Randomness

This is the one down day that I have this week and I'll be spending it outside. Sounds great, huh? Not really. A horse threw a shoe and it's in perfectly good shape so I'll be walking the pasture and slogging through the huge sludge puddle looking for it. I pulled her other front shoe this morning and realized that farrier work is something that's worth paying for. It took me 10 minutes to pull a shoe. It takes me an hour to trim one horse. The farrier can pull shoes, trim the feet and reset the shoes in about 30 minutes. Maybe with time I'd get faster but who has the time? And yet my husband must think I'm Super Mom. He keeps saying "you can do that." I'm flattered, don't get me wrong. I can do most things that he says, but just haven't figured out yet how to add hours to the day to get them done in.

My washer, being a Maytag, is quite the trooper. I've mentioned how it takes on overloading and all sorts of things that any normal washer would have walked out on years ago. But I've decided that it needed something else. Corn. It's the fall season after all. This is my own doing and I can't blame it on anyone else. Our church hosts a corn maze every year and this year I'd decided to add a corn pit for the kids. How fun would it be to play in a huge sand-box filled with shelled corn? And it's therapeutic, too. The kids would love it! And they do. I had no idea, however, that corn was so dusty. Not only are kids coming out of the pit with corn in their underpants, but their clothing and skin have taken on a ghostly pallor. Parents are silently (or not so) cursing me as they're loading their kids into the vehicles to go home. And I'm sure my washer is not the only one in the area with corn rattling around in the bottom of it. Just remember, it's for the kids!

We were at the maze last week getting ready for the first day's opening. Josh and I were getting corn stalks to sell. For lack of a machete, I discovered that a good swift kick to the base of the stalk would snap it right off. Josh started saying that his foot hurt and I said "imagine how the Indians felt. They didn't have shoes." His eyes grew large and he expressed his sympathy for them. So I continued. "Yeh, the Pilgrims didn't realize they could kick them down, so they chewed them off." The look of utter horror on his face was great. The boy is 10.

Since we're on the subject of the maze, I have a question. One of the special events I planned this year is a bonfire. I think it will be fun to stand around it, cider in hand, and warm up after playing in the water balloons. But we have this pessimist who is adamant that kids will get hurt. I'm under the assumption that a bonfire is hot, and kids won't be getting close enough to get burned. What are your thoughts on this? Would you let your little one stand around a bonfire or quickly run the other way?

3 comments:

Nora said...

I can barely cut my own toenails much less mess with horses hooves, I'm very impressed.

Deanne said...

Would I allow my kids near a bonfire? Sure. Of course I'd be near to make sure they didn't get too close. One thing that would make me feel more at ease is having a nice barrier around the perimeter to help establish a visual boundary keeping the kids away.

Burgh Baby said...

I would be OK with a bonfire (as long as I was somewhere nearby). Alexis is only one, but she gets the concept "hot=don't touch" so I would think other kids do as well. Besides, if a parent isn't feeling OK with it, it sounds like there are plenty of other things to do that don't involve fire. Like dousing one's self in messy corn, for example.