Day 11

The day starts off ominously.

That pony is plotting something, I can tell.

Not in the "Oh god we're all going to die" way, but more in the "oh look, clouds" way. So not ominous at all. Mostly just cloudy.

But there is a feeling to the air like it is going to rain. This feeling is exacerbated by the fact that it is raining. Just a light drizzle, but the arid desert is now being pelted with life-giving water. Lauren is ecstatic, because this means that they are out of the drought that they have been in, and that the pastures will grow some grass that the goats can eat, and maybe the damn squash will live.

I do not comment on the plight of the squash. We have broken up. 

 

Since it is raining, there is no need for me to water anything, so I ignore the squash completely and make my way to the garden. Lauren is going into town today, which means I am on my own, so she sets me a few tasks that she knows I can complete well, but will also take enough time that she can be certain I am not just sitting on a stump somewhere telling Facebook how I am totally farming right now.

Given that proficiency is digging holes and putting poop in said holes, she tasks me with finishing digging a trench in the garden and securing the rest of the trellises, and then digging little trenches. Just like the other day, only in other parts. This suits me just fine. It has started to rain, and I am feeling tranquil and sedate. I am a perfect digging machine, with no thoughts other than turning over dirt. I wish that someone would hitch a plow to me so I could walk around all day just turning over the earth.

My one true calling.

 

I am an insane amount of productivity this morning. I dig three trenches (filled with manure, naturally), and install two fence posts, all before noon. By the time I am finished with my work, I am starting to realize that I am cold. Like, really cold. And wet. The temperature was actually warmer in the morning, and as the day goes on, it is dropping, and the rain and wind are picking up. My jacket is only water-resistant, and it is starting to get soaked. Lauren is still not home, so I consider this a good time to sit down and be a useless twat.

 

I go inside and Ed asks me why I have been slaving away out in the rain, when Lauren would never ask that I work in such conditions. I say that I am from Oregon, and we live in the rain. I neglect to add that when I am in Oregon, I would never be caught dead working in the rain. Working in the rain blows.

Immediately after I get in and take off my wet things and sit on the bed under a cozy warm blanket, Lauren calls from Tooele and asks if I wouldn't mind cleaning the barn office, aka The Room With The Cat. She is kind enough to think of a warm, inside job for me, but I already have a warm inside job, and that is keeping this bed from not being sat on. I remember that I am here for working, and fight my Oregon nature to crawl under the bed until it is warm again. I put on my muddy boots and tromp out to the barn office.

Lauren has instructed me to dust and clean The Room With The Cat. I am increasingly tickled by her devotion to keeping things neat. She is fastidious about her animals, making sure the horses are bathed nearly every day, and that the goats are brushed and hoof-trimmed. Apparently, this is a Strange Thing in this neck of the woods. I chalk it up to her being from Southern California. I do not think the patio is going to be clean, and I do not know how one dusts a room that is covered in dust with open windows through which more dust blows whenever there is a gentle breeze, or, much more likely, a goddamn gale force wind.

But I do appreciate her desire for cleanliness, so I start cleaning anyway.

Something up in this bitch is getting cleaned.

I move some things around halfheartedly. I am not entirely certain what she wants me to do. She mentioned cleaning up the things on the floor, but the things that are on the floor seem like they belong there. 

 

Do I arrange these alphabetically or what?

 

I begin to sweep, and then I catch the cleaning fever. I want everything to be clean. I want to dust the shelves and 409 the shit out of something. I consider arranging all her bags of feed alphabetically. This is a cautionary tale about not drinking copious amounts of Diet Coke.

I rein in my ambition to scrub everything when I notice that a lot of what is in the barn office is filled with spiderwebs. I have a pact with spiders: I don't bother them in their homes, they don't bother me in mine. If spiders come into my house, they get beaten with a shoe. Why no catch and release? Because they know what they did.

 

The Room With The Cat technically counts as people territory, but then I think it is actually cat territory. We have not negotiated any contingencies for third-party species. I figure the spiders have pretty much solidified their squatters' rights, so I let the dust and webs be.

