lazy

I must have a hearing problem. All of my life I have heard (what I thought was) folks referring to the “lazy days of summer.” You know, the Country Time Lemonade commercials with people sitting on their front porches in a swing with a glass of icy lemonade?

Well, it ain’t happening here. I think that I must have misheard. The expression is actually the “CRAZY days of summer.”

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE summer. I adore the birds singing me awake every morning (even if it is a bit too early for my tastes). I love not having to take 5 minutes to dress myself before going out to do chores. I LIVE for spending breezy nights on the hammock.

However, the to-do lists become much longer in the summer, just because the days are longer and the weather is more cooperative. Pens need to be built, fences need to be shored up, there is much cleaning to do. Plus, there is the preparation for winter—baling hay and weatherproofing the barn.

Of course, there is still the inside work, even though we try and take it outside if we can. B built me a great clothesline, and we have enjoyed our line-dried clothes immensely (and our $50 electric bills!). But that does require more work. Not a huge amount more, but still more than popping it “next door” to the washer into the dryer and pushing the button.

And there are the paying jobs, which do not cease.

And the invitations to picnics, cookouts, zoos and attractions that are much more fun in the summer than in the winter.

For goats, it is show season, which not only means spending your weekends at the shows (which seem to always require hours of travel and overnight stays), but the weekends that you are not showing involve preparation for shows—hoof trimming, bathing, clipping, training to lead, etc. And there is the insane obsession with your goat’s condition, of course. For what it’s worth, we have decided not to show this year, with the exception of L showing his goat at the county 4H fair. Which happens to be coming up this Wednesday. So guess what we did this past weekend?

My days start at 5:30, except for the weekends, which (though they should actually start EARLIER so I could cram everything in) start at about 8:00, if I am staying home. Each morning I usually check my email and my calendar for the day, dress and head out to the barn at 6:00. I spend about 45 minutes in the barn, feeding, milking Cindi (nobody else is up that early to help), feeding, moving animals to the correct outside pens. We have the goats, of course, still have Joe Llama, and the horse and cats and geese. We now have the 2 Maremma dogs that we are training, and we are working them and ensuring that they are bonded with the goats, so we place goats accordingly. We also have the chickens, which need food and water 2x a day.

I finish that at about 6:45am, and hit the shower. Truthfully, I try to be on the road by 7:05 and most days do pretty well. No earrings or much makeup for me! No time! I am to work by 7:45, though I am supposed to be in by 7:30. I work until 3:00, or a little later in the summer. During the school year I leave promptly so I can be home to catch the bus when it gets here.

I get home about 3:45 or 4:00, and usually finish up any work that I brought home from work. Sometimes it’s a little or none, sometimes it takes me the entire evening. By 5:00, B and I are planning supper, and I try to take some time to tidy up the house. It doesn’t always get done, but this is the plan anyway.

He comes home with supper, and we fix it and eat, and are done by 7:00. Time to clean up from supper, and do anything else that needs doing—laundry or dishes or vaccuming.

We go out to the barn about 7:30 or 8:00, and usually take more time in the evenings. We love on the animals, discuss plans for moving pens, put our hands on them to make sure that they are healthy and sound, etc. We spend about an hour outside, usually. The kids help milk and also love on the animals.

We come in and the kids go to bed, and I am usually back to work in some way. Lately I have been working on websites for other people, so that consumes time. For whatever rreason, we seem to not be able to get to bed before 11:30.

Then it’s get up and do it all again.

However, it seems as though every day is some type of deviation from this. Today B worked late, and it’s 8:15 and he is just now coming home with supper. We’ve been collecting our things for the show, so nothing has been done around the house this afternoon. The kids and I spent some quality mom/kid time in the hammock. It was worth pushing everything back!

A good way to spend a Monday. Not a lazy day, but a few lazy moments.