Goats and boosters and December

I got my Covid booster today, y’all, and I am grateful AF. I stuck with Moderna, and my body is again letting me know that it does not like anything about this virus. Hooboy, I do not feel good. I have a blinding headache, some nausea, fatigue, and my arm is sore. Better than my response to Dose 2, same’ish as Dose 1. The pharmacist said that he thinks everyone will need a 4th shot roughly six months after their 3rd. You have to wonder when/if we’ll manage to get this pandemic under control. Thank you anti-vaxxers and conspiracy loons who aren’t doing your part. All the rest of us are thrilled to still be decidedly not back to normal.

And today there was another school shooting! And SCOTUS will probably uphold Mississippi’s abortion ban, thereby overturning Roe! And Lauren Boebert attacked Ilhan Omar with hideous Islamophobia and now Rep Omar received an incredibly gruesome death threat! It goes on and on, but I’ll stop there and switch to some exciting news.

We bought four of the lawnmower goats and absolutely love them. This is Lefty, a sweetie who had listeria and only turned in left circles for a while.

Lefty

And this is Apple, so named because she is extremely aggressive when we give the goats apples as treats. The woman we bought the goats from thinks Apple is pregnant. The father? Stinky Billy!

Apple

This is Jemima, so named because I have always wanted a pet named Jemima. Word on the street is that Jemima is also pregnant (also Billy), and I will tell you that she is really starting to look it.

Jemima

And lastly is Rambo, a dear castrated male.

Rambo

We get to see them again on Friday, and I can’t wait. During our last visit, we started introducing grain and hay to supplement their diet over the winter. They were EXTREMELY excited, and at one point, three of them had their heads crammed into one bucket of grain. Because of this ridiculousness, I went to Tractor Supply and bought four buckets that can be hung over gate rails and also one salt block. At one point, three of them were licking the salt block like it was the most sublime meal in the world, and later, despite each having his/her own grain pail, they continued to butt and play musical chairs with the buckets. They are very amusing.

The thought of baby goats at Christmas (purportedly they are due around Christmas) is almost more than I can bear. What is more darling than a baby goat?

Tomorrow is December 1, and I swear it was just December 1, 2020, but here we are. I am the most joyous, enthused fan of Christmas and started decorating the day after Thanksgiving. It is my hope that I feel totally fine tomorrow so that the boys and I can go get a tree and get busy with our lights and ornaments.

I treasure my boxes of ornaments. Some were Nanny’s, and I am always struck how fragile yet strong they are, what to have lasted all these decades despite being the thinnest sheet of glass. Mom and Dad and Tom’s mom have given us many, too. First home, baby’s first Christmas, one from the Obama presidency, felt enemas (the Fleet’s Enenamen) given to my Dad by a pharma rep one year (Dad was a GI), at least a dozen tributes to New York, souvenirs from trips abroad, treasures crafted by Jack and Oliver’s tiny fingers over their early years, others from Tom’s and my childhoods.

As we hang each ornament, we share its story, its history, its provenance. Some are cheap, one was a gift from Tiffany, some are ugly, many are stunning. They track interests and dates and they allow us to connect in memory and nostalgia. Trimming our tree each year is one of my favorite activities. Here’s to feeling good tomorrow and heading to the tree stand!

And in the meantime, Happy Hanukkah to all celebrating. Chag Sameach!

Stories

I knew nothing about Dune and so didn’t have any expectations upon seeing Part 1 of the film several weeks back. While I dislike much about pandemic life, certain things are absolutely better now: curbside pickup, and the ability to stream movies as soon as they’re released, for example.

Anyway, Ol was with friends for the weekend, and Jack stayed here to attend some school events, so Tom and I found ourselves alone in WV and tired after a day of work. I’d had some wine and couldn’t have cared less what we watched —if I’m by myself, I never turn on the TV so am both behind and infinitely flexible— and Tom suggested Dune. Sure. We set a fire in the cast iron stove and settled in.

I love Star Wars and Harry Potter but dislike Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. Where would Dune fall on the sci fi/fantasy spectrum? Squarely on the dystopian, polyglot, strong women, naive-handsome hero side of things as it turns out so, I was hooked.

I’ve since seen it 2.5 more times, including, today, on the big screen.

Is it an epic work for the ages? Jesus, I don’t know, and I’m not sure I care. But did it speak to me? 100%. I loved the crafty, powerful shadow-walker women of the Bene Gesserit who look like pissed-off Italian widows (ps: Charlotte Rampling could pretend to be a daft penguin and I’d love her); Rebecca Ferguson’s quite fierceness and her stiff-jointed sign language; every bit of Timothée Chalamet and his interrupted adolescence (and marvelous head of hair); the endless dunes; the integrity and courage of some; and, as in Star Wars, the variety of language and the fact that most seem able to understand all.

