May 22, 2013
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Old Pictures and No New News
I found this among my neglected photo files.
I have an obscure fascination with cows, which I believe I’ve been boring about before. I like cows. Grazing. In fields surrounded by secure fencing. I have no particular fondness for cows in any shared spaces. These cows live in Alabama between Haleyville and Russellville. It was hot. They were cooling their bellies. This is as far into a discussion of cow water as I choose to go.
Today I am putting off cleaning carpet because a.) I cleaned carpet yesterday an something small and black came home, ran outside to dig somewhere, coated her paws with black mud and then trotted (repeatedly) through my still-damp carpetting. This has become something of a habit, between the two of us. I could touch that up, and then I could actually finish the job I started.
I also like goats. (Same conditions.)
I should crop the top off that photograph and probably will. I forgot, just now. These goats live in Haleyville, just around the corner from my Dad.
My father is in his hospital in Florence, right now. He has a UTI. He also has a brain tumor, but the doctors seem to feel it’s fairly irrelevant. Perhaps we all have them and just don’t notice them. My mother noticed hers, which is why when I appraised my siblings of his health, I tried to go carefully. DON’T PANIC! EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL, BUT… He was having difficulty walking, which could stem from any number of problems. He had a stroke several years ago that affected one side of his body more than the other. Now he has this benign little tumor the size of a quarter (I have no idea how they know it’s ‘benign’ since they’ve only photographed it with a MRI, but…it’s not the problem.) He has some heart problems. He has some residual stroke damage. He has replacement valves in his heart with expired warranties. He has prostate cancer. He is 87. His penalty for going to the hospital and bothering everyone is a sentence of re-newed physical therapy to work on his walking, since the diagnosis seems to be…you have to do it.
Like everything else, the more you do it the better you are.
I wish the very best of luck to whatever bright-eyed optomistic physical therapist gets to deliver that message to my Dad because…he’s not going to like it.
I don’t like it much myself.
This is Allie Upside Down. She was a toddler here. She’s..give or take, six now. She’s a girly girl. My grandmother would have loved her: if you put all three of her grandchildren into a blender and ran it for an hour, you wouldn’t have as much attention to fashion and accessories as she could have had with Allie. She’s a little dress-up doll.
I have reunited with Flickr. I have a page, myownfineself49093 where I have posted a hodge-podge of photographs (76: one was there from 2008, and the rest I loaded yesterday.)
It is so damp today it’s hard to tell if it’s raining or just hanging in the air. Great day to clean carpets. (On the other side of that argument, it’s a great deal to baste in the barn-smell of a shared life with animals, which the steam cleaner temporarily removes.)
I have no great insights into the world today.
And very soon it will be time to make lunch.
