I'm having a moment. It's the moment, right before lambing, right before milking, right before the work of the year kicks off that makes me crazy. It is the feeling that something is coming. Something is coming and I need to step up. It's what a swimmer feels right before she jumps in the pool for a big race, the feeling a gymnast has in that fraction of a second, whirling through the air: “am I going to stick this?” It's a precipice and it sucks. It's a moment of being out of control, relying entirely on your training, on your habits, on circumstance, but not on your mind. Unwelcome thoughts appear in my mind: what if all the lambs die? What if they're all too small? What if they're all too big? What if all the ewes die? Or get mastitis? What if they never go into milk? Are they even pregnant? How will I make cheese this year if the ewes aren't even pregnant? What if they're all born early?What if not enough ewes are pregnant to make enough cheese to pay the bills?

It goes on and on... my mind spins and frets in its knowledge that it is useless here. It's all just going to happen. It's like I'm riding this wave, this wave called Mother Nature and I'm begging her to work with me, to not toss me around or crush me. I don't want to end up face-first in the sand (or a coral reef, for that matter!); I'm pleading with her to work with me so I can ride this transition, to stick this landing... to make it to the other side.