Reflections on the Eighth Week of Summer – “Country Scenes Blue Ribbon Dreams”

 

    Excitement radiating from their faces, giggling children milled around the goat tent Thursday. As if feeding on the children’s vibes, three kid goats circled and butted heads in a corner pen.

   Older goats stuck their heads through slats and begged, with their soft oval eyes, for pets. Does with full utters scrambled their front hooves up pen walls to remind owners it was past time for milking.

    But owners didn’t milk the goats. Thirty minutes remained before the Kid’s Goat Milking Competition at the Cochranton Community Fair.

    With her spiral notebook and ball point pen, a thirteen-year-old 4-H’er approached each child. “Are you milking a goat?”

    Two goat owners, a hefty fifty-something man and a wiry white-haired man, carried a milking stand, a platform with movable slats in a frame on one end to secure a goat’s head over a feed bucket. The older man cried Ouch, dropped his end, and grabbed his right elbow.

    People in the tent gasped.

    “My elbow acts funny at times,” he said rubbing the offending joint.

    Another goat owner lifted the dropped end. “Let me carry your side while that elbow calms down.”

    Recorder 4-H’er took the list of milkers to her mom. Bending their heads over the list, Mom said, “Match the children by ages.”

    Recorder drew lines, and Mom called, “Who has a doe ready to milk? We need at least two.”

    “I have one.”

    “Darn. I should have taken the kids out of the pen. They already drank the milk.”

    “I’ve got three ready.”

    At 7:00 p.m. a black doe and a brown doe stood on the milking stands with their heads secured in the slats as if locked in pillories. Distracted by the grains in their food bucket, the does munched. Children and parents gathered in a semi-circle. Hefty Handler and Wiry Handler stepped beside the goats.

    “I guess we’re ready,” Hefty said and turned to Recorder. “Who’s first on the list.”

    Before she could answer, a blond wearing sun glasses, silver hoop earrings, and purple nail polish burst through the crowd. Ms. Blond pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “Where’s the milking competition?”

   “Right here,” Hefty said.

    “How do we sign up?”

    Hefty stretched his arm toward Recorder. “Give us the child’s name and age.”

    “I have six.” Ms. Blond listed names and ages.

    Recorder scribbled.

    Mom pointed directions to redraw lines on the page.

    The competition started with the two youngest children. Ms. Blond’s four-year-old daughter stood by the black goat with Wiry for her coach.

    A five-year-old boy approached the brown goat.

    Hefty gave him a wide smile. “Have you ever milked a goat before?”

    With arms tight against his sides, the boy shook his head and the top of his body.

    “Well, grab here—” Hefty put his hand on the utter a quarter inch above the teat.

    “—pinch to close off the milk—” He squeezed.

    “—and pull down.” Milk squirted into a shot glass. “You try.”

    The boy slowly reached for the teat and squeezed. No milk.

    “You’ve got to pinch like you're making a shape with a balloon.”

    The boy squeezed again. Still no milk.

    After five minutes, Hefty put his hand over the boy’s hand, and milk squirted. “Great,” Hefty said. He squeezed a half inch of milk into the glass. “This will give you a start.”

    Since both children had squirted milk at least once, Recorder quietly said, “Go ahead,” and touched her phone screen to start the timer.

    Whether the children heard or not, they kept pulling.

Ms. Blond and the little boy’s father coached along with the goat handlers.

    Thirty seconds later the timer rang, and the handlers held up the shot glasses for all to see. The girl’s half full glass won.

    Older children crouched to reach the utters.

    In the second set the boy with Hefty managed to fill a third of the shot glass. The timer rang. The boy set the shot glass on the platform, stood, and bumped the glass. All the milk emptied onto his jacket.

    His friend yelled, “Now you have a souvenir from the fair.”

    Hefty put his hand on the milker’s shoulder. “Wash your jacket when you get home, or you’ll smell like cheese.”

