I like to exercise. Really, I do. (I can hear my son saying “sure, Mom, keep telling yourself that”.) I can remember exercising with Jack LaLanne on the TV with my mom when I was young. I have several exercise records (you know, those round vinyl discs that only give you audio and you have to flip over halfway through the workout), including Jane Fonda (“feel the burn”) and Jazzercise. I took aerobics classes and swam at noon when I was working, and even did one morning “Breakfast Club” class with weights that required me to take the 6:30 Rural Transit bus to Bloomington. (Despite the name, breakfast was not included.) I have a goal of being able to do real push-ups (which is pretty ambitious, since I don’t do sissy push-ups well) You would think that being retired, there would be lots of time to exercise. What else is there to do? But somehow, on the farm I find that it can be really hard to get a workout in (other than occasionally chasing cattle). Here’s an example:
A little while back, I decided that I needed to start my day with a short “wake up” exercise time. I rolled out of bed and put on some exercise clothes. I no more than got started when Hubby said “Put on your shoes and come help me”. We have about 80 ewes, and when they lamb, we put the ewe and her lamb(s) in a small pen in the barn for a week or so to be sure they know each other and the lamb will be able to find its mother when we turn them out with other ewes and lambs. We don’t normally put ewes that look close to lambing in a lambing jug because we just don’t have enough space in the barn when things are popping. So we have to find them wherever they lamb – during the night when they are locked in the barn it’s pretty easy; when they have been out all day, you look for straggling ewes as they head to the barn and listen for lamb bleats.
This morning, Hubby said that he was hearing a lamb bleating in the machine shed and he couldn’t find it. Apparently, it had been born the day before and its mother went back to the barn and left it, which they almost never do. It might be worth noting that Hubby has had hearing problems since childhood but refuses to get hearing aids because having things in his ears drives him nuts (and maybe also because of the cost of good ones). So he wanted me to go to the machine shed to listen with him and see if we could find it. We go down there and wait a little bit – nothing – finally, there is a sound that could be a lamb bleating, and he points to where he thinks it is coming from, but we don’t find anything. We wait another little bit to see if it will bleat again. Finally, after about half an hour of occasionally hearing the noise but finding nothing, I think I hear the sound coming from near one of the shed doors. I go over there, and the wind is blowing the door out just a little bit, and the squeak sounds like the bleating sound. I yell at Hubby and ask him if this is what he is hearing as I push the door out. It is. Mystery solved – no lamb – and now that I’ve spent a bunch of time chasing down sounds, my morning wake-up exercise mood is long gone and there are other things to do.
Really, I like to exercise!