My Saturday Night: A Timeline

9 pm - Tired and ready for sleep, i climbed into my cozy bed to read a little before drifting off into a sweet slumber.

9-9:30 - Listened to my (three-almost-four-year-old) nephew run around the house shrieking with delight as he jumped out of dark corners wielding styrofoam swords and running from the bedtime police (adults).

9:40 - No longer tired, i realized i had developed a craving for hot chocolate. Off to the kitchen to seek one of my favorite cold-weather indulgences.

9:45 - Nephew decided to sleep with me. (Had to hide hot chocolate.)

9:47 - Nephew changed his mind.

SometimeAfter10 -  When i no longer heard my nephew i turned on my light and headed over to the computer. I paused to sort through a few pile of papers that caught my eye during the five-foot trek. In the process of sorting one pile i dropped a few things (kinda loud things), decided to forgo anymore organizing and opted, instead, to sit quietly at my desk.

NoIdeaWhatTimeItWasByThisPoint -  Powered up my PC to kill time on Facebook and Twitter read the news while drinking my no-longer-hot chocolate.
Finally feeling the weight of fatigue, i shut everything down and climbed into bed (again).

12:30ish a.m. (officially the next day, by the way) - i heard a dinosaur* outside my window. Though faint at first, by the third time it sounded serious. Tired but unwilling to sacrifice a good night's sleep the well-being of any animals, i threw on a jacket, found the closest pair of boots and grabbed a flashlight.

*(Fact: horses sometimes sound like dinosaurs.)

   
Oren, our Arabian stallion, was sounding an alarm. A horse was loose.  O bolted out of his shelter prance-running (that's what Arabian horses do - often under rainbows whilst angels, playing Ouds and Nayat, sing tributes to their intelligence, nobility and beauty) straight up to me to say, "he's here! back in the woods! right by my shelter! roaming free! get him! GET HIM!"
   
As i rounded the corner of O's shelter, i found a disoriented gelding. Under most circumstances Oren would  have ignored a gelding. However, for some reason completely unbeknownst to me, he was gonna hollar 'til someone came running.
[Quick backstory: This gelding came to live with us when a friend moved out of state. Our friend had recently acquired said horse and didn't know his name. We never gave him one. I call him No-name.]

So no-name-gelding and i made our way back to the area from whence he came but not where he belonged. Since i had the flashlight and didn't fancy getting kicked in the face, i took the lead. He followed me through the first gate and into the paddock adjacent to his field. We were doing good. He was so grateful to me for saving him that he would follow me anywhere.

Then he began grazing -
       as i stood on the frosty ground in my pajamas, a jacket and muck boots.

When the horse stopped following me (a good thirty yards short of our destination) i realized i had run outside without a rope
OR
a bucket of feed
OR
my phone (apparently my brain stayed in bed).
I had no way to catch no-name-gelding. I talked soothingly, showed him where i wanted him to walk, kissed, clucked and whistled. Nothing.

He had found the best tasting grass in the world and he was not moving.

There was nothing else (i was willing) to do, so i said goodnight and left well-enough alone.
Then i came inside
...and wrote about it.
Because nothing says WAKE UP like a brisk, one-hundred yard walk in pj's on a cold October night to quiet a dino-horse so one can (eventually) get enough sleep to fix a fence (correctly) first thing in the morning. 

On Time

I haven't posted here since May. I've wanted to. Several drafts on various topics exist, along with notes typed hurriedly on my phone or scribbled on various scraps of paper. The ideas are there. The desire is there. The time is not.

For me intentions and follow-through exist on different planes...or in different dimensions. Occasionally one will jump through a wormhole and they inexplicably line up. 
I have way too many ideas, over-commit to others, and then run out of time and/or physical endurance. With the alacrity of Superwoman, a desire to help on par with Mother Teresa's and the time management skills of daVinci (very bad, so i'm told) i say, "I'll do it!"...then don't.
Though DaVinci has been labeled a procrastinator, he was always doing something, like "doodling." Here is an example of this "doodling" habit of his.

Perhaps he wasn't as much of a procrastinator as he was just bad at time management. I like to think i share some traits with geniuses, so we'll go with that.

