There is an old cattle chute on my in-laws farm.  This old chute was used for many, many years by my father-in-law and my husband.  It has stood firm for probably 50 years.  I have photographed it during every season.  I love the old chute and the road that winds beside it.  The road leads back to the barn and then winds on down to the pond.  We park our camper just a couple hundred feet to the east of the chute so I have seen it in the evening light and the early morning light.  I have photographed it with blistering sun and covered with snow.  I wish that I could show you some of those photos but they were all lost when I sent my computer off to be repaired.  All I have are the photos I have just recently taken.  Here are a few from this fall.

Evening

Evening

Morning

I love things that endure.  Things like love and marriage.  This old chute reminds me that although once useful, all things eventually become old but still remain beautiful.  I hope that I can remember that as I deal with aging parents.  They are getting old and even though they feel like they are useless I want to always treat them as the things of beauty that they are.  They have withstood the test of time, they have worked hard and now they have time to rest.  Lord help me to remember the old cattle chute the next time I get frustrated.

We recently had the pleasure of keeping one of our grandsons for the weekend.  All by himself!  Usually his older sister is with us so he was especially happy to have Nana and Papa all to himself.  He followed Papa all over the place and they fished, loaded the deer feeder, sat in the deer stand and watched for deer and cook burgers for us.   On Saturday we got up early and made pancakes for breakfast and then he decided he wanted to look for treasures.  He found some old metal parts of tractors and other unidentifiable items.  He gathered them all up and told me he was going to make a ferris wheel.  Well, okay……..

Mind you, this boy is just 5.  Looks like he has a pretty good start on that Ferris Wheel.  Then he and his Papa went out into the “forest”  in search of more treasures.  They ran upon what appeared to be the remains of an old vehicle.  Coach thought it was an old Model A.   He remembered it from his childhood.  It was all tangled up with a tree trunk growing right up through what would have been the hood.

You can see the “spine” of the car running across the bottom of the photo.  They started digging in the front end and actually found the engine block.

Then they dug around the back-end and found some old wheels, a hammer mill and even an old cream can.  All these “treasures” have been left in the woods for another visit.  We convinced Kader that these things had been in the woods so long that they needed to stay there.  He reluctantly agreed.  He really wanted to take them all home with him and put them in his toy box.  His mother was glad we convinced him to leave them there.

Then the big man and the little man got a call for help.  Coach’s brother had shot a buck and needed help hauling him out of the plum thickets.  So we loaded up on the 4 wheeler and off we went.  Across the dam, past the pond, and through the pastures and trees.  We found BIL (brother-in-law) huffing and puffing as he pulled and tugged his big buck toward the pickup.  After helping him get the buck to the road our little man decided he needed to check this creature out.  He looked in his eyes, in his ears, under his tail, bottoms of his hooves, and then ran his little hand down his side.  YUCK!  He about freaked out when he pulled back a hand with blood on it.

Then the Big Man let the Little Man hold the deer up just like the guys on TV do.

He helped them gut it and clean it and then told me that he was never going to kill a deer because it is too yucky.  I have a tendency to agree with him.

We finished out the day by doing a little fishing and then grilled some hot dogs and listened to the coyotes howl until we went into bed.  When his parents came to get him the next day he cried because he just wants to live at the farm in the camper and spend all the time finding treasures and fishing.  Sounds like a deal to me.

I love spending time with my grandchildren.  Especially when I can spend one on one time with them.  We don’t get to do that often enough though since we have so many now but every chance I get I want to spend quality time with these precious kids.  I remember my grandmothers and the wonderful times that I got to spend with them.  They taught me about unconditional love and about having patience.  I loved them with all my heart.

I am so thankful that my Big Man aka Coach is so willing to take these little ones and teach them the things that a man needs to know.  I can work with the girls but the boys need his knowledge and his attention.  He teaches them not only about hunting and fishing but also about respect and good manners.  He teaches them to be men of integrity.  I am so thankful that my Big Man loves all three of my Little Men.  Just like he loved our own Little Men and helped them to become the wonderful Big Men that they are today.  Am I a lucky girl or what????

One final photo of my Little Man.  I love this photo because he looks so sweet and  innocent.  Yeah, not his normal pose……

I can’t take credit for this photo because his 13 year old sister took my camera out and took his photo in my yard one day.  She is really good with a camera but that is another post entirely.

