Avoiding the Kick Zone

Emily works at a saddle barn, guiding trails at Pokagon State Park here in Indiana. Emily is, shall we say, height challenged. I don't believe it's PC to say  "short" anymore. But one thing I've learned from watching her work is that she knows how to get much bigger animals to do what she wants.

She knows how to get me to do what she wants too, but at least I don't have to wear a bridal. Well, except that one time.

I've learned a lot about horses from talking to her and watching her work. Horses are even a large part of my mystery/humor/supernatural novel We Love Trouble, which I hope you all get to read someday. She'll have to be listed in the book as "technical consultant".

Did you stick your tongue out at me, young man? Um, young horse?

 

That's why I know about the Kick Zone.

If you walk behind a horse, you either want to be right behind it, or drop back about a mile and a half. If you're close, but far enough away that the horse can wind up for a kick, you might soon find yourself landing in a tree.

You don't want to be in the Kick Zone.

Earlier this year I drove to Pokagon to pick up Emily. It gave me a chance to introduce myself to the new mule, who Emily described as "rather large". The Saddle barn had two mules. Freddy, who had his own Facebook and Instagram accounts before he passed, was normal sized. for a mule. The other one I hadn't seen yet, but as I walked up to her I imagined what Freddy said at first sight:

"It's a giant! Mulezilla!"

That's Molly with Emily, and no, this is not a trick of perspective.

 

Molly is the tallest equine animal in the Midwest. Horses and mules are usually measured by hands, but Molly is eight legs tall. Petting her was like trying to put out a forest fire: It's hard to tell where to start. It takes Emily five steps to get into her saddle, with the first step involving the word "trampoline" and the last step being to put on a high-altitude oxygen mask.

I'm just sayin', big mule.

After we got to know each other, Emily untied Molly and led her toward the barn, past me, which is okay because I'm to her side as she goes by. But that was when something spooked her. The mule, I mean, not Emily. The animals know better than to pull away from Emily, but the plastic bag, or crunched leaf, or perceived insult made her swing her back side around until it was aimed at me. The mule, not Emily.

I was in the Kick Zone.

There's only one thing to do: Flee. I backpedaled, reaching approximately warp 9 in half a second. Even the USS Enterprise can't reach that speed by going backward, but I did. Of course, the Enterprise might accidentally back into the Klingons, and I'd hate to fill out that road rage report.

Directly behind me was the end of the hitching line. It was a plastic pipe, maybe four inches in diameter, with the end aimed right at the small of my back like a police battering ram. Only less fun.

 

Molly with the offending railing end.

I did not scream when I backed into it at Warp 9, which, as you'll remember, is very fast. I did say something, which I'll just code as "Klingon! Oh, Klingon!"

I said "Klingon" several times.

The moral of this story is "situational awareness". It's also that you should keep ibuprofen, ice, and that green stuff from the chiropractor close by at all times. The chiropractor should also be close by.

Molly never kicked. I suppose her mind was on whatever spooked her: a candy wrapper, a passing mosquito, maybe the realization that Lost will never make sense. The hitching post just laughed off the incident. I drove us home with no problems, although it took several people to pry me out of the car and carry me to the couch. I'm now working on the outline of a novel about evil hitching posts that attack the unwary, and I'm calling it "Post Ghosts". M. Night Shymalan already has the movie rights.

 Yes, horses do appear in some of my books, specifically the Storm Chaser series. Find them all here:

 

·        Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

·        Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

·        Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

·        Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

·        Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

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·        Audible:  https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

 

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A Hypothetical Kneed For Down Time

 Let's say some guy--not me, you understand, but just some hypothetical person--started to get a little ache in his knee. Maybe it started, for example, from lifting a sick 75 pound dog into a car, or maybe his job moved to a new place and he was climbing a lot of stairs he wasn't used to, something like that.

This is strictly hypothetical.

Now, let's say it got to hurting him, but after a couple of weeks it started getting better. So he--it could be a she--put on a knee brace and decided to mow his lawn, in the theory that it would test how serious this particular medical malfunction could be.

It would be like running your lawn mower until a wheel fell off. Which this hypothetical person also did. Allegedly.

