I think every mom knows it:
The way you can say something over and over and no one listens;
The way they shirk your advice until that one day when the exact thing you warned them about happens, and then all you can do is stifle your “I told you so’s, and purse your lips as you laugh like Ursula on the inside.
For 6 months now I have warned everyone to always pass the family cow in a wide circle, especially if he’s eating, so they don’t get stepped on or kicked from the side.
They’ve rolled their eyes.
They’ve said, “I KNOW,” all while proving that we have very different ideas of exactly what is “wide.”
Tonight my husband, Justin, whose most frequent thought is that I am overreacting in some way, traipsed right in, against all of my warnings, with his bare feet in Birkenstocks practically right up against our steer, and before I could warn for the 200th time, before another word could escape me, the cow was standing on his foot, looking right at me as if he was asking,
“Perhaps this is what he needs?”
Justin swiveled around with murder in his eyes, already irritated at having been asked to come dump the water trough while the playoffs were on,
and, as if I had just moved that hoof with only my mind and had the power to also reverse time,
he yelled at me like it was my fault,
“AAAARRRGH! HE JUST STEPPED ON MY FOOT!”
“I’m sorry that happened,” I assured him from 8 feet away,
but why are you yelling at me like it’s my fault?
I’m on the complete other side of the fence!”
He blinked for a minute, holding his foot.
“I just…I just thought maybe you’d… I don’t know…(and here’s the part)
WAIT TO ENTICE HIM UNTIL I WAS FURTHER AWAY!”
“Entice him.”
As if, with swiveling hips and batting eyes no steer could ever resist,
I had just somehow coursed a cow to trample his foot in some kind of act of jealousy over Justin being human, and therefore allowed to have me – oh, this cursed love triangle – strictly with the power of my mind.
I just stood there breathing inward through my nostrils slowly, thinking,
“Sir, take your Birkenstocked allegations elsewhere.
I told you to swing wide.”
It took a good hour that night for Justin to resume speaking to me.
That’s the thing about knowing someone else was right, and being proven wrong so blatantly.
The scene, however, was further proof that it’s time for Nash the Cow to go to a more proper place than the back yard of a country duplex where there’s barely room for him AND our feet.
It’s been 6 months now since my dad sprung him on me.
I didn’t know the first thing about raising an orphaned calf then, and I’m pretty impressed with all I’ve learned about caring for them,
but it still couldn’t have ever prepared me for things like his fondness for fully submerging himself in his water trough as if this is a day spa,
or the way that we often think he’s gone missing, until he pops his head up from inside the kids’ playhouse chewing his cud, looking like he works at a diner and is just there waiting to hear what we want.
It’s been six months of hard work, and laughter at the fact this cow even happened to us,
but he needs a bigger space to roam and graze, and it appears that we have secured a pretty sweet long-term location for him, as soon as he’s fully-weaned, on an 1100 acre ranch overlooking the ocean with hundreds of other cows.
He will live out his existence with soft breezes and calming views of the sea.
When I expressed sadness in wondering how we’d ever find him again to visit, once he was set free, my dad responded,
“That’s easy.
You just need to start dog-whistle training him.”
Friends, for the next several weeks I will apparently be blowing a dog whistle before feeding a steer a bottle so that when he is released into his giant pasture, no matter where he is roaming,
he will associate the sound with love and milk,
and come running over the hills with a toothy cow-grin to me.
(At least that is how I am picturing things.)
*searches “bonnets” on ebay*
I mean, might as well dive full-on into this thing.
I never knew this exact type of realizing of my dreams could happen with this life full of kids and animals and my hometown all finding their way to me,
but, whatever I have done to deserve it, Bless God,
it is happening.
Now, if you don’t mind, I am going out into the night with a leather bird glove to see if any barn owls want to come and be instantly bonded to me.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
