Thumbs

Rawley: "Opposable thumbs are what make us human".

With this logic I am half human.

family tree

Update: Rawley and I are officially siblings now. After Chyca once called him my brother a few months ago, everyone's taken to grouping us as brother and sister.

Plans

As much as I thought I was getting used to this whole "not knowing my next step in life" thing, a change in plans this big still shook me pretty hard. In a fraction of a second, my entire Ireland trip fell through my hands and now I'm facing at least a few weeks of confusion and mystery.

Despite my unsettling change in plans however, I can still find comfort in being at the farm and seeing that life here boldly marches on. It calms me to know that no matter what happens the cows will still have to be milked and the greenhouses will still have to be closed every day. No matter what happens, those bad radio stations will still exist and will still cause my brain to play random songs on repeat all day log (the one that's currently on loop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93X2mZ5xT8Y). The world around us can go up in flames but chickens will keep laying eggs, grass will still grow miraculously in the back of the forklift where dust and soil has gathered, lambs will still need to be bottlefed, lettuce will still surprise me with its beauty, and pigs will still squeal when they see me coming with a bucket of scraps.

The blink of an eye

If the Full Belly gods thought they hadn't shown me the delicate balance of life and death well enough yet then they really proved their point last week. One second I was innocently washing out a stinky jar of milk and watching the two calves play in the sun, and the next I was running through the yard, clutching my bleeding wrist. I yelled over at the first person I saw but the adrenaline made me forget the pain, and my voice came out too calm. Chuy heard me and laughed, jogging over with a tiny bandaid in his hand. But when he got close he saw the fear in my eyes and the dark blood and he flagged down Paul who drove me to the hospital. Days later as I painstakingly type out letter by letter on the computer with my left hand, I look back and think how lucky I am to have been shown this lesson in the company of such wonderful people and not somewhere else.