Thanks, Oprah! (And friends)

I'm not sure if I can even tell this story the way it unfolded, but I'll try.

It starts with milking goats. We always listen to either talk radio or music when we milk. (We have an XM receiver out in the dairy...LOVE the XM) Anyway, even though XM doesn't normally have ads, you do get a lot of promos for other XM stations. We are routinely plagued by promos for a station called "Oprah and Friends". The ad drives me insane. It has an absolutely unbearable "theme song" that keeps repeating, "Oprah and Friends...friends and oprah" Aaaargh. Terrible. Really terrible.

So sometime last week we went on an emergency bank run kind of late at night. (Accidentally wrote the hay guy a check off the wrong account - had to make a quick ATM deposit. Ooops!) I was feeling a bit punchy and so I searched out the Oprah and Friends station. (That's right, I have XM in the car, too. I tell ya...XM is the shizzle.) I can faithfully report that Oprah and Friends is a bunch of psycho-babble-nonsense.

The program we listened to featured this guy, talking absolute bollocks about the "laws of attraction." He won't REALLY explain anything, as he wants you to buy his books, so you have to just try to pick up key words and ideas from his inane babble and the delusional callers he speaks with on air.

Here's what I got...I had to leave my valves open to attract what I wanted. Well...this was in the middle of our hay debacle, so I decided what I wanted was dryness. We had had rain and the threat of rain every day since we started. I began loudly proclaiming that I would attract dryness. It was kind of funny. But maybe you had to be there. I was pretty punchy. Anyway, as you see - we got the hay in.

Fast forward to Saturday night. We had just finished chores and it was pretty late. I went to wash up before bed and when I turned on the tap, air came out. Our water was off. The electricity was still on, so it wasn't the normal "no water" scenario. (We have a well...when the power goes off, you get no water. Electric pump. Soooo country.) C went out with a flashlight and a current tester thing and we had the sinking realization that it was our well pump. And the next day was Sunday.

We left messages for the well guy and resorted to our emergency water. Our neighbor let us run a hose from his place, too - so we weren't totally lost. We could get water to all of the animals without hauling buckets from our pond and we could wash the milking equipment. Luckily we were between pasteurization runs. By day's end Sunday I felt totally wretched, so we decided to combine errands with a trip to C's parent's house for a hot shower. In the car, I was going to annoy Christian with a little snip of Oprah and Friends...friends and oprah.

When I tuned in, it was the same psycho-babble loser. And then it hit me. I attracted too much dryness. I made the well die. OH MY GOD, CLOSE THE VALVE!!!!

I started chanting to the valve god (that may not be right, but I tell you - I don't really have any idea what this dude is actually talking about) that I didn't really want dryness. I just wanted everything to work the way it was supposed to.

Monday morning the well guy came and found it was just a burned out switch. He replaced in in two minutes and we were back in water. Just like that.

Thanks, Oprah! (And friends.) (...And friends and Oprah)