Category: General News

I just got home from my morning bootcamp workout, and I had to write a post to tell you about a new song I love.  I listened to it while I drove to and from my workout today.  Both times, it made me cry.  In fact, on the drive home, I had tears kinda dripping down my face.

Here are the lyrics to When the Night Came Around.  I just know you’ll be moved. 🙂

There was a cow.
She made a sound.
The prettiest song that you ever did hear.
And when the night
came around
she sang a song for her friends to hear.

The cow went moo moo moo
The cow went moo moo moo

The cow went moo.

It repeats with a sheep going baa and a horse going neigh.  Then it ends like this.

So when the farmer went down to bed
and no one was around
they met under a star-lit tree
and made music through the night.

And they sang <moo/baa/neigh>
and they sang
and they sang.

And they made the prettiest sound
when the night came around.

This song is from Melissa Green’s album round and round (you can hear it if you follow that link). I find myself laughing at the fact that a song about moo-ing, baa-ing, and neighing makes me cry.  It’s Melissa’s beautiful singing and guitar that gives this song such soul.  Listening to it, I find myself thinking about pure and beautiful things in the world.  This story about some farm animals singing their songs to each other just kinda breaks my heart with its simplicity.

It reminds me of one of my favorite children’s books The Gardner by Sarah Stewart and David Small.  In this book, set during the depression, a young garden-loving country girl is sent to live in the city with a gruff uncle.  The story is told through the letters she sends home to her family.  As the girl plans a big, flowery surprise for her uncle, she writes home that, “I’ve tried to remember everything you taught me about beauty.”  My voice cracks every time I read that part to the kids.  So simple.  Just a little girl doing her best to make it in the world.  Her soul is that of a gardener, and she’s grown up feeling loved, and she wants to share it.

In so many small ways, we teach our children about beauty. From the way we touch and treat each other to the art we make.  Makes me think of another favorite song, Simple Gifts:

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,

‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain’d,

To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

When I go to Andrew’s elementary school and see all those sweet little kids, find my heart filling with hope that each of them will trust his or her song.  That they’ll know that their song is the prettiest song that you ever did hear.  And that all their lives they’ll all find ways to sing to their friends under a star-lit tree and make music through the night.

Yesterday, I wrote a post about my horse Cold Snap.  It got me thinking about memorable incident that happened out at the barn in 1996 when I was a sophomore at college.  I remember writing up the story and sending it to my family, but I can’t find that cleaned-up version.  Instead, here’s a copy of a note I sent to my friend Anne describing that exciting day.

saturday is my day of fun and excitement…

I woke up at 9 and went right out to the horse.  This is the FIRST time i have gotten out there is two weeks.  I needed to see them so much.  It was great.  I drove out there and it was nice to get a chance to just drive and look at the drying cornfields and the sun and blue sky and other people doing non-college activities:>

Oh, Annie, I saw a tree that was so pretty I thought of you.  It was mostly green but the top layer of leaves was turning orange it looked like a burnished orange crown or perhaps more like a fairy had come by and sprinkled magic redish orange pixy dust all over the top.  So pretty in the sunlight:)

So when I got out to the horse, I got their halters and walked out into the pasture and they both ran over, and I pet them and talked to them and tried to figure out who to take out first.

I figured that since _I_ hadn’t had horse experience in a couple weeks I should start out with Valentine.  So I took her out and  put her in the upper barn where I brushed her off.  Meanwhile, I hear Cold Snap starting to run back and forth along the pasture outside of the barn.  He sounded really upset.  I went out and talked to him for a few moments and told him I would take him out in a little bit.  I asked him to calm down.  Well, he didn’t, and this is what happened.

The Interesting Story:

I was in the barn brushing off Val, and Cold Snap starts really making like an insane horse, running frantically across the whole pasture.  He was REALLY upset and running like Secretariet…dirt flying up behind of him.  Actually, it was kind of cute.  My baby had missed me and didn’t want me to be working with Val.  Hey, I was liked.  Hey, what was he doing?  What is that noise?  ohmygod! He was crashing throught the fence!  He was breaking the boards in half!  He was down in the mud!  He was up and leaping through the broken fence!  I ran from Val.  (thank goodness she ground ties well…), and by the time I got to the garage, Cold Snap was coming around the corner to find me.  Snorting, pawing, “I’m out, Mom, I came to find you, Mom.”  “Everything is good, Mom.” “I didn’t know I was that strong Mom.”
Good gracious, you stupid, stupid horse!! So I got a halter on him and put him and Val in stalls in the barn.  (Oh he was fine if he was with Val) then I went out to survey the damage and prevent the other horses in the pasture from getting loose!  Yes sirree.  My well-behaved little baby broke straight through three boards.  broke.  sigh.  well one of the other horses was standing at the break..eating some grain on the other side of these broken boards.  He was like “hmmm.  this is kind of neat.  look, I can _eat_ this grain by just sticking by head through this nice absence of fence.”  So I put the other horses in a different paddock and left Barbara a long note explaining what had happened.

