It’s 12 p.m. I’m now sitting down after doing the morning chores in order to get some non-farm chores done. Grr, grr, grr. I do just fine with most of the routine outdoor stuff, which involves livestock. Gardening, I’d enjoy it if we didn’t have livestock. I’m not big on putting in fences or fence posts. I don’t enjoy building stuff, either.

And I do okay with the liminal space routine indoor/outdoor stuff such as tending to Rainbow. Dealing with her needs is now psychologically difficult for me. Her back end is working minimally, making her semi-ambulatory. I have to hold her up while she’s eating. Her food must now be scraped into a pile in the

middle of the bowl so she can get at it. I sometimes feed her off a spoon. She likes this and also enjoys getting her Cheeze Whiz fix – I put it on my finger and then put her pills in it. I can get her up and down the ramp okay, but have to move quickly with whatever I am doing. Dog doesn’t like being in the rain, and I can’t say that I blame her.

As far as the other “indoor” stuff goes – I am not at all domestic. I wish I was. My mother wasn’t either, so what is supposed to be learned was not learned. Mothers probably teach their daughters in doing housework to both prioritize and organize. My mother missed the mark, and I followed suit.

I’m a washout when it comes to doing kitchen chores, as is evidenced by how I handled today’s cheese making process. Last night I heated a batch of milk on the stove, to 80 F. I then set the thermometer on the counter. It rolled off onto the floor, fell between the stove and the counter and broke.

I went to take down the cheese that I hung last night. I got it into the container okay but dirtied a number of containers in the process. I put the cheesecloth that I had just taken down in a colander on top of the milk pitcher. I poured the pot of whey and cheese into the colander. Splat, splat, too late to do anything about it – the colander was too small – cheese splattered onto the clean dishes, the counter, the floor.

Tied the cheesecloth onto the hanging string – drip, drip, drip. Oh yeah, I forgot to wash the dishes beforehand. The cheese sack dripped into the rinse water.

I then had a huge mess to clean up. The milk had spattered everywhere. And I had a huge pile of dishes, made larger by my ineptitude. Uhh, it occurred to me that the cheese making process would have gone better had I first washed the dishes.

Pete makes all kinds of cheeses. He is relatively tidy and there are no spatters. And he works in a timely fashion. Me, when like today, it goes all wrong I envision myself living more simply, in (for example) a studio apartment with a minimal amount of possessions and no animals. I might have a goldfish or a turtle, but this would be a stretch. I’d also find someone to cook, clean, and wash my clothes. And yes, I’d have a fashion consultant, which is someone who would coordinate my wardrobe and accessories.

Ahh, but then I wouldn’t have much if anything to write about.

Next: 181. 7/4/17: A Conversation with the three Girls