The Truth about Chores

Here's a secret...I don't actually mind doing chores. Even at 8 months pregnant, I don't really mind doing chores. Despite the bone-chillingly cold temps we have had recently, I don't mind doing chores. It's crazy but it's true. I am tired of having to pull on three layers of long johns, undershirts, T-shirts, pants, wool socks, sweatshirts, and jackets that no longer close over my belly. I am tired of having to go bathroom before we leave for chores, before I start chores, during chores, before I leave the barn, and when I get home from chores. I am tired of having to crawl out of my nice cozy flannel sheet-covered bed on chilly mornings only to have to put on barn clothes that seem to shrink with each wearing and venture out into sub-zero temps to deal with poopy, temperamental bovines.

But chores, themselves...It's relaxing. There is this almost poetic rhythm that becomes second nature once you've been milking for a while. You move from cow to cow dipping, wiping, putting milkers on, taking them off. There's the soothing click of the pulsators that sound out the steady heartbeat of the milking system, the swish of milk through the hoses, the clunk of the pump turning on, the metallic *clink* of the milkers being hung up. It's music, after a fashion, with harmonies of swatting tails, tip-toeing hooves, and the 'whoof' of a cow coughing up her cud. The beauty of milking is that it's never the same. Different people milking, different cow order, added cow pie cleanups, etc. all add to the musical elements of chores. It's a randomly precise choreography that varies in texture each time yet with the same results in the end-a large increase in the milk level in the bulk tank.

Perhaps I am just crazy, in a sane sleep-deprived way that is, but I really don't mind chore duty. I just wish I could do chores without having to wedge my burgeoning belly into too-tight barn duds and brave the chilly, icy outdoors to get there.