Dry windy fall means fantastic colors during sunset.

The only arctic affair was northern lights.

The second half of autumn had truly caused a horrible stress for yeti. You see, it did not snow. Heavy frost came in November, and about twice, something white floated down from the skies, but by far not in the extent that would justify any optimism regarding Nordic skiing. Even our downhill resort, where Tom works part-time again this winter, delayed its season opening by a week due to lack of snow and the fact that it wasn't even possible to make artificial snow.

The only wintery, or rather arctic, affair in this sad and gray autumn, was — northern lights. One goes sword-fighting in a barn, and one's telephone rings — neighbor calling. Could we please turn off our barn lights, for he's having a hard time taking pictures of aurora borealis. I think I yelped, ran to turn off the barn, and then we all just gaped. All except Sid, that is, who's new eyes (after cataracts surgery, he has plastic lens implants) would not show him anything. I must say that the glow has a green bottom on the pictures, which had not seen at first, until later when it grew brighter.

I've been trying to quiet yeti down with having seen the northern lights, and that during our first winter in Wyoming, snow only came by New Year's Eve. But the poor yeti is stressed out from plenty of other things, and the fact that he can't enjoy skiing is just the last drop. He would urgently need to run in some silent snowy forest somewhere, and not to have to fight with corporate bullshit.

Cheyenne surroundings are surprisingly beautiful.

Now that I won't wear myself out at work, I can enjoy our trips.

Besides painful complication with my back and arm, a situation came to a point at my work. I had been a server in the Applebee's chain for three years. It's a demanding job, both physically and psychologically. A server makes most of her money on tips, which in turn depend in majority on the kitchen's output — whether meals are ready in some reasonable time and quality. One thus finds herself between a rock and a hard place, and at a conjunction of a moody kitchen and an unpleasant guest, bad situation ensues. Now add the fact that our specific outlet was acquired by another holding company. I did not expect that things would change as much, after all I'm indifferent to whose administration processes my payroll (as long as someone actually does), but I was deeply in error.

I did not count on ass-kissing complex of our local managors. They actually had completely given up rationality and began to behave nonsensically and unpredictably. They started threatening with the new owner — just wait, a new boss will clean the floor with you. I still considered it just talk, after all, threatening the kitchen with higher hygiene standards was rather pointless — as a large chain we could never really afford to slight any regulations. Yet directives started arriving, ever more absurd. Servers were forbidden to keep drinks hidden under the counter in cans — everything had to be in lidded and strawed containers. It seems to me that the lid opening is not that much different, between the plastic and the pop can. Then came an order forbidding eating food during work time. That started to be suspect, and a bit illegal. If you work over five hours in a row, you're entitled to a break in every civilized country/state. Before I managed to raise objections, the memo disappeared from our notice board. Then I was told that I could not wear cotton clothing, and that I must wear "formal" attire. I defended myself with plastic fibers being dangerous in a restaurant with a hot kitchen; in the end I found the very regulation from the bosses of our bosses — guess what... yes, big chiefs WANTED cotton-based clothing. Apparently vehemence trumps accuracy. I tried to negotiate a solution with the branch director, but even he told me in principle that I'm making things up and that I must follow directives from on top (those in direct contradiction to his own directives). I admit that at that point I simply handed in my apron and walked out. After two full months of such oppression, when one manager claims a thing and another the exact opposite, and both demand I obey, I felt like in a lunatic asylum, which, I think, I really don't need at my age.

On a trip with Tom.

A path winds through aspen.

Naturally, I had another motivation — when I asked my family doctor whether it was suspicious that something has been hurting me for over eighteen months (feet, back, arm) and I've been sick all the time (I amassed three sinus inflammations and one UTI this year), she told me that given my homestead and physically exhausting job, while in my free time I fight with a long sword, climb rocks, paddle on kayaks or ski, I should not be surprised at my age, and I might consider calming down. I admit that right after I had quit at work, I drove home in a superb mood, improved by this being a Monday before Thanksgiving; I knew all of a sudden that I would not have to go to work on Friday right after the holiday, nor on the following Sunday. And that the kids would arrive and we will be able to enjoy each other's company without my bellyaching and late arrivals and sleeplessness and bad nerves.