And let's say the next day this person couldn't walk.

Would you call this person an idiot?

You would? Oh. Well, it's hypothetical. Still, you'll be happy to know that you'd be in agreement with his wife, his dog, the doctor, and himself. But if this whole thing had actually happened, you can be sure he would have learned his lesson, especially when the pain got so bad he couldn't even sit propped in a chair, working on his writing, because it hurt to much to concentrate.

Hypothetically.

Brace yourself!

 

So that guy would probably suck it up, get the x-ray, take the pain med, and stay home in a chair with his foot propped up even if the weekend weather was great. There comes an age where you can't just push through this kind of thing, even if there are yards to mow and bushes to trim, and chores from last year he never got around to. It's hard for some people to not feel productive, in one way or another, but hey--there are always books to read.

Still, it makes a person think. That's more than this person was doing when he wore himself down to begin with.

Hypothetically.

Let's face it: It's not the dumbest thing this hypothetical personal ever did.

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A Screen, A Dog, and a Bed

 Let's talk about pain.

Young people tend to be reckless because they haven't experienced real pain. There was a time when, one a scale of one to ten, I would have rated my chronic back pain as a nine, but I'm old(er) now. Chronic back pain is a four. A pulled back muscle is a nine, as is a migraine. A kidney stone is a fourteen out of ten.

I've talked to people who suffered through both a kidney stone and childbirth (not at the same time--wow), and it appears childbirth is a fifteen out of ten.

And there you have it: Older people need a whole new rating system.

 When you get old(er), you realize why older people didn't want to do stuff back when you were a kid. You could find out the same thing by just listening to their conversations:

"My knee says it's going to rain."

"Really? I can't feel my knee because of the lumbago."

"Oh, I haven't been able to lumbago since I was twenty."

"That's limbogo, moron."

Enjoy it while you can, kids.

(By the way, I Googled "lumbago" to make sure I got it right, and found out ... I got it.)

I told you all this to explain how I injured my neck by--wait for it--turning.

I once fell all the way down a set of stairs inside a house that was on fire, and all I got was a skinned knee. The next day I danced the lumbago.

We got a new radio system at work, and because I wasn't familiar with it I turned my head a lot more than usual to make sure of what I was doing. There are seven screens at my dispatch console. You have to be an owl to see everything.

"As long as I pay, my chiropractor doesn't give a hoot."

 

Neck pain level, after ibuprofen: maybe six, as long as I didn't actually turn my head. But I'd forget--and turn my head.

The neck pain caused head pain, and I was down for about a day. The day after, my wife and I decided to move furniture. This was a coincidence, but also related to pain: The dog's.

Beowulf is around fifteen years old, which in human years is something like 90. So he has trouble getting up and down stairs, but when that's where we are, that's where he'll be. The obvious solution: Move our bedroom downstairs, to where our office used to be. Let's face it, I do most of my writing work on the couch, while icing down various body parts.

My bed hasn't been moved in fifteen years. Why? Because, although we now use air mattresses, the frame is designed for a California King waterbed. Picture something the size of an aircraft carrier, strong enough to hold the contents of Lake Michigan.

It took two hours just to take it apart. Then we had to make multiple trips carrying pieces up and down  those narrow 1879 stairs with the sharp turn at the bottom, and now I know why the dog kept wiping out.

But we did it, and I once again got to dance the lumbago. When it comes to pain, how high can you go? Also, I can now tell you exactly what muscles are needed to haul something up and down stairways. The first day the pain level was about nine, but only when I moved, and as I write this it's down to a much more manageable seven. Ice is my friend.

And that's why none of you have seen me all week. Or Emily. Or Beowulf, who managed to slip by my makeshift barrier and come upstairs to see why we were cursing and throwing things during deconstruction. The next day Emily worked on one of our book projects, while I worked on a different one, and you know what they had in common?

They could be done without moving.

The lesson? I dunno. Buy our books, so we can hire movers? Meanwhile, if you see an older person who isn't moving very fast, cut them a break: You don't know if their day involved a screen, a dog, or a bed.

"A Walk? Nah, I'll just wait in the car."

