Animal updates, classes, the weekend

Yesterday afternoon Mama took our little boy goat, she calls him Splash, back to the vet for a third follow-up appointment. In that appointment the vet removed the cast he has been hobbling about with for the past three weeks. Mama was asked to limit his activities for the next two weeks, expressly told that he should not jump. Not! Mama’s response was that he is a goat and will do whatever goats do. I assured Mama that he will take a couple weeks to resume use of his injured leg so there is very little we have to worry about. We will monitor his activity and ensure he begins to use the leg more over the next few days. If we do not see that use increase, we will take measures to enable him to gain confidence in the leg, but not until we have to intervene. For now, I am seeing him touch the leg to the ground very tentatively. As he gains confidence, we should see that use expand to what we would see as normal. I am not sure how much, if any, pain he is experiencing, so we will let him decide how quickly to adapt to having the use of all four legs at his own pace.

Also, yesterday, Mama took Mocha to be groomed. In the process of grooming Mocha, the groomers discovered that she had fleas – not a few. So, now we begin the process of ridding our animals and the house of fleas. A tedious and difficult process. Fortunately, we had the house sprayed only a week ago, so our expectation is that the fleas were killed for the most part in the house, but we do not know for sure, so we must assume that at least a portion of the population of fleas has recovered from the treatment and we must now do the treatment again. I told Mama just a few days ago that I am ready for a dog-free home whenever we can arrange that. That was before the discovery of fleas on our inside dogs. It will not be happening soon, but I am pressing for it to happen at some time. I am just really tired of the continual hair being shed. Mama and Victoria sweep regularly, but it is not enough to keep the hair from accumulating in masses in corners of rooms, on every rug in every room, and on my computer. Oh, well. I love Mama and she loves her dogs. Besides, Victoria is wholly unwilling to rehome her dogs and they are the reason for all the hail blowing about in the house.

Teaching three cases this week is proving a challenge for my voice. It may not seem like much to say I teach a class, but the presentation of the classes I teach require me to talk for three hours in the morning portion, take a break for lunch, and talk an additional three hour for the afternoon portion of the class. Six hours of continuous talking, regardless of the subject matter, is a challenge. Typically, by the 2 pm hour, my voice is wearing out. So, a day of rest between classes is almost required for me to be ready to teach another class. So far, that day between has been scheduled into the mix because those in the company that have taught classes realize the challenges of speaking for hours at a stretch.

After every class, I am wrung out. Yesterday evening, after I got home, as Mama and I were waiting a bit before we went to tend to the animals I laid back in my recliner and slept soundly for almost a half hour. Mama told me as I was wakened – so that I did not oversleep – that she was amazed how quickly I went to sleep. Almost the instant that I laid my head back. That is how tired I usually am when I teach an eight-hour class. Fortunately, tomorrow is a four-hour class. I will finish early, but I will have to talk for four hours straight to cover the material in the class. So far, I have been able to get the job done and the participants have enjoyed the presentations. A win-win for me, the participants, and the company.

This weekend I have not made any plans, but I will tend to the beehives again. For those hives where I removed the honey supers, I will begin treatments for Varroa mites. It is forecast to be brutally hot, so time outside will be limited – especially when I am wearing the bee suit. With Vacation Bible School next week (Monday -Thursday) we will be passing out flyers Saturday as we also cover our normal routes for our bus routes. I try to participate in bus visitation/soul winning every other Saturday. I have only Saturday to get thing done at the farm, so I have to limit activities that bite into that time, but I enjoy going with the teams on our outreach for the church.

Every weekend we see the dividends from that outreach; those Eternal dividends that matter most.