Thursday, November 20, 2008

I Hate You, Milk

Dawn, Michael and I used to (use to? I have never been able to figure that one out and Lord knows how I love to be grammatically correct) spend many weekends, holidays and summers out at my Uncle Howards' ranch in the Porcupine Hills of S.W. Alberta, Canada. This picture, by the way, was in no way "dulled" to appear this drab. This area of Alberta never gets green. Ever. We'd help herd cattle, collect eggs, tumble around in the hay loft, muck out the stalls, weed the acres of garden, sleep out in a 100 year old army tent that smelt like kerosene, dare each other to ride random wild horses kept on the property, go on long rides to no where, milk cows.
I am honestly not sure if I have always hated milk but I do know when I think of milk and it's sticky sweet whiteness I get slightly sick to my stomach when I add thoughts of The Ranch into the mix.
"That's Odd" you may think.
Unless you knew the next bit of information. And The Aunt.
The Ranch, in general was a fun, hard working, early rising place to visit. You knew going out there wasn't going to be a "vacation", but our cousins Nikki and Blair (Bear) lived out there and THEY in and of themselves, were a good reason to visit. Them and the horses. Oh, the horses.
I digress. Milk. Sticky. Smelly. Hate.
One of my designated tasks was straining, seperating and storing the milk after the morning milking. Not a big deal. If the child doing the chore isn't painfully klutzy.
One morning as I was carefully manuvering the glass gallon jug from the sink area all the way over to the fridge I lost my grip on the jug and it went crashing to the floor. Shattering the jug, splattering the milk to all corners of the excessively huge country kitchen and absolutely soaking me. I stood there, absolutely terrified (of said aunt), mortified and drenched in sticky, sweet, stinky milkly liquid. I remember standing there my eyes darting (terrified) to The Aunt, waiting to either get walloped or hollared at. She started laughing. And laughing. And laughing. To which I responded to by bawling. She, being the warm hearted (HAHAHAHA) woman she was, responded "smartly", "No use crying over spilled milk!" She thought she was hilarious. She then proceeded to hand me the mop, gave me orders to have it all cleaned up by lunch and walked out of the house. Being all of nine, I wasn't much of an independant thinker when given orders by an adult. For that reason it didn't occur to me to go clean myself up before I started in on the mess. I just started cleaning. And Cleaning. And cleaning. By the time I was done, the milk that had drenched me was caked dry. Stiff. Stinky. Itchy. Nearly Paining me to move.
To this day, I cannot handle the smell of milk. It's all I can do to stay composed and not gag when I smell it.
I hate you, Milk.
But I think I hate you more, Janet.

6 comments:

Lump said...

so I shouldn't get you any of those Milk Bath products for Christmas, huh? ;)

mom said...

I can understand your hate for milk, that is a fairly horrid experience.

mom said...

the country is green first thing in the spring, but, you have to look quickly

Roeckers said...

That was the weirdest thing! It posted on my website inside of as a comments here!

Krista said...

That was rather odd when I saw it pop up on your blog. See you've fixed it now.
Lumpy - if you don't mind me regifting your gift ... give away ;)

Michelle said...

Soooooo how do you feel about the AUNT these days??