Saturday one of our little granddaughters celebrated her 5th birthday.  She told her parents that she wanted a “Dorothy” party.  When they did a little digging they found out that she wanted a “Wizard of Oz” birthday party.  They did a lot of planning and decided to hold the party at a corn maze.  What better place to “follow the yellow brick road” than to wind your way through a corn maze.  I had never been there before but every year around this time you can drive by there and there will be dozens of cars and school buses and hundreds of people wondering around.  Over the years it has grown to include other activities and buildings to hold parties.  Here are a few shots from our delightful evening.

You can see that the corn was pretty tall and we could easily have lost a few kids had we not outnumbered them 2 to 1.  The older siblings had already run off and left us.  These little tikes were having a ball until someone – Masson’s daddy – jumped out of the corn and scared them to death.

This place has to be a virtual money making machine!  There wasn’t much out there that cost too much to build.  The maze, I’m sure, requires planting and watering and then they use a GPS unit on their tractors to carve out the design in the maze.  This is the design they used this year.

Here in Western Oklahoma we don’t have a very colorful autumn.  Oh, we have color but just not a variety.  I took my camera with me today and looked for some reds, yellows, oranges and greens.  What I saw was some browns, almost browns and a few yellows.  Here is a photo of a tree on our main street in our little town.  It is a beautiful tree and probably one of the few in our little town that actually puts on a show for us in the fall.

When I got home I noticed – duh, it was there all the time – a tree in my neighbors yard.  The sun was shining on it just right and it was beautiful!

Wait, what do I see right there on the lower left of that tree………is that some red?  Let’s look a little closer….

It IS red!  I lied…….we do have some red autumn leaves in Western Oklahoma.  Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit.  You’re never too old to learn something new about your neck of the woods.

Several months ago I blogged about getting my flower beds ready for spring planting.  Suddenly it’s fall and I am loving how things have grown and flowered in some of my beds.  The remarkable thing about it is that they have been so neglected for the past 2 1/2 months.  I haven’t been able to trim, weed or work in my beds due to all the surgeries so everything has been left to either thrive or die.  Some of my flowers have bloomed and died but many have been flourishing.  My sweet potato vine that I planted for filler has absolutely gone wild.  It’s grown all through the beds and up onto the porch.  Coach has bundled it up and thrown it back into the beds and onto the yard and yet it continues to grow up and onto the porch.

The sun has returned to Western Oklahoma today so I grabbed my camera this morning and headed out to snap a few shots of my beds.  To see where we started you can look here.  Now for the reveal……………..

A front view of my house:    

Shrubs need trimmed and the trim on the house really need painted.  Maybe I’ll tackle that next spring.

The flower bed by my back patio.  Look at all those strawberry plants behind my little angle statue.  Next year should be a good year for fruit.      

I wish I could figure out a way to hide my air conditioning unit and all that electrical stuff and yet allow access to it in case it needs worked on.  Any suggestions?  The blue pot was full of tomatoes but they have been long gone.  I love this porch in the mornings but in the evening it is generally too hot out here to enjoy.    We have talked about enclosing the porch for years but just never could agree on what we want to do with it.  I would like to put my office in the south end and make the north end a sitting area.  That would require Coach to build me a deck or patio outside for our huge outdoor dining table.  Coach just wants to enclose it and leave the table and swing out there.  I’m thinking “living area”  and he’s thinking “enclosed porch”.  Thus there is a stand off at our house so nothing gets done.

Then we finally get to my favorite part.  I bought this little chair at a garage sale a few years ago and it has been several different colors.  This year I painted it lime green.  Along with my bright yellow bench it really brightens up my front porch.

The sweet potato vine has grown through the chair and through the table legs behind the flower pot.  The leaves are huge and beautiful.  I love the pumpkins and the pink mums.  The mums have kind of been choked out but still managed to stick their little heads up and bloom.  The crab grass flourished too but I did manage to get some of it out before I had to quit working in the beds.

My favorite season is Spring because of the promise of new life but I also LOVE fall and all the colors that it brings.    I hope that each of you are enjoying the beautiful fall colors and having a wonderful weekend!

Remember this ad for Coppertone Suntan Lotion?   