    Hefty’s third milker also came in second. During the next boy’s turn, Hefty reached in and squeezed the teat five times which filled the shot glass.

    The timer rang.

    The milking girl beamed while Wiry held her three-quarters full shot glass.

    Hefty hoisted the full glass, and Wiry groaned.

    The girl frowned and slumped away.

    The boy’s family cheered as if he’d finished a marathon, but he stared at the ground.

    “It doesn’t matter,” Hefty said to Wiry. “They all get the same prize. It’s just for fun.”

    Twice more Hefty filled the glass for silent children.

In the last round with thirteen-year-old girls, Hefty’s milker filled her shot glass half way before he reached in and squeezed.

    “Hey.” She turned her scowling face to him. “I was doing that.” To the crowd she yelled, “He cheated.”

    Ms. Blond slapped her thigh and snickered.

    The crowd laughed.

    Hefty laughed too. “It’s just for fun.”

    Recorder called names of participants, and one by one silent children with lusterless faces accepted blue ribbons.

    Just for fun.

Reflections on the Seventh Week of Summer – Giving George Fluids

   Early Monday afternoon, I walked down the driveway past my son Charlie’s red car, stepped into the log house, and yelled, “I’m home.”

    The refrigerator hummed, the cats’ water fountain gurgled, but neither Charlie nor the cats answered.

    Puzzled, I dropped my wet swim gear on the bathroom floor and tiptoed to the guest room.

    Charlie, who usually crashed at his Seneca apartment after working 3:00-10:00 a.m. for UPS, lay motionless on the bed. The cats, George and Emma, yawned at me from curled poses on the floor.

    Charlie had driven to Wells Wood to help with George’s subcutaneous fluids. I’d rejected the idea of waking two hours early so that my husband Spence could hold George for me before leaving for a day in Columbus, Ohio.

    I stepped toward the bed. “Are you in pain?”

    Charlie turned bleary eyes toward me.

    Slipping into concerned mother mode, questions cascaded from my mouth. “Was work horrible? Were folks mean to you?”

    “Work went fine. I’m just tired.”

    Tired? He looked zoom-to-the-emergency-room exhausted.

    “Do you want to give George his fluids now so you can sleep?”

    “Eat your lunch.” He murmured and lay his arm over his eyes.

    I scolded myself for fussing at a forty-three year old man, rinsed my swim gear, and made a salmon salad sandwich.

    George meowed at my feet.

    I dropped a piece of fish.

    George gobbled the fish, meowed, and gazed at me with pleading green eyes.

    I put the place mat with pink salmon specks on the floor and sat with my lunch tray in an Adirondack chair.

    Snores floated down the hall.

    An hour and a half later, Charlie ambled into the great room.

    I hung the bag of Lactated Ringer’s Injection fluid from the track light affixed to the twelve by six inch white pine beam supporting the loft bridge.

    Charlie bent and scooped sleeping George off the blanket by the sliding glass door.

    Careful not to prick my finger with a sharp tip again, I screwed a sterile needle onto the end of the plastic tubing.

    Wrapping George in muscular, bare arms, Charlie carried the cat across the room and gently set him on the kitchen table.

    Charlie’s fingers massaged George’s head while I pulled the loose skin on George’s back into a fold and jabbed in the needle.

    George merrowed and licked my hand.

    I opened the clamps on the plastic tubing.

    Fluid flowed.

    Charlie massaged.

    George relaxed.

    Standing on the chair to monitor the fluid level, I envisioned Charlie as a nine year old walking away from me to the radiation room in Mount Sinai Hospital. Had Charlie’s tender handling grown out of his extended hospitalizations and prolonged cancer treatments?

    I shut the clamps, eased the needle out, and pinched George’s skin tight to close the hole.

    George didn’t complain. With a Quasimodo hump of water on his back, he gobbled soft chicken-flavored cat treats.

