Motherhood: Country Style

Being a mother is challenging wherever you live.  I, for one, would never want to try to wrangle my children in a confining city apartment.  Lord, no.  But the outdoor life we live has its drawbacks too.

Like today.

Due to Cubby's insistence that outside is the only acceptable environment for entertainment, I spend a lot of time outside.  Obviously.  And now I have this other child, who frequently requires milk.  Which comes from me.  So he comes outside too.  I have gotten quite adept at nursing him wherever I happen to be sitting.  This morning, because Cubby was working with a car jack in the shed*, that meant I was nursing Charlie while sitting on a hay bale in the shed.

That's bad enough, but then I saw the sheep.  On the other side of the fence.  By the neighbors' house.  And I could see one of the neighbor's cars, which meant she was home.  And THAT meant that if I did not remove said sheep from her house post-haste, I would shortly be receiving a phone call of the "please get your sheep off my property" variety.

Damn, I hate those phone calls.

A. was at court and not due home for hours.  The MiL was at work.  That left me.  Luckily, Charlie fell asleep as he was nursing, so I was able to put him in his car seat and put the seat in the shed, from whence I could hear him if he woke up.  Cubby was busily engaged shoveling mulch, so I got a bowl of chicken food (because of COURSE we were out of corn), pulled down the electric fence, and trudged up the neighbors' driveway towards the sheep.  There were only six or so milling around in the flowers.  I can only hope they didn't eat anything too important.

Shaking the bowl of chicken food worked its Pavlovian magic, and I got them over the fence and into the paddock with no trouble and went back to my children to find them both where I had left them.

Then five minutes later I had to do it again with two different sheep, at which point I discovered that the fence to the pasture was just totally open in one spot, making it no trouble for the entire flock to stroll through at their leisure.  So I tied it up in a half-assed manner with some baling twine, cursing those wretched animals all the while.

I would not be sad if the entire flock ended up on the grill.

* No, the jack was not under a car at the time.  Even we are not that permissive.  Or stupid.