Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way
Back in action. My neck is much better. Pretty much back to normal. It’s a relief being able to lift your head again. Cherish the little things, and tomatoes.
And back to the goats. Six days away is too long. It was good to spend time with them again. Everyone doing fine. They probably barely noticed I was gone!
I found the wooden staircase partially toppled over. I don’t know if it was from a goat mishap or vandal kids or something else. I’d used rope to tie the crossbeam to the support pillars, I guess if one of the goats had knocked over one pillar it might have brought the whole thing down. I don’t know. In any case the goats could still jump on it. And it didn’t take me long to rebuild it, although it was complicated by Mia and Palle constanty trying to jump around on it, and on me. Goofballs.
Funtimes was had. The girl who likes to call me Goatman was there. She was practically screaming it at me. GOATMAN! She liked to feed the goats. But she was scared of them when they got too eager too. So she’d pick leaves and the goats would run to her and she’d feed them and then when they got too close she’d scream and run over to me and give me the rest of the leaves. “You give these to them!”. She also climbed a tree to get leaves, but then the goats went under the tree and she was afraid to jump down. Haha. I sat and talked to Bodil and the girl came over and talked to us too. When she parted she left us with “you two are the craziest”. I don’t know, I think I’m perfectly sane! Can’t vouch for Bodil, though.
Just kidding.
Speaking of Bodil, I have made a surprise for her. I can’t tell the details in a public forum. But I think it’s very sweet. As a thank you for the cards and CD and raisins she gave me on my 10 year anniversary. Her birthday is the 26th next month. I don’t think I can wait that long to give it to her, though. It will probably have to be an early present.
Other fun goat things. That time when five big, strong goats ran away in a big panic and I turned around expecting to see some huge, ferocious dog. What did I see? A single chicken (or hen or rooster?) clucking its way along the path. Scaredygoats! And the time when Hans called out to me “Lasse, you have to keep your goats under control!” and I had to go shoo them away from the newly planted apple trees round the back, behind the new multi arena thing. Easy prey for goats!
Highlight of the week though, was bringing peanuts for the goats. I don’t think they’ve ever tried them before. One of Mia’s Facebook friends had shown videos of goats enjoying the crunchy nuts. So I thought I’d try them. The goats weren’t too sure about them at first. It took them some time to figure it out. The shells seemed to confuse them. In fact it took Mia several days before she realised that they were tasty treats. I’ve never know her to hold back when it comes to food! I had to crunch them for Herman too before he got the hang of them. But they all seemed to really love them once they got a taste for them. And I love listening to that crunching sound. It was especially funny seeing Kamel eat hers. She’s normally quite a dainty eater. She doesn’t open her mouth very wide. But with her peanut she was chewing wide with smacking sounds and curling her lips. A big show! And afterwards they were all nibbling at fingers and trying to somehow get more. Sniffing each other’s mouths when one of the others was devouring a peanut. Very popular. So that was fun.
On the home front, I’ve been trying to quit diet soda over the weekend. I’ve tried before but the results have never quite taken hold. I’m not sure it will this time either. I might have bitten off more than I can chew. I do want to quit some time, but right now I’m prioritizing weight loss higher. And the diet soda helps me with that project. I’ve been struggling a little lately to really give it my all. I’m not sure, we’ll see. I didn’t exercise today because I wasn’t feeling too good. I thought maybe it was withdrawal from aspartame. Haha, probably not. I’ve been feeling a little croak in my throat and today I had a big headache and lost all my energy. A long nap and some painkilers helped. But yeah, we’ll see how it all goes. Unfortunately the temperatures have dipped below 20 for the last half of the week. And it looks like it’ll stay like that for the next few weeks. That’s not helping. On Thursday I had to put a jacket on! Oh the horror. I want my T-shirt weather back.
But let’s go photo.
Firstly a bit of a creepy picture. When I first found it on my camera it took me a second to realise what it was. Herman’s eye.
Kamel up on the hill.
Back with Mia.
Where I wanna be.
The toppled staircase.
Lady Mio.
From the clover field.
Under the tree, uuuunder the treee.
Herman the great and powerful.
Four photos of Mia in the clover field.
Mia and me again.
Mia found a little oasis of green in the sand.
Walking down the street on a lovely summer day. Before the weather turned.
Hummm… peanuts? I love that expecting look on their face as they hope for treats.
Master level photography achieved.
Don’t worry, the bomb squad goat is here to check your bag.
She actually found a piece of apple that had fallen out. I was worried for a minute that she had grabbed something bad from my bag, some plastic camera accessory or something. I had to pry her mouth open to check. Then I realised it was just a piece of apple and I let her have it.
More interested in the leaves above than in me.
I think I took the picture before Mia was quite ready for a cool pose.
Tender moment with the cuddlemonster.
I see a little silhouetto of a goat.
Palle on a pedestal.
Baah!
Spotted something.
Palleface and humanface.
Maybe I picked a bad time to try to stop drinking diet soda…
In other news, Bruce Campbell retweeted my photo of Palle on my shoulders. To his 277,000 followers. That’s pretty cool! My inbox was full of people retweeting and favoriting the photo.
I had just finished listening to the audiobook version of his autobiography If Chins Could Kill. In it he included some emails from fans. So I thought to myself I thought “oh this guy reads his email and seems to appreciate it”. I thought I’d just send him a quick thank you because I always appreciate when writers narrate their own books and make something special of it. It makes me feel less sad that I can’t read physical books anymore. It makes me feel less like I’m losing out, you know? I may not have the feeling of turning the pages in an actual book. But I get to hear Bruce Campbell whistle like a boiling kettle of water. So that’s pretty good. Anyway, as I was writing the mail to him I checked his twitter account. And he was retweeting fans who tweeted at him using the hashtag #lollygagging. I looked up the word and the definition said “spend time aimlessly; idle”. And I thought to myself I thought “well, that’s kinda what I do with the goats”. So I tweeted the picture to him. And then I went to finish the mail. And when I had finished it I went back and checked twitter and he had retweeted the photo. I know this isn’t the best story in the world, but it’s awesome to me. Because it’s Bruce fucking Campbell, man. Groovy.
Happy birthday, Bruce!
But I digress. Let’s end with the goatlog. The highlight is of course: the peanut tasting. Treats!
And that’s all for this folks, see you in the next week!