The Cow Ate My Homework

12. Things Could Be Worse (Oh Wait, Now They Are)

Trust me when I say that if you're getting sick of hearing how terrible my situation is by this point, I am exponentially sicker of it.

If you're keeping track, you might realize that this shoving/head-bonking/kissing day is only Tuesday. I have a ways to go.

In some life situations, three days seems like a very short window of time. My current life situation is not one of those situations.

Thankfully, Tuesday at school finishes out without anything else catastrophic happening. Sarah and I don't talk. We have little opportunity to do so in the second half of normal days, and we don't go out of our way to make it happen today.

At home, I auto-pilot through my normal farm work and a bunch of my dad's. My mom is preoccupied with handling a few mini disasters in the small window of time she has available before she needs to go pick up my dad from his doctor appointment and bring him to a medical equipment store two cities over to get one of those knee scooter wheelie thingies.

These mini disasters around the farm that she has to deal with before leaving include a newborn calf who won't drink, a hard quarter on a cow's udder that means the cow needs medicine before ending up super sick, and... the milk inspector showing up.

The milk inspector showing up is the final straw in my mom's over-burdened afternoon, and she turns to me with imploring eyes.

"Caleb? I have to go get your dad in ten minutes. Can you..."

She hates dealing with the milk inspector on a good day. So her feelings are multiplied today. I, on the other hand, kind of don't give a crap. I probably should, because the milk inspector gives us a cleanliness score after inspecting our facilities, and they could potentially get us in so much trouble that we'd have to shut down our farm and stop shipping milk if they were to find a big problem. But compared to the other situation I've been dealing with the past two days, the life or death of our farm feels comparatively tame to me­—is that backwards? Probably, but here we are.

"Sure, I got it," I assure her as I take the big milking apron she hands me off of herself.

"Thank you!" she says as she zips away up the steps of the milking parlor to get the hell out of there.

I put on some latex gloves, ignoring the intrusive middle-school thoughts about how it's like I'm preparing to do a butt inspection (which I think about every time I put them on), and I get to work finishing the milking shift.

I'm attaching the third milking machine when the milk inspector comes inside. There are several milk inspectors who work in this area, but this time our inspector is a frumpy forty-something woman with an awkward amount of facial hair. And like basically all of the milk inspectors, she doesn't look very happy to be alive. She says neutrally, "Hello, I'm your milk inspector today." And though it doesn't sound like she cares to really know the answer, "How are you?"

The milk inspector is not someone you dump on, so I merely reply, "Hanging in there. How about you?"

She grunts out something that sounds like, "Meh," and lets herself into our milk house building nearby to inspect the milk tank, the filter, and the cleaning system.

A few minutes later, she comes back in and starts inspecting stuff in the pit area around me as I continue to milk the cows.

We're not an overly messy farming operation, but the milk inspector finds issues to dock points off for no matter what, including on the most ship-shape farms in existence. So even though I know my mom would be pulling her hair out and nervously trying to schmooze this lady, I just ignore our milk inspector as she scrapes at some random scuzz on the bottom outer side of the milk pipe.