Can I go back to bed?

Good morning! So far, it is a lovely day. There are some clouds and there is some blue sky. Libby is milked (have you ever really thought about the world ‘milk’), Amena is off in time, the boys are in various stages of being ready, the temperature is nice (63°), the humidity is tolerable (66%), no dogs pooped in the house. Yeah.

I think I pretty much covered Saturday since I kept writing throughout the morning. Louis Valdez helped Paul with the kitchen sink and they were in and out all day getting things for it (including a new sink). When they were finished for the day, which ended due to the late hour, the drains were still leaking so we were still basically without a kitchen sink.

Seth is about to take the goats out and I’ll help him so there will be a bit of a time lapse in here somewhere. The funny thing about that is that you won’t really notice. Even though I’m telling you now, and will probably say something to the effect of they are out, there will be no time differential for you.

See what I mean? It is now twenty-eight minutes later and I had a good enough workout to skip walking today. And if I hadn’t mentioned it, you would never have known. Now I’m thinking the humidity is no longer tolerable. As soon as the bathroom is available, we’ll have another time lapse, unless I’m done here first, while I have a shower.

Anyway, Sunday was Sunday. There was a scout hike in Barre at 1:00 that I would have loved to go on but it was at 1:00. The very earliest we can do anything on Sunday is 2:00, 2:30 would  be better so we can eat first. Saturday would be better yet but I guess the world is too busy on Saturday’s to do anything like that. Church was church. For our lesson in YW, we watched two videos and discussed them. Then we chatted about what the girls have liked about Young Women and what they’d like to do. I love getting input from them because they definitely have a lot to contribute and by now they know what they like and what they don’t, they know what works for them and what doesn’t.

After church, since we were without an operational sink, I didn’t want to do a lot of baking or cooking because that would mean more mess to clean up. So we had something. Ham steak, leftover baked potatoes, and grilled broccoli. Pretty exciting. Paul left to go see Glen Orzel who was in the hospital. He was gone for quite some time and we didn’t have time for Family Home Evening when he got back. We did have family prayer and read a chapter plus a bit of Mormon.

Yesterday we had a pretty laid back day. Paul got the sink operational which included replacing a valve under the sink. It rained off and on and I wondered if the parade might get cancelled but it didn’t. The boys played games most of the morning after we had pancakes with rhubarb sauce and sausage for breakfast. Seth helped pick rhubarb from the garden Sunday afternoon and that is what I used for the sauce. I made two apple rhubarb dump cakes; one for yesterday, one for today.

We got ready to go to the parade and left. I took the boys; Joanna and Zak took Amena. Joanna brought Misty which was quite interesting. She was a big hit because everyone thinks she is cute. She is cute, she’s just also a dog. Anyway, one little boy wanted to know if he could pet her and Joanna said he could. His grandmother (I think), the music teacher who is retiring asked how old she is. Joanna said, “I think she’s about five.”

The little boys said, “I’m five!” It was pretty exciting.

Joanna said that there was a Corgi that liked Misty and she thought about asking the owner if they’d be willing to trade.

I’ve thought of another reason I like cats more than dogs. Dogs run for fun; cats run when they need or want to. Anyone or thing that runs for fun is crazy.

We stayed for the program at the end of the parade for the first time since we’ve been here. Always in the past, we’ve wanted to get to Goguen’s but this year I don’t think they had anything going on at their house due at least in part to Rich’s recent knee surgery. It wasn’t bad at all. There was the national anthem, three recitations (Flanders Fields, Response to Flanders Field, and the preamble to the Constitution), a couple of musical numbers by the Quabbin High band and the main speaker. One of the Boy Scouts, Charlie, led in the Pledge of Allegiance and I was somewhat disappointed by the number of people who actually vocalized it. Still, not bad and not too long.

After the parade, Joanna took Amena out for ice-cream. I would have taken the boys in the car but the car is so low on gas I don’t want to drive it anywhere until I take it to the gas station. When they got back, she ended up taking the boys out, too. And then when they were back from that, they went hiking at the gravel pit with the cliff. That didn’t last very long because Joseph was tired (Joanna and Zak both reported carrying him part of the time) and it was so buggy out.

For dinner we had macaroni salad (I would have made potato but we are currently out of potatoes), rhubarb lemonade, and three kinds of sausage. We have all this sausage in the freezer, we need to be using more of it. For dessert we had one of the apple rhubarb dump cakes. Then it was time for prayer and scriptures and bed since today everyone had to get up for school.

The bathroom is available but I want to at least finish typing; I can post when I’m done in the shower. I’m almost done, anyway. In fact, I was only going to mention the goats and maybe milking.

The goats. Oh my. They were not cooperative at all this morning. Seth went out with the bucket of grain and we opened the gate. They didn’t want to leave the rocks to begin with and then Seth slipped and dumped the grain all over the ground so they didn’t want to leave that behind either. We got Zoey and Leroy out but the rest were just not cooperating. I waited for a while, moving pieces of a greenhouse that had been left out in the field last summer. After I’d moved four or five pieces, I decided to go back and see what was up with Seth and the goats. Snowflake was being particularly difficult. I put a leash on her and we had a tug of war the entire way out to the field. At first, I was tugging and she didn’t want to budge. I won and then once we were out in the field, she was tugging but I didn’t feel like letting her have the bit, so to speak, and I won on that, too. Then we had to go back to get Goldilocks. She was easier but wanted to run once we got out in the field. I didn’t want to let her because I didn’t want to have to chase her down to get her tied out. Then we had to go back to get Bailey. He wasn’t anywhere in sight and Seth said that he thought he was in the barn. Sure enough. He was. So we had to get him out of the barn and then take him out to the field. I moved the rest of the pieces of greenhouse I could lift relatively easily and then came in. There are still some out there but they’re rather heavy and I’m not going to attempt moving them on my own. Besides, the bugs are awful and I didn’t want to spend any more time outside.

And milking. Milk is an interesting word. We drink milk. We milk the goats and cows. Although related, they are different and conjure up very different images. Libby is finally getting into the routine of being milked in the morning. I was beginning to wonder if it was ever going to happen so I am quite happy that it is.

And that’s all for today. Have a wonderful day!