My window looks out on a 320-acre alfalfa farm with beautiful Diamond Mountain beyond that.
Trina Machacek
ME, half an hour later: What is that bull doing out there?
Still morning but after a cup of juice and my Cheerios.
ME: Has that stupid bull moved? Yeah, he has to have moved. I think he is moved.
ME, a few hours later, as I am eating a fruit cup for a snack: I swear that bull moves slow. Now he’s back. No, maybe he’s sick. Maybe he hasn’t moved….
A few days later that same bull was still out in the field, in the same area.
Now don’t get me wrong but that morning I swear to you that the bull moved a few steps forward and stopped. Finally I grabbed up my binoculars. I live in the rurals, we all have binoculars by our windows.
Come to find out, the big black bull that I saw, I swear it was a bull a few days ago—was now the end tower to the pivot sprinkler that waters a 160-acre field. Yes, a tower that stands about 14 feet tall with two big black tires and cross pieces and is made with various 6-10-inch aluminum pipes and angle iron. Looks like a gigantic 1300-foot-long monkey bars. But! Yes, a bullish like “but.” From just the right angle it looked like a big black bull.
Actually over four months I have seen that “bull” out in the field. On and off all summer long actually. As the pivot moved around watering the 160-acre circle of alfalfa, I would see the bull every four or five days. Just about as long as it took the sprinkler to go around and pass by that spot. About half a mile away. The bull would be there one day and gone the next. Until the farmer turned off the pivot, parked it across the field and that danged “bull” just stood there. Until my binoculars told the end of the story of “The Disappearing Bull.”
Yes, that was my cue to make an eye appointment. So I could see the bull that wasn’t there. I’ve watched that bull, all summer long.
Off to the eye doctor. The optometrist, not ophthalmologist. I was about in my mid-forties when I learned the difference between an optometrist and an ophthalmologist. It’s like the difference between a pocket-sized dictionary and one of those dictionaries that was a foot thick and stood on a stand! Both doctors look at your eyeballs, but the optometrist sells you glasses too. The ophthalmologist can check your eyeballs and sooooo much more. Then he sends you to the optometrist for your glasses. Oh, usually the eyeball guy that sells glasses isn’t covered as thoroughly by some insurances. But an ophthalmologist, to several insurance companies, even Medicare; well his visits and services are usually fully covered. How messed up is that. I need to step off the soap box—if I could just see to do that!
I know I need new glasses. I am to the point of leaning my head on my hand when I am at the computer so I can get my glasses set at just the perfect angle so I can, you know, see the screen. I am wearing double vision glasses now. The last time I took my eyes to the eye doc there was a brief, very brief discussion of the three tiered, or tri leveled glasses. I said thanks but I can’t even see with two step glasses. Pretty sure though, trifocals will be in my sights next.
At my last two appointments I swore to myself, before I even made the appointment, that I was not going to let them move me through like a side of beef. I’m pretty sure we have all felt like that with some type of doctor. I feel like that when that thing is put in front of my face and the different lenses are clicked by. When you get the, “Is it better now,” click, “Now?” I just start to answer when I hear, “How about now?” I might as well just close my eyes and say, “Yeah, sure!”
Trina lives in Diamond Valley, north of Eureka, Nevada. She loves to hear from readers. Email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com
