Boring Is Best

Light Goat Reading

As Facebook might have intimated to some of you, I've spent the last week farm-sitting for a passel of adorable goat friends and house-sitting for the Internet. You read that right.


My lovely friends Rebecca and Merlin decided to give themselves a much deserved vacay to a warm place before the onslaught of kidding season, when they will be up all night helping to deliver baby goats on top of all their other normal farm and cheese duties (doodies). They asked me to care for the goaties and chickens and tempted me with all the Wifi I could consume (swoon) and as many hot showers as my epidermis could handle (not that many, as I have a reputation to uphold). I was in.

In addition to having twice the cuddle time with my ruminant pals, who include my best friend Placer's mom Patches (!), I also had very grand plans to try making a cheese with Rebecca's gear, read up on animal husbandry and also pillage these dudes' formidable cookbook shelf and memorize every goddamned recipe in every Ottolenghi book ever published.

Instead I watched web TV.

I know it comes as no surprise to anyone with a pulse that the World Wide (we're cool like that), and specifically TV thus proffered, has the capacity to suck all of the creativity and productivity from a human being. Unless one is terribly disciplined (LOLZFORDAYS), what starts out as a perfectly sound plan for Edifying Oneself will immediately devolve into a Media Consumption Orgy that you come out of woozy and feel the need to shower after. I watched ALL the Girls and ALL the Broad City and then decided to go outside my comfort zone and watch an impressive number of The Good Wife episodes. I would pass out, as I had done in days of yore, with the computer by my side, threatening to burn a hole in the mattress, its blue light warming my pallid mug like an alien sun.

Not to be that girl who is always bringing up this VERY INTERESTING REPORT SHE HEARD ON NPR but I'm about to be that girl, because a couple weeks ago there was a very interesting report I heard on NPR about how creativity is suffering at the hands of various modern gadgetry, because no one ever allows oneself to get bored enough to turn inward for amusement. I have actually written about that here in a few places specifically with regard to my iPhone and how it has historically kept me from Thinking Thoughts and also noticing anyfuckingthing around me, which is terrible for creativity and also crime scenes. And I've also noticed how comparatively fertile my mind grapes seem to be when instead of listening to podcast after podcast whilst down in the cheese cave I just marinate with my thoughts. Shit is real. Also I am old. And, quite possibly, "crunchy."

Speaking of which, this seems as good a place as any to insert an anecdote (and I'm really stretching it with "anecdote," but since nothing much happens here except for an occasional goat death or dog haircut or sometimes someone buys a cookie at the General Store, or at least that's what I HEARD), I'm taking what I can get.

My schedule at the farm's been all wonky since the girls dried off. My days are much shorter because the tasks and chores are fewer -- fewer cheeses being made, no milking to be done. Laini has done her best to scrape together more hours for me, which now means that while sometimes my shifts are as short as 3 hours, I am at the farm 7 days a week now, twice a day for 5 of them. During my downtime, I have wrangled a silly data entry job in Town (aka Newport, population 4500 - a teeming metropolis let me tell you). In an effort to be as helpful and useful as possible to Laini, who is still the world's busiest person even when she has seemingly less work to do, I offered to pick up a growler of the beer she uses to wash the Snow'd Ins (like Sweet Carolines but cow instead of goat and see what she did there?) on my way back from Newport.

I turned down the road with the sign pointing to Kingdom Brewery, was led up a swirly twisty road and chased by a few toothless and senile seeming coon hounds (are those a thing? did you read Where The Red Fern Grows? SOB) and finally arrived at my destination, a little brewery and tasting room in the middle of fucking no where (like everything around here evidently). I walked in and found the proprietor, a cheerful lug of a guy named Brian, behind the bar. "Haven't seen you in a while!" he said mirthfully. "Oh, have we met?" I asked, totally embarrassed and confused. "You work for Laini right? You used to come here every Thursday but it's been a while!" I assured him I'd never been there and after a few minutes of very Alice in Wonderland-ish logic exercises, I was given to understand that he was simply confusing me for Rebecca, my soldier in arms at the farm, whom I will tell you right now I look ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING LIKE. (Not that I'd be mad, as she's cute as hell). Like, NOT AT ALL LIKE HER. Evidently everyone youngish and female(ish) gets lumped in to one pile, and that pile gets marked Likely Employees of Lazy Lady Farm. Brian in fact corroborated that by saying I had the same "look" about me.  "Sort of crunchy but sort of not."

So I guess I'm Crunchy. Who the fuck knew?! ( I kinda knew).

And that pretty much sums up most of the excitement from the Northeast Kingdom, where, miraculously, the snowstorm mostly skirted us and no crazy weather related events befell my hopeless ass (knock all wooden things). Today I have the morning off, so I will wash four of Rebecca's cheeses, feed and hay (HAAAAAAY) the goaties and the chickens, go to the Price Chopper, do some more light goatreading (I cracked open the above-pictured book last night finally and no joke it is riveting), then it's evening chores here and at Laini's and then MORE WEB TELEVISION TIL I DIE FOOLS. Or at least until I go back to my house with my limited data plan and am relegated to downloaded movie rentals and, you know, actual books. Feels practically Victorian. Which reminds me of a thing I heard on NPR the other day...

Requisite adorable goat pic