One-eighty

I'm getting my exercise running around opening and closing windows and taking the quilt off the bed and putting it back on.  On Tuesday I was sweating buckets in a tank top; yesterday I needed a turtle-neck sweater.  The temperature dropped from mid nineties to high sixties.  The wind blew and the sky threatened rain all day.  At least the sun is shining this morning. 

The other day I was trundling a seventy-five-pound bag of goat chow down to the barn on the hand cart.  I'd noticed that one tire was getting low and had made a mental note to put air in it "sometime."  Half-way down the hill in the pen, the tire came off the wheel.  The girls had seen me coming and were bawling, I was cussing a blue streak, that made Bessie bark, and not one of us was happy.  Back up at the feed barn, I was able to get the tire to hold air long enough to get the feed to the girls before it gave up entirely.  This was a good lesson in "Don't put off til tomorrow what you should do today."  The little tire shop down in Mt. Aukum was doing a thriving business yesterday and I spent a good hour waiting for the guys to put in an inner tube.  My companions in line were an interesting group.  There was a seventy-five-year-old psychiatrist who had blown a tire on his horse trailer.  He was a competition endurance rider, and was recovering from six broken ribs.  Another gentleman, well into his cups early in the day, had just pulled in and, while getting the spare out from under his truck, dropped the entire assembly on his thumb.  He let out an inventive stream of invectives, but having previously administered internal anesthetic helped him with the pain.  He became quite fascinated while watching the thumb swell to twice its normal size, and encouraged us to watch with him.  Hmmm.  My third companion was a loquacious local lady.  I learned her family's history in the area, as well as that of most of her friends.  My tire repaired, the guys loaded a bale of orchard grass for Nineteen, and I made a dash for freedom. 

After the salad or cereal dinners during the hot spell, ham and lentil soup was on the menu last night.  One just never knows when the weather is going to do a one-eighty.  (Go-To got held up on his day job, so he'll try again for tonight.  The saga goes on.)