    Flashing me a weak smile, Charlie sat in the other Adirondack chair with a bag of chips and bowl of salsa. He munched, and we chatted about point of view in Dorothy L. Sayers’s Whose Body until he yawned and ambled back to the guest room.

    Ten minutes later he carried Emma out to the great room. Standing by the sofa, he scratched her neck.

    She flicked the end of her tail.

    Scratch. Flick. Scratch. Flick. Scratch. Flick.

    “You’re too nice to Emma.”

    “No I”m not. I’m evicting her from my bed.”

    I giggled.

    He set Emma on the sofa.

    She crossed her front legs.

    Charlie walked down the hall and closed the guest room door.

    Sunshine poured through the sliding glass door.

    The mattress groaned.

    Emma purred.

    Despite the closed door, snores floated down the hall again.

   I smiled at images of Charlie cuddling cats, helping me with George’s life-prolonging fluid treatments, and engaging me with conversation. Thank goodness he moved to Western Pennsylvania.

Reflections on the Sixth Week of Summer – A Long Wet Mile

    After writing “Do something special to celebrate yourself” in hundreds of birthday cards to friends and relatives, I planned something special for my own sixty-ninth. I could swim a mile.

    I’d been contemplating swimming a mile for two years and eight months–ever since I walked into the Meadville YMCA pool for the first time and read the sign painted in black on the white tile wall.

88 lengths = 1 mile

I swam four lengths before the Deep Water Fitness class that first day and told myself I could work up to swimming a mile . . . maybe.

    Stroke by stroke and length by length over two long years, I’d finally reached three quarters of a mile. Since January, I only slipped back to a half mile once–the day my fingertips touched the deep end wall, and I turned exuberantly to backstroke another length. A wave of dizziness crashed through my head. Vertigo. I grabbed the wall until the swirling pool slowed and the band of pressure encircling my head eased. I stopped at a half mile that day so I wouldn’t vomit in the water.

    Never, after any of the other eighty-three swims in 2017, did I leave the pool saying, “I could have swum another twenty-two lengths.” Was I stuck at three-quarters mile?

    Marathon runners don’t practice the whole distance before a race. Maybe I’d built enough stamina to swim longer. Testing myself would be something special for my birthday Monday.

    But between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. Monday morning, quarter inch red spots woke me for the second night in a row. Were spiders feasting on me during the night? No webs hung near the bed, but I sprinkled diatomaceous earth in the narrow gap between the box spring and wall. I didn’t mind smothering the spots in Cortizone cream for a week, but losing sleep over the rash was unacceptable. I fought the urge to gouge the itchy monsters out with a dandelion weeder and called for an appointment with Cynthia, the physician assistant at Sheakleyville Health Center.

    “Could you make it at eleven?” the receptionist said.

    Eleven? How long could it take to look at spots? I’d still have time to swim if the appointment took twenty minutes or less.

    “Thanks. I’ll be there.”

    Long black hair falling onto her white doctor coat, Cynthia studied the red spots on my arms and neck for less than a minute. “Have you been outside recently?”

    Lots–photographing roof walkers, cutting ferns and garden phlox for flower pounding, harvesting blueberries and purple beans.

    “Yes.”

    “You’re reacting to something in nature. It’s similar to a poison ivy reaction. I’ll have the nurse give you a steroid shot. Call me if you’re not better by the end of the week.”

    Cynthia also listened to my breathing, gave instructions for mixing an oatmeal bath to relieve the itching, and responded to my lap swimming plan. “That’s great. Chlorine helps itching.”

    Ten minutes with Cynthia. But I didn’t just see Cynthia.

    I had to check in, sign the copay credit card receipt, slip out of my shoes to step on the scale, take yoga breaths through vital sign checks, revise my medicine and vitamin list with a nurse who two-finger typed, relax my deltoids for the steroid shot, and stand in line to check out. The four person line didn’t move.

    If I waited, I wouldn’t have time to swim.

