L.J. Zinkand - Blog

Requiem for a Tree

2/25/2026

Had to take this beauty down. It was a 6-stem oak tree, breaking ground as a singular tree several decades before I was born. One stem had been removed before I got here in 2002, and another trimmed by a crew in 2015. Now that our home has been cast into the "extreme fire zone" by the powers that we wish weren't, insurance wasn't having it. In fact, Farmers Insurance, the company I've shoveled money to for the last quarter of a century with nary a claim, unceremoniously dumped us without a chance for rebuttal.

I’ve loved this tree as one would love a dear friend. It has shaded the house in the summer, and yes, dropped an epic amount of leaves in autumn. We’ve witnessed a family of raccoons perched on a limb, watching television through the living room window. I’ll admit that my love for this tree somewhat clouded my ability to see that it was actually a monster in the making, the far right stem beginning to expand significantly over the north (bedroom!) side of the house. After making a total fool of myself sending “before” pictures to prospective insurance agents, I knew the tree had to come down. It totally dwarfs the house. Yegods! How did I not notice this?

A number of bids later I hired a crew called Bigfoot Brush & Tree, LLC. They were friendly, knowledgeable, we liked the quote and, since the novel I’m currently writing involves the concept of Bigfoot, they resonated with me. In the days before they arrived I spent time hugging the tree stems, begging them to try and stay alive underground. I was horrified about the murder I had ordered.

Bigfoot Brush showed up with a crew of seven, and went right to work cutting down the smaller madrones on the sides of the house, feeding them into the grinder. Then came the big guy. These guys were experts, cutting down the smaller limbs with the ground crew guiding them to a safe spot with ropes. I couldn’t focus on any work – I sat in my studio, watching out the window, stepping out occasionally to take pictures. At some point, when the largest trunks started coming down, I went into the bathroom and cried for nearly ten minutes.

Now there’s a hole with an expanded view from my studio. Coming up the driveway promises to be shocking for quite some time.

Here's a slide show, before and after. They cut all the larger limbs into 16” pieces to fit our wood stove, piling them in the side yard. The largest log has a circumference of 75”, so I might try shopping some of those big guys around. I don’t think there’s a chainsaw big enough to cut through the stump that was left. It’s all one piece.

Whoaaa!

February 09th, 2026

2/9/2026

Since our local ski area is closed due to lack of snow, I drove down to Mt. Shasta Ski Park last week. I just had to try out my new hip.

Great day! They still had some good snow, plus the mountain provided a modest lenticular cloud. Because of the warm temperatures, it was like spring skiing in February. Soft, but not too soft, and you had to watch out for bare spots and rocks. Having taught there back in 1998, I felt a bit like Rip Van Winkle. So much has changed since I was a ski instructor there in the late 90s.

As for my hip, my ski stance had been somewhat compromised due to compensation for my wayward pelvic region, for a long time. Without getting too technical, my right leg needed to be gently coaxed into recalibration when initiating turns. Plus it was the first day skiing for me at all this winter. Still, it was a whole lot of fun, with no crashes!

My Hip Replacement

12/16/2025

I’d been suffering for lots of years with my right hip. Could it have been the nearly 30 years of aikido, happily flipping through the air in high falls? Lugging my synthesizer up and down a sixth-floor walk-up in the East Village back in the 80s? That time I dropped my then-boyfriend’s racing bike on a tight, fast turn in the Adirondacks? They must have all combined to take their toll. By 2002, the pain while walking was nearly unbearable. I had an x-ray taken by a local orthopedic surgeon who told me my pelvis was crooked, making my right leg slightly longer, that I’d have to wear a heel lift in my left shoe to compensate. I breathed a sigh of relief that my x-ray didn’t show a crumbled hip laced with arthritic cobwebs. I bought some heel lifts, shrugged the rest of it off and trained my way through aikido anyway. Headed for my sandan, my 3rd-degree of black belt, I'd be darned if anything would stop me.

Several weeks later, an aikido buddy told me he’d had problems with his ankle, that something called Bikram Yoga had helped him heal it. I signed up immediately, and within a month of hot, sweaty yoga, I had begun to align my pelvis and no longer had that agonizing pain when walking without a heel lift. I was amazed! For the next twenty or so years, I did the yoga poses, even more when the pain, prompted by lifting stuff, returned. I was able to realign myself until a few years ago, when yoga just didn’t help anymore. Sorry, yoga. I still love you.

