Loser Livestock Thieves

We heard some hunters on the large property behind us - happens sometimes; there's a pond and abundance of wild pigs.  However, this time, it seems they had a hankering for lamb.  When the sheep came in the other night, we were missing one young ram.  I walked through the pasture looking for him that evening, and my husband went the next day - there are thickets of trees where a little guy could get hidden away, but he's just not there. 

Someone asked me if they could have thought he was just a wild sheep - umm, no, he's fenced in a pasture.   There were bigger rams and wethers for them to take, but maybe they thought he looked young and tender - or maybe he was the one who walked right up to them, because he would be one to do that. 

My husband is almost done with the fence on the ram pen and/or mamma and baby pen - which ever we decide to do with it.  It's an oddly shaped pasture as it zigs around the olives and the garden.  Eventually, it will go along the almost-there pond and around the future site of the big greenhouse.  Lots of almost-theres and future sites, it seems, but, though progress is slow, it is still progress. 

Now in the house progress on anything except those essays and driving to practice has not been happening at all.  In fact, I have 18 more essays to go.  They're painful.  I have decided to postpone the literature I planned to start next week and work on rewriting these essays.  I have a process I call (secretly, to myself) "The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly."  I give the kids a pile of papers with no names and teacher comments removed, and I ask them to sort them into "Needs Work,"  "Getting There,"  and "Wow!"  and then they sit in groups and try to come to consensus on their rankings, and then discuss the criteria they used to sort the papers - what do the Wow!s have that the Needs Work could add/change to get to Wow! too?  It takes a couple of block periods, but it works.  I give them papers from another period or from another year, so no one gets bummed at being put in the Needs Work category.  We argue it out until we have a good description of a good paper, and then I give them back their papers and ask them to make the revisions they need to improve the writing. 

Oh well, once again, it is time to drive to practice.  Tomorrow is my niece's wedding and  the last regular race of the season is tomorrow.  I told the kids to run darned fast so they have time to go home and shower before the wedding!  Next week is the regional championship, the week after that (on Kauai) is the State meet (crossing my fingers for my kids to make it!) and then another XC season is done.  Phew! 

And completely off the topic of anything, I watched part of a typically foolish Hallmark movie this morning while folding laundry.  At the end, they had some weird panel of judges for a hunter-jumper show - one of them didn't want to give the first place to a pinto horse.  What is this, horse racism?  In actuality,  sport horse breeders have been adding color to the roster for quite some time, so it was a little more goofy and uninformed than the usual animal underdog movie.  Made me miss Ohia, anyway - although, as a typically quarter horse-y paint, he wouldn't make a super hunter jumper, anyway. 

Oh well, ramble aside - off to sit in the car grading the last papers.