    The nurse had said, “You’re free to go,” after she put a bandage on my upper arm, so I stepped out of line, jogged to the car, and zoomed north on Route 19.

    I reached the pool at 12:15. Not great. Only forty-five minutes left of the two hour lap swim. My husband Spence’s admonition, “expectation is disappointment,” floated through my mind when I dove under the lane rope to position myself for breaststroke. I needed fifty minutes to swim the sixty-six lengths for three fourths of a mile. I pulled my arms in an arc, frog kicked, and blew out air. Bubbles drifted up. My goal of swimming a mile sunk.

    Tuesday, still in birthday celebrating mode, I arrived at the pool at 11:12. Only two men arrived earlier–Mike, the Mennonite who swims side stroke without kicking to strengthen his shoulders after surgery, and Brad, an asthmatic who swims to make breathing more comfortable and has a bucket list of pools where he plans to swim.

    I walked behind them through the middle section to the end lane.

    To keep track of the lengths, I chanted. Beginning of beginning. I kicked and stroked the first eight lengths–two breaststroke, two sidestroke, two more breaststroke, and two backstroke.

    Panting, I switched the chant. Middle of beginning. Mob. I swam and visualized mobs at political rallies, fashion shows, sandy beaches, and pastry shops. Every muscle in my shoulders, arms, and legs complained.

    Would I make three quarters of a mile?

    Habit propelled me. I pulled and kicked for another set of eight.

    Brad left and walked directly to the men’s locker room. Good–he didn’t need his inhaler after swimming today.

    I took his lane in the middle and pushed my feet against the wall for the “end of beginning” set of eight. With only two of us in the pool, I didn’t hold my elbows against my side and backstroke with my forearms to avoid poking passing swimmers. I spread my arms wide and zipped through the water. My breathing slowed. My muscles eased.

    When I finished “middle of middle,” forty lengths, Mike climbed the steps, picked up his duffel bag, and walked to the men’s locker room door.

    I had the pool to myself.

    Chanting “end of middle,” I slipped through the silky cool water for another eight lengths.

    Swimming a mile would be easier without waves from other swimmers.

    But vertigo could attack. Your knee could swell and ache.

    Alice and Jackie arrived. Alice, who’s recovering from heart surgery and swims with her legs two feet lower than her arms, took the end lane. Jackie, a diabetic who usually swims a mile and a half a day, sat on a noodle in the first lane and gently swung the foot she’d injured last week.

    I chanted “beginning of end” for the seventh set of eight, rolled with the swells, and did some math. After I finished my regular sixty-six lengths, I’d only need six more for five sixths of a mile. That, combined with the two thirds I’d swum Monday, would average out to three quarters of a mile each day. If I swam twenty-two more lengths, I’d make a mile.

    And you’d be too tired to drive home.

    Jackie chatted with the life guard, Alice swam freestyle, and I pushed through “middle of end” and “end of end” to finish nine sets of eight for the five sixths of a mile.

    I stood in the shallow end after that seventy-second length. Though my heart pounded, I breathed normally and nothing ached. Without checking to see if my knee had swollen, I pushed my feet against the wall, pulled my arms in an arc, and frog kicked. I could always stop at seventy-seven lengths for seven eighths of a mile.

    Pull. Kick. Breathe. “Tenth set of eight.”

    Pull. Kick. Breathe. “Eleventh set of eight.”

    I MADE IT!

    I held onto the wall at the shallow end of the pool, glanced at the clock, and reached my left then right leg back for stretches.

    Jackie swung her feet, the lifeguard chatted with Jackie, and Alice swam as if nothing special had happened,

    I stretched my right arm across my upper chest and called to Jackie. “I did it.”

    Jackie turned to me. “What did you do?”

    “I swam a mile. For the first time.”

    “Good for you.” Jackie beamed. “That’s great.”

    “It took me an hour and ten minutes.”

