Tuesday Tool Shoveling $#!+ edition

The tool of Tuesday, reported a few days late, is the five-tined manure fork.

I spent a lot of time this week cleaning up--sorting through the desk, through the piles of mail, through my parents' mail, magazines, newspapers, all the thousands of leaves of paper that arrive and stack up in a household over the course of a couple of months of inattention.  Another set of piles occupied more time, as I worked my way through a great deal of laundry.  It's all a lot of work, and profoundly unsatisfying, especially now that the weather has turned nice and I can glance out the window and see green fields and blue skies and black and brown lambs frolicking between the two.  It is completely occupying for a whole day, and at the end one doesn't feel as though one has accomplished much of anything.  Very much a Red-Queen race.

Tuesday I took a break from paper-pushing, and mucked out the doe's portion of the barn.  Yes, it's hard labor, and yes, it is also a Red Queen race, but for whatever reason, shoveling out real manure leaves you with more of a feeling of having gotten something done.