Apr. 11, 2003 ~ Some days you're the windshield;
some days you're the bug.
This was a "bug" day. Pretty much of a "bug week," actually. Should have just skipped the whole thing.
The highlight today had to be backing my truck into a ditch, and having to have someone pull me out. Sheesh. It would not have been so bad, but this happened right next to the highway, in plain view of probably half the people I know in the world, and it was at a friend's office. I'd stopped by to drop off a birthday gift for her daughter, and there is precious little parking there under the best of circumstances, but the UPS truck was in my usual spot, and a whole bunch of other cars filled the small lot. As I was trying to back out (downhill), one wheel slipped over the edge of the asphalt and into a deep ditch. Turned out the entire staff was there for a meeting, so when I had to go back inside for help, every... single... person... felt obliged to come outside and look at the results of my klutziness. "Oh, how embarrassing!" they all said. Well, yes, you could say that! They were going to get some guy next door to come over with his tractor (seems this happens about once a week), but the husband of one of the employees drove by, and decided to come back and help. His chain was short, and there was only about one foot between our two vehicles, if that much. I told him that I was afraid I was going to hit his truck! But I didn't. I thanked him profusely and went on my way, feeling like... how shall I say this... a world class moron. Yes, everybody screws up from time to time, but do they all do it in public? I think not.
Yesterday was cute, too. I heard some cows mooing frantically in the woods next door, which to me means our cows have gotten OUT, and we can't have that. I couldn't call our cows to the gate to count them, because I still have no voice, and certainly can't yell, so I just took off into the woods. This is not a particularly bright or clever idea, especially when one is wearing sweats. See, the woods are filled with briers and all kinds of stickery, scratchy things, many of them poisonous, no doubt. No one lives next door, and the woods there are completely untended, with no paths or cleared areas at all. But I am a Cow Mom, and Cow Moms do what must be done. Those poor babies kept mooing desperately, and I could picture them all frantic and pitiful, maybe even out on the road, some big bad truck bearing down on them, about to turn them into hamburger. They mooed louder; I moved faster.
Well.
I finally made it to the other side of the woods, and there were six moo-faces, not one of them mine. All six were safely behind the neighbor's fence. Newcomers all, they were probably complaining about the accomodations or bemoaning the fact that they'd been torn away from their families and friends. Did I mention that my neighbor doesn't keep cows at his place? Clearly, he does now! Did I mention that I undertook this rescue effort while wearing rubber boots, the really clompy, oversized, dorky ones? If I could have made it down the steep embankment, I would have been willing to clomp down the road home, but that wasn't happening, so I had to turn around and go back through the scratchy, itchy, stickery (and hey, aren't the snakes out by now?) woods, then rip my coat on the barbed wire fence. But on a cheery note, at least we didn't have any stray cows!
Like I said, I should have stayed in bed.
Tomorrow is bound to be better.
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