How Was Your Day, Dear?

I have found that when a day "goes south," the best way to recover is by doing something physical.  In the morning, Frank had been in terrible pain and could not bear weight on a foreleg.  His last injury resulted in an expensive surgery.  I gave him some painkiller and hoped for spontaneous recovery.  The rest of the day was filled with piddly and not-so-piddly irritations and I was getting cranky with the world.

The rain had stopped and Bess and I walked out for a breath of fresh air in the afternoon.  We were joined by several tribes of turkeys, also out for a stroll.  Almost all of the uncovered wood was in a pile on the ground.  I'd thought when I started that I'd just get a few pieces around the edges out of the dirt, and then a few more, and then a few more.  It felt pretty good, so I just kept at it.  As I reached ground level, about a dozen golden-eyed, slow-moving frogs and one warty toad the size of an orange were disturbed from their sleep and dislodged from their homes.  There is a pile of unsplit wood a few feet away, so they won't be homeless long.  The stacked wood appears higgledy-piggledy because, for the most part, it is wood from the old, old oak tree down in the pasture.  Even though well aged, it is very heavy and tremendously dense and was impossible for Tree Guy to split in even sections.  It may not make for a neat and tidy woodpile, but it sure makes for a good, long-lasting fire in the wood stove.

A day of rest in the house had left Frank a bit gimpy, but certainly not in distress anymore.  An afternoon of exercise and the satisfaction of a job begun and finished had improved my disposition.

It was a good day.