Quitting my TV news career has come with many benefits but perhaps none as important as how it has affected my ability to parent. My relationship with the Producer would have consisted of about an hour in the morning (stressed about what I’d cover that day) and an hour at night (still stressed about what went wrong with my report that day). I’ve started “Hold On to Your Kids” by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté and I highly recommend it. They describe the era since World War II as one where peers have taken over the role of parenting, calling it “peer orientation”. They write, “Orientation, the drive to get one’s bearings and become acquainted with one’s surroundings, is a fundamental human instinct and need. Disorientation is one of the least bearable of all psychological experiences. Attachment and orientation are inextricably intertwined. Humans and other creatures automatically orient themselves by seeking cues from those to whom they are attached.” This has also got me thinking about my pressing question about why so many journalists prefer group think over curiosity. Are we adults also suffering from “peer orientation”?
The kids did their first rodeo today! Their event was “goat undressing on foot.” They have to catch a goat and grab a ribbon of its tail, throw the ribbon in a bucket and raise their hands to stop the clock. It seems grabbing the rope is the best strategy, then use that to shimmy toward the goat. The real winner was the crowd- who doesn’t love watching kids chase a goat in circles? Lily’s time was around 24 seconds, Jack’s was about 13 seconds.
I had to get a blood sample from our (hopefully pregnant) dairy cow, Maisy, to the post office, but wanted to hit the gym on the way. So, the blood came in a cooler (which I won in a feed store raffle) and hung out in my passenger seat. I think you hit the pro farmer world when you can say you’ve driven around with animal blood in your car while running errands. All in a day’s work!
WARNING: You will see a sheep rectum in this video.
I am dealing with my first rectal prolapse in our ewe, Maple. She is such a sweet girl but I’ll tell you, it’s been quite the learning experience and challenge for my gag reflex. The consensus among farmer friends has been to pack the prolapsed section with sugar and push it back in. This may seem easy enough but I’ve found it to be quite difficult for a newbie like myself. I’ve see this is more common in feedlot lambs but Maple is on grass with a tiny bit of hay and has no other issues, so the cause is a mystery. Vets can suture the rectal opening so that there is just room for Maple to poop, but this can be a costly procedure. There are also “rectal rings” available which essentially do the same thing as the sutures. Has anyone else dealt with this?
@AlisonMorrow Alison, are you doing interviews or news analysis anymore or have you shifted to farm life and similar types of videos mostly?
Hi! Curious to know if people in other areas than mine, Chicago suburbs, have a lot of people wearing masks. I know a lot of people that wear masks, not because they are afraid of getting Covid or other sickness, but because they are sick and think they need to wear them to keep other people from getting sick.
