Coverall Code

I would like to think that I am not superstitious. Most superstitions seem petty and silly but if I am honest I would admit to having a few myself. Things like if wearing the same exact clothes from one ballgame to the next when I was playing and (if I am going to be totally honest) when I was coaching youth sports. Silly things like not stepping on the baseline when walking onto the field in a baseball game. Even now, if my favorite team is winning when I start watching the game and start to do poorly I will stop watching because, obviously, it was my turning the game on that made things go badly.

Sports are one thing but real life is another and even then, I must admit that I have superstitions when it comes to my daily life. If things are going good I try not to talk about them because when I do my fortune seems to change. If I have had a string of bad luck I will change my routine up to help change my luck up and when it does I stay with that routine until I talk about it too much and have to change again. Remember I said superstitions are petty, silly and don’t make sense.

My main, number one superstition is with my chore clothes. During lambing and calving I do not wash my coveralls. This is both rooted in superstition and practicality. Practicality from the stand point that every time you wash chore clothes sort of accident will happen and you will end up just as dirty as before you washed them and this usually happens the first time you wear them.

I guess that also works into the superstition part of the equation. If you wash your coveralls something bad will happen (and get them dirty again). So, I only wash my coveralls sparingly during this time of the year and only after the rest of my family has had an intervention (or Jennifer has just thrown them into the washer daring fate). I cringe as I put on freshly laundered coveralls, knowing that some calamity is about to rear its ugly head.

That is what is making my current dilemma maddening. The ice storm that didn’t happen really did a number on my coveralls. OK, so it was me tripping over the wagon I left out and falling into the mud that caused most of the damage. I would put my coveralls on and they would seem like they weighed twenty extra pounds because of all the wet mud on the legs. However, as the mud dried up in the lots, the legs of my coveralls dried up and just became stiff and crusty.

Lambing season is hard on my cleanliness too. Carrying fresh lambs from one barn to the next and wiping my hands off on the legs adds to the coating of grime and gunk. Pulling lambs, wrestling with the ewes and cleaning pens all take the toll on the sanitary state of my coveralls. I try not to wear them into public this time of the year but when I do I notice the stares of the people around me. Apparently, they do not know or care about the horrible fate that I am saving staving off by making the sacrifice.

To make matters worse this week, I was carrying a lamb from one pen to another. I take the utmost care to make sure the lambs are safe. As I was transporting the lamb, it made a deposit right on and in the front pocket of my bibs. It just so happened to be the pocket I carry my phone in. I was completely oblivious to this until my daughter pointed it out to me. The phone was easily cleaned off and I have almost forgot about it each time I put it up to my face to make a call.

I scrapped the excess gooey excrement off the front of my coveralls and soon it dried leaving only a tell-tale yellowish stain. It was the part that went into the pocket and mixed with the alfalfa leaves, feed and other dirt that caused the biggest problem. I scraped it out the best I could with my pocket knife but the odor lingered. What should I do?

Luckily the weather was nice the next two days following this incident insuring that everything dried nicely. Sure, the coveralls were a little stiff but my good luck remained and I decided not to wash them and tempt fate. With only eight more weeks of lambing and calving to go it will be nip and tuck as to whether I can make it the remainder of the season without breaking down and give into the growing mob demanding a washing. But if I do weaken and give in, it should make for a good story. Of course, maybe by talking about it I will scare off the bad luck.

Winter Preparedness

It looks like winter is finally upon us with the most bitter cold snap of the year. Just like last year, and the year before and the year before that, I am completely unprepared. Each year this first real arctic blast seems to catch me off guard and not ready. Never mind that it is well into the first week of December before we got really cold weather or that we have had a couple months of unseasonably nice temperatures. I am simply not ready.

Jennifer tells me that my unpreparedness is a chronic condition of my own doing caused by my tendency to procrastinate. OK, she didn’t put it to me that nicely and she may have said it when she mentioned that we should power wash the lambing barn on one of those nice sunny, seventy degree late October days. I think my reply to her was that it was too nice and I wanted to do something else that was of equal importance in my mind, I would do the power washing later when I had more time.

Despite the theory of my wife, I am sure that my unpreparedness is a result of an early winter and global climate change or something along that line. I just assumed that the seventy degree sunny days would last until at least Christmas. It is not my fault that the polar air couldn’t wait to make an appearance, who would have thought it would be here this early?

Last week we had our first little taste of cold weather when the morning lows dipped down into the twenties. That was when I made the shocking discovery that I did not have any insulated bibs. It did eventually come back to me that at the end of calving season my bibs were in such bad shape and so dirty that Jennifer strongly suggested I burn them rather that subject our washing machine to the terror of trying to clean them. I believe it came with the statement that the settings only went to heavily soiled and not gross. It was probably for the best, without all the grime holding them together they would have disintegrated anyway.

So, I had no insulated bibs and could not find any gloves. Did you ever wonder just where the gloves go? Each year I buy the biggest bundle of cotton gloves I can find and each year I am scrambling to find two gloves by March. As for my insulated hat with ear flaps, who knows where it might be. I am sure it will show up later (probably about April).

The prediction is for the bitter cold to be here tomorrow morning. I sure hope there are a pair of overalls that will fit me somewhere in Manhattan. Finding my size is not easy. I know if I lost weight clothes would be much easier to find and I will get right on that, later. I really don’t think I procrastinate, I don’t have time for it. Besides, without my insulated coveralls I might freeze to death if I wasn’t a little chubby.

Aside from my personal comfort, I am woefully unprepared for cold weather. I probably ought to have the tank heaters ready to go, barns bedded down and water hoses drained. I am sure that will all get done in the next few hours. I might even have time to get the chimney cleaned so I can fire up the wood stove and have a place to thaw my cold hands out. That really only matters if I find a little time to get some firewood cut. I guess these are all things that could have been done earlier, but what was the hurry.

The sad truth is that I do often fly by the seat of my pants. That would be an uninsulated, cold, hopefully not frost bitten seat of my pants. I have heard that preparation and planning do make life easier but what is the fun in that and where is the challenge? I think the thrill of the deadline and the exhilaration of the near disaster are much more exciting.

It is very difficult to plan for everything and who has the time to get all of that done ahead of time. I am sure the days are shorter and minutes go by faster these days. The weather should have given me more warning than the seven to ten days I got from the long-term forecast. These are all the excuses that will be going through my head as I am power washing the lambing barn on a day that is below freezing. Oh well, at least I will be warmer in my new insulated bibs and gloves.