My variety rack is full!

I wear lots of hats nowadays. You know, Hats. That old cliche, the metaphor for "I am fulfilling more roles than that of Supreme Couch Potato, thankyouverymuch." It's been a pretty active month past, and as the weather changes, my activity level will increase at a mathematical (rather than grammatical) rate. This is because I do things outside, like play in the dirt and pretend I can garden and haul 140 lb. bales of alfalfa in a cart with flat tires up a trail of mud 6 inches deep and heft little goats back over the fences they jump. I may have lost some weight, despite the amount of food and beer I consume (though the latter is less than it was at this time last year...).

This is no excuse (it's a reason) for my not posting in a while. I will try to articulate some of the things that cross my mind on a typical day recently.

I had a daydream/nightmare while milking the other day: background: there are a bundle of goats that have CAE, which is basically goat HIV which is transmitted through milk (but not to humans), and they are kept separate from the other, socially accepted goats. My daydream involved the CAE girls getting into the main milker pen, and that I would find them all having a crazed, unprotected-teat-licking lesbian goat orgy, and they would all be infected and have to wear red collars and be goat pariahs.

I am reading a book called Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, and it's getting to my head. The chapter was on musical hallucination, and I've started hearing music in my head right before I go to sleep. I can see the way it's played on the guitar, and the sounds are catchy and original-sounding, and I want so badly to remember, but I'm too tired to wake myself up and be the hallucination.

I have planted peas and rhubarb and a little grafted plum tree, and I hope they grow big and yummy. It's the first time I've actually gardened for myself, and it's a different world. I (and Liz, who has put numerous hours into weeding and pruning our rose bushes) get to manage this yard. The landlord told us we have free reign, that he was glad to have the yard put to use. I don't think he knew what he was getting into. That whole damn yard is going to be beautiful, if not entirely edible (including eggs...), and grass-free by the time I can make a down payment on some land. The yard hadn't been tended in two years, so there are more weeds than grass in all the wrong places. But I'm learning how I garden when left on my own, which is basically to have a rotation of tasks that I do all at once and never quite finish. Edging, weeding, tilling, and braiding some baling twine were my tasks today (aside from planting rhubarb and potting the tree), and I went from one to the other until I felt satisfied that I had made a visible impact. It also hailed a bit, and rained, and hailed, and got sunny, and all the while it was about 60 degrees. Freaking Oregon.

On top of that paragraph, I have three jobs. The one I am going to use as inspiration for short films that nobody will understand. Another is doing landscaping for a pregnant woman who can't lift heavy things, and she pays me well. The other is a more serious, careerly endeavor. I am a "junior manager" sort in the home office of San Diego Motorcycle Training, run by my neighbor Joe. Joe deserves his own blog post. He's great, and he hired me. I'm on a salary for 8 hours of work per week until I'm sufficient enough to do more. It's a hard job for me because I'm not used to "office work" and "phones" and "efficient methods of communication" and "business practices." It's not a job I will have any stories about, but it is a job that could eventually offer paid leave and benefits. The only benefit the goats provide is the white, fat-infused substance that keeps me from getting very skinny. And stories.

These three jobs mean that I work six days a week, which is too much. That's the bummer here: there's just not enough days in the week. You know, Days. It's that old cliche that moms use when the house is messy. It's a metaphor that means, "my damn kid plays video games 6 hours a day." Or is it "not enough hours in the day," or "days in the year?" Whatever.