Excerpt

Chapter Seven

Baby Holds Out

Someone much wiser than me once said, "Life is what happens while you are making other plans."

First of all, it was something I‘d never planned to do—live on a ranch; raising cattle, for heaven’s sake! I was an interior designer, after all. What would ranching do to my nails?

But Carl had his dream, and manicured nails or no, I was swept off my feet by the love of cows.

It was glorious. It was scary. It was fun.

Our own 120 acres of privacy and pristine beauty in the foothills of western Trinity County was sparsely populated with retirees, mountain men, pot growers and city refugees like us.

Of course we wanted to be there for holidays, but we also had obligations back down south. One Thanksgiving, however, Baby had other plans—plans which we had not anticipated.

It was two weeks before Thanksgiving and Baby, our first calf, was—we judged—within about a week of being a mother herself, and this was to be her first calf.

In our ignorance we were sure that Baby would oblige and give birth on cue, in plenty of time to let us get back to civilization, to our Thanksgiving with Carl’s son, Tim.

We packed enough food in the pantry for the expected lying-in period, but by the beginning of the second week we were running low on fresh vegetables and milk and Baby didn’t look any more pregnant than when we had first arrived.

We had done all the necessary repairs and pulled all the weeds in the flower garden.

Meanwhile, Baby stayed close to the barn so she wouldn’t have to heave her ponderous body too far to get to the hay. She was, after all, eating for two.

By the following Monday, our fresh provisions spent and the canned tuna supply running low, we came to terms with the reality that we needed to make a run to the Kettenpom Store for iceberg lettuce, oranges and bananas, plus some cheap port and sherry to see us through the cold winter evenings spent around the fire, reading to each other or even talking, things that in Suburbia with the ubiquitous television, we often forgot to do.

We spent a good part of the next morning planning meals for the week to come (just in case), making lists, driving the seven or so rugged miles to the store, and of course, visiting.

By the time we had shopped for canned goods, wine and lettuce and driven the same dusty, bumpy miles home, we needed to make lunch.

After an uninteresting salad of iceberg lettuce and unripe tomatoes, Carl went down to the barn to check on Baby.