This is me.

 

 

Stuffing my face and wearing more food than I ingest.  Par for the course.

 

And this is me on no sleep.

 

 

Any questions?

Because I can’t breathe…

…I’m still up and it’s almost midnight.   It’s late, I’m exhausted, but I know there’s absolutely no point in trying to go to bed since my head is filled with concrete.  Hello, allergy season!  I’ve been waiting for you!  Now we get to spend a lot of nights up late together finding interesting things to dally with on the internet.  What fun!

So guess what I learned tonight?  According to Veromi, there are five people in the U.S. with the same first and last name as me.  Two of the people listed are me, and it looks like two other listings for my name are the same person as well since they are both listed in Ft. Worth, TX.  Three people total in the U.S. with my name, which means two other women probably grew up being called “jeanne weanie”.  Sorry, ladies.  I feel your pain.

But you know what’s really interesting about this?  One of the women is a legal assistant in CA, but the other raises racing Quarterhorses in Texas!  What are the odds that out of the three of us, two would work in the horse industry?  Opposite ends of the industry, but still…

I’m just glad we’re 2,000 miles apart so she won’t be trying to send me any of her broken down horses!

On a side note, go check out Jasmine’s latest training post.  If anyone doubts that I ride these horses myself, I’ll be happy to send you a picture of me post-accident.  But I warn you now, it ain’t pretty!

Bad idea?

Am I the only one that thinks this will probably end badly?

 

I suppose he could just be getting food and no drink -- and maybe he’s planning on packing the food away in one of those saddle bags and not planning on cruising around town with one hand on the bars and one hand on the burger. 

I didn’t stick around to find out.

Hang in there

I’m not sure what’s going on with Blogger right now, but if you’re looking for the usual links that are on the right hand side, they are now at the bottom of the blog.  No matter what changes I make to the template layout, this is how Blogger wants to show my blog in Firefox (I haven’t checked other browsers).  I’m sure they will fix it eventually… and if they don’t, I may just have to move on to something else. 

Over the Top

Connie, over at WV Fur and Root, has presented me with an Over the Top blog award!  Sadly, I didn’t even know that Connie existed before today and I’ve never read her blog (something I remedied earlier this morning).  But she still had the absolute NICEST things to say about my little blog!

I feel so selfish.   So self-absorbed. 

 

 

Anyways, back to me.  In order to accept the award, I have to answer the following questions with one word answers. 

1. Where is your cell phone?  imagination

2. Your hair?  ponytail

3. Your mother?  short

4. Your father?  dead

5. Your favorite food?  fruit

6. Your dream last night? R

7. Your favorite drink?  water

8. Your dream/goal?  happiness

9. What room are you in?  living

10. Your hobby?  horses (duh)

11.  Your fear?  drowning

12.  Where do you want to be in 6 years? here

13.  Where were you last night?  bed

14.  Something that you aren’t?  materialistic

15.  Muffins?  raspberry!!!

16.  Wish list item?  tractor

17.  Where did you grow up?  Lucketts

18.  Last thing you did?  lunch

19.  What are you wearing?  jeans

20.  Your TV?  silent

21.  Your pets?  snoring

22.  Friends?  enough

23.  Your life?  hectic

24.  Your mood?  tired

25.  Missing someone?  Brie

26.  Vehicle?  Bessie

27.  Something you’re not wearing? smile

28.  Your favorite store?  ACE

29.  Your favorite color?  blue

30.  When was the last time you laughed? morning

31.  Last time you cried?  Brie

32.  Your best friend?  GBH

33.  One place that I go over and over?  barn

34.  One person that emails me regularly?  spam

35.  Favorite place to eat?  Auggies!

 

Whew.  I never thought those questions would end.  I’m not going to call out specific people to pass this award on to, but if you’d like it, take it!

Thanks Connie!

Unmountable Boot Volume

After 16 years of working in the computer field, you’d think I’d be smart enough to keep a backup of my work in case of hard drive failure. 

Nope.

The only excuse I can come up with, is that the brain cells are slowly leaking out of my nose and I’m losing common sense as I age.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been.  Computerless.  Internetless.  Whining to everyone because I lost a year of photos and the spreadsheet where I kept all data for the horses.  At least I can use the blog to recreate most of that – except for all of the contact information for a few of the adopters.  I have email addresses for most of you, and know physically where all of you live so I can hunt you down if necessary.   So if you’ve adopted a horse from me, please feel free to volunteer your contact information again before I have to send some Italian guy named Guido to your door (horsehavenholler@frontiernet.net).

 

Thanks!

I need to take up drinking

Whew, what a weekend!  I am on-call again, which usually means I do a bunch of nothing since I can’t leave the house.   This weekend was the exception!  I worked with a client for 6 hours on Saturday, Anne came over and rode Sadie, then the old fencing guy showed up with his wife and she wanted to know if I had any smaller horses for adoption.  Um, yes?  I’ve got so many adopted that just haven’t left yet, it usually takes me a minute or two to think about who is still available when someone asks.  Since I couldn’t leave the house I begged Anne to take them up to the barn and show them Apache.   The woman used to have horses and is a decent rider, so she’d like to take Apache home after I’ve put a few rides on him.  Okay.

