Perspective

Yesterday I was feeling a bit sorry for myself. I started the day with a dentist appointment, then had a heap of urgent accounting to do, which proved almost impossible with a hugely stroppy toddler and a decrepit computer that didn't want to play. And then I started getting increasingly panicked phone calls from the trucking bloke, held up elsewhere trying to load recalcitrant woolly sheep, and unable to contact R to let him know he could let the yarded sheep out. Apparently R's mobile was receiving just fine, but he wasn't answering. No response to the 2way either.

Eventually I had to wake the sleeping stroplet to go driving around the farm looking for him. He wasn't in the hay paddocks, he wasn't in the shed (although his ute was), and after waiting around there for an hour or so we had to drive down the road to the hayshed, where we found the guys unloading the last of a load of hay, R's fully functional mobile in the front of the truck. I delivered the message and a sharp slapping- what if Farmboy was unconscious or I broke my leg or the house was burning down? And then I sulked for a few hours, and when R got home I told him that next time he can do the squealing toddler gig, and I'll do anything else. Anything.

But really... yesterday R started the day at the crack of dawn, getting sheep into the yards. He spent the day carting horrible itchy hay that brings up red welts on bare skin and sends his hayfever off the scale, in the muggy heat that precedes a storm. He got a verbal slapping from his very cranky better half, moved the yarded sheep back out to the paddocks, got a phone call from the trucking bloke letting him know that things had changed and if the sheep were still in the yards they could pick them up in ten minutes. He went back to hay carting until it got dark, and came in for a quick bite of dinner and romp with his son (at 8.30pm! Curse you, daylight saving!) and then he went back up to the shed to crutch 80 sheep, alone. I don't know what time he got home and crashed into bed beside me, but we lay there a while listening to the thunderstorm rains soaking any hay left in the paddocks. He was up again at 5am to get the sheep back into the yards for the trucks at dawn.

My head is throbbing from toddler squeals and accounting stress and if I never see another spreadsheet it will be too soon. But sometimes I think I do get the easier end of the deal.

(but if anyone has any tips on dealing with those high pitched toddler squeals that make your ears ring, I'd love to hear them. Once my hearing comes back...)