I’ve had it.  I’m pooped.  I don’t need any more things to do.

The exhaustion seemed to begin the day I put my contact in wrong.  I cleaned the lens, rinsed it well, put wetting drops on it, put it in my eye.  Freak out pain occurred immediately and at that very moment I knew I put the cleaner back on my lens instead of wetting solution.  Then the lens would not pop back out of my eye, ran cold water on it, managed to not emit a string of cuss words, actually not even one.  Got the lens out finally, ran more water on it, and for the rest of the day looked as if I had spent my morning smokin’ dope. 

Fast forward to the next incident, outdoors picking up this and that in the herb, fruit and perennial vegetable garden known as the Barn Garden and spotted a suspicious clump of feathers, and another.  Called Bet over.  We deducted from the various clumps and the count of live chickens in the coop still that raccoons had pulled no less than three chickens from the coop in one night, without a word, or bark, from Fluffy Joe.   Raccoons?  How can we be certain to claim they are the perps?  The manor of the kill was distinctively raccoon. 

So Bet and I spent the afternoon battening down the hatches, which really doesn’t help because it is well known that raccoons can pull a full grown chicken through the normal gaps in a fence.  But the battening made us feel better.  Plus we wrapped their open air coop with clear plastic, possibly making it a bit harder for the raccoons and to give the chickens a break from the torrential rain and having to hang out at the back of the coop.

Later on that afternoon Bet came in with a tore up chicken, a lone survivor of the terrorist attack.  Now, Clever Reader, it is true that under normal circumstances if these were just laying hens or a remaining meat bird we would have just off-ed it.  But this hen is part of Bet’s breeding stock for her own line of pasture meat birds. 

So it was determined that she needed to be stitched up to see if she could indeed survive and go on to produce some young for the freezer later on this spring.  Our oldest daughter Stephanie has set the precedent with having stitched up ducks from Labrador and Fluffy Joe attacks.  I do believe one Muscovy in particular was a frequent flyer in the Kitchen Surgery. 

Chicken successfully stitched by Dirt and Bet goes about her evening duties.  In she comes, fifteen minutes to the close of most businesses including Vet clinics.  This time with Rose, the remaining Lab of Dale’s here at the Farm.  A front paw very definitely swollen and oozing serosanguineous discharge.  This time a quick call to the Vet of our particular choice before she left the office for the day.  Dirt told her that he was going to give her a shot of penicillin, and send her in in the morning with me, was there anything else he should do?   No, that was fine.

So in the next morning we went, dropped off the dog, made some quick stops while in town, realizing how we must have smelled, suffice it to say Rose does not smell like a rose.  And back home to mix tea for the seedlings coming up, seed a few more trays, move things around in the cold shed, try and figure out why the thermometer wasn’t reading correctly, prepping the cold frame to receive onion starts.  Great strides in getting things put to order all over the house and farm.  Getting just a ton done.

I informed Dirt after yet another wonderful rabbit-hat trick dinner that I had packed his lunch from the leftovers (super wife!).  He asked where I was packing him off to, I said work, he said he wasn’t working the next day and that he had begun a three day weekend. I went into a tizzy about furlough days.  He said, “No furlough, just MLK day.” 

“But then why are you not working tomorrow?” I ask incredulously thinkin’ Dirt had indeed gone daft or was attempting to mess with my very on-top-of-things-in-spite-of-everything-this-week head. 

“Because it’s Saturday.”

“It can’t be, today is Thursday, I’ve done Thursday sort of things!”

A long drug out explanation of the days of the week and a quick reinforcing gander at the calendar on the computer rendered me into a puddle of despair (not real despair, just the sort of self-deprecating, you’ve got nothing to show for your grand week sort of despair.)

I do believe that Dirt felt so sorry for me the next day that he acquiesced to a quick break from laboring in and out of the rain and randomly loosing days of the week, to run up to Tukwila/Renton to see Justin and Anna at IKEA. 

The trip also included a jaunt over to Renton Western Wear.  Where we watch poor Justin crumble under the Anna powers.  She now has the boots I refused to purchase (even though I secretly really like them).   

The three of us came home with nonsense of a different kind,  a cover for a couch that we will purchase at a later date. And a determination to just put in a cheapo floor from IKEA in the living room, circumventing a Dirt/Lanny impasse.  Which of course caused another impasse upon arriving home, whether or not to give the room a quick touch up painting before the floor goes in.   The jury is still out and now the lr has become a sore subject again, but just for the moment I’m sure.

Taking a good look around the living room and my eyes fall upon the unknown plant that I gave my mom back in 1982 and most of its offspring.  They aren’t doing so well due to lack of water, rats.  Not to mention it is high time they got some new dirt, er, soil.  A good soaking in the bathtub aka LeeAnn’s version of a utility sink for the past twenty-five plus years of her life, and they still didn’t do their usual I’m-thirsty-now-give-me-water perk up.  Clearly they need new soil and probably some leg room.

