Eudora

Writing for fun--it's been a while. Sometimes when a person's heart breaks, pieces go flying. And if the break is bad enough, some of those pieces fly so far that they get lost somewhere in the person's soul. I lost my music piece; I also lost my writing piece. Funny, seeing how those were probably the two biggest pieces of my heart.

It's not easy to find the pieces and patch them back in place. Imagine attempting to place an edge-piece of a puzzle somewhere in the middle, and you'll have it about right. Anyhow, the point is that I haven't written this way for a while. But Laura did it--she found the piece for me, and now I've somehow got to get that edge-piece snuggly planted in the middle of my puzzle heart.

What do all these things have in common?

-Coalville

-The D.I.

-sprouts

-poop

Okay, so really nothing, except Eudora.

It was a better than average day. Last week of April; a Thursday, I believe. No rain (or snow, for that matter), and I was driving to a random, little, Utah town: Coalville. Bjorn napped on the passenger side. Only a 2 1/2 hour drive.

Remember what I said before, about pieces flying? Well this was after the pieces flew. Did I mention that flying pieces such as these tend to run off with chunks of aforesaid person's sanity? It is true. They say people do crazy things, when in love . . . I'm proof that after the fact, crazy becomes less of a random display of affectionate actions and more of an irrevocable state of pathetic being.

Basically, the paragraph above is stating my mental state as unstable.

I'm kind of crazy.

Coalville. People asked me, "Aren't there people with sheep in Cache Valley? Why go all the way to Coalville?" Well, there is nobody named Vera in Cache Valley. Vera lived down Elkhorn road in Coalville, and she had a little nursery full of baby, orphan lambs who needed moms. So I drove to Coalville. We got lost a couple times trying to find Elkhorn road, and had to stop and eat our turkey, ham, and sprout sandwiches. A couple dirt roads and a few rickety bridges later, Vera introduced us to the babies. Out of the bunch there was one white one. It was a rather sad-looking waif, skinny as all get-out and smaller than the others.

"Is that one a girl?" I asked Vera, pointing to the scrawny bag of bones in the back. Vera verified that the lamb was a ewe. and she was just born the night before. "Then that's the one I want." I didn't think twice or have any difficulty in making my decision. We loaded the lamb into the car. She rode inside a giant green tub that I purchased at the D.I. the day before. I sat next to her, and she basically screamed the whole 2 1/2 hours home. When she wasn't screaming, she was going to the bathroom. Occasionally she would sit down and snooze for 10 minutes, but at the next bump or pothole she was back up and wailing.

I decided to name her Eudora, after the author Eudora Welty. I was debating between Eudora and Willa, but after seeing the spunk in that baby's eyes, she was clearly a Eudora, not a Willa. Bjorn wanted to call her Queen BathSHEEPa.

We finally got home to Logan, and Bjorn got Eudora to drink her bottle. Then we tucked her into bed. The queen slept in the bathroom that night. Well, she slept until 4 a.m. when she started crying, "Maaaaaamaaa! Maaaama!" I knew that meant me. Dragging myself out of bed and slipping into my blue slippers, I trudged into the bathroom and sat down on the floor. Eudora wobbled on her baby legs over to me, lay down with her chin in my lap, and fell asleep.

The queen slept in the bathroom that night, and so did the nurse maid.

Thank you, Laura, for inspiring me to write again. And yes, you can link this post to your blog, if you like. That was my first day with Eudora. Since then, oh man . . . Lots of wonderful days. I will write more soon.