Bootsandheels...My blogs, and poetry

[Bootsandheels]

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[Bootsandheels]

Started…
(October, 2, 2011…Sitting at my computer…the sun just going down now at 8:30 PM…hummingbirds buzz at the feeder outside the open window 4’ away, a cool sweet breeze floats in with a smell of sea air.)
Finished…
(December 18, 2011 Sunset now at 4:45 PM, chilly and wet, snuggled on the couch in my green robe and slippers with Aisha & Leo on either side of me. Thinking about my past year here on the farm, moving in two weeks time into the next chapter of my now single-again-life…)

I think most of you by now know that over this past year I took up with a goat wrangling butch. I’m sure that this simple statement conjures up a variety of ideas, and believe me I have heard all of the jokes, and been made fun of around this website on more than one occasion…it’s all good, and very much expected. But let me tell you a little bit about what my life has really been like over this past year and a few of the priceless things I’ve had the priviledge to learn while being here on these 7 acres of emerald green on this mystical Isle known as Vashon, WA.

I’ve learned that I can hold a newly weaned baby goat on my lap to comfort it upon arrival from being taken from it’s mother.
They snuggle and snore just like a puppy, and cuddle into your warmth like a baby. This is hands down one of the most precious experiences I’ve had so far-my butch in one chair and me facing hym, just having our usual end of the day conversation, but each of us holding a very sleepy baby goat that has finally stopped crying, suckling on our fingers.

I’ve learned so much about goats…I was dreading it, but really they are quite fascinating. They are dog-smart, have 4 stomachs, eat the sharpest thorns FIRST on blackberries, thistles, etc. They can die if they eat anything in the rhododendron family (which is an indigenous plant here in the NW-go figure) and must be treated immediately with charcoal, and fluids. They have absolutely NO gag reflex to be able to get the poisonous plant out of their systems…so of course the first thing they eat when they escape-which they do A LOT is go for the poisonous plants. So contrary to popular belief, goats cannot eat just anything.
I’ve learned that if you hear a goat grinding it’s teeth, it means it’s in a lot of pain…which comes immediately after the above said carnage of Rhodie plants. I’ve learned that there are many different breeds of goats…and my least favorite was the La Mancha because they have absolutely the smallest ears, and if I had to rename their breed, I would call them ET goats…they look like ET. I rather like them now, because the aforementioned baby goats were La Mancha’s…and something that strange looking in baby form just melts my femme heart…

One of my jobs this past year was to help feed and care for ALL the rescue animals on Frog Holler Farm…yep that’s the name…because frogs are prolific here in the summer months, and that’s what the folks call this area of Vashon.
I have fed, watered, chased, been chased by,knocked over and doctored up about 130 goats, 2 horses, 1-1800lb Jersey steer with BIG horns,
1 shorthorn dairy cow (rescued from the veal factory), 3 self shedding sheep called Katahdins, 2 gay male pot-bellied pigs…(yes you read that right and don’t ask please), and 3 dogs-1 crazy border collie who herds the goats, 1 rescued German Shepherd guard dog, and 1 rescued toy dog who you cannot ever get really mad at for peeing on the floor occasionally and who’s name is Leo (as in “The Lion”) for taking on the Jersey steer his second day on the farm…

I have been swarmed by bees and stung repeatedly after losing my footing trying to turn on a rusty irrigation pipe, (the nest was in the ground-who knew! Picture a femme running for her life across an open field tearing off her clothing…oh ya…hot stuff! LOL)
I have had my thumb almost bitten off by a pot bellied pig were it not for my acrylic nails, and am pretty sure I have mud on every pair of my boots and heels and probably won’t ever be able to get it all off…and if you are wondering…NO I don’t wear those to feed them all…I have a nice butch pair of Bogg boots for work around here…and when those are on my feet…you better believe I get down and dirty but in 30 mins flat can be dressed to the 9’s and girly once again… I am still one of the very few women that I have seen on this island that wears any heels at all…and I anything over a 3” heel gets comments galore…too funny.

I will miss the farm but not the mud and muck, I will miss all the amazing funny animals, but not their equally amazing smells, and antics that almost did me in at times, I will miss the goat wrangling butch who helped me heal with her amazing unconditional love through the toughest breakup in my life on record…But not her way of life.

We meet the people we are supposed to meet and have in our lives for a reason so its said…and I believe this to be true. Some we fall for, some we dearly love for just a season, and some we still scratch our head over wondering… what the hell was that?