A trip to town with Dirt netted me some indoor potting soil.  So I came home to do emergency repotting, reviving and division on a very special house plant that no one knows exactly what it is.  I say it looks like an over grown African violet.  Any way the repotted and newly divided plants are now back in their winter area hopefully recovering their benign neglect and frenzied revival.

Tuesday, which really felt more like a Monday, this time for good reason, seemed to be traveling right along at a fairly okay clip. Once again getting Monday-ish things done, but this time fully aware within minutes that it was not really Monday but in fact Tuesday.  But happy to do so since Monday had ushered in the beginning of the Screen Porch makeover and Dirt putting in a new threshold on the door that separated the hallway to my room and the second smelliest dog but first in furriestness, Fluffy Joe.  But when the remake is over there will be no more Fluffy Smelly Hairy Joe on my porch, and his hair will no longer find its way under my bed only to make everything under my bed smell like a hairy smelly Joe.

Wednesday morning I realize that it is indeed Wednesday and if I wanted to take advantage of the fifty-percent off coupon for the vinyl that I told Dirt that fabric stores have, that quite frankly hardware stores ought to have, I better get going and get it. 

Yikes!  Wednesday means that I have a header challenge to attend to and it happened to be my very own lame yet clever theme pick last week when I realized that I had made the mistake of the Thursday thing and …. suffice to say self-inflicted pressure was coming home to roost bringing more self-inflicted pressure with it.  I needed to find that photo-op of something missing that I had hoped all weekend long I would come across.  I had even taken my camera with me to Home-Depot and other destinations willing to forego my self-inflicted rule of all headers having to have something to do with the farm. 

I really like winter for its sublime slowness.  Funny, that seems to be missing from my winter this winter about as much as winter-like weather is missing!  Like the leaves that normally are missing.  There should be leaves and roses on my rose bush for how chaotic my life happens to be at the moment.  Picture up, no wordy post, thankful Clever Reader, and Bet and I were off to get the vinyl for my great idea of switching out vinyl covered openings during the winter for the screen covered openings of summer.  

Home again, home again jiggity jog.  Settling down to finally do a bit of blog reading, check out the other headers, and e-mail the others my picks for favorite and second favorite.  All that was interrupted by a phone call.  An expected phone call but an unexpected phone call all the same. 

The day before, Tuesday, a friend, John, called to ask if we would like to take over the care of a orphaned calf, actually an abandoned calf, (who does that mother think she is).  She was getting along fine, was several days old, but he didn’t have time to take care of it and the gal who began taking care of it decided that because her children were becoming attached and eventually the calf would have to go somewhere else, now would be the better time to stop that run away train.  Would we take it? 

Sure!  John being one of our favoritest people in the world and calves being one of our favoritest animals in the world how could we say no?  And that was the answer given by Dirt by the way, even though John first spoke to Bet who passed the buck to me and then I passed the buck to Dirt.

We wanted to just go fetch it up right then and there but John had to go fetch it from the gal’s house and perhaps it would just be easier if we came ’round the next day to get it.

But now, Wednesday in the middle of my luxurious blog catching up, John was calling to ask if we still wanted it even though it had taken a huge turn for the worse.  Dirt was promptly handed the phone. 

After many questions and answers passed back and forth between the men, it was decided that we would still give it a go rather than knowing it would get a knock in the head to save folks from trouble.  Often times it is determined by wiser folks that a knock in the head is best for the animal and the people involved.  Sensical  people were not around yesterday, just us nonsensical folk. (And yes, I am well aware that sensical is not a word, not yet any way.) 

We arrived at John’s really really nice place and were directed to the stall with the calf.  John explained its turn for the worse most likely was caused by the fine shavings in the stall where John put it.  Dirt shot it full of penn.  and I surmised that it sure looked a lot like white muscle disease.  I’m not happy to say that I am hideously familiar with the horrid disease brought on by lack of white muscle due to our having a run in with it in our lambs one nasty year when we assumed that the mineral we purchased was the same as the mineral we purchase prior to that, when in fact they had changed the formula with out huge blinking lights warning everyone. 

Mostly I remember the confusion with misdiagnosing the lambs with pneumonia for a while in spite of the fact that there was no fever present.  It was Dale doing an autopsy after we lost way too many lambs that year, and way too much sleep trying to keep lambs alive with all the wrong measures, that we discovered the ugly truth.  That our sheep had not been getting the selenium we thought they had been getting. 

So when I posed that question to John, he said that he fed selenium but that he had just acquired this calf’s mom and so it could be very likely that it didn’t get enough. 

Well after much standing around and staring at the sweet little heifer: wiping shaving out of her mouth; sticking molasses in her mouth; shaking and jiggling her; seeing that she wouldn’t even attempt a suck at John’s bottle when offered, we finally said good-bye to John, loaded her into the back of the Exploder and headed home to give it an honest go.