 

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What I do on my coronavirus vacation

My life hasn't changed all that much since the coronavirus quarantine started: I go to work, I come home, and my back hurts.

Just the same, there are some changes. I go straight home, for instance. Once I stopped at the grocery store on my way, and despite the fact that everything seemed normal (they even had a little toilet paper), the few people I saw seemed on edge. My feeling may have been affected by the armed guard at the cleaning supplies.

But in theory, my wife and I got just what we wanted. We both tend to be introverts, and staying home seemed like a swell idea. I got more writing done--in fact, I made it through a complete revision of an 82,000 word novel. To celebrate, the next day I wrote a short story. We're party animals.

I write, you read, everyone wins.

The day after that I tried to get my lawn mower going.

Hey, I didn't claim it was a paradise.

Then there's the back thing. I've had low-grade back pain for many years, and while it's a--wait for it--pain, I'd gotten more or less used to it. Now I was having medium to high grade lower back pain that shot down into the back of my thighs and--perhaps ironically--sometimes made it painful to sit. Emily made the connection before I did: sciatica.

It's nice to try something new, for a change.

Sciatica is pain related to a problem with the sciatic nerve, and now you know a bit more medical terminology. The answer was simple: I see my chiropracter every two weeks, anyway. She's like the mechanic on an old tramp steamer, who manages to keep the machinery chugging along somehow, year after year.

Only my chiropracter has been shut down. By the caronavirus.

I take exception to her being called nonessential, and I'm more than willing to be treated while wearing a full Class A Haz Mat suit ... although come to think of it, even she couldn't make my spine bend through one of those things.

So after three weeks of working on making it better, one day I looked out into my back yard to see a jungle right out of Jurassic Park, complete with strange animal noises somewhere in the high grass. Despite everything, spring had come. Emily was dealing with a pain problem of her own (and not just me), so if anyone was going to mow the lawn, it would have to be me.

I was saved temporarily, because the next day four inches of snow covered that green, green grass.

"Where the frak did this come from?"

But two days later it was all gone, because this is Indiana. So I spent a day trying to get the lawn mower running, because this is me, then another half day picking up poops and sticks, because that's the dog's bathroom. Then I mowed one third of the lawn.

Why? Because I didn't want to mow the other two-thirds. I'll deal with that when the swelling goes down.

So, again, my life hasn't changed all that much. I work, I write, my back hurts; maybe a little more than usual of at least two of those. For some people it hasn't been as bad; for some it's been much, much worse. Meanwhile, people are still arguing about whether it's a big deal at all, which maybe they wouldn't if they had as many immune compromised relatives as I do. I don't pretend to know what the best next step would be, but as for me, I'm going to keep writing, and try to be funny, and in my own small way keep spirits up. Because there are a whole lot of people out there who are not introverts.

Meanwhile, there's something I've wondered for awhile now: If you're in the middle of the apocalypse--will you even know it?

Because it's funny. It IS.

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Knee replacement went well, road trip was middling

Emily's father had knee replacement surgery Monday and came through okay, although she tells me he's having pain issues. She's going to be down there taking care of him for a week or two.

I drove her down Sunday, and drove back Monday, because there was quite literally no one to replace me for my whole work rotation. (Which isn't to say I'm irreplaceable--that's a different thing entirely.) It was right at 1,000 miles starting out Sunday morning, and getting back Monday afternoon.

We had a passenger part of the way. Apparently Pokemon are only visible in a phone screen..

A thousand miles in thirty hours is hardly a record, by any standards. Still, I'm getting a little, um, older for that. We listened to Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" on the way down, and I listened to podcasts on the way back, which made it easier ... but man, am I stiff and sore, and tired.

Beowulf wasn't overly thrilled either, especially when he realized we were leaving without Emily. It took half the trip to get him to drink any water, and as we got close to home I bought him a cheeseburger just so he'd eat something. Poor fellow hasn't gone a day without seeing her since we got him, and I haven't been separated from her that long since we got married. The difference is that I can stay busy to keep my mind off of it, and he's just moping by the door.

Not much of interest on the drive, except that I got buzzed by a biplane doing some crop dusting. It's startling to suddenly see a shadow pass over that's bigger than the car.

