And now here’s Plume with the weather:

It’s too damn cold. You know that “The Rent Is Too Damn High” party from the election? I want to start a “The Weather Is Too Damn Cold” party.

I went to see the goats yesterday. And it is now so cold that it is prohibitive. I had to have my woolly socks
and gloves on. The sweater and scarf will probably come out soon too. Maybe even the leg warmers. And it’s just hard for me to sit there in the cold for hours. I took my gloves off to pet the goats, and when it was time to go home I had popsicles for fingers. It is exasperating to think that it will be 4 months or more before it will be tolerable again. And I don’t even want to think about how it will be when the snow and ice comes, I might have to start bringing my dad along for trips again. Or at least have to use the cane again.

So the weather is too damn cold. On a brighter note, mama is planning to make soup one of the coming weekends. That is always the upshot of the cold. Mama’s world famous soup. I do look forward to that.

And fortunately the goats are still great. Yesterday was the first time I sat outside on the bench with just Magnethe and Grethe. No Hans. It was quite odd, since he was always the trouble maker with the most energy. Bodil came by at one point and commented “you can’t help miss the little black-headed guy”. No indeed. But Grethe is good fun too. And she can be quite energetic as well. Sometimes a little too much even. She doesn’t always like to be touched. Around the sides especially. Or held by her collar. It’s not always, but just sometimes she’ll start jumping around in protest. Swinging her head to butt away the hand. And if I hold her collar then she’ll almost always start jumping upwards. On me or on the bench or just in the air. Not aggressively. Just a little oddly. It’s not that I push or pull. I only have to grab on to the collar. I don’t recall any of the other goat kids ever reacting quite like that. I wonder if she was handled badly when she was littler. I probably spent less time with Hans and Grethe when they were tiny than I did with the other kids there have been at the playground. Because of how my life has been going. But anyway, she’s still very sweet and fun. And I’m trying to get her used to being touched more. She does like scratches. And I’ll sometimes give her some treats while I pet her and such. Positive reinforcement.

Speaking of treats, I introduced her to hazelnuts yesterday. The storebought kind, without shells. Still, it took her a little while to figure them out. The first couple of times I gave her just one and it would still pop out of her mouth after some failed attempts at chewing. But once she got the hang of crushing them she seemed to like them well enough. And Magnethe likes them too. Although I think she prefers the au naturel ones. Picked from the ground with shells intact. And I prefer them like that too, because I just love the crunchy crunchy sounds the goats make when they eat them.

And now back to you guys in the studio.

Took a trip to see the goats today. The weather was quite nice when I left my apartment. It was a bit cold, but not chillingly so. And the sun was out. Rather a lovely day. Until I reached the playground and the rain started. But okay. I can take a little rain. As long as it’s not too cold. The rest of the day has been a mixture of sunshine and rain.

Because of the rain, I went inside the goat house when I got to the playground. Magnethe was at the hatch, looking out. She baahed and came to me. Then Grethe appeared at the hatch and baahed and came in and up to me. But there was no Hans to be seen. At first I thought perhaps he was still outside. But with the rain and with the two other goats baahing inside, that did not seem likely. So I went outside and checked the fold. And there was no Hans. He has unfortunately moved on. I always knew he would leave, and lately I’ve known it couldn’t be long, because he got so big and was starting to act like a real buck around the girls. So I wasn’t surprised to find him missing today. But it’s still sad of course. He was a fun litlte guy and I will miss him. A perfect goat boy. Per and Alice told me that he has gone to a playground in Sabro. Where he has gotten a couple of lovely goat ladies to have fun with. So I’m sure he’ll have a lot of fun and adventures there. Although I had hoped he would go to Kurt’s place, as was the original plan. I’m not sure why that didn’t happen after all. But after Kurt left the playground and people seemed to not be in touch with him anymore, I knew that was a possibility too. With all the stress and health problems he has had, maybe he’s starting to scale down his animal activities. But I’m going to have to try to find out how Vanilje’s kid is doing. Hopefully she’s still okay.

So now it’s just the gals and me. I’m still very happy that Grethe gets to stay. That I can see her grow up and become huge like Magnethe, I’m sure. It will be interesting to see how the dynamic will be between them. I imagine it will be something like Magnethe and Vanilje’s relationship, but of course they were sisters while Grethe is Magnethe’s daughter. So I wonder if that will make it different in any ways. Time will tell.

Time passes and things change and there is nothing we can do about it.

Bye bye Hans, we’ll miss you.