Karma

Today is my little brother's birthday, the one that died. Perhaps it's coincidence, or perhaps it's Karma that made me see a post on Alan's facebook today about how people behave at funerals.

Link here. Go read, then come back.

Got it? Good. Take it to heart.

The only thing I would add, is if you are truly close to the person mourning, it's ok to give a hug. You don't even have to say anything, just an arm around their shoulders, a quick squeeze. Physical communication is as real as verbal, and if you don't know what to say, a hug, or a hand on a shoulder, a brief moment of physical contact can communicate your sympathy and offer of support better than a soliloquy.

At Jeff's viewing... I lost it. I completely lost my shit, and I freely admit that. It was the family viewing, before the public one. It was me, R, and mom in there with him. R had already seen him, mom came as moral support for me. She'd known and cared about him, don't get me wrong, but she didn't have the kind of emotional ties to him that I did. Know what she did? Stopped halfway down the aisle to the coffin, and waited. She stood there and waited for me to be ready to leave, as did R.

R is not a physically expressive person. We've been tight since we were seven, and I can count on my fingers the number of times that she has hugged me. I've hugged her a lot, and she puts up with it from me though it's not her bag, but I'm a toucher with those I care about. That day, R and I were both mourning, and she knew better than anyone that no words would help. We both already knew that if the other needed anything, we'd be there for them. We both already knew that he'd died far too young. We didn't have to give each other our sympathies.

What she did instead was put her arm around my shoulders while I stood there staring at the young man who should have lived to attend my funeral and cried. She squeezed, just a little, just the beginning of a movement reminiscent of lifting me up that way. It communicated caring and support and the offer of any help I needed, though all of that was already understood.

When I was ready, and walked out of that room that held the shell of someone I loved, mom was there. She hugged me, and when she asked "You ok?" it didn't mean "are you done with hurting over this" or "don't make me feel bad that I don't feel as bad as you, so buck up camper" like so many people mean when they ask that question. It meant "are you ok to walk back to the house, or do you need a minute?"

Because, if you didn't know already, grief can do some messed up things to you. I've dealt with it more than I wanted to in my lifetime, and I know I haven't seen everything. But I do know, first hand, there's a real chance that it can physically impair you.

Certain friends at certain funerals, I've stayed close to. I'm not trying to make them feel better or make the hurt go away. Mostly, I've wanted to make sure someone was paying attention, to catch them if need be. In a literal sense. I've also wrangled children to allow the parents a few minutes to grieve without worrying about where the kids are and what they're doing.

Out here in nowheresville, when someone dies, you bring food. Everyone always ends up with way more food than they need, but it's a concrete way of communicating sympathy and caring. It's a way to ease other burdens than the grief.

You bring food, or coffee (people are always hanging around houses where someone has died, and the family is never sleeping enough... It's easy to run out of coffee) or disposable plates, cutlery, and cups. You ease the family's burden in regards to food, or clean up, to give them one less thing that they have to pay attention to. They've already got their grief, and funeral plans, and simply dealing with the number of people who want to help but don't know how. Bring them food, and they don't have to think about cooking. Bring disposable things to use and that takes care of dishes.

Those are things that help reduce the burden. Not the burden of grief, you can't touch that, so accept that you can't. The burden of daily life. You don't have the right to tell them not to be sad, and you don't have the right to take any of the funeral burden from them, unless they specifically ask you to. You can say "If there's anything you need, let me know." That's ok, as long as it is an honest offer made without expectations. Don't say it if you don't mean it, and I mean three am they want someone to come hang out with them and make cookies mean it, just as much as "hey can you pick up my dry cleaning and bring it by" mean it.

I think it's awful that people don't trust the real offers because they know so many of them don't mean it, not all the way. And yes, I have gotten out of bed at three in the morning to drive somewhere so that I can be with a friend and make cookies. That's what they needed. Mostly to not be alone at that hour, but the process of making cookies helped them too, and that's what they asked for.

Don't hover. I spent days at Jeff's parents house when he died, but I was never hovering. I was making myself useful. I brought food when I showed up, or ran errands for them, or herded the kids, or shaved the dog. They asked me to help with some of the funeral stuff, so I did. I helped put together the music, and the photo slideshow. I helped write his obituary. I did exactly as much to help as they asked me to, in regards to the funeral. Then I stopped, and did some daily chore, or got something done so they wouldn't have to worry about it later (like shaving the dog.)

That is the way you behave around a grieving family. If you can't figure out some way to be materially helpful, express your condolences and walk away. It's not rude, it's not awful of you. If you're not part of the close family, or friend enough that you might as well be (Put it this way, if I weren't close enough to this family that Jeff's mom would tell me "Go find your dad" referring to Jeff's dad when she was distracted, I wouldn't have been around nearly as much) then they don't need you. If they do, they'll let you know. Otherwise, feel free to express your sadness for them, and move on.

