Beau Jackson

Well, it was a busy Saturday anyhow. We always try to take it easy on Sunday and not do too much. But Saturday…

5:30am - get up, get dressed, eat cereal, drink coffee, go hunting. Now, hunting is not that vigorous of an activity, at least for me. Hunting means walking out the door about 15 minutes before it starts to get light out and walking out to the edge of our pasture where the woods start, picking out a likely spot and waiting. Ironically, it’s the sitting and waiting that’s the hardest part - not because it’s boring, but because it’s COLD. It was about 36 degrees out on Saturday morning, and while that’s not that cold when you’re moving around, it’s dang cold when you have to be very still.

8:00am - call it a day on hunting, and come on back in the house. A big convoy of pickups, several with stock trailers just rattled by on the dirt road near our place. The dear are going to be hunkered down for a while.

8:30am - back outside to change the thermostat in my truck. I replaced the thermostat a couple of years ago, but I foolishly put in a lower temperature thermostat (160 degrees), and consequently my truck never gets very warm in the winter time. I replaced it last week, but the one they gave me didn’t fit quite right, and I guess it was being held open all the time because the temperature gauge never budged off of “C”, which means I had no heat at all in my truck for the last week or so.

9:30am - after finishing other morning chores (feeding animals, kids, etc) it’s back outside to fix up the camper shell for my truck. Why do I have to fix my camper shell? Because rams are stupid. I have an old camper shell, and about the only time I put it on the truck is when I have to transport an animal. Last time I took it off, I left it sitting out in the yard (we have a big yard, it wasn’t like it was in the way or anything, ok?) . Our ram saw his reflection in the windows of the camper shell, and apparently he didn’t like the attitude he was giving himself, so he rammed out a couple of the windows. So, to make the camper shell workable for animal transportation again, I cut some window-sized pieces of wire mesh, drilled a bunch of holes in the camper shell, and pretty much put a big wire screen where the window was. This is actually not such a bad thing. The camper shell is probably 10 years old. It was cheap to begin with - just aluminum, not painted to match or anything, and it’s pretty banged up, windows not withstanding. Now that it only has the front glass and the rear glass, it’s quite a bit lighter and it’s easier to get it on and off the truck by myself.

11:00am - back in the house, get kids dressed and fed so we can go to town.

12:00 noon - (I can never remember if noon is 12:00am or 12:00pm!). Pack kids and wife in car to go to the stock auction, ’cause we’re bringing home the bacon today. On the hoof. We got to the stock auction just in time - got our bidder number, found a place to sit, and about 10 minutes later they were pushing the hogs into the pen. We ended up with two - one that’s all black, and one that’s white with black spots. They must be some kind of mixed breed. At least, we couldn’t find anything online that looked like these pigs. Still, they look healthy and with pigs, it’s not so much how they look, you know?

3:00pm - back home with the pigs. I park the truck in the shade and rig up a pig pen. I learned about pig pens last year. Pig pens have to be tough. Last year we used field fence (wire mesh) and strung an electric wire around the bottom thinking that would contain the pigs. And it did. Until the pigs decided they didn’t want to be contained any more. Last year’s pig pen had to be rebuilt with cattle panels, and we just started out with those this year. We’re also doing a little experiment this year. We butchered last year’s pigs in April or so of this year, and the ground where we had their pen STILL has not had the grass grow back on it. Those pigs cleaned out everything - seeds, roots, all of it. All spring and all summer it was just a bare patch of ground. So we built the pig pen on the garden. We also built the pig pen much smaller, and we plan on moving it regularly so that the pigs will basically clean out the garden area. Hopefully we won’t have so much grass growing in the garden next year. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

3:30pm - start building pig shelter. The drawback to putting the pig pen in the garden area is that there aren’t any trees around the garden, and it’s still warm enough in the afternoon that they’ll need some shade. Also, they need someplace to be to get out of the rain and such. So we built a little pig hut for them. I’ll have to get some pictures taken as they’re kind of hard to describe, but it’s basically a wooden frame with cattle panel sides and top, and then tarp stretched over the cattle panel to keep the weather off. It’s pretty heavy duty, so that the pigs don’t tear it up.