Ahhh, memories!  I do enjoy that story.  And it’s sure to make my brother laugh really big:)

Unrelated but silly pictures of me and Val:

Did you know that I used to have horses?  From 1993-2002, I had one or two horses.  When I was in middle school, a friend won a horse by putting her name in a drawing at a mall hair salon (amazing huh?).  I spent a couple years visiting the barn with my friends, and eventually I started taking lessons.  Then in 1993, when I was a junior in high school, the woman from whom I was taking lessons was moving out of state and was looking to quickly sell her horses.  And so it came to pass that I ended up with my very own horse – Valentine.

It wasn’t until about 9 months later that we learned that when we bought Valentine, we actually got a “twofer” — she was pregnant!  So, in January, 1994, I had two horses!  Cold Snap, Valentine’s foal was born on the night of January 14, 1994.  As his name suggests, the weather was chilly.  In fact, it was a bitterly cold couple of weeks, with temperature around -20 degrees and the wind chill plummeting to something like -60.  Not a great time to be born in a barn.

We wrapped Val’s stall in thick plastic to try to keep the drafts out and had a couple space heaters going.  I spent hours and hours at the barn that week, and at least one night, I stayed overnight with my mom and another friend.  It was so cold that even wearing my super-warm barn boots, I couldn’t feel my feet.  One time, Val stepped near me and I heard a “crack.”  I wasn’t sure if she had stepped on my foot or not and ran off to take off my boot to check my foot for injury since it was totally numb (my foot was fine).

It turned out that Val wanted privacy for her birth.  No one was in the barn when Cold Snap made his entrance.  I remember my mom calling up the stairs to me when the barn-owners telephoned us on the morning of the 15th to tell us that he’d arrived.

Oh, he was so cute!  We had him wearing a big sweatshirt and/or a flannel shirt for the first week until he put on a little insulating weight.  What a silly guy:)

When I graduated from high school, I took both my horses in a trailer up to Carleton College (in Minnesota) with me, and they made the trip up and back many-a-time.  During my junior year of college, I sold Val – spending enough time with the horses had become more and more challenging.

I have such fond memories of my hours in the barn.  The smells, the touch of a horse’s sweet nose (I’d often come home with a very dirty face from kissing all those grubby equines).  Good times with friends.  Meditation.

I hope to have my own farm some day.  Someday, some day.

There are seasons in life for many activities.  My teen years were so much richer for the hours I spent at the barn in the company of horses.  I hope that a future time in my life includes a similar season, full of sweet-smelling hay and grain, leather saddles, dirty jeans, and horsey kisses.

I have a poem about horses on my refrigerator, yellowed and curling with age.  Mom sometimes cut out poems or cartoons from the newspaper.  This is the last one I have from her, and I’ve been a little loathe to take it down.   Maybe if I share it here, it’ll feel OK to move it along.

Kissing a Horse by Robert Wrigley

Of the two spoiled, barn-sour geldings
we owned that year, it was Red —
skittish and prone to explode
even at fourteen years — who’d let me
hold to my face his own: the massive labyrinthine
caverns of the nostrils, the broad plain
up the head to the eyes.  He’d let me stroke
his coarse chin whiskers and take
his soft meaty underlip
in my hands, press my man’s carnivorous
kiss to his grass-nipping upper half of one, just
so that I could smell
the long way his breath had come from the rain
and the sun, the lungs and the heart,
from a world that meant no harm.

Ahh, good stuff.  Cold Snap is 17 years old now.  A middle-aged man.  I wonder if he’s still as fast and furious and fun to ride?  Perhaps he’s still at Hell Creek Ranch in Michigan…riding the trails and living the good life.  Happy birthday, buddy!

Here’s some pictures when he was less than a year…

And here’s him all grown up…  He’s a horse of a different color!

I just re-started work on a cookbook of my mom’s recipes.

Back in fall 2007, back when I was pregnant and working and my mom had just passed away, I took steps toward making a cookbook of her recipes to share with family and friends.  I started in early September with the goal of finishing by Thanksgiving.  And I did get about 40 recipes entered on the computer.  But then I was unhappy with how the software I was using made the recipes look.  And I wanted to add photos or scanned copies of the recipes in my mom’s handwriting.  And I ran out of steam.

However, if you’re interested, here’s a link to version 1.0 of my mom’s recipe cookbook.

