I think I had some pictures left over. Let me just check my drawers.

Oh yes, here they are.

Mio’s belly. Sigrid told me she had done the math from when Preben came to the playground and if he was ‘succesful’ right away then kids could be coming at the end of this week. Certainly soon.

Terribly impolite taking pictures of her belly like that, so there are a couple proper ones of her.

I met Bodil again and got some pictures of her dog Sif. Sif has had a little operation that seems to have helped her with some breathing problems she had. Bodil had been very worried and was now very relieved that the operation had gone well.

There she is, the little sweetheart.

Bodil offered to take some pictures of me with the goats.

Kamel was supposed to come over to me, but of course with a dog closeby she wasn’t really listening to instructions.

But we did manage to get her closer.

And there’s one of just Kamel. We had more summer rain as you might can tell. Oh and I think Preben has learned from me that you can actually take cover from the rain. Because when it started raining he ran off and stood under one of the platforms. The two girls were tied down but they didn’t make any effort to follow him anyway. And Bob didn’t either. But it was almost nice seeing a goat run from the rain. That’s kinda how it’s supposed to be.

Let’s finish off with a couple of pictures of Bob.

There you go.

Oh yes, I have a video too. Bob running back and forth. It amuses me when goats do this. I’m not quite sure why they seem to get excited and run back and forth for no reason.

Running goats are sweet.

I have been taking more pictures lately. It’s almost like the good old days. I can’t do it as well as I used to, but I have fun trying. And the eyesight has gotten good enough that I can at least attempt it. And frankly I’m not doing so much with the blog lately so why not post more goat pictures? Instead of annoying people on Facebook with the same basic 3 shots all the time. That’s probably smart. It’s something to do on the blog. The thought of shutting it down has crossed my mind now and then. There was a time I wrote daily. And then bi-daily. And then a few times a week. And now it’s more like a few times a month. For the first time the idea of not having a blog actually seemed ok to me. I get my socializing and stupid writing done on Facebook. When I was going through all the hospital stuff with the eyes it was handy writing in the blog about how it was going so my parents could keep up like that, because I’m not good at talking about things. But now that things are stable that’s not really needed anymore. A blog of goat pictures is better than an empty blog, right?

And you guys don’t mind the pictures, do you? All you.. guys. Alrite then.

In fact I just ordered myself a new camera. It was kind of a spontaneous thing. After a couple of hours of research. It has megazoom and makes HD movies. It’ll be a fun toy for me. But I’ll probably write more about that later. In between posting hundreds of pictures.

Today is a month since Magnethe passed away.

I still miss her a lot. Of course. Every time I look at a picture of her I get the urge to scratch the bridge of her nose. I don’t know if it has completely sunk in that I’m never going to see her again. I think there’s still a part of me that expects her to come back some day. That she’s been taken out on grass for the summer like they do with the horses. Like it can’t be true that she’s gone forever. But I know she is. Sometimes it feels like it just happened yesterday and sometimes it feels like a lot of time has passed already. Time has a way of doing that.

Life does go on. And I’m adjusting to it. The first few times back at the playground were hard. Sometimes it felt like there was no point in going again. Mio, Kamel, Bob, Preben. They’re all wonderful goats. But I haven’t known them for that long. And Magnethe was so dominant that things sort of revolved around her. So I haven’t gotten to be really close with the others. I don’t know if I’ll ever be as close to any of them as I were with Magnethe. Or Mads. The first few times back at the playground it was hard to imagine that I would. It was like going to a party that you used to go to with your best friend but now you’re there on your own and you don’t even know if you’re going to fit in without your friend there. You spent all your time there with your friend and now you’re worried no one else there will actually like you.

At least I’m not overthinking things!

But it did get better. With the help of the human peoples too. The kids that came and I got to talk to them and help them with the goats. That brought some happiness and feeling more connected to the place again. And just spending more time there, it has been good and I have been happy with the goats. It’s also been really good that I have gotten to see Kurt and Bodil, and Sigrid who is great as well. It makes the playground feel like home again, even if there’s a dear family member missing.

I look at Bob and I hope that we can get to be really close. There’s a part of Magnethe in him. Most of the goats are some shades of white, Magnethe was almost all reddish brown. And Bob is the prettiest black almost all over. They do stand out. I hope he gets to grow old and happy at the playground. I like the thought of the two of us ten years from now sitting together and looking back at hopefully mostly good times. I spent so much time with the original three goats, Mathilde, Mads and Magnethe. It’s like a new era now. Starting from scratch. I don’t know if it will be as good, but I know I still need the goats. I still need the playground and the people there. It is still an important part of my life. And I’d like to see Magnethe’s boy grow up to be the king of the place. I’m sure Magnethe would like that as well. I hope she’s up there somewhere on the endless grass field in the sky and peeking down on us now and then. When she’s not butting heads with Mads or dozing off in the sunshine. I don’t know if it rains up there, but I’m pretty sure Magnethe would not like the summer rain the way the current crop of goats seem to.

Her memory lives on. Forever with me, certainly.

I’ll end the entry with three pictures from the last week I had with her.

Oh and I uploaded an old video. From 2005. With Mads and Magnethe. And Kurt.

Look at them running along. So sweet. It was at the end of the day and Kurt was setting Mads free from his leash. It wasn’t often he was on a leash because he always felt it was a great injustice and made sure to tell everyone who wanted to hear about it. I still remember that day. How they ran back home. And it’s a really beautiful memory to me. I miss those two.