I have no excuse for not posting anything meaningful for such a terribly long time. I have at least a half dozen or more.

But first! Saturday Dear and Faithful Reader and Commenter, SueK– seeing that I hadn’t even posted anything from The Week in Pictures– took it upon herself to keep up this tradition. I was ashamed of myself. So ashamed that I vowed to write something meaningful bringing folks up to date. Even Daughter C was miffed because I wasn’t updating on the weather here at The Farm. So it was time.

Excuse #1 begins in medias res, a devise Missy employs in her own writing. As I was thinking about posting something meaningful, and returning to The Big House from the Bunkhouse, Tiger snuck through the door in front of me. Stuppie, the Robot Vacuum, was bonking around the dining room at the time. Missy, Rocky, and Snaps have grown accustomed to Stuppie’s antics. In fact, Missy no longer tries to pick Stuppie up and shake it to death! Rocky is now more curious that cowardly when Stuppie approaches. They have not, however, completely habituated to Stuppie. This was Tiger’s first encounter with Stuppie. I did some super quick thinking and reasoned that the last thing I needed was for Tiger’s first encounter with Stuppie to set off a cascade of chaos involving Missy and Rocky and so, despite the fact that Tiger was clearly stalking Stuppie, I bent down (I cannot ask you to recall that I am currently semi-crippled because I haven’t told you that yet but trust me when I say picking up Tiger is no fun right now) and picked him up.

You know those cartoons where they show the scardy-cat with its clawed outstretched and all crazy meowing and shrieking and flailing around all over the place? That’s real.

When I finally pitched him out the door and looked down at the biggest “scratch,” I was not really all that surprised to see it was not scratch at all. “Gash” best describes it. Right wrist. Pinched it together. Hollered very loudly for Mr. Big Food. … Naturally, his first reaction was to insist we get me to the hospital right away. It comes as no surprise that I did not go to the hospital. Long story short (I kid), he took my direction well and we got me bandaged up and put on ice and all is good. I did decide keeping my wrist elevated Saturday was more important than fulfilling my commitment to posting something meaningful.

So there’s that– the reason I didn’t post Saturday.

And then there’s

Excuse #2 the aforementioned state of semi-crippled-ness. All is much better than it was a week ago. I am definitely on the mend and JoeAnnie was glad to see me at the grocery store this morning.

It has rained a lot here. In fact, we are approaching record rain for the December-February period. Walking on the mole tunneled super-saturated wet ground is like walking on a sponge.

We were headed to the Hidden Pasture via the Shortcut. I bent down to pick up a limb in the path. Missy miscalculated the clearance between me and the fence. I do not have eyes in the back of my head and so did not see Missy pummeling toward me. I went down and my ankle did some interesting adjustments to accommodate the force of an 85 lb. dog.

Moderate to severe sprain. Moderate to severe pain. Severe swelling.

Put a big dent in my program.

Excuse #3 I got a FitBit. I used to claim that I walked a mile a day. That is false. When my ankle is functional, I walk about 20+ miles per week which is like 3 per day. SueK. This is the hobby that got me serious sidetracked. FitBit spouts out a lot of proclamations and I needed to research them all. Bottom line, everything that FitBit spouts out is correlational. Not that there’s anything wrong with correlations– correlations are the cornerstone of mechanistic explanations– but it took some doing to figure out what the “algorithms” FitBit uses that allows FitBit to tell me I’m healthy.

BUT. … And so it went as I investigated which was the best nutrient extracter to buy. Mr. Big Food was most helpful here. Do not skimpt on blenders, he said.

And so I had to research smoothies.

Excuse #4 has nothing to do with anything. We are working on a paper on conspiracy theories. That took some time. Do you know where your eggs come from? Because there’s no such thing as the family egg farm, anymore.

Excuse #5.

I give up.

Also. We moved Tiger into the Bunkhouse.