Struggling, pigs, lights, funeral

I was struggling by the time I got home yesterday evening. I did not make any plans for the evening. I just wanted to rest. That was not what Mama had planned. She had set up with a friend at church for us to pick up two piglets at his house. I missed hearing about the purchase because I missed church Sunday, but I can be flexible. The only issue was that she had forgotten about that appointment when she scheduled for us pick up the girls to take them out to look at Christmas lights. So much for my leisurely plans, but, what can you do? I loaded up two cages into the back of the truck and we headed out to meet our seller, who lives about three miles from the farm.

He is keeping the shoats in a stock trailer, so it was not difficult to catch the ones Mama picked out of the ten little ones. I say little, but they weighed about thirty-five pounds each. The whole bunch of ten are nice looking pigs; stocky, short-hosed, black and white. Once separated out I could tell we got two fine pigs for the money he was asking. They are both nice looking shoats. Both gilts – females. It has been wet recently so I had to be careful how I approached the trailer the pigs are in, but other than that we made the purchase and pick up without any issues and were headed home in about half an hour. At our farm, Mama and I drove to the back of the pen where the pigs will be kept and dragged them out of the cages to be deposited, ungracefully, in the enclosure. I carried feed over to the pig building while Mama put out some pine shavings for the two to make a bed for the chilly evening. That was all we had time had to give to the pigs because we were scheduled to get the girls soon after we got the pigs settled in their new quarters. They should quickly adapt to the larger, cleaner facility. They will also come to appreciate Mama’s care very quickly. At least I hope so.

We got the girls just after dark, but prior to getting them from the house, Mama and I set up a Christmas light projector in their front yard. We have two and are not using neither of them so, it made sense to Mama to set one up for our Chinese family. The girls were impressed. I have no idea if Alex and his family felt the same. Mama had planned to go to a neighborhood in Paradise but I was not feeling up to the drive there and back. Paradise is almost a half hour away and the girls have a pretty strict bedtime. Instead of driving to see if we could find the neighborhood in question, we drove around town to see whatever lights we could find. We ended up finding a lot of houses that were decorated beautifully. We spent about an hour driving around. The girls really enjoyed it. Especially Aubrey. Then we took a break at Burger King. We needed gas. The girls needed a potty break and chicken nuggets. Mama needed French fries. After that break, we went to one more neighborhood with the parallel purpose of Mama picking up some LuLaRoe items she had bought. (No. I have not managed to shut down the LuLaRoe purchases.) But we did see some really good lights on the way there and back. We dropped off the girls very near their bedtime. Aubrey was not pleased that we had stopped our light tour, but she went in quietly – mostly.

I went to work this morning, but got sent home. I was not feeling well when I got up and dressed for work, but I do not have any time off left. The runny nose and the rough cough gave me away quickly. It was probably not wise to go in, but I tried. Along with work, I had planned to attend a funeral today for a wonderful lady at our church that went home to Heaven last Friday. She has been frail for some time and early last week she and her husband were involved in a bad head-on accident. He ended up with two plates in his chest. He is recovering well. She was injured too badly to recover, lingering only a few days before the Lord took her home. Along with missing work, I am going to skip the funeral as well. I do not want to unnecessarily expose anyone to what I have – in case this is infectious. Normally, it is not. But I do not want to take the chance. 

Mama will be attending for both of us.