No new insights today, friends. I have an anecdote. A rather lengthy anecdote. This is The Ranch Diaries of Angie. Let me know what you think of my memoirs.
A family friend asked me to watch their ranch and check on their animals while they go on vacation this week. Even though the drive is far out (about 40 minutes or so), I have the free time during this summer of unemployment, and they assured me that I would only need to travel out there every other day. So I agreed. Now, the hour-by-hour forecast for today claimed that it would most likely rain around 3pm today, so I got ready really quickly after discovering this prediction and headed out around 1:30pm. Well, while I was driving over, it began raining. Perfect. But I kept trying to maintain a healthy outlook, thinking that perhaps the storm was moving toward my town AWAY from the ranch.
WRONG.
I arrived at the front gate around 2pm and it was raining so hard that I couldn't even motivate myself to attempt to get out to open the gate at first. So I proceeded to sit in their front drive like a cr33p hoping that the rain would slow down. After listening to about 3 songs on the radio, I decided that I was really craving a Coke. I contemplated driving back into town to a nearby[-ish] Taco Bell, but then figured that since I had driven all the way out there and that they had given me a key to their house, my friends would not begrudge me a drink in these turbulent times. So I braved the gateway and proceeded to be completely drenched before I even had the chance to meet any of the animals.
Well, that opportunity was soon upon me. When I pulled up to the house, my second Task was to side-step 3 cows that were huddling under the over-hang for shelter. Luckily, they didn't give me much trouble as I entered. I quickly identified the Coca-cola I was looking for, and also found the dryer. I decided that since the weather wasn't promising to let up anytime soon, why not sit through a dry-cycle and attempt to re-claim some dignity, or at least some comfort? So I hung out in this house on a ranch in the middle of the HickTown of my area in my undergarments drinking a Coke for 25 minutes of a dryer cycle.
While I had plenty of time to sit by myself and think, as none of my friends seemed available for a phone chat, I tried my very hardest to apply the principles I wrote about in my blog last month. So I asked myself: What is great about this situation? Well, it's pretty peaceful out here, listening to all the frogs sing to the rain. And thank God I found that dryer AND a Coke, which I did not have to pay for. And, I really don't have much to do at home, so at least I am not sitting around my own home bored, as I have been for much of the summer. So my day was looking pretty decent on the whole.
It was at this point that the rain had dwindled to a slow dribble and my dryer was finished, so I figured it was a safe time to venture out. I relocated to the other house on the property, as it was closer to the majority of the animals, and hung out on the porch for a bit, waiting for the rain to stop completely. After composing an entire improvised song to my best friend whom I could not call to kill time because she is currently in Lebanon, I checked the time and realized that it was now almost 4 o' clock and I really just want to get these animals fed so I could get the heck home. And so, I pulled on the largest pair of concrete boots I could find next to the porch and began trudging around the property, making my rounds to all the inhabitants of the Ranch.
First of all, can I just say that cows always be all up in my bidness. I had to fend them off while feeding the rabbits, to the point where the poor bunnies were so sad that it was raining in their hutch that I neglected to close because Olde Bessie wanted a piece of whatever food I happened to be feeding to the rabbits. But Bessie didn't stop there. Oh no. When I fed the horses, she recruited a friend and blocked me into the horse pen. I had been warned of this potentially happening, though, and threw them some hay as a distraction so I could escape and tend to the others.
Then, I began my search for Baby Klondike. Klondike is officially the only cow on this Ranch that I like. This poor calf has trouble with her legs, so I was asked to find her and give her a bottle of food because she has trouble standing long enough to eat enough on her own. So I trudged up and down the land trying to find Baby Klondike and could not find her anywhere. Mind you, it's still been raining all this time. So now I'm covered in hay and drenched and I'm sloshing around in outrageously large concrete boots yelling to the air that I will NEVER EVER in my entire life live on a farm or a ranch or a rodeo! And my poor innocent inner-child was screaming at the universe: WHY IS IT STILL RAINING?!
After a bit, I gave up on finding the calf and decided it was time to get the heck outta this place. So I headed up to the front of the Ranch again to feed the pigs and then collect the mail and drive far FAR AWAY. Well, go figure, I couldn't find the pig food. And of course, by now, the cows [minus Klondike] have decided to graze right up next to the pigs. At this point I have no more patience, no more positive thoughts, and I'm really really frustrated. I tried to call the Ranch Owner to ask him where to find the food, but neither he nor his wife answered. I traveled back to check both houses to make sure I hadn't missed it, but found nothing. Finally, I broke down and called my Mom. And it was then that I could no longer repress my inner-child and began to cry.
After a bit more searching, my Mother called me a second time and this time, while on the phone with her, I discovered a secret compartment in the pigs' house that I hadn't noticed before that contained their food. It's amazing that I didn't get electrocuted whilst standing in the rain, talking to my Mom, crying, and finding pig fodder. But I hung up and brought the buckets round to feed the silly pigs.
As I turned around to get out of the pigpen, triumphant from the completion of my Final Task, I ran into about 5 cows who were now trying to get into the pigs' food! Seriously, these cows are just greedy little biotches [to quote Juno]! I tried to throw handfuls of pellets at them, but they just stared at me, blinking through the rain. Well, I had come too far to be stuck in a pigpen for another THREE hours [it was now 5:15 or so]. So I pulled the back gate back as much as I possibly could, and used it to climb over the back fence, dodging both a malicious-looking yellow spider and barbed wire that temporarily snagged my concrete boot.
Finally, feeling as weighed down as Frodo carrying the Ring of Power into Mordor, I pulled my Tahoe back through the double gates of the Ranch. I trudged up to the edge of the street to get the mail, and a man passing by in his car proceeded to honk at me.
Really?! You cannot convince me that I looked in any way alluring at this point in time, with my crummiest pair of jeans tucked into muddy galoshes, my hair piled on my head in a soggy dripping mess, and my shirt and arms covered in horse's hay. But hey, whatever gets ya goin, I guess.
So the moral of the story is: Never, ever get a cow for a pet.