We passed this guy on the way down ... twice, after a rest stop. The military sometimes hauls its haulers.

Prayers and good thoughts requested for my father-in-law -- and for Emily, who's tasked with making him get up and exercise his new knee, something I'm sure he won't want to do.

Pulling The Horse Muscle, or Break In the Saddle Again

If you can see this video ... well, I'll be very surprised, because my video uploading skills are suspect, to say the least.


"Would you like to go on a trail ride?" my wife asked in August.

(Yeah, I know. It's taken me this long to recover from the emotional trauma enough to write about it.)

Do you remember those people on the tourist boat in Hawaii, who got hit by lava when the volcano exploded? It was like that. "Would you like to go on a boat ride? The view is great!" Oh, I'm sure they got an impressive view, indeed, especially during the medivac helicopter ride to the hospital.

This is Cheyenne. Cheyenne is ... shy. She tends to keep her head down in a good Eeyore impression.

 My wife, Emily, works at the Pokagon State Park saddle barn which, as you might imagine, is at Pokagon State Park, in northeast Indiana. It's one of those "they don't have to pay you as much because you love your job" kind of things, like being a radio DJ, or writing. One of her fringe benefits is that, if the hourly ride isn't sold out and there's a horse available, she can bring her husband along on a ride.

At no point while writing that policy did anyone consider whether the husband wanted to go.

I've been on about half a dozen trail rides now, so I'm better at it than when I began. The first time, my horse saw some nice grass off in the woods and wandered off, and they found me three days later, still unconscious from the tree limb. Okay, I exaggerate--slightly. The truth is, those horses wouldn't stray far from their routine trail even if you let them go.

But I hadn't been on a ride since early last year and ... how can I say this and still maintain my self-respect? Okay, there's no way: I'm out of shape. I haven't been trail hiking as much as usual due to writing chores, and the muscle stretches the chiropractor gave me to do only work, it turns out, if you actually do them.

That's Emily all the way up in front, in the hat. If she looks particularly alert right there, it's because we'd just seen a coyote standing in the trail ahead of us.

But that's no problem, because all you have to do is ride, right? You horse people, you're laughing right now. Well, first you have to get on the horse, which involves putting your foot into a stirrup, which is fine except the stirrup is at the level of your chest. I haven't been able to lift my foot to chest level since I was eighteen. Hah! Kidding--I couldn't then, either.

Then you have to swing your other foot over the horse which, I think, is when something happened. I didn't notice it at the time, because I was busy noticing how very high up above the ground I was. The words "head" and "melon" were intertwining in my mind right then.

On the first leg of our 45 minute trip, a coyote casually walked out onto the trail, right in front of us. He looked over our way, and I expected him to say, "Have you seen a road runner go by lately?" But what he actually said was, "If Mark Hunter falls off the horse, can I have him? I spent all my food money on an Acme brand anvil."

Well, that's the predator vibe I was getting from him, anyway.

The thing is, riding a horse involves an entirely different set of muscles compared to my favorite exercise, which is hiking, which is way closer to the ground. (Usually.) And no, you don't just sit: You have to kind of ... hug the horse with your legs, and keep a good posture, which I haven't done since ... well, ever. It makes you appreciate how fit porn actors must be.

It really was a nice ride, and beautiful scenery, except for when the horse ahead of me had to relieve himself.

I expected to be sore the next day. But as I climbed down after a scenic and uneventful ride, something felt ... off.

I'd pulled a horse riding muscle.

I didn't even know there was a thing. It's very low on your back, on each side, or maybe very high on your hip, or--let's face it, it's a butt muscle. I suspect it happened when I climbed on board, but at the time I was too terrified to notice. Yeah, I've done this six times now, but I've also seen all those YouTube videos entitled "Riding Gone Wrong".

Also, I once personally saw someone fall of a horse. They didn't get up fast.

But there was an upside. I'd been reading the second novel in George R.R. Martin's Game of Throne series, and those books are thicker than the Federal budget. Once the pain killers kicked in and I was settled on the couch, I got in some great reading time.

Maybe I'll even ride a horse again. Next year.

