Every spring, as soon as the snow thawed, a certain mountain woman would come down into town, have a baby, and gather supplies for the summer. After a few years of this, she looked despairingly at the doctor and said, “Doctor, I don’t know how much more of this I can handle. We got us eight kids now and I just don’t know how we can go on. I gotta do something about having all these babies or I’ll just lose my mind!”

The doctor scratched his head and wondered how to gently instruct the woman on how to curb her ordeal. Finally, he told her to pick up a ten-gallon bucket along with her supplies. “And every night when you go to bed, I want both of your feet in that bucket and don’t take them out until morning.”

So the lady was off, and all of her problems seemed to be solved. That next spring, right on cue, she walked into the doctor’s office and promptly delivered another child.

“Ma’am, I thought I told you to sleep each night with your feet in a ten-gallon bucket. What happened?”

“Well, you see doctor, the store was all out of ten-gallon buckets, so I just figured two five-gallon buckets would do the trick just the same.”