Ahead Of The Game

I'm usually behind the eight-ball, so it was a nice surprise to find myself ahead of the game at the end of the day.  First order of business was to trundle a 50-pound block of trace-mineral salt to the goat pen and a 75-pound bag of feed to the barn.  The salt block always seems heavier than the feed; probably because it's inert and the bag has some give and movement.

Point of interest:  cat litter is heavy, no two ways about it.  I just bought a jug of litter that professes to be "lighter," and the lid proclaims, "Lift me!"  By golly, it is lighter.  Well, duh.  The "light" jug weighs 15 pounds, as opposed to the 20-pound jug of the heavy stuff.  Kind of like that, "Which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of steel?"  I'm assuming the new litter is sold by volume, not weight, because the jugs are the same size, but really?

Out of the five, four (including Inga) girls came into the milking room on schedule.  Tessie wanted to play the wait-for-me game, but I'm on to her.  It might be a sign of insecurity, but Tessie cannot bear to be ignored.  When she dawdles, I go on about my business, gathering shovel, rake, and bucket and go in to clean the back stalls.  In a few minutes, reliable as clockwork, she's at the gate to the play yard.  "Hey!  You forgot me!"  The stalls can wait, so I go tend to Tessie.

Onward and upward.  I have a tendency to unload smaller bags of groceries from the truck after a trip to town, but leave the heavier stuff in back of the seat until needed, like the bags of cat food and sugar and flour, which I buy in bulk.  With days of rain in the forecast, it seemed prudent to get the big bags into the house after barn chores.  Mission accomplished.  They're saying we might even get snow on Sunday, so I hauled even more firewood to the porch and emptied the ash can on the burn pile; it pays to be prepared.

Darkening skies and dropping temperature prompted a fire in the wood stove.  It was burning well and warming the house when the rain started about 3 o'clock.  How nice it was to be ahead of the game for a change.

Muscles are screaming, but it was a good day.