Oh, that was mean of me. "We're having a baby!" Mentioned after my son and girlfriend's arrival. It's not what you might be thinking. John, Justin and Desiree (husband, son and his girlfriend of a hundred years) were arriving for a visit on Monday, December 28. John (owner of hundreds of thousands of frequent flier miles) decided to DRIVE from MN to FL. His reason? He was tired of airports AND had never seen Tennessee. O.K. So, 25 hours and two days later he had seen Tennessee AND was in Ocala. I agreed to meet them at the restaurant to see and be seen in Ocala if you are a horse person, the Horse and Hounds. I ran out to check the horses, who had graduated to the paddock next to the cows. The horses were congregating in a far corner along with a large white bovine; cow, steer, bull--whatever, a 'mooing thing', who seemed to be blocking the corner of the pasture with it's body and agitated about something that every other living creature was utterly intrigued by. Oh, yeah! That's right! We done did have a baby calf right here on Daddy Oak's Farm on the coldest night, so far, in Ocala! There was a tiny white thing, with the umbilical cord attached, penned into a corner. Poor thing had my two horses, my dog and three other bovines acting like 'helicopter parents.' They ALL just wanted to get a peek at it. Mama was having none of that noise.

I grabbed my cell phone and dialed Cowboy Ken, owner of the farm. 'Miss Jodi, what can I do for you,' was the response. 'Um, Ken, we had a BABY! NO ONE TOLD ME WE WERE HAVING A BABY!' was my reply. Of course, the Gone with the Wind phrase of 'I don't know nothing about birthing no babies,' came clearly to mind. He told me that, 'yeah, we took that 2 yr old bull on, but, he's so small we didn't really think much would come of it.' Well, much came of it AND on the coldest night I'd experienced (so far) on my Florida trip. So, Ken informed me that if it's up and moving it will be fine. It will cuddle up to its' Mom and stay warm, 'we don't blanket them or nothing like you do those horses.'

I know how to do horse babies, human babies; I was even pretty aware of duck babies' needs, but, this cow thing was new. I trusted Ken, put Puppy Moose in the house so he didn't get his curious body crushed by big, bad MAMA cow and went to meet the family for dinner. We had a good dinner served by a very charming gal named Amelia. She was from Bulgaria, so, of course my husband asked her what language she spoke in her native land. 'Bulgarian' was, of course, the answer. We stuck with English.

To top off the story, because no good story just ends, I named the new baby cow Amelia after our waitress. I relayed the entire story to Cherie, wife of Ken/owner of said farm, about naming the calf after our good natured server, Amelia. Turns out, Amelia is a good friend of Cherie's! Of course! I named a COW after one of her friend's. OUCH! Don't tell her, I pleaded. A week later, when my other son visited, he was helping me with some bookkeeping and found a receipt for the Horse and Hounds. After perusal I realized that I had STIFFED her. I had given her a generous tip and then proceeded to take that copy of the receipt home. We immediately drove to the restaurant and 'righted my wrong.'

So, Amelia lived through the night just fine. Mama cow settled down around day 5. Moose didn't get his body tossed into the trees. Justin and Desiree took off to explore points afar. John and I went to St. Augustine and Daytona Beach. Both were very cool in different ways, both were COLD in the same way. My family left on Saturday. . . my family arrived on Monday. Jayse came, by areoplane, for a quick visit. He got the 'Grand Ocala Tour' and we spent a day at Cape Canaveral. You all know we had really cold weather . . . for Florida. It got down to 17 degrees a couple of times and my pipes froze! O.K., so it warmed up into the 40's during most days, my blood has thinned! It felt cold! I kept apologizing to Jayse for the cold temps. He kept reminding me that he was returning to Grand Forks, ND; one hour from the Canadian border. It was, I think, minus 20+ (or would that be minus 20 -?) in ND the day I put Jayse on the plane. He thought Ocala was balmy!

Before Jayse left, Royalty arrived!!! Another cliff hanger. I'll try not to be offline as long. My computer stopped working while Jayse was here. Fortunately, I had a teenage (o.k. 20 yr old) boy and and astrophysics dude son to diagnose the problem. Turned out that my inverter was out. It is the power supply to the light source that allows you to see what your computer is doing. If I took two flashlights and shined them on the screen, AND found the cursor, I could follow the cursor around and kind of compose some sort of email response. So, I'm back online, but, two weeks behind in my updates. Bad me! Poor you!