pštrosí

Today I spotted an ostrich egg and I have no reason to deny the fact that I felt a deep connection with it.  Mirek and I were changing out the water and tending to the kid rams and I could see it from 400 meters away.  Not that they are very hard to spot in the first place but it was as though it was meant to be found by me.  We drove over to it and I reached my hand through the gap in the fence and pulled it through.  The heaviness of it seemed to be the only thing weathering the life it displayed to me.  It was cold and the heaviness only added to the fact that it homed death.  I have not quite been able to translate/sort out (seeing as it is always said to me in Czech) but the basic things that I have been able to draw from the conversations are that our ostriches have not yet "nested".  They have chosen not to dwell in the little home that has been provided for them and so they remain wild in their designated plot of earth.  

Something about holding an egg as big as my head did a number on me.  It does every time but especially this one because I was the first to hold it.  I carefully held it with two hands at all times, knowing that even if it were to fall it would surely survive without a crack, and kept insisting to myself that it was in fact an egg.  Somehow I am going to figure out a way to make it mine.  I think I can keep it.  Well, eat it first and then preserve the shell and somehow send it home.  I have to.  Every moment it becomes more of a necessity and more of an obsession.  I need to be able to hold it whenever I want for the rest of my life.  I need to be able to put it up onto a shelf and look at it and remember the moment I saw it.  I am not sure if this will all follow through but I hope for my sake, and the eggs too, that it does.

Thad should be on his way to Colorado right now and it was nice to say our goodbyes this weekend in Brno.  We did nothing special seeing as there was lots of laundry and tapping to do at Clubwash but I think it was nice to have fresh company on both sides.  The girls have been gone and will be gone all week and I am beginning to wonder how it was they decided to have me come and teach English when they are never here.  I am getting the better end of the deal surely seeing as I am the one learning a language fully and living the life.  The slightest bit of sadness approaches with each passing day.  At some point I will have to leave.  The date has not been set but it will come.  Never in my life had I imagined I would pass my days as I have been but I am very grateful for them and hope to see the land I have come to know and love again.  One the other hand I can here the land past that which I can see call out to me and I am excited to once again pack my bag, stick out my thumb, and head straight into it.

Intermission

The egg is mine!  Now, all I have to do is figure out what I am going to do with.  I only recently found out that it is possible that the ostrich could live!  Apparently they are experimenting with incubation because due to the fact that the shell is so thick the bird has a better chance of survival even if the mama doesn't take to it.  So, we are going to give it a shot and if it isn't in there I am sending it home.  If it is... well, I am adopting it and I am never leaving this place.  

It is nearing nine o'clock now which means I am pulling some pretty hefty days.  I woke up to the light cracking through my window ready to milk.  The girl always has something to prove at least my type of girl anyways.  Especially in countries where girls are typically driven towards homemaking.  I wake up when the boys do, I shovel the same shit, and stay as late as they do.  There are of course ways around it for me and both they and I know it and all the more reason to prove that I am just as capable of going through the same shit that they have to.  Twelve plus hour days of hard physical labor is basically what that entails.  My body feels more alive then it ever has and I think that is because it can feel ever part of itself in every way.  Like, damn, where did that muscle come from and why is it sooo sore?