Brilliant post. Did I say brilliant? I meant boring.

I haven't posted recently, and I think that, along with Mr Farty, this may be my crappiest post ever. Not that Mr Farty's post was crappy. It was totally awesome! It said so in the title.

Right now, I could either be sewing my pirate costume full pirate regalia for an upcoming Flying Spaghetti Monster party, or writing this post, or sleeping. I've had a couple of gin and tonics, and if I can do this:sober, imagine what I can do completely drunk slightly tipsy. (Sorry for anyone who already saw this on Twitter (Hi Lesley!!). Strike while the iron is hot, unless you're ironing suedecloth. That works better on medium. (Speaking of Twitter, as soon as I twittered about male and female strippers, The Bloggess started following me. I'm just sayin')

[WARNING: Completely arbitrary change of topic]
Remember the post about Twister the one-eyed wonder horse? You know. The post before last? Someone (named David) pointed out to me that perhaps Twister is NOT soaking his hay to soften it up, but is, in fact brewing his own alcoholic beverage. A sort of hay beer. He does occasionally bump into things, which I attributed to his blindness, but maybe he's just tipsy.

Twister the One-eyed Wonder Horse

WARNING: IF YOU'RE SQUEAMISH ABOUT EYE-SOCKETS, DON'T EVEN LOOK AT THIS POST

UPDATE: Apparently, don't look at it if you are squeamish about the trots, either. (No pun intended)(Okay, I lied. Pun intended)

Yes, I have one of the smartest horses in the world, and I'm not the only one who says that.

A little bit about Twister: He's about 25 years old, and we've had him since he was 18 and William was 12. Come to think of it, Bill and Twister came into our lives right around the same time.William and Twister's first 4-H competitive trail ride. Third place!

As I've said in previous posts, he was born with a huge cataract in one eye, and developed equine recurrent uveitis, aka moon blindness in the other. When we got him, he had had recurrent infections for many years, and his eye was very scarred and caused him constant pain. It was very light sensitive so he kept his eyes closed and fell asleep a lot:About three years ago it abscessed and I had to have it removed (and not put back in like SOME people). He's been MUCH happier ever since. Interestingly, Twister isn't the first blind horse I've had. Paleface, the Pony of the Americas I had when I was growing up also went blind due to moon blindness. He also adapted and lived for many years after. (Yes, the common denominator seems to be me, but Twister had it well before I got him)

Other problems we've dealt with are: mild arthritis, mild navicular, occasional very painful hoof abscesses, and a leg wound that didn't heal for well over a year. Oh, and his teeth are almost worn down to nothing on one side, and not much better on the other, so he can't chew his food properly. I am an expert at bandaging legs, packing hooves, putting ointment in eyes (the left one, anyway), and giving shots. He also had almost constant diarrhea, for which I took him to the vet several times. They just told me that he's an old horse and there wasn't anything I could do.

What's this banana slug photo doing here? Oh, right. I'm a biologist.

Last summer, I started noticing that his poop (yes, this is a technical term - if you're a sailor) was more horselike and less cow patty-like (a scientific description). The ranch owners and I also started noticing that his water was full of hay, disgustingly stinky (another scientific description), and had to be cleaned out far more often than all the other horses. I thought he was just drinking with his mouth full, and dropping some hay in. We also thought he might be accidentally pooping in his water - after all, he IS blind. Well, turns out he's blind but he's not stupid.

One day, while I was cleaning his paddock, the ranch owner came around to feed. While we were chatting, Twister grabbed a huge mouthful of hay, carried it over to his water trough, and dropped it in. The owner and I looked at each other. Did he just do that on purpose?

I went over, scooped it out and said, "Twister, don't do that, you idiot!" He immediately sniffed around, picked it up and plopped it back in. He then spent the next few minutes slurping it off the surface. He went back over and picked up another huge chunk of hay, carried it over and dunked it in the water, and then happily slurped it up. I couldn't believe it. He was softening it up so he could chew it. We were astounded. We watched as he did this with the rest of his hay. He must have originally done it accidentally once or twice, and discovered the hay was softer and easier to chew when soaked for a while. I would never have credited a horse with the reasoning abilities to connect the dots.
And because he's able to digest his food better, an added benefit is that he managed to "fix" his own diarrhea problem.

I just have to clean out his bathtub trough frequently. I might think it stinks, but Twister's next door neighbour, Spicy, thinks it's delicious when I drain it. After:Is that a smart horse, or what? Handsome, too.

Easy meme

The reason I changed the name on this blog from Aquatic Ecologist, Bright, Atheist, so many labels.. to Chimaera Contemplations was because I wanted to indicate that it is about a variety of subjects, and my friend Kia had already taken the name that says it all. That and the old name was just to darn long.

