Dear Readers,
It’s a cloudy Thursday and in my world it feels like a glorious blue sky sunny Saturday. I suppose that is the nature of working a lot with sunny weather. How ironic, Beautiful Day by U2 just started playing on I-tunes. Murphy’s Law number 82: If the weather is nice while at work, it will change for the worse on your day off. Good news! This is okay because well…the day is mine to seize and conquer! And so how am I spending it at the moment?...telling you about my week, in a world of nothing extraordinary, in events of everyday, things that probably are not even that exciting, I’m sharing them with a twist of “life according to Tracie.”
I want to write today about insanity - insanity of my job, insanity of Wyoming, insanity of me. Well, really it is not THAT insane. So day two of work…Sunday. We went to Mass, and then had lunch (a hot lunch mind you because it was SUNDAY! (We never have hot lunches otherwise)). On Sundays the girls are allowed to listen to music, get letters from their families, and get a hot lunch. Sidenote: practically every lunch on NET we had sandwiches. I swore I wouldn’t eat any for a very long time. God has a very funny sense of humor. So Sunday lunches - mu-ee (I don’t know how to spell Spanish) bueno!
Moving on. To spice life up a bit, we took the girls to the river. Given, I did not know we were going to be hiking beforehand so I did not bring proper hiking shoes; I just had my cowboy boots. Time to cowgirl up! So we are walking on one of the rockiest trails I’ve ever experienced and I’m trying not to scuff my boots (they were new, I’d like to keep them nice for at least a little while!). If you’ve never hiked in cowboy boots, don’t. Given they gave some ankle support, but not so much on the soles of my feet, I might as well have been barefoot. Sidenote: the river is in the canyon that I took pictures in last week and about a mile in there is a waterfall called Bridal Veils Falls, which was our destination. Technically I didn’t go to the falls, it was my job to stay behind with the girls who didn’t want to brave the bouldering and get wet because apparently it is a “guaranteed to get wet” hike.
Well, we were all hiking together for a while up the hill to the part where you start bouldering and all of a sudden we hear this loud obnoxious noise. Oh yes, a rattlesnake, a cute little baby rattlesnake was hiding under a bush. My first one! I am pleased to know that rattlers have rattlers and they are quite audible, because any other snake I would just be clueless walking right on by (and it has happened before in Colorado and Georgia). Exhibit A of why one should hike with protection. I know rattlers are essentially everywhere, but really, they are everywhere here. Oh…and so are bears, especially at the dumpster. It is recommended I get a gun for whenever I go riding…just in case. My roomies have promised to take me shooting, dun dun dun dun! I feel like my life is a real version of the movie City Slickers. In any case, we walked passed it and no one got hurt. So now every time I hear a grasshopper I get paranoid, they sound so similar! The difference: Grasshoppers are an intermittent sound, rattlers are a constant sound. The end.
Back to the ranch, if you didn’t know this about me, I have a fear of matches and fire. The girls cook on a camping grill with a propane tank outside. As the girls can’t use matches it is our job to light the grill. I killed about three matches before I realized that the propane tank has an on/off knob to allow the propane to enter (I had already turned the nozzle on the grill). I was so relieved I was alone…how embarrassing!
All in all here is a quick summary of what I have learned in the last five days:
One can cut an apple with a spoon
Rattlesnakes are loud
Goat head butting hurts
Cowboy boots are not good hiking footwear
Deer jump fences
Cows are dumb
Sheep are dumber
One should use caution around propane with matches
I’m in charge!! :)
This is not summer camp
Why I’m glad I’m an advisor and not a client:
We can do what we want
We make the decisions
We get to drive the ranger uphill and not run
When the food is bland we can use salt or other condiments to help it
We don’t have to earn the privilege of closing stall doors in the bathroom
We don’t have to ask permission to speak, to go anywhere
We get keys
We watch the mucking (15 years later of scooping poop, I’m finally on top of the pecking order!…well, sort of, we still have a supervisor, a boss, but I’m not at the bottom!)
And in case you are wondering about the deer, cows, sheep, every morning or night when I drive to or from work I play dodgeball with these livestock, I nearly hit one at least once a day. I have yet to nearly miss an antelope. So, the deer jump the fences and land in front of you (car brights are my saving grace), the cows stand there, the sheep lay there. Honking my horn is the occasional effective way to move them, and sometimes you just gotta gently hit them to tell them you mean business!
God Bless!
Tracie
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