ok...brace yourselves

I'm considering finding a home for my sheep.
blasphemous i know i know...but it seems an important step in figuring out what in hell i'm gonna do with my strange little life.
having them, as fantastic as they are, seriously reduces my options. in all reality i'm too poor to keep them. They are the main reason i came to live here on this farm, where their feed is paid for, since it was proving near impossible to find anything i could afford that could also accomodate them.
and lets not forget that the struggle to feed them through winter was a large part of why i had to sell chacon...while stubbornly holding on to my sheep.
and on a purely economic level its much more affordable and way less work to simply buy fleeces every spring than to actually raise the animals myself.
oh, but i loooooooooove them.
seriously.

so, in a moment of clarity and self-determination, i posted some ads online thinking...ok i've got all the time in the world, esp. since i'm not actually moving anywhere yet...i'm gonna just start the search for THE perfect home for them...be super picky...its mellow...no hurry.

so ofcourse the very first reply i get, like the next day, is from a woman that has what sounds to be pretty damn near THE perfect situation.

fuck.

First off, she titled the email to me "your incredible sheep".

ugh.

Secondly, she grew up on a sheep farm in pennsylvania and now lives on a small farm near taos w/ her partner, 8 acres, chickens, a goat and a columbian ram named "puff"
she wants a small flock in order to learn her grandmothers craft of handspinning.

oh sigh.

so now everything in me is screaming no! no! no!...not yet! its waaaay too quick. what will i do w/ out them? without their greasy wooly yumminess to sink my fingers into. W/out the sense of purpose they give to my ridiculous level of isolation. w/out their knowing eyes and steady presence that i rely on when i'm weeping and lonley. w/ out their gorgeous fleeces that keep me blissfully busy at my spinning wheel all year?

but then i look around...remember that this is not my place, my struggle with that, my dependency on living here to even be able to keep them, my lack of options and dwindling resources, that i need to be able to move when the time comes.

oh but it hurts....i want them with me wherever i go.