This morning and some

Babysitting.  Which means, I am keeping company with a baby monitor.  Nice, gentle white noise.  I am wondering why the baby gets to sleep when I’m the one who got up at five this morning? 

Oh, wait.  So did he.

I am now going to regale you with vignettes of the day so far (it’s just after ten in the morning, but that won’t stop me).  Kind of  like the “scrap” posts, only with words.  So mind’s eye – wake up and imagine:

You can make your restaurant reservations for Dis World three months ahead of your vacation.  You actually MUST make them that far ahead, or you can’t get any.  So the other day, we all sat down and hashed out a Master Plan – which park, when – eating, when – park hopping, when.  One call to the Dis Dining, of course, can leave all that smokin’ in a pile of sad ash.  So we called, suffering trepidation, two of us sitting side by side on different computers behind my desk, one on skype, staring at us staring at the computers.  You have to call Dis Dining  long distance; no toll free for this deal.  So it was tense – both plan and money at risk.

Nice lady answered, asked questions, listened (minutes, ticking, ticking), then said, “You’re calling too early.  You have to wait until 90 days before your trip.  You can call tomorrow.  We open at six.”  That’s six in Florida.  Four in the morning here.  Big fight ensued amongst the female fam: who would be roped into making that call?  The daughter on Skype is on Florida time, after-all.  But I lost, as usual.  So next morning, I woke up at 4:30 and called Florida.  Only, turns out, Dis Dining doesn’t open at six after-all.  They open at seven.  So I went back to bed, only to wake up again at five twenty. Called again. No waiting.  Very nice.  Very nice lady answered (please plug in the entire first sentence of this paragraph right here—including the part about being too early, which means that nice lady #1 was wrong on ALL counts).

Last night, I nearly forgot about the whole thing  I mean, how easy is it for the brain, which has just made tremendous effort to do a thing, to file the failure as Job Done – I mean, it’s the effort that counts, isn’t it?  And it’s not like the flood waters of life hadn’t been rolling along under the bridge all day.  But I woke up at five 0 three with a start and remembered, and got up, figuring what have I got to lose but sleep and money?  So I call again.  This time there’s a REALLY long wait.  And a nice man finally answers, and it’s the right day, and the right time and I get all my reservations exactly as I wanted them, which leaves me itching to look behind the curtain for the catch.

And then it’s five thirty or forty or something and I’m sitting at the desk, blinking owlishly at the screen, not quite understanding that I can go back to bed now.  I know that plenty of really nice honorable people get up every day at five thirty, but I am not one of them.  So what do you do when you are blank-minded and at a loss?  I got on facebook and made a wall post.  Then I went back to bed.

Gin, having seen the wall post and feeling confident that I must actually be awake, called me twenty minutes after I’d finally fallen back to sleep.  Scared the brights out of me.  I sent her away and screwed my eyes shut against the incipient dawn.  But some time after that, G must have gotten up and dressed and taken off on his bike (the morning constitutional) because a dog started singing in my dreams.  It was very melodic.  Very tragic. Like opera.  Like, opera right under my window.  Piper has started doing this in the last year—when G leaves on the bike or goes out the back into the river (have I mentioned flood waters?) fishing, Piper plants himself in the last place he could possibly see G and begins to howl.  He never used to do that.  Now he’s old, and he gets it that there isn’t much time life.  Relationships become important.  So he sings.

I threw on my pasture clothes and clattered down the stairs (not really; they’re carpeted) and opened the front door.  Piper nearly fell in over the threshold.  Evidently, the singing now has been extended to “LET ME IIIIIIIIINNNNNNNN.”

I thought I’d get in a moment’s treadmill before I headed for the pasture, but I called Gin first.  Then Cam buzzed in (confusing me) to ask me to emergency babysit, and it wasn’t even eight o’flipping clock in the morning yet.

I had to run out to the pasture first because I had the vet coming at eight thirty.

May I say that working with horses requires PSYCHOLOGY???  And some chess skill?  Five horses.  Two with ouchy feet (which can mean death in the worse case) who have to NOT eat grass.  Three who are fine and MUST eat grass, but not too much grass because they get fat.  The ones who can NOT eat grass (because of their feet) are the ones who could eat all day and would still show ribs.  Where is the equity in the world, and why wasn’t I born with sore feet and that metabolism?  (Notice how smoothly I hijacked the story to include horse-tales?)

When your horses all run free inside an arena all the time, and you want to let three out to the grass and keep two in, you have a problem.  Actually, a dangerous problem.  If you stand in the doorway in front of a hungry horse who is watching the receding backsides of her family, heading for the grass – even if you wave your arms and shout and make dire threats, she will make a pancake out of you and never even look back. 

I managed to trick them all, though, two days running.  Good thing I don’t have to do it tomorrow, because eventually, they do catch on.  The two left in the arena, sore feet or not, instantly became rodeo stars – such carryings on.  The bucking, the yelling, the wild dashes and the bad words.  My lazy colt who walks under saddle like he knows he’s going to his death becomes magnificent in self-righteousness.  I shoulda taken the camera, because you have seen NOTHING like horse indignation.

Vets are always late.  Especially on farm calls.  How great is it that vets will come to your house?  I mean big animal ones will.  And that you can call them by their first name?  And that they don’t charge you for every breath you take in their presence?  I love my vet.  I loved my old vet, but he moved from horses to dogs.  My new vet has the sweetest face and the kindest way and knows all about feet.

He took care of everything.  Worst case scenarios set aside.  All will be well.  Just in time for me to go home, eat a protein bar, snatch my computer and run for this couch, where I am now sitting.  And that is why I am wondering why I am not the one taking the nap.

I promised you scrap and have not delivered.  Maybe there’s just one picture: yesterday, when we went to feed the big guys, Fendis, the little barn cat from next door, came to visit.  This is a delicate cat, a dainty cat.  A cat even people who do not like cats would still admire.  She’s like a piece of lace, a walking bit of dignity and kindness.  And I am allergic to her.

She comes out into the arena to see us, which always worries me.  The horses find her fascinating, and will follow her slowly with their noses nearly touching the ground.  I don’t know if one of them will strike at her, or step on her by accident, so I worry.  But yesterday, as Chaz (who was trying not to sneeze) and I were fussing over the colt’s feet, Fendis came out to see us.  She wound her way, threading that custard smoothness in and out, passing between the colt’s legs and ending up right in front of him.

He dropped his nose slowly, gently.  He’s a giant, really, fifteen hands for all his youthful slimness, and his legs are like redwoods to this cat.  He has always liked her.  Now, she held still instead of beating a wise retreat, and he, with his black muzzle, touched her lightly on the back.  She arched her back, presenting it to him, and he kept still as she passed back and forth, softly, under his nose.  She looked up at him, and he touched the top of her head with that same soft black lip.  She rose and rubbed her shoulder against him.  And he closed his eyes.

Chaz and I stood still, watching this amazing thing.  It went on for some time, until Jetta decided to come and find out what was going on.  It’s always something, isn’t it?  Transcendent moments are, as named, not meant to be long in this world.  I just had never seen anything like it.  Chaz picked Fendis up, having chased her down to a nice Jetta-safe place, and brought her back, presenting her to once more to the colt, this time at eye level.   “Purring,” Chaz announced happily.  “She’s just purring.”

End of picture.  The baby monitor is starting to moan a little bit.  So I am going to go and fill my own arms with warm, dozy baby. 

What will fill the rest of the day?  Who knows?  Could be anything.  I’m a mom.  I’m used to that.