Lessons…Experiences…Gifts. Perhaps it’s just my age now, but I see each person, each experience as precious and important. Like a chocolate sundae, I don’t want to miss any of it and want to lick the bowl to make sure I get every last bit of it all…because I don’t want to miss it…
These things that are so priceless for me to learn right now…and sometimes I don’t know it until I get ready to move on to the next adventure that I was immensely blessed to have experienced any of what I just walked through…at all.

Boots

©lkfox 2011

[GPS]

very nice writing

[Bootsandheels]

Originally Posted by GPS

very nice writing

Thank you so much GPS! I appreciate you stopping by to read and comment!

[Bootsandheels]

This past weekend I decided to visit my best friend and her 15 yr old son down in Portland where I used to live just blocks away. I barely made it down due to a snowstorm in the area, and ended up staying most of this week. What a blast…the kind of mini vacation you dream about…getting snowed in unexpectedly and having to tell the boss…uh…I can’t make it home safely. Which was in fact the truth, but I felt like a little kid fibbing the whole time.

Many of you who have read my stuff know that I have a son who is now 18 and who has been shunning me for being gay. It’s been excruciating at times, and always creates a sort of aching black hole in my heart where I thought only love could grow for him.

Max is my best friend’s youngest boy, a big lumbering bear of a young man whom I of course affectionately call Bear…he moves like one, acts like one but has an amazing wisdom and intuition about life. When Max speaks, you want to listen. He is the typical geek teen cookie monster and Dr. Phil with a splash of Eckart Tolle thrown in…he is simply…a very old soul in a testosterone fueled Bearish boyish body. He goes to a special technical school that can finally keep up with his intellect and keep his brain stimulated and challenged, while affording him valuable friendships and affirmation of who and what he is-a brilliant boy child soon to be a man…a large bear of a man with an equally bearish heart and mind.

Last night snow fell on Portland, and here in the rainy NW that is a godsend. It doesn’t happen often, and when the torrential rains of liquid sunshine finally…finally agree to bow down before the snow goddess and transform into the more solid graceful and beautiful form of fragile snowflakes…magic ensues and is reflected like diamond light on water. Everyone seems to inherently understand this spell won’t last but a few moments, hours or even a day or so…and so…we go.

We go out and play..no talking allowed…only screams of delight, yipping, skipping, throwing, smashing, rolling, slipping and sliding in snow…the snow-snow-let-it-snow-I’m-off-of-work-and-out-of-school so-let-it-snow-and-let-me-go…kind of snow.

Max had just left the toilet seat up AGAIN…and I had just done the fanny fall almost into the water…*&%$@!!! I marched to the foot of the stairs and started yelling up to his room..”Young man…when your Auntie is in town you WILL PUT THAT F*ING SEAT DOWN!!!”…his mom quietly smiled and said behind me…”He’s outside-in the snow…” and then laughed at me as I got my snowboots on, still steamed up and ready for the second volley of my toilet bowl litany.

I stepped out on the front porch and saw Max just peeking around the corner of the house so I started again…”Young man….blah blah blah blah!!!! Suddenly I saw that he had not ONE snow ball but an entire ARM FULL of snowballs…he started lobbing them at me one at a time giggling and enjoying the fact that I kept going with my toilet bowl speech the entire time he was pelting me in the face and chest with his snowball arsenal. Now who looked stupid… I finally came too on about the 10th snowball and it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps I should stoop down and start making snowballs myself..perhaps this was the way to get through to a 15 yr old about his toilet lid habits…pelt it into him! It was ON from “Young man!!!! and kept going until we were soaking wet, giggling hysterically and happier than we had a right to be…

I was laughing with a young man-boy…not far from my son’s age and it felt like heaven…I was a human mother unit again…I was me…celebrating some precious moments with another mother’s son…and I had to be pelted by many snowballs to wake up to the fact that my heart was still ok..still beating full of love and ALIVE…

My heart has felt like a beautiful ice sculpture when I think of my son…I’ve done this so it doesn’t hurt so much as the days, weeks, months and the almost two years now that have gone by without word or contact from him. It’s how I’ve coped.

But another son melted my heart that night…with his snowballs and giggles of delight…and yes…a toilet seat. Max said he heard every word…but I still think all he really will remember is how many snowballs it took to get me to stop talking…and PLAY!!!

Boots
Copyright LKF 2012

[Bootsandheels]

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