My little brother called me a few days ago right in the middle of my current version of a rough day. When I started to whine to him about what was going on, he laughed (a lot) and said "your problems are so funny." And this actually didn't insult me, because my problems that day were pretty stupid. "I just got the tractor (it's really a riding lawnmower, but I am a wannabe farmer and call it a tractor) wedged next to a fence post that was buried in the pasture. Anthony isn't home today and I'm too embarrassed to ask the guys working on the chicken coop for help." I felt like they would think I was a stupid female driver and then that made me angrier. I tried lifting it up and pushing it by myself - and that was even more hilarious, because of course it would not budge.
Stuck
"Then when I went into the barn to get a pry bar to try to unstick the tractor, I pulled the giant barn door off the track. Anthony is going to kill me! I can't get that thing on there by myself." "When I was in the barn looking for the pry bar, I noticed that some kind of animal has ripped open BOTH bags of the minerals for the heifers. It's spread around everywhere. Plus they needed 10 buckets of water. AND since they are eating all pasture all the time right now, their shits are pure liquid and green and splattered everywhere"
gratuitous cow poop shot
Then I apologized to my brother and told him I knew all of these things were all stupid, but I was just annoyed and he happened to call at the perfect time. He said it was fine, and that it was only funny because I was talking about my tractor and cow poop and a barn door. My life is so completely different now from what it used to be. I started laughing and told him he was right. And then I noticed a ground squirrel and started yelling "I wish I had a gun in my hand right now so I could kill these stupid-ass ground squirrels that are eating my bird seed and putting holes and tunnels throughout my yard!" And my brother started laughing again.
When the guys working on the chicken coop came back from lunch, I asked them to help me and they very sweetly pushed the tractor and got me unstuck in a flash. I fixed the barn door - it wasn't as serious as I had originally thought - and went back to work on the tractor. Success! Until I tried to back the tractor and full trailer to the edge of the pasture to dump all of the soil and weeds I had in it. I couldn't stop jackknifing it and to top things off, my next door neighbor was working on one of his fields and I was absolutely sure he was watching me and laughing his head off. So I casually got off of the tractor and busied myself somewhere else on the farm until I was sure he wouldn't be able to see me anymore. Then I moved the tractor to a different area where I wouldn't have to put it in reverse and was successful in finally getting rid of the junk in the trunk, so to speak.
I'm pretty sure they were embarrassed for me too
This is my slice of life and day to day right now. It's not glamorous, because life never really is. And I'm not sure what's more exhausting, the actual work itself, or all of the steps I have to take to try and not make a complete ass of myself. But no matter what, even through all of the cow poop, frustration, hard, hard work and list of unending things to do - I wouldn't trade it for anything. And that's how I know we did the right thing by moving here and are exactly where we are supposed to be.
