Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Death is Coming...

Started my first feed crew of the semester tonight. To start with we've got fewer people than we did last semester, all of the sophomores being off doing their internships, which means more work for the rest of us.

Then I walked into the block barn (my assigned area for today) only to find that someone (someone meaning two of the HTM program kids) had left us a present. Two manure carts brimming with shit and shavings, left in the aisle, plus a pile of crap that no one had bothered to pick up, as per the rules of the barn. The rules are, if it comes out of your horse, you clean it up. Seriously, how freaking hard is it to roll the damn cart out to the pit and dump it, then roll it back. It's not like you have to carry the horseshit forkful by forkful out the doors and to the pile. They were even the two-wheel carts and not the wheel barrows!

On top of that, it appears that no one on the last feed crew was capable of remembering the proper use of a broom in the south end of the block barn for at least the last three days. I swept up a half a cart full of shavings that were coating the aisle.

Let me put it this way... we got all of the hay fed in about fifteen minutes. After that, I grabbed a broom and started sweeping on the south end. I was the last one done, and everyone else completed the watering, inside and out, sweeping the other end of the barn, the other barn, and the hitch rails outside before I got one end of the block barn swept.

I'm ready to stab people. I don't even want to shoot them because while the sensation of the little explosion is a satisfying one at this moment I want the visceral pleasure of feeling the knife slide in, and the sucking feeling as it is twisted before I pull it out.*

Meanwhile, I've got myself a mixed drink, I have no idea what I'm going to do for dinner but I need to eat something, and I'm exhausted with a sore back from shoving thirty pounds of filth around with a crappy broom. (Do you have any idea how much loose sawdust it takes to make thirty pounds?!?)

I'm going to bed early tonight, and laying on my back for a half an hour with the electric blanket turned up.

*Disclaimer for paranoid, uptight people with no sense of proportion: No, I'm not going to really stab someone. Hay bales, maybe. But I'm not going to stab a real person. I'm just pissed off and it's an extremely satisfactory mental image. No cops need to be called. Really.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you ever twisted your knife in a haybale? I wonder what the chances are of breaking a blade in a tight bale.

As for the mess you had to clean up, I can imagine the type kids who left it...

HollyB said...

Oh I definitely think some special delivery packages are in order for the inconsiderate, lazy, irresponsible, f***tards who left all that mess!
Since you'll be home tis weekend, why not get some special "patties" and leave them on their desks, in their tack, on their saddles, or any place else where they will get the message not to "mess" with FarmGirl, again.