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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mac Con Ulaidh who wrote (64995)	3/22/2004 8:18:17 AM
From: Ish	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

<<Is there anything they can do for him?>> He's on oxygen 24/7 and heavy doses of steroids trying to slow his immune system. Next step is anti rejection drugs. Only a lung transplant will repair the damage. We had an odd fire on the road to town. A small rental house in bad shape caught fire just after the renter moved out and the place was empty. I've had more smoke grilling a steak than what came from that house. The next morning at 7 am the owner had a track hoe tear the place down and declared it had been 90% destroyed. The odd part is none of the pile of rubble shows any smoke or fire damage. I doubt the insurance company will fall for that. April 1st the best part of the lake opens for fishing and I'm planning on several trips before the discharge chute makes the water too hot. The fish are drawn to the warmer water until summer gets here.

To: Mac Con Ulaidh who wrote (64995)	3/22/2004 8:25:58 AM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

"That man" was by yesterday to do a little walk thru. We chatted a minute before I took off. Just looking out over the mountain and taking it all in. Couldn't be I "want" to dislike him cause I'm conflicted about going? nahhhh. <g> Anyway, reckon I'm gonna be okay with it. Though he has a toddler and an infant. I'm not sure when he thinks he'll take care of the orchard. If he moves in, he's gonna be a very very busy man, make his new doc wife look like she's got it easy going to work. I don't know if this will be the case down your way -- but up here, I've had quite a bit of experience with stay-at-home-dads who have moved back to the land while their wives continued to work at some well-paying job. I don't quite know why, but our area has attracted a number of these families over the past couple of decades. I've gotten to know several of these families very well as they tend to do the Noah's Ark thing of getting a couple of family goats, some hens for eggs, and so on. They usually plant orchards or long rows of raspberry canes, or start up a garlic farm, or get into emus or some such thing. Just some observations as someone who was once a mentor to a good number of the families. Most of the men tend to be Type A personalities, often were successful in their own right, but the decision to stay at home was largely based on practicalities. While a family may want to do the back-to-the-land thing, it may not be easy for the man to find a good CEO's job in some off-the-beaten-track community. On the other hand, Mom might be able to get a job as a doctor, a teacher, or some other professional in the nearest town. From the stay-at-home back-to-the-land Dads that I've known over the years, they actually do okay. Most seem to funnel all of that Type A over-achiever energy into working around the farm while raising 2 or 3 children. They make lists of around 2,000 things that need to be done around the place -- usually generated on their laptops and religiously updated daily. Their modus operandi for raising kids seems kind of off-beat, but it usually works. They train the kids to be like assistant execs who trail along in their wake, expected to help out with every chore. If they're out in the orchard pruning trees, their knee-high toddlers will be waddling back and forth picking up the trimmings and loading them onto the cart of the lawn tractor. If they're milking the goats, the children will be bottle feeding baby goats or lambs. I'm often amazed at how these guys get the smallest kids working alongside them like little soldiers. Makes me laugh just thinking about how often I've seen this kind of scene repeated over the years when I've dropped by to visit one of these families. Interesting thing is that the kids seem no worse for the experience -- I know quite a number of these kids who are now in their early 20s. Doesn't seem to have done them any harm. Most say they have great memories of spending time working around the farm with their dads. Might not be such a bad thing if we saw a lot more of this in our society.