1. Dreamed the night before last that Cailin and I were in the pool table room of Grandpa's house, looking down out at the field, down where there may have been a few workers doing something or other. In the dream there's no fence or ditch that separates the field from the road, and there's a cement truck that pulls in hard off of the road, swinging and broadsiding on of the figures down on the field, who collapses. Horrified, Cailin and I drop whatever it was that we were doing and rush out to see if they're still alive. It's a little later, and we're back in the house, and the man who'd been hit turns out to have been my coworker Oscar. If he's dead then I don't know how I'm going to continue working- but thankfully he's still alive.
2. Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi is about a group of future scientists who have strange, impossible-to-explain things happen aboard their starship, where it eventually turns out that the things are happening because they're characters in a Star Trek-like television show that plays fast and loose with its science. It's a pretty funny book, though truth be told there was only one occasion that caused me to laugh out loud. It's still worth reading because of those three codas mentioned in the title. It's worth reading for those three codas alone. They're, among the most raw human honest things I've read in my life, and each is better than the last. And, like, the rest of the book is pretty okay too, worth reading on its own and not that thick so it shouldn't take longer than a few days if you want. Anyway.
3. At lunch yesterday Dad handed me a couple of bags of cookies that he'd made, for me to give to my coworkers. I've got two of those, more or less. Usually it's Oscar who helps me feed calves, but a couple of days a week it's Joaquim. Before feeding the calves their dinner yesterday I found the opportunity to tell Oscar my dream, and hand him one of the two bags of cookies. I think Joaquim was off yesterday so I kept the other bag in my pocket till I could see him.
Work's at 7:00, and I'm usually pretty punctual and sometimes clock in at 6:59, which happened this morning: walking in, a loader had driven up behind me, lowered its bucket for me to get in, to drive me to the barn. It was Brent, and as I clocked in he told me that with both Joaquim and Oscar in today, if everyone scheduled to be in the barn today came in, I can take the day off. (If not, it would be Oscar and me feeding, Joaquim in the parlor helping to milk.) We'd see by around 7:30, but until then, I started getting prepped to fill the calf bottles, because it takes me just about that long. Prepare everything by the calf room (including heating things up, rinsing things off, pouring in hot water to keep the bottles warm and adding formula which will be mixed into their milk when that gets poured in,) swing the tractor around to in front of the milk room, fill up the bottles with milk, put the nipples on them. We can usually leave around 7:50.
So I finish up there, head back to find Oscar. I'd seen Joaquim, in the parlor, so I'm not sure by this point if he is going to help with breakfast, but when he sees I'm ready he heads into the break room to get better dressed for outside. Brent had disappeared somewhere, not sure where - so, was I supposed to gauge for myself if he'd let me leave early? But he's with Oscar, in the break room, Oscar finishing up telling him the story of me telling him my dream and then giving him cookies. Brent says I can leave if I want, and goes off elsewhere, and Oscar asks me what I want to do and I say I'm here actually to give Joaquim some cookies as well. And it's perfect, and it feels so scripted, and I decide to stay to feed for breakfast, because it goes a lot quicker with three people than with only two.
And then right before feeding the hutches, Joaquim saved my bacon-- so I caught myself in time I didn't dump all the bottles to the ground when I dumped out the hot water from the bottle tray-panel-tub-thing (it's usually closed, bottles held in and locked by the top grate, but the tray had been opened from feeding the group pens before the individual hutches got fed) but he called my name and I caught myself, and everything turned out non-disastrously (maybe the bottles would have gone everywhere, or maybe I would have caught myself in time had he not been there, or maybe I wouldn't have tilted the tray at such a steep angle if Joaquim hadn't been with us in the first place so it'd be fine anyway, who's to say.) And feeding the calves in the hutches I could make sure that the right calves received the right bottles, because the youngest ones get a special mix and I counted it out just right based on how many were born the most recently.
So in Redshirts, they try not to get caught up in The Narrative, because it's where bad things happen and where nothing makes sense... but in my experience of it, this morning felt so perfect, like a Narrative, only my writer is a lot better apparently, and it was humbling and lovely. Kinda working out how to deal with these emotion things, and that feeling, like being caught up in something like a well-crafted story, certainly is one of those.
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