<Then, three years go by.  I stopped working, had a baby, started my photography business, and stayed busy-busy!>

Last weekend, spurred by the freshness of the new year, I spent a couple evenings going through my own recipe piles.   I have a loose-leaf binder full of sheet protectors that contain recipe clippings from the last 10+ years.  On top of that binder sat about 5 inches of paper that was supposed to be in the binder.  I went through the binder and culled recipes and then added most of the unwieldy stack of printed recipes, recipes from friends, and all the recipes I’ve pulled from magazines.

Then I started thinking that it would be a great idea to get all that info out of a binder and on to my computer.  Most of the recipes I make these days are from blogs or are from online recipe databases (like EverydayFood.com).  So I got on the new Mac AppStore and saw that there are some cool Mac-based recipe software.

I compared software called YummySoup and another called MacGourmet.  I like that MacGourmet can make printed books.  And that made me think about the book I was going to make of Mom’s recipes.  After downloading the software and pulling out Mom’s pile of dusty recipes, I got really excited about creating a nice cookbook of my mom’s recipes.

So here’s my plan:  I’ll have this cookbook ready and available as a pdf to download or a book to purchase by Mom’s birthday: April 7. I plan to include scanned copies of Mom’s hand-written notes, some of Mom’s cartoon clippings, notes from us kids, and poems that were in her recipe box.

I’ll need some help, and here’s how:

1. I plan to post some early iterations of the cookbook, and I’ll need reviewers.  Let me know if you want to help, drop me a note (adotzour@gmail.com).
2. Back in 2007, several people sent me notes about their favorite recipes that Mom made and stories about times shared around food.  If you haven’t sent me such notes and would like to, I’d love to include more in this book!
3. I’ve got lots of recipes that are either in version 1.0 or are going to be added in this version, but please let me know if you have favorites that you’d like to see included.

OK, that’s my thoughts and my plan and my needs.  Hold me accountable!  I’m excited to complete this project:)

~Althea

When I crack open a new book, the first thing I do is read the dedication and find the acknowledgments page.   Before starting to read, I want to learn a little about who the author is, and for me, the acknowledgments give me a little view into who they are, what’s important to them, and how eloquent their book might be.  I particularly like to see how and where they thank their spouse and children.  Genuine, heartfelt thanks earns the writer lots of points in my book

I just started a book, and here’s how the writer thanks his wife:

Kelly, you are my soul mate, lover, and best friend.  Through thick and think you have helped me become who I was intended to be.

<sigh>  Acknowledgments that leave me choked up are the best ones of all.

I think I should start a running list of excellent acknowledgments.  Do you have any favorites?

I am a little addicted to listening to podcasts.  Something to do with my compulsive personality.   First, I fell in love with This American Life and This I Believe (see my Oct. ’09 post here). Then in the last year, I’ve added Planet Money, Savage Love, and RadioLab to that list of podcast.

You’ve got to check them out. I know I do whenever I have a moment in the car or in the kitchen by myself!

I get ridiculously excited when I get to listen to Planet Money.  Yay for engaging, funny, intelligent news that helps me better understand the world!

RadioLab is a little like This American Life in that they pick a theme and explore that theme through a variety of stories.  I’m going backwards in time, and am now listening to podcasts from 2009.

They did an hour-long show on “death,” and then they did a set of short shows to follow-up on that theme.  In one of them, Robert Krulwich reads an excerpt from poet and writer, Mark Doty’s 1996 memoir Heaven’s Coast (listen here).  I liked this one so much that I listened to it a few times.  And then I felt like I should share it with someone, but I wasn’t sure who.  So my solution was to write a post about it.  If you don’t listen to the whole 3 minute story, here’s an excerpt of my favorite part that I wanted to share.  In this story, Mark is witnessing his partner, Wally, during the last moments of Wally’s life.  I think I’ll have to check out more of Mark Doty’s writing.

Thanks for reading.  I found that like poetry it is best savored when read aloud.

The afternoon is so quiet and deep, it seems almost to ring and chime, a cold, struck bell. There is an inaudible roaring, a rush, beneath the surface of things, beneath the surface of Wally, who is now almost no surface, as if I could see into him, into that great hurrying current, that energy, that forward motion which is life going on. I was never this close to anyone in my life. His living so deep, and absolute, that it pulls me close to that interior current, so far inside his life, and my own. I know I am going to be more afraid than I have ever been, but right now I am not afraid. I am face to face with the deepest movement in the world, the point of my love’s deepest reality, where he is most himself, even if that self empties out, into no one, swift river hurrying into the tumble of rivers, out of individuality, into the great rushing whirlwind of currents. God, moving on the face of the waters….

On our last day of winter vacation (Sunday the 2nd), Bryan and I took the kids swimming at Swim West.  We’ve been cooped up inside because of first wet and then cold weather, so the kids haven’t had a lot of large motor exercise but have still been eating all the Christmas and New Year’s cookies as well as Lisa’s delicious birthday cake.  It was soooo great to get to spend some time in a warm pool.  The kids swam for a couple hours, we went to Culver’s for a special treat lunch, and then they both fell asleep.

