Today is the first day of two weeks off work. Yay! I love that luxuriant feel of the time stretching ahead like a big stretchy thing and fully intend to actually luxuriate in it today because the next thing of course is that I will blink and it will have finished. Needless to say that being on the homestead with our 50,000 creatures, physically getting away somewhere is almost impossible and besides which there is the small matter of our two broodmares being due to arrive home from Portugal on Monday. In any event, there's nowhere else I'd rather be than at the homestead with Sid and our 50,000 creatures, so that's just as well isn't it. I would say it's cheaper too but when you factor in the cost of shipping the mares home and that of their brand new 23 x 12' field shelter due to be erected on Saturday, well we have been on holiday for rather less on several occasions. In fact the only holidays that were more expensive were the times when we went to Portugal and came back with a stallion. Maybe also that time we went to Vienna and gorged ourselves on the SRS, coffee and cake and stayed in a really nice hotel.
My niece Knickers is staying with us at the moment and as is customary she has been pressed into service with a number of chores about the homestead. She remarked this morning that the sort of tasks she'd been charged with doing (such as raking a load of top soil into a veggie bed and breaking up big clods of earth in what might be regarding as a desultory fashion) were exactly the sort of tasks one might be expected to do when sentenced to 25 years of hard labour. "Ah", said Sid, "but in prison you don't get Nutella for breakfast" which I thought was (a) probably correct, and (b) bloody funny. She's going back on Friday (probably for a rest) then coming back to live with us in September when she goes to Uni. And does loads of stuff about the place. We have a full schedule of activities planned for her and have considered pimping her out to raise some funds for the extra acreage we are bound to need and have already identified a number of local farmers who may have needs that she could meet. We thought we could then write about her adventures in a tome called "Desperate Farmers". Or, we could pimp her ass and as a result of her activities she would marry a rich old farmer, he would die and she would have the magic acreage, and then in a tragic reversal of fortunes she could get me and Sid to do all the unpleasant jobs on her place in an effort to get her to let us use her expansive acreage for our growing collection of Lusos.
Slimy eh?
In other news, the mittens (or meehoos as I like to call them) are growing like weeds and eating us out of house and home. They enjoy loafing about in the wisteria playing lions, and galloping and gambolling in the garden. Binky has cut a swath through the local baby rabbit population in her attempts to teach them to hunt - that's good, it's much more useful for us not to mention ethically acceptable that she keeps the rabbit population down than hunting any of the local birdlife. The other night, I had gathered up all the meehoos for the evening but it quickly became apparent that one was MIA. We all went out in turn scouring the farm looking for him, but no sign. I let Dora out for a pee last thing and immediately heard a high pitched and rather desperate mewling coming from the garage. Binky ran up to me and might as well have shouted "he's in the garage!" from her body language, then ran back to the garage door. I had to go and get the keys to let him out but it was so sweet how she ran up to me to let me know help was needed, and knowing I'd sort it out. She's a wonderful cat in so many ways; still loving on he babies, fiercely protective, friendly, sweet, beautiful - ahhhh :mush:
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