Happy Birthday, Laura!!! Hard to believe that
it’s been twenty-three years since Laura made her debut in this world. Wow.
What an interesting twenty-three years it has been. I will be making a cake
later and will have a picture on Facebook after that. I mean, really, we have
to have cake, right?
Friday. Holy cow—seems like about forever ago. It was
in the early afternoon that Seth and Joseph went outside and came back in to
report that the runt (she really needs a name) was laying on the ground moving
her legs but couldn’t get up. I’d heard her out there crying but hadn’t gotten
out to check on her so I went out and there she was, the poor little thing. We
brought her in, wrapped her in a towel and Seth held her while I fed her some
warm milk with a dropper and then got a plastic tote fixed up for her to be in.
We but a blanket in the bottom and then another to line the whole thing. I
warmed a rice pack and put it under one layer of blanket and then baby goat and
then a small quilt over her. She fell asleep eventually and slept for quite a while.
We fed her again around 3:30 and got the crate ready on the front porch for her
to spend the night in. Cedric held her for a while while he and his brothers
watched something. That was pretty cute. When the goats came in, I had her
suckle without competition from her brothers but decided it would be best not
to let her sleep out with them all because she was doing better but I didn’t
think she was quite good enough to completely fend off the others. We put Misty
in with her and that worked out pretty well. Seth did end up bringing her in
for a while in the middle of the night but in the morning I found baby goat
asleep with Misty in the crate and Seth asleep on the porch by the crate.
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| I'm still not sure how this is better or easier than just dividing 3/4 by 6. Any ideas? |
Because there was a school dance that Amena wanted to
go to, Paul and I could have gone out but because I needed to pick Amena and
three of her friends up, we couldn’t. Paul therefore was going to bring home
Chinese for us and pizza for the boys. Amena got off to the dance fine and
everything was going along fairly according to schedule and then Joanna called
on Zak’s phone. They had gone to get his truck full of stuff and on the way home,
the truck died. Joanna asked if I would get some oil and take it to them
because they were stopped near exit 26 on route 2. I left to get it but then
decided to call Paul and see if he thought oil would fix it because it didn’t
really seem like it would to me. Paul agreed and I called Joanna back. Paul
stopped there on his way home and Ray went with his truck and trailer to get
the truck (although it took an hour and a half for him to get there). At 8:30 I
called Paul because I needed to leave to get Amena and her friends and I didn’t
need to take the van but if he was still too far from home, I would because the
green car didn’t have enough gas to get to Barre and back. At that point he was
still with Joanna, Zak and Ray and didn’t stay on the phone long enough for me
to even tell him what I was doing so I left with the boys watching a movie.
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| Boys watching a movie with out new house goat. Isn't she cute? In spite of her cuteness and the fact that her hair is soft, Cedric reports that she still smells like a goat. Gosh, that's a hard one to imagine. |
I picked the girls up and Paul called. The original
deal was that I’d turn the oven on when he called. Well, can’t turn the oven on
when I’m in Barre and have no way to contact the boys at home. So should he
turn the oven on? Sure. When? As soon as he got to the house. We needed to drop
off one girl and then the others came to the house to sleep over. Joanna and
Zak were here cooking pizza. Paul was eating Chinese. I ate some Chinese. All
other boys and girls had some pizza and then Cedric wanted some of my Chinese.
Then Joanna said that their wonderful plan was for me to take them to Ray’s so
they could get their stuff out of the truck and then we could take it to their
apartment. By this point it was pretty late but that’s what we did.
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| Seth in action. Also, Tom and Jacob W. |
Earlier in the afternoon, I’d gone for a walk because
I’d already eaten three cookies that Amena made a couple of days earlier and
then Joanna brought over lemon bars and I had one of them. In other words, I needed to go for a walk
because while I love Pilates, doing them doesn’t really burn that many calories
and I needed to burn a few calories. Because I was walking, I went up Birches
and turned east on Ragged Hill. Because I had my phone, I went until it told me
I’d gone a mile and then turned around. On the way back, the bus passed me. Amena
said she was sitting on the other side and didn’t see me.
