Almost Losing the Lambs!

I didn’t notice it happening, but somewhere in the course of their little lives, I’ve grown very attached to our brood of lambs.  Yesterday they gave us quite the scare, and I was overcome by a terror I hadn't realized myself capable of.

The time had come to dock and neuter them, a process I'd been dreading since I'd found out the awful truth; we would be placing the tight rubber band around their tales, and worse still, around the poor little boys’ crown jewels, manually and without sedation.  What kind of barbaric world did we live in?  Wasn’t there another way?  Tom told me quietly that this would be the quickest method and the least stressful for the babies.  

I felt like a betrayer as I chased the first boy around, knowing that when he eventually surrendered, he would be calm in the knowledge that like every other time, the only fate that awaited him was a big, smoochy cuddle.  Not so.  I got him, panting, and led him over to the log, where Tom instructed me to sit with his tale accessible.  Tom nursed the tale and slid the band on like a pro, and I made myself look, determined not to close my eyes lest a mistake get made.  I had expected the little munchkin to be squealing, but he had adopted an eerie state of resignation, as if he knew that it would be easier that way.  Even as I lowered him awkwardly to the ground, his limbs dangling so Tom could get to the second job (cough cough), he simply lent back against me, pulse quick.  Tom had the worst job because he had to grab the poor little bugger’s balls and slide the band on... and then, thank God, it was done.  We cooed wildly over the lamb, told him how brave he was and dropped him back into the paddock.  

The girls were easier, lacking as they were in any private parts needing to be severed, but of course they made a huge fuss.  Drama queens.  With relief we grabbed the last boy, the first born, the big one.  He had gotten almost too fat for me to hold and I refrained from telling Tom as the frightened thing struggled and squealed that it was all I could to just to hang onto him.  My arms were burning, Tom couldn’t find the second ball... then, in an instant, we were finished.  I breathed a huge sigh as I lowered the lamb back to the ground... but the sigh caught in my throat.  He was limp, his legs flailing out at odd angles.  I took one look at him and screamed ‘He’s gone into shock!’  

My heart accelerated to an almost unbearable pace, and for what felt like a lifetime, the three of us, Val having heard the scream, were dumbstruck.  The lamb was opening and closing his eyes, groggy and semi conscious.   

‘Pick him up Tom!  He needs to be kept warm!’  It was my voice shouting.  I didn’t have a clue how I knew that, but some base instinct seemed to have taken over, and I wasn’t going to fight it.  Tom scooped the thing up, holding it tight as I massaged its legs.  Val ran for a blanket, and in no time the lamb was wrapped up and being carried at urgent pace back to his mother.  Skirting the edge of the front paddock, the Mum began bleating like crazy, and suddenly, the lamb had life.  He squirmed slightly, and then let out an almighty ‘Baaaaahhhhhh!’ 

We took that as our cue to return him to his mother, and he did manage to get himself under her.  We held our breath as he tried to extract some comfort-milk.  It was only when he fell clumsily onto his back that the terror took over.  He wasn’t better!  He stumbled around like a drunk, failing at the task of staying upright.  

‘Shit!’  I breathed.  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have put him down!’  

An intense and anxious debate fired up, and for a brief moment we were all a mess, yelling our opinion without hearing the others’.  

Tom: ‘It will stress him out more to catch him now!  We’ll just have to leave the care to his Mum!'

Val:  ‘It’s too late now!  We’ve done all we can!’

Me, crying:  ‘But maybe it’s the band that’s causing the shock!  Maybe we should catch him and cut the band off!’  

We were getting nowhere, and eventually I accepted Tom’s point.  It would probably be worse for him now to be chased and caught again in that state.  I hated myself for letting him go too soon.  Tom and Val went back to their gardening as a method of distraction, but I couldn’t.  All I could do was pace up and down next to the flock, crying.  Every time I looked over fear would grip my chest once more; the lamb was still lying down, eyes semi-shut, unfocused.  Every few minutes I would pace over to Tom; ‘There must be something we can do!’  Tom would assert again that he believed we had done the right thing.  

Finally, I got the idea to call the vet, and her tone spoke a thousand words.  It was like when you’re on a plane and you look at the Flight Attendant to gauge whether you should be nervous.  The woman on the end was calm, saying, ‘Don’t worry just yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if he recovered.  Remember, it’s a stressful procedure.’ 

And as I sat watching him for the next hour, he did.  First his eyes focused, then he sat up normally, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet.  When he finally stood up and succeeded in getting a drink from Mum, relief and happiness welled up inside me so much that I was overcome.  I had been very, very frightened.                 

The Joy of not being a Slut

Save for a few fancy-free months, I’ve spent my entire adult life in a relationship. 

My first real boyfriend was an introverted goth I’d had a crush on since he was an introverted nerd in primary school.  We were friends and one confused night we made out.  I grabbed my opportunity and claimed girlfriend status, and he was such a pushover he didn’t fight it.  A year later he changed his phone number and hooked up with the guy he’d been copping blowies from all along.  I was 17.

Adrian followed immediately afterward.  So immediately that when I tracked down Mr Gothy and stormed his house to express my dissatisfaction at his method of exit, Adrian was the one that dropped me at the door.  Unlike the first guy, he actually pursued me.  His romancing was good enough to secure a solid 6 year incumbency in my bed. 

