This Manager is about to be OUT OF THE OFFICE for a few days! I have been busy packing up our company and have been left with little space in my mind to do a proper update on my employees. Such posts are coming soon, but in the meantime, you might enjoy a brief story (beginning?) I wrote recently about K.Lo and the Night-Shift Cows.

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This week, K.Lo thinks there are cows in her room at night. The first night, she rocketed out of her room, running and screaming down the hall, jumping when I came up the stairs to meet her and ask what was wrong. Her whole body shook with plain fear, cold sweat soaked her pajamas. There’s a cow, she said.

A cow?

J.Lo’s movie, a man-film of the action-packed, violent variety, thumped deeply from the living room and perhaps, from down the hall, out of an exploding car or gun sequence, K.Lo had heard a moo.

She wailed some more as I picked her up and carried her down the hall, reassuring her, as per the drill, that everything was just fine, she was safe in her room and in her bed, and Mommy and Daddy were nearby if she needed us. Both common sense and a vapid pair of moms on the Pajanimals show told me these were the right words to say.

I could tell from K.Lo’s raving and shaking, however, that this would be one of the nights where she just wasn’t going to relinquish the fight. Several hours and attempts-to-calm later, I give up, and pull her into our bed. She sleeps.

On night two, she doesn’t shake, simply appears in the living room, wailing for what seems like effect. I am now a little more skeptical of the mystical cow, and ask her, “Where is this cow. Show me.”

“Right there,” she said, pointing vaguely toward her bedroom window.

“Outside?”

“Yes,” she said, because at first it always seems like the right thing to say. She climbs down from my arms and pulls back the window shade, peering out into the night with great concern. “Right there,” she says, pointing at the lawn.

Uh-huh. I put her back to bed, once, twice, and more, each time explaining that there is no cow, and even if there was, it wouldn’t bother her. The soothing tone of my voice frays a little more each visit, and soon we are no longer talking about cows, but about the simple fact of sleep, which is necessary for all human beings to function well throughout the day. She either doesn’t see my logic, or is too beside herself to hear my words.

The third night, J.Lo takes over cow combat-duty and emerges slightly more battle-scarred on the patience front, but with a possible victory on his hands: K.Lo’s rocking horse might be the cow. The handmade purple rocking horse that has lived in her room for over two years now, sparkly but placid, and keeping to itself? It seems it might have mooed and stared the child down with bovine eyes.

For these offenses, it is removed from the bedroom, banished to another far corner of the house.

And K.Lo sleeps.

Sort of.