What happened was it turned to winter all in one day. The leaves fell off the trees and the rain started pouring down. The sun shut off - click! - just like that. This was very depressing.
Then the next day the farmer came out at dinnertime and called the herd weak-mindedly. "BETSY!"
Everybody looked around. Betsy? Is Betsy here?
The farmer looked grim.
Then Lori came over and Lori trundled about in the usual fashion knocking things over and misplacing things and showering everyone with cookies and candy but looking rather gloomy and in the end Lori said to no one in particular, "you know I can get used to a lot of things but I just can't get used to not seeing Penrose."
The farmer turned away.
One of the farmer's friends arrived in the middle of a downpour and looked at Sky Blue and at me, we were standing next to each other in the pasture. "It's funny," she said absently, "they both look just like Hannah Belle."
"Mmm," said the farmer, and changed the subject.
Well what are you going to do. Are you going to clomp around with your head down pretending Betsy never lived here? Are you going to never mention Penrose again? Penrose? The patron saint of bummers and orphans? Really?
Are you going to frogmarch into the future as if my mother Hannah Belle possibly the finest or at least the second finest Nigerian Dwarf goat to ever walk the earth NEVER EVEN EXISTED????
Well I will tell you one thing, I am not. I am going to keep on living and remembering my absent friends and relatives and I suggest you do the same because what is the other choice anyway and as far as the winter and the rain and the leaves falling off the trees I am only one and a half years old but I can tell you for a certain fact that it happens every year and you better just GET OVER IT!!!
ALL OF EVERYTHING I JUST TOLD YOU AND PLENTY MORE JUST GET OVER IT!!!!
If not for me this whole place would go to rack and ruin. And the same is true of you. Whoever you are. Wherever you live. So get over it, whatever it is you can't get over. Just get over it.