Trust me, they'll appreciate that far more than you hovering over them and getting in the way.

Too Much Of A Nerd

I am. Really.

I have all the technology I could possibly need. Use of a screaming desktop pc for work (and play, it was set up as a gaming pc originally) a laptop, a tablet, a nook (the first version) and a cell phone that will do most of the stuff those do.

And yet. I want a nookHD.

Because it's nifty. Because it does stuff. In HD.

I also can't afford to spend the money, so I will continue to want in one hand and... well you know... in the other, and I bet I know which one fills up first.

I'll survive without it. Clearly I'm not short on tech. Still. I give a little sigh of desire when I see ads for it online, which sucks cause every time I want to check for a new e book... there it is, smack dab in the middle of BN's home page.

My name is FarmGirl and I'm a shiny tech addict... oy.

Really Now,

The new comment spam: Dropping a (possibly even applicable) comment on someone's blog, with the name of the commenter linking to some oddball shit.

I'm deleting all of them I find. My blog is not your ad space, most especially not for free. This is my space on the internet, go get your own you smarmy bastards.

I don't click through to see if it's a legit comment anymore. I right click and copy the link location, then paste it into an address bar or notepad to see where it points. Some of them at least must be getting paid by the click.

So, all you stealth spammers, go blow a goat in a thunderstorm with a lightning rod stuck up your ass, because I will not be providing you any more click throughs than I can help, you won't be making money on me.

(And now, to sit back and see how many of them comment on this....)

A Friend In Need

Miss Tam is... well, she's hard to describe in a properly colorful way, to be honest. The best descriptor I have for her is that she is Tam, because she is wonderfully unique.

She's also having some medical issues, with a very small income, which I can completely sympathize with.

I adore Tam, and look forward to her visits at Blogorado every year. She's one of the people that I always wish I'd gotten a chance to talk to more, but with Tam, it's a case of her talking to everyone because she is, and always will be, beloved and popular in our little group.

So, a friend of mine (though we rarely talk much between Blogorados, since she's notorious about returning non-gun-chat emails, it's ok Tam, I still like you) is staring down the barrel of not only facial surgery to remove a carcinoma, but the enormous medical bills that go along with it.

While I have absolute confidence that if she wanted to, Tam could snark that cancer right off her nose, bill collectors just seem to get more irritating and persistent when you snark at them, so her powers are useless there.

But you're not. Go hit her tip jar on the right sidebar on her blog. Any little bit that you can spare will help, and ease her mind a bit about the cost so that she can concentrate on getting better, because we all want her to get better, and continue being... well, Tam.

Keeping Up With The Pup

 Butcher has been growing by leaps and bounds, and eating everything in sight to do it. Not kidding, he's eating two to three times the food of the big dogs.

Anyway, he's also learning by leaps and bounds, as are we. Mostly learning where he's stubborn and just how much incentive he needs to do the right thing. He's a really good pup, he has a pair of good examples so he's learning a LOT of the house manners by osmosis. The big dogs do it x way so that's the way it's done kind of thing.

I also love that his reaction to new things and high stress situations is.... to sleep. He seems to go "ok holy shit what the fuck is this?.... it's not going away? ok fuck it I'll nap, maybe it'll be over when I wake up."

I was going through some pictures on my phone and found a couple that really demonstrate how much he's grown since we got him.

Here he is with one of my size six and a half shoes the day we got him:

And here he is with one of the same pair of shoes, today:

He's grown a bit. We still have no idea what he's going to wind up looking like, body wise. Some days he looks like a bulldog, some days he looks more like a schnauzer. His face is old school bulldog, and he's got the digestive system of a bulldog, if the tear gas that escapes from his ass to fog up the room is any indication.

But he's a pretty good pup, a quick learner, and a complete and utter love. I think we'll keep him.

Ugh

 NFO links to a contest being held in New Mexico, as an incentive for, I assume, population control on local coyotes, with the quaint suggestion that I could possibly win. I'm rusty enough that I doubt I'd make an impact and I can't call a coyote to save my ass anyway, but it's a nice thought.

Reading the comments, though, got me a little twitchy.

Some of the things mentioned were the concept of livestock as "slaves" to humanity, anyone who hunts being a "serial killer" and, one of my personal favorites in the hypocrisy challenge: got coyote problems? Don't kill them. Get dogs.