8:00pm - pig shelter finally finished. We took a break for dinner, but it still took about 3 to 3 1/2 hours to finish it.

Sheesh. I’m tired just writing about it again!

So, it’s been about a month. I’m getting to be a terrible slacker when it comes to posting to the blog. I’ve had a couple of things to post about, and I have pictures and I keep forgetting to get the stinking pictures off of the camera. So, now that I’ve finally done that, I’m going to make one big ol’ post about all of it.

Several weeks and I Dominic and I had the opportunity to go cave exploring. We went to Smittle cave, which is located about about 20 miles South of Lebanon, Missouri. The DNR only lets people into Smittle cave two months out of the year - September and May (I think) - due to there being a large bat colony in there. Dominic and I were joined by our friends Andrew and Damien from Kansas City. That’s Damien on the left below and Andrew on the right.

Smittle cave has a very large opening and we were able to just walk through the cave for a good long time. The cave is very muddy though. I think we were about 200 feet into the cave and I sank up to my knees in the mud. The deepest mud I discovered was up to my belt (and I’m 6′ 5″). There were a lot of really beautiful formations in the cave - the pictures don’t really do them justice. You can see more pictures of the cave in the Smittle Cave photo gallery.

Later on in the cave things got a little tighter. There was a lot of tunnel that we were able to kind of squat-walk in, or at least crawl. Further on it got REALLY tight. I haven’t low-crawled since I was in the army. For those who aren’t familiar with that term, low-crawling involves sliding on your stomach with your head flat against the ground. In the army you low-crawl to keep from getting shot. In a cave you low-crawl because that’s the only way you can squeeze through the little crack you’re trying to call through. I’m not normally claustrophobic, but I actually got a little nervous. When you’re crawling on your belly with no space to turn around, it is not a good time to think about a cave collapsing on you! Things soon opened up a bit though - at least we could sit up and turn around. I was really proud of Dominic on the whole adventure - there were a few places where he was obviously scared but he powered on through and had a great time. Did I mention the cave was muddy?

The next thing I wanted to talk about in my cumulative post is the Spindle And Wheel fiber frenzy swap. I participated in the “goodies” swap - and I got some really cools stuff. Most of it is pictured below, but both of my pals sent some candy and it just didn’t last long enough to make it into the picture. Anyhow, I got some really soft sock yarn from each pal, as well as some nice roving. From one pal I got some really big “man sized” knitting needles, and from the other I got some tiny needles for knitting socks with. I think I may try to knit a cargo net with the big needles. I also got some gourmet coffee (I’m a coffee snob so I love this!) a book mark, a “real men knit” magnet, some stitch markers and post-it notes. Thanks very much to Nancy and Lea for all the great stuff!

The final portion of the multi-post is about birthdays, of which we’ve had a several lately. All of our kids birthdays fall in a short period of time so in the last couple of months, Elizabeth turned 5, Dominic turned 14, Teresa turned 3 and yesterday William turned 1. So, today we had a big party with lots of kids over for cupcakes and hotdogs and lots of running around and playing. I think this was William’s favorite gift, but all of the kids have had fun with it (even Dominic!).

I had a Tonka truck a lot like this one when I was a kid. They’re dang tough and I expect it’ll see a lot of of use.

…and I’ve been awake for the last hour.  After three ibuprofen and a lortab, the pain in my mouth is beginning to subside.  I can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoy not being able to sleep.  grumblegrumble.

I’ve been pondering suffering a lot the last few days.  There are a lot of reasons for suffering - not all of them bad.  But when it’s all said and done, I guess what really matters is how you deal with it.  I don’t think I deal with it very well…it’s a character flaw I guess.  I try not to complain, or whine, but…here I am telling the world about it in the middle of the night.  Amongst the Catholics (maybe others?) a common expression when suffering is “offer it up”.  Give your suffering to God as penance towards past sins - yours or others.  I try to do this, but I think that my penance must be diminished when I complain about it.  If you’re not suffering willingly as a penance, does it really count?

