I woke up with this story in my head one morning- I don't know if it was a dream or just an idea, but I liked it so here it is.
"You can put your cold feet on me any time." Matt and I wrote our wedding vows, and this was part of mine. I married a dairy farmer. Coming to bed in the middle of the night with cold feet is part of the job. Matt's vows to me included something along the lines of, "Don't take what I say when we are working cattle personally." That got a laugh, and it turns out it was pretty good advice too. Matt isn't a huge yeller, but working cattle brings out colorful language in most everyone.
My cousin Mia (a nursing student) had stopped by to visit us and our new-born baby. It was unseasonably warm for March, so she and I were sitting in the warm sun on the front porch, the baby napping between us in a car seat.
"How is breastfeeding going?"
"It was kind of painful at first, but I am getting used to it."
"I got to follow a lactation specialist around for one of my nursing practicals."
"How did that go?"
"It was interesting, how the whole process works, with your milk coming in and the difficulties new babies have latching on."
"We haven't had too many problems with that. This little one has gained a pound since birth already. I think I have enough milk for twins. It's like my body is making milk out of pure love, 'here is my milk-think of it as love.' I suppose that's the hormones."
We basked silently in the sun for a few minutes, watching my husband, Matt across the yard in the corrals. After some gate-banging he headed our way with purpose. I shifted forward in my chair, knowing what was coming.
"Beth, Hon, can I borrow you for a bit?" Matt called out as he got close to us, "I need help sorting a pen of cows. Can you run the gate while Mia is here to watch the baby?" "Hi, Mia," he added as an afterthought.
"Sure," I got up and trailed after Matt to the barn where I found a pair of overboots and followed him into the corrals. Matt had me run a swinging gate while he funneled the cows towards me, sort of in single file. The idea was that I would use the gate to sort the cows either into a pen or the alley behind me by swinging the gate open to the pen or open to the alley. Most of our cows are gentle, so I mostly just moved the gate back and forth as Matt directed and the cows went were they were supposed to.
When a spotted-faced cow I recognized as a mean one came running at me with the intention to go in the pen instead of the alley where she was supposed to go, I hurried to close the gate before I got hit by 1200 pounds of angry pot roast.
In my haste I slipped in the mud, well it wasn't exactly mud- but it