    “You made good time,” Jackie said. “It takes me an hour to swim a mile.”

    “Well done,” the life guard said, “That’s almost as fast as I swim. I come in at just under an hour.”

    From behind me Alice called, “Congratulations.”

    Smiling from ear to ear, I climbed the steps to the locker room.

    Getting ready for Deep Water Fitness class, women undressed by the benches.

    “I did it,” I told the other Janet that swims at the YMCA. “I swam a mile today.”

    She stopped with her sock half way off. “Did balloons rise up into the air?”

    Chest filled with the air from those rising balloons, I drove home and told Spence.

    “That’s fine,” he said. “But don’t do it again for awhile. You might hurt yourself.”

 

Reflections on the Fifth Week of Summer – Roof Walkers

 

    Wednesday a crew of five men from Energy Independent Solutions arrived wearing neon green t-shirts with “Harvest the Sun^TM” logos.

    I walked down the ramp toward them wondering if I could take photos and ask questions while they worked.

    A thin six foot man stepped away from the group at the truck and extended his hand. “Hello, I’m Richard.” His voice had a lyrical African accent. A smile crinkled his dark skin.

    I shook his hand and returned his smile. “I’m Janet.”

    Before I could ask a question he said, “Nice to meet you, Janet. Do you have any dogs?”

    “No. We have two cats.”

    “That’s fine then, Janet. Do you have a bathroom we may use?”

    I took him inside through the sliding glass door, led him around our cat George sleeping on the great room floor, and showed Richard the upstairs bathroom.

    “My you have a lovely house.”

    We walked downstairs to the basement bathroom complete with a worm factory in the shower stall. Then I showed him how to get back outside through the basement door.

    “This is perfect. We can use this one. Now, Janet, may we move your flower pots so that we can put the ladders on the deck?”

    “Yes,” and before he could ask another question, I got one in myself. “How can you work on a forty-five degree angle roof?”

    As if reciting a practiced report, he said, “We’ll put two short ladders on the deck and two long ladders on the grass.” His hands drew parallel lines upward. “Between each pair we mount bridges.” His hands moved horizontally. “From the bridge we install the first rail. Then we stand on the rail to mount the next and so on up the roof.” He placed one hand over the other repeatedly until his arms stretched straight.

    Throughout the day, I heard footsteps overhead, the brrrrrrrzzzzzaat of drills attaching clips to metal roof ridges, and, once, the squeak of the basement screen door. Did the other four men use jars in their trucks?

    Thursday, lugging my swim gear out of the garage, I met Terry, the site supervisor, walking down West Creek Road. His long thin arms swung by his sides and his shoulder length hair, with a pony tail drawn only from the sides of his face, swayed.

    I reached into the mailbox for letters. “Were you going for a walk?”

    “No, I was watering a tree.” 

    Okay. No truck jars.

    While we walked back to the house, I said, “The weather forecast called for thunderstorms at 3:00 today.”

    Terry’s brow scrunched. “I hadn’t heard. We’ll watch the sky.”

    After lunch I took my camera outside.

    Terry turned a solar panel on its side to pull off plastic packing corners and tape holding the connecting wires. He carried each unpacked panel, which weighed about thirty pounds according to one of the dozens of answers Terry gave me, up the ramp. Shifting his hands down the sides of the panel, he hoisted it over his head.

    On the roof, one of the men crouched, grabbed the top of the panel, and pulled up. Then he turned the panel around, held it over his head, and lowered the panel into the rack.

    Amazed that they didn’t drop the panel, I clicked pictures till raindrops hit my head. I lowered the camera and turned to Terry. “You won’t work through the storm, will you?”

    “No. It’s not safe.” He called to his crew. “Secure everything up there so you can come down.”

    Fifteen minutes later, rain pounded the roof. Except for Scott, the crew retreated to the two EIS trucks. In soaked clothing, Scott, who’d climbed down last, sat in a wicker chair on the porch. The shortest in the crew and the only one with glasses, he stared at his phone.

