Sometimes Shoveling Shit Is The Perfect Antidote To Life

Yesterday, after spending a solid hour being pampered by Anna the Barber at the Rustic Rose Beauty Lounge in Berthoud,

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php/?id=100057225408565

I spent the day performing Claire & Honey related chores at Casa Claire.

That means I first had to drive to Longmont to Walmart’s, Murdochs and King Soopers and purchase the latest load of fruits, veggies, alfalfa meal pellets, sesame oil – which adds a nutty flavor to their meals and has been added to the recipe because it is loaded with antioxidants, is a great source of vitamin K for bone support, lowers blood pressure, blood sugar and improves skin – and dry roasted peanuts, to be added as a final crunchy garnish. I also add in a new supplement called Rose Hips, which seems to be having a positive affect on their general mobility. Then I performed some food prep. I’ve started soaking the pellets in the oil to keep the mules regular and help prevent a recurrence of Claire’s Colic. So far, so good.

As they do enjoy their meals.

The ladies spent most of the rest of their time enjoying the weather out back.

While I refilled hay racks, topped off the water troughs,

shoveled mule muffins from in and around the barns and then scooped up the massive underlayer of urine soaked wood shavings from within the two barns – yes they still spend time in the original (where they delinquently raid the stacks of bound hay) – and removed four wheelbarrows full of said detritus to Hadrian’s Wall out back, where, in theory, over the winter months, it will decompose along with the well sourced mule muffins into rich and fertile soil. Nothing is wasted.

Not even my time. Because I have found that in a world where I am regularly expected to continuously, rapidly and successfully perform mental miracles on the legal and literary fronts, being able to work with just my back, hands and legs doing repetitive menial physical labor at my own pace is not only pleasantly exhausting, it provides me time to emotionally reset and, even more importantly, daydream. No phone, no computer. Just me, Claire and Honey, and a whole lot of shit.

After letting the cleared bedding areas dry out, I then shifted 8 new bags of fresh wood shavings back to the bed sites where it belongs – it smells so good when you first lay it down.

And while I am toiling away out in the fields, Lisa is inside trying to recover our home from the recent family invasion, room by room, floor by floor. Just as physically challenging as anything I do, without half the complaining.

By late afternoon we respectively called it a day. I came in and turned on my beautiful new 75″ TV, Garret,

so I could continue my October Halloween film fest, this time watching the old school version of The Omen, with Gregory Peck. The film indeed was an omen concerning diabolical children, as halfway through the film, my beautiful DIL, Georgie, arrived to remove additional clothing and stuff from their temporary first floor bedroom, while my most terrifying granddaughter, Stella, did her best to challenge me.

I threatened to keep her locked in a cabinet here at Casa Claire (as opposed to their “new house” which “is much nicer” than the one she almost single handedly destroyed with the force and determination of a fall hurricane). But she raced out the front door after her retreating mother before I could extricate myself from the slow moving electric recliner, slower now from its relentless abuse over the past 6 months as a makeshift bouncy castle by feral grans.

I wondered aloud whether I could find an equally useful set of pointed knives on Amazon for her next visit.

Well things then settled down and Lisa and I enjoyed the rest of the evening in our now quiet as a church and seemingly much larger and uncluttered home, while my body reminded me that I am now no longer in my forties and fifties and barely remain in my rapidly diminishing sixties. But that kind of pain is good, as it reminds you that you are, indeed, still alive.

Then, as we balanced out our evening viewing pleasure with a Robin Williams film, Dead Poet’s Society, we received a surprised visit from our feral cat, Smokey, who has taken to coming around back and meowing at our doors and windows.

In this particular instance, Smokey invited herself in through the open sliding doors off our back deck and, after a tour of the first floor (to make sure the grans and pups were really gone), lept up onto my recliner and made herself comfortable.

I make a comfy bed in my own right.

While we offered her overnight interior accommodations, Smokey remained true to her feral and enchantingly familiar nature and left after the movie, to peruse and protect the exterior of the home from all things malevolent, and to sleep in her comfortable and warm personal housing on the front porch within the mystical protection of the gnomes, fairies and dragons in the magical Jack The Spruce Gotto.

I slept like a log.

However, there is no rest for the wicked, and my Sunday promises to provide one of the worst of my nightmares. Lisa is insisting that I clean the basement.

I would happily rather shovel ten wheelbarrows of mule shit.

I pray that you fine, five readers have a more advantageous and relaxing day before you. One of rest and/or fun. Maybe read a book.

Who am I kidding, you are all going to watch football.

Well, I may as well get moving. Lisa will be up soon and my living penance will begin.

First, I must go out and cuddle Smokey and Mittens, and then do my rounds.

Maybe I can swing a trip to Einstein’s Bagels before the cleaning torture begins.

But, no matter what is on our respective or collective agendas, let us make today a great one.