Five, Six, Seven, Eight...

That's the usual count before the dance starts.  Tap, jazz, ballet, all of them.  Five, six, seven, eight...

Riiiiiiiiiight.

Not at all.

No dancing.  Nope.  Not yet at all.

The eighth, and so far the most horrific of days resulted in lots of stuff to slip in, but nothing to dance in, around, or near.

 The Eighth Day, like the Eighth Day of Creation, got a wee tad bit messy.

The bell rang, and a note was posted to my door.  There were no packages, no boxes, no containers.  Not even a Lakeside Livery delivery man standing there, looking for all the world like the most evil elf since the Friday the 13th movies, or Jason, or the other Hollywierd Frighteners. 

The note read, "Come down to the garages at the back of the building."

Ominous.  I grabbed my coat, gloves, extra warm hat and scarf and headed to the appointed location.  I also grabbed a flashlight, which was stupid as the entire area is lit like a Christmas tree, or should be.  No matter, the lens in the light was broken and the bulb was missing.  In short, I grabbed what could be a billy club, if billy wanted to swing a 5 inch club.

Useless in all possible ways.

I forgot to put my feet into the good boots.  The warm boots.  There I was, standing in a winter coat over my striped pajamas, wearing a bathrobe over the top of the pj's, with an overcoat over the entire mismatched ensemble.  My feet were in bunny slippers for Gawd's sake.  It was windy with a chill that bit around my bare ankles causing instant pain.  Snow was beginning to fly. 

In the garage/parking area there was a giant delivery truck.  Think U-Haul with an overactive thyroid.  Inside the truck, there were sounds of girls giggling, and the more ominous sound of cows mooing and making a sound that seemed to be the bovine version of "let me out of here, NOW!!!"

Oh.  And the smell.  The delivery guy had the ramp up to the truck box, and was offloading, with help from a group of young girls, some very upset cows.  One glance told me the cows should never have been out driving with so much milk in their udders.  The entire herd of seven looked (and no I will not apologize...), udderly distressed.

(Okay, I am a bit sorry.  Just a bit.  It was a cheesy pun.)

Anyway, the cows were only props.  The real gift, and one that I will never understand as a present for a city girl with no designs on maids, milking or otherwise. . . The real gift was SEVEN MAIDS, that weren't at the very moment of the gifting, milking.  They all looked a wee bit distressed themselves, after riding in the back end of the truck with cows demanding their morning milking.

I got the gals, country types from Wisconsin 4H it turned out, into the building and called my friend Frieda to get to my place fast with enough coffee for the First Army and enough donuts to make the coffee worth drinking.  Frieda is a psychiatrist, and she's been receiving all sorts of calls this week, so I'm pretty sure she'd never heard of cows in Chicago that weren't branded "Mrs. O'Leary's,  but was good humored anyway.

The other boxes were off loaded and sent upstairs with the help of delivery guy, two of the maids that had lost their milk pails in the shuffling of cows into the garages under the building.  No matter what, this was all happening at 5:30 AM.  And, there was nothing indicating the sun would ever arrive nor would the cows find a good place to hang out before I had to meet with the lawyer I hired over the weekend.

I needed a good, sharp, works for pennies, mean as a junkyard dog, hungry lawyer.  I could guarantee that there would be great publicity for the case.  It seems that there is always good publicity when the Twelve Days of Christmas are involved.  It's the FIIIIIIIII-IIIII-IIIIIVE GOLLLLL-D RIINGS!!!

No one ever remembers the swans, the cows, the whole malicious flocking of birds, gatherings of feathers or truly amazing amounts of processed bird food that tends to get ground into the carpets.

By the time I was upstairs, the other gifts were all unpacked, and everything was orderly.  I had yet another 'pool' for the swans, this time one of those automatic swimming things with a jet of water at one end, that makes swimming laps possible in a pool that's only two body lengths in width. 

There was a milk pail filled with eggs.  Then there were another five milk pails filled with milk.  I got out a large vat, poured the milk in, and started making cheese.  There was yogurt culture in the fridge, and I was hankering for some whole milk, herb seasoned cheese.  Don't tell the FDA, they'll shut me down and take away the animals.

On second thought. . .

Happy Christmas All!