Wacky Wednesday

Somewhere in between the discovery of a dead horse and standing on the side of the road with two police officers after dark, we did in fact have a productively exciting day. Our good friends and neighbors have been virtually living in hospitals around the country for the past two months while going through a major medical ordeal with their young daughter. We have been happy to be able to help in some small way by caring for their animals while they are gone. Up until now, I was feeling pretty good that in all this time a lone chicken had been our only casualty. My confidence took a sharp turn downwards this morning when I arrived at their place to find one of their two draft horses lying dead in the field. There were no signs of foul play on the body, and he had been fine the day before, so I have no solid explanation as to what happened.

Back at our own place, my dad and little brother came up to spend the day helping us move forward with the yurt project. We had gotten as far as clearing the site and gathering and setting 16 locust posts. Due to the nature of working with round posts of various sizes, the lay of the land and our own limited capabilities, our jobsite didn't exactly meet the desired specifications of square, plumb, parallel, etc. It is a true testament to my dad's craftmanship and supreme problem solving prowess that he is turning our rustic mess into ordered chaos. It turns out the yurt deck will be more of a rhombus than a square, but we were aiming for that earthy feel anyway, and where do you ever see right angles in nature??


Master Craftsmen Herman and Joe Logan


When taking an inventory of our remaining building materials, we realized we'd miscalculated some of the lumber and were short on the supplies we'd need to proceed the next day. So, late afternoon Joe and I borrowed our friend's truck to make a materials run to town. It was after dark by the time we got everything purchased, loaded up and strapped down. We were halfway back home, making our way up a steep, twisty stretch of road, when our entire load slid right out of the back of the truck and scattered itself on the road behind us. There were several cars following us, but luckily none of them were following too close and everyone was able to stop without incident. Everyone sprang into action and with the help of some other motorists, we quickly moved the lumber into the thin strip of ground between the road and the guard rail. At least one piece of lumber went sliding down the side of the mountain, but that was the least of our worries! It took a few moments to regain our wits, but we decided to reload only half of the wood, drive it home and come back for the other half. The fact that all of the wood was covered in ice from sitting in an outdoor lumber yard is what made it so difficult to safely secure the load. After about 10 minutes of reloading on our own, a police car pulled up. My few previous encounters with police cars have always involved getting a ticket of some sort, and I was half expecting to get a ticket in this case just for being the cause of general chaos, but the officer was very sympathetic to our plight. He and another officer directed traffic around us while we ferried the wood up to a gas station at the top of the hill. The gas station owners were nice enough to let us stash half of the wood behind their store while we took the first half back to our house, at a very, very slow pace.

Joe dropped me off at a neighbor's house so I could make arrangements for having the horse buried, and he went back for the other half of the wood. I had dinner waiting and was anxiously pacing the floor when Joe showed up after the second wood trip. He had lost the load again, but in our own driveway this time, so he decided to call it a night and deal with it in the morning. The whole experience left us pretty shaken, and it took at least three "Seinfeld"s for us to decompress enough to think about sleeping peacefully.