Jeffrey L. Tucker's Thoughts - Raindance Farms, LLC

The world today is nuts. Everybody has a viewpoint and believe it or not, they differ from mine a lot of the time. That's okay though, people are allowed to be wrong. With all of the politicking going on, the wishy-washy vacillating stands people are taking based on popularity polls I'm making a stand as well. Here and now. I don't care if you disagree with me. I am willing to let the chips fall where they may, the results speak for themselves, the early bird getting the worm which I never wanted anyway because it always give me a headache, and put my nose to the grindstone.

I am against creases. That's right. I don't like them. I'm adamantly against them. I will support a bill abolishing them and I will vote for a war on them. I am so against them that there is a pile of shirts and slacks on my floor awaiting their abolition at the stroke of my iron. But...I am against wasting energy right now. I will not plug in that iron and turn on a light. I am attempting to see to the removal of those creases by out waiting them. The iron is near my clothing, striking fear into the creases heart to be sure. I occasionally bring these clothes into the bathroom when I shower because I like to attempt to deceive myself into believing that "steam will cause creases to fall out of your clothing." Has that ever worked for anybody - bring a wrinkled garment into the bathroom, step out of your shower and there is your neatly pressed suit? Maybe it only works if you wear it in the shower with you.

I have to go now. I need to buy some wrinkle-free clothing to support my tough stance, my war on wrinkles.

There's two things that for some reason are hard for many to say - "goodbye" and "thanks." I've never really had trouble with "goodbye", that one's fairly simple. "Goodbye...see ya...so long...see ya tomorrow....get off company property..." So many people get stuck in those conversations where for some reason they can't get out of them, the kind where you're sitting there going insane inside your head, wondering if it's a slice vertically or horizontally in your wrist, one way will cause this conversation to end swiftly and mercifully, the other a long lingering period in which you'll hear all the details of an event so boring that even the event itself found no interest in as it was occurring. Unfortunately my sister inherited my mom's inability to end a conversation. She hangs onto it like it's some form of lifeline, tightly grasping it well beyond it having any life left in it. But she's one of the nicest people on earth. The only way my mom knows how to end a conversation is when "my show is coming on." I always wondered who the networks made all those shows for - they're for my mom. All those Sunday night movies about terminally ill ice skaters who despite all lack of hope, and overcoming extreme adversity, somehow find peace, joy and love with their rival or skate partner before the news comes on, thus giving us all a little more to be thankful and helping put our lives in perspective for that 2 hour period (1 hour of actual show, the remainder commercials) - they're all made for my mom. Mom measures time as pre-"my show is coming on" and now. The networks have formalized this into "prime time" and non-prime time but what they really mean is "Jeff's mom's show time" and non. Thus in mom's pre-my show time period, which is mid-afternoon for the rest of the world, she'll call me at the office where I'll have two nurses in my office screaming at each other, two calls on hold, an evening board meeting and 7am board meeting to prep for and staff lined up to ask questions which apparently the universe hinges on and my mom will call, tell me about her pre-show world "Hi honey, just got up...slow day but I'm up early (it's noon)...coffee is brewing...haven't done much today...can you hold on the coffee's almost brewed and I need a cup..." but it's my mom so I gotta take the call. When she finally returns she remembers to ask "Oh by the way honey, are you busy?..." "No mom, just trying to see if I can sharpen this letter opener enough to open a vein..." "Oh that's nice sweetie, so anyway, haven't done much today, gonna start putting on my makeup...." AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH Okay, so maybe there are conversations I can't get out of so easily but it's my MOM....

That leaves "thank you's." I've never really felt like I know how to say it adequately enough. So I try to let flowers do my talking. When I was going through my divorce way back when I pretty much hit bottom - stopped eating, stopped even drinking liquids...so as you'd guess, I ended up in Urgent Care with pneumonia, dehydration and malnutrition. The doc told me I needed to find something else to live for. Losing my kids had been really hard on me, I loved my time with them.... so I did as she ordered. Sent out two resumes, got two job interviews leading to two job offers. I brought roses to the committee that was interviewing for the job I didn't take. 5 years later one of those members took over as administrator at one of our clinics and said they had never heard of anything like that and still talked about it. I took the other job doing what I do now - went back to that Urgent Care and brought that doc a rose, thanked her for caring enough to call and follow-up on me, told her where I was in life and gave her the rose. She cried. I guess that sort of told me maybe we don't say "thanks" enough. I've told my staff to abuse their positions for the greater good - meaning if they witness an act of kindness, professionalism, service - of just plain goodness - to call that person's supervisor and/or send them a letter or better yet a card. Recognize it. One of our staff came in afterwards and said never in that person's experience had they worked for an employer who directed that they live by or recognize the Golden Rule. Isn't that sad?

So I guess this is a long-winded way to say "thanks" to those of you that take time out of your day to comment or write because you stopped long enough to read and look at one of my little pieces of the greater puzzle of our lives. I never thought people would read this, I thought it was a way to throw something out at the great virtual space and never really thought space would bring anything back. It has, and it's you folks. Thanks for honoring me enough to read my words and even more for commenting.

Thanks to everyone - this bud's for you.