Lifting things was not going to leave my life. I was already showing my handmade creature dolls at craft fairs, basking in the appreciation for my art, and lifting booth stuff for shows was part of it. How I managed to keep skiing every winter bewilders me although I’m sure if someone took a video of me they would see that my left turns were stunted compared to my right ones. But hey, if you could ski like me at my age, you’d do anything to get on the hill. It’s pure joy.

Last summer the pain became unbearable. I could no longer sleep on my right side, and I limped most of the time. Even sitting on the couch hurt. Getting in and out of my car was a teeth-gritting, five-part process to angle myself without sharp stabs of pain. I had a two-day craft show in mid-July up in Bend, where I should have brought my cane from The Great Fall of 2014, but didn’t. It was brutal, hobbling the three blocks to the artists’ breakfast pavilion, and grimacing at every move during set-up.

I finally caved and wrote to my primary care doctor, explaining the situation. I told her about the pain, that I’d done some research on my own online, was fearful of wrecking my liver from excessive use of Tylenol, and wondered if I might be a candidate for a hip replacement. She immediately ordered me an x-ray. Turned out I have severe osteo-arthritis of the right hip.

A referral was made, and by late August I was in the examination room of Southern Oregon Orthopedics, studying my x-ray with Lark, the physician’s assistant. I had bone-on-bone contact in the right pelvis. No wonder it hurt so much.
“Oh, yes, you’re a perfect candidate,” Lark told me. “We have a new outpatient surgery center over by the airport. The procedure takes about 45 minutes, and they’ll get you upright and walking out of there on the same day (with a wheeled walker for the first few days). “Then,” she said, “After a few weeks’ recovery, you’ll never have that pain again.”
Wow! I’d assumed a hip replacement meant a hospital stay, and months of recovery.
“You mean I can actually have this?” I thought.
“Our earliest appointment is on September 23,” Lark continued.
“I’ll take it!”
In two months’ time I’d be strong enough to do my holiday shows and soon after that, ready for ski season! I have a buddy from high school who went through the same procedure last year, and skied happily in winter 2025. He’s been a great source of inspiration on this subject.

Meanwhile, my pain became markedly worse. Maybe it was the effect of seeing my x-ray. Setting up for the Saturday markets took twice as long. Even with the help of Tylenol, I was working half-speed at best, hobbling around on my cane. But, you know, I’m not the kind of person who drops everything and sits around in pain. Not if I can help it. Plus, watching peoples’ reactions to my dolls is always more spirit-lifting than staying home. A few other artisans told me they’d had the same procedure and yes, I’d feel wonderful afterwards. September 23 couldn’t happen soon enough.

A week before the procedure I met the surgeon – cute younger guy, actually. Most everyone working professionally is younger, come to think of it. Maybe it’s my age, but I appreciate so much about younger people than I used to. They’re not something to compete with, mistrust, or weigh my self-worth against. I just enjoy them.
The doctor seemed jazzed about my procedure, giving me a pre-surgery pep talk. I asked him what he was actually going to place into the right side of my body, and he went back to his office and returned with a model.

“Okay, that looks cool,” I said, nodding.

I’d have to fill some pre-surgery prescriptions – heavier stuff than I’ve ingested in more than a decade. A few words about oxycodone, and any heavy painkillers. They’re butt-plugs, every one. I learned this during my two-week hospital stay in 2014. Percoset was the culprit back then, causing an emergency call to the nurse one day with the phrase, “Oregon clay.” I won’t go any further. It was something I swore would never happen again. I ordered a side of prunes with every meal after that, and the situation was resolved in a few days’ time. So, having to fill a prescription for oxycodone and other things a week before my hip surgery, I stocked up on prune juice. As a bonus, I’m providing you with my tried and true instructions for the use of prune juice for constipation:

Hayleyanne’s Prune Juice Remedy
5-6 swallows = maintenance
12 swallows = a healthy discharge within 24 hours
16 oz. or more = mass anal explosion. I mean it. Do not go out! Intestinal gurgles and aftershocks will be felt for the next 24 hours.

My husband, Wayne, took me to the Southern Oregon Osteopathic Outpatient Center at 9 a.m. They set me up in my own private recovery room with a gown and hat. The anesthesiologist came in and described everything he was going to do – an epidural, then anesthesia.
“I’m a lightweight as regards heavy drugs,” I told him.
“Yes, but you’ll want to sleep through all the hammering and sawing the surgeon has to do.”

