Living with Wesley

Wesley is growing to be a very big cat. Not big like Biscuit. Biscuit has a big tomcat head, and a big muscled body. Wesley is tall and elegant, with a long swishy tail.

Wesley actually does try to be good sometimes. He still knocks things off the counter. He is still mean to Gollie, though when I feed them he backs off and lets her eat first. I still have the barrier up to the den because I need to put birds in there when I wash them for a show.

So how, then, is he actually trying to be good? When I won't get up in the morning and he tries to knock my iPhone off the bedstand, I only have to snarl "Get DOWN!" once and he'll leave it. When I have company, he isn't so bad about tasting them (though I don't trust him yet and I still spend a small fortune to keep Bandaids on hand).

He'll actually sit on my lap sometimes and not end his petting session with a bite. I'll know he's totally reformed when I don't end the day with a bloody paper towel coaster under my tea cup.

Breakfast With Friends

I seldom go out to dinner, I don't like to eat very much after 3, and I really prefer breakfast food or a nice salad at lunch.

At least twice a month I meet one old friend or another for breakfast at Bert's Diner, where the waitresses know us and don't mind if we sit around and jabber for hours.

This past week my office mate when I worked had a day off. I got to have breakfast with Melanie at a restaurant neither of us had tried before. I really, really miss this lady. What a way to spend your last working years, sharing an office with someone who's fun and a great worker.

Things Other Than Shoes

Choosing clothes when you live on a farm is quite different from when you live in town.

If there is a choice, one typically wears denim. This is not because of a retarded sense of style, it has practical applications. Only denim sheds hay, shavings, and dirt. Only denim won't rip immediately if it comes into contact with barbed wire, chunks of wood, or sharp cage edges.

I can wear other things to town, but not if I need to feed horses on the way to the car. I love sweaters. If I put on a sweater, though, I need to use a pitchfork to throw hay to the horses. It's pretty much guaranteed that will be the day Dusty shoves the chunk of hay back over the fence at me and it goes right down the neck of the sweater. There is no hay that exists that won't totally ruin a sweater. Grass hay has seeds that burrow in, oat hay has even more insidious seeds, and alfalfa will crumble and you'll be picking pieces out of the sweater for the rest of the day.

I have been known to wear a long sleeved coat over my sweater just to get the horses fed. Or leave the sweater in the car and change into it later. Walking back to the house to do this is not an option when walking is a time-consuming chore and you need to get on the road quickly.

One thing I love, but never buy, is something like this.

Does anyone who lives on a farm or ranch ever wear velour? If so, how do you manage it?

I'm think people who have pets probably don't wear much velour, either.

Shoes

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this topic before. And that I'll be talking about it again, sometime.

On one of the diabetes sites I frequent, they recently had a questionnaire for the members to answer. One of the questions was, "Are there any effects from your Diabetes that affect your daily life?"

At first I thought, "not really." My choice of food is what I'd need to eat whether or not I'm diabetic. I have to get new glasses every year, but that's because my eyes keep getting better and the old glasses are too strong. I couldn't think of anything.

Then I got up from my computer chair and started to walk across the room for another cup of bulletproof coffee. My brain was working great, my body from the knees up was ready and willing to stride purposefully. But not from the knees down.

Some days I have to wonder if someone came in at night and transplanted lower legs from a 90 year old person onto my body. They just don't coordinate with the rest of the body. Nor with the brain.

I have neuropathy from the knees down. Okay, so I won't be running a marathon. But the main problem is that my feet seem to morph constantly. A footprint taken 2 years ago won't match one taken today. I know this because I have custom-made orthothotics that are 2 years old and they don't fit at all.

I have a small fortune invested in shoes. Not because I love shoes. I hate shoes. But I have several pairs because I can't wear any one pair all day or I'll end up with blisters or soreness somewhere. Some days I wear one shoe on one foot and a different type of shoe on the other foot.

And, NO, it doesn't help to have custom orthotics or custom shoes. Those have been the worst. They're big, heavy, and bulky and because they're rigid, they make lots of blisters.

I don't even try to wear shoes that match my "outfit." I consider what I'll be doing for the next couple of hours: driving? (there are some shoes that rub blisters on my heels when I'm driving); walking? (only a couple of pair that won't make the ball of my foot sore...and that's WITH pads and bandaids added); slopping around outside in the garden or cleaning pens? (that requires yet another pair of shoes).

