Tara, HDYEUH girl

I kind of like being the "How Did You End Up Here?" (emphasis usually on the 'here' and occasionally the 'you') girl. Though my replies are not terribly inspired: "Umm. I dunno. The internet?" Or: "Umm. I like goats," the questioner never listens to them anyway. They either look hard at the breasts tattooed on my arm* and buy some cheese, or they look hard at the breasts tattooed on my arm** and do not buy some cheese.

A boy tried to hit on me the other day. He said he was "quite taken with me." OOOooooOOOooh. I told him I work on a goat farm. He replied: "I love goats!"

I was not impressed.

Reminiscence: When I Was Impressed, by tara louise.
When the gecko that lives in my trailer walked across the key pad of my laptop, and managed to spell: "pih." Apparently he was not impressed.


*for those of you who do not know me very well, the 'breasts' are not out of context. The tattoo is not just breasts on my arm. They are part of a larger tattoo. Yes, it is of a woman. Yes, she is naked. No, she is not me.

**these are the same breasts.

When to not ride 78.4 miles

When you think you're only going to ride 40. I tell you, the difference between 40 miles and 78.4 is truly astonishing. When you're on your bike. With your bikini on under your bike shorts. You have five bananas. And all of the beaches are closed due to swarms of tiger sharks.

Such circumstances as these--particularly when paired with a certain amount of heedless spontaneity--render a 40 mile ride a long one indeed.

Postscript Regarding Heedless Spontaneity in Hawaii:
Always. Always always always look at a map. LOOK, don't glance. Don't think "Oh, there's that road down there that eventually links up with this road that goes back my way, sort of." NEVER think that. Unless you have more than five bananas.

note: If ever you need know, the lady at the Subway in the middle of nowhere is really nice. She'll even encourage you to put ice in your water bottles when she lets you fill them up at the fountain drink station. Kudos, you, Subway lady!

mealking

Milking the goats is such a pleasure.
Let me walk you through it.

What I see:
goat butts.
(many many many of them)

Let's try that again, a little closer:







What they see:






Hey girls!
They eat and enjoy the view while I milk them and try desper- ately to catch their many poohs in a bucket so they don't scatter across the floor and get trampled into the concrete which I then have to scrub.





Eat up girls.
Make more milk.




cute, eh?
The one in the center, peering around the post is Truffles. She's not the brightest light in the barn, but she makes up for it with sheer mulishness. Hi Truffles!

Rodgers and Hammerstein

Song

In my own little corner

in my own little chair

I can be whatever I want to be

on the wings of my fancy

I can fly anywhere

and the world will open its arms to me

I'm a young Norwegian princess

...or a goatmaid

What girl needs anything else?

the end.

and a banana

Food Abhorrence Warning: This post contains extensive reference to bananas. May contain nuts.

I can already envision the day, sometime in the future, when I will look back fondly upon my Hawaii experience and be reminded of...bananas.

I am immersed in bananas. Bananas punctuate my existence. It's true. To illustrate, I have written a short interactive essay entitled "My Existence"--for which your only task is to insert a banana wherever you see punctuation. Any punctuation. (Apostrophes voluntary). When you reach the end, please put down your pencils and have a banana.

"My Existence"

Well it's another lovely day on the Hawaii Island Goat Dairy. The ladies have been milked; the babies fed. Although it has been a long morning, it is not yet time for that second cup of tea. First I must unload the hay from the truck, then I shall have my cuppa. And maybe a biscuit. After tea my chores for the day include: mucking the small pens, remulching the garden, planting some tomatoes, and messing with Otis. But what I'm really looking forward to is trying my first batch of goat yoghurt at noontime! (Maybe I'll make a smoothie). Either way, at 4:00 I get to "dip cheese" and thereafter the evening is mine! Maybe I'll pack dinner into my tainted Camelbak and go for a stroll... ..

cake or death?

Though the sun is shining a chill runs down the spine of Nancy. The birds have ceased their song and the air is still. Suddenly an horrible monstrosity blots out the sun. The sky darkens and a shadow creeps across the field.

They try to run.

They try to hide.

But they can't escape.

They're fenced in. And the fence is electric.

* * *

It is terrible to signify 'CAKE' to 130 animals. I can't go anywhere without getting chewed on. They chew on my shirt. My shorts. My hair. My skin. And yet they are afraid of my cowboy hat. "Chupacabra!" they scream and scatter, eyes rolling in panic, whenever the hat approaches.

Not so much about farming

So. I went for a longish bike ride the other day--as is my wont. I rode to the town Waimea, approximately 17 miles from the farm. Getting there is quite a climb, about 2,000 feet of vertical gain over a couple of miles. I was breathing hard. The sun was shining hard. I was drinking a lot of water. ...And I'd started the day off right. Coffee. Tea. Other water. So. I had to pee. Badly. But! luckily I knew where the public bathrooms are for the farmer's market. So I dashed over there (thinking about those triathletes who just wet themselves as they go--which wasn't making it any easier for me, let me tell you). I arrived, wheeled my bicycle right in, ran to a stall, and proceeded to relieve myself.

Ahem.

You know those "Camelbaks"? You know those long hoses they have? Those too long hoses they have? With the little nozzle at the end upon which you place your mouth to drink? You know those things?

I peed on that.

agggghhhhhhgggghhhhhhhhhhhh!

I know. I know. I mean, what do you DO after that?

I had no other vessel (having generously left my sister's water bottles in SLC.) It was Sunday. It was hot.

And it was seventeen miles back home.


...should i not have told this story?