No Such Thing as Plan A

As is usually the way of the world, neither scenario A or scenario B played out as I had planned.

K arrived home late last night, exhausted and completely incapable of processing another event, activity or anything other than the exuberance every last inhabitant of the trailer was expressing upon her entrée through the door. I was jazzed; my preferred plan A was coming to fruition!

I woke up this morning, filled with the anticipation of a kid on Christmas morning, only five hundred times worse. I imagine my father must have felt this same way a thousand times over every Easter as he watched the agonizing process of my sister and me looking for the hidden Easter eggs. Inevitably, we would miss one or two, which would be found at a much later date in a much less appetizing state.

I was beginning to think this morning that I, too was destined for this agony. Like Sisyphus, doomed to push the boulder up the hill and helplessly watch it roll back down, I was growing more and more certain that none of the parties to my big surprise were going to cooperate. The boys, Tumnus II and Digory, are so docile that, unlike the other kids who have resided in the trailer-side kennel, they don’t cry out a lot. I made up reasons to go outside and try to stir them up. I repeatedly looked out the window at them, encouraging them to say hello, feed me, jump in a lake, anything. . . to no avail. K got up briefly, but retired back to bed, exhausted, and fell back asleep, certain to incorporate any kid calls I could coerce from the boys directly into a dream.

When K finally made her way to the window and saw them there, she was breathless, speechless, giggling, crying tears of joy. She did that absolutely adorable thing where she covers her mouth with both hands and squeezes her eyes shut.

Phoebe and her husband have really done a phenomenal job with these boys. They are as sweet and as tame as can be. We took them out into the yard, and then they walked all the way around the pond without leashes. They just followed K along, stopping to graze and sample various and sundry leaves and greeneries along the way.

I was able to catch some video footage:

So, although my “picture perfect” image of how everything would go once again fails to predict the actual course of events here at the farm, I got plenty else that turns out to be better than I could ever have imagined.