A pep talk to myself

 I've lived here for 14 winters. I know how to deal with inclement weather.

There's plenty of food, firewood, hay, wine.

I've got this.

I keep repeating these thoughts to myself so I won't fret about the next storm,

which is on schedule for later today.

 Then my mind wanders 10 years forward, when I'm 74

and shoveling paths on a 7-degree morning. Will I be able to handle it then?

I have no idea, and getting anxious about it serves no useful purpose.

 So I circle back to the beginning and remind myself, "I've got this."

Alex: Yes, you do.

Alex: Now put some more wood in the stove so I can warm up my butt.

Puddle-jumping with Alex

I take Alex on three walks a day. No. Matter. What.

It's the easiest way I've found to drain the puppy energy out of her tank.

Our first walk of the day happens around 6:30, after breakfast and barn chores.

Smooch comes with us for the 1.5-mile trek, which is brisk enough 

to wear out Alex for most of the morning.

Around noon, Alex and I head out for a power walk:

westward across the ranch to the end of the back 40, as fast as our legs will take us.

That's good enough to tire her out for most of the afternoon.

Then just before dark, Smooch, Alex and I take a leasurely mile stroll,

to make sure a certain puppy is good and tired before she goes to bed.

Want to lose a pound a week? Get a puppy and walk her three times a day.

She sits like this all the time. How weird is that?

Just when I think her ears will remain fabulously floppy forever...

 

...she warns me that they might one day stand up and stay that way.

Or not.

A walk around the ranch post-apocalypse

There was a storm here Wednesday evening. It lasted about 30 minutes.

The power went out and stayed out for 22 hours because the electric company couldn't 

get into the area until Thursday morning, as the arroyos were running too fast and deep.

I shot this video as the rain was tapering off. It's very long (6 minutes) and I won't be offended

if you don't watch it, but I want to have the whole thing available for reference

so I'll know where to dig more ditches before the next big one.

I didn't describe the sandless sandbags very well. They're filled with something similar

to the stuff that's in disposable diapers, and they do work, despite how flat they appear in the video.

Here's a link to them if you're curious.

If I had the energy, I'd reshoot the same walk now, 24 hours later,

because you won't believe me when I tell you all the water is gone 

and the ground is dry in all but the low spots. 

Life in the desert southwest. 

Always an adventure.

p.s. JCC is just fine. The rain happened so fast, he didn't have time to get to the barn
and took shelter under a bush instead. Let's hope he learned his lesson.

The sound of music

It's been so long since we've heard rain on the roof, I had to record it. 

One never knows when we might hear it again.

A good time for extra time

I took this picture of Smooch on Sunday, when, 

like almost every day since early October, the sun was shining,

the temperature was freakishly warm and winter was nowhere in sight. 

What a good time to have all this extra time, some of which I've spent

binge-listening to the podcast "Dirty John." Described by the producers as
"a true story about seduction, deception, forgiveness, denial, and ultimately, survival,"

I highly recommend it, and I won't be searching any online dating sites in my spare time. 

Have you seen the previews for the movie "12 Strong"? It comes out on Friday.
 It's based on the book "Horse Soldiers," which tells the now unclassified story of
a team of CIA paramilitary officers and U.S. Special Forces sent to Afghanistan
to help take down the Taliban in the days following the September 11 attacks.
War stories and movies generally aren't my thing, but when I learned that horses
were involved, of course I had to get the audiobook, which meant Smooch and I 
walked alot of extra miles over the weekend because I couldn't stop listening to it.
The book gets two thumbs up from me.
👍👍

As for the movie, I'll wait for it to be released on Netflix. I don't do theaters.
Most of it was filmed right here in Socorro County, New Mexico,
 which apparently is a body double for Afghanistan.
If you see it before I do, let me know if you spot the 7MSN in the background.

 

And on the 96th day, it finally rained...

and then it snowed a little, then it rained again, and then the sun came out.

***

I've heard from several of you recently that your comments are not showing up.

While Blogger has never played well with certain browsers and devices,

the problem seems to have worsened in the past few weeks.

It may have something to do with an Apple product update, but I don't know for certain.  