At the time our mothers were being encouraged to slather us down with “suntan lotion” to help protect our delicate skin with a whopping SPF 2 or 4 or something like that.  SPF wasn’t even a measurement at the time.

In the 60’s, any self respecting beach girl wanna-be could be found at the local swimming pool, lake, or lying out in the back yard, glistening in the hot afternoon sun.  We had bought our large bottle of baby oil and mixed some iodine in it (for that summer “glow) and then baked all day in the sun.  Of course we burned our skin, got water blisters on our faces and shoulders, suffered through days of excruiating pain, peeled and then started over.  All in pursuit of that “healthy” summer tan.  Brown was beautiful.  Brown fat looks better than white fat……..UUGGGHHHH!

“Today, we know there’s no such thing as a “healthy” tan. Although advertising once conditioned us to see tanning as attractive, studies have proven that both sunburns and tanning assault the skin’s DNA. As this knowledge has become accepted, so has the importance of high-SPF protection. While low-SPF formulas enhanced tanning, modern broad-spectrum sunscreens with high SPFs are designed to prevent tanning as well as burning. It has been a total revolution in the way sunscreens are used.

The Skin Cancer Foundation led this revolution. The original concept of SPF (which signifies how many times longer it takes for the sun to redden your skin when you’re using a given sun protection product, versus how long it would take to redden without protection) was developed in 1962 by Swiss researcher Franz Greiter. However, it was the late 1970’s when the Foundation’s Photobiology Committee (a panel of experts on the damaging effects of UVR) established strict requirements for sun protection products, calling for (among other things) SPFs of 15+.”  Skin Cancer Foundation

Have you been down the sunscreen aisle lately?  There has to be about a zillion different brands, SPF factors, scents, colors, etc. of sunscreens.  How do you pick the one that is right for you?  I used to look for a high SPF and a low price.  I didn’t care if it smelled good (after all that only attracts bugs) or if it had those little “reflective” additives that give you some fake glow.  I only wanted protection for pennies.  Well, as I have studied sunscreens lately I have found that there is so much more to think about.  Now I plan to take an entire afternoon to browse that aisle reading labels.

What Type of Sunscreen Should I Use?

“The answer depends on how much sun exposure you’re anticipating. In all cases we recommend a broad-spectrum sunscreen offering protection against both UVA and UVB rays.

Many after-shave lotions and moisturizers have a sunscreen (usually SPF 15 or greater) already in them, and this is sufficient for everyday activities with a few minutes here and there in the sun. However, if you work outside or spend a lot of time outdoors, you need stronger, water-resistant, beachwear-type sunscreen that holds together on your skin. The “water resistant” and “very water resistant” types are also good for hot days or while playing sports, because they’re less likely to drip into your eyes. However, these sunscreens may not be as good for everyday wear. They are stickier, don’t go as well with makeup, and need to be reapplied every two hours.

Many of the sunscreens available in the US today combine several different active chemical sunscreen ingredients in order to provide broad-spectrum protection. Usually, at least three active ingredients are called for. These generally include PABA derivatives, salicylates, and/or cinnamates (octylmethoxycinnamate and cinoxate) for UVB absorption; benzophenones (such as oxybenzone and sulisobenzone) for shorter-wavelength UVA protection; and avobenzone (Parsol 1789), ecamsule (Mexoryl^TM), titanium dioxide, or zinc oxide for the remaining UVA spectrum.”  Skin Cancer Foundation

I’ve come to my own conclusion that sunscreens with titanium or zinc base are the healthiest.  They are more natural and have fewer chemicals that can cause free radicals in my body.  This is a personal choice.  Everyone should study and choose what fits their lifestyle.  Whatever you choose, just choose to wear sunscreen.  Get your kids used to the idea that sunscreen is vitally important.  Not only is it safer for them now but when they are 50+ like me, they will be ever so thankful for their healthy, young looking skin!

This past weekend Coach and I took the camper out to our farm.  The farm is about 15 miles north of the town we live in but is a world away from where we spend most of our time.  The farm is his parents homestead and has been in his family since statehood.  It is in a family trust so it actually belongs to his mother until her death.  At that time, each of the four boys will inherit an acreage.  There are two tracts of land that are owned jointly by the four boys since their oldest brothers death.  It is on this part of the land that we have run electricity, dug a water well, put in a septic tank and poured a concrete slab for our camper.  We, Coach & I, have got it all in bermuda grass and we work hard all summer keeping it mowed, fertilized and weed-free.  Only one other brother, the youngest one, even comes to the farm.  He and Coach take care of everything out there.  Don’t get me started on that or it will be another post entirely.

