Wanted: A Do-Over Day! ~A Wendy post & a farming post

Tonight as I walked into the piano room from outside, crying the 'ugly cry' - deep sobs, snot & all, I was able to compose myself enough to answer my children's cries of 'What's wrong?'  Micah then replied, "Well, you know what they say, Mom.  

'There's no use crying over spilled milk!'

15 hours earlier:

I awake at 5:30 a.m. feeling terrible.  Migraine.  Upset stomach.  I shower with my eyes closed because my head hurts so much.  I see that it is still dark.  Ugh.  Are people really up at this hour?  I milk & go back to bed, skipping church in order to sleep and hopefully feel better.

7 hours earlier:

Kevin accidentally spills my much-anticipated & longed-for Sunday Dunkin Donuts community coffee.  First-world problem for sure, but I had a very low threshold at this point!  I begin a hard afternoon with the kids.

3 hours earlier:

I had plans to work tonight & really needed to schedule-wise & that didn't work out.  I ended up kind-of running around trying to fix the problem I encountered, but to no avail.  Small problem, just at the end of a long day.

1 hour earlier:

I arrive home a little later than I would have liked to, anxious to feed the goat kids, feed the people kids, milk Clara & get everyone to bed!  I asked the people kids to feed the goat kids and I headed down to milk.  It was dark.  It was raining.  It was chilly.  

I fed Katahdin & got Clara by the milkstand.  She knows what to do already and she jumped on the stand.  

Unfortunately the milkstand was slippery and Clara jumped on and before I could do anything she slipped right back off again, on the side.  I should have foreseen this and put down some kind-of traction, and we will indeed do that now.  I don't think Clara was hurt but it scared her a lot.  I tried everything I could think of for 30 minutes to get her on that stand.  The tears started falling a bit at this time!  I just couldn't get her to get on it.  

I decided to lead her up to the porch and milk her there.  She stood still while she had food in front of her, but after that it was milking a moving animal.  Without the milking stand to keep her in place it was very  difficult to milk her, a task I am already struggling with.

My one consolation as I was milking was that I already had enough for the kids' midnight feeding so this would all be extra.  For us.  To drink.  Kind-of worth the struggle tonight and the cold and dark and wet.  And the dirty, now that I was milking on the porch floor.

As you can guess, just when I was nearly done and had nearly a quart - Clara knocked my pail over!!  Ahhhhhhh!  Ridiculous or not I started my ugly cry which continued for quite some time after I was done milking!  A few more squirts.  I stripped the teats.  Applied the iodine and that is the moment when we began our story and I walked through the door with my ugly cry... 

I called my husband, still ugly-crying away, hoping he was almost home!

We still needed to give booster shots to Clara & Katahdin today and I am so thankful that all I had to do was hold them and Kevin administered the shots.

One Hour Later:

I am showered and warm and I can smile knowing that tomorrow is a new day!  And I have consoled myself with what was left in my milkpail - about 6 oz. of delicious, raw milk.

'There's no use crying over spilled milk.'