New book out as ebook!

My new book, THERE'S A BEAR IN THE BASEMENT, came out a few weeks ago.  The publisher and I talked about it during his blogtalk radio show on Tuesday night.  If you'd like to listen to us talk about my writing process, a few characters in the book, and animals and pets, in general, go to http://www.trestlepresspublishing.com/ and click on the words about his blog talk radio, the G-Zone.  After that comes up, look to the right where you will see archived blogs and click on that of Gay Balliet and Jeff Bennington.  I think you'll be happy to hear that it's quite entertaining.  Thanks.

link to my review of There's A Bear in the Basement in Goodreads.com

There's A Bear in the Basement by Gay Louise Balliet
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Terrific read! But what more would an author say about her next book? Truly--it is very entertaining. Upload this to your electronic device, grab a towel and some goodies, and head out to the beach. Don't forget the sunscreen!

View all my reviews

Skippy's Escape

Now that I have found myself with a rather large farm to tend and manage on my own, time is certainly precious.  Lack of hours is the reason I have been visibly absent from my blog.  Your forgiveness is greatly appreciated.  Those of you who have lived and survived divorce know exactly what I mean.  What work was usually done by two people falls heavily on the one left behind.  So, no one should be surprised that my shoulders are loaded with farmwork right now.

Mowing grass this time of year and with the amount of rain we've been having is an arduous task.  I am driving a Kabota, full-size tractor with a five or six foot finish mower behind.  On a good day when I don't bash into a fence post or tree, I can accomplish the task in a minmum of four hours.  But when the horses can't keep up with "mowing" their own pastures, I must get out there and cut their grass, too, just to make it manageable.  That one pasture, alone, takes me two hours.  So, one day a week must be devoted to cutting grass for six hours on this eight-acre farm.  And I won't even mention the weed-whacking around the fence posts and trees. 

Yet I do my chores here because I love this place and love, in a strange way, all the work it takes to keep it going and looking pristine.  It doesn't matter that at the end of my mowing stint I'm sweaty, sticky, and icky all over.  I have lovingly coiffed my farmland.  Passersby can only note that the person living here loves her property and all that goes with taking care of it.

So, the other day when I began the first hour of mowing, I unexpectedly came upon Skippy who was eating some of the farmer's alfalfa next to my patch.  When he heard the diesel chugging toward him, he became alarmed, probably thinking he was being a bad boy for sneaking alfalfa and that this big machine was coming to forcibly remove him from the field.  I laughed to myself as I kept driving towards him, and he looked each way, honing in on the sound of the tractor so that he could decide how to escape.  And I just kept going on my cutting route around the woods.  I certainly wasn't going to run him over with the tractor.  But he didn't know that.

I could see Skippy about fifty feet ahead of me, listening and deciding what to do about being caught between the alfalfa field and my tractor.  And, then, I could see that he had made a decision for escape.  Very deliberately he turned toward the woods, away from the alfalfa field, and began a slow bee-line towards the trees.  He took the shortest path--straight across--and before the tractor crossed his footsteps, he was already safely inside the woods where no loud machine could reach him.  Skippy's mad dash to the woods entertained me for the rest of the day.

I'm back!

Sorry for my absence: life has a way of pulling nasty tricks on us, thus shutting down the normalcy of everyday work. My response to the shock that came my way was to focus on the solution, to the ignorance of everything else, including my blog.

But I'm up and running again. One of the nasty things biting at my ankles like an annoying chihuahua was Death. I hate Death, the Grand Ruiner of all things.

In just a matter of a few months I lost several friends. Death broke into my home and took away several cats: Little Eggie, Bonnie the Bitch, and Maggie--all old felines but still helpless in the grip of the Grim Reaper.

Within a few weeks I had to invite unforgiving Death into my home and put to sleep the first of a number of aging pot-bellied pigs. First, he took Chico, a good-natured soul who could not keep weight on and simply deteriorated with each passing day. Then, Lowell, my first swiney friend who I bought for $50 back in 1994, looked at me with a pitiful face, a face begging me to take him from this life of aging misery and into a space of nothingness. With the nothingness came freedom from discomfort and pain. So, much to my own misery, I accommodated his request: I had him put to sleep.

This past Saturday I had Annie Louise sent into Death's skeletal arms. She, too, was old and had lost complete control of her back end. Death gladly took her despite my trying to hold on and extend her life.

As I grow old, so do my pets. What began as a farm housing fourteen pot-bellied pigs, now remains a home for my last seven, with Pauly, another elderly fellow, already knocking at Death's door. Every morning and evening and sometimes during the day, Pauly loses his balance, falls over and waits for me to come right him. He is much appreciative. But as he grows thinner and thinner and weaker and weaker, I realize he's not going to be able to sustain himself much longer. I expect him to live no longer than about two weeks. However, I promised him and myself that I would not let him suffer. And I won't.