Friday night we went to the football homecoming and then one of our grandson’s, Kader, went with us to the farm.  He spent the night with us and we all got up Saturday morning and hit the fishing pond.  We fished for a couple of hours and then went back to the camper for some breakfast.  Then Kader and I rode the 4-wheeler for a while and hunted for arrowheads on the Indian Hill.  This is just a patch of ground that my father-in-law always kept bladed off so that he could hunt for Indian artifacts.  Over the 93 years he lived on the farm he had found some amazing things.  In the 32 years I have been in the family I have found a few arrowheads, some grinding stones and one scraper.  The grandkids absolutely love going out there and “hunting”.  They pick up every rock they see and exclaim over their finds.  It is a source of great enjoyment for all of us to just walk that hill and look.  Well, on saturday Kader and I were walking around looking when he suddenly yelled for me to come see what he had found.  I looked and he was pointing to the ground.  Upon closer inspection I saw that he was pointing to some deer tracks.  When I asked him what they were he remarked “They are camel tracks, of course.”  Camel tracks……I looked a little closer and they kind of look like a very small version of a camel track.

Deer                                                   Camel

Now I see why he would get confused, don’t you?  But I had to assure him that there are no camels running around loose on our farm.

He then decided that since the likelihood of us seeing a camel was pretty slim then we should go explore the old farm house.  My in-laws lived in this old house for most of the 59 years they were married.  I used to love to go there because it reminded me of my grandparents farm house.  They moved to town in 1988 and the house has been vacant since then, with the exception of a few “treasures” my mother-in-law left behind.  By treasures I mean there are closets full of junk, old clothes and rats. Yikes!  We used to go out there and just rummage through stuff but last summer my husband and brother -in-law found a huge snake skin shed in there and that was enough for me to decide that I didn’t want to go into the house again.  The rats were bad enough but being surprised by a snake was just not going to happen.  This spring my brother-in-law told Coach that he saw a huge snake crawling under the door going into the house.  Now NO ONE will go into the house.
I told Kader about the snake and told him we just couldn’t go into the old house anymore.  We looked in the barns and the old grain bins though.  He found a couple of old beer bottles and some baling twine that he thought were neat and he loaded the back of the 4-wheeler up with old metal parts and tricycle wheels he found.  He was in hog heaven.  Then he asked about the old storm cellar.   Out here in tornado country every farm had a storm cellar that also served as a cellar to put your canned goods in.   My grandparents even had a bed down in their cellar so they could just go down there and sleep if the weather looked bad.  I played in their cellar a lot because I was too dump to think about snakes and rats they used their cellar often for storage and there weren’t any critters down there.  The last time I was in this particular cellar was about 20 years ago and it creeped me out then.  I told him we wouldn’t go down there but I would open the door and let him look down there.  This is what the cellar looks like.

An old dirt hole with some concrete walls poured in.  The door is wood frame with corrugated metal on top.  These old doors also had a counter weight to help hold the door open when you went down there.  I told Kader to stand back so he wouldn’t fall in and I reached down and pulled the door up about waist high on me.  I was looking down the steps to see if there were any critters on the steps when suddenly Kader screamed at the top of his lungs.  I looked at his face and he was looking at the under side of the door I was holding. Just as I turned to look at the door a HUGE snake fell off one of the wood  cross braces of the door.  It fell into the cellar onto the steps and proceeded to wiggle up the steps.  I found my voice and screamed bloody murder and jumped backwards right in front of Coach who was mowing the yard.  Kader had already made it the 30 feet to the 4-wheeler (in about 3 huge steps) and was climbing up on the 4-wheeler.  I guess my eyes were huge because Coach stopped the mower and asked what was wrong.  When I was able to say snake he laughed and asked why I was not shutting the cellar door on him.  I finally got my wits back and shut the cellar door and as far as I am concerned I will NEVER, EVER open that door again.  I don’t care if a tornado is barreling down on me, I will not ever go down those steps.  Besides I think the walls have collapsed down there and it wouldn’t be safe anyway.

