Life at the old oil mill is not so dissimilar from life in a farm. At six, you are awaken by the dogs, to whom you're supposed to provide a morning biscuit. Differently from a farm, you can yell at them or throw them a shoe and turn on the other side, but this is not going to help much.
They try to wake you up until eight, when you finally give up, arise from bed and throw the biscuits at them in the usual precise hierarchical order. Eight biscuits, one apiece.

You have then to forage the horse, clean the paddock around hoping the black bastard doesn't kick you in the head. Right away, the dogs bark all around you to have their walk all around the lot, and you better go or else your breakfast would be hell.

Half an hour later you're back from the walk, but it's not time for breakfast yet, because now your crazy dogs have to eat. Again, otherwise your breakfast would be hell.
To fix lunch for these dogs takes a long time. From half to one hour, if you haven't cut and cooked all the vegetables already. Every dog takes his precise amount of food, a mix of rice, vegetables and turkey meat. You obviously don't want to think about bird flu during the process.

Then it's time for your breakfast, but it is also eleven already. You can't lose too much time on your tea, instead you better get on the Fiat Panda and drive to the nearby village to get the huge quantities of food required by your fellow animals. Stores and markets there close at 1 Pm and won't reopen until 5.

Hey, and don't forget on the way back to feed the stray cats!

As you get back, the dogs bug you until you give them the getting-back biscuit. After that, you have a little time for yourself, usually wasted staring blankly at nothing asking yourself moronic questions, or watching the most stupid afternoon shows on TV.

Around 2 Pm you take the dogs around the lot again, and right after that you lock them in the oil mill area and free the horse in the field, minding not to be crushed by his junkie need of carrots.
A young soldier, horse-lover from a nearby village, will come three hours later to pull him in the paddock again, clean him and some other stuff I can't really do. Your mother found him somehow through one of the friendship chains everybody shares here. He was in Falluja last year during the famous battle of the bridge but he doesn't talk much. He comes, look after the horse and goes. He's paid, but you bless him.

Anyway, before that, you must have noticed how the house should be cleaned. But you better do it fast, 'cause at four you have to start preparing the food for the dogs again. They eat at 6, but you probably have to cook meat and vegetables from the start this time, then the food must cool down.

As the soldier goes, you forage the horse again, start fixing your own dinner and crumble in front of the TV, as stupid and yelling and political as ever. A lot of half-naked beautiful bodies though.

The evening continues like this, with your remorses for not writing and blogging, and the laconic phone calls, until you go to sleep, and the dogs all around your bed constantly wake you up during the night, by snoring, running in and out, having bad dreams.

As I said, it is not dissimilar by a farm, but you don't produce any commodity nor goodies here. Only dog turds, horse turds. Lots of them.

-- In picture, above: Max looks at the sunset. Everything is beautiful around, and quiet.)