1-21-10

CLEANING THE TOILETS
EMPTYING THE TOILETS

Today was a fairly uneventful, rainy day. We spent this morning in town doing a few errands after doing our animal chores and lugging 250 pounds of animal feed from the car to the barn. Granted, the distance wasn't that great, but the rain and the weight didn't make the chore any easier. All the animals were seeking shelter from the storm in the barn. This was the first time we've come across them all inside instead of lazing outside, grazing on hay and making loud noises. Humans like to stay dry...apparently so do lower creatures. Let's talk about Chocolate the ram for a minute. He's a jerk. He has these big old horns and thinks he rules the world. When food comes, he puts down his head and literally rams the three nice, hungry sheep out of the way. It's like watching a rugby team lining up in a scrum. If a goat comes over, she can just forget about it. Of course, that doesn't stop Chocolate from stealing the goats' food. Rude. When humans enter the barn, a stick must be held to ward him off. Mallory was warned and is a bit afraid of being rammed by him after hearing how he rammed Aaron. He came a bit too up close and personal to Jen the other day for her enjoyment.

In town, we stopped by Kerr Drug to get Aaron some anti-itch poison ivy relief in the form of Tecnu. We then hit up the library for our last visit and confirmed plans with Paulino, our next host in Tennessee. We'll have one more waffle breakfast at Coweeta Heritage Center and head off Saturday morning.

After town, we came back home to empty our toilets. Both were awfully full and smelling something terrible. To everyone out there, going to the bathroom in your home is a questionable act--why would you go to the bathroom in your own home? The more you think about it, the less sense it actually makes. It's convenient...but still. Having to take it out of your home, however, and to dump it outside is beyond vile. We both have new respect for all those in the waste management business, especially the septic tank removal people. Yikes! Aaron nearly lost his lunch today while shoveling leaves on top of our newly laid addition. Literally, he dry heaved. It took a cool minute for him to regain his composure. After emptying, we must clean our toilets. This includes washing the 5 gallon buckets which are our toilets out with water and bleach. Then we let them air dry for a while and bring them inside, fill with brown bag, and replace under the unassuming toilet seat before defiling again. Today was our last emptying here.

Enough potty talk.

We did some work this afternoon in the cabin and then had a bit of time to relax. We read "The Lotus Eater," a short story by W. Somerset Maugham. We have a full collection of his short stories and haven't read one in a while. It was nice to get back to this. This story was a bit sad, but still took us out of our world for a while. Reading about summer nights and drinking wine while sitting outside in gardens in Capri sounded oh so lovely. This only further excited our hopes for finding warmer weather as our trip continues.