    After my husband Spence held George so I could give him his daily subcutaneous fluids, Spence joined Scott on the porch.

    I followed.

    “May we join you?” Spence said.

    Scott grinned. “Yes. I was only reading the latest from Mueller.”

    Spence sat on the love seat. “We were giving George IV fluids for his kidney failure.”

   I sat beside Spence. “With the lump of water on his back, George looks like the character from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Quasimodo isn’t it?”

    “Quasimodo is correct,” Scott said and glanced at the rain pounding on the fir trees. “I hope it’s raining in Pittsburgh so I won’t have to water my lawn when I get home.”

    I stepped inside, checked the radar map on my computer, and returned in time to hear Scott say, “I trained as an architect. I like to work in 3-D.”

    “Pittsburgh isn’t getting any rain,” I said.

    Scott flashed a sad smile.

    Before the fellas continued their discussion I said, “Will you be able to go back on the roof after the rain?”

   “It’s safe when the roof is wet. We don’t slide down—” he moved his phone from over his shoulders to his lap “—just slip a bit.”

    “You mean sideways on the rails and metal bridge?”

    He nodded. “That’s not a safety problem.”

    Friday, I ran out and in with my camera a dozen times hoping to catch the crew installing the last row of solar panels. How would they work on the edge?

    Finally, Scott said, “We’re going to put the last row up now.”

    I stood on the grass, pointed my camera upward, and waited. A deer fly bit me once. Mosquitoes bit twice.

    Wiley, the heftiest guy on the crew, had the job of hoisting panels to the men on the roof. He pointed at our wire cages topped with white cover cloth. “What are those bushes?

    “Blueberries.” I clicked a picture of Scott setting the top panel. “The cages keep the birds away.”

    “My grandmother has a field of red raspberries.”

    “Does she make jam and pies?”

    “She makes jam that comes out more like syrup.”

    Jake, the quietest member of the crew if you don’t count the music he played softly on his phone, motioned to Wiley for a panel.

    Wiley missed the gesture because he faced me. “It’s great on pancakes.”

    I motioned to Jake. “I think they want another panel.”

    After Wiley hoisted the panel, I asked, “How many installation crews does ESI have?”

Wiley paused before answering. “Two, but the other crew only does ground installations. The heavier guys don’t work on roofs.”

    To install the last panel, the crew took down the bridges, and Scott stood on the top of a short ladder. “Can you put counter pressure on the ladder, Wiley? It’s crushing the gutter making it give way. I want to fix the gutter before I lean into it.”

    Wiley pushed against the ladder.

    Scott drilled in screws.

    The drill slipped from his hand. Leaning and balancing on one foot, he caught the drill before it fell on Wiley’s head. “Be sure to get a photo if I drop the drill on Wiley,” he called to me. “We’ll need the picture for worker’s comp.”

    After an hour, Scott lay on the empty one foot edge of roof and reached under the panels to make the final connections.

    Five red, five black, and one green wire, each sixty feet long, hung off the roof. Jake rolled them into a coil a foot and a half in diameter and set it on the ramp.

    “We can’t close the ramp gate with the coil there. George will wonder off,” I said. “Could we move the wires somewhere else till the electricians arrive?”

    Jake hung the coil on the butt end of a house log. “The electricians will be here in about two weeks.”

    “Will they have to drill a hole in the foundation?”

    “Yes,” Jake grabbed wire cutters and a drill off the deck. “The work to connect the wires to the basement panel will take two or three days.”

    When the crew ambled toward the trucks, I called, “Thank you. You did a great job. I enjoyed watching you work.

    Jake lagged behind. He touched the brim of his baseball cap. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”

    During the three day installation, the crew responded with a million answers to the two concerns I had walking down the ramp Wednesday morning. All five had become more like neighbors than contractors.