 

Lauren returns from town, and she is delighted with the progress I have made on the office. This is clearly one of those situations where you see something so many times in one way, and then all of a sudden you see all the small changes that make it an entirely different thing, like when your ugly shitty girlfriend goes away on vacation and dies and you hook up with a hotter cooler girl in celebration. Whatever the case, Lauren is happy, so I am happy.

The only difference I see is my camera is dirty now.

She tells me to finish up what I am doing and then come inside because she is going to light a fire. I dink around a bit more in the office, and then I smell the wood burning, and I cannot resist the idea of a nice warm place. I put up the broom and walk out into the barn to this weird fucking scene.

"Join us, human."

The fire I was smelling was not from the house. Apparently there is a big metal barrel in the barn, like hobos have. And like hobos, the goats are huddled around it, less for warmth, and more to get stoned out of their damned gourds. Bleating fills the barn, but it is not the urgent calls that I am used to hearing. These are clearly maaaaahs that translate to, "Dude...what if, like, in another universe, we're the humans and they're the goats?"

Sure enough, I check their pupils and they are not the normal Satanic-looking goat pupil. They are all dilated into big round saucers, making the goats look almost human. It is deeply unsettling and I leave immediately.

 

True to her word, Lauren is lighting a fire. As for myself, using the power of Amazon, I have procured basmati rice and saffron in Utah, and I prepare to make loobia polo (Persian green bean rice) for dinner. This is shitty because:

 

a. I hate cooking.

b. It makes me want to die.

c. I don't like people watching me cook because it makes me nervous.

I have the exact same conversation with Lauren that I have had with so many people. No, I do not find it relaxing. No, I do not find it therapeutic. I find it stressful and annoying. Why are there so many steps in between me and my food? Why can't the food just be in me? She suggests I snack while I cook, but I do not want snacks, I want what I am cooking. It is the world's most frustrating and unfulfilling activity.

As I put the stew to simmer, she invites me to sit with her by the fire. I tell her that is impossible. Given that my legs and general body function seem to be in working order, she cannot fathom why I cannot walk the five steps into the den to sit next to the fire. I tell her it is less about mechanics and more about my cooking anxiety. I cannot leave the kitchen for fear that something will go wrong. She laughs at me and asks if I have ever heard the phrase 'a watched pot never boils.' I say absolutely, which is why I have my back to the stove.

She laughs even harder, and says in all her years, she has never met anyone with cooking anxiety. It is the strangest anxiety she has ever encountered. I have now made Top Two Worst Mistakes and Number One Weirdest Anxiety. I would pin a medal on myself for winning the Shittiest Things To Win contest, but I am too busy making sure my food does not try to become not food.

The loobia polo is actually a big hit with the two of them. Ed does not even like rice, but he likes this. Lauren is ecstatic that she gets to eat ethnic food in Rush Valley. As we eat, I regale them with tales of how Persians invented everything that is important, including goats. Lauren says I am like a bonus because having me around is like having a Middle Eastern exchange student. I tell her Persians invented exchange studenting. 

Thoroughly full and exhausted from the heightened anxiety of having to cook a meal, I turn in for the night and read a book about how to manage a small farm. It is from the 90s and tells me to not invest my time in a website, because no one knows how that technology is going to pan out. As I read, the sun starts to come out and show off what the dickhole clouds were up to all day.

Yo Utah, it's the middle of June, get your shit together.

 

"DON'T TELL ME HOW TO LIVE MY LIFE!

 

Snow. In the middle of June. Whatever, Utah, you guys are weird.

 

GOAT OF THE DAY: Ajax (with bonus picture of Siddhartha)

 

Ajax is a fat pack goat that literally has rolls of blubber that flutter like butterfly wings when he walks. You can slap his belly and it will roll like the ocean. He looks like his chubs will soon overtake the earth. He does not like carrying backpacks because you have to squeeze the straps around all of his fat, and then he looks like he has giant tumorfats hanging out of his armpits. It is grotesque and hysterical all at once.

"Take it from me, kid, you load up on treats and you'll get no respect at all."