A nurse gave me a handful of pills – muscle relaxers and an oxycodone, with very little water allowed to swallow them. Wayne waited until I was ready for surgery, then took off to do errands. At around 10:15, when I was making little sense to anyone, the nurse wheeled my gurney into the operating room – a massive, fluorescent-lit chamber with silvery implements of human body realignment packing the shelves around me! They loaded me onto the operation table and instructed me to sit up with the backs of my legs against the edge of the table, in readiness for the epidural.

Then I was being wheeled back to my room. At first I wondered if a mistake had been made and they’d cancelled the whole thing – but I was done! I dozed on and off for a while. Then a nurse showed up with a tiny container of applesauce and some ginger ale. Things are a little hazy, but apparently the doctor stayed in contact with Wayne, who came back in the early afternoon. The highlights were, as I remember them, a nurse making me walk along a red line in the hallway with my wheeled walker, climbing up a narrow stairway holding onto its banisters, drinking water and throwing up (they have these great new circular barf bags that fit right over your mouth now), and the excellent nurses.

By 5 p.m. there were four of them in the room, coaxing me to pee in the private little bathroom so they could release me (and go home themselves, it later dawned on me). It took a while, one nurse explained, as my lower body had been numbed by the epidural. Dr. Jancuska stopped by to tell me everything went well, that he’d added a medical zip-tie to the bottom of the new hip because they’d found a crack in my right femur. Retroactive ouch! Around 6 p.m. I was finally flowing, amid cheers from the nurses! They got me dressed and sent us home.

The scariest thing was, when I was waking up from surgery, dozing on and off, I saw monsters. The kind you might hallucinate when your eyes are closed. Bad dream monsters. Just the heads, that would morph from one horrifying design to another. I think it may have been a warning about the drugs, especially the fentanyl. It’s just sinister. I've always thought that, in the aftermath of a colonoscopy, for instance. I mean, where do you go? It's not like sleeping, where you feel yourself dozing off, and return to shake off the grogginess. It's an empty page, as in, "This page intentionally left blank." I guess I'm not a great fan of having zero control over what happens to my mind in drug-induced situations. Anyway, as the day wore on, I’d go back to sleep and see the monsters. They were always illuminated on a dark background. “I saw monsters,” I remarked to Wayne when he was driving us home. I could still see them when I closed my eyes. Hard to explain, but I think he got it. The monsters stopped occurring a day or so later.

The first few days were tough. I took two of those oxycodone pills, and anti-barfing pills, but luckily, the pharmaceuticals don't seem to hold much allure for me. Still can't figure out why several friends said to "enjoy the meds." Blech. After a day or so, I downshifted to Tylenol.

I got myself back up to my studio on the walker within a week.
I drove after two weeks. When I could put my sneaker on my right foot without the help of a reacher device, I went to the gym. On my cane at first, of course.

Gave up the cane after four weeks. Initial post-op check-up with the surgeon gave me a thumbs-up! Healing was chugging along. In November I was able to do both of my holiday shows easily.

Now, nearly three months later, I can barely remember how much I used to hurt. I feel like I’m twenty years younger and can’t wait for snow so I can get back on the slopes with my new hip!

Winter winding down

3/5/2024

Yes, I'm still at it, making the posable animal dolls and working on my third novel. Hint: it takes place in a small Oregon town by a lake that covers a town sunken by the Army Corps of Engineers back in the 20th century. (I promise, when it's edited, it will not contain run-on sentences such as this.) There are ghosts, a murderer, Bigfoot, and a host of eccentric characters. Also, some great sex scenes, which my writer's group will attest to.

Here's some of what's been going on this winter:

Me, also.

11/19/2022

Yep, this is also me. After a busy summer season making and selling my posable animal dolls (and, I'll admit, struggling with my third novel), I've been Lumber Jane-in'. It's my ongoing crusade to keep our small forest clean of the dead wood that constitutes wildfire fuel. I'm calling it "Hayleyanne's Wildfire Fuel Reduction and Home Heating Campaign."

We've got a fine assortment of oak, madrone and Douglas fir that have fallen to draught over the past few years.

There's a lot to do, but I pace myself. Plus, it gives me the opportunity to spend time outside amongst the wild turkeys, deer, squirrels and possums.

Sofie

8/13/2022

Sofie
2004 - 2022

We sent our dear, sweet Sofie over the Rainbow Bridge yesterday. She was a princess in every sense of the word, and a tough little cowgirl under all that fur, living to the ripe old age of 18.

