I may not be posting as much as I used to, but there are times that I just have to.  Yesterday, for example, when grandson Andrew and great-grandson Weston rode up on Kitty, I was sure I would get a great picture.

Better try it from the other side; the light’s better.  Look this way, Weston!

Oh, well.  Try again.  Look this way, Kitty!

Well, this time I got a good one.

Darn.  Weston blinked.  Oh, well; maybe next time!

All’s well here; Billy passed his last check up with flying colors.  We’re about to enter another heat wave, but the end is in sight now.  Many kids are going back to school, and the days are perceptibly shorter.  Still, the saying is that fall won’t be here until after the county fair, and that’s almost always been true.  Then I’ll get out and about more, and I hope I’ll do more blogging.

And she’s cuter than ever.  See?

Her hair doesn’t look very red in this shot, but it is.  She is three months old now, and a very good baby.  She and her mom Christina were giving her great-grandfather a haircut.  It was the kind he likes, which means he’s as bald as an egg right now.  Oh, well, it will grow back — eventually.

I stopped by the liquidambars at Teen Challenge today and snapped this picture of some of the fallen leaves.  They’re beautiful on the ground, too.

Fall is passing quickly, and there’s another storm due on Thanksgiving — we hope.  It’s supposed to be a really cold one, which will probably bring the last of the leaves down.  Winter is nearly here.

The place was awash in little girls this afternoon.  I think I counted seven, at one point.  A couple of them were even ours.

Here is great-granddaughter Liliana on her gaited pony . . .

Here are some spectators.  Can you tell which one has been on a horse lately?

Liliana’s little sister Isabella was not impressed.

The sun was really bright . . . but it sure lit up Isabella’s red hair!

I think it’s true; there is a natural affinity between little girls and horses.

We had some excitement yesterday.  I was going out to catch Kitty — Marion and I rode out again — when I looked up and saw a couple of deputies headed down into the river bottom.  One appeared to have a gun drawn.  There were eight or nine of them searching the brush.  They were apparently looking for the renegade deputy who had escaped from custody earlier.

Needless to say, Marion and I went in the opposite direction.

Just a couple of hours ago, we learned they had captured that deputy, who was wanted on a variety of charges.  He was said to have brandished a firearm at a group of little girls.  He was found in Oildale, all right, so maybe he had passed by.  It’s a relief that he was caught with no harm done to anyone.  But it was a weird episode.

Things are never dull around here . . .

 

We had some very small visitors a couple of days ago — some of the latest crop of great-grandchildren.  Here are Weston (left) and Colin (right) checking out Weston’s present.

Weston figured out the correct thing to do with wrapping paper right away.

Colin doesn’t seem so sure about it.

Babies are such fun.  You have to wonder what they are thinking about this strange new world.

Weston is grandson Andrew’s and Ciera’s child, while Colin belongs to grandson Brian and Janet.  Aren’t they beautiful?  If a little blurry — great grandma was snapping her shots too fast.

Because I’ve been caring for Billy and his fractured vertebra, I haven’t had much time for getting acquainted with little Weston.  When Ciera and Andrew brought him over for Christmas dinner, they thought it was a good time for us to get together.

I wasn’t so sure . . .

This isn’t so bad.  He’s pretty darned cute . . .

Uh-oh . . .

HELP!!!

I once knew of a lady who no sooner got on a horse than it ran away with her.  She swore she had an electric bottom.  I think I may have an electric lap.

Oh, well.  Maybe with more experience . . .

In the good news department, Billy got in David’s truck and drove around with him, checking on the place for the first time in months.  He said the place looked really good.  (Implied was, “A lot better than I expected.”)  Tomorrow he plans to get in his own pickup and make his usual rounds.  Everyone will be happy to see him out there supervising again; but even he admits the “boys”, (they’re in their fifties) have done a great job.  But it’s time for him to get out there.

And for me to have more time for great-grandma practice.  If I don’t chicken out!

We went to consult the orthopedic surgeon yesterday — a very nice young man.  It was an ordeal for all concerned, as Billy can’t sit up straight without extreme pain, and you have to do a lot of that in a doctor’s office.

The bad news was that he is not a subject for surgery.  His age, his weight, and his medical conditions are all against him.  The good news was that the fracture will probably heal without intervention — if he can deal with the pain in the meantime.  Well, that’s what painkillers are for, after all.

His back is, as expected, a mess.  I got a glimpse of the x-ray, and it looks as if he has less a column of vertebrae, and more of a line of gnarled chunks of bone.  Some of his vertebrae are just bone grinding on bone.  I got the impression that they were surprised he hadn’t been having pain for years; but his back hasn’t been a problem till the past few weeks.  Or perhaps, knowing him, he just ignored it.

