Once I was seven years old . . .

Today in class, one of my sweet girls proudly brought me a sealed envelope.

Student:  Mrs. M.  I wrote this for the whole class.  I need you to read it to EVERYONE.  But, actually, I need you to sing it to everyone.

Me:  Ooh!  Ok, we will do it later this morning.

So we get into the morning and right before morning recess I remember her letter/song.

I call her up with me and we open it together and this child is beaming sunbeams of absolute joy and pride.

And Readers, I kid you not, she had written out on four pages the lyrics to the entire song of ¨7 Years¨ by Lukas Graham.  Here is a link if you would like to hear the song.

So, I start to read the lyrics and she reminds me that I must sing.  So I am trying to sing the song and the entire class is laughing because, well, I sound ridiculous, and I am just hoping that the lyrics of the song are first grade appropriate.

I sang/read a bit of it and then we talked about why she wrote it.  She was so proud and said it was her favorite song and she knew it by heart.  I was impressed by the neatness of her handwriting and her spelling.

So that is how one of my students spent her four day weekend.

Would you like to hear what I did with mine?

Stared at the lady parts of all my cows.

Stuff was happening, things were exciting, yet, no calves were calved.  It was all very disappointing and not how I wanted my 4 day weekend to go.

I walked 20,000 steps around our property yesterday tracking them all.  I have several photos and many strange searches in my Google search history.

¨What should a cow´s vulva look like when in labor?¨

¨What should a cow´s vulva look like on a normal day?¨

I have no shame.

Here is what we know, Friends:

Some of the cows have a lot of mucus-y discharge.  According to THE GOOGLE, that COULD mean they MIGHT calve within about two weeks.

Cows lift their tails to poop and pee, but they also lift when they are pushing out A CALF.

And please picture me, if you will, standing in the cow mud/poop, elated, waiting with bated breath each time one of my bovine friends lifts her tail.  Only to have all my hopes and dreams shattered when poo emerged instead of a new calf friend for me to enjoy.

It was all a huge disappointment.

But!  The eight calves survived The Great Grain Over Feeding Travesty of 2020.  All is well.

Anyways, I have calves on the brain.  Since it is getting light out earlier now, I was able to walk around and check on all my cow pals this morning before work.  And then I totally ditched my whole family in the city and drove home right after work so I could do another head count.  And stare at cow bottoms.

For school today, I ended the day at a teacher training.  The leader of the training had us separate into two groups:  one group being people who spent most of the weekend indoors, and the other group being people who spent most of the weekend outdoors.

I have less than ideal hearing, so I had to ask a friendly stranger from another school what the directions were.

Friendly Stranger:  Oh, you go there if you were inside most of the weekend and over here if you were outside.

Me:  Oh. I was definitely outside.  I am waiting for a bunch of cows to calve.  It was all very exciting.  I have a bunch of pictures of cows and their back ends on my phone, too!

Friendly Stranger:  Wow.

Me:  Yup.  I cannot wait to get home and check to see if I have any calves.

Friendly Stranger:  Yes.  I can see how that would be exciting.

Upon reflection, I feel like I overshared with Friendly Stranger.  I might need to reign in my excitement a bit.

Thoughts?

Happy Tuesday!