The Year Of The Goat
Surprise~~~~~the last few days have been spent on fixing fencing.
Surprise! !@*%#$*@#@!
I have no other activities it seems……………..in my spare time, I fix fencing.
Ugh. This is getting old. I can’t put on or take off rings because my fingers are contused and swollen from hammer smashes.
Old, hard, pine posts combined with my all-time favorite hammering projectile………………..the fence staple. They are both a nasty combination.
Those things have got to have been created by the same sick people who made my Spanish Inquisition riding boots.
When nailing in a fence staple, where exactly are you supposed to hold it so your non-hammer-holding fingers don’t get walloped repeatedly?
There is no right or good place to hold those buggers………………….it all hurts.
And then you’re smacking it into a wobbling post. Even if it was securely in the ground when you started……………..it’s wobbly by the time you’re done with it.
And of course the oaths.
I think rural living is a steam-engine driven by the hot air of oaths.
Hissed oaths, mumbled oaths, flailing oaths, and the always popular banshee-wailed oaths (the type I have polished to a high-sheen and octave).
Yesterday was spent doing emergency, patch-up fencing. You know, versus the normal emergency, patch-up fencing.
And that was because while doing normal, patch-up fencing the day before, I discovered that 15 of our goats were out helping the bad-neighbor do his power-washing of his ridiculously over-sized, metal monstrosity of a non-commercial (ha) garage…………………….it’s butt-ugly.
But it’s been power-washed now, so it’s clean and butt-ugly.
And this was all done with the help of fifteen of our goats.
Just so we have this correct in our minds. That’s 15, or if you prefer, fifteen. Or even better the classical XV………………………………anyway you look at it, our goats were not going to go unnoticed.
Hurricane Irma!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your impact is on-going!!!!!
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I don’t like the bad-neighbors.
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I prudently went into the house and got my husband (who everybody loves).
We paraded around dramatically in the waning daylight, pointing at where the rusted-out fence was exposed from the dried out swamp-area. And with our best thespian dramatic-posturing, we made it clear that fixing THAT area of the fence would be the next day’s priority, emergency fence fix.
(Plus, I fed the goats amply at the far end of the pasture…………………….away from the rusted-out holes.)
(Plus, my jovial husband spoke to the bad-neighbor and said we would be fixing it.)-(Did I mention everyone loves my husband?)-(Well, they do.)
(However, I have self-banned myself from talking with the bad neighbors. I don’t have the self-restraint not to leap for their jugular and do a gleeful dance while watching their arterial blood pulse from their twitching bodies.)
(I know my limitations.)
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Bright and early the next morning we get started.
First, we have to take down the fencing from the other emergency paddock fencing that we had to put up immediately after Hurricane Irma, so we could get Mason (our Thoroughbred stud) out of standing water.
That didn’t involve putting staples in. That involved clawing staples out.
My fingers were still safe.
Then, rolling up the appropriate length of the Red Brand field fencing that had come to our rescue once already earlier in September.
I speared the roll with the tractor and carried it out to it’s new home at the far end of the goat pasture———-where the rusty holes were.
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Fencing always taxes a marriage.
It does.
It’s inevitable.
First, where to drop the roll of fencing.
Oops———-not there…
Now, it’s upside down.
Now, his fingers are caught……………….now, my fingers are caught.
And then, those name-less nettles (who will haunt me to my dying breath) get caught up in the roll and like a carousel of repeated stinging torture, they keep coming around and around and got us every time they passed……………………(I had forgotten my work gloves in the house).
~~~~~~~~~~We finally got the fence right-side up. We finally got it rolled where we wanted it. We finally had mashed the nettle-what-evers to smithereens.
We were barely talking to each other…………………and then we started hammering.
Each to their own post, with their own hammer and their own Spanish Inquisition fencing staples.
Between my husband’s and my bad language (because of our mutual unrecognizable, smashed fingers) both the goats and the bad-neighbors kept a low-profile until we were done and had vacated the pasture………………………….smart thinking.
It’s not a pretty job. It’s really quite a bad job. It’s very loose, but it’s impenetrable.
It would have been much better, but we don’t have our “come-along” anymore. It’s one of those fencing tools that you hardly ever use or need———-until you really need it to staple up taunt fencing…………………….
But the missing “come-along” is another story and a source of marital distress………………
See……………..after almost forty-one years of marriage along with my bear-trap memory………………some things that could have been forgotten and left in the dusts of time are still there to be brought up again, and again, and again……………….
Just what did happen to that come-along……………….???