Apologies to everyone for the radio silence - lots of stuff going on here and the blog has been horribly neglected. Between trying to get the final garden push done, a bunch of goat birthing (including four beautiful babies yesterday for Eric's 42nd birthday - Urania gave us Tybalt and Mercutio in the wee hours while Calendula delivered Beatrice and Benedick), a lot of legal and medical proceedings involving C. and K, our foster sons, and the end-of-school stuff (Eli is transitioning from the program for kids with autism that he's been in since kindergarten to a new program for middle school kids and older, C. and K. are finishing up their school year and making plans for a major transition, probably to family in another state), and the usual farm stuff, and well, we're behind. I didn't plan a hiatus, it just kinda happened.
We're also TIRED. We've always been early morning people, but C. and K.'s school buses arrive at what we call the "Crack of Doom" because of the long trip into the city of Albany for school (way, way better than the days when they used to just make foster kids switch schools every. single. time. they moved) and we're getting up earlier than usual. Visits and supervised phone calls with family, very good and important for the kids, take up time. Goats think it is amusing to give birth at night, when we could be sleeping.
The good news is that school ends Friday and sleeping normally begins again immediately afterwards. We've got a great week planned at a nearby lake, with my parents, sisters, brothers in law and nieces all camping there. Once everything doesn't have to be arranged after school and the kids aren't getting home so late, there will be time for life to go back to as normal as life gets on a working farm with six kids (and the knowledge that it could be eight or nine or ten pretty much any time the phone rings). If the goats will just voluntarily go to diurnal birthing, I'll be one happy, relaxed camper.
The good news is that as I've been digging in the garden or waiting to pick up my sons or sitting through incredibly boring meetings about bus transportation or waiting for a goat to pop some babies, I've been composing in my head, so I promise, there's more stuff coming. If I didn't write, my brain might explode, and that would be messy.
Meanwhile, in honor of the new babies, goat song!
Cheers,
Sharon
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Although I've not been around them a whole lot, I've noticed that goats seem to find most things to be amusing.
@Martin: I imagine that's part of their charm.
Honestly, Sharon, I've been so busy I didn't even notice you were gone -- it's been over a month since my last post. I do hope you can make it out to the Age of Limits 2013 conference, though.