We're tired

The days are too short, or maybe too long, but they are full, rewarding and I am learning at record speed. Margaret Stewart drove up from out of state to help me with some acupressure work on Birdie. I feel like I was in an incredible workshop for the past two days. I am exhausted, but I believe this is the exact lesson I am to be learning at this exact time with this exact animal.

One can drive themselves crazy with, "WHY?"

I just choose during this llama love project to say..."It is for us to do now."

I will write more soon. I just have not had a minute to really think of anything else. I think things will settle for a while now. We have the electric lift operating and I have a new lift sheet that is well balanced and I am able to hook it all up on my own. This is a God send. We can feel her spots of blockage, or resistance, and now I will continue the therapy and acupressure. It is sort of a roller coaster ride, but I aim to remain positive and do all I can for this incredible creature. Goose has been in sync with the entire process...stories to come.

Right now, I'm with Pino. Cat nap, donkey nap, llama nap...just a nap.

Donkey speaks

So I was informed, by The Heaad Troll delivered note under the door, that in a nutshell, my tone in my last update on Kickstarter felt a wee bit...tired. So the donkey has stepped in. With help I suppose from The Head Troll. Today he just wants to show how he relieves stress from such a fundraiser with Donkey Inspired Frisbee. I mentioned the typo in his movie and he said,

"Typos have no meaning to me".

He will be helping do updates as we tick down the final days of this Kickstarter-so be warned, the donkey will be sharing in earnest.

Thankful for old warriors

My father was 17 when he got a plane and then a boat and landed in the Pacific. He was a Marine. After my mother died this April, I helped clean out her belongings. I had seen some of my father's medals and discharge papers after he died. But I never really examined them until after my mother died and I took them all home with me. The discharge papers tell which battles my father fought in, including the dates. I knew he was in major battles, but I researched and was amazed he had lived. I know he once told me only two of his group survived. I only talked to my father once in detail about his war years-over one too many Scotches!-back in my late twenties when he came to see me in NYC. He told me some horrific stories-images of heads rolling by him as he hunkered down in a culvert. We never discussed it again.

He liked war movies–and I can understand that. Perhaps the movies helped him comprehend where he had been, I don't know. I remember we watched Toro Toro Toro together and it was interesting to see his take on it. Later in his career as an architect, he was working on a building in Japan, and he and the other Japanese architect began discussing the battles they were part of in WWII. They think they might have been fighting each other on any given day. They toasted each other's lives, as here they were, without guns or battle helmets–just two old soldiers who made it. Each of their countries had reason to battle. Each of them were brave and made sacrifices we can't imagine.

So here's to all the soldiers-young, old, men and women, dogs, donkeys and mules–thank you for your huge sacrifice. And here's to my old soldier, Robert Louis Dunn, gone now 5 years but never forgotten.

My friend and I used to wonder how we would have handled being put on a plane at 17 knowing we were going off to the South Pacific to fight. We decided we would have cried all the way there.

How to make hats out of squash...yep

Pumpkin on our minds

It is all things pumpkins right now.

The large orbs of orange are taking over the squash garden, fueled by the energy of the fallen souls in the goat cemetery. It pleases me that Old Man Guinnias, Honey Boy, Gertie, Georgie, Granny and Aunt Bea are all adding their love and nutrition to the growing of these creatures.

It is one more way that with life there is always death entwined, and here at the farm, death always starts a life in one way or another. A worm dies for a chicken to lay the egg, an apple falls from the mother tree to feed the pig, and now, the bodies of the old goats now past help the pumpkins - the latter will also give their lives for pie, pancakes, muffins, soup and barnyard snacks.

Someone mentioned pumpkin pancakes and it's all I can think of. The crisp fall air [finally] and crunchy leaf sounds take me back to moments of youth, being chilled from outside play, but upon entering the house of my youth the waft of baking cinnamon and the sound of my mother's voice,

"Is that you? It's time for dinner," floats over my head. I feel safe and content to be inside.

A Pino Pondering

Another offering from Pino

Pino's NEW Fan Page!

Pino and I have evolved over the years. He is my muse, no doubt, but he is teacher [to me and many] and healer to broken hearts and torn wings. He is the walking version of The Puppet.

He is so much more than just the host to an annual Pie Party, and I wanted his online presence to make sure the world shared in all of Pino, not just his Pie Day.

So his old Fan Page on Facebook will end, but his NEW Page will begin. And it will still share Pino's Pie Day every year, but it will be full of his ponderings and spirit in many other ways.

I hope you will join him there. It will be a respite from the often too cynical cyber world.

Pino speaks

"When someone does something that makes me feel badly, I just close

my eyes and imagine that black hole in their heart where it must be

hurting and I imagine it turning to daisies, because I've never been hurt

by someone without a hole in their heart."

Pino.