Dirt found a small amount of Bo-Se in his tool kit, it is a prescription only item so there was no point in running up to the feed store to get a proper amount, and promptly administered it.  I cracked open one of my Selenium caps and Bet put it on a wetted finger and stuck it in little calf’s mouth.  We watched.   She seemed to be improving, at least her breathing was, it seemed.

We struggled all evening to get her to suck on a bottle (a regular calf nipple on a big fat calf bottle), gave her more molasses covered fingers to not suck, wiggled and jiggled her when it looked like she stopped breathing, listened to her moo occasionally on into the night.  Between hearing her moo, I dreamt various cowish nightmares.   And a few lost baby nightmares as well.  A dandy night’s sleep.  I woke in the morning not wanting to go to the kitchen, wishing I had asked Dirt to take the calf out, clearly she must have died in the night.  

“Muuahhh,” loud and clear from the kitchen. 

Oh you must be kidding!  Give up already!

Out I trudge to make my coffee and try my best not to look at the calf that clearly must be on death’s doorstep by now!  Well she was lookin’ the same as before.  Definitely not dead but not exactly recovering either. 

So Bet and I pow wowed for the next several hours.  About the only thing we have not done for the calf is tube feed it or give it iv fluids sub-q.  Finally by ten I cave.  If she is still alive I gotta try something!  I would have loved to have just done the iv fluid thing even though it totally goes against my nursing back ground to stick an iv needle in “improperly” and watch the fluid essentially do what it is not supposed to do, infiltrate the surrounding tissue, but it works and fairly easily and no instantaneous death results. 

But I know I don’t have an IV set up.  I know that somewhere I have a tube and syringe for tube feeding.  I hate tube feeding.  Hate.  Hate. Hate.  It is notorious for croaking as many animals as it saves.  Esophagus, the passage way of food, is right next to the trachea, the passage way for air.  Air in the esophagus is one thing, water or feeding fluids into the trachea, entirely another, and most definitely deadly.  But so is not getting any nutrition in at all.  This calf will most certainly die without food.  It will certainly die if I get the tube in wrong, but I could possibly get it in right, get her fed and save her life, or she could still die.  Ugh.  But I need to do what I need to do.

In a mild state of adrenalin surge I locate the tubing and syringe.  Not hard to find when Dirt sets it out for you even though when he was home he kept saying that it was the wrong size, yadda yadda yadda of excuses.  Hmmm.  I feel a bit set up at this point.  But to the house I go.  I clean up the set up, seeing where it just came from a good cleaning and sterilizing with alcohol was warranted, trust me.  The last thing I wanna have to deal with tomorrow is motor oil or grease monkey induced scours in the calf.  

Bet prepared the milk. I marked the distance it needed to go in with masking tape, the length is the same as from nose to point of elbow. I chanted “left-side” “this far”  and “feel it go in” several times.  Do or die time had arrived.  In went the tube.  I had another surge of “crap, I’m about to kill it!”  So I asked Bet to bring me a tumbler of water to stick the end of the tube in, sure enough rhythmic air bubbles.  The gut could be gassy but…..  I can’t take it, out comes the tube.

It should have been in the right place. I gotta pay more attention to feeling it.  In goes the tube again.  This time I clearly feel it and I feel it go all the way past the neck and between the front legs – weird – but now I am hugely confident.  Esophagus is soft.  Trachea is hard.  You can feel stuff go down the esophagus but you won’t feel it in the trachea.  In goes lunch.  No need for the water test again.  I am sure of what I felt this time!

Several syringe fulls.  At least a pint goes in (minus the stuff that sprayed all over me when Bet went to get the second cup of milk.  Oh, yipee.  Remind me to tell you of why Milk Replacer is not my favorite odor, especially on me.

Well here it is, three thirty, I didn’t immediately kill her with the feeding tube, Dirt has arrived with an IV set up.  Bet and I have been given phone instructions from Anna who is an expert at the whole infiltrating tissue with iv fluid treatment thing.  Dirt also brought home dinner, I hope.  So downstairs I go, to usher in a peaceful relaxing evening on the homestead.

 Nine o’clock pm update:  Dirt came home with the IV set up but not dinner, but he went for dinner (he planned it that way) down to the little corner store that also sells Bet’s favorite Teriyaki. 

Put about two hundred ml into the calf, she did not appreciate it.  She seems stronger but still no sucking.  Took a break.  Watched I am Legend – mistake on a possibly poor sleep night.  Took an intermission and gave calf more IV fluid (sub Q remember).  Was going to tube feed her again after the movie but I think I hit the wind pipe again, freaked me out and could not try again.  So we put more IV fluid in her for a total of 6oo ml.  Watching something benign on the TV for the sake of my brain and then we’ll do more IV fluid before going to bed. 

See you in the morning.  Hopefully.