Friday, October 17, 2008

Noah! Send help!

The barn is floating away....well, maybe not quite but I do believe we could use a carpenter like Noah to build us an ark. I've had no time to make arrangements to get the roof, doors and gutters fixed, nor to supervise anyone onsite (I don't trust strangers around my critters!), and so it has been left undone.
And now I am paying for it with stress and worry. The water is pouring into the garage all over my tools, part of the ceiling looks ready to come crashing down, the thinly tarped straw and hay and alfalfa is getting wet from both above and below (I KNEW there was a reason to only buy one bale at a time), the water is washing across the floors under the tarps, into the piggy stall...........yikes.

Let's see....how can I put a positive spin on this?
As long as it is raining, the pipes in the barn won't freeze.
I don't have to worry about the well going dry.
I have a good excuse not to clean the piggy yard - it is a foot deep in thick mud.
I really needed to throw out a lot of stuff in the barn anyway.
It will help me get my priorities straight.
I can take it as a lesson about procrastination.

In other news: Oliver had his checkup today. His mouth looks awesome, his butt looks awesome (Oliver is blushing!), but his - ahem - balls, not so awesome. Apparently the size of the tumour that was removed left a lot of skin behind that is not shrinking and is still swollen and hot. We have him on another antibiotic and will return in another week. If it doesn't go down by itself, he may need another operation to remove the scrotal sac. Meanwhile, he has to keep wearing the dreaded cone. Oh, and GOOD NEWS - all the tumours from both the testicles and the butt end were benign and localized.

And that's all for now. My sister has just arrived for a photography conference, my students are awaiting their midterm marks and their assignments, and the dishes are waiting to be washed.

Hmmm...maybe I could just spread the dishes out on the leaky barn floor.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is good news re Oliver. Hopefully his swelling will go down but I am so glad to hear the tumors are benign..

Can you find a huge tarp for the barn or would that be too hard? Sorry it is leaking so badly.

Cheryl

Anonymous said...

Hi Jean,
Oh! I feel for you about the barn problem. I do hope the weather remains nice for you and the piggies.
I'm glad Oliver is on the mend.

Lou

Jean said...

I do have two more huge tarps (each covers the whole roof) like the one we put on last year - the bigger problem is finding a reliable labourer to do the work on a schedule I can live with - not to mention finding time to calculate and pick up the other materials needed to fix the tarps in place and to do other repairs that are just as urgent for the safety and comfort of the pigs this winter.

I obviously need to retire! Work sucks!