Fourteen Years

Last night, Little Z puked in the middle of the night, so we were all up for a bit at 3 AM or something. By the time we woke up this morning, it was lunch time (partly due to the time change). I looked out the window to fog, rain, and melting snow. The sheep, in the distance, were digging with their hooves, trying to get to the grass under the snow. Feeling a little guilty, I trodded out to the barn to feed them some hay.

The barn was flooded. A two inch layer of ice around one of the big garage doors was blocking water from escaping the barn, but somehow water was coming in at a steady rate. I fed the sheep and set to work on sweeping out water, and then cracking a trough in the ice. Once the trough was made, the water started pouring out.

The Gentle Giant has frost bite on his feet, so he can't get up high and perch above the water, but I saw he had a dry spot on his wood shavings where he seemed to be pleasantly sitting. He is in a separate coop from the others, who haven't left in a few weeks because something was eating them outside. I wanted to let them out in a limited run, but the door to the run is frozen open.

After fifteen or twenty minutes clearing out water, I went back into the house, where happy conversation seemed to be going on. It was a little bit deceptive, however, because all of that conversation was going on while BAH was cleaning up poop. Little Z had not only puked but pooped her pants in the night! So BAH was asking me what I normally did to clean everything of such foulness.

"It doesn't happen often enough for me to have a procedure," I said.

"What? No procedure?"

"Use some bleach?"

Then BAH went to the bathroom. After much screaming therein, he explained that Tigery the Cat was running around the bathroom with a strange flow of poop coming out of her, and he stepped in it. So, he cleaned that up, too.

We then sat down to breakfast, at lunch time.

"Happy anniversary," said BAH.

I completely forgot. We've been married fourteen years, today.