August 8, 2023

I had a friend ask me the other day why I had not posted any of my writings to my BLOG page in nearly a year.

The answer is pretty simple….I have not written anything meaningful to me in quite some time.

The more meaningful question to me is WHY???

I have pondered this for some time myself….I am still not sure of all the reasons…It is certainly not a lack of time.  I waste more time daily now than I have ever wasted in my life. 

One of the factors is the lack of inspiration.  Usually, whenever I scribbled anything with any value it was because some person or event had inspired me to chronicle something.  Most of my inspiration lately is absent.  I was never one to have an abundance of close friends.  It is funny that today I had lunch with some folks and some of them mentioned high school reunions and trying to match the faces they saw with those in their memory  I would not have that problem as there were only a few memorable to me in the first place.  But those will live on in my mind forever.  I have never been to a high school reunion.  But I keep in touch with some old friends.  Lately too many of   those I considered close, are watching from above.

I feel my own mortality a little more every day….I lost another cousin just a couple of weeks ago.  Mom, Dad, Aunts and Uncles all gone and Cousins who are all younger than me are now slipping away.  I am not going to try to list the non relatives who I felt close to who are no longer here.  Those who know me well will know who some of those folks are.

Life events of the past couple of years have taken a  toll as well.  2021 was the year of surgeries…four of them….but I am still here and kicking.

Then there was the barn fire…Lost the barn, the hay in the barn, the tractor, the cattle facilities, and had to ship out the few cattle I had that day as I could not feed or care for them due to the losses.  Hurt me some to watch what was left of 35 years of developing my herd step on a trailer and leave here.

Then came the balance issues.  I fell off of my good horse Condi three times….let me be clear….she did nothing wrong….I just plain fell off…once while she was standing still.  She just stood there looking down at me….some other horses would have stomped me to death as twice I fell directly under her.

I went to several Doctors and finally if was discovered that the balance nerve in my left ear was dead…apparently my right ear had been compensating for decades but the passage of time had eroded that ability to compensate.  I was walking with a walking  stick part of the time and still falling off of my own feet.  I am learning to pay attention to what I am doing a little better and have not fallen in a couple of weeks….but I can not climb a ladder

The consensus was that I should never get on a horse again because while my falls had not resulted in injury, it was just a matter of time.   I decided that I needed to find my equines a better home and the one joy in my life is that they all ended up in better circumstances than they were in here.  Another arrow to my soul.

So I ended up with 12 acres of grass to cut.  I was fusing about cutting grass consuming my life and a friend suggested that he bring me some grass cutters…he did and there are now 8 red angus heifers here busily cutting grass….and it gives me something to do.   Okay one of them is black….but she is a granddaughter of one of my cows and she has red relatives.

Picture of the K girls.

I tried for a while to keep a log of daily activities….but it became so boring that I abandoned it.  I am trying to walk regularly…the goal is three miles every other day but doctor appointments keep messing up my schedule….tomorrow is the Veterans Administration hearing doctor in Fredericksburg in the middle of the day….so planning to walk Friday.

Trying to walk places that I did not ride.  I walked Washington Lacy Park the other day on trails that Condi and Dixie and Perkins use to carry me over and I was mentally watching the trails between equine ears.  Decided I need to walk somewhere else.  Going to Forest Hill Park Friday morning…never been there….

It has been somewhat cathartic writing this.   Perhaps it will begin to break down some of the walls I have built around myself….I have to begin to think about what I need to write in The 74^th Orbit around the Sun.

I dont know why the photo posted twice and the site has changed enough that I no longer know how to delete the repeat….will work on it for next time…