Success From the Jaws of Disaster

Did you ever have one of those days that despite your best efforts to screw it up and make it a disaster, some how things work out and everything turns out OK? Me either, but today looks like it might turn out to be a good day, wrestling success away from the jaws of disaster. All because my smart phone is a whole lot smarter than the operator.

The success of today actually started with some good fortune yesterday. Well maybe I ought to give you a little background first. I thought I was supposed to deliver my first load of fat lambs to the locker plant on Thursday of this week. This meant that I either needed to deliver them early on Thursday or in the afternoon on Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon and evening were completely booked for me, so I was going to have to deliver early Thursday morning and because I could not be home the night before we decided to get as much ready on Tuesday night as I could. That turned out to be fortunate.

Tuesday night Jennifer, Tatum and I sorted lambs, picked out our replacement ewes and moved the six lambs I wanted to deliver Thursday morning into a smaller pen closer to the loading alley. I lamented about moving the six lambs away from their usual pen and causing them stress. Jennifer and Tatum reminded me that our stress level would be even higher if we had to do all this early Thursday morning.

Doing all of this on Tuesday meant that all I had to do Thursday morning was to hook up the trailer, run the lambs into the alley, load the trailer and I could be gone in a matter of minutes preserving as much beauty sleep for everyone as possible. We came in about dark Tuesday night as the rain was starting to move in feeling pretty good about getting things done early.

Wednesday morning, I woke up and started with my usual morning routine of brewing coffee and watching the news. Because of the work we had done the night before Wednesday was going to be a little more leisurely, all I had to do were my chores and then I could get ready for a full afternoon and evening of meetings away from the farm without worrying about preparing for lamb delivery Thursday morning (or so I thought).

Just as I was preparing to watch the weather and drink my first cup of coffee my smarter than me phone gave the appointed calendar reminder sound. I was puzzled, it was too early to give me the reminder for my afternoon meeting, I wondered what that stupid phone could be doing. It didn’t take me long to figure out what that stupid phone was doing. My smart phone was reminding the stupid human that May 30 was a Wednesday and not a Thursday and that I needed to be leaving now to make it on time. That was when the chaos erupted.

I hollered at Jennifer and Tatum that I needed to get the lambs delivered this morning and not tomorrow. For some reason they did not seem surprised that I would make a mistake like that and pointed out that I merely needed to hook up the trailer and load the lambs. Like a tornado I rushed out of the house and down to hook up the trailer, which I had conveniently parked on the lowest, muddiest part of the farm. After a few minutes of slinging mud that would make any teenage boy excited I got the trailer around and backed up to the loading alley where Tatum had the lambs pushed up and ready to load.

Somehow, I was in the truck, loaded with lambs and on the road in less than a half of an hour. This put me exactly on schedule to get the lambs to the locker plant at the latest possible time of delivery. I had planned on delivering the lambs at 7:00 or earlier not 8:00 but in all fairness I was twenty-three hours earlier than I had planned which would have been a new record had we went off my calendar and not the real official one. In any case, I made the delivery and at the locker plant they seemed to have been expecting me at 8:00 and not earlier, imagine that.

My 8:00 delivery made it, so I returned home just in time to clean up, change clothes and leave for my afternoon meetings, nothing damaged except my anxiety level and self-esteem. As I got ready for the meeting I marveled about how I had gotten everything done I had planned to along with an unplanned trip to the locker plant, I wonder how that happened.

I know how it happened. I was fortunate enough to have married a woman who does not procrastinate and does things early if they can be done early. I am also lucky enough to be just enough tech savvy that I put everything on my smarter than me phone with a built-in reminder. All of this worked together to save me from a total disaster of a day and make things go relatively smoothly.