So he’s down in his recliner for the foreseeable future, though he can get up and down and move around briefly.  As long as he’s down and still, he’s comfortable.  His sons have been a blessing.  David, whose wife Terri was paralyzed for so many years, has been especially helpful with his father’s needs, while son Scott keeps an eye on everything and reports faithfully to his dad.

I know the place just isn’t the same without him and his faithful pickup doing their rounds, but perhaps they’ll get back to them yet.  In the meantime, he’s still able to keep track of all the boarders and keep up with the bookwork, just as well as ever.

Both of us are still recovering from yesterday.  I never realized how hard it is to see someone you love in pain, and not be able to do much about it.  It is stressful.

On the way to the medical center, we got a few sprinkles.  The air has been really clear.  Even the mountains to the southwest, usually invisible, are as sharp as knives.

Right now it’s beginning to look as if we might get a little rain later.  We’ve got our fingers crossed . . .

 

Billy is going in for an MRI on Thursday.  The x-rays they took on his last visit indicated he may have a fractured vertebra, so they’re going to check it out.  We’re hoping it’s just one of his old fractures.  Many years ago, when he was having back problems, the doctor found three different healed fractures in his back — all acquired at different times.  He’s also had a fractured pelvis and jaw.  He spent a lot of years breaking colts, and that’s a rough business.  He knows he got the pelvis injury when a colt went over backwards with him, and the jaw when one stepped on his head.  (Luckily, that was in soft river sand.)  He has no idea when he acquired the back injuries.  In those days, he didn’t go to the doctor, because there wasn’t enough money.  (That’s why he became a teacher, instead of a horseshoer.  Health insurance is a wonderful thing.)

He’s not in a great deal of pain, though he’s been instructed not to move around more than he has to.  With a heating pad, a heated throw, his recliner, and some nice painkillers, he’s comfortable.  He’s fighting boredom by making a list of all of the boarders and the pens their horses are in — this while seated in his chair.  There’s nothing wrong with his memory; no one else knows all of them, even when driving past the pens.

I don’t have many pictures of him, because he seldom was still long enough for me to take one.  Here’s my favorite, though.  He’s on his last horse, and one of his favorites, Skip.  This would be sometime in the ’90s.  By this time, he wasn’t riding colts any more, but still ponying them for others to ride.  He and Skip were very good at it, too.

Like many men of his generation, he hates fuss.  He probably won’t be happy that I wrote about him, but everyone who comes in already knows about it anyhow.

Don’t tell him I said so, but I know he’s a great man.

 

Weston was by today to visit Great-grandpa and Grandma.  His eyes, so far, are still blue . . .

He wasn’t too impressed with the hat Great-grandma had made for him.

I’m not sure how he felt about being Mickey Mouse with Mama Ciera for his first Halloween.

It looks like he might be saying, “Get me out of here!  I wanted to be Donald Duck!”

I haven’t gotten down to see him lately, so it was nice to have him come by.  It’s been hard to get away, with Billy still down with his back.  He was doing better, then this morning he slipped and fell backward in the shower.  He wasn’t hurt, but stuck like a cork in a bottle.  It took both Scott and Young Billy (or William) to get him pried out.  It didn’t do his back any good, but he seems to be better this afternoon.  It looks like we got lucky.

I’m sticking close, though.  I didn’t even go to Barnes and Noble this morning!  And the next time he showers, I think I’ll have Scott stand by, just in case.

It’s not often that I skip blogging for two days, but things have been a bit hectic.  Billy took a fall Friday, while I was out shopping.  He wasn’t hurt (except for a couple of scrapes) but couldn’t get up again by himself.  When I got home, I went for help.  Scott and grandson William got him up again, and he was fine.  I certainly wish I could talk him into using a cell phone — and keeping it in his pocket.  When you’re eighty-one and have bad knees, it would be nice to be able to phone for help.  I’ll just have to check in on him when I’m gone for more than a half-hour or so.

Saturday we had a visitor — one just three weeks old.  Weston and his parents came in for a while.  He is growing eyebrows and lashes, and has the faintly bewildered expression common to the very new.

His eyes are a smoky blue at present, but subject to change without notice.

I was a little startled, bringing in the mail the other day, to discover that he is getting his own letters.  It’ll be a while before he can read them, though.

I discovered the setting that controls the depth of field in Paint Shop Pro.  Very useful when the house is a bit of a mess — but not enough to conceal everything!

Weston paid his first visit to his great-grandparents’ house yesterday.  He didn’t seem too impressed . . .

. . . but then he’d just been to see the doctor, and had a big bandage on his little bitty heel.  No doubt an exhausting experience.

He has some blond fuzz, but I haven’t seen his eyes yet.  Not that you can tell much about that at four days old.  It’s going to be fun to watch; though we’ve had grandkids and great-grandkids in abundance — I think he’s GGK number seven — none of them have been close enough to observe from day to day.

Maybe I’ll even work up the nerve to hold him . . . eventually.