In the first few laps tedding hay, I thought of a half-dozen amusing ideas for how to start the daily newsletter. I have since forgotten all of them in a haze of hay fever.
It shouldn’t have been surprising how badly I reacted to spending two hours in a cloud of hay dust, but given that I did not die during the eighty minutes I spent hauling hay last week, I thought I was home free. Alas.
After the fourth pass over the field, I brought the tractor to a stop and walked to my car, mostly to get a dust mask, but partly to assuage a small panic attack built on the combination of First Time Driving a Tractor Want to Do It Right and oh god hay is trying to kill me after all can’t breathe cough cough.
I put on the dust mask, and my new pair of Bluetooth ear muffs, and kept riding.
Ah, there was one of the thoughts I had: maybe I am more like my father than I thought. I thought maybe I didn’t catch the bug that afflicted him with the need to attempt multiple ultramarathons per year, but now here I am, voluntarily mouth-breathing through a dust mask while my red eyes and puffy nose run amuck.
The difference between my dad and I, though, is that he would have gone back out today to help rake. I thought about it but called on the counsel of the Wise One:
The piece de resistance that I haven’t even mentioned yet is that the tedder broke. And I didn’t notice, until I was stopped and my father-in-law pointed out to me that I was missing maybe ten teeth off the machine.
My father-in-law is possibly too lenient when it comes to newbies tearing up farm equipment but I’m grateful for it.
Today I’m sitting it out while my face, throat, and pride recover (I wonder, in the back of my mind, whether things would go better if I started with the dust mask from the beginning?). I have a doctor’s appointment this morning and then I am going to craft.
Yesterday I:
had a small internet vulnerability hangover
drove to Petersburg to pick up parts for our beach cat trailer and returned parts to Tractor Supply and went to the hardware store to buy a pair of ear muffs (the sound protective kind) and a pocket knife
ate lunch and took a nap
drove the big tractor to ted a field of hay
Today I want to:
do crafty things. My rubber stamp artist date, assembling the quilt top — those could take the whole day but I think I will also park myself in a coffee shop this afternoon and put an eye on the Friendship DB