Post note: My foot is dry, the soup is on the stove, dirt farmer just came home and poured some wine, the Christmas tree is lit...I haven't yelled or sworn for hours.
I found myself yelling at a bucket tonight. I was yelling at the bucket because it made my foot wet. It made my foot wet because I was gallantly trying to smash my boot heel through 2" of ice so that there would be water for the animals to drink.
Unfortunately, I did not stop at one bucket. I went on to Boone's bucket and yelled at it, then went on to the lower pasture to yell at a sheep bucket. All the while, my wet boot and socket froze to my lady like skin underneath. For the record, I did not yell at the chicken bucket because I'd wisely turned a heat lamp on in the chicken coop. But I did yell at the latch to their coop door that was frozen.
I also the told the water spouts that had frozen that they "were stupid and dumb". I told the barn "I left winter weather in Minnesota 7 years ago and this is stupid weather". And when the I couldn't get the frozen lid off the sheep mineral container, I yelled out to all who would listen - cats, one horse, three rams and a bunch of senior citizen pygmy goats- "Okay, that's it, that's all I can take, pack your hay, we're moving to Spain." No one even blinked.
I then went and found my three little donkeys, and proceeded to yell at their huge water bucket. Actually it's a water barrel, and I had to dig through a dark barn to find something to try to break the ice. "Ah! An ice pick! Eureka!" I trudged back to the iced barrel, my one frozen foot numb, and my cold little donkeys waiting patiently for water. "She can do it, she does everything," they were thinking. I remember thinking my parents could do everything and would save me no matter what happened. So...very...wrong.
I made one smash to the ice with the axe and proceeded to ice up my glasses. The next swing made a teeny dent to the 4" ice slab. And then on that third swing, well..."Hey, wait a minute, where did the ax head go?" Confused looks from donkeys.
The romance of having a 100 year old dilapidated barn with dilapidated stuff becomes less romantic when the dilapidated ax head falls off leaving you standing with a wet foot, and three very sad, cold, thirsty donkeys.
I then stepped it up a notch and switched from yelling to swearing at the water barrel. I told the water barrel it deserved to be all cold and icy, but with expletives. Looking at the faces of the donkeys brought me to my senses. I retrieved water from the house and carted it to the donkeys, just to give them a quick, warm drink.
I grew up in Minnesota and the rule was no whining about weather. "It's just weather," my mother always said. Oddly, I have become sort of a wimp in Oregon, and often even 40 degrees feels colder than it does in Minnesota due to the moisture that soaks into your bones. But when it freezes my water buckets and my pasture pumps, I allow myself to cuss. If you can't rant when when your buckets freeze, when can you?
