The Bolivians are Coming!

It was like any other ordinary day.  Scratch that.  Who am I kidding?  There are no "ordinary" days out here on the farm.  It was just another day in Freakin’ Farmville is more like it.  With one exception: The Bolivians were coming!  My dear friend and former exchange student was coming back to Oklahoma to visit, with her family in tow.  

But first things first.  The equine vet was coming to check on a horse that was breathing funny.  Did you know that horses can get pneumonia,  AND be allergic to hay? What the? Who knew?  But my rescue horse I had hoped would be my "I have big plans for you horse" had come down with pneumonia and needed professional attention.  After the vet left, I set off to the airport to pick up the Bolivians.  I couldn't wait to bring them to the farm - our home, our fortress of a dream come true. The beautiful pastures were alive with horses galloping and grazing.  The chicken yard was flocking with egg laying ladies.  The pigs were wallowing  in all their oink-oinking glory.  We had company coming, and the farm was ready.  The kids were in their Sunday best, and the house was staged as if Southern Living was coming for a photo shoot (talk about a dreamer).

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Proverbially, pride always cometh before the fall, so  naturally things went south pretty quickly. Be gone my imaginary  banners  reading  "Welcome to Our Picture Perfect Farm,’ and ‘It's a Magical Place to Live”.  My picture perfect,  magical place to live was more like a V for violence scene from Foul Play on Elm Street.  My pride bubble burst into a spray of a thousand droplets of exasperated spittle when we stepped out onto the deck so that I could show off our country living panorama in all its splendor to our guest.  Only there was nothing splendid to see.  Instead, we got an upclose and  not at all suitable for any audience view of flying feathers, fur, and mayhem.  An outrageous ruckus had just ended.  Our new bird dog was the victor  and one of our favorite chickens, who was at the moment dripping from between the dog’s tightly clenched teeth, was evidently never going to lay another grade A egg.  I tried to make a joke of it and said, "Whelp, there's dinner".  My Bolivian friends were speechless.  Humor didn't help.  I'm sure the event scarred their small children for life.

Meanwhile, Big Dog (my husband) was putting a horse into the time-out pasture for practically reducing me to pasture kill earlier that day.  There went my ninth life as I only suffered a sore shoulder and back.  For whatever reason, when you move one horse to a different pasture all of the other horses get excited and run around causing a scene similar to that of an unpopular prisoner swap in the big house.  I only mention this commotion because it is the very thing that brings us to scene two of our afternoon horror show.  Shadow, our dog, who does all the things that make dogs annoying, but you love them anyway, came  running out and got brutally  trampled by a horse.  Have you every heard a pig squeal? Have you ever heard a pig scream?  There is an ear piercing difference.  Well, Shadow came flying out of that pasture faster than you can say pigs in a blanket, screaming like a pig.  No quicker than I could declare the chicken dead, we had a dog needing emergency surgery, and visitors who should have taken off running for the hills.  

But the sun was still shining so there was still hope.   Big Dog whisked Shadow away to the doggy ER,  and I calmly prepared dinner (and a round of stiff drinks) for our guest, and acted as if nothing had happened.  In the back of my mind I was wondering where the film crew was.  A film crew was the only thing missing in that 5 minutes action packed disaster scene.  They weren't there to capture the drama of my ten year old weeping over the dead and mangled chicken.  Or that same ten year old, entering the scene in his doctor's coat he had asked for at Christmas, proclaiming, "The doctor is here!  Step aside".  They also missed filming  the wide-eyed and innocent Bolivian children standing numb in shock and fright.  But come to think of it, where is the film crew on any given day around here?  I'm much too busy to capture the chaos on my smartphone.  

Our unlucky dog pre "cone of shame"

Thankfully the evening came to a close without any more episodes that would require and emergency call to  “The Cleaner”.   I had arranged for our guests to stay in a hotel close to our blood splattered, green acres.  They were exhausted from their trip and all of the  recent unexpected drama.  So I dropped them off, bid goodnight, and drove back home.  I was exhausted too.  I put the kids to bed and went to my closet where I planned to shed a few tears, and put on my pajamas.  But this day was too rich to end on such a quiet note.  Cold, wet, soggy carpet was waiting for me.  Another blasted busted pipe burst in the wall of MY CLOSET.  You heard me.  MY CLOSET!  With that I fashioned a for sale sign and stuck it in the ground and went to bed.  Just kidding.  If I was going to sell this place I'd a done it the week before when our 400 foot well died and another blasted busted pipe burst in my daughter's room on the same day.  Or I would have done it the time in rained so much we were surrounded in floating manure. 

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The Bolivians (they are actually our dear friends.  Saying, "the Bolivians" just sounds funnier) came, stayed, endured, and enjoyed.  And you know what?  They will come back.  You can't buy, experience or make up this kind of real life entertainment.  I adore this family and consider it a gift and honor that they would travel all this way to visit us...and our chaos.