After that little adventure I didn’t have any trouble getting Kader to watch where he was stepping and playing and I certainly didn’t go venturing out into the weeds.   ~~~~~shiver~~~~~~~ Those kinds of things can just spoil your whole adventure.

Now I am trying to get Coach to consider one of those new little cellars – I think they call them storm shelters these days – to put next to the concrete slab next to the camper.  Other than the well house there is nowhere to escape a storm when we are out there.  The well house is underground and is concrete with a concrete top but only big enough for two people to stand up in.  I’ve never seen much more than some spiders in it.   I think we really need a shelter.   Maybe just a little one that you dig a hole and drop the metal or concrete box into.  They have nice steps and doors that will keep out the critters.

Although this one resembles my dumpster out in my ally, I think it would do nicely.  Except that the stairs seem to be on the outside of the shelter….what the heck is that all about?  It’s made of fiberglass.  We could use it for a boat if the flood waters got up and washed it out of the ground.  As long as it is snake proof I’m good.  Oh well, all in all the weekend was a really good one – sans the snake – and I am ready to go back.  I wish we could afford to buy out the others and have that farm for ourselves.  I would build a little house on  it and stay there most of the time.  Ahhhhh..dreams!

It has now been exactly 52 days since all this started.  Some days it seems like 6 months and some days it seems like only yesterday.  I think this is the way any healing process goes.  If you are having a good day then the time is flying but on those days where you don’t want to get out of bed then the time just D R A G S by.  Yesterday my friend Kim and I went to OKC for my doctors visit.  OKC is about 120 miles from my house so we had about 2 hours each way to really talk about everything.  Since we haven’t been together for this whole time, except for one visit and about a dozen phone calls, we had a lot to talk about.  I’ll cover that in another post.

When I got to Dr. Wayne’s office, the waiting room was full!  I’ve never seen more than maybe three people in there at one time so I knew that he must have had an emergency or something and was a little behind.  I actually got in fairly quickly and his nurse started to work on me.  She removed all of my sutures.  That’s not my favorite part as it hurts due to the tenderness of the skin around the sutures.  It was over soon and Doc came in to look at his handy work.  He explained that there was still some swelling and that he thought it all looked really good for all I have been through.  He was pleased and therefore I was pleased.  He then explained that they would put some skin glue on the suture lines and place some flesh colored tape on them.  This is to help the scars to lay flat.  In four or five days the tape will come off and my life goes back to normal.  Whatever normal is…..

Here is what my nose looks like today.

Notice I am trying to smile since MLS thinks my previous pictures look like some kind of mug shots.

The tape hides the scars right now so it almost looks like I don’t have any.  The swelling in my nose and face should  subside over the next couple of weeks and over the next three months even the scars should fade.  He reinforced that I have to stay out of the sun and be very careful to not get my nose burned as the scars will absorb the pigment and make them darker.  I have already bought a big floppy brimmed hat to wear outside and I have bought some sunscreen recommended by brochures in his office.  Coach and I are going to be diligent in our use of sun screen from now on.

I only have one other treatment, well maybe two, that must be completed before I am finished.  Remember the hair on my nose?  I go back to Dr. Wayne’s office in 6 weeks to have them use a laser to get rid of all of it.  It may take a couple of treatments but it will prevent the hair from growing back.  Right now I am shaving the tip of my nose about once a week.  Coach is quick to tell me when he thinks I need to take care of it.  (This coming from the man that has to be practically held down to get rid of the inch long hairs growing out of his nose…..)

My next visit with Dr. Wayne will probably be my last and that will be in 3 months.  He assures me that by then I will be looking fantastic.  He is such a positive person.

What a trip this has been.  I know that as I look back on this past month or so that I have been through the valley.  Now I can see the sun shining again and can actually look toward the future with more hope.  This hasn’t been an easy journey.  There were times when I wanted to pray and yet I was so drained that I couldn’t even utter a prayer.  I know that God always knows what is in my heart and I know that He knew my needs at all times.  I can’t imagine going through an ordeal like this without the assurance that someone who is always faithful is interceeding for me.  Also knowing that many friends and family members are constantly lifting me up in prayer made it easier for me to rest and heal.

