Fits And Starts

I might as well get used to the fact that if Project Cleanup ever gets underway, by the time I finish I'll have to start over again.  One of the frustrating things about housework is that it is an endless loop.  Like an old-time movie projector, I move along at a herky-jerky pace, getting a start and then an interruption.  Camille has been in the same situation and now she's hitting the panic button.  After a month of nonstop company at her house, for a week she's been saying she needs to paint her barn and then everything would go kerphlooey and nothing got done.  We are due for rain tomorrow or the next day and welcome as the rain will be, it would spell disaster for a paint job, so today's the day.  As soon as I finish with the girls this morning, I'm going down to help Cam.  I told her I'm not going up on a ladder, but she can go high and I can go low and maybe between the two of us, we'll get something done.

I logged some miles on foot yesterday.  I average over a mile every day just going down to the barn morning and night.  My milk customer had said he wanted the "end product," as it were, and come to get a load of manure.  There is a brief window of time when that is possible between tall, dry weeds in summer when there is danger of hot exhaust pipes starting a fire and wet, slushy mud in winter when a vehicle puts ruts in the field and now is just right.  "Just let me know early for sure so I don't let the girls into the big pen (where the dung pile is)."  Not hearing anything from him in the morning, I opened the gate between the yards so the girls could go over to graze in the shade under the big oak.  And then, of course, when I was back in the house he called and said he was on his way.  So I hiked down and coaxed the goats back into the smaller pen and shut the gate.  I asked him and his friend to open that gate before they left and save me that extra walk.  They loaded up their little trailer and did as I'd asked and all was good.  A little later in the afternoon, he called again and said he was coming back for a second load and we did it all over again.  Dang, that hill gets steeper on the way back up!

At least I'll have a good excuse not to get anything done here today.