Monday

When I lived in town, a bad Monday meant a traffic jam on the way to work.

Round bale. Large. Heavy. Round.

In the country? A bad Monday means deciding to wear socks with my ugly sandals because I'm only going to milk a goat (for crying out loud) and then winding up at the feed store in them. It's a little humbling to wear socks with sandals at the feed store, but it could be worse. Farmers will be farmers, after all, so I know they've seen worse. What made it a bad Monday is that I had to go twice. I needed two large round bales of hay and can only haul one at a time. Yes they know me and yes, they probably noticed the lovely. black. socks.

With sandals.

Black socks. Ugly sandals.
It was chilly this morning, hang it!

What made this Monday a particularly ugly Monday was that I didn't tie down my bales and the first one was a mulligan. I made it all the way home, jiggity jig, thus lulling me into accelerating too fast for the second bale after stopping at the one and only stop sign on my route.

There was a split second when I saw the bale begin to move--it was staying still and I was moving away from it, more accurately--when the entire canon of law for motion flashed into my brain. An object at rest tends to stay at rest. Round objects at rest tend to stay that way, too, but when an object underneath a round object begins to move and the round object doesn't? That tends to look a whole lot like what we like to refer to as rolling. Once that process starts, then forces like momentum and pavement come into play. Which brought into play other actions like eyes widening, heartbeat accelerating, as well as the accompanying dash home to get help and hay forks.

As it turns out two teenage girls, two middle aged women, and a 10 year old boy are just enough people to direct traffic, fork hay off the road and back into the trailer, and tamp it down. Unbaled hay takes up a lot more space than it does while baled. You have to walk and stomp on it (a.k.a. mushing) or it won't quite fit.

Hay itches, by the way. Even through ugly, black, stomping socks.

I met a bunch of new friends today. All offering to help.

I'd like to especially thank Mrs. Joplin, the kind neighbor who stopped to ask if we needed help and when we refused the offer, smiled, left, then got on her cellphone to tell her husband  to go lend those girls a hand. Mr. Joplin helped us load the last of it and tie it down. Thank you.

The other person I need to thank, I didn't actually meet. I was walking the last mile home because the Laws of Monday impelled me to leave the key in the "on" position while we reloaded 1,000 pounds of hay. (Because having a dead battery was just the way that adventure was going to end.) The other gals and the 10 year old boy who was with us hung around the van with the hood up and the trailer full of a messy pile of hay until a cowboy named Mr. King stopped and gave them a jump. I was almost home by then.

Walking in my socks and sandals and thinking very Monday-like thoughts.