What does your favorite word whisperer do on her day off when I learn that the weekend is going to be another scorcher?  Why, I get up at dawn to pound 30 fence posts while it’s still cool enough. Then I prepare the shed to be renovated before the truck arrives that will deliver 15, 16′ cattle panels.  (Thank you, Matt and Janis, for coming to our aid and delivering our panels, saving us a $75 delivery fee!). While doing this, I notice that Juliet, one of my baby goats, has a belly ache and is stretching, laying down, getting up, and throwing her head back but looking in all other ways bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I almost freak. I know she couldn’t have eaten anything bad. Then I wonder if, if, if (oh please no!) she could possibly have been impregnated by a brother or another male goatling before I banded them, and I freak about that possibility for a few minutes. She is 5 1/2 months old now and baby boy goats are fertile as early as one month old. Baby girl goats should not become mommies at 5 /1 months; it would kill them, in all likelihood.

I get about 45 minutes of rest (plus a quick shower and more worrying) before Jackie announces that Matt and Janis have arrived. I check on Juliet again. Still unhappy and uncomfortable. Damn!

I help Matt and Jackie unload the panels; we drag them along the fence line (two go to the goat shed so I won’t have as much packing to do by myself).  I start dragging them to their final locations along the fence line, checking back with Juliet every 20 minutes or so. Suddenly, she burps up a cud (yes!) and appears to be feeling a lot better. I breathe a sigh of relief and buckle down to strap all the panels in place.

Jackie helps me pound in the last two (end cap) fence posts and strap the last two fence panels in place because by now I’m almost helpless when it comes to hefting the 30-pound (or whatever the hell weight it is) fence post driver.  Then she wants to watch me introduce the goats to the newest section of their Garden of Eatin’ so I let the goats in. Juliet looks completely, 100% recovered; you’d never know there was anything wrong with her earlier.

Jackie needs to take off to a function so I wish her well and walk to the shed, where I clip ten thousand (it seems) strands of fencing wire so I can remove the old, decrepit fence and replace it with two new panels. I get the old fence about a fifth of the way removed and — you guessed it– the goats spot me working near their shed and return from their paradise way too early to suit me, so I quickly carry the two cattle panels into the shed underneath the canopy area and lash them together so there’s a temporary barrier between the goats and Jackie’s REAL yard and garden, which is No Goat’s Land if they want to stay alive. I realize the panels will need to be moved when Jackie gets back (or when the goats take another trip to the hinterlands) so they’re placed permanently between the wooden fence posts and the canopy legs, but we can fine tune later.  For now, they’re in, the goats are secured, and … it’s hotter’n hell by now so they’re flaked out in the shed. Probably will be until tomorrow morning.

I suddenly realize how exhausted I am and take an aspirin so that when (not if, when) my body realizes what it has been through this morning it will not “get even” with me for deciding to do two days’ work in something under five hours..

I feel freakin’ accomplished. I expect applause.  Thank you, thank you very much.

Aw, shucks…t’warn’t nothing. Piece of cake.

(Crash.)

P.S. You ought to see my fingers. I wore fingerless gloves, figuring I’d be able to work faster and more nimbly while attaching the panels to the posts. The only problem is that I absolutely needed to wear full-coverage gloves because wielding the fence post driver is beyond hard on fingers. I have several peeled patches where my fingers blistered and then ruptured. YEOW!  Dang, they’re painful!