I was tagged by Mr Farty with this meme. Well, he tagged somebody named 'you' so I'm considering it to mean 'me.' And it is easier to do than the other post I am working on about the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

1. The rules of the game get posted on the beginning.
2. Each player answers the rules about him or herself.
3. At the end of the post, the player tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they’ve been tagged and asking them to read his [or her] blog.

NOTE: I don't know why the numbers are showing up as cutesy little flowers when I post this. They are numbers in edit mode. Woo Hoo! I figured it out. The creator of this template, Todd Dominey, liked cutesy flowers instead of numbers for some reason.

What I was doing ten years ago:
Er...I was living in David and Pete's (yes, my ex-husband and his life partner) remodeled garage while I was getting my MBA the University of California, Davis Graduate School of Management. It is a very nice garage with its own bathroom.

About six months earlier, I was living in my parent's basement while I was getting my M.S. degree at Purdue University. A very nice basement it is, too.

Five things on my To-Do list today:

1. Not much. Did it all yesterday. Went to gym, rented a truck, played in band concert, potted plants, etc.
2. Working on the post about the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (note #2 on my bad habits, though)
3. Cleaning Twister's paddock, and bandaging his legs if needed.
4. Maybe going to see my friend M's (I have three friends M), new baby goats.
5. Sitting around reading other people's blogs. Maybe trying to figure out how to do a "behind the fold" on my blog. I've found two different ways so far, and neither work the way I want them to.

Update: I actually washed my car today, and it wasn't even on the list. Anything to get out of doing housework.

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Not likely to happen, so why bother thinking about it? Millionaire, maybe....:-p

Three of my bad habits:

1. I don't do housework. Ever. Or at least until I can't see the floor. Then I make a path.
   
2. Procrastinating.
3. I tend to get a little obsessive about things. For instance, I'll read constantly for months and then switch to crossword puzzles for months. According to my family my current obsession is blogging. I never get obsessive about housework, funnily enough.
   

Five places I’ve lived:

1. Crowborough, England
2. Earlville, New York
3. Lake Jackson, Texas
4. Benicia, California
5. Indianapolis area, Indiana

There are several more towns. I once added it up, and until this house, I've never lived in one house more than four years. Going on 4 1/2 years here with Bill. I keep telling him it's time to sell the house and move.

Five jobs I’ve had:

1. Weekend greenhouse waterer - keeping experimental plants alive at Dow Chemical
   
2. Receptionist at a ballroom dance studio - worked for dance lessons.
   
3. Clerk/manager of a small parcel shipping company.
4. Field biologist for a consulting firm.
5. Scientist with the State of California.

Five books I’ve recently read:
Hmm...define recently...See above post regarding obsessive blogging.

1. Science Friction - Michael Shermer. Currently reading, but keep getting interrupted by blogs.
   
2. The Ancestor's Tale - Richard Dawkins. I bought it for my parents and brother, too.
   
3. My Boyfriend is a Twat - Zoe McCarthy
   
4. The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - Bobby Henderson.
   
5. Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) - Jerome K. Jerome. I can read it over and over, although I probably haven't read it as often as the Tolkien trilogy (note how I sneaked my favorite books onto the list?)
   

Five people or communities I’m going to tag:
Anybody who feels like it. As was evident in my last meme, musicians don't follow directions very well. Directors, yes, but not directions.

Actually, I think that most of the people who occasionally read this blog (my family) don't have blogs.

Twister is world famous!

I think this means that Twister is now world famous! I hope he doesn't get a big head when I tell him.Too late.

Blind horse running!

Er... actually, this is rolling. This is running:
Back the other way:Notice I'm on the OTHER SIDE of the fence from Twister the One-Eyed Wonder Horse. Not that I don't trust him, but he weighs about 1200 lbs and IS almost completely blind. He knows exactly where the fences are, but I tend to be a random variable in the paddock. A loud random variable when he starts doing this while I'm in there. There's absolutely nothing wrong with his ears.

Back the other way again:

And then I asked him to rear for me, which he obediently did. Anybody watching would have thought he'd been trained to do it. Beautiful, isn't he?You can see why I have trouble keeping the bandages on. He's a little hard on them.

All done. More than enough exercise for an old blind horse for one day. He looks a little motheaten because he's losing his winter coat.

Gimme a treat! It was getting dark, so his pupil was dilating, and you can see the cataract in his one remaining eye pretty well.

Twister or Les?

