It has been a pretty good week. I have been feeling okay for the most part. There is still the sadness that surfaces at times, but not completely unbearable anymore. I have gone to the playground three times. Making the effort to be there more, as I had intended. Had good times with the goats. And good human contact too, which was of course one of the goals. So that’s good. Since not much else is going on, let me tell you of the playground trips.

On Monday I was sitting out on the little football lawn at the front of the playground. With the goats. I was feeling pretty sad and missing Magnethe. It seemed so empty without her. But then some kids came along and helping them with the goats cheered me up a lot. Mio and Kamel were tied down, and the boys wanted to take them for a walk on their leashes. So I helped get the leashes out of the ground and we walked around on the lawn. That is to say the goats dragged the boys around, for the most part. But it was good, sweet fun. It’s always great when I get to help with the goats and tell the kids about them.

Here is a video: youtube.com/watch?v=yL0v65fvswo.

On Wednesday I was planning to just drop by for a quick visit. The weather forecast said there would be rain. But the rain never came. And I ended up having such a good time that I stayed for quite a while.

When I got there I found Kamel tied down on her own. She was looking up the hill and baahing. So I figured the rest of the gang were up there. And when I went to investigate I found the three others pillaging the trees up in the residential block. Mio had pulled her leash up from the ground and gone up there with Bob and Preben. I took her back down and put her close to Kamel, and the two boys followed. And that stopped Kamel’s baahing. Company and food, two things that are important to goats. It’s not the first time I have found Kamel on her own, loudly complaining and looking for her compadres. She has a habit of getting left behind I think. She’s still the New Girl on the Block, but she’s getting along better with Mio now.

All of a sudden a guy started an electric lawn mower up the top of the hill. And immediately all four goats jumped up and ran away as fast as they could. Even the girls, they just pulled their leasheds out of the ground and ran off. Like little cartoon puffs of smoke in the distance. I followed them back to the main grounds of the playground. Where Nina came out and said “what happened?!”. It’s hard not to notice a flock of scaredygoats coming charging.

We put them back on grass, safely away from the lawn mower man. One of the boys from Monday came by again. He gave apples to the goats. He’d climb up a tree and get four apples and then he’d go to each goat and give them an apple. They were small, bitesized apples. Then he’d come back to me and tell me that he was going to get some more apples for them. So that happened a couple of times. He’s a nice boy.

And then Bodil came by. It was really nice to see her again. We talked for more than an hour I think. She did most of the talking of course. But she’s one of the few people I feel fairly comfortable talking to. She’s just really sweet and nice and open and easy to talk to. We talked about Magnethe, and she hugged me. She understands what it’s like to lose an animal you love. I’m sure she still misses Lulu a lot. But she loves her new dog Sif a lot too, you can tell. And all the kids love Sif too. They kept coming over to say hello to her. And every time Bodil would say “where’s Lasse?” Sif would go to me and get scratchies. Such a sweet little thing. Sigrid came out too and was going to sit down and talk with us, but then she got called back in by some kids who were doing some theatre stuff inside. Too bad. Sigrid and Bodil are two of my favourite peoples.

Here’s a video from the day: youtube.com/watch?v=1E1mVyYDJEk. The boy feeding apples to the goats and Sif the dog. Oh and here’s a little bit of Bob: youtube.com/watch?v=VuUDSrxU9w0. At the very end you can see the bit when the lawn mower turned on and Bob runs away and I think you can just spot Mio starting to run too.

So that takes us up to Friday. I found that there’s some stuff being built on the hills out the back of the playground. I’m not really sure what it’s all about, there are some platforms and signs. But one nice thing I found was a big wooden chair sort of thing. Almost like a throne on top of the hill. I was sitting on it and had the goats all around me when I heard laughter. It was Bodil coming down the other hill. “What a scene” she said. And then she offered to take some pictures for me. So I gave her my camera and she went back up the other hill.

There I am on my wooden throne on top of the hill. I am the king of all I see. The king of goats. I wish there had been a picture that was more zoomed out so you could really see the whole scene on the hill. But it’s still sweet.

And a couple of closeups of me and Preben. He is a sweet buck. Sigrid told me that she’s trying to get it arranged that Preben can stay at the playground. He’s one of the best behaved bucks we have ever seen. I have to admit I feel conflicted about that, though. Because as long as he is around it’s harder for me to get quality one-on-one time with Bob. And I really want to bond with Bob. But Sigrid talked about loaning him, Preben, out to other playgrounds too. So we’ll see what happens. He really is a big, friendly guy though.

I had a nice talk with Bodil again. She invited me to her birthday party. It’s just a little thing, but I still had to decline the invitation. New people and everything. It’s just not me. But she understood. She knows I’m not much for social situations. She laughed and hugged me. And she got my phone number, we’re going to try to arrange a little visit in her garden summer home. She’s had it for years, but she’s selling it now. We used to talk about me going out to see it, so now’s the last chance. If I gather up my courage to do it.

After Bodil had left, a cat turned up. I didn’t see it at first. But then Mio started sneeze/snorting. Warning signals for the herd. And all the goats were suddenly very attentative. And then I spotted the little fluffy thing. Scaredygoats. I made some video of it but the wind was so strong that the audio was all ruined. So instead I put the Jaws shark theme on it. I thought that was amusing.

So those were good times. And I’m happy and relieved that I can still have good times at the playground. I miss Magnethe a lot. But my goat friends give me comfort. And the human interaction does me good. So I’ll pat myself on the back for still doing okay. With exercise and salad as well.

And today I went and had dinner with the family. It’s my mother’s birthday. We had a nice little time and I did some computer fixing for them too. Said hello to a cat on my way there. I have met it a couple of times in that same spot on my way to my parents’ house. It always walks slowly towards me, like it’s judging whether I’m friend or foe. And then when I slow down and bend forward a little it comes up to me and gets head scratchies. Sweet little thing.

The weather is supposed to be good next week. So I hope I’ll be having another nice week with exercise and goats. Fingers crossed.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2012 at 22:19 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.