Your pain lesson for the day

I decided to prove I was over my sinus infection yesterday by going out and doing four hours of yard work. Even better, I have a brand new hedge trimmer that's tiny and lightweight, so I could pretend I was swinging around a heavy tool but not get overworked.

First, I'm not over the sinus infection.

Second, no matter how lightweight your hedge trimmer is, swinging it around for four hours after not doing that work all year WILL lead to screaming muscle and back pain.

This has been your lesson for the day.

Sympathy For The Elbow

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

            I’ve been seen recently with my arm in a sling, and whenever asked I just explained it was for sympathy. My wife put a stop to that when she realized some people thought I was serious. Worse, the people who thought I was really hurt didn’t give me much sympathy, anyway.

            It is true that I didn’t have to use the sling: I’m trying to heal up my tendonitis, otherwise known as lateral epicondylitis. That’s the term I usually use, because it makes people feel bad for me, until they look it up. I got the condition by throwing bricks off to one side, which sounds manly until you realize I was only throwing them a few feet.

            The irony’s not lost on me that demolishing a chimney by hand only got me injured after it was all on the ground.

            The thing is, if I don’t move my arm it’s not all that painful, usually. But I’m right handed, and it’s my right elbow. You don’t realize how much you use an elbow until you’re not supposed to, so I put the sling on as a way to remind me not to use it.

            That only works some, because I cheat. The cheating makes it hurt, then I get angry because I can’t blame anyone else.

            So when I went to the doctor, I asked him how soon this would go away. He replied: “You might die with it.”

            Which is bad enough by itself, but my mind interpreted his words as “You might die from it”, which cause exactly the reaction you can imagine it caused.

            It turns out one of the things that can worsen tendonitis is keyboarding, which in the olden days was called typing, which I do a lot. Now, at work there are three keyboards and three mouses … mice? … um, hand control devices around my work station, and two of my six computer screens are touch screens. There are no duties that don’t involve keyboarding or reaching.

            Then there’s my part time job, which is … well, you’re reading it. I could try handwriting my newspaper stuff, but considering I can’t write with my left hand, that’s kind of pointless.

            Can you imagine the editor trying to transcribe my left hand cursive? “I think he wrote ‘All mimsy were ye borogoves’ … stealing from Lewis Carroll is very odd in a column about home maintenance. Did he get another concussion?”

            I could cut down on my fiction writing, which at the moment is bringing in just enough money to pay for the tea I drink while writing fiction. Have I cut down? Well, I’ve got one book coming out in about a month and another in October, I’m well into the rough draft of a new novel, and I just started working on a collection based on my early columns. That last will probably be called: “They Amputated My Elbow, And Other Tales From A Guy Who Doesn’t Know When To Quit”.

            Or maybe something shorter.

            It’s go through some pain or don’t write at all, and I’d rather give up on chocolate and Mountain Dew than not write, although it would be a close call. So I learned, as people do when a body part hurts, that I use it for a whole lot more than I thought I did. For instance:

            Opening a bottle of Mountain Dew, which takes two hands. I miss that more than anything.

            Tearing open a plastic bag of anything. Yes, I’m thinking chocolate, although it also hurts to open less important things, like food and first aid supplies. I actually have to track down scissors, although my wife would rather I have her do it because, hey – scissors.

            Basically, grasping for anything or reaching for anything hurts, which isn’t a big deal if it’s something small enough to get with my left hand. But I don’t use my left hand, because I haven’t led with my left since my brother beat me up in fourth grade, and that hurt too. Thus the sling, which is there simply to remind me to lead with the left again. I’ve also had some success with anchoring my right hand in a jacket or sweatshirt pocket.

            But that doesn’t get me as much sympathy.

            So that’s my explanation for now, although I’m working on a story that involves something a bit more interesting. Maybe I hurt it rescuing a kitten from a tree, climbing Mount Everest (which is silly, because it’s cold up there), or fighting off whatever female celebrity is popular right now. Whatever else I have to do to get healed up, I’m not going to give up the writing.

            Although if I have to go left handed for my next book signing, I might rethink that.

Me changing breathing air tanks at a fire scene some years ago ... just to show what I looked like when both arms worked.