Everything out in the barn seems to be fine other than a total overload of cuteness. Sundae isn't eating like I wish but she's pretty busy taking care of her three kids, her first priority.
Mamma goats do the strangest thing: to get their kids to nurse they lick their butts. Something about that makes the kid go searching for the teat and start nursing. It's so effective that I can take my finger and tickle a kid's butt and it will go over to momma and nurse.
Don't try this at home.
I got an email this morning inviting me to the 50th reunion for the Ballard H.S. class of 1968.
Yeah, I want to go for that event. I'm also hoping my GP will order up a colonoscopy and the mechanic will say I need a new transmission.
I pretty much had one friend in H.S. and he was killed in a plane crash in 1990. But hey, maybe those of us who were in the orchestra cello section could all get together and play March Slav.
Today's snail mail brought the rebuilt distributor I ordered from Rock Auto that I'll try to get installed into Sally's engine on Monday. I'm cautiously optimistic this is going to fix my idle problem because when I manually operate the vacuum advance mechanism in Sally's distributor and on this rebuilt model there's a HUGE difference. The former returns to the normal position very slowly like it's all gummed up. This one I got today snaps back into place.
It's a delicate job that's easy to get very wrong and you pretty much have one shot at it, so I'll make sure not to do this job after a fourth cup of coffee.
I've got my sermon for tomorrow firmly in head. I won't use any notes, the method I increasingly prefer. I'll finish up some painting as soon as the primer is dry and then go down to Fred to go over it again, preaching it to myself.
It's a fine line - wanting to do my best and not wanting to impress. The former is essential when delivering God's Word and the latter is the surest way to a total FAIL. "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
Lots of prayer that I stay on the right side of that line.
I wrote a few days ago about the detailed table manners we were taught growing up and the strictness with which they were administered. One of my brothers issued a thinly veiled threat to read that post to my mother, in effect tattling on me.
Trust me, that is NOT a cycle he wants to start. The stories I could tell.
But you should understand that I am and have been very grateful for the table manners that were drilled into us. And insistence on things like a properly folded and rehung bath towel, the correct way to make a bed, how to properly walk with a woman, and a dozen other social graces.
I sometimes despair that we're turning into a society of boors. I suppose if everyone sinks to the same level it doesn't make any difference that manners and social conventions die. At the coffee shop awhile back someone posed the question, "Is a man supposed to take his hat off indoors?"
What???
(I sometimes see men wearing caps in church. Un-bee-leevable.)
It starts, of course, with parents (as it did with mine). Methinks most parents are myopic, just trying to get through Tuesday with safety and sanity intact. There's no long range sense of, "This is what I'm trying to produce, this is what I want my son or daughter to be when they leave home." Has ever a more important endeavor been approached in such a haphazard, unplanned way? And to the extent too many parents have thought about the end product they tend to assign the key features to others - to the school system and to the church.
No fifth grade teacher has the time or inclination to teach table manners. Their youth pastor isn't going to teach them how a gentleman or a lady conducts themselves in society. Where will they learn how to make conversation with a stranger, the correct way to leave a table, how to shake someone's hand?
And if one generation's parents fail to teach the social graces it's all but certain the next generation won't. They can't teach what they don't know.
Ok, now I sound like a complete curmudgeon and a Don Quixote rolled into one. The cure: go out to the barn and visit with some day-old goat kids.
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