I am a little afraid. I am not afraid to admit that. A little scared of stepping back into the real world, after the surgery. What if nothing has changed? What if everything has changed?

I am not sure what to expect, not sure how it will be. I guess I’m worried that it won’t live up to my expectations. I have imagined for so long what it would be like to step into a room and not look down on myself and feel bad. Maybe I’m worried that I’ll still feel bad.

I didn’t go to therapy on Tuesday. That was stupid of me, I’m feeling well enough to go. I should have gone. But don’t worry, I’m not quitting or anything. I will go next week for sure. Missing a couple of sessions isn’t a disaster. Especially since the surgery should do wonders for my mental health. Once I get out and about again.

Talked to Sanne on the phone. She called to ask how I was. And we agreed that I’d start at work again on Monday. As always she was very supportive. No pressure, and if I start to feel bad I can always go home again etc.

So on Monday I’ll go back into real life and we’ll see how it goes. I think it’ll go just fine. Usually when I worry about something it turns out fine.

I’m looking forward to taking a real, long, warm shower. I haven’t had a real shower since the surgery. Just washcloths and sponges and carefully aimed water streams. I wish I had a bath tub. I feel like soaking myself deep. I’m not allowed to though, not yet. But a good, long shower. That should be okay.

While I’m waiting for the real world to catch up, I have been having a good time at the playground. Going there every day. Animals and kids and sunshine.

Going there early in the day gives me the chance to see pre-schoolers come and have lunch and play.

Mrs Piggy was rolling around in the mud. “Look at that giant ugly pig, she’s smelly”. pre-schoolers don’t appreciate the quiet dignity of rolling in mud. But still fun.

Mathilde walked over to say hello. It’s amazing how she has changed. She’s so different from how she was just 5-6 months ago. Even with strangers she seems pretty confident. And with me, she’s not shy at all. I don’t have to lure her with food anymore. I can pet her any way I want, stroke her anywhere. She doesn’t mind at all. It’s wonderful. I would like to see it as a parallel of my own development. No matter how shy you are, what role you have been cast in, the shy and repressed, you can still grow out of it and learn to trust people. And have a good life.

Goats are great. I have been reading about them online. They fascinate me. They’re much more intelligent than you’d think. I saw someone compare them to dogs. They’re like dogs without the “I have to please my human” thing. They’re harder to deal with and more mischievous. But you can actually train them like you’d train a dog. You can get them to recognise and react to their own name. I wish I could do that at the playground, but obviously I don’t have the time or opportunity for that. I don’t have to use their names anyway, they come running as soon as they see me.

I learned that Mads’ “secret spot” below his throat isn’t so secret after all. It’s a common thing that goats love to be scratched there. It’s so sweet, when I scratch Mads there he just stops whatever he’s doing and gazes off into the distance with this pleasured look on his face. Haha. It’s great.

A lot of the things that I read, I knew already. Like the head butting. How the kids butt for play. And then when they grow up they butt for status and leadership in the flock. That’s what Mads always does. Asserts his dominance. He’s the leader and he wants everyone to know it.

Magnethe has started butting a lot more too. I actually saw her butting Mathilde today. They were clashing horns. I have never seen that before. I have only seen them do it with Mads, not together. I think it happened because Magnethe wanted to have a drink. And I guess Mathilde thinks she’s getting too old for that. So she was all like “No more milk for you, I’m cutting you off!” and Magnethe was like “But moooom, it tastes so good and all the cool kids are doing it”. Something like that. it only lasted 30 seconds then everything was idyllic once again.

But she is getting quite feisty, Magnethe. Sometimes when I turn my back on her she’ll ram into my legs. I know I’m supposed to discourage that because she’ll grow up and keep butting everyone, just like Mads. But it’s so adorable that I just can’t help but love it. And it’s not like she’s going to grow much bigger so she won’t be a danger to anyone. Plus like I said before, I can’t train them or anything. I have little time with them and there are so many people up there, lots of kids. Would be impossible for me alone to train them. I’m not good at discipline anyway. I just want to spoil them. I read about one woman who used some sort of electronic tazer or something like that. To give her goats electroshocks when they butted or did other things they weren’t supposed to. I could never do that. Maybe it’s a normal way to discipline goats, I don’t know. But I could never hurt them like that. Today there were a couple of bags of food that had holes in them and I had a hard enough time trying to keep Magnethe and Mathilde away from them. I just wanted to let them eat all they wanted there. But that wouldn’t be good for them of course. So I tried to be stern and pull them away. And then Magnethe butted me in the legs and I almost got sad because I didn’t want her to be mad at me.

I know she wasn’t mad at me though. The next moment she was running along, following me around again. She is so cute and fun and lovely.

The hardest thing is leaving. When I have to go, I always feel a little bad. Usually they will baah after me and I feel like I’m abandoning them or something. I spend an hour or two with them and we have a great time and then I have to go and they look at me like I’m their best friend and they want me to stay. And they will follow me too. See the fence there in the background in the second Magnethe picture? The gate thing is open. Yesterday when I left I closed it after me so the goats wouldn’t follow me. But Magnethe just jumped over the fence. And looked at me smuggly. “You think you can get away, mister?”. So I had to open the gate and lure her back in and close the gate and then quickly walk away before she got the idea to follow me again. Heh. It’s always a struggle to leave.

I love goats. When I grow up I want to have a goat farm. Except I probably wouldn’t have the heart to slaughter them, so I’d end up with a farm of pets and make no money. But seriously, I would like to have goats as pets. I should get myself a farm with goats and cats and dogs and horses and ducks and everything. And then make a living playing online poker or something.

There was a cat at the playground yesterday too. A sweet little one. It came up to me, meowing. Aw. Seeing a cat like that, it does highlight the difference between goats and “normal” pets. A little kitty would be a lot easier and more manageable. There’s a reason why cats and dogs are more common pets. But I love the personalities of the goats.

It was a very sweet little kitten. I sat down and it came to me. But then Mathilde came and looked at it curiously and started sniffing towards it. And I guess a big goat is a little scary to a little meowing kitten. It ran down under one of the train carriages that function as stables at the playground. I tried to find it again, but I guess it must have run out on the other side. Too bad. I wanted to cuddle it lots. I want to have an army of animals of all kinds and cuddle them all day. That would be nice.

But enough rambling. I should wrap this up. I just want to mention that I am still in awe of Lost, the TV show. I easily managed to watch the entire season 1 set before yesterday’s season 2 opener. I actually got up at 6.30 am today to start downloading the episode. That’s how much I love that show, I got up at 6.30 just because I couldn’t wait. The only other times I have gotten up that early was when I had to get up to get surgery or to travel or other important things that couldn’t be put off. But Lost just really, really fascinates me. I can’t remember ever being so excited about a TV show before. It’s a sickness, I tells ya.

And that’s all for today. Baah to you all.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 22nd, 2005 at 21:57 and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.