Smarter Than A Goat

There she stood at the far corner of the pen, back toward me, daintily picking up one alfalfa stem at a time and chewing it slowly just to make her point.  There I stood in the doorway of the milking room, calling, "Sheila!  Come on, pretty girl."  And then, "Sheee-lah!  Get your butt down here right this minute!"  She ignored me.  Fine.  Just fine.  Two can play this game.  The other girls had taken their turn on the stand, eaten their cereal, and been milked.  I was disinclined to hike the hill after Sheila even one more time.  Grabbing the rake, shovel, and poop bucket, I went around to clean the smaller stalls.  I muck out the big room while Esther, the nonmilker, has her breakfast.  By the time I emptied the second bucket over the fence, Sheila was waiting at the milking room door.  "Hey, what about me?  Don't I get my cereal?  Let me in, please."  Ha!  Ya just have to outsmart 'em (and out wait 'em).  I think she just liked the extra attention.

Years ago, before we finished the downstairs room in the walk-out basement, it was a big, empty space with a cement floor, walls without sheet rock, open ceiling with bare studs and hanging wires.  I had ordered a weaving loom; not a small lap model, a loom big enough to weave thirty-six-inch material, and it was delivered in multiple boxes with a book of instructions thick enough to choke a horse.  It was summertime and my friend Dolly was spending what had become her annual week with me.  Unappealing as it might have been, the basement was the coolest room in the house.  Dolly, my partner in many adventures (and misadventures), was drafted.  "Come on!  It'll be fun!"  (And, if not fun, it would at least be cooler.)  It took us days to assemble the loom, including putting in six hundred heddles; the up-and-down thingies that carry the thread.  I'm sure Dolly thought she'd never see the sun again, being held prisoner in a basement in a town nobody had ever heard of.

The reason this comes to mind is because Dolly is coming up for the weekend.  I just got a note from her and, silly girl and glutton for punishment that she is, she volunteered (and, believe me, I will remind her of that!) to help me assemble the Christmas tree for downstairs!  If anyone thinks I'm not going to take her up on that offer, they're not as smart as a goat.  It'll be fun!