by Kathy Brasby | Jul 29, 2014 | Stories
I’ve decided to declare this time as Valentine’s season for goats because, well, if you have to ask you may not understand.
Of late, I’ve been seeing these adorable YouTube videos of baby goats cavorting with great joy. If you’ve seen those, your appetite may be whetted toward goats. Well, you need to know more.
If you haven’t heard about goats in love, you are woefully deprived.
In our goat herd, we usually keep our buck – the future daddy – separated from the does so we can control when the babies come.
One bright fall morning, one of our girls had put on her high heels, lipstick, and Chanel before sashaying along the fence line she shared with Rocket the buck.
Rocket got the message: she was in the mood. Rocket was always in the mood so he pushed his manly head through the fence to sniff her fragrance.
When I saw the hearts drifting into the air above those two, I collected Miss Elinore and brought her into Rocket’s pen. She wiggled her hips and lightly danced from the gate to the fence line so that she could lean against Rocket.
Just what he had hoped for, except for one thing.
Rocket’s massive head, and I could not make this up, was stuck in the fence.
He pulled and twisted while Elinore was nearly doing a pole dance beside him. His front legs were like pile drivers pushing into the ground. His cheeks would have turned red from the exertion if not hidden by that thick buck fur. No go. He was stuck.
The love of his life was at hand and he couldn’t get his head out of the wire.
I gotta tell you that it’s hard to cut fence wire when you’re laughing that hard.
by Kathy Brasby | Jul 25, 2014 | Seasons
Agnes leaned over the lunch table, her eyebrows bent together.
“My brother-in-law is living here but he won’t speak to me.”
I had joined her table at the nursing home and glanced over my shoulder. “Really? That’s too bad.”
She nodded. “I’ve spoken to him several times but he turns away. And do you know what else? He’s changed his name from Bob to James!”
I knew her brother-in-law lived 300 miles away and so I took a deep breath. “That’s frustrating for you, I’ll bet.”
“Well,” she settled back in her chair, “You just go on.” She studied me for a moment and then leaned forward again.
“And then there’s a woman who denies her own children.”
How did I answer this one? “Really? That’s awful.”
Agnes nodded. “I know. I asked her one day about her children and she claims she doesn’t have any children. She even told me she had never married. How could she forget her own husband?”
“I can see that upsets you.”
“I went up to June and asked her, ‘Do you know Melvin Roberts?’ and she said she’d never heard of him. He was her husband for 40 years. How about that?”
I knew June, too. She sat at another table in the dining room, waving at newcomers and chatting happily with others at her table. And I knew she’d never married and her last name wasn’t Roberts.
“Do you think you’ve confused June with someone else?” I asked.
“Oh,” Agnes studied my face. “I can see they’ve convinced you, too.”
Once I would have defended my position. Once I would have tried to change Agnes’ mind. But I knew she’d forget our conversation tomorrow no matter what I said. Kindness won out.
“Well, family is important to you, isn’t it?” I said.
Her face relaxed. “I’ll never forget my husband or children.”
She probably wouldn’t. But the brother-in-law was in trouble.
by Kathy Brasby | Jul 22, 2014 | Stories
This is not another of those cute cat stories that make the Facebook rounds, largely because I think cats are as unfathomable as two-year-olds. Or teenagers.
Clara the cat joined our family as the responsibility of our teenage son. Somehow the connection seemed poetic.
We already had a cat. Snickers was the responsibility of our college-age daughter who is moving out soon.
Maybe a little cat overlap could work as long as I had no responsibilities.
These cats’ problem wasn’t sashaying over my desk, waving a tail before my nose, knocking my glasses across the room, tromping on my keyboard — but I digress. Their problem was each other.
Neither liked the other.
Their owners thought they’d get acquainted and then play together.
Ha.
Responsible teenage son decided to comb and clip the tangles from Clara’s long hair. So he held her in his lap while he worked.
Clara growled at Snickers as though Snickers controlled the comb wirelessly. Every time the tangles were pulled, she snarled a little louder. When one tangle needed extra work, she suddenly launched a full-scale mauling on Snickers, who hadn’t bothered to ignore the hair styling party.
Bet he regretted that.
The cats seemed to like yowling at each other more than parading over my computer cables, scattering papers and nestling into the paper-thin space between my printer. Digressing again…
One evening we heard this now-familiar guttural noise rising from near the dining room table. Clara and Snickers were flopped on the floor just out of batting distance from each other.
You could hear cat swear words in those growls but neither moved.
My son wandered onto the scene, watching the two combatants throw insults and threats without shifting their leisurely positions.
“Weird,” he said. “That is the laziest cat fight ever.”
Wow. Even more unfathomable than teenagers.
by Kathy Brasby | Jul 18, 2014 | Seasons
My dad’s financial ideas were good as gold – and carried him well in his older years.
When I left home for college, he told me, “Have a savings account. Treat it like a bill and put money into it every month just like every other bill.”
I did. He was right. Whenever I needed a new tire or a root canal, I always had funds.
But the best financial legacy he left his family was his trust fund. He and Mom set up a simple revocable trust about 10 years before he passed away.
They changed their checking account, their deed to the farm, and their vehicle titles to the name of the trust.
When Dad died, there were plenty of difficulties but one we didn’t have was with his finances. The trust has provided for Mom since he passed – and without probate or any complications.
Some parents are slow to face their mortality so I’m glad my dad set things in place to make the transition a smooth one.
If you can’t convince your parents to make plans, do it for your children. They will rise up to bless you in yet another way.
by Kathy Brasby | Jul 15, 2014 | Stories
It’s taken an amazing amount of time for me to realize that my sister is my twin.
There are eight years and two brothers between us – which explains why this took me so long to figure out.
I overlooked the more obvious: we’re the same height and our eyes are the same color.
And the fact that we both like to be unique and unusual could be explained away for a time.
The most glaring piece of evidence to this point had been our frustrating tendency to order the same food at a restaurant.
We do not like this.
We want something unusual so, when we both study the menu and come up with the same selection, we glare at the other. This even happens when each tries to avoid what we’re sure the other will order.
But the final straw came last week when a text message alert blew on my cell phone.
Among my choices for a text message alert sound is one entitled Sherwood, which is supposed to sound like a horn blown in the forest.
You know, Robin Hood and all that.
It’s not the most obvious of choices for texts, which was why I chose it.
But when I checked my phone, I didn’t have a text message. I was busy so just stowed the phone and went on.
Oh, I forgot to mention that my sister was with me.
We were both busy.
And then Sherwood announced that I had a text message again. I checked and I did have one this time.
My sister narrowed her eyes. “That was your text message tone?”
“Yes.”
“The same one I picked?”
Well, that explained the earlier Sherwood tone I had heard and ignored. It was on her phone.
I stared at her and it finally came together. We were twins.
How else could you explain this?