{"id":1023,"date":"2008-08-12T15:39:56","date_gmt":"2008-08-12T20:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/?p=1023"},"modified":"2008-08-12T15:39:56","modified_gmt":"2008-08-12T20:39:56","slug":"catching-up-without-depeche-mode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/2008\/08\/12\/catching-up-without-depeche-mode\/","title":{"rendered":"Catching up (without Depeche Mode)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No real significance to the subject line, just a play on the album title <em>Catching Up With<\/em>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/hizzouse\/q3-08\/evandaddy-aug10.jpg\" alt=\"Evan and his daddy\" class=alignright \/>Nothing much to report &#8211; here&#8217;s Evan all dressed up on Sunday (much more so than his daddy, at any rate), complete with a little tie with a velcro dealie at the back.  And I wonder&#8230;why aren&#8217;t all ties like that?  What&#8217;s the great stigma of the clip-on tie?  I could go further and ask why the hell we&#8217;re still bothering with this piece of cloth around our necks anyway, but staying for the moment within the bounds of the idea that the necktie just isn&#8217;t going to go anywhere anytime soon&#8230;why is there this unspoken demand that it has to be a real tie, tied in a real knot?  Is this some arcane test of skill whose use has far outlived its shelf life?  Dammit, <em>I <\/em>want ties that close at the back of the neck with velcro.  Then again, I also love ties that look like a big multicolored fish.  Formal menswear and I do not play nice together &#8211; just be glad I&#8217;m clothed at all, society.  That&#8217;s all I gotta say.  <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Erm, anyway, for the 0.8 people who are still bothering to read on after that, just because Evan was dressed up didn&#8217;t mean that he doesn&#8217;t make the rounds as usual.  Here he is blowing the cats&#8217; hiding place (under the breakfast table) wide open over at the farm:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/hizzouse\/q3-08\/evanfindscats.jpg\" alt=\"Evan finds Chester and Misha\" \/><br \/>\nThey may have been asleep when he found them&#8230;but they didn&#8217;t stay that way for long.<\/p>\n<p>Also at the farm, we&#8217;ve had to bid farewell to two of the oldest horses in the herd this week&#8230;<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/hizzouse\/q3-08\/krista.jpg\" alt=\"Krista\" \/><br \/>\nKrista (above) and Midnight (below).<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/hizzouse\/q3-08\/midnight.jpg\" alt=\"Midnight\" \/><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/hizzouse\/q3-08\/midnight-chelsea.jpg\" alt=\"Midnight and Chelsea\" class=alignright \/>Midnight was nearly as old as I was, and at this point he was blind as a bat but still stomping around and bothering the mares like the four-legged dirty old man that he was.  Midnight was always a sweet horse, but he and Krista both lost a lot of weight going into the summer, so I suppose it was inevitable that they didn&#8217;t make it.  Still, they had dignified exits compared to Sultry (who had also lost most of her sight).  To give an example of what I loved about Midnight: a couple of weeks ago, the very last time I fed him, I led him to the back of the barn by the sound of my voice and gave him his feed.  The four younger pasture horses, who hadn&#8217;t shown up yet, appeared and started harrassing and crowding Midnight, trying to get him to leave his food (he got a larger helping of food than they did since we were trying to keep weight on him).  He let himself get cornered, but he didn&#8217;t budge beyond that &#8211; he just ate and stared at them blankly.  I grabbed the hose in the barn that we use to fill the barn horses&#8217; water tubs, and I started to shower Midnight and his uncomfortably close circle of admirers.  The younger horses took off like a shot, while Midnight did exactly what I expected him to &#8211; he sat still, ate, and enjoyed his shower.  Midnight was a <em>big<\/em> horse, but about the most gentle horse I ever met.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/hizzouse\/q3-08\/midnight-sun.jpg\" alt=\"Midnight\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Krista was around long enough to have a daughter and grandchildren at the farm; in fact, she outlived her daughter.  She was the &#8220;alpha mare&#8221; of the herd, so it&#8217;s interesting to see the pasture horses try to figure out the command structure again; if this past Sunday was any indication (I almost got kicked in the face because evidently I wasn&#8217;t forking over the feed fast enough), they&#8217;re still figuring it out.  It certainly isn&#8217;t the same without those two.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/hizzouse\/q3-08\/midnight2.jpg\" alt=\"Midnight\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re going to an open house tonight for a new daycare opening up not too far from the house; how in the world we&#8217;re supposed to be able to afford to send Evan there anytime soon is the real mystery though.<\/p>\n<p>I spent some time today reorganizing the game room a bit based on the premise that the boy can and will hang on to anything as he learns to walk by side-stepping his way around while hanging on to furniture.  He can walk in a straight line if supported just a little, but he&#8217;s still gaining his confidence for walking solo.  There were some things in the entrance to the game room that just had, if not &#8220;death trap&#8221; written all over them, then &#8220;really bad idea&#8221; at the very least, so I reworked things quite a bit.  He spends quite a bit of time with me in here, so it&#8217;s important for it to be safe for him, not just fun for me.  We&#8217;re running up on 11 months, and he just has so much personality already, it blows me away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No real significance to the subject line, just a play on the album title Catching Up With&#8230; Nothing much to report &#8211; here&#8217;s Evan all dressed up on Sunday (much more so than his daddy, at any rate), complete with a little tie with a velcro dealie at the back. And I wonder&#8230;why aren&#8217;t all ties like that? What&#8217;s the great stigma of the clip-on tie? I could go further and ask why the hell we&#8217;re still bothering with this piece of cloth around our necks anyway, but staying for the moment within the bounds of the idea that the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,22],"tags":[24,64],"class_list":["post-1023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-and-baby-makes-three","category-critters","tag-horse","tag-little-e"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}