I Knew This Day Would Come

I wasn’t quite emotionally ready for the day when I woke up…I’m not sure why. I felt like I was on the edge of crying all morning. I think every lady has days like that. With Kody’s new job calving for one of the biggest cattle outfits, I haven’t really seen him. He comes home I feed him dinner, sometimes a wonderful 3 course meal and sometimes Dairy Queen. Anyways, Kody eats dinner watches a little bit of TV and crashes on the couch, I wake him up and help him find the way to bed.
I’m not sure if I was just tired of this boring routine we were starting to have but I felt like breaking down in the kitchen and frosting my Chocolate Zucchini cake with my tears. Along with everything else going on in my life, I decided to stop doing hair, completely and utterly cut it out of my schedule 100%. And take on my job full time running the store that my mom and I opened last July. That way I would have time to breathe, cook, clean and go to work with Kody. I hope the ranch doesn’t mind every Sunday and Monday it is official “Bring your wife to work day”.
5:00 am rolled around, it was a time I hadn’t seen in about a month seeing how we finished up lion hunting. I rolled around grumbled and still I was tired. I got dressed, Kody was up and ready…ready to roll. We headed out to the ranch saddled our horses, loaded them in the trailer and in no time we were out tagging calves. We didn’t have a lot that morning, maybe 5 or so. Kody does get a lunch break, we headed into town to grab a bite to eat and meet back at the barn around 1.
Jesus, one of the cowboys rides with us in the afternoon. Kody and I go one direction and meet up in the middle with Jesus. I knew this time would come for me, there was a calf that needed pulled. I had seen horses be born before, easily. Nothing that you had to run into a head catch, reach shoulder deep, pull out the legs and hook up this big metal thing with ratchets and a pulley. I was in for it. I knew this was all it was going to take to send my emotional day spiraling downhill into a dungeon of tears.
Kody subliminally gave me the job of the gate girl, he didn’t tell me this is what I was supposed to do, apparently I should just know these things. “Jordan, are you going to get the gate!?”
“Sure.” I got the gate, these two cowboys ran her into the head catch and Kody stepped back and let Jesus do the pulling. I was thinking to myself, get this cow and epidural, Kody we need a scalpel, gloves please. Are you ready momma cow, this should only take a minute…work with us and we will help you. Did she take Lamaze?…uhhh…probably not. I don’t have children but I think all of the estrogen and adrenaline went straight to my heart the moment I hooked on the pulley to the ring and started ratcheting out this little black baby calf while Jesus was pulling. Please don’t think I did the work, it was really Kody and Jesus…I was just the gate girl. The calf hit the ground the mom fell to her knees and I had to leave the calving barn in a blustering storm of tears rolling down my face. It was beautiful…and Kody thought it was disgusting and Jesus wasn’t quite sure why I was crying. Tender is a good word for me, not soft, but tender.