Short Stories

Okay, so after yesterday's encyclopedic tome that was something akin to watching grass grow, today I'm opting for some small tidbits from our lives...
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Our kids just turned three years old. Why is that so hard to wrap my brain around? Three years. That's just crazy.
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Here's the scene that started our goat ranch visit last weekend: We're driving down a country road, past smallish houses and big old barns, looking for the right address. We find it, but drive past, so we turn around at the next driveway. When we get back to our destination, the woman we were planning to meet was walking across the road, with the last two bites of a hot dog in one hand, and a dead cat in the other. The recently departed was put in a ditch on the far side of the road as the proprietor finished her lunch. She introduced herself through the last of her food, and led us to her big old barn full of baby goats.

The goat kids were pretty cute. Nubians have big floppy Beagle ears. The adults are a little more alien, with their wide-set eyes and strange rectangular pupils. The ears are still pretty endearing though. It was interesting to see the whole herd come running when she called. She spoke to them all by name, too. The funniest scene was the older kids trying to get out of an 18-inch barn door gap by going through three wide. When all else fails, climb onto your neighbor's back.
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My son likes to go on "nature walks" around the property. He's always asking, "Can we go by the pond" or "Can we go by the road"? He never fails to find something interesting. Two tiny purple flowers in a clump of tall grass, a very small butterfly, animal footprints, a strangely colored beetle... While walking by the "marsh", he heard some of the green frogs croaking. He looks up at me and says, "What's that 'k-tus'? What's 'k-tus, k-tus'?" Pretty good imitation.
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My daughter's not talking yet. They suspect she's got some type of autism spectrum disorder. She hasn't picked up on hand signs much either. I think the abstraction of language hasn't totally clicked for her. She finds ways to communicate, though. If she's hungry, she gets a box of crackers from the pantry, brings it to you, grabs your hand, and puts it in your hand. If she's thirsty, she brings you a cup. One of her favorite games is to bring you a hat. She gets a big grin when you put it on. If you take it off, she'll give it back to you again, and look at you expectantly. Now she's starting to bring shirts from the laundry. I guess she doesn't like our fashion sense.
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There's been a lot of excitement around our house, because some excavating equipment has been here to fix our drainage problems. We've had a bulldozer, a backhoe, and a dump truck. The kids were pretty excited. E5 woke me up the other morning, shouting, "Daddy, it's a bulldazer!" I wasn't quite as excited when they went a little too deep and clipped our phone line. No phone until Monday. Gosh I love Verizon. And the bulldozer operator was a little overzealous and buried the end of the drain pipe that was installed the previous day.
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My wife has almost single-handedly built two goat shelters in our garage. I helped with loading and unloading the lumber, and I drove a few screws and cut a few boards (and cut a few incorrectly). She's done the rest. They're looking good. Roofing and a coat of paint is about all that's left. That, plus overcoming the fear that we are in the process of doing something completely crazy.
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Hmm... Even my short stories are long.