Fairly busy day today.

This being Saturday, it was shit-shoveling day at the neighbors. I've already hauled two trailer-loads of sand from the wash to fill holes dug by their stallion-from-hell, and estimated that I was only half done. So this time I drove the Jeep with its trailer into the wash itself and dug out more than twice as much as I've dug on the two previous trips. That, I figured, would do it and then some. And sonuvagun, I was right. I had some left over, but I knew just what I wanted to do with it.

One of their goats is incredibly pregnant, and gonna pop any minute. The poor thing is so big she can barely walk, and there's no telling how many kids there are in there. J's out of town at a trade show and won't be back till sometime late tomorrow, so I promised H I'd stay close to my phone. If ever there was an animal that was going to have trouble birthing, this was the one. I don't actually know anything about it, but sometimes just providing another set of hands and some moral support is a lot of help. So I might be running back there any time.

In the meantime, there were chores to do. I'd let my black-water tank get rather full, and needed to empty it. Little Bear (abetted, no doubt, by that hussy Beauty - I don't believe my innocent boy would do such a thing without the encouragement of Bad Companions) scattered garbage in not one but two locations and that needed to be cleaned up. I took the surplus dirt from the horse corral and spread it on a tiny, tiny portion of the driveway where the clay is thick and gets mighty slick when it's wet. I discovered, as I feared, that the effort of moving enough sand to actually correct the driveway will be formidable. Ah, well.

And since I'm here by myself, I need to do something about laundry. But the water is still turned off at the barn and I don't anticipate turning it back on for another month at least. So I gathered hoses from scattered locations and ran them from the valve house aaaaaallll the way to the barn's workshop, where the washing machine has been idle all winter. After much gurgling and spewing of dirty water, I got the combined hose clear and hooked it up to the machine. Step one was a pile of towels we'd used to sop up a - ahem - minor flood from last weekend that I still hadn't figured out. This was associated with another project that's too complex and perplexing to get into here. No lives were lost.

I got the towels going, came outside, and discovered that I was missing the usual three dogs. They'd been really good while I was doing the other chores, but while my back was turned in the barn they disappeared. Well, I had a fair idea where they'd gone - Ghost spent much of the day casting longing eyes at S&L's place, where all the grandkids were loudly visiting. So I disconnected the trailer from the Jeep and drove out there. Sure enough, there they all were. I visited with S&L for a few minutes, then called the dogs. Ghost prudently disappeared, but Beauty and Little Bear had been waiting impatiently for their Jeep ride and gave me no trouble at all. Now they're tied out in their respective yards, and I won't see Ghost until sometime tomorrow.

The weather's been warming up after a cold week, and I hope that tomorrow I'll be able to spend some time on the cabin. Finally got all the seams caulked up, and it's past time to start on interior insulation. Assuming, of course, that I don't have to play clueless midwife to an enormous goat.