"Good morning, madam."
7:45am. I take a picture of one of the overly polite house cats to start my day. It feels like eating a bowl of Wheaties with Folger's on top. Energized and refreshed, I go about my morning routine of letting the goats out of the barn, and then digging things. I rejoin with my new friend, pig poop, in order to fill up the trench that I so meticulously dug the other day.
I figure at this point I know what difficult situations are. Navigating an awkward social moment. Making sure not to fall down fifty stairs carrying Nate's culinary works of art. Not owning a pony. Nothing really prepares me for filling up a trench with dry pig poop, though. Allow me to explain.
The art of pig poop trench filling goes thusly: put as much crumbly pig poop in the trench as you can, avoiding all four blisters on your right hand. The crumbly part is key, because some of the pig poop has now solidified into solid rock while baking in the summer sun, so it is not pig poop so much as it is pig poop bricks with which one could ostensibly build a pig poop house, which would be a huge eff you to any wolves who tried to blow it down, because it feels harder than brick, but it is poop. Anyway, put the poop bricks into the trench and spray them with water until maybe some parts are wet, and then take the shovel and pray to whatever gods you believe in, because divine intervention is necessary to break that shit apart.
Not being in the graces of any deities that I know of, this takes a long time. Luckily, right before I decide to impale myself with the spade instead of the poop, Lauren calls for breakfast. I dine sumptuously on lamb, beans and Spanish rice, then return to manual laboring as hard as I can.
Unlike these lazy bastards.
The day is calm, and HOT. Me and the hose become best friends. I forget all about that asshole, pig poop. Pig poop never did anything for me, but the hose does whatever I want, as long as what I want involves some sort of water spray of varying intensity. I work on weeding the high tunnel with Lauren for a while, a job that seems endless, but probably has an end somewhere that my sun-addled mind is unable to comprehend. She disappears behind one of the walls, and while obscured by the drunken plastic (that still idly blows around like a drunk person who can't remember which direction they are supposed be walking), I hear her brokering a deal. For what?
Second pony.
Second pony!
SECOND PONY!
That's goddamn right. Where once there was only ONE pony, now there are TWO ponies. That is literally double the amount of ponies, which means double the amount of happiness that I experience any time I think about the fact that there is a pony right outside my window. Oh, sorry, did I say one pony? BECAUSE THERE ARE TWO NOW.
The pony's name is Ruby, but we call her the Hell Bitch, because we have all found an affinity for all things Lonesome Dove. Ruby is a 7-year-old registered quarter horse with a paint butt and a cute face. If Coco is a dignified old lady who wears fancy hats to church, Ruby is the rebellious teenager who only dates boys who drive fast cars. She is still a sweet pony who likes scritches and pats, but she does not like riders, like many rebellious teenage girls. I immediately put apples and carrots on my mental grocery list, because my goal for my tenure at Planet Goat is to have both ponies love me.
Unfortunately, though all I want is to pet the pony, more things need to be done on the Tunnel of Death. Having been blown to bits by the gusting winds, Lauren deems it necessary for us to start jury-rigging the shit out of the frame, in a thin prayer that it will stay up long enough to keep the plants covered for optimal growing. I put my metal-working skills to use by drilling holes through aluminum siding. The city in me says, "Dude, shouldn't you wear some goggles? Or like...a flat surface?" But the country in me says, "SUCK IT, ALUMINUM, HOW YA LIKE GETTING DRILLED?!"
The country in me is kind of a dick.
Here are double ponies to compensate.
Next comes the cumbersome task of getting the front and back flaps off of the Doom Tunnel. Lauren wants to take them down because of the heavy winds, and put them back up in the fall when they're more necessary. This sounds like a lot of work that I do not want to do. In addition to having to remove a lot of fastenings, the removal of fastenings takes place on a very tall ladder that has no place to prop itself up comfortably. It sounds like a dangerous and unwieldy task, but more importantly, it sounds like A Very Lot of Work, and to that I am deeply opposed. My desire to avoid work takes over, and I offer a suggestion.
"How about if we just roll them up?"
"What do you mean?" she responds.
I make sweeping hand gestures in the air that convey absolutely no meaning. She stares at me, so I reply, "You know, like a sail. Throw some rope around it and pull it tight."
"Huh," she says, "that's actually a great idea."
And this picture of Ed feeding goats is way more exciting than a picture of a furled flap.
"Have you ever jumped horses before?" Lauren asks me. I briefly consider telling her about when I was in Australia and a horse jumped over a log while I happened to be on him, but seeing as how I neither incited the horse to jump over the log nor went over the log with him gracefully, I just shake my head. "Oh, well, would you like to learn on Coco?"
Why yes. Yes I would.
Having sustained insane saddle rash from riding in shorts, Lauren lends me her dressage pants. For anyone unfamiliar, that means I now look like this:
Quite so.
Only I am missing the top hat. And the quirt, the boots, the coat with tails...so really I am just wearing absurdly tight pants and a cowboy hat. In short, I look awesome.
Coco tolerates my ineptitude, and we learn to jump over a little log, very reminiscent of my time in Australia only this go around I know what we're doing before it happens. Then we take a leisurely stroll around the pasture, where I wave exuberantly to the neighbors and they do not wave back because obviously a lunatic is on horseback, and that is never a good sign.
After a long while, Coco and I grow tired, so I head in and wash her down with a hose, thinking of how nice it would be if someone washed me down with a hose when it was hot outside. I add 'personal hose-down specialist' to my list of things I want in life, but cross it off immediately because I can't even imagine the application process that would be involved there.
The day is mostly over and that means that is drinking time. We mostly drink what I have dubbed high desert sangria, which is boxed red wine with ice cubes in it. It is the only thing on the farm that staves off the heat and gets you drunk, and I am all for it. However, for a change of pace, I offer to use my venerable and fantastical bar skills and mixologize us up some fresh strawberry margaritas.
Fancy.
I employ the Bud Method of preparation from Kill Bill 2: one blender, an indeterminate but always large amount of tequila, ice, and other things. Lauren watches the Hell Bitch for signs of ponyness that I cannot fathom because I do not know much about ponies other than that I love them.
"Tell me your secrets."
The rest of the evening was spent playing with baby goats. The end.
GOAT OF THE DAY: Chili Lomper
Chili Lomper is the oldest goat on the farm, and gets to come in the house once a day as a reward for being ridiculous. I mean, look at that goddamn face. Though I have not learned all the goat names yet, Chili Lomper was easy to remember because she is always staring at you from across the yard, and the next thing you know she's right next to you, doing this.
"Whatcha doin'?"
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