Even the things you naturally do can become burdens…

…when they’re forced on you.

Yesterday’s experiment with D doing the mid-day horse feeding went so well he decided he’d also take over the 6am feeding. As you can imagine, I begged and pleaded for him to have a change of heart*.

And I went to bed last night a bit early, as I’ve been doing lately, fully intending to stay in bed for as long in the morning as I freaking wanted to. This turned out to be 6:30 and would have been longer except starting around 5 Tobie kept coming in to see if I was done laying about. “Are you getting up?” “Are you getting up now?” And then around 6:30 he just declared, “Okay, look. You’re either getting up or showing me how to work the food bucket.”

I found this funny because I normally get up around five anyway and think nothing of it. And what with Tobie’s obvious needs I even usually go right into action. Adding a quick fifteen minute trip to the neighbors’ to the routine isn’t that much of a burden. But being required to do it every single goddam day without fail or falter kind of is for some reason and I’m happy to be done with it.

Apparently the 6am feeding went so well that D decided it was time to catch up with all the barn disorder horses can cause in three weeks, all in one morning session. I arrived at 8:30 to find him sweeping out the second of the two stalls, with elaborate plans to fix misarranged floor pads and clean up the hay room. This tired him out quickly and I suggested it might not be completely necessary to get everything done in a single session, particularly since overdoing it might set back his recovery. But it’s good to see him recovering so well.

No new news about L’s recovery, and no news isn’t necessarily good news but I can hope. Best case is she stays symptom-free and gets released as soon as she tests negative, which optimistically might be sometime next week.

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*I did not do this at all.