When he got sick of me I tried super hard to stay single.  I was actually really enjoying it, once I got the hang of not measuring my worth by how many pick up attempts came my way at the pub.  (Way less then when I was attached!)  But Tom came along and was quite persuasive. 

Do I have an attachment problem?  Obviously.  I always think how effortlessly cool and independent it sounds when people declare, ‘I had to let another guy go because I’m scared of commitment’, as if it’s some sort of candid admission.  Scared of commitment?  I’m fucking petrified of being alone!  Now, that actually sounds uncool.    

When I was with Adrian I was convinced I would eventually fall victim to the dreaded ‘trapped woman’ syndrome, whereby a previously sane person realises at 45 that they’ve missed out on the whole gallivanting about being a scallywag part of life, and is hitherto possessed by their neglected sex drive to go forth and be a raging middle aged slut, ending their marriage and forever fucking up their life.  But I’ve since re-thought that.  Seeing as none of my partners have been prison wardens, the only part of the scallywaging I’ve missed out on is the being a huge slut part.  Which if I’m honest I got in nice and early at high school.  As you would know, I’ve partaken in more partying and drug consumption than your average swinging singolite, so if you see me, fat, pasty and 50, gyrating like a desperate hooker in some ‘over 30’s’ venue in Moonee Ponds, it’s more likely to be a result of a disgusting attempt at reclaiming that part of my life than any allusions at having missed out on it in the first place.  I reckon I’m clear on the trapped woman front.           

What do you think, what have I missed out on?

I’ve never known the single life.  I am most likely missing whatever finely tuned set of social skills arise from that existence.  But, hey, I’m really good at whatever it is you get good at form being in a couple for freakin’ forever.  Compromise.  I'm swell at that. 

When I was with Adrian I used to do that thing where every time you get drunk you fantasize about what you’re missing out on.  In the morning you’re back to normal and you can’t work out which part of you you should listen to.  But it doesn’t happen anymore.  I feel truly fulfilled in the relationship I’m in now.  I’m at peace with being a serial monogamist.  It’s been officially removed from the incredibly long list of things about which I fret every day.  Hoorah.    

 

Not a Fuck Up; Just a Writer

 

It’s my birthday today.  I’m 28.  That’s pretty close to 30, and when you’re pretty close to 30 I figure you can no longer lay claim to the ‘very young’ tag.  I bade farewell to the rose coloured glow of uber-youth a year ago, in a fit of tears and snot and with about as much dignity as a cavorting drunk in the emerging dawn at Revolver.  

It was a year ago that I decided I wasn’t young anymore.  Youthful, yes.  But not the kind of young where people forgive you your indiscretions purely because ‘She’s just a baby!’  Not the kind of young where it’s perfectly acceptable to be flitting around from shitjob to shitjob to nojob, in fact it’s a rite of passage.  Not the kind of young where you can do just about anything- drugs included, and it’s all just part of the fun.   

   

The day I turned 27 I decided that no matter how I framed it, it would be both delusional and desperate to continue to lay claim to the young-and-dumb label.  I had landed un-ceremoniously in my late 20’s, and I wasn’t happy.  I didn’t have a job.  My writing was making about as much progress as my dole cheque increases, and my parents didn’t approve of my boyfriend.   I was homeless.  Tom and I were planning on traveling, taking some time out to figure out where to go next, so had moved out of our Brunswick share house.  For some reason we had done it just shy of Christmas, meaning we had to wait it out for the family gathering we had promised to go to.  I had parked at my parents house, in the tiny room at the end of the corridor where Mum had laid me down a few days after being born, and that’s where I found myself, heaving great gooby-laden sobs into the pillow, trying to figure out how on Earth I’d gotten here.  I was 27 today, and my shambles of a life could no longer be excused by tender youth.  I was just a fuck up. 

How had I gotten there?  I’d been swept up in the whole Brunswick-hippy mantra of abhorring the system while simultaneously suckling from its welfare-provisioning-teat.  I’d justified my lifestyle choice by squeezing under the ‘struggling artist’ umbrella with all the other drug-guzzling alternative types, and spent far more time partaking in the drug-guzzling than the artistry.  Somehow in the bubble it had all seemed perfectly fine, but now I was pushing 30 and with sudden and acute horror realizing that it totally fucking wasn’t.             

I’m 28 today and I’m not sobbing and I’m not in bed.  Nor am I freaking out about getting another year closer to 30.  My life isn’t within spitting range of meeting the expectations of 12 year old Katie; no highly paid career, still in hospitality, and not yet with child.  She would have been horrified.  But I have two pigs, and enough money to buy myself a new dress.  And unlike last year, I’m happy.  I spent so many years thinking I should be something more than a writer, but deep down inside, not really wanting to do anything else.  So I procrastinated, socializing and taking drugs, hoping that a career would magically manifest itself.  It didn’t, and I suppose the revelation of last year’s birthday was the kick up the ass I needed to go get what I really wanted.  I am happy now, because I’m finally letting myself be ‘just’ a writer.       

I wasn’t ready to be 27.  I am ready to be 28.  Maybe by 29 I will have actually sold a few books!