Waiting On Agnes

Agnes is bred.  Every time My Loving Spouse says to her, “Hey, you fat old cow.”  I hush him, because even if it is true, it just isn’t nice.  Although, she is not really very old and she is not fat, she is bred/pregnant/great with calf.  We (me/My Loving Spouse/Our Friend the Farmer) thought she’d calve last week…or the week before…  We were wrong.  We are anxious.  We spend a lot of time looking at her teats to see if they are indeed filling up with milk.  We also stop whatever we are doing, if we happen to see her tail up, so consequently I believe we’ve watched every pee and poop that cow has made in the last few weeks.

It has also been hot and still.  Still, as in no wind, which makes it feel hotter.  99 degrees here is hot, and tends to keep one from wanting to do things like fix fences or paint the barns.  5 pm and it was still hot, there was a bit of grumbling, some thoughts of floating the canal, a bit more grumbling…  ‘Someone‘ said, ‘Are we going to be those kind of old people who don’t do anything fun?’  I went out to say to My Loving Spouse, “If I do all the work, will you go floating with me?”  There he was filling up the inner tubes for us to float the irrigation canal behind our home.  Our very own lazy river, cool slow water, where the view is of the sky, a bit of barns and lots of birds.  I grabbed two beers for the float, packed two towels and put my suit on.  We were off.  It was a lovely, cool delightful break from the heat and from cow watching, just enjoying the time that he is home.

We were home, showered, clean and grilling our late evening dinner, when we got the emergency painting call from My Sweet Friend.  She had borrowed our paint sprayer.  Her maiden painting voyage was going fabulously and she was completely convinced at the wonders of painting with a spray gun, until it clogged or  something.  Three phone calls later and she apologetically pulled into the driveway the back of her truck loaded with her paint bucket and clogged sprayer.  My Loving Spouse said,

“Oh, you just need to turn this….and turn this off…and I’ve never seen this before…”

I was not close enough to the action to hear, if he said a Bad British word, but if he didn’t, I am sure he was thinking it.Paint sprayer…unclogged.  I quickly administered a Gin & Tonic to My Sweet Friend who was a bit beside herself.  As these things usually happen to me, I could not help but giggle (a few times) and returned to look at Agnes’s back-end.

We are blessed.