Happy Mother's Day

This lamb was born in our pasture on Mother's Day. In this picture he is just a few hours old (he's much cuter now especially with the white tip on his soon to be whacked off tail) O.K., he was born the day after Mother's Day. Close enough. O.K., he wasn't born so much as he was pulled from the womb by his observant owner who happened to be driving by and saw the ewe in distress, thrashing wildly in her pain.

I had no idea this had occurred until I went out and saw a new lamb. Cool! No muss, no fuss on my part. I've been arm deep in sheep midwifery before and like goat raising, those days are behind me. Thank God. But there is nothing cuter than a little lamb hopping and bopping in the grass. So I'm glad the sheep and lambs are there and also glad they are not mine.

As for human mothers, I managed to remember Mother's Day and procured appropriate gifts (mother & mother-in-law) well in advance, which was quite remarkable for me. It's hard to find gifts for people who have tons of junk already. Plus the fact I remembered it was Mother's Day. Woot.

I went to visit my mother last Friday and brought her gift. I was excited to give her something that I thought she would use and thought she would like. It was a DVD player. Just a little, inexpensive one.

Oh, you shouldn't have, oh, pj, oh, oh. She seemed happy. I was thrilled that I made her happy. Until I couldn't get the damn thing to work. I had her all primed to watch the Michael Moore Fahrenheit 911 DVD and nothing, but nothing made the player play. I even took the player into my brother's house in town thinking HE WOULD MAKE IT WORK. But it never happened.

So I picked up a Pasquales pizza and went back to my folks and we ate the best pizza in the world. I left my folks with my car full of stuff, including the defective product which went back to WalMart today. WalMart sucks!

WalMart took the thing back without even looking in the box. WTF?? When I purchased it, I got the alarms and the shake-down at the door when I was leaving. But when I return it they don't even look to see if the box is filled with faucet parts from my junk drawer??

I took my money and ran to Target and got a replacement. I will test it first, then if it works I will take it to Mom. Then mother's day will be happy.

Goat Woman

I got cornered by Goat Woman today. My fault. I could have easily avoided her if I didn't smoke, which I shouldn't anyway. Even the governor has tried to help me quit by raising the tabacco tax by a dollar a pack. But I digresss..

Goat Woman has her name because it's all she talks about. Give her a chance to get a word in edgewise and the subject of goats comes up. Because I was too polite to tell her to shut up during the initial goat talk, I am stuck with goat talk whenever I see her. Even if the prevailing subject is racism in America or the cost of W's war.

Goat Woman is the name I gave her, of course. I doubt if it is her real name. I name people that I see on campus. There is Late Guy, Big Late Guy, Horse Girl and Cotton To, among others. Cotton To got his name because one day I overheard a snippet of conversation in which he said, "If there's one thing I don't cotton to, it's liars and cheats."

I want to say this about goat talk: I can talk the talk. I have goat experience. It is behind me and now I don't need to hear some neophyte blubbering about it. Goat people are weird, which is why I am not one anymore. I choose to be weird on other levels.

Spunky and Molly, circa 1982