Never Enough Hours in the Day

This week is our annual inspection at work meaning a slew of people come crawling through our workspaces from the capital double checking everything off their little lists ( kind of like Santa except not in a nice way). So the uppity ups are all freaking out as usual. I get the much envied ( not) position of providing refreshments to these folks. My theory is that if there are enough calories and carbohydrates in their food that they will be semicomatose and happy. So no high pro for them. It's candy pizzas, chicken cordon bleu, home made onion rolls. I got FOUR phone calls this morning in the space of 30 minutes asking me if I had taken care of the COFFEE. Coffee for God's sake. I'm like yes I always do, (for the past 15 years). I should have said hell no, I'm bucking. Then they took my chief cook and bottle washer ( kidding about the bottle washer part) and had him painting the numbers on units today. That is a completely brilliant use of highly skilled kitchen labor.

Speaking of work I celebrated ( well that is much too excited of a word) 20 years on the job the first weekend of March.

Then today after all the craziness at work I got home and had a sick goat and sick sheep with scours. Oh fun. Went to the coop picked up some oxyterramycin ( probably misspelled that) and boluses of time released Albon in case its coccidia instead of enteritis. The ruminants had been penned up so at least I didn't have to do that but oh the JOY of struggling with two stinky beasts covered with liquishit ( a new word I made up for diarrhea) who do NOT want to swallow that huge bolus that might make them better. No, I do not have a bolus gun that you can shove down their throat but believe me I will before the next time I try this. I make a couple of grabs finally snagging one, loop a noose over its neck, straddle it squeeze hard with knees, left hand squeezes mouth and pulls it open, right one shoves bolus in as far as possible while watching in amazement as the bolus is forcibly ejected from the side of the animals' mouth. Well crap start over, and over and over. Finally I have my gloved hand halfway down the throat tilting the head back as far as I can leaning over to the water trough and slopping water in its mouth with my gloved right hand. Eventually after about 5 ejections of the bolus it went down. Now for the next one. Same trick. These are supposed to work for 3 days. I have to go to work at 4 am the next three days so I sure hope these critters get better. I may not be Mary Poppins if I have to do this again