I met Jon in Auburn because on Friday he had to get a root canal. I know what you're thinking and the answer is no; Root canals are not life or death situations. But the Schuman-Rose's do not allow for rites of passage to go by unrecognized. And this is Jon's loss of dental innocence. He has gone from a boy with cavities, to a man with a root canal and what will soon be a gold crown. Someone had to bare witness to this episode that has, in our minds, aged him at least 5 years.
We sat outside the night before the procedure and star-gazed - an activity that Auburn is great for. If we sit long enough we can keep a running count of shooting stars. The night before Jon's root canal we looked up and saw a satellite moving at a steady but quick pace over the night sky.
It's Spring on the farm and there are baby horses and baby goats and families of baby Canadian Geese to prove it. The frog population seems to be booming out of control because at night the chorus of ribbits was loud enough that we had to consciously talk over it. We stood outside talking about this and that the night before Jon's root canal and I kept saying that I couldn't believe the noise they were making and then all of the sudden, as though it had been planned in advance, every single frog stopped and it was dead silent. We were quiet for a moment while we pondered how large and small life can be in one single second. Not fifty seconds later the first frog started up again and the chorus returned, but it was sweet to experience the froggy moment of Zen.
We got a lot of photos while we were there - a lot of which are of the 7 Australian Shepherds that were present at the time so that I could do a cool collage of dog photos, which I am going to work on today.
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This particular set of goats felt the need to argue over Jon and my attention.
Remember the cats that Pat rescued from our neighbors? Chloe and Sammy joined the farm on Bell Rd. but seeing as there was already one Chloe - pictured here:
Chloe of "Chloe and Sammy" fame, became a Snowy...
Now as it turns out, Sammy had some rare and potentially deadly tooth disease that, in order to survive, Sammy had to have almost all of his teeth pulled out...All but his k-9s...
On Friday night I was feeling like my normal overly-confident self and whilst bickering about who knows what with Jon I challenged his ass to a foot race. I wasn't positive that I would lose...as a toddler my dad nicknamed me Laser Bomb and in elementary school I won several ribbons in the school-wide track meet so it's not that I felt like a Slowsky or anything.
I jogged to the guest house where my tennis shoes were to loosen up a bit. Jon and I rendezvous'd at the top of the driveway where his mom and step dad graciously observed our ridiculousness. I assured him that he was going down and he was going down hard. The Schuman's don't ask for a race they can't beat. We walked down the long driveway until we felt like it would be a long enough race to determine a definite winner. "Dude, Allie. Just don't go crazy and fall or anything, okay?"
I paused to think about how well the man knows me and then I promised not to fall. Shortly thereafter I began searching for any and every way I could get a head start. Should I cross right in front of him? Would his parents look down on me if I tripped him? Yes. Probably so.
Ready....Set....GO!!!
We both took off and after about 6 steps he was clearly in the lead. It was at that moment that I assured myself that I did not want to be dating a man that I could beat in a foot race. I would never look at him the same again. When we crossed the finish line, several steps apart I told Jon this in an effort to soften the blow and he said "yeah. I guess I'm the only one that had anything riding on that. But dude, I had a root canal today."