Let's talk about that last one first. I think protective herd dogs are awesome, I know people who use them, and they work like a charm for guarding your livestock. And your neighbor's. And the wheat field three miles down the road. And that patch of woods that everyone leaves alone cause it's nice to have a place for the wild things to be wild. See, most guard breeds don't just hang out in the middle of the herd waiting for trouble to come to them. The ones I'm most familiar with in this context is the Great Pyrenees, and I know for a fact that they patrol a beat, and depending on the dog and how intense their guard instinct is, that beat can be anywhere from one square mile to god only knows how far they go in a night.

And, folks, for anyone who might be confused about this point, guard dogs don't always just scare off coyotes by pooing in their claimed territory and just being there. Sometimes, the coyotes look at the guard dog or dogs, and think "We can take them" and try anyway. Know what happens then? Either the coyotes kill the dog, or the dog kills the coyotes. And, let me be clear here, getting killed in a dogfight is not pretty. Most of the time, in a dog fight, there's a lot of scuffling and biting and ripping until one party loses enough blood that they just can't be quick enough to stop the other. With a few exceptions in breeds specifically bred to bite and hold on, the strategy of a dog in a fight is to cause damage and get the hell out. So, yeah, coyote in a guard dog's territory pretty much equals someone is going to get torn up. Also, I've met Pyrenees that would track coyote packs. If they got close enough to the Pyrenees's territory that he could smell them, he would go find them, and kick the shit out of them.

Let's presume for the sake of argument that a coyote and a Pyrenees scuffle, but the coyote realizes the error of his ways and gets the hell out of dodge, and the Pyrenees doesn't track him down to finish the job.  Now you've got a coyote that undoubtedly has open wounds, at the very least puncture wounds. You know what kind of wound is most likely to infect and abscess, even in domestic animals that get direct care? That's right, puncture wounds.

So your precious coyote that you're trying to protect from the cruel and inhumane death of a bullet (which, yes, you can get a bad shot, but a good hunter finishes the job as soon as they can, and most who try for coyotes can get a shot that will kill within a couple of minutes at most) is now dealing with massive infection, will be feverish, achy, and miserable for days, or weeks, or months. Just the right level of sick, which happens fairly frequently, thanks to the amount of effort the body puts into fighting infection, and your noble coyote dies, not of infection, but of starvation, as it's body eats itself up trying to fight the infection, and the coyote is too sick to go find food.

I can hear the din now, "but the pack will take care of it!" No, they won't. Social animals are amazing, but in the animal kingdom shit gets real in a hurry. If a pack of coyotes assesses that a member is more of a drain than a benefit, best case, they'll leave it behind. Worst case, they'll kill the draining member themselves, and depending on exactly how much food is available at that particular time, they might just eat them.

To a certain extent a pack might bring food to a sick member. It's more likely when the pack has pups, and they're feeding the pups anyway. But there comes a point when the rest of the pack assesses Uncle Sicky and figures out that he's just more work than he's worth.

Donkeys and llamas were mentioned too. Do you have any idea what a coyote that has pissed off a donkey looks like afterwards? A red, gooey smear. Pretty much the same with llamas. So again, you're trading death from a bullet for a more labor intensive and excruciating death, this time being bludgeoned to death with blunt objects. Well done.

So, now let's look at the serial killer thing. I've killed animals. I get a sense of achievement from hunting, be it prairie dogs or dinner. If what I kill isn't a snake too close to my livestock that refuses to be shooed off, a coyote behaving the same way, or a prairie dog, chances are good that I'm planning on eating it. I don't like buying meat, first off because store-bought meat sucks, and secondly because it's farking expensive.

Anyway, yes, it feels good to me to be skilled at what I'm doing, but you know where most of the sense of achievement comes from? A good, clean kill. And if anyone wants to whine about the poor prairie dog, here's something to balance the scales: the raptors know when you're shooting p-dogs. They hang out and wait for one to drop outside the hole, then come have lunch. So it's the cycle of life, just with a little help.

I don't think I'm a serial killer, for all I enjoy hunting on a certain level. Everything I kill is either for food, or refuses to cooperate with my preferred method of live and let live. Hell, I even give poisonous snakes basking at the base of a fencepost in a corral where my horses will be tempted to stick their noses under the fence to get that juicy weed a chance to move on. Generally, I'll have a long stick in one hand and a gun in the other. I'll hit the ground and make lots of noise as I walk up, and if they don't move, I'll poke em a bit with the stick, with the ultimate goal being to make it uncomfortable enough for them right there that they decide to leave and enjoy being a snake elsewhere. If they do, no harm no foul. If they don't, they've made a bad choice and end up feeding whatever scavenger notices them first.