I am sorry that I had to come back to my blog with such a sad, despairing tale, but Death is a part of life on a farm, not a farm for butchering animals but one for allowing them to live each's life to his or her natural end. Though Little Eggie, Bonnie, Maggie, Chico, Lowell, and Annie had good, full lives here and appreciated the good life on the Balliet farm, they didn't fear Death as I did. In fact, I feel they welcomed the monster. Behind the horrid face of Death lay calm and peace, and freedom from pain. And though Death took each one in slightly different ways, they suffered no fear because I was with each one at the Moment. I became the strength whereby they could say "Good-bye" without apprehension.

Death cannot intimidate or scare when someone is whispering "I Love You" in the dying animal's ear. In that moment, Death loses all his strength, his ferociousness--his mystery.

Convoy

“We’ve got ourselves a convoy!” I imagined Stewie thinking as I glanced at the S-Team gearing up for more mischief.

Stevie, my four-month-old Yorkshire farm pig, galloped out of the barn with Stewie, my Irish wolfhound pup, right behind him--up the pig’s rear end, pawing his back, and play-biting his flag-ears.

What a couple of goofy bed-fellows I have in these two animals: one a scruffy-haired, kinda droopy-lipped sight-hound of seven months and his best pal and confidant, Stevie, a white, smooth-bristled, pig—each weighing close to a hundred pounds. The two inseparables, both in their youth and fascination with this world relatively new to both, crave the outdoors and all the curiosities it has to offer, from the spring grass-shoots to the grubs emerging from their winter sleep, from the cats lurking beneath each bush and guarding atop each tree limb, from the horses neighing in the pasture to my planting elephant ears in the gardens. Everything lures their curiosity.

Stevie is Stewie’s mentor. The other day I watched from the kitchen window as Stewie concentrated on Stevie’s rooting technique. With such intensity that I have never seen in my hound before, Stewie watched as Stevie plowed up the muddy back yard. Stewie must have been thinking, as he saw Stevie bury his face, up to his eyes, into the ground, “Hm-m-m-m, must be food underground. I want some too. Should I be helping?” Since Stewie is not used to plowing earth with his nose, he didn’t exactly know how to get at the treasure beneath the soil, but he was learning how to adjust for his lack of a snout roto-rooter.

I watched as Stewie analyzed Stevie’s nose-plowing methods, and then suddenly, Stewie’s ears perked, and he looked at the ground in front of him. He sniffed, looked at Stevie, whose eyes were the only part of his face visible (the rest being covered by mud), and began to dig furiously with his front paws. He scratched and threw the dirt through his hind legs. Ground flew four feet into the air, and all the while he gaged his success with Stevie’s. Stewie was digging faster and deeper than was Stevie, but Stewie didn’t know what he was digging for.

And I? Well, it wasn’t bad enough that Stevie was plowing six-inch ridges into my backyard. (Incidentally, I take pride in my landscape design and beautiful tropical-looking gardens. This activity wasn’t enhancing the outdoor décor.) The two were in league together, against me and my landscaping. If I didn’t stop the partners in crime, my yard would look like the work of an excavator gone toxic.

Out the door I flew, shouting, “Stevie! Stewie! Stop it!” Stewie looked up as if to say, “What’s bugging you?” but Stevie, so intent on his digging, paid me no attention. So, I tromped into the muddy hole behind him and began to push on his rump. It’s not easy trying to move a hundred pound cylinder on legs out of an enticing mudhole. After ten minutes of yelling and coaxing, and with my shoes Frankenstein-heavy with caked mud, Stevie finally walked off into the woods where he can root until he collapses, for all I care. My gardens, however, are off limits.

Stewie had stopped digging when he saw how upset I was. And when Stevie trotted off into the woods with Stewie close behind, I muttered to myself, “Yep, we got ourselves a convoy.”

Remembering Claudia

Claudia

Sweetest Welsh corgi in Wisconsin,
Our Claudia—Mare’s and mine.

Tales of Claudia throughout her life:
Geese-chasing,
River-walking,
Snow-nose plowing
Claudia.

Loved her walks with momma.
Loved watching the neighbor, Joey-dog.
Loved her family felines, Spotty and Meg.
Loved her food: meat chopped each night.

Roar of the blender:
Made Claudia dance,
Made Claudia talk-bark,
Made Claudia smile
With lips stretched from the West coast to the East coast of her face.

But this little corgi went to heaven,
And this little Mare stayed at home.
And this little Claudia will have no more roast beef.
And this little Claudia won’t come home.

Her bark is silenced.
Her dance has
ended.

But her memory lives
Beyond.
In all of us who knew her.
And loved her:
Looking out upon the river,
Laughing at the geese—

Her geese.
Her river.
Her Wisconsin snowfields.

Her life laced with love
Of the land
And her lady.

Ice Storm

Ice Storm

Diamond-encrusted, sparkling saturation, mirrored forest--storm of ice.

Ice-queen beauty--impenetrable, frosty-glared, hard-hearted.
Master artisan, Nature--tools of cold and water.

Quiet calm of the ice-fringed forest.
Squirrel-tails balancing on frosty limbs,
Scamper-sliding, slip-clinging, across the rime.

Crystalline woods wearing clear-crackled branches;
Like a brittle old woman: thick spectacles piercing from cropped white hair.
Trees captured in a glass-blower’s art like flies caught in lucid amber.

Frost-whiskered world.