Mud, Babies, and Countdown to a half.

It's a free Friday.
If you have been following me at all this winter, you might have noticed we had a lot of snow and cold. We had more snow and I think I heard were averaging 22 degrees below normal temps. The last two weeks finally warmed up.. for most of it, and we had some serious melting going on, which leads me to number 1

1. All that melting means MUD. and when you have cows and horses (and goats and pigs and rabbits and cats and dogs) outside to care for a lot of that mud tracked in by everyone is going to stink. The dogs are going to want to come inside and they are going to be up to their armpits in nasty corral muck. This is why mud rooms are a necessity when you live in the country.

2. Mud means moisture which means green grass and hay for the animals and the crops need it to grow which means food for us. That makes it hard to really hate mud. We need mud so I try to be thankful I have mud to sweep, scrub and vacuum.  I clean our mud room every day when it is muddy out, sometimes twice a day, sweeping the floor of the loose chunks that fall off boots, scrubbing the dried mud off the floor and vacuuming the rug that catches people as they enter. It can be tedious, but if it builds up in the mud room it starts to track into the rest of the house.

3. Running in mud. Oh the joys of slip sliding around. Luckily the county roads tend to dry up pretty fast and have enough gravel on them that it isn't too big of a deal, but the field roads feel like they take forever to dry up enough to run on and now we are back in a cold snap with more snow (not a lot thankfully) which means...more mud.

4. Calving season is just starting. The heifers, first time mamas, get around the clock checks to make sure their first baby comes into this world safely, which last night meant waking up to this in my mud room.

Her mama had no intentions of going into the calving shed where it was warm and dry and my husband wore out several flashlights at 2 in the morning trying to get her in by himself. She finally jumped the fence and Rance decided to bring baby home to dry her off, warm her up and get some colostrum in her. He will find mama when the sun comes up and reunite them.

5. I have a half marathon in 15 days! I don't know if I feel ready or not. I did have a strong feeling hilly 11.5 mile long run last week so that gives me some confidence, but the speed work has been very hit and miss... more miss this winter with all the snow and cold. I haven't even thought about goals and since speed work hasn't really happened I don't know that I will set any big goals.

It's FRIDAY!

Link up with Running on Happy & Fairytales and Fitness for the Friday Five 2.0 linkup!

Don't forget to link back to your hostesses and visit other bloggers :)