For those of you in Madison, I recommend Swim West’s open swim.  I took Andrew and Sylvia last spring every Friday from 9-12 – it was only $5 for the three of us.  It’s the time of year when getting into a warm pool can make us feel like warmth and summer will one day return.  A good reminder as we head into the long winter months!

While I enjoy having the house all fresh and open post-Christmas, I found myself really missing the Christmas tree.  Plus, our living room has been feeling really dark.  So on January 2, I made a run to Ace where I picked up some white lights, a 5-gallon paint bucket, and a couple bags of sand.  Then I went in the back yard and cut a couple branches out of April’s dogwood bush.  I brought it inside, spent an hour winding lights, and voilà!

I’ve been thinking about bringing branches in the house for quite some time, and this seems like the perfect time and way to do it.  Our Christmas tree skirt is doubling as a winter tree skirt.  Maybe I’ll have the kids make some birds to hang from the branches:)

Merry January to you!  I’ll close with a couple pics of the kids watching The Princess Bride.  It’s an instant favorite.

Our home is de-Christmas-ized, and we’re on to winter.  I wandered around the house snapping some pictures of the winter decorations and just of our somewhat disheveled home at the start of 2011.

This candle is a little Christmas gift I got for myself:)  The white fairy was Sylvia’s until she had a fit and knocked it’s head repeatedly until it fell off.  Now its mine:)

This little chickadee decoration is from my grandma.  I like it:)

Here’s our de-Christmas-tree’d living room.

I’ve been thinking that I’d like to have lights up somehow again.  Maybe hanging them around the ceiling like in college.  I just miss the sweet glow of our Christmas tree!

Bryan got me this collage for Christmas a few years ago.  Last month I filled it with pictures from Christmases past.

Kirstin, my American Girl, is dressed in her nightgown for winter.

My mom made this cross-stitch, and it was hanging at my grandma’s house.  Last fall, my uncle Kirk and I found it in Mum’s storage locker.  So happy to have it in my house.  It makes me happy.

Here’s Sylvia’s room.

And our room.

And Andrew’s room.

Our kitchen.

And sunroom.

The kitchen sink with snowflakes in the window.

Hope you enjoyed the tour:)

Our sweet cat Bowser has gotten to be skinny recently.  I’ve been able to feel his spine really distinctly recently, and when I took him in to the vet last week, I was sad to hear that he is down to 8lbs (he’s been up around 14 lbs in the past…that’s 40% down).

So $350 of vet tests later, we know the following.  Bowser is not:

• hypertensive
• diabetic
• in kidney failure

Also, he does not:

• have glomerular disease (something to do with protein in the urine)
• have a thyroid abnormality

And they found that his blood counts are normal.

Possible Diagnosis:

During his physical exam, Dr. Heidi found that Bowser’s intestines felt thickened, and based on the fact that all other the other tests came back normal, she thinks he has some kind of a small intestinal disease.  She says that the most likely candidates are inflammatory bowel disease, eosinophilic enteritis, lymphangectasia, diffuse small cell lymphoma, or another type for cancer.

Prognosis:

From Dr. Heidi’s email:

Inflammatory bowel disease has a good prognosis.  Treatment involves feeding a hypoallergenic diet and oral medications to decrease the inflammation.  Most cats are treated with weekly injections of vitamin B12 also.  Eosinophilic enteritis is a subset of inflammatory bowel disease and treated similarly.  Lymphangectasia is not common in cats and can be more challenging to treat.

Diffuse small cell lymphoma is common.  In a recent study performed at the UW, there was a 96 % response rate to oral medications (prednisolone and chlorambucil) and a median remission of 2 ¼ years.

Doing a blood test of his GI system in order to move toward confirming the diagnosis is over $200.

I think I might try switching B to a hypoallergenic diet for a month to see if that helps before moving forward with more testing.  It’s always kinda hard to know how to proceed with these kind of situations.

A couple years ago, Bowser’s brother Spooky had lost a significant amount of weight.  I took him in, and we did a whole slew of tests and an ultrasound.  They showed that he had probable bladder cancer, but we didn’t do the tests to confirm.  Now, two years later, Spook is still fine, and he’s back to a healthy weight.  So maybe he did/does have bladder cancer, or maybe he had something else that cleared up on its own.  Sometimes, I think the answer is: who knows!

I am happy that my affectionate black kitty is in good health two years from his very worrisome diagnosis.

Please wish my Bowser-kitty good health!  He’s my sleeping buddy, and most every night for the last 10 years, I’ve fallen asleep while he kneads my scalp, drapes his body across my head, and/or rests his little wubbily chin on my cheek or ear and purrs away.