through the HWG. 

Very exciting times right now. It's hard to believe how things have changed from this time last year. 

New Puppy, Meet Oberon!

So in keeping with our frozen theme, today reached a high of seventy five and I thought I was going to have heatstroke. In far more interesting news….

Last weekend I adopted a new companion to keep me company up here from the SPCA. His name is Oberon, nickname “Obe.” He’s 10 months old and 92 lbs and expected to put on a good 10-15 more. I’ve been telling everyone who asks that he’s a “curbstone setter” and getting a number of funny looks or people telling me they’ve never heard of the breed, so I’ll go ahead and say that he’s a mutt.

According to the SPCA he’s got German shepherd in him. According to the vet, he’s got Rhodesian ridgeback (sometimes called African lion hound) in him. According to a random but very sweet lady at the park, he’s got some Afghan hound in him. No idea about the last one, although he does have a long, lean body and silky fur, but the other two are perfectly visible in him. Black German shepherd in his coloring and haunches and ridgeback in his chest, head and the classic “ridge” of fur going in reverse up his spine (no good pictures of it though, I'll see if I can't get another one for the next post that includes him). 

Obe's decided my book bag is his favorite pillow, and curled up with his rawhide bone he's in puppy heaven...and are those my socks? Think he's gonna blast me with those laser eyes if I don't watch myself with his bone. 

He’s smart, sweet, and definitely an alpha dog. Learns things after only a single demonstration and likes to think he’s in charge. My folk’s dogs have spent some time with him and he’s buddied up with their lab, but their cantankerous old terrier-mix, Maggie, tried to push him around, so he laid down on her. We went back into town this weekend and she spent the entire time sulking. Last I heard, she’s still refusing to “speak” to anyone.

Poor baby picked up a bug though, and his nose has been a mucus fountain for the past several days. The vet gave me some antibiotics and I’ve been sneaking them to him in treats. He’s showing good amounts of energy, but he flat lines after he’s had enough, half because of his bug, half because he’s 10 months old and has spent too much time in kennels. He’s loving having so much room to play and explore now though, and I'm glad for the company. 

Frozen Farm

So maybe I jumped the gun a bit when I said I was ready to be posting regularly again.

I feel I’ve got a good handle on my classes, now it’s just my living situation I need to figure out. I’m in the process of moving into the converted barn on the ranch and spending several days a week at it. It’s absolutely gorgeous and something of an adventure, but half the things that make it the latter are causing me no few problems.

There’s limited electricity from the barn itself. What little there is fluctuates so that the lights flicker and dim constantly. We’ve jury rigged an extension cord from the house the main house, where the lady we just closed the deal with is still living, and that works beautifully, but only for so many items. At night I have to pick between having light or charging my computer.

But the biggest issue is the heat. The warmest it’s been since I’ve come up here is maybe fifty, but spends most of its time fluctuating from upper thirties to lower forties. Which wouldn’t be so bad if the barn didn’t somehow manage to get colder than the outside. Stone floors, uninsulated metal roof, fire-stove that can’t properly expel the smoke up through the flu pipe, and a heater that blows out the electricity all combine to keep the interior five degrees colder than outside at any given time. And it rained all day yesterday so no opening windows.

I’m loving it.

Half the time I can’t feel my fingers, which makes writing a huge challenge, but I’m adjusting. As I said earlier this is an adventure and an absolutely gorgeous one at that. Let me walk you through my morning.

• Got up, took the dog for a long walk through the pastures.
• Got back to the barn, ate breakfast, read, planned a little for the day and talked to a friend of mine about a problem they’ve had with their writing.
• Went back out in the pastures, explored, found a log to sit on and wrote in a notebook
• Found the horses and fed them carrots
• Came home, showered, ate lunch, and now on to school work, blogging and more writing.

Life is cold but life is good.