Indeed it was a fairly good day – sunny, cold in the morning when I was tending to all the animals. Breakup will be interesting this year – if it comes later, then we won’t have much mud to contend with.

I am looking forward to playing in the water running out of the horse enclosure. I am also looking forward to brushing them out, and having their hair come out in sheets.

What’s the difference between looking forward to and hope? I think that looking forward to is a form of certitude. For example, I know that the pen will thaw out and that the horses will shed. These are givens. I don’t know what I am hoping for. Maybe hope would center around the question of when. As in, I hope that breakup occurs at the end of April.

Brushing Raudi

Dunno. Looking forward to and hope are like two separate fertilized eggs in the womb.

Yes, it was a fairly good day, weather-wise and otherwise. I figured out that I am totally lacking in social graces in a social setting – totally lacking, because I have never had to rely upon this – it is learned, and perhaps at an early age.

I do remember my social graces blunders – for example, twice I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu – first at the woman’s press club meeting when I was a reporter working for the Hampton Beach News in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire and then when I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and on the search committee for a liberal arts dean. Both times I ordered lobster.

Not only is lobster expensive, but it’s also messy. Looking back, I now realize that ordering a simple salad would have changed my career trajectory. Instead of being thought of as the dweeb who finished her expensive meal after everyone else, I would have been thought of as a dumb shit who was focused on getting an expensive meal, I would have been thought of as a young upwardly mobile professional who was focused on moving up in the journalism/academic world.

And just look at me now. I may in a few weeks go to another muckity muck professionally related meal – it now will not matter what I order (although I suspect that I will end up eating what’s placed before me) because I am no longer an . . .upwardly. . . mobile. . . professional. Rather I am an older . . . immbobile . . . dirty. . . grubby . . . hippie who is running a grassroots free enterprise project.

So, perhaps this is an instance (finally) when I have nothing to lose and so I ought to again order lobster or the most expensive thing on the menu. Yeah, it’s now time to coast along, and rather than think about my failings, acknowledge that they are behind me.

Let’s hope that the BLBP can find an up and coming executive director who is young and has their act together.

Next: 72. 3/13/26: When will the story end, and how?