Aside from the shoes on my shoe rack, I have at least 20 pairs stored in a plastic bin in the closet. Those are the ones I could wear two years ago that my feet no longer like, including at least 5 pairs of expensive Arcopedicos. You know the story of The Princess and the Pea? Well, I have pea-brained feet.

It wasn't always like this. I used to walk the 1-1/3 miles around the field behind the house barefoot. I had really tough feet. Even now, I don't have typical diabetic feet. My blood sugar is low, blisters heal easily in a couple of days, my feet don't swell.

In addition to all the shoes, I have a drawer full of bandaids and I've tried every pad and pair of inserts that are sold. And I have many, many pairs of socks. Because some shoes require socks with extra padding around the back, some require thin socks.

I'm not the only person I know who shuffles around because of foot problems. And what I live with now is really a big improvement over a few years ago. So it doesn't bother me much until the brain wants to take the body somewhere quickly and the feet won't cooperate. It's pretty much like dragging two balls and two chains.

Want to take the garbage can out to the road? No problem except by the time the feet shuffle out there, the brain has been out and back 4 times, the upper legs are bored, the arms want to push the can over and just leave it there (maybe with a little provocation from the brain).

I'm not just a Pisces, I'm a double Pisces (sun and moon). That appears to indicate an affliction with feet. It makes as much sense as anything the podiatrist has come up with.

Ventura and other things

Do I do anything besides go to chicken shows? Sure, but just not in October.

I put more than 2500 miles on my car last month, with trips up and down the valley. Ventura is a long trip, and technically it's in the nastiness of Southern California, but it's at the extreme north end of that area, so going through the SC traffic is not required.

I went down Hwy. 99, up over the Grapevine pass, then the Ventura turnoff is immediately to the right. It sort of skirts the hills at the edge of the border between Northern and Southern California. My timing was not great, as soon as I turned west the sun was right smack in my face. I couldn't really read the road signs. As it turns out, I didn't have to. The highway just joined neatly with 101 at its end and the show turnoff was just a couple of miles up 101. Things like that scarcely ever happen.

This is how the hills looked all over California that week, without rain for quite some time.

Dry, dry, dry. No grass for cows. While I was at the show, however, it did rain in Northern California and now, just a few days later, the hills are starting to get green.

This show, like most, is held at a county fairgrounds. It's a little more scenic because it's right next to the ocean and not in the poorest part of a dusty valley city. This is the closest I got to the ocean, though.

I sorta saw it from my car on the way to the fairgrounds. That's okay, I'm not a big fan of the ocean. You know what? There are no tsunami signs in Ventura like there are up on the coast in Northern California. Do you suppose they don't get them in Ventura? Or maybe they think signs would depress the property values.

I was at the show for about 3 minutes when I realized I had forgotten my dolly and would have to carry the boxes full of chickens. I'm pretty strong and the boxes don't weigh much, but I can't walk and hold things at the same time. I had gotten to the show before anyone else who had a dolly, so couldn't borrow one. Luckily one of the junior exhibitors (Garrett, for those of you who know) helped me. A lot of the exhibitors are even older than I am, and I hate to ask them for help. Anyway, it worked out.

I took 7 birds to sell and ended up selling 8. The last one was actually one that I showed. Here is one of the buyers:

I love selling birds to 4-H kids.

I won Best of Breed with this guy. He had messed up his comb and wattles in the carrier, but the judge still liked him.

It was my Ancona pullet that did the best this time. She was Best Mediterranean and got to be up on championship row. That was as far as she got, but that's pretty good for a chicken that lives in the mutt pen at home.

Best of Show went to a bird owned by the team of Jones and Leonard.

I had taken my new iPad with me and worked for an hour trying to set its alarm so I would get up at 6 a.m. About 30 seconds after the alarm went off, I discovered why the hotel I was staying in is called The Clocktower Inn. I did get up early Sunday morning to have some breakfast before picking up the birds. Here is a typical, lovely Southern Cal sunrise scene: palm trees and a McDonald's sign. I didn't eat at McD's.

I was going to go back home the way I came, but a friend suggested 101 instead. I'm glad I took that route. First, it's much more scenic.

But also there was a lot less traffic until I got close to San Jose in the north, and there were practically NO trucks! It's amazing how much more polite the other drivers are when they're not dealing with the frustration of truck traffic.

