This is my life

When I was a college student, I was mesmerized by a photo that captured the kiss of a walking couple. What I loved about it was that it highlighted to me that our lives are in many ways a series of moments, ever moving from one to the next.

A "photojournal" of 24 hours in my life...

We get home from a long day away in the big city visiting friends. I hear a strange noise. I realize it is coming from behind our barn, and is likely on the neighbor's property. I dismiss it as the neighbor digging holes for fences. Farmer Boy, however, leaps into action. He adamantly inists that it is aliens, who are disguised as dogs. The only way I can convince him to turn around and come in for dinner is by entrusting Molly the real dog with the responsibility of taking Fred and Luke (the other real dogs) with her to conquer the aliens. To my amazement, after my solemn commission, she trots away from me in the direction of the sound.

As we walk back to the house I simultaneously hear:

Farmer Boy: "I've GOT IT! They're alien echo-ologists!"
The Princess: "And then the butterfly in the pink net flew away."

Many alternate universes here on the farm.

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I try for 15 minutes to figure out where the cat peed only to discover that the smell was from the irises I cut from the yard, that are sitting on the table.

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Walking through the mud room, I find a yellow plastic toy firefighter's hat upside down on a chair, with 7 eggs in it. A creative egg collecting basket.



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I hear from the front, "I found Trill! I found Trill!!". I open the door to be presented with a chicken, sure enough, our long lost Trill!! She was our first injured animal on the farm, and she had seemed to vanish one day. I had not seen her for 3 months. But there she was.

You may wonder how this could be... so do I. We still have so many chickens it is hard to see them all at once, or distinguish them from each other. But there she was, with a little limp, and a strange crusty thigh, neatly hidden with feathers. It was definitely Trill.

I have no idea what makes me more or less attached to an animal. The chickens are on my nerves right now because of the poop that is everywhere, and because I can't plant anything until we build a garden fence (they eat everything, except for the irises... ohhhh, maybe I know why they leave THEM). But I spent 10 minutes watching Trill and taking pictures of her. In the laundry room. And she actually didn't poop (miracle!). It made my day to find her healthy and whole.

Injured baby Trill being offered some molasses water:



Trill in my laundry room yesterday:



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I have to wait to turn off the car when we get to the park for our homeschool group, because the Princess and I are jamming to the beat of "Water for the Elephants" by Dan Zanes.

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I open the trunk of the SUV at the library to put our huge bag of books in, and have to squeeze the books between empty recycling crates with a violin in them, and two 50 lb bags of goat feed.

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[WARNING: If you don't have a farm this may gross you out; if you do have a farm, you're crazy]

With herculean effort, I manage to heave a plastic sheet filled with soggy nasty pine shavings out of the tub, into a big plastic container, and drag it to the compost outside. For "fun" I weigh myself holding the thing. No wonder it's next to impossible... I'm leaning over the edge of a huge tub and lifting out 75 gloopy stinky pounds of pine shavings on a wiggly plastic sheet. Back trauma, here I come.

You know that separation of church and state thing? This one has put me over the edge: time for a more firm separation of house and farm. No more livestock in the house. UGH!

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I complete my day with a fine bedtime reading of "The Good Little Bad Little Pig", who is also a dirty little clean little pig. Hmmm, that rings true for me.

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