Sometimes You Just Have to Not Lose Patience...

When you're a farmer, stupid things happen sometimes.  Or that you just do stupid things and then have to spend most of the day fixing whatever it was that you just did.  Or helping someone else fix the stupid thing that they did.  One of those instances happened today.  We'll call him Chatty.  He talks...A LOT.  What should be a 3 minute conversation lasts about 7 minutes instead.  Don't get me wrong!  I like him a lot, he works hard, he's nice.  But just likes to talk.

Today he was moving a bunch of equipment around.  With the tractor, he went to move a bucket.  But it got stuck.  Poor Chatty.  See below:

  See, the fork, for some odd reason, is not attached at the bottom.  Why?  I don't know.  But now it's good that I know that.  


Poor Chatty had come up to my office, blood coming down his face.  He had slipped with crowbar he was using to try to lever it off, and nailed him straight in the forehead.  Don't worry, no stitches needed.  

We went together to try to get the bucket off the fork.  We tried to push it off with the skidsteer.  We tried to tie down the one fork.  We tried tying it to the truck and pulling it off.  Nothing.  

As I spent the next hour brainstorming with Chatty trying to pull the bucket off, I got to thinking.  It's so much easier going at this without being totally annoyed with yourself.  Isn't that the real reason we get annoyed when you do something "wrong"?  That you're just mad at yourself for doing it?  And the same goes for being annoyed with the other person.  I could have been, "Gah Chatty, I have things to do. I don't have time for this."  Which, I have to say, happened to me with Chatty last week.  Anyway, I stayed patient.  I actually didn't even feel impatient.  So I focused on that feeling, and I hope that the next time I get into a situation where I lose patience with someone or lose patience with myself, that I remember that moment where I felt calm.  Where I could think clearly and wasn't judgmental with Chatty or myself.  (Don't worry, not all of my entries will the after school specials.  But, it's a decent lesson right?)

In the end, we couldn't get the bucket off.  Tomorrow's a new day with new ideas.  We'll hopefully get the bucket off.