The Dog Days of Spring

My larger goal with my blog is to keep things very real.  I can’t imagine what benefit there would be to projecting this message, “we sure have our sh*t together.” We don’t.  Today that means nothing dark to report thankfully, just life.  

Our dogs are a huge and constant source of joy, having said that they cost me. Last night around 2:30am I was wakened by our outside dog, she was defending our yard from coyotes (I think), her barks were quite ferocious and Coffee responded from the dog room and joined in.  That’s a lot.  I was awake.  I could not go back to sleep for three hours. Now I am so whooped I am almost useless, so why not write a blog about it eh?  Its 6:50pm, I think the guys will be working for another hour but I am tired so I am unusually hungry.  I am generally trying to eat low carb but I just polished off a large bowl of leftover perogies.  Its one of those days.   Back to the dogs…….I was just rounding the counter when I started to trip over a noisy thing on the floor but ended up just kicking it.  I thought it was a dogbone.  No, not that pretty.  Coffee had brought in a donkey hoof trimming from the ferrier’s recent visit.  A couple friends with donkeys brought them over to meet with the ferrier. We had souvenirs. True confession here……..I have a regular appointment with a cleaning woman.  Every second Tuesday she is here.  I’ll be honest, I feel guilty about this.  It’s a serious indulgence especially now that I am not working outside the home.  It needs to be in place until I dig myself out from the pileup that happened when I was committed to too much.  Maybe I will always give myself this treat.  For one thing, it frees me up to have company without worrying about the state of the house, at least not as much as I used to.  (I am operating under the belief that the day will return when once again our house holds regular company).   Anyways, today was Joanna’s day to be here and two hours after her departure I have a horse hoof on my kitchen floor.  If I used hashtags this would be the spot to place a #ranchwifelife.  

As I write this Coffee is playing with the water dish.  Its quite large and holds a lot of water and it can create a flood when she gets going, and I should be disciplining her, but here I sit.  And this is the spot for a hashtag including these words…. if I ignore it will it go away?    I always try hard to have the house clutter free before Joanna gets here, I can achieve that in places, but never in the 3 years I have had Tiki Cleaning coming here have I ever been truly ready in the whole house.  Todays victory was slim, the kitchen was almost perfect by the time she got to it (better than it has looked in weeks and now even better after her handiwork).  

Back to the dogs…….this morning Coffee had another set of puppy vaccinations.  She rolled into the vet clinic like a beast on fire.  She was so excited by the bird in the lobby and being out and hearing other dogs and she made her presence known.  As I was holding her for the early part of the exam I quietly urged her, “okay Coffee, now show these women your best self, you can do it Coffee!” Then I explained to Coffee that they were used to our old dog Foxy, a sweet and quiet Chihuahua, she needed to be like Foxy. There is nothing like negative comparisons to guide behaviour…..not my best moment, but really I was just trying to be funny. I was kind’ve embarrassed by her huge presence, her 15 kg was coming off as 50.   The trip home was a bit outrageous.  I had groceries in the back and Coffee was super reactive to vehicles we crossed paths with.  Its like she thought she would chase them off so she would throw herself at the back window each time one went by.  I thought she was going to give herself brain damage.  After the third time it happened with no sign of it abating I roared.  When I have mentioned my grouch factor before many people have said to me, “YOU….grouchy?  I can’t imagine it.”   I wish you could have been there.  You would have believed it.  She was driving me nuts and I was sleep deprived after all!  Despite making myself hoarse after shouting her name only a few times, nothing changed.  I pulled over onto the highway shoulder, got her on my lap and held on for dear life.  She was perfect the whole rest of the way home, best pals, only damage was the wet mark on my pants from her slobbering on me.  Earlier in the ride I had resigned myself to the thought that I had likely ruined 6 dollars worth of bread by letting Coffee near the groceries in the state she was in.  It turned out the bread was perfect.  It was the tortilla chips that died, I see a taco salad in our future.

In other news it has been a record setting day on the ranch.  According to the names Russell is sending my way we have had 22 calves today and glory be, none of them needed me.  There are some noteable ones for sure.  We started the day relieved that Canada had safely calved and birthed herself almost a mini me.  She is red and white so she earned her nametag.  Later in the day another special red and white cow gave us a calf. Here she is…..

 The heifers were really busy today too, emotion, fidelity and lust all calved.  (Story behind these weird names in the blog post called “Love Me Tender”).   One of the later ones today is “Abba.”  

The sun is shining, the wind is low, the air is warm, it’s been an especially beautiful prairie spring day.  A great day to have 22 calves.  Now I am going to leave this and go work on supper.  I am hoping for a super inspired finishing thought.  Maybe it will happen.  Maybe it won’t.

As I finish I am not super comfortable with this post.  I am not really used to being so scattered and off the cuff, and maybe, like having a cleaning lady, feel a little guilty.  Guilty for highlighting a bunch of passing details in a light hearted way.  Life around us is serious, am I being irresponsible to turn my back on all the deep need in the world?  Maybe its okay to appear to ignore the hard stuff for a bit.  Maybe a day where the sun is shining and the air is still and the dogs are acting crazy and a cow named lust is calving, maybe that’s a good day to embrace that line in the 23^rd Psalm I talked about a couple days ago…“He makes me to lie down in green pastures.”  We are allowed to take a break and rest and let others help us and maybe try something different, something light and fun.  Maybe despite being sleep deprived we can find ourselves saying, through all the craziness, “he restores my soul.”  May that be so.