When you think you've got everything planned...

...That's when Uncle Murphy will come to call.

Okay, it's about seven in the morning. Shaping up to be a beautiful day. Landlady and M are due around one. M's bringing the door for the Secret Lair, so I've got to be ready to move that when he arrives plus whatever Landlady has planned. I've only got maybe an hour's work to do shoveling shit this morning, and that'll leave me lots of time and walking range. (When you're a one-legged guy, you plan around how much walking you can do.) So! I'll take the boys for a nice cross-country walky to S&L's place. If they're in, maybe Ghost can spend the day with them. If that works out, Little Bear and I can walk to J&H's place, and he can spend an hour playing with Luna while I clean the corrals. Then we'll walk home for a nice rest and leisurely lunch.

Uh huh. The trip to S&L's went well enough. We had a chat, Ghost and Little Bear had a nice butt-sniff with their new Shih Tzu. Ever see a five-pound dog get in the face of an Akita/Doberman mix and back him right down, because he had the temerity to get a scratch from Mom? Wacky fun.

Little Bear and I then went about two miles cross-country to J&H's place. I brought a leash with me, because I couldn't be sure that Little Bear would be civilized around the horses. I put him in Luna's pen. Luna's a Pyrenees pup and has grown - a lot - since they last met. She's huge and full of energy. Also she's not the best-behaved dog in the world. Before he could even negotiate a polite nose-bump she reared up, grabbed him by the ass and... Uh, Luna, I'm pretty sure that's his job. Well, he was a obnoxious adolescent once, too. I hadn't even got the door secured when he was looking at me as if to say, "Can we leave now?"

J met me in the yard and said there were a couple of extra things to do. He's been tearing down the goat pens and using the materials to surround the whole ridge top. The front part of the fence, now complete, goes right through the biggest manure pile, and it seems he only moved the part where the fence had to go. He wanted me to move the part that's on the wrong side of the fence to the right side of the fence.

Sigh - that would have been easier before you built the fence, J.

The next thing he wants me to do is clean out the horse trailer. They've got this big three-horse trailer, and normally it wouldn't be any big deal except the horses belong to his wife and... Look, I'm really not getting down on H, okay? She's a very nice lady, makes a kick-ass salsa that she shares freely, and anyway I was getting paid. But this lady never cleans anything. Heracles may have had more trouble with the Augean Stables than this trailer promised to be, but I'll bet not by much. After I got it raked out, after I dragged the heavy rubber mats outside, I spent the best part of an hour on my knees scraping fossilized horse shit out of the corners with my belt knife. Then I could clean the mats, of course. Ugh.

Happy to do it, especially since I'm getting paid. But could we have maybe planned this more in advance? Last Wednesday I just raked corrals and left, and I could have made time then. Today I had other things going on, plus after the manure pile my stump was starting to get kinda raw.

Anyway - got it done. J, bless him, gave LB and me a ride home on his way to town, which by the time I was done I was really hoping for. And now I'm sitting with my leg off, feeling like I never want to move again, expecting to hear M's truck arrive any second so the actual work day can commence.

Just had to take that extra walky, didn't I? Putz. At least I don't have to worry about entertaining Little Bear. He's done.