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| Cedric in action. |
Saturday morning I decided that I wanted to stay in
bed as long as possible because I was tired of getting up early so I did. It
was about 7:30 or so before I got up and while I wasn’t asleep, I wasn’t up. It
was nice, but only sort of. I really don’t like just lying in bed doing nothing
but
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| One heck of a U12 team. |
Cedric and Seth had their last soccer game at noon
against Barre in Hubbardston. It was a good game. I think Barre is my favorite
them that they played because they’re good and the coach doesn’t yell
constantly. Of course Hubbardston won. The score was 5 to 3. And of course the
game was good. After the game was the end-of-season pizza party at the
Hubbardston Pizza Palace. The boys all report that the pizza is good so maybe
we should try it sometime. I think they provided pizza for Daniel’s funeral.
After that the boys all needed to get to Mount Jefferson
for the Haunted Hay Ride. Seth and Joseph were supposed to help with the
pumpkin carving and Cedric needed to help get ready for the spook alley. Seth
carved a pumpkin and I guess he came in 3rd although we never went
to check on that. After we checked out the telescopes and rocket launching, we
went home. The plan was to go back about 8:00 and catch the last haunted hay
ride of the evening at 9:00 and then gather Cedric and go home. It’s always nice
to have a plan even if they don’t work out as expected.
We did go back a few minutes after 8:00. However, no
one was parking on the field, I guessed because of the mud and that was correct,
but it meant we needed to park on the side of the road. I drove down a bit and
then went to turn around and, not taking into consideration the muddiness of
everything, went too far off the side and proceeded to get stuck. Jay Guertin,
one of the coaches for soccer, happened to drive around us and park and went to
get someone to pull us out. I don’t know who it was, but someone with a truck
came and we got pulled out and parked and everything was good and I’m really
glad that it was dark. It still wasn’t 9:00 but Jay mentioned that he hadn’t
seen a tractor go by for a hayride since he’d gotten there. As it turns out,
they’d stopped some time earlier due to the aforementioned mud so we missed out
on that. Instead, we were going to search for Cedric. Laura Foley had called me
saying she had him and could give him a ride home but since we were already
there, I attempted to call her back to see exactly where they were but she didn’t
answer. And then I discovered that Seth
and Joseph were not where I was. And it was dark. And I had no idea where they
were. Then I spotted Cedric and Scott Carignan so I had Cedric but not Seth and
Joseph. They turned up shortly and we went home. What an unexpected adventure;
so different from what I’d imagined.
Paul worked on the barn in the morning with Brock
Miller and Rich Goguen. In the afternoon he was going to get hay but his plans
kept getting changed. At one point he called me to see if I knew where the
tie-downs were. Honestly, I don’t keep track of them. He’d looked in every
place he remembered putting them and came up with nothing and said that if he couldn’t
find one, it meant no hay. I wanted to say that it wasn’t my fault that he
couldn’t find one because I hadn’t done anything with them so he’d better not
talk to me like he thought it was but I restrained myself. I really have no
idea where they might be. I looked every place I remembered having seen them
but they weren’t in any of those places. Such is life. Everything really does
need a place and needs to be put in its place when not being used.
Sunday morning I had a meeting before church. Then was
church. Then we came home and ate. I put a roast with potatoes and carrots in
the oven and took a picture of the knob indicating temperature so if it got
turned up I could at least say, “Look, this is where I left it.” But it was the
same when I got home. Paul left church early to put the hay in the basement
because the weather report had changed to a chance of rain and it had begun to
look like it might. He got done as we were getting home.
In the afternoon I went with Paul to visit the Fuller’s.
I like visiting with them. They are quite interesting and I really like Mary.
Then we went to the church because I’d forgotten the zucchini bread that Joyce
Horne had given me. Then we did all the typical Sunday afternoon things that we
do at home. Then it was time for bed. I had Amena keep Kitty in her room
because she wasn’t supposed to eat after midnight. She started making a fuss
while Amena took a shower and Paul let her out as he was going to bed but after
her shower, Amena got her back inside so all was well.
Monday morning I got up and made sure Amena was
getting up. I got dressed and ate and got ready to take Kitty to Sterling for
her spay appointment. Seth and Joseph wanted to go so I got them up and they
got ready quickly. We took off and other than Kitty pooping on the passenger
seat and wanting to help drive, the trip was fairly uneventful. Check-in time
was 7:30 and we were there just a little after. There were lots of other people
there dropping off cats and dogs so we weren’t late; there were at least two
others after us.
