Say hello to my new friend.

Wow. I have met four new goats in the last two days. How awesome is that? I will run through it chronologically, but first I just have to say: my kitten omgzpwns.

Look at her! Look at that little,beautiful grey kitten with those amazing blue eyes! Blue eyes. A bit of a blurry picture, but look at those eyes! She’s gorgeous! I mean, she’s even more beautiful than I would have thought. Those first almost-newborn pictures with closed eyes, I knew I’d be getting a sweet kitten. But I didn’t think she would be so utterly pretty. Okay, I’m sure all daddies think their little baby girls are the most precious in the world, but you can’t tell me that she’s not gorgeous. Wow. I definitely did pick the right one. The grey one, the girl one, the lively one, the one with the amazingly beautiful eyes. I can’t wait till I get my little Luna Frodo! A video too. Not much happening in it, but look at her! My baby.

There are a couple more shots in the album. Thank you, Desirée!

I will try to tear myself away from them now. Getting back to the goats and the laundry. Let’s see. The laundry business went well, mostly. A couple of minor hickups. But one of them lead to a happy outcome. See, I have this laundromatic card. Like a credit card, for the laundry system. The card said I had 0 kroners on it. But my understanding was that it was paid over the rent, so I figured it didn’t matter. It did. I needed to have some monies on it. No money, no laundry. That’s capitalism for ya. Anyway, I didn’t know how to put monies on it and neither did my dad. So we decided that I would run up to the housinge organization headquarters and ask. The hq is close by. So I ran on my merry way. And not even halfway there I stopped in my tracks because I heard.. could it be? Yes.. definitely. I heard baahing. You might remember that I mentioned that there is a playground in the neighbourhood here? So putting two and two together… I found my way to an enclosure and a little group of lambs and sheep. Baahing sweetly. Aw. I couldn’t stay though, my dad was waiting. So I ran up to housinge hq and asked them “what’s the dealio” and they said “all the instructions are in the laundry room, you fool”. No, actually the lady was very polite and sweet and I said “oh I must have missed that” and she said “well it happens” and smiled and I ran back to my dad and said “yo fool, where be instructions at homey?”. I like to pepper up the dialogue, sorry. Anyway. Turns out that the instructions were in the machine-type thing that you have to put your laundry card into. I thought it was just for selecting machines and making reservations, but no you could also transfer money to the card. And I assume it will then be taken from my rent. So with monies on the card we could now select machines and put clothes in them and all that jazz. It said something on the machines about “automatic dosage” of soap and stuff and thingamajigs, so we foolishly figured that would all take care of itself. Which meant that my clothes got washed without any soap at all. Haha. Oops. Oh well, no biggie. I can live with it this one time, I think everything got decently clean anyway. While the machines did their washing I went to the shopping mall with my dad. We brought my bike to the bicycle repair place for some fixing and I did some shopping, including washing powder and liquid. So I’m set for the next time. And then we went back to the laundry room and put the clothes in the dryers. There was a nice woman in the room, doing her own laundry, and we talked to her a little about the laundry systems. All good fun. Then we left while the dryers worked their dry magic. My dad went home and I went back a little later to pick up the clothes. Warm to the touch, a nice clean feeling.

So that was all done fairly succesfully and my clothes are fairly clean and now I know how to do it all on my own for the next time, and how to do it properly. Nice enough. At this point I was very tired from walking back and forth, carrying laundry, doing shopping, running to headquarters, learning new things etc. I mostly just wanted to take a nap. But the baahs kept ringing in my ears and I knew that I would have no peace from them. So I went back the playground. Said hello to the sheepies and took a look around. It kinda seemed like a bizarro version of “my own” playgrund. Not bizarre, but just sort of the same with a slight twist. At first I couldn’t see any goats. But then I spotted a train carriage much like the ones at my playground. And sure enough, next to them were a little pen with goats.

Three of them. One of them was big with fully grown horns. I imagine she is the mother, and the two others are her kids. The two others were a bit smaller and their horns not as grown. So it makes sense.

That’s the big one. She started rubbing against that rock, hehe. Her belly looked big and full, maybe there are new ones coming…

They were extremely sweet and trusting. They came up to the fence, of course. And they let me scratch and rub their faces. My goats don’t always let you do that. Vanilje not at all. Magnethe if she’s in the mood. Mads not for long before he starts harrassing you for food. These three seemed more quiet and almost subdued. They did gnaw a bit at my jacket, but not like Mads or Magnethe do! Good thing I like energetic goats. I think “my” goats have somewhat more personality. But these three were very sweet and I spent a good long time just scratching and cuddling and letting them sniff me and get to know me. Very nice.

Then I went back to the sheepies. They were less accomodating. At the other playground the lambs and sheep always come running to you when they see you. These just sort of stood together in a group and looked.

I had some old bread with me, they didn’t even come up to me to get that. I had to throw it to them. The little black one was beautiful, though. Reminds me of someone I used to know..

Then I went back to the goats for some more fun, because nothing beats goats. They are lovely. Eventually I worked up the courage to go find some playground staff and ask them about the goats. The first guy I talked to didn’t really know anything at all and directed me to a woman. She wasn’t much more help. How can you not know the names of your goats? That astonished me a little. Maybe they just aren’t goat nuts like I am.

But it was very nice nonetheless. And it’s good to know that there are goats five minutes away from where I live. If I ever need a quick fix then I have a place to go.

Today I had to go the bank to pay my rent, since the automatic payservice thing hasn’t kicked in yet. On my way there I went to the “real” playground to hang out with the “real” goats. No one can take their place. But as you saw in the beginning of this entry, there was a new guy there.

A handsome buck. It might be the same buck who was here some months ago, I’m not entirely sure. But I know why he is here. I said that they were expecting Magnethe to have kids in October, that is unfortunately not going to happen. I heard Kurt say it a week ago or so, he was pretty sure there was nothing in Magnethe’s belly, other than the results of living the sweet life at the playground. No kids. And apparently none in Vanilje either. So now this here buck is going to rectify that situation. Of course that means it’ll be a while before any kids do come. Too bad. I could use some goat kid fun!

Mads was in the fold as well, that surprised me a little. In the past he has been seperated from the flock when bucks have visited.

But it didn’t seem to be a big problem. They stayed mostly out of each other’s way. A couple of times they got close and the buck started grunting and Mads baahed a bit and they even butted heads a little, but then they seperated again and Mads ran to me. And I did my best to comfort him and make him forget about that big, mean buck who has invaded his territory!

He didn’t seem too popular in general, the buck. Most of the time I was there he sort of slowly followed Magnethe around. And she’d baah at him a little and walk away. And if he got too close then she’d run and baah louder. She didn’t seem too interested in romance. But I’m sure she’ll come around.

He was mostly interested in Magnethe. A couple of times he got close to Vanilje. And she’d run away too.

While Per and Kurt watched with amusement.

So a nice couple of days for me, with four new goats. And three old, wonderful ones as well. I hope we’ll get some kids out of it.

And my kitten, soon! There is nothing like baby animals to brighten the day.

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Current music: The Album Leaf – Twenty Two Fourteen
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 20:06 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.