If you give a buckling a bottle...

If you give a give a buckling a bottle, he's going to ask you to rub behind his ears.

If you rub behind his ears, a cat will get jealous and ask for attention too.

That, in turn, will attract the attention of the dog, who will jump on you and get you full of mud from the hole he's digging on the lawn.

As you wipe the mud off your clean shorts, you realize that, since you're dirty anyway, you might as well work with the horses.

When you start working with the first horse, you might decide that he's dirty from the weekend rains and needs to be curried.

Given that it's Sunday and you have the time, you will conclude that it would be good to curry down the other horse, who is far more difficult to work with.

You will get a little muddy yourself chasing down the second horse, and it might take you a good half-hour to curry the second horse, but eventually you'll get to walk her around the pasture.

If you walk her around the pasture, you will see that last night's rains brought down the electric fence in the far corner.

If you give even a skittish horse a carrot, she'll follow you through the pasture and watch carefully as you fix the fence.

Though the horse won't ask for anything else, you, having fixed the fence, will take a moment to savor the vista, you decide that it's a good day to try to let the chickens free-range for the first time.

If you let a chicken free-range, it might decide that the best chicken treats are in the pig pen.

If you give a pig a chicken, it might just think the chicken is itself a treat.

Disaster having been averted, the chickens might learn their lesson and stick to the relative safety of the pasture, and you just might decide to change your muddy clothes.

If you come in to change your muddy shirt, your boys will prevail upon you to put in 70s-version Hobbit.

If you put in the Hobbit, you might just decide to open a beer and sit down too.

And if you sit down and drink a beer, you might just take a nap. And by the time you wake , sure enough, it'll be time to give the buckling another bottle.

And that's pretty much the wrap on a Sunday at the Kleins.*

*I think pretty much the only thing we didn't do is give a mouse a cookie.