If it’s 1919 and you’re afflicted with the dread Gobbler Neck, Dr. Pratt’s your man. Ditto if you just need some general face corrections.
This nugget of goat-lore* goes some way toward explaining President Goat’s lamentable exiled-from-the-pasture, tied-to-a-tree-by-his-lonesome state. I’m sure my new neighbors would take very kindly to my gently urging that they build, as the book suggests, a house for President Goat, right? “Yes, but you see, right here, on page 93 of this whimsical book I got, it says goats need to be protected from the elements, and also enjoy fun perches.”
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* N.B. Obtained from the beautifully hand-lettered and illustrated Farm Anatomy by Julia Rothman, but take with, I don’t know, a seasonal, hand-sourced, artisanal grain of salt, as she is from—gasp—Brooklyn.
And this, besides the aforeblogged barrel of pesticide, was my thing for J. It’s an assemblage commemorating the first date of our current incarnation (we’ve known each other going back, yikers, 7 years, since grad school)—it was May 12, and we took an auto trip to Two Rivers, Wisconsin (top postcard = luckiest eBay score ever) to the Hamilton Wood Type Musuem. I grabbed the big J—produced at Hamilton back in the day—and the type drawer pull from eBay too.
Two of the many wonderful first anniversary gifts J gave me.
Top: If you are thinking “huh?,” it may help to know that we primarily address each other by surname. Lovely arrangement by J, who is a dab hand with such thing.
Bottom: True love is remembering the random-ass antique valentine with an entire peanut that your boyfriend saw and found endlessly amusing, and then going back and getting it for him on the sly.
A Noble Beast in Exile
Oh, President Goat. You’ve gone and done yourself good this time. It seems he has found a way to shimmy under some weak spot in the pasture fence and, subsequent to said shimmying, is going into the neighbor’s (the goat’s owner’s) yard and eating everything in his path, in the best tradition of his species. After these shenanigans, he’s been tied up outside the fence and, I imagine, missing his equine pals terribly, but I shouldn’t imagine such things, because this is the country, and President Goat Stew could be on the menu any day now at the neighbors’. My city slicker’s sentimentality toward animals won’t fly out here for long.
While I was extremely chuffed, and came near to spitting out my coffee, this morning when I saw that a bona fide idol of mine had posted a screenshot that I took and originally posted on F+L, it would have been nice if the person who started this chain of 11,744 notes and counting would have just properly reblogged from me instead of snatching the image. But oh wait, then the shady fucker couldn’t set a click-through for the image that leads to a sleazy interstitial advertising site. Thumbs down, shady fucker. That’s not cricket.
I know the txts-from-your-Mom thing is about 3 years past its sell by date, but my mom, bless her, just got her first smart phone with speech-to-text (or, as it’s sometimes known, “talking texting”) capabilities, which resulted in the above bit of insanity.
Greetings from the windswept prairie of central Illinois! I guess it’s been 5 days down here so far, and everything is splendid. I love homesteading with my ladylove. Gemma and her new bf—whom I’ve taken to calling President Goat—are getting on like a house on fire. I was walking her down the lane today, and he actually bounded halfway across the pasture—no small distance—to come say hello. He proceeded to have a lie-down alongside the fence and wait for our return, upon which his shaggy goat tail was all a-wag. And my head is clear, my brain is slowing down, both good things. Possibly brain damage from airborne pesticides—did I mention it’s windy down here—but they say you get used to it and start listening to “Accidental Racist.”
Wait, did I say everything was splendid? Well, there is this small matter of our internet connection. We are at the the vanguard of country DSL, which means about 1 Mbps max, which means a wee step up from fast dialup. Given that this is about 1/20 of my cable internet speed at home, it’s been a painful transition. A couple of curious things I’ve noticed:
- Similar to how the gleam of a distant star was actually emitted light years ago, the version of the internet we experience here in the hinterlands is approximately 9 months behind. I just checked YouTube and saw that someone had upload a new video today called “Gangnam Style;” so far it has 67 views and 4 likes. I just watched it, and, from what I could make out through the pixelization, it’s weird! That horsey dance is pretty cool.
- Emails are sent to a switching office on main street in town, where they are hand-converted to ones and zeroes by a 104-year-old codger known as Prestidigitatious Phil. And for good reason—he is rumored to have learned his craft at the knee of the most skilled telegraphers from the Czar’s special retinue. It is my understanding that the piece of paper containing the zeroes and ones is then conveyed by an underground pneumatic tube to the central switching office in the downtown of the metroplex we orbit; at that point it is reconstructed as an electronic-mail and sent along it’s way.
Well, I think that’s it for me right now. Those stacks of hay aren’t going to bale themselves! Till next time, city slackas.
Someone’s got a new boyfriend! Someone’s got a new boyfriend! It was clear, from the moment they made eyes across the lane, that they had a special interspecies chemistry going on. Sure, she barked in his face after a few moments of ardent sniffing, but this was elementary school pulling-the-hair-of-the-girl-you-like stuff. I have yet to inform Gem that her love is star-crossed, as the laws of the county prohibit miscegenation. But what the county doesn’t know can’t hurt it. I’m going to give Gemma a fine tin can to present to her new gentleman friend tomorrow morning.