We got home about quarter after eight so we had plenty
of time to get ready for school and such. School was school. When the boys were
all done with their work, including reading The
Hobbit, I went for my walk/jog and when I got back from that, we had lunch.
Then I took a shower and then we took off for Leominster.
We still hadn’t been able to get out and get the supplies
we needed to make a stamp so that’s what we wanted to do. Our first stop was
the bank to cash a check. Our second stop was Michael’s. We found unlined
notebooks and finally all agreed on one to use for our log book. Then we
wandered around some more and found ink pads. Then we wandered around some more
and close to where we’d found the notebooks, found the stuff we needed for
making our stamp. They had a kit with two cutting nibs, a handle, a sheet of
rubber, instructions for transferring a picture to the rubber, and some
pictures to use. Or we could get a sheet of rubber and a set of cutting/carving
implements with five or six nibs and trust that we can come up with our own
design and find out how to transfer it to the rubber online. We went with the
latter and I read up on the procedure when we got home.
After Michael’s, we went to Walmart and got the things
there that I wanted. Cedric wanted CO2, I wanted some paper lunch
bags for soap, Seth and Joseph wanted some Legos. I also wanted to look for a
lunch box for Cedric and containers for Amena and Cedric to take juice in their
lunches. We scored on both. There was a bin of lunch bags and back packs marked
down to $5.00. We struck out on those but did find a lunch bag Seth and Joseph
thought Cedric would like (they were right—he did). One woman looking through
the bin looked at a price tag and said, “$4.88. Marked. . .” she looked at the sign
on the side of the bin, “down? to $5.00.” Yeah. Go figure. In the kitchen area,
we found some containers for juice. Not only were they a price I could handle,
they were made in the USA. Double score, that.
Then we came home. I had time to learn how to do
stamps and Seth and Joseph had time to put their new Legos together. Amena had
gotten home before we did and Cedric got home later. Everyone had some
ice-cream and at 4:00 I went out to milk. Between then and about 8:30 I wouldn’t
have time so I decided that an hour and a half to two hours early was better than
an hour and a half to two hours late. I left to pick up Kitty when I was done
milking and ended up almost 20 minutes early. So I waited.
At 5:05 the gate was finally opened and in spite of
the fact that I was the first one there, I was the third one to actually get my
animal. Poor Kitty! With no boys in the car, I wasn’t going to let her out of
the carrier. She needed to poo and had a hard time moving around in the carrier
because they put a cone collar on her. They kept calling it an e-collar and
said she needed to have it on for 7 to 10 days. Right.
We got home, Kitty got fed and loved, I took off to
the hospital for Meet the Doula Night and Doula Recognition. In the last year I
volunteered over 100 hours and Greg and Kathy had some really sweet things to
say about me in my role as their doula. For those of us ‘newer’ doulas, we got
nice canvas bags. On one side it says “La Chance Maternity Center Heywood
Hospital” and on the other “Doulas: Changing the World One Birth at a Time.”
Inside are an assortment of things a doula might find useful including a
package of tissue, a journal, pony holders, etc. Very nice.
Then I got home. Paul called a couple of times while I
was at the hospital and my Yoda ringtone got a few chuckles. He wanted to know
about the dog food situation. He got a bunch a few months ago but it is almost
gone and he thought it shouldn’t be yet. He called once I got home about something
else as well and the call was lost. Every time that happens, he blames my
phone. The problem is that there are places in the hospital that just don’t
have cell phone reception and at home it depends on where I am. I don’t think
it’s my phone.
When Paul got home there was lots of stuff to unload.
No dog food, though, and more than what was on the list I’d given him. He
mentioned that he thought he’d only be getting milk and was tired from
shopping. I think it’s almost time to mention that he doesn’t have to do the
shopping.
And that leaves us where we are. Tuesday. Laura’s
birthday. Yeah. Got to make a cake, carve a stamp, get ready to find our first
letterbox. Should be a fun day.
And I hope you have an absolutely splendiferous one!
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