This is my motto. I wouldn’t say that Pete and I are night owls, meaning we stay up late because we are metabolically inclined, but rather, we stay up late because we have so much to do. There’s dinner and then after that, Pete posts dispatches. The dishes then need doing and the animals need to be tended to. If it’s cold, the water buckets need to be swapped out. One takes care of the animals while the other does the dishes.

So we seldom get to bed before midnight. And we seldom get up before 8 a.m. Getting up at 7 a.m. like we had to do today, is, should I say it? I do not mince words, instead I cut them into huge chunks, brutal. Yes brutal. It is painful to

Alys and Hrimmi

get up before you have gone through the final dream state. Most see this as just something you have to do. I avoid it at all costs. I have a hate relationship with our old, funky alarm clock. It goes eep, eep, eep.

When I lived in Sitka (and there I also had to get up early), the alarm took the form of a clock radio. I would awake to the sound of the morning news, being broadcast just a few blocks from where I was living. I was a reporter on the local newspaper, so I listened in, always glad when I’d covered whatever was going on, and not so glad when I’d missed getting the scoop on a certain story and had to still go after it.

My life was simple for the first twenty years that we lived here, but those days are long gone. I can’t sleep in – I wish I could. I’d like nothing more than to wake up at 10:00 a.m. But always, too soon, what comes back to mind is what I need to get done. It didn’t used to be this way, but this is this way now.

Is this going to change? Yes, of course, because change is both a constant and a given. And you never really know what’s in store for you. This is something that humans all accept, and animals never think about.

And what do animals think about? Hard to say. The dogs, it’s breakfast and getting what I call treaties, cookies and treats. The horses, it’s breakfast and getting packer pellets. The goats, it’s breakfast and getting outdated packer pellets. And the chickens, it’s breakfast and getting Raisin Bran cereal; the latter (six boxes) was given to me by a friend. Pete sampled some and remarked that it tastes terrible. I did not question his judgement although the chickens disagree.

Tomorrow we must again get up early. We are going to check out the property and garage behind the Meeting House. I am going from there over to the Palmer Senior Center for volunteer orientation. This is a requirement. I am not adverse to this because it is not, as is lifting boxes of books, hard work.

I avoid hard work when I sleep in.

Next: 38. 2/7/24: Plumbing the Depths