"Baby Boo and You" by Troy H. Cheek on Dec 31, 2007
Christmas 2007 came and went without any trips to the emergency room, so I count it as a good one. Some genius heard that one nephew had shown just the tiniest little inkling of interest in learning a musical instrument, so "Santa Claus" left him a brand new electric guitar and suitcase-sized amplifier under the tree. I'll be hearing the first 13 notes of "Smoke on the Water" in my dreams for years.
A different genius heard that the other nephew had to spend a lot of time in his room with no television, so some other "Santa Claus" left him a television and DVD player. Of course, the reason he had to spend so much time in his room is because he was getting poor grades because he watched television instead of studying.
I, myself, racked up on little things that light up or make noise, DVD movies, and socks. Like Dumbledore, I believe a man can never have too many socks. Also like Dumbledore, J. K. Rowling keeps changing her mind about my sexuality.
Speaking of sex, my girlfriend Kitten is mad at me because I didn't make time on or around Christmas Day to spend some time with her. I suppose that "official family Christmas" we spent together two weekends before just didn't count. Neither did the weekend immediately after Christmas, apparently.
The plan for that weekend was to have no plans. I had vague notions of firing up the fireplace, cuddling on the couch with heavily spiked drinks, and watching old movies or something. That is, to me, the perfect way to spend a rainy Winter weekend.
My first hint of trouble was when Kitten asked if she needed to reserve us a room somewhere. Kitten works for one of those timeshare places, though they don't call them timeshares anymore, and can usually get us a good deal if the place isn't completely booked. Failing that, there are several reasonably-priced motels in the area, in addition to the unreasonably-priced ones that Kitten prefers to stay in.
I gave her my standard answer: "Go ahead and rent a nice room if and only if we're actually going to use it."
"What do you mean?" she demanded.
"I mean that if we're going to spend all weekend camped out in the room sipping eggnog in the jacuzzi, rent away. If we're going to get up first thing in the morning, spend all day shopping or running errands or attending craft classes, and return simply to fall into bed for a short nap before having to check out in the morning, I'd rather sleep on the couch in your utility room again."
Kitten was of course offended, but eventually admitted that she had no plans to run around all weekend. In fact, she was looking forward to staying at home, where she had to take care of just a few little tasks that would take no time at all if I was willing to help out.
I knew what that meant, but I went along with it anyway.
That weekend, I loaded, transported, unloaded, and stacked two truckloads of wood. I even did some sorting so that the pieces which were too long to fit into the wood heater were off to one side. I tried to sort dry from wet, recent from aged, and light from heavy, but could never get a straight answer from Kitten about the source of most of the wood. To her, anything that wasn't floating in water was dry, anything that wasn't cut today was aged, and she hadn't kept track of what wood had come from what type tree. In fact, I couldn't convince her that wood that was cut, split, and stored under a tarp since last Summer might burn differently than wood from a tree that was cut down at the same time but left in a ditch until it was split today.
I also had to move one of those large round bales of hay without the help of a tractor with a lift bar. Being completely unable to budge it with muscle power, I simply pushed it around with the front bumper of my truck. Kitten screamed every inch of the way about how it was unrolling, but I had decided it was easier to go back with a pitchfork and pick up the bits that were falling off than to break the handle out of said pitchfork trying to lever the thing along.
The high (low) point of the weekend was mucking out the horse trailer. Well, technically it was a horse trailer. It had actually been used as sleeping quarters for a pig and several goats for the last several years. Kitten had occasionally made reference to putting new hay in the horse trailer for the goats to sleep on. I approved of this. What I didn't know was that she wasn't taking the old hay out. After half a day, we'd cleared about half the trailer length, scraping clear down to the original wooden floor that we'd forgotten was down there, and came up with enough high nitrate potting soil to build a little ramp at the end of the trailer so that the goats no longer had to jump up to get inside. I told her we'd finish the rest when I could hold a pitchfork again. Kitten made fun of my being a sissy and wearing gloves the whole time.
I was also introduced to (drum roll!) Baby Boo. I had no idea what a Baby Boo was, but was rather concerned that the large cardboard box in the corner of the living room was moving. It contained a baby goat, mostly white with some black around the head. It was named Baby Boo because it was a boo goat. That's Kitten's special term for a fainting goat. Actually, Kitten's fainting goats have interbred with her others so none of them actually faint anymore, but this one has the coloring that she associates with that breed. This particular baby goat had lost its mother to illness. They had fed it with a bottle for a while, but efforts to get it adopted by another mother goat failed when the herd rejected it.
"You probably kept it away from the herd too long," I opined. "It no longer smelled like a goat to them." A thought occurred. "You didn't, like, shampoo it or anything like that, did you? Or let it sleep with you in your bed? Or hug it and rub it and love on it all the time? So it smelled less like a goat and more like a human? Did you?"
"I didn't do any of that!" she screamed. "And even if I did, they still should have recognized her as a goat!"
Baby Boo has one floppy ear and a bad hip, injuries sustained when the other goats butted her out of the trailer. We hope the hip will heal, but for now she's hopping around fairly well. I'm not entirely convinced that the one floppy ear is the result of injury. Some of her goats have perky ears, some have floppy, and this might just be a weird genetic mix.
Once Boo is big enough to butt back, we'll see about getting her back into the herd. Otherwise, we've got the world's biggest housecat. Boo follows Kitten around, cuddles with her on the couch to watch television, and I'm certain sleeps with her in her bed in spite of statements to the contrary. Boo even adopted me and started bleating every time I got out of sight. She took every step I did while we were doing the abovementioned chores. She even let me take her outside for a bathroom break before putting her down at night.
Kitten called her a traitor.
Incidentally, you do not want a baby goat playing with your shoelaces while trying to push a hay bale around the field in your truck.
We had the mandatory argument over starting a fire in the wood heater. When I start a fire, I gather up some small sticks, wood chips, and finely split logs first. Once I get them going, I add on some slightly larger items, until finally I can throw the largest, wettest, greenest, unsplit log on top and rest assured that it will burn. At least, that's how I see it. Kitten sees it as me burning up a Winter's worth of kindling to make one fire. Of course, since her method seemed to involve a commercial "fire starter" brick, three wet logs, and half a gallon of charcoal lighter fluid. Only after she'd charred all the wood and made a smoking mess of the place would she let me try. Then she taunted me that I wasn't doing any better than she was.
The last day of my visit, I amused myself by lancing Kitten's blisters and pulling splinters out of her hands. "Why aren't your hands blistered?" she demanded to know.
"Because I wore gloves all day yesterday?"
"You and your sissy gloves! I'm going to dump you and get a real man! I've been saying for years that I'm dating the wrong brother!"
Ah, love.