This is Twister the One-eyed Wonder Horse relaxing in a patch of sun in his paddock. He has a huge cataract and is essentially blind in the one eye he has. Yes, that is a bandage on his hock. If you look carefully, you can see a matching purple and white one on his right hind leg. He usually has at least one bandage somewhere on his person (or horse). He's sort of like the Les Nessman of the horse world.

This most recent bandage is due to a wound that won't heal. It has been 5 months now, and it is very close, but not quite there. He somehow managed to grind gravel into a bedsore on his hock, probably during his second favourite activity - rolling (his favourite, of course, is eating). It got very nasty very quickly, so here we are months of bandaging, 6 weeks in a long-term care facility, and many many 100s of dollars later. The purple bandage is the real one. The white bandage is actually more of a preventative measure. I can't afford to do this again.

Supposedly he's an American Quarter Horse. He's about 16 hands at the whithers; luckily they don't measure at the lowest point on his back. He originally belonged to my son, but my son became more interested in girls than horses and officially "gave" Twister to me a couple of years ago. Twister is only 23, but is officially retired now due to numerous foot and behavioral problems. He's lucky he's so cute.

New at this

Hmm. This is a test of the blogger system. This is only a test.

I'm not sure why I'm doing this. I don't think anybody would really be interested in what I have to say and I've never been one to write a diary. I think I'm just getting very tired of being pushed steadily more and more into the closet. My ex-husband came out of the "gay" closet years ago, and I greatly admire him for it. I've been an atheist all my life, and it has never really been a problem for me until recently. I don't think I have ever really been "in your face" about it, but have had more of a live-and-let-live attitude. I will tell people if they ask, but don't generally volunteer the information. All of my close friends know, and just accept that I cannot understand any religious feelings they have.

Not that I haven't had problems before. When I was a young teen living deep in the heart of Texas, aka the Bible Belt, I learned very quickly to call myself an agnostic (note I said call myself, not become one) as that seemed more acceptable to the other kids.

While getting my Masters degree at Purdue University-again in the Bible Belt-I had not dated in several years and was told by one of the other grad students that without "God" telling me what I could and could not do, I could have no morals. He then went on to tell (tell me, not ask me) that I must be having sex with my dog since I wasn't sleeping with a man. My response was that gee, I guess I shouldn't have had the dog neutered then, and if I HAD been sleeping with a man out of wedlock, I assume he would have accused me of adultery! I never did quite understand why it was inconceivable to him that I might go for five years without sleeping with any other animal, human or otherwise.

The reason I feel I'm being pushed into the closet is that I am recently seemingly surrounded by religious people I feel I have to tiptoe around. I have had a Darwin Fish on the back of my cars since 1991, most of that time in California, but even when I went to Purdue it was never a problem. I have now replaced the plastic icon with a vinyl cutout without the word Darwin (granted, my car was rear-ended, and the bumper replaced, so I didn't actually go out and physically remove the plastic Darwin Fish). I have a very hard time finding a place to keep my blind horse. The stable I have him in now is owned by a very religious couple. I have actually been taking my husband's car in case they see the Darwin Fish and confront me about it. I can't risk being asked to move him. Two of the last three places I've had him have been sold and converted into housing developments, and the elderly couple that ran the third retired. There are fewer and fewer places he can safely go that I can afford. He is getting older and has a few health problems other than his lack of vision which also cost a lot of money, and several people have suggested I put him down. I will not do that while he is still enjoying life, and if any of these people saw him while he was rolling, bucking, rearing and prancing around his paddock they would understand why. He may be a swaybacked, one-eyed, giant ball of fuzz (in his winter coat) but he is absolutely beautiful to me. To kill him when he enjoys life so much would be criminal.

I am the chairperson of a local band (that will give it away if anyone reads this), and all of the other council members at the moment are very religious. I feel that they would have trouble trusting me for my supposed lack of morals if they knew. I could be wrong, and hope I am, but it would make my job just that much harder if I had to deal with that on top of all the other problems we've had this year (that would be a whole 'nother blog!). I had one council member ask me what church I go to, and I evaded by saying I don't go to church (the truth, but I didn't tell her why). We have had a difficult year for various reasons-enough that I get physically ill after council meetings-and I have wondered why I haven't just told them. It might be an easy way to get off the council, and better for my health. The fact that I am very much an introvert, and don't like any sort of confrontation is also a big part of it. I feel responsible to do the best that I can for the band, and unfortunately that means that staying in the closet is probably the best way. As I said, I could be wrong, but I'm not willing to risk it while I'm still chairperson of the council. I sometimes even park my car backward so that the Darwin Fish silhouette isn't as visible.

Then there is work, which I don't really want to get into right now. I have never before been in the closet at work, though.