I adopted her in 2007, shortly before her 4th birthday. She stood her ground a number of times with the addition of Sparky and Possum, the “little brothers,” the arrival of Wayne and his two Texas cats, and a years-long home renovation. She went on to become our muse, with the distinction of being The Only Cat allowed in our respective studios.

Happy trails to sweet little Sofie, our princess, our supervisor, our “rules” girl, my soul sister.

For You To Share, If You Like

4/11/2022

The house phone beeps a text message, waking me up just before 5 a.m. this morning. Well heck, I had to get up anyway. I check the phone and it's a “dirty” text inviting us to come and "taste" someone. We usually press the Report/Delete/Block option when this happens, but today I feel like responding. It's a chilly April morning with snow that should have been falling with great alacrity back in February, during ski season.

Thank you for your interest. Unfortunately, since neither of us feels compelled to “taste” an ill, psychotic loser like you, we suggest that you peddle your hopelessly flawed self elsewhere.

Of course, Wayne has talked me out of actually sending this text in response, but should you want to copy and paste this for your own use, please feel free!

Our Friend Skeezix

11/28/2021

Skeezix, aka Adventure Man and our spiritual advisor, went over the Rainbow Bridge on Wednesday, November 24. He was 16. He spent his early years in Austin, Texas, then moved up to Medford, Oregon, where he regaled the local woodland creatures of his armadillo-chasing tales. Settling into life in the Northwest, he enjoyed tree-climbing, gopher-hunting, nail-sharpening, and often followed me out to the woods to help gather kindling.

In his last months he became obsessed with food, so honed in his skills that he could often snatch an entire enchilada off a plate if our backs were turned. He also developed a taste for PG Tips tea, daily knocking over Wayne’s Yeti mug to lick the spilled tea. So it was hard to say goodbye to a cat this lucid, although the physical signs of his withering body were morbidly apparent. Still, the day before, Tuesday, he followed me out the woodpile and trotted back with a satisfied smirk after taking a quick dump in the kindling tent. Wednesday morning his last act was to turn Wayne’s Yeti mug over one last time, just for good measure.

He was a real trooper, ready to take on every pitfall or adventure that came his way. He’s left a huge, silent hole in our household, making this Thanksgiving somewhat somber. We will miss him every day.

Okay, Now I'm Mad

9/8/2021

I was scheduled to exhibit my Dreamland dolls in a festival in downtown Medford this coming October. It was going to be a whole lot of fun - art, music, food...
Well, the event was just postponed until 2022 because of COVID, and our local hospitals being stuffed to capacity with ill people who didn't want to get the vaccine. The producers of the event did the right thing and honestly have our safety in their utmost thoughts. I'm just getting really tired of these whack-job anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers deciding what our lives are going to be like. It's almost as if they're getting off on the power they have over the rest of us. Grrr!

So here's my latest letter to the editor of our paper. Also, I got a mention on the cover's teaser sweet spot!

Tip-toeing through the summer

7/30/2021

Gertie, the possum.

It all sounds pretty terrible on the news, although we keep saying that we’re 100 miles away from the Bootleg fire. Seriously, (knock on wood), it’s been a good summer so far, as regards smoke. It’s blowing east. Sorry, east coasties. In the future, please refrain from calling us the loose nuts who rolled out west when they shook the country. We’ve got smoke and we’re not afraid to use it.
So it’s quiet here – not a single lawnmower or chain saw.

One thing I suggest to avoid at all cost, is pulling a muscle in one’s shoulder. Let me repeat that: Do not, under any circumstances, pull a muscle in your shoulder if you can possibly avoid it! Still imagining myself to be 27 years old, I tried to power my way through an already worn shoulder blade by going to the gym for the first time in 15 months, followed, the next day, by an hour of weed whacking. Since then, every stroke of the stylus, every click of the mouse = agony! I finally surrendered and went to the doctor, at Wayne’s suggestion, when I cried while he applied Biofreeze.
Really, there’s nothing one can do about this kind of injury except wait it out, basically. I got some muscle relaxers, Tylenol and exercises from the doctor. The muscle relaxers made me kind of dopey, though, so I gave them up and took it easy instead. Worked at half-speed. I sighed as the star thistle slowly began to take over sections of the front yard. I did get some CBD capsules, which helped.

Meanwhile, Dreamland Zinkand has gotten a great response at the Talent Evening Market. My favorite thing is watching people break into a smile when they come by the booth. Okay, my second favorite. I like it even more when they buy a doll! Still, if my life’s mission is simply to make people smile and laugh a little, then I guess I’m doing okay.