But if you think I'm a serial killer, oh well. I don't spend any time trying to convince vegetarians to eat meat, I consider that a personal choice. They don't give me the same respect, but then, they also don't give much respect to the animals they claim to want to protect, either. Frankly, they don't have a clue what would happen if humans stopped having a reason to care for domestic animals. Oh, and that cute domestic pig you think you want to save? Let it go feral and you get a huge jump in aggression, to the point that they will attack people who stumble across them in nature. I don't say this as a call to kill all wild pigs, or even in support of raising domestic pigs. I like bacon, whether it's been pampered and fed or not. But, there are consequences to every action, and if you want to advocate for something, you need to be aware of the consequences.

Do some honest research on the horse slaughter ban, and what happened to unwanted horses during that time, whether they were lamed or bought because horses were cheaper than a purebred dog before the new owner discovered that buying the horse is the easy part, feeding and caring for them is the hard part. Anyone who has read any part of my blog knows that I love my horses, probably beyond sense, and I was against the slaughter ban. That, my friends, should be a clue to how horrible the consequences were.

For the last point that was brought up by commenters on the article about the contest, I'll point again to the rest of my blog. Particularly the posts concerning my favorite part of having horses being when they come up to me to get attention in the pasture, just to be together. Also, the posts about fighting all night to save a calf that's mother has given up on it for whatever reason.

Clearly, I'm an awful animal hating person, because I ride horses and raise livestock, and think that a contest to win a couple of AR's is a good way to incentivise population control on a nuisance species that will literally breed until the food supply runs out. Coyotes have their place in the ecosystem, but they're opportunistic little buggers that will exploit every food source they can, including your garbage, your dog, or yourself, if they think they can pull it off. In certain places, they could literally eat every other scavenger and predator out of food if the population is allowed to explode.

So, go ahead, call me whatever you want, but I'm willing to bet I understand the consequences and effects on the ecosystem of my shooting a few rabbits for the pot, or failing to shoot a few coyotes for population control, far better than you understand the consequences and effects of any of your hair brained plans for fixing the world.

That's why we have brush piles on the ranch, leave ditches and fence rows weedy for cover, maintain scrubby areas as unused space. That's why we have rabbits to watch, quail in the back yard, doves in our trees.

And that's why I'm going to keep on living the way I do.

Blogorado

Was awesome, and tiring, as usual.

The weather screwed us a little on Saturday, with a fairly normal for October but unusual for Blogorado weekend day of cold and spitting mist. So instead of going to the range most everyone voted to stay in town and bs.

And unclog the kitchen sink, which decided to stop draining completely right about the time mom was going to clean up the roasters to start the pot roasts... she did them in the oven instead, but it was fairly imperative that we fix it anyway. DM had taken the FarmTruck out with a trailer full of steel to set up the range and we had to call him back because all of FarmDad's tools were in the truck. 

A few of the guys did brave the cold and wet to go out and do some set up on the range that hadn't gotten done yet, and holy cow kudos to them. They also hauled in a bunch of firewood (read: Cedar posts that have been stacked and unused for many years) for the fire pit, so the people standing around outside for whatever crack headed reason could have some warmth.

Sunday we got the range day, and everyone had a blast. Old family friends showed up as well and brought their toys, and as usual there was a bit of a crowd when AD got over to the shotgun line, as he gave a quick instructional and helped some of the newer shotgunners break some clays.

Sunday night was another of BSing and drinking, with the usual storytelling and laughter that comes along with. Sadly, Monday morning people started leaving in numbers, but those who remained made one more range trip, then went to plink some prairie dogs. I went with AD and mostly watched as he shot mom's Tikka and giggled, my little 22mag is a lovely rifle and I adore it, but I just flat ass don't have the ass to reach out there much past 100 yards with iron sights, so the majority of the shots were just too far out there for me.

Christina, Sci-Fi, Mrs Sci-Fi, Holly, and JPG were huge helps in cleaning up, and we got it done in a quarter of the time it would have taken me and Farmmom alone, much less Farmmom alone if I hadn't been able to stay and help.

Got the chance to watch AD do his thing this weekend, too, since he'd agreed to give a talk to our volunteer EMS guys. It was worth going. I didn't understand a lot of it, but it was still interesting, and the parts I did understand will enable me to know in the future if the person I'm looking at in the aftermath of this accident needs medical attention right now. It may enable me to give information to the first responders (um, guys? This one is in really bad shape, I know that guy is all grody lookin but uh, can someone come over here for a minute?) that could help save someone's life. Regardless, I learned a lot. Granted most of it I'll never use, but it's still knowledge, and all knowledge is worth having.

I had a blast and talked myself half hoarse, which is ironic considering what I do for a living these days. Thank all of you for coming, and especially thank Farmmom and Farmdad for the work they put in this year. I wasn't able to go across and help much, but they busted their butts to ensure everyone had a dry place out of the wind to sit down in town, and food to eat while they were there. All credit goes to them, this year, and I mean that.