Near Salinas, everything is irrigated and green. Every square inch of ground has been dedicated to farming.

See the area up there between the hills? Even that had crops on it. In another few years, maybe this area will have terraces all the way up the hills like they do in China. I think the Salinas area has done a much better job than Sacramento County about keeping development from encroaching on farm land. Sac County is an ugly, totally lost cause. And it's probably the worst place in the state for development because it has the #1 potential for flooding of any location in the United States. Developers and county supervisors have collaborated to let houses be built all over the floodplains. Where do you suppose they'll be the first time there's a catastrophic flood? Living off their profits somewhere else.

Anyway, the poultry show was fun. The show banquet on Saturday night is the best anywhere because it's prepared by a TV chef who is really good. He also makes sumptuous desserts that people can bid on, and they go for lots of money. The (other) people at my table of 8 bid on a large bottle of cognac and a box of fancy cupcakes. It was fun to watch them all get a bit tipsy.

I've had lots of work to catch up on. I took 16 birds to the auction on Sunday. I got the car windshield replaced, I had an appointment with a dietician, I bought and unloaded 20 sacks of pellets for the stove, I had to move birds around after the auction, and I am a month behind on the Dominique Club newsletter. The house is a mess (thank you, Wesley) and there's a lot of laundry to do.

And so, I also got behind in blogging.

Fallon

Even though it's in another state (Nevada), Fallon is one of the closer shows I attend. It's quicker to get across California, when it's not snowing, than it is to go up and down the loooooong valley. There are two main routes to Fallon from my house. The first is to go east on Hwy. 50 through Placerville, Lake Tahoe, and Carson City. The other way takes you east on I-80 through Auburn, Truckee, and Reno. I used both routes: went to the show on 50 and came back on 80.

I was fortunate to have an assistant this time. An old friend from high school, Max, went with me. Max has several engineering degrees from Stanford, so he got the jobs like figuring out how to make the container of pop-up wipes work properly. They are used to clean the birds' feet in the morning before judging.

Like Carlotta, Max used to show horses. They're both handy assistants because they understand about grooming procedures and can handle animals. It takes someone who won't just turn loose of a squawking chicken and watch it fly for the rafters.

I appreciate driving with a good navigator. Max is a good navigator because he's skilled with his smart phone and its GPS capabilities. Sometimes he'd even look up from his phone to read road signs. Bob's friend Jonathan has similar skills. Both are computer nerds.

I am a jabberbox when I travel with someone else in the car. I love lively conversation and debate. Carlotta and I argue about everything. Bob and I used to have indepth philosophical conversations to and from chicken shows when he was 8. Or he'd sing "99 Bottles of Beer" and drive me nuts. John just told me to shut up, not to talk while he was driving (we didn't often travel together). Max held up his side of the conversation, but whenever I'd ask one of my rhetorical questions, he'd google the question and come up with an answer. That was great!

I took 17 birds to this show: 4 white Old English bantams, 12 Dominique bantams, and a large fowl Ancona pullet. The judge was Donald Barger. Here he is examining one of my Dominiques. Please note the clear barring on the bird's wing...that's a wonderful thing.

Was he calling for advice on how to judge the class?

No, Donald's mom called while he was working. Note to all sons: Donald is a good example, always pick up the phone when your mom calls.

Here is the same bird, #16. By the end of the day he had won Best of Breed, Best RCCL and was Reserve Bantam of the Show. That was fun.

My Ancona pullet won Best Mediterranean. Max and I went to lunch with our old horse show friends Joan and Bill, who live in nearby Yerington (as much as anything in Nevada can be described as nearby) and came over to visit for the day. When we got back to the show room, a photographer was taking the class winners out of their cages and photographing them. On an open table in the middle of an open room. Yikes!

Anconas are quite flighty. I said, "I doubt my Ancona will cooperate. It would be just fine to NOT take her picture." "Oh no," I was told. "The photographer is very good with chickens."

So I found a comfortable seat that was close enough to enjoy the show. There were lots of kids around. I figured that when the bird got loose one of them would catch her. Eventually.

But the photographer really WAS good with the birds. Great, even. He spent time settling them down, then walked back to his camera and shot the pictures.

He got several nice shots of my girl before she took off flying. He caught her in mid-air and walked her back to her cage, talking to her. What a very nice fellow.