I’ve always known that I am a vain person.  As far back as I can remember I have been very concerned with my appearance.  I always wanted to have the right clothes, a good hair style, good makeup,  perfect skin, etc. etc.  My appearance took front and center in my life for way too long.  I am slowly realizing, due more to my age than this one incident, that what we look like on the outside is not nearly as important as who we are on the inside.  If we all spent as much time working on the inside as we do the outside then this world would be a much better place for our children and grandchildren.  I also learned that the people who truly love you will love you no matter what you look like.  The sweetest times have been when my grandchildren would gently touch my face and tell me they loved me.  No amount of physical beauty is better than unconditional love.

Well, the hard part is over for now.  The rest of the journey will be up to my body.  I know I need to eat right and give my body the nutrition that it needs to heal.  This has spurred me to take a closer look at my diet.  (Need to get more antioxidants in this body.)  Healing has begun both inside and out.  Thanks for sharing this journey with me and for your prayers, thoughts, hugs and love.

This isn’t the last you will hear about this but it looks like my nose won’t be the center of my attention for much longer.  I need to get back to work and I have lots of plans for the end of this year.  MLS and I really need to go to Canton to the biggest flea market in the world, Christmas presents need to be bought, my laundry room needs painting, Thanksgiving is just around the corner and many, many other things to look forward to.  I can’t do any of those things stuck here in my house.

Wish me luck!  I’m ready to hit the ground running but think I need to start with a stroll.

I am thinking positive today.  Yesterday was the LAST surgery.  Last, final, as in no more…….   It wasn’t nearly as bad as the one I just recovered from though.  Probably because they didn’t stretch, pull, cut and realign quite as much.  Thank you, God!  I can’t say that I look a lot better but I can see where we are going with all this now.  Dr. Wayne (cutie patootie that he is) is so positive and reassuring about all of this that you just can’t help catching some of his enthusiasm.  Yesterday before the surgery he came into the holding area and kept asking me why I wasn’t smiling and happy about what we were getting ready to do.  Well…..could have been because I was nervous or maybe because the previous surgery was so painful and I wasn’t looking forward to more pain or it could have been because those frown lines down the corners of my mouth are what I would like to have fixed IF I ever went to a Plastic Surgeon on a voluntary basis.  Take your pick, Doc.  During our conversation he asked me what I had been doing with the last three weeks and Coach popped up and said “She has stayed on the computer all the time.”  He asked me if I had been blogging about my experience and I said I had.  We talked about it a little and he handed me a paper and asked me to write down my blog address.  Oops!  I was a little hesitant because I wasn’t sure I wanted him to see everything on my blog but I knew I hadn’t written anything bad about him.  Well, maybe I wrote that he looked like he was too young to know what he was doing but that’s about all.  I gave it to him thinking he probably was just being nice.  Coach told me that after the surgery he told him that while he was waiting for the surgery suite to get ready he went online and looked at my blog.  He said it was “nice”, “interesting”.  What does that mean?  Boring…..informative…..????  Well, I will get the chance to ask him when I go back next week to get my sutures out.

Now for the part I know you have all been waiting for………….ta da……the reveal….

What……..you were expecting something else?  Well, considering I had something similar to a trunk growing out of my forehead before, I think this is much better.  Now you must remember that the surgery was just yesterday.  The swelling in my eyes, cheeks and nose will go down eventually and if these scars look like the one on my forehead did after the sutures are removed then it will look 100% better by this time next week.  Doc keeps telling me he has made me a “cute little nose” and I am going to trust him on that.   Everyone from the nurses to the intake folks have commented on his expertise.  I heard comments like “he’s THE nose man”, “if I was having anything done, he would be the one cutting on me”, and “he is the very best”.  I think that the one that really sticks with me is the nurse who said he was like an artist.  She said he looks at every face like a canvas that he wants to  paint a pretty portrait on.  I thought that was beautiful.    As long as he doesn’t paint like Van Gogh!

Well, that’s about it for today.  I can hardly see out of my swollen little eyes and my nose hurts so I need to hit the Tylenol and get the ice pack back on my eyes.  Keep those thoughts and prayers coming.  As one of my granddaughters said last night “Nana, they closed you up and you look not scary anymore.”  Doesn’t get much better than that.