My Thanksgiving was therefore truly fun, only I think that my family stopped asking why I was grinning all the time — I usually answered that it was because I did not have to go to work. I myself was surprised by it; I had lived under the impression that I liked and enjoyed the job. I probably did, but only the job itself — once somebody always keeps tripping you up, when you fear what next nonsense which shift boss would come up with (because directives and restrictions kept changing according to who was the shift boss at the time), all joy dissolves.

Slanted rock.

Stone maze.

The first positive sign was that I suddenly managed to go on hiking trips. A bit outside our city begins Curt Gowdy State Park, followed by Medicine Bow National Forest — each one of them sporting its separate network of trails, which theoretically do not connect, yet both also contain old roads that form various shortcuts. Or you can just go off-trail, as we did with Sid on our walk through Pinball — which is a relatively known and very pretty trail to Hidden Falls — but we did not want to go all the way to the falls and chose to cut across a local outcrop, getting that way onto a horse and a mountain bike trail.

Right on the next day I managed a three-hour tour around East Sherman Mountains with Tom and Sid, without any noticeable whimpering, and without consequences in form of back or foot pain. Sid often sets out on hikes along local known and unknown trails, and this was one attempt to connect several sections into an interesting route. Again I have to marvel at the natural beauty so nearby, as I had not expected Cheyenne, a city located in a flat prairie, to offer so many choices where to go in its vicinity. Once I stopped ruining myself by walking several tens of miles at work weekly, I brim with energy for weekend action with my family.

The second positive sign was my sleep. I used to return from late night shifts at the restaurant by ten, eleven, but sometimes after midnight. Before one washes, changes, possibly eats something (and then curses self that eating this late is a bad habit), and relaxes to the point of being able to fall asleep, a new day begins again. But I have to get up in the morning to feed my animals. Thus I ended with catching up my sleep in the afternoon, but that means all I have left from a day is the morning. Such setup makes me moody and tired all the time. Hence, balancing my sleep deficit can't hurt.

Reynolds Hill.

Devil's Playground Valley.

In the context of preserving my own physical body I tried to order a delivery of hay. You see, one goatie would eat a small bale of hay in a month, which gives the impression of an undemanding animal. Well now I have nine such undemanding goaties, and our Ford can comfortably carry four such bales. If you keep up with my math, it's clear that four bales will last up to two weeks. A store with hay stays closed on weekends, hence I must think of hay in advance and buy it no later than the day when I start serving the last bale. It gives me an overall feeling of not doing much anything else than driving to get more hay and stuffing it into the shed — with my back it means pulling a bale off the Ford's bed into the wheelbarrow, pull it with the bale to the shed (it was designed so that I can roll all the way to the hay holder) and dump the bale there — then arrange it so that more bales would fit. I researched whether it would pay buying hay in a large bale, but that is about 700-900 lb, i.e., I can't move it myself (much less stuff it into the relatively narrow shed) — while leaving the bale outside is impractical in Wyoming. I asked how other goat ladies do it, but they either own a large barn, where bales get stacked up with a forklift, or I've seen a solution with a bale trailer parked next to a goat shed and hay gets served from there — but that's in the case you'd have a larger count of normally grown goats, who then dispose of the giant bale in a week or two — my dwarf goaties would spend weeks or rather months, liquidating that volume of hay, and in that case there's danger of it getting wet outdoors (again — we're in Wyoming, where covering it up with tarps is somewhat less effective given winds of the speed and strength of an express train), or getting moldy or rotten, or become a hostel for some vermin.

The sun sets early in winter.

Everything froze solid at times, lots of ice, but no snow.

It would seem that I'm destined to stay with my hay bales, but I thought of letting them deliver eight of them — thus I would have enough hay for a month and not have to deal with it all the time. I went to the feed store, ordered (and paid, which wasn't cheap) delivery for a Tuesday before Thanksgiving, full of joy of figuring it out. Tuesday came and no hay. They deliver after closing time, which means I could not reach anyone. Well. On that evening I fed out remnants of my old bale. I had no other choice than to get up on Wednesday with sunrise and hurry to a chain store (where it's much more expensive than in the local feed store) to have breakfast for my goaties. The chain sells only compressed hay, and my spoiled goats made faces over that.