I don’t know about y’all, but in my opinion, shit is bad in the world. Like, really bad. If you made me tell my honest opinion on staying at or below a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius and American democracy, I’d answer that at this point, both are pipe dream relics of a bygone era. No one in power is taking climate change as seriously as Greta, Bill McKibben, Paul Nicklen, and Cristina Mittermeier are (or Al Gore and Rachel Carson were generations ago) which means all their big talk is, as Greta says, “blah, blah, blah",” and if you can’t even enforce Congressional subpoenas, keep judges from overtly preferencing murderers, convince elected politicians to protect voting rights, or keep science and fact from being optional, well, you’re in bad shape.

At this point, we don’t deserve to have much. We are an arrogant, ignorant country, and it is heartbreaking, scary, and ugly. I say that as someone has fought constantly since early 2016 but with increasingly fading hope. The fire that propelled me for so long still burns, but it is a tired flicker now, worn by injustice, Covid, and the fact that trump will probably run again in ‘24.

So, post-apocalyptic sand worlds and worms and no water in 10191? Give it to me. Lest you think this is my only escapist activity, I am also reading Endurance, the incredible yet horrifying recounting of Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition that commenced in 1914. Hoo boy, I doubt I’d be any sort of hero in either tale, but I can definitely appreciate the stronger among us. And meanwhile, I continue to delight in the possibility of two of our goats being pregnant and in helping idealistic young people go to college. I tell you, it’s all a bit of kosher LSD.

But really, is that so wrong? Why not indulge ourselves for a few hours each day around the times we try so hard to hold everything else together? We are long into a pandemic that isn’t ending, the world is burning, white Republican lawbreakers seem impervious to consequences, there is a national mental health crisis in our young people, Facebook is Meta (eye roll that strains), and winter is coming.

Stories help us understand, process, navigate, and leave behind even momentarily the tough parts of life; the losses, disappointments, worries, unknowns, horror. Stories can help us feel less alone, give us hope, enliven our imaginations and dreams, inspire us. And so for now, I’ll take Shackleton and Paul Atreides and my goats and all who keep fighting with courage and faith. I’ll take and relish the moments of pure distraction and otherwise keeping donating and parenting and doing what I can, and I’ll start reading Dune to tide myself over to the 2023 release of Part 2.

Covid #InAmerica + goats + nature

We are so many months into this pandemic, and the relentless pressure and loss of it all weigh. On me, on many. On most? I suppose it depends on where you live, what you choose to believe, who you have lost, and what meaning you put into life, community, “freedom,” and duty.

I suspect you all know where I come down on this, but in the meantime, I spent a meaningful few hours on the Mall last Friday with my friend M in service of a local artist’s installation regarding Covid in America and the scale of what we’ve surrendered.

Some of you definitely saw this exhibit; others read about it. I couldn’t fathom its impact until I was there. I had volunteered to transcribe online submissions from people who wished to honor their loved ones. M and I sat at a Cosco table, armed with fresh Sharpies, white flags on metal stems, and printed cards to copy onto them. The volunteer to my left lost her brother to Covid last year; other volunteers didn’t share, at least to me, but some had helped for many days, and if I’ve learned anything at 45, it’s to never assume you know what someone is struggling with, processing, or feeling.

After more than an hour of transcription, M and I offered to tend plots of already-planted flags. Part of me hated to leave the writing tent: there was something so powerful and important about bearing witness to grieving people’s testimonies. By writing their final tribute, we, too, honored the dead they mourned.

But carefully, tenderly straightening flags felt almost like tidying a graveyard. Watch your step, provide honor where honor is due, memorialize.

While we were there, the artist, Suzanne Firstenberg, changed the number board to reflect the updated official death toll: 700,327. I mean, the sadness-rage cocktail became a frothy, shaken mess laced with ice chips. New Zealand’s count was like 14 (see tiny patch in above photo). This could have been different, the numbers could have been infinitely lower, perhaps we’d be done with this masking, distancing shit by now.

But no! ‘Murica. SMDH.

I am so glad M and I volunteered, but at the same time, it was a sad cap to a shitty week. A poo bonus, if you will.

Now, I am in WV. I drove out Monday morning after getting the boys off to school and finagling a childcare logistics schedule that any mother could do while sleeping but which would likely boggle the mind of most men. Because there are no longer llamas here, our pastures are overgrown and in need of serious mowing. I have spent many hours trimming, but this is beyond the scope of one woman and her motorized weed whacker. I priced brush-hogging it before asking about renting a herd of goats. Goats are half the cost.

And, goats are the answer. They are darling, friendly, make amusing sounds, require no gas, need to eat, love to eat, and poop liberally which amends our rocky “soil” in fabulously beneficial ways. Sixteen arrived Monday around noon, and I have loved every minute since. Well, I have loved everything except smelling the billy who is the sweetest animal but who smells so foul that it cannot be articulated. He is as if an ancient fraternity-house carpet, sodden with years of spilled beers, decided to start asking others to pee on it with abandon. And never washed. Holy shit.

Anyway, I love them, and it is so healing to be here by myself, including without Nutmeg and Ruthie, and to have no schedule and no one to feed or talk to other than the animals. To garden until I can hardly move another muscle. To order mulch and sifted soil. To eat a donut. To indulge the barn cats. To think and simply be. To acquire a Neighbor Account at Tractor Supply Co.

This is Romeo. He is my boyfriend.

Romeo from the back, omg. ;)