The Insanity

Life.

It just has a way of keepin' on, even if you can't keep up with it.

It has been crazy busy around here lately. A birthday and an anniversary and purposely scheduled craziness might have something to do with it, but still .... crazy busy.

Five of the six poodle-pie puppies have found new homes, which means that I have five less poodle-pie puppy messes to clean up every morning. Grace has gone from one puppy to the other making them her favorites as they all leave: first D-O-G (said phonetically, Deogie) and Licorice left, then Cheesenout, and Rosie, and yesterday Chocolate, leaving behind little Boaz who is doing his best job to convince us that we do need a goofy little yellow lab. Sigh .... Rob is doing his best to stand his ground amongst all of us animal lovers.

The farm is busy, too, with six milking does now. Martha delivered last week~ another buckling. We have decided that next year must be our doe year as we are over run with bucks right now. This new guy brings the total up to 6 bucks and 2 does. Micah donned him "Stripey" as the rest of us were all pretty much named out. Lord willing, pictures to come as soon as I can spare a hand to carry the camera down to the barn amongst the three calf bottles, water jugs, egg basket and milking supplies.

Yes, we also got our bottle calves. It is more of a "going through the motions" event this year with little to no fan-fare over the black and white buggers. Again, Lord willing, pictures to come soon, and I'll try to write a detailed post of how we raise them on goats milk in the near future.

And then there are the chickens: our egg laying girls have been loving the sunshine and have been laying us lots of farm fresh eggs. In an attempt to get back on track with actually farming we have been recording eggs again. In the last ten days of February we brought in 74 eggs from 16 hens. Good job girls!

Our pullet chicks are doing great, and there are some very happy Craigslist people who bought several over the weekend. We still have some little ones in the basement waiting to graduate to the big outside coop, and some more six week old pullets waiting for homes if anybody needs them. Overall the chicken business is good for so early in the spring.

The weather has been crazy, too. We had the biggest snowstorm of the season a couple of weeks ago, and in the past two days it has been so warm that all the snow has melted. The kids dug out the shorts and flip-flops today and even took out the duck boat on the pond to celebrate.

I bought roses. This, in itself, was a significant event because it's one of those things that we used to do when Trent was here. As a reward for making it through Aldi's with two overflowing shopping carts, we would take turns picking out bouquets. When Grace saw the flower displays last week on our grocery shopping trip she asked if she could pick some out .... I woke up from my stupor enough to say yes.

Insane is how I have felt lately. If somebody would just find me a straight jacket in a cute brown and pink pattern I could be content sitting in a padded room rocking back and forth. And then don't wake me up until it's my turn to go to heaven.

The crying doesn't seem to do any good, so I have opted for the insanity behind curtain number three these days. I mean, really, how else does one wrap their brain around the fact that their son is not here? Thoughts of God and His glory and heaven consume me unrelentingly. And for the millionth time I ask: How do you go on living here? What do you live for? When you know that this is all temporary, what is worth investing in?

It's worse than having to cook three meals a day only to have it all eaten in moments and then have to wash the dishes three times a day only to get up and know you have to do it do it again tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day.

Oh~ and the tiny push that sent me cascading into the insanity mode: somebody stole Trent's identity and claimed him on their taxes. Yes, we were informed that we would have to paper file our taxes and prove to the government that our dead son was really our dead son rather than somebody else's dead son who was claiming that our dead son was their dead son. Uh-huh. Now you see why that cute little straight jacket might not be so bad? Who would even think up these things?

So, I humour myself with barn chores twice a day: feed the calves, feed the goats, feed the chicks, feed the calves, feed the goats, feed the chicks. It's cheap therapy.