May 16th, 9:27am: Whoa, busy busy week! Last Saturday we hauled two horses to Lake Elmo, MN for the Early Bird Show. Kathi showed Last Dance (Dance) and Simply Fearless (Fear) in a number of classes bringing home a second place finish on Dance out of 14 horses and a second place finish for Fear. Dance had only been ridden twice in the last year or so - Kathi has worked with her so much that she even makes me look good when I get on her and go round the arena! After a stressfully short period getting the horses clipped, bathed and ready to go it was amazing watching her out there, a cowgirl in her element. I took a ton of pictures I'll get posted along with the Layla videos and pictures from the past couple of weeks that got lost when I tried to email them to me (files were too large I guess).

We had the very first official board meeting of the WindChill Legacy, Ltd. last night. I'm happy to announce we now have 6 board members - each of whom have an area they are responsible for (volunteer/project coordination, grant writing, education & resource development, finance, management). The board members will be posted on the forum along with meeting details. We also have a core group of volunteer administrative team members, each of whom have an area they are helping with. They'll be posted on our website as that develops. I am also very pleased to announce that Kathi L. Davis has been named the Executive Director of The WindChill Legacy, Ltd. I know Windchill would be as proud of her as I am as she tackles this new role. There couldn't be a finer person in this role - congratulations Kathi!

May 5th, 8:14am: FINALLY no snow for a couple day stretch! Yesterday we had a great day - sun was shining, it was warm, all of the farm visitors came Saturday so Sunday was ours. It was a jeans, boots and t-shirt day for me and the best part of the arrival of Spring - kat in tank tops and jeans! Cowgirls rock. The mud was awful but if that was the worst thing we had to deal with I'll take it. We used the day to bring the horses into the barn for 'maintenance.' That means walking through the mud to catch the suddenly blind and deaf pasture citizens who can't hear their names for some reason, walk them back through the pasture, through the yard, through the mud in the pen and into the barn where we brush them down head to toe, worm them, give them their shots and do a general check of them - bodies, teeth, etc. They love the brushing, if they could purr they would. It's okay though, Olivia jumps up on their backs so she does the purring for them. I think we got around half the herd done or so. I guess that's job security for us.

We added another board member the end of last week, so we're rounding out some areas. Quite a few of the old care team are back in the saddle with us in this effort. What a great group.

I know I promised photos and vids of Layla and had tried to email them early this AM to my office so I could post this morning instead of doing something productive but unfortunately the files must have been too large. I'll try to get them up early this week. Our first priority is getting the basic Legacy webpage up and going. I had hired a web designer who had to back out due to another big project so I'll do something basic to get us started and then hire someone to do something more worthy of WindChill's memory.

April 1st, 9:13pm: Woohoo! Good news on multiple fronts! DSL is back up and running so we have have all the cams back up, and can pull the security cams off the second phone line. That's our backup for if internet goes down but we lose the use of the line. And help finally arrived with my family flying in to stay at the farm and play with the animals for a couple of weeks. And even better - I'll be gone so won't have to deal with them! Mostly kidding.

April 1st, 8:43am: While in the middle of my update last night our DSL went down AGAIN. While I have a connection (at the office currently) I wanted to update you on a couple of things: Watch for WindChill Legacy (the non-profit) updates on Windchill's forum from Kathi. We've been a lot behind the scenes, lots of the paperwork as well as trying to get our arms around the various efforts going on (research on programs, laws, organizing volunteers which is going slower than we'd like). Kathi Davis will be posting updates on there to keep you all updated on things. We'll probably need to organize people into tighter groups, like committees only in our case they'll actually get things done - you people are absolutely amazing, the caliber of people who have volunteered has been incredible.

I'm hauling a horse to IL and then continuing on to FL so will be out of touch the rest of the week and weekend. Will be on the road a LONG time. If I hit some wireless hotspots on the way I may try to post but that's really hit and miss I've found.

FYI, I'm sort of branching this blog off into several areas so anything I post about Windchill will later be moved to the Windchill section of the site. For right now anything else is being copied to the Layla section but I have a bunch of other thoughts and blogging to do so eventually when I organize this more I'll branch that off more into a 'wanderings and ramblings' sort of spot. I've found a bunch more Windchill pictures and videos, if there's time tonight I'll post some, if not I know I've promised you I'll get to that and I will. I also haven't forgotten the promise to post the notes from the communicators, we had hoped to have the 'final' communication from the communicator who was in touch with him regularly to explain what we were doing and get his 'feedback' feelings but we haven't received that so I'm going to post from our old notes, which is a combination of notes from several different communicators and healers.

March 31st, 8pm: Sorry for the delay guys, we've had major problems with our DSL (internet connection) the past couple of days and after meeting some really great people - the Friends of Barbaro - who came out to the farm Saturday, our DSL went down completely. I used the down time to work offline, answering around 240 emails yesterday from when Windchill died, I have around 300 or so left from around his memorial time. Then I can start catching up on the 150 currently in my inbox. I divided the emails up into "pre-March 24th" and after thinking that would help me both stay current, and start chipping away at the piles in the folders. I was wrong. FYI, for some reason I hit some people's spam filters so if you haven't gotten a response it may be because my email to you bounced and I'm truly sorry.