Pots of Gold

When I awake and my neck is complaining, what I feel like doing is going back to sleep, to escape it. What I have finally learned is that doing so only increases the discomfort by the time I do get out of bed. So usually I get up (and that's hard to do; I love my sleep, and I want to escape that neck pain so badly!), and the discomfort goes away on its own after a while. Not always. But sometimes.

Yesterday morning, after a fitful sleep due to the neck thing starting the night before, I just took a pill and slept till noon. Scott had left early and I was alone in the house, or felt like I was, until about a half-hour after rising. That's when I heard a noise a lot louder than what the little Mr DoodleDog could make. I was perplexed—until I saw Emil coming out of the spare bedroom. I had forgotten he was here. He'd come home with me from town the night before and he'd slept in, too.

Once in a while the trusty pills THANK GOD FOR THEM don't do the job. Yesterday I had to take a second one at noon, then lounge in the living room watching movies in hopes of taking my mind off my neck. After a couple more hours I was good to go, and was just out of the tub when my former husband phoned.

"I'm here in Wadena. Should I come and get Emil?"
"Nah," said I, thinking Gord had already driven the eight hours from Edmonton and I'd save him an extra 20 minutes behind the wheel. "He's outside walking around already. I'll bring him into town."

It was a beautiful day and I'd already wasted most of it indoors.

The gate has been left open after the cattle at GGFarm were moved to the home quarter for the winter.

The boys have got their straw bales ready to be picked up and hauled to the yard.

Scott told me he'd been driving down the road when a great blue heron flew up and flapped along, well within easy view of the truck for quite a while instead of disappearing into the distance like they usually do. He was pleased, he said, until he saw a giant blob of shit shooting out its ass ("as big as a cow pie!") and then stretching out and hanging in the air, attached to the bird like rope, as the shy bird pulled it across the sky.

I couldn't help thinking, after that, that someone should make a horror movie about the amount of shit birds terrorize us with.