by Pa Rock
Farmer in Summer
I rise early here at The Roost, an hour or so before daylight. I wake automatically without the aid of an alarm - and almost never oversleep. My internal clock, it would seem, is one of the few components of this aging body that still works as well as it did when I was twenty. (Though, come to think of it, I usually tended to oversleep in my wasted youth.)
My morning routine is fairly . . . well, routine. I take care of some personal business and then let the dogs out so they can take care of theirs, and then I sit at the computer and check email until Rosie and Riley are ready to come back in. If it's cold or rainy they are usually begging to be let back in before I even get logged on to my email account, but on nice mornings they enjoy more time in the yard. After my own personal needs and those of the dogs are taken care of, I go outside and open the hen house and scatter grain for the chickens, guineas, geese, and peacocks.
Today's routine, however, was truncated by a crisis. I discovered within moments of arising that there was no water. I had had a couple of warnings earlier in the month but ignored them because I am getting ready to switch from getting my water from a well to connecting to the rural water provider. It's going to be an expensive proposition involving purchasing a water meter, having to pay for twenty-five-hundred-or-so feet of digging for the new water line, and then paying someone to connect the new line to the house plumbing - so I have been hemming-and-hawing when I should have been biting-the-bullet and writing checks.
And now I have no water - and to further complicate the issue, it is Sunday, a day when I am unlikely to find someone to help me through this crisis.
The water did come back on for just a few minutes - time that I used to rush about filling eight available milk cartons, watering the plants, and filling the dogs' water bowls - and then it shut off again. I brushed my teeth later while standing on the back porch and using bottled water - and I suspect that I will make a trip to the laundromat before this day has ended.
Tomorrow will no doubt involve begging tradesmen to do their jobs - and writing checks.
Life could be simpler, I suppose, but. if it was, it would not be nearly as interesting!
Farmer in Summer
I rise early here at The Roost, an hour or so before daylight. I wake automatically without the aid of an alarm - and almost never oversleep. My internal clock, it would seem, is one of the few components of this aging body that still works as well as it did when I was twenty. (Though, come to think of it, I usually tended to oversleep in my wasted youth.)
My morning routine is fairly . . . well, routine. I take care of some personal business and then let the dogs out so they can take care of theirs, and then I sit at the computer and check email until Rosie and Riley are ready to come back in. If it's cold or rainy they are usually begging to be let back in before I even get logged on to my email account, but on nice mornings they enjoy more time in the yard. After my own personal needs and those of the dogs are taken care of, I go outside and open the hen house and scatter grain for the chickens, guineas, geese, and peacocks.
Today's routine, however, was truncated by a crisis. I discovered within moments of arising that there was no water. I had had a couple of warnings earlier in the month but ignored them because I am getting ready to switch from getting my water from a well to connecting to the rural water provider. It's going to be an expensive proposition involving purchasing a water meter, having to pay for twenty-five-hundred-or-so feet of digging for the new water line, and then paying someone to connect the new line to the house plumbing - so I have been hemming-and-hawing when I should have been biting-the-bullet and writing checks.
And now I have no water - and to further complicate the issue, it is Sunday, a day when I am unlikely to find someone to help me through this crisis.
The water did come back on for just a few minutes - time that I used to rush about filling eight available milk cartons, watering the plants, and filling the dogs' water bowls - and then it shut off again. I brushed my teeth later while standing on the back porch and using bottled water - and I suspect that I will make a trip to the laundromat before this day has ended.
Tomorrow will no doubt involve begging tradesmen to do their jobs - and writing checks.
Life could be simpler, I suppose, but. if it was, it would not be nearly as interesting!
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