Fallon wasn't the first show of the year, but not everyone attends every single show. This was the first time I got to see some of my friends.

Here are Max and I with Kathy and Ryan, two of my favorite chicken show people.

We traveled back from the show on Sunday morning and got home before Bob and his friends were even finished with breakfast. I had barely stepped through the door when I was met with stories about what a bad boy Wesley the cat had been. "Whoa!" I said. "Give me a minute to put this all into perspective and find just the right way to express to you all that I really don't give a shit."

This week is a short one for me. Another chicken show on the weekend, I will be driving all the way to Ventura by myself. In addition to 17 show birds, I need to take as many birds to sell as will fit in the car. It's got me a little strung out trying to get it all organized. Only one show in November, though, so there'll be plenty of time to rest. And catch up on the stories about Wesley.

One more note. Just before I left one of the folks from Davis Ranch brought me this baby Tubby Dove.

They found it on the ground near the Ranch Cafe. I put it in a little carrier and took it to Fallon with me. When I got home, its sibling was waiting. It had also been found on the ground, but had been pecked on the head. It's usually a parent bird that does that. I was surmising that someone may have shot the father (dove hunting season is on) and the mother couldn't feed the babies, so she kicked them out. But yesterday afternoon I found a baby pigeon in the pigeon pen with a similar story. The weather has turned, maybe there's something about that that prompted the babies' parents to abandon them.

Anyway, now there are 3 babies to hand feed and pack along with me. Anna has volunteered to take care of them while I'm in Ventura. She's such a peach.

Workshop

This has been a really busy month with the chickens. There are shows on 3 of the 4 weekends. Last weekend would have been the free one, but a wonderful opportunity popped up.

There is a fellow in Missouri who is considered by Dominique breeders to be our national expert on the breed, Mark Fields. He literally "wrote the book" on Dominiques. He was available to come out and help assess the birds we've raised in California this year, so we quickly arranged the trip.

"Come on out to California," I told Mark. "It will be a relaxing trip." I picked him up at the airport on Friday morning. The two of us caught and evaluated all of my birds during the day. It was really a chore.

On Saturday, three other breeders brought their birds. Before he left, Mark handled over 150 birds. It was anything BUT relaxing.

This is Chris (left) and Mark examining one of my cockerels.

Debbie drove up from Southern California. It took her 6 hours to get here, we spent 2 hours on her birds, then she loaded them up and drove home. Mark is weighing one of Debbie's birds.

It's very difficult to raise Dominique bantams that are the weight specified in the American Standard of Perfection. They are mostly too big. Some of mine have been waaaaaaayyyy too big. One of my otherwise very good pullets right now is 34 ounces. She's supposed to be 20 ounces.

This is Sara, her daughter Bailey, Debbie with a copy of Mark's book, and Mark. Bailey has been breeding Dom bantams for a couple of years in 4-H and has some good ones. This is a hobby for people of all ages.

Our impromptu workshop was really a benefit to us all. It gave Mark a good idea what's going on with the breed out here on the West Coast, and all of us had a crash course from the master teacher. My head is still reeling with all the information I tried to cram into it. I now know which birds to keep and which to sell. I'll just need to be home for a while so I can pack up the sale birds and ship them off to people who want them.

Mark was kind to us all, but one thing that makes him a valuable teacher is that he doesn't mince words. If a bird has a fault, he points it out. One of his goals was to help everyone improve their birds, so he always had advice on things we could do. In some cases we were able to trade birds with each other, which might make the improvement process a little shorter.

This weekend is another show. I'm washing birds tonight. Some of them had been designated "inferior" but they're in good show condition, so they're going anyway. Bob and Anna are keeping the cats company while I'm gone. I've been trying to learn to use my new iPad mini this week, so maybe I can add something to my blog from the show. Or, more likely, not...because everything requires passwords and I keep forgetting what they are. Passwords are my downfall, my biggest problem with technology.

One last thing, I'll be taking a baby dove to the show, too. He fell out of his nest near the Ranch Cafe and was brought to me to foster. It's not hard to do, but I have to take him with me. Wesley has been predictably bad, I have the baby in a carrier that's locked inside a cage that's in the hatching room with a barrier so Wes can't get in. Every time the baby squeaks, the cats eyeballs rattle around in his head and he goes into hunting mode.

Wish us all luck.