Actually, the main reason for this post is to distract myself from the discomfort.  I learned how to purl last night, and some other nifty knitting stuff.  That’s another thing I wonder about…why “purl”?  Why “knit” for that matter?  I wonder if the words have some kind of meaning in another language.  Like, “knit” means “tie a small knot” and “purl” means “knit only backwards”.  Word entomology (I think that’ s the right word) is fascinating.  I often find myself learning where a word comes from and getting this little joy out of it.  The other day I read that the word “excruciating” comes from the Latin words that mean “out of crucifixion”, which makes perfect sense when you think about it…it just never occurred to me before.  I know…I’m a dork…I’m rambling here to distract myself…cut me some slack! ;)

More rambling…I took a look at the early morning news, and they had an article about news-anchor-person foul-ups that have been immortalized on You-Tube.  Some of them were quite funny, but you have to feel sorry for these folks having there mistakes broadcast over and over.  I guess they chose their careers though.  There was one of a (very gay) weather guy that has a meltdown when a cockroach crawls up his leg.  Now I can understand the meltdown - I don’t like cockroaches either - but what made it funny was that he did this little sissy-boy shriek and whine, and then totally did the stereo-typical-flamboyant-gay-man routine explaining what happened in front of the camera.  Limp wrists and everything.   I’m not trying to pick on gay people in general here - but if you’re going to live up to the stereo-type, I don’t feel bad about making fun of you for it.  You can make fun of me for being a stereo-typical-wanna-be-farmer-and-computer-geek if you want.  Umm…I think there’s a stereo-type for that somewhere.

Well…here it is 20 minutes later and I don’t think I can sleep yet, but I’m running out of stuff to ramble about.  I’m thinking at this point that maybe my surgical wounds have become infected (yay) - I’ll definitely be calling the oral surgeon once the office is open.

Signing off…enjoy your sleep!

The knotted web I weave? I’m trying to be subtle here…Ok, I’ll just say it…the KNITTED dish rag I knit! There! I’m out of the closet. My name is Beau. I’m a guy, and I knit.

I can rightly call myself a knitter because I’ve knitted a dish rag! hahaha. Well, you have to start somewhere right? But where will it end? I’ve already started another project - a hat. True, it’s late July, and it’s in the 90s ouside, but a hat is a good next project - new stuff without being overwhelming.

So, why does a guy knit? Well, I have to confess that the main reason is because of Spindle And Wheel - If I’m going to write articles for an online magazine dealing with spinning, and knitting, and fiber arts of all sorts, I probably ought to know what I’m talking about. Another reason to knit - it’s something my wife and I can talk about. She’s learned her share of geeky things so she can keep up with what I have to say about work and what not. Seems only polite to return the favor. But you know what? I enjoyed it. It had it’s tedious parts, it had it’s frustrating parts, and it had it’s rewarding parts (all that from a dishrag!). It’s actually appealing to my geeky side - it’s very intricate and detailed, all those little knots. I’ve actually thought about how you would program a pattern - it seems like it’s a big recursion program just waiting to happen. I’ll have to work on that :)

Anyhow, to my loyal readers (all four of you) - you will be seeing posts about knitting, and other yarnish things in the future. So be encouraging! You might end up with a hand-spun wool hat and mittens for Christmas ;)

Which isn’t saying much I guess.

I had my two lower wisdom teeth pulled out yesterday.  It wasn’t as bad as I expected, but I’ve been popping a couple of lortab every four hours or so and without that I’d be rolling around crying in pain.  As it is, I’ve pretty much just been laying around in bed.  The lortab definitely kills the pain, but it also zonks you out pretty hard.

I was unconscious  for the procedure - sort of.  It wasn’t what I was expecting.  They didn’t use gas.  Instead, whatever it was keeping me asleep came in through an IV.  The difference is that when you’re under the gas, you lose time.  You go out, and you wake up, and there’s no sense of having lost any time, and you’re not aware of anything at all.  With the IV, it’s like you’re just sleeping really hard.  There were a couple of times that I was aware of things happening - something banged against my upper teeth at one point, and I remember saying “ow” to something at another point.

Anyhow, the upside is that once I’ve healed, it won’t ever bother me again.