As I may have mentioned in passing, we are selling our house. This means that every Sunday between 1 – 4pm we have to get out of our home, after cleaning it within an inch of its life. As you can imagine, this is getting old. However it does mean that we spend Sundays as a family doing something together. Sometimes this something is fun, other times it’s something crappy and boring, fraught with irritation and anxiety.
The best outings are the ones planned in advance, like skating downtown. The worst ones are of the willy nilly ‘let’s take a drive’ variety, like the trip out to Camarillo whereupon we realized that it’s barely a town and is truly all about its outlet malls. Following that we went to Oxnard, which I thought was kind of cool, but which Richard thought was extremely lame. The highlight was driving by their town hall to see 9 protestors rallying for Occupy Oxnard! I wanted to get out and hug them. Richard wanted to kill me and everyone in the town. Violet slept most of the way and then wanted rice and beans. Luckily there are three Mexican restaurants per capita in Oxnard.
This past weekend was one of the more inspired trips – we went to a place called The Gentle Barn that rescues and rehabilitates farm animals. They have previously abused llamas and sheep, cows saved from veal pens – you name it, the sad animal story is there!
Among the many horses at The Gentle Barn was this cutie, who seemed to have a special bond with Richard right away. Look at this communication:
This alone was worth the five dollar admission. I was grateful that Violet couldn’t read the stories that were posted about each animal and the horrible abuse they had suffered. I myself was reading between the cracks of my fingers. Booo on crappy people who mistreat animals. How could you hurt this face?
I almost got Richard to eat vegan barbeque at their little cafe at the end of the tour, but he changed his mind at the last minute, so Violet and I shared a fried ‘chicken’ burger and we all ate French fries. This dog Dylan pictured here has apparently been recovering from neglect and separation anxiety, but he seemed to have no anxiety related to snoofing around for French fries.
In fact, all of the animals at this place looked like they hadn’t missed a meal since they were rescued. The ‘hugging cow’ for example (yes, Violet hugged a cow – extreme cuteness ensued!) was downright tubby. Maybe the next thing will be weight loss spas for overindulged rescue animals. Sign us up for next Sunday!