By that moment they called me from the feed store that they were sorry and that they would bring my hay right away — indeed, before my goaties finished huffing disgustedly on the pressed hay, a truck stood at the shed gate. I closed up the goats to the old section of the shed, opened the gate into the run and then only proceeded in watching a well built rancher boy grab a bale and simply carry it in his hands to the spot, then smoothly proceed to stack them up there. The whole affair, including closing the goats and backing up the truck, may have taken altogether five minutes. Not once would I need to bend down, much less pick up and carry something, or try to walk the bale like Mr. Pavel Pavel did with giant statues on the Easter Island. Except for the kink with delivery, I consider it a valid demo of a solution for the case I would not or could not transport the hay myself (or I fail to conscript my family in doing it).

Our gingerbread house.

Guido.

I know that I have been writing perpetually that I like Thanksgiving holiday, because it's about family getting together without the Christmas-y madness surrounding presents and trees. We are not into celebrations much, on top of being rather on our own here, without the wider family, but so far we succeeded in getting together in our small number. Tom and Lisa volunteered to help with preparing the potato salad (it's not hard, but takes a lot of cutting vegetables), and that created a pleasant morning in the kitchen. At the same time it added to my feeling that I became awfully old. There were no "faces" or arguments, no pushing — simply a gang of adults cooperating on their shared dinner.

Then December began — full of days called by our court sky watcher Don, 50‑50. It means it's fifty degrees Fahrenheit (10° Celsius) with wind of fifty miles per hour (80 km/h). On the better days. We also had twenty Celsius (60°F) and wind of 70‑90 mph (112‑145 km/h). Which makes yeti not only stressed out, but altogether depressive. Snow nowhere to be found, hot — and at the same time ugly outdoors, one can't stay out. Garbage from the construction on the neighboring parcel — and from a wider neiborhood — flies in and lands on our fence. Beginning with large sails of plastic wrapping, across the spectrum of food wraps, bottles, insulation, styrofoam packaging — all the way to whole cardboard boxes. All that junk is very dangerous for curious goaties, but it can also literally take down our fence (when a wind leans on a large area of such box or several square yards of a tarp caught on the fence). Naturally, it happened. My wire panels are stretched on the inside of posts to make the fence resistant to goaty attempts to get OUT — thus I spent one whole evening cleaning out the fence and desperately called Rick to absolutely come down in the morning to reattach the fence — it held only on the uppermost pins, with the bottom fluttering. I admit having been a bit hysterical, but the idea of the whole fence flying off, while we would have to shell out several thousand dollars for a new mesh and everything else, was rather horrific.

Goaties had no idea we were facing goatel evacuation.

Solstice egg.

That's not all — on one of those extremely windy evenings I went to take care of my goaties, when I spotted a giant smoke column on the horizon. It's rather hard to estimate in a rolling hills prairie, how far that fire is. I could not see the source, only smoke. When I started smelling it, I got rather nervous. Emergency 911 would not pick up my call, so I started preparing an evacuation. I ran the irrigation around the house, closed cats in the house (so that I could try stuffing them in their carriers — not being sure about that with Guido), wondered what to do with chickens (perhaps bundling them in food wrap to stop them from walking and flying), and despaired about my goaties. I can't stuff all nine goats in the Ford bed, which means deciding who to take and who to leave for the second round, which I can't imagine doing. I would also need help loading any goats into the truck — they don't like to ride, so we usually have to manually lift them up and put there. I realized I did not have enough collars for all of them. Eventually I managed to reach fire brigade over the phone, who told me that we did not have to evacuate (yet), as the fire was across the highway from us, and after a while the smoke disappeared — but it was a very ugly half an hour — especially when gale or minor hurricane level wind blew exactly in our direction. To give you an idea — we're quite used to large trucks getting blown over on the freeway; this year wind blew over a freight train. No joke.

As if that were not enough, by the end of the year, complicated matters happened on the Czech side of the family. Our granny had an unpleasant accident that forced her to stay at home for several weeks, and there was a death in the wider relations. I don't know why ends of years seem such difficult, dark periods. It appears to me that it turns for better before Christmas, by winter solstice. I don't understand it much, but it seems to repeat every year. I had been waiting for this solstice quite desperately. It came, and to reinforce my theory, I found an egg in our chicken coop. First egg after several weeks without lay (our three remaining chickens are old, and don't lay much). I decided to take it as a portent of better times to come — since even a "stupid" chicken feels that way...