Rest assured that while I moderate the comments to protect us all from Russian bots,

I publish all the legitimate ones that appear in my "awaiting moderation" folder.

Some legitimate comments have been showing up in my "spam" folder.

When I mark them as "not spam," they're supposed to go to the "awaiting moderation" folder, 

but they disappear completely instead.

My current workaround is to copy and paste them into the comments section.

Meanwhile, I'll be looking at alternative comment platforms, like Disqus, 

to see if there's a better way.

While I've been gone

 My mind has been and remains a jumbled mess since Lucy's death, 

much like this picture, taken during the middle of one of those once-in-a-hundred year storms

which happened here Friday night. I'll get to that in a minute.

First let me say:

1. Thank you, for every comment you've written and every email you've sent.

I burst into tears just thinking about them

and how you all are always here for me.

2. Our vet concluded from Lucy's necropsy report that she died of kidney failure,

which likely had been coming on for months. Nothing we could have done

in her final weeks would have altered the outcome.

3. George is doing well. His foundered front feet were pain-free for a few weeks,

then it rained and he became sore again, but now he's better again,

and I expect this will be the pattern for awhile until he's fully recovered.

He remains in his pen and is surprisingly calm and content.

As for that hundred-year storm...

It came after three days and 1.75" of rain, which is all but unheard of around here.

 In 30 minutes Friday evening, another inch of rain fell,

plus an inch or so of marble-sized hail, which came down so hard

I was convinced all the windows on the north and west sides 

of the house would break. 

The noise in the barn was too much for Alan to handle.

He chose to stand butt to the storm in the corral for most of it.

I don't know how hard the wind blew because 

the cup things broke and parted ways with the gauge.

The rain and hail overwhelmed the drainage culverts, flooding the corral,

the back porch, the front porch, and just about everything in between.

The barn sits on higher ground, so George and eventually Alan

had a safe, dry place to be.

 The hail stripped the juniper trees of their berries and a lot of their foliage.

I would love to see drone footage of the ranch about now - it would look like

every tree was standing on a bright green carpet.

 

 

The really amazing thing about the hail, though (those pock marks above are the dents it made),

 is that it broke apart every bit of donkey poop in the pasture, then the rain dissolved what was left.

I've got to think the pasture will be better for it in the long run, 

with all that fertilizer so nicely distributed.

The fence is another story. 

See those two black straps holding the connector onto the t-post? 

 The storm broke almost every stinkin' one of them.

The straps had been in place – in the relentless New Mexico sun – for 12 years,

and I suspect they were all suffering from UV fatigue. 

The wind and hail accelerated their demise in one fell swoop.

I had spare parts to fix a hundred or so and temporarily fixed 

the other 1,872 (not a typo) with baling wire until more parts arrive.

So it was a busy weekend, and busy is good.

Keeps my mind out of dark, sad places.

 

 My morning coffee ritual gave me a sign that maybe it was time to try to smile again.

 And then who shows up Sunday morning but Steve

(that's him in the puddle).

He's survived here for 12 years that I know of. 

I'm certain he made his only appearance of 2017 to remind me that

all bad things, bad storms and obstacles in my path can be overcome.

 It just might take a little longer than expected.

Sharknado

Every which way but here

I took these pictures within a minute of each other yesterday. 

It was raining to the east.

It was raining to the south.

Over to the west...more rain.

And to the north, even more rain.

Overhead, blue skies and a few wispy clouds.

Some day it will be our turn.

I prefer productive over pretty

 Yes, the clouds are pretty,

but I wish they'd organize themselves and produce more than .01" of rain at a time.

It's getting crispy out here.

George and Alan escape the rain

A tenth-of-an-inch miracle

I hadn't intended to take the week off from posting pictures, 

but I can't post them if I don't take them.

My camera has sat on the shelf for days because

the relentless heat and dryness has left me uninspired.

Then a tenth-of-an-inch miracle occured last evening...

...and all was right with the world, or at least my little patch of it anyway.

I could see a double rainbow from end to end across the eastern sky,

but no matter how far into the pasture I ran, I couldn't fit it all into one frame.

So hold the picture above in your mind, then scroll down 

and imagine you're looking left to right.

How nice of the ravens to join us.

George's ass is no pot of gold, but it'll do.