Be darned.
I’m slipping a gear, here. I thought this was June 31. Yes, I know. It’s just that I’m one of those that takes his leap year as he wishes.
I used to work for the government. It’s contagious.
Renter wanted some help. I gave it. The work will expand today, from what he was saying yesterday. I’m not sure if it is necessary, really, or just shades of yesteryear. Either way, I suppose, he’ll gain some comp;any for a time.
The village hierarchy is in flux. Renter’s wife is ex-post mistress and now cares for a fading partner. Her position use to gather moths to her flame and the house was always full and they were a center. That is fading also, so they’ve become less a center. To garner the information they use to receive, they must now travel and question – which is very, very difficult for Renter. Singleton women (the widows) haven’t yet accepted Renters wife into the full circle.
Life’s a bitch at times, and the hoops never cease to appear.
Unless one simply ignores the hoops. Which can be a lonely proposition for those accustomed to country support groups.
Part of the work I’m doing is around:
And it can get a mite dangerous. I bring that up not as a “nice guy” type of thing, but to highlight two incidences of man and beast that happened to me the past two day.
I was in the back pasture, it has six steers – as opposed to cows, bulls or calves. I got a hair lodged sideways and stopped the mower blades and started chasing the steers around the pasture. They never run far, and false kick at you as they move off. They’re also funny about the way they go about fake scared, when they’ve had enough they simply walk away, ignoring one totally. They’ve figured out you not going to hurt them.
Early this morning I went out in the cool to finish the job and was well into noisy process when a bull left the bunch and started to charge me and the mower. I’d done nothing to the sucker. He just upped his tail and came at me head down.
He gave me time, so I could think about this on his first twenty foot run – so I pretended I hadn’t seen him and kept going in my circle. Next time around he met me head-on, I cut off the blades and ran away from him. He chased me.
A fourteen hundred pound steer can be funny as hell, sometimes. I let him chase me for fifty or sixty feet, turned the blades back on, and resumed my circle as if nothing was happening.
He wandered off.
They can be funny, these critters.
But, I’m babbling. It’s time for breakfast. I might even get in a couple of hands of PLO8 today, as it warms up.
_____
From the reaches,
Ten Mile
Ten's space 