Yet another adventure at the barn

Yesterday was an interesting day! Mum and I went over to the barn to clean the stalls because it was so incredibly hot that the people who own the barn didn't want to clean. So...yeah. We got the fun part. But that's not the exciting portion of the story.

I was working on the last stall on one side of the barn, thinking that that would be my last stall to clean and then I could go fill the water buckets. Cold, sparkling water...!

As I stuck the manure fork into the pile of shavings in a corner of the stall, a small dark dust-covered object launched itself into the air and sailed a few feet to the left. Great, I said to myself, now the stuff jumps away from me as I try to get rid of it. Wait a minute...jumping horse manure? Something's not right here.

I gave a little shriek and stepped back, then forward to get a closer look.

"What? What?" Mum asked, having heard my squeal.

"There's a toad in here!" I answered, bending down to pick it up. As I grasped it, I corrected myself, "No, no, it's a frog!"

I took it out of the barn, after spending a frustrating few moments trying to catch it, and put it in the horse trough. It swam happily, turning from a dust-covered brown speckled thing to a shiny, pretty green frog. It did look slightly dehydrated and hungry, though...poor thing. After a few minutes, I took him/her out and put him/her in a smaller food container partly filled with water. Mum came out to look at it.

"What should we do with it?" I asked, not wanting the kids, the cats, or the horses to kill the poor thing, not after it had survived so much already.

"We could take it down to the stream," she suggested, and so we did. The stream is only a few minutes down the road from the barn, so I wrapped the poor froggy, whom I decided to call Maturin, in a see-through breathable cloth normally used for washing Max, and we drove to the stream.

Maturin croaked desperately as I wrapped it up in the cloth, plainly terrified; poor Maturin! When we arrived at the stream, I carefully dropped it into the water (upside down, more's the pity -- I couldn't help it!) and it floated dazedly for a moment, drifting with the current. That was the last I saw of it. I hope poor Maturin is all right!

Why did I name the frog Maturin, you ask? Well, my first inclination was to call it Francois (sorry, can't type the cedilla in this setup), but then I decided that finding a frog in the stable would be just Stephen Maturin's kind of adventure. How he would have loved studying the frog, sketching it and watching its movements with those cool grey eyes! To tell the truth, after studying it he probably would have stuffed it into a jar of spirits and kept it preserved to look at later...but we won't go there. Another reason to call the frog Maturin is because the name works for both genders -- if a male, it can be simply Maturin or Mat, while if a female, it can be Mattie! Cute, eh?

Ah well, at least poor Maturin (the frog) is happy, I hope. And still alive. After one more day or two in that dry sawdust inside the stalls in the barn, I sincerely doubt it would have lived. Flies there may be, in plenty, but not much water unless Maturin happened to make the lucky jump of the century and land in one of the water buckets. Not likely.

Anyway, in other news, I've been having fun lately! As I said, I got to see Cinderella Man, which I am absolutely dying to see on DVD, and I've gone out to eat with my friend Lea and her friend Ali. We had Indian cuisine -- it was the first time I've eaten that, and I must say it was quite good. I did, however, feel a tiny bit like I had fallen into an Indiana Jones movie; I was bravely eating stuff that I really did not recognise. The fried spinach balls and the basmati pilaf were both good...though again I'm not sure what's in them besides spinach and rice, respectively.

Also, I went to see the hilarious The Pacifier with Lea, who's absolutely in love with Vin Diesel for some reason I can't fathom. (Then again, she probably can't completely fathom why I admire Russell Crowe so much, though she likes him too. )

And, to top it all off, the other day I got hit on by a federal agent!! LOL! It was so funny. He came to the college to interview some people about one of the guys I work with; when I mentioned I knew the bloke that this agency wanted to hire, the agent took my name and began to interview me. He stopped abruptly when I said I'd known Geoffrey for only a few weeks. This was at my first job on campus; he showed up again later at my second job (where Geoffrey works), waiting around outside my door for someone to show up. I paused in front of the vending machine outside the office, looking for a quick and unhealthy lunch (don't condemn -- I didn't have TIME for anything else!).

"That's going to be your lunch?" the forty-ish agent asked incredulously.

"Yep," I answered dryly. "No time for anything else, I'm afraid."

"What are some good places around here to eat?" he asked, and I began to name a few restaurants.

"Have you ever gone to Alligator's?" he asked me, referring to a downtown city barbecue place.

"No, can't say that I have," I answered.

He chuckled, glancing at my right hand, on which I wore an antique engagement ring (a gift from a family friend who is now deceased). "What's the matter, doesn't your husband ever take you out to eat?"

I spluttered for a moment, then recovered, laughing. "I'm not married!"

Apparently this was just the answer he wanted. Pleased, he inquired, "Oh, do you want ME to take you out to Alligator's, then?"

Don't, for the love of Heaven, ask me what I said next, because I honestly do not know. Somehow I extricated myself from the situation and went on with my work. He came back later to talk to my co-workers and I must confess that when I saw the edge of his trench coat swing into view, I fled like a scared rabbit, dashing down the corridor to hide in someone else's office. "Ahhh! He's here again!"

You must be thinking I'm a sheltered little ninny who doesn't know how to take a compliment. Well, you're right. I'm not making any apologies. Too bad for Mr. Forty-ish "I've-Travelled-the-World-So-I-Am-Irresistible" Agent Man.

Anyway!! This was a long post, eh? Kewl. I haven't written so much in a long time. It's therapy. Now if I could only transfer this energy to my fanfiction writing and my novel, life would be sweet. Have a swingin' day, y'all!