It is important (to me) to distinguish between a procrastinator and a poor manager of time. When "a person" is categorized as the first, she feels like a sloth. And to a large degree, she probably is. (High school me = procrastinator.) When "a person" doesn't organize her time well, it doesn't mean she is lazy. It means she has too much to do. She probably

• is not organized enough (where did that horse go?)
• has trouble prioritizing (should i find that horse or just work with a different one? what about the llamas?) 
• sets unrealistic goals (i'm gonna work 10 horses, shear some llamas, blog, edit 1,000,000 pictures and build a barn - today.) 
• has no one to whom she can delegate work (i'm going to do all of the aforementioned tasks by myself.) 
• does not pay close enough attention to time spent on tasks (what? lunch time already? i'm still having my coffee...which i started drinking at 8.) 
• does not prevent burnout (yes, i have a social life - it's called facebook.) 

Since i don't procrastinate i have no time to do silly things that would improve the content of this post...like drawing a Vitruvian Llama. I did, however, google it.

Turns out someone has that kinda time. So maybe i'm okay at prioritizing (sorta) and delegating (with my mind, like a Jedi), which i'll take as a sign of hope.
Conclusion: i shall start posting in a consistent and timely manner. I'll let you know what that is after i've set some goals - realistic ones, of course.

(Go ahead and check back often.)

PS. A few people have asked about the second part of the post about the llama (or as one person said, "the story about the ostrich"). I decided to save the rest of that story for my book. There are a couple reasons for this.

1. I want to keep some of the more insane incredible material a surprise as a means of enticing people to read said book. 
2. It's not a happy memory.
3. I don't want to end up on PETA's hit list.

Mama Llama, Sickly Drama (Part 1)

We have forty-one horses. They are my kids.

We have five llamas. They are very odd my kids' quirky roommates.

Let me back up a sec. Llamas were not originally part of (what could be misconstrued as) "the plan." They kinda just happened. My mom saw an ad for llamas and convinced my dad to buy a couple, because she had "always wanted" one. But llamas have to have a llama companion or they will get depressed and die. (Yes, that is what is known as a red flag, and we treated it as such. We ignored it.) So my parents set off to buy a couple of llamas and returned with ten. Hang on, let me re-type that...
They returned with TEN.

Since that time, many years ago, we have done close to nothing with our camelids. I mean, we've taken care of the basics - they've had their pictures taken a lot, vaccinations, deworming and are fed well. A few had some babies (cria), so we took lots more pictures played with the little ones and socialized them. Beyond that, we haven't had time to interact with them on a regular basis. Building this farm and tending to the horses has kept us busy. That finally changed last year.

And now i love llamas.

But then one died.

(Like how i skipped a book's worth of info to bring us back to the topic?)
Mama Llama, a.k.a. Big Mama (the matriarch) took a turn for the worse a couple of months ago. None of the vets around here know a darn thing about llamas. Camelid health professionals are hard to come by in this part of the country. We were on our own.

We checked our llama manual and covered the troubleshooting basics. It was unclear if we were helping. She wasn't going downhill, but she didn't appear to be getting better, either. That is, she wasn't putting on weight nor was she her usual, sassy self.

To make matters worse, the other llamas were following her around looking forlorn and confused. Then they would just show up, like apparitions (as is their way), wherever i was working and stare at me (also their way), as if to say,"aren't you going to do something?" It scared the crap outta me made me feel awful.

What could we do that we hadn't already done? I followed all of the the llama manual instructions. When i exhausted that resource i googled every llama and llama-related term i could think of. I read medical abstracts and articles from magazines, checked forums, referenced, cross-referenced  - on and on and on.

I wanted to yell at them, "I'm sorry, llamas, but this is North America! You are a relatively new species here! AND we're in Kentucky - land of equinids!! Curse whoever brought you to our shores; i don't know how to help you!"

But one look at those big, brown eyes silently pleading with me to help their beloved matriarch shut my mouth and strengthened my resolve to help Big Mama.

Little did i know, we were about to take Llama care to the next level...

(Check back in a day or so for Part 2: "Llama Triage and Emergency Field Care," or "Oh Dear, Perhaps I Should Have Just Shot Her.")