Surfacing for Air

Like the porpoise, up I come to the surface of the deeps, gasping, coughing, sucking in air like I'll never get enough, before plunging again to dark caverns far beneath the meeting of water and sky.

I finished my research paper, so I'm going to spend a blog post jotting down various news from the Happy Sprouts Farm.

Matthew and Luke made the National Physical Fitness cut offs while Anna actually made the Presidential! They're all excited and I am too.

Elle, Anna and I spent a frustrating hour tattooing baby goats. (MI state law requires that all goats be tattooed or tagged with an official Scrapie Premise ID number, usually 10 digits or more.) Ears are much easier to tattoo than tails. For one thing, ears don't have little bones that the steel tattoo numbers can get stuck in. The Kids have all grown quite big, so holding them steady for the tattoo process was quite a challenge especially when sisters let go of tails upon hearing screams.... Blood, green ink, screams and tiny tattooing numbers and letters all mixed together do not facillitate mental functioning.
I must shamefacedly confess that I lost it and screamed at my siblings for the first time in...a long time.
Then we banded the bucklings. (Don't ask, you don't want to know) I'm just glad this is done. This is probably the portion of goat care I feel worst about simply because I'm never quite certain that I have properly applied the bands and afterwards I have to watch the bucklings mope around miserably -sometimes even refusing to eat- for days.
As a consequence of all this, I stink. Literally. A shower sounds LOVELY!

Physiology quiz tomorrow over digestive and endocrine systems. Dr. Norris hopefully won't make it too tough.

I startled myself today. Looking over sample college application essay questions (in ESSAY WRITING at Co-op) I noticed that one college wanted to know the applicant's definition of success.
It may sound funny, but that little thing really knocked me backwards a pace or two and I spent an hour pondering it. Now I know how I would answer, but I don't have time right now.

There are actually five or six different topics I hope to post on in the near future, but they'll probably all have to wait till after finals are finished.

I'm exhausted. Maybe I'll go shower and sleep. Maybe...

I know there was something else I wanted to write. Oh well. This is a VERY informal and unsophisticated blog post so it doesn't really matter.

And...Lukie vehemently expressed his opinions on altered Bible Stories tonight. He thinks (and I agree) that people who write children's Bible story books shouldn't be allowed to change or expand or add to the Scriptural text.

That reminds me: Luke's ears are badly blistering. I'm kind of worried about them. They've been curiously swollen ever since a harsh sunburn he incurred as an infant and easily prone to further damage.

Dad has been working at [the Pasture] to fix up a small house the past few days. Matthew, Lukie and Anna made it through the swamp far enough to disturb the bald eagle. That's when the ear blisters happened.

That's probably enough for now. Good night All!