While they were here looking at Apache, I got a call from another family down the road wondering if I had any TBs for adoption.  Glenn and I had recently discussed Quest’s status and agreed that neither of us had the time to ride him and that we should find him a home.   That family came out today and fell in love with Quest and will come back in a couple of weeks to ride him and probably take him home.  Okay.

T-Man, Abbi, and Genesis will go to their new homes next weekend.  Beauty leaves August 8th for her new home.  Maggie should be ready for Synergy and Holly on the same weekend.  Cheyenne leaves when she’s had a few rides.  Jasmine’s adopter is (im)patiently waiting for me to get her trained.  That leaves me Miles the mustang, Ellie, Jewel, Classy, and Kisses to train and get adopted.

I got half the horses wormed today, picked up two round bales of hay (don’t tell work!), canned 5 quarts of Tyfon Holland greens and 5 1/2 quarts of Chard are in the pressure canner now.

I think Cheyenne can show you exactly how I feel, better than I can explain it myself.

 

 

I may be running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off, but I sure am happy that these guys are finding homes!

I’m easily amused

I love looking at the google analytics to see what people searched on in order to get to my blog.  Sometimes this blog is one in thousands of results, and sometimes it’s one of a few.  Today’s hit came from Manila and this post was number two of only five results.   How cool is that??  My little blog, coming in second place!  Where’s my red ribbon???

And I REALLY don’t want to know why they were searching on “slither up his pants”.

Reflections

 

The picture and title have nothing to do with anything, but I bought a new camera yesterday and this is the first picture I took with it.  And you know how I like to share.

I’m on vacation starting 4pm today.  Need I tell you how incredibly happy that makes me?  I won’t even tell you what I plan on doing next week, because last time I took vacation I didn’t get much of anything done thanks to rain and nasty weather.   Since it’s been raining for the past three days, I don’t want to jinx myself again this time.  Suffice it to say I’ll be busy.

Doc is coming out to spend the day on Tuesday, gelding, vaccinating, floating, etc.  I hope to get a ton of pics and post about it Tuesday night, cause, well, you know, it’ll be exciting.  The rest of the week it’s just me and my hammer, so who knows what will happen. :)

Some Assembly Required

I did a little retail therapy the other night and bought Glenn the grill he’s been wanting forever.   Since I’m on-call for work this weekend, I had plenty of time to put it together.   On the front of the instruction manual it says “Estimated assembly time:  30 minutes”.   HA.  It took me 30 minutes just to get everything out of the box and unpacked.

 

Once everything was stacked around the porch and I had found the package of nuts and bolts, things went pretty quickly.   I got the casters on (without the caster wrench, which I didn’t find until I was almost done), then got the two sides and back up without a hitch. 

 

 

That’s when I hit a bit of a snag.

 

Lacking a second human, I asked for a canine volunteer.

 

I couldn’t have done it without her.  And without the Noodle, that one piece would have been cold and hairless when I put it on.  I’m not sure how I would have managed.

 

 

“Mom, you owe me quite a few meaty bones for this.”

 

As always, there were a few extra pieces.   I’m pretty sure they were just included to make people like me feel like they did something wrong during assembly. 

 

Go team!

 

I’ve got some chicken breasts thawing on the counter, lettuce, spinach, and herbs in the garden, and some raspberry vinaigrette in the fridge.  I can’t wait for dinner!

Knowing my limits

I’ve always known my limits – what I’m capable of doing and what I’m not.  It’s just the part about admitting my limits to myself that I have problems with.   For instance, when Glenn and I first started discussing him becoming a truck driver I knew I wouldn’t be able to take care of and train all these horses, take care of the garden, work full time, and keep up with all the farm maintenance by myself.  But, I was more than willing to kill myself trying.

Last week when one of the many thunderstorms rolled through the area and the rain was coming down in buckets, I took a break and chilled out on the porch to watch it rain.  That was the first time I had really stopped, taken inventory, and made a mental list of everything that had to be done.  Like the yard grass being over a foot high in places.  The trash that has blown in that I haven’t picked up yet.  The burn pile growing out of control.   The pasture fence that I keep hastily fixing just for Ellie to push down again with her butt so she can come back into the yard.  The outhouse, which is still an outhouse and has not made the magical transformation into a chicken coop for the meat birds and guineas.  The porch, which is still a disaster area from all the times Ellie has done a midnight raid looking for food.  The round pen that isn’t built yet.   The gutters that still aren’t on the big barn.  The run-in sheds in the top pasture that still aren’t built.  All the plants and seeds that are still waiting to go into the garden.  All the rotted manure that’s still waiting to top off the garden beds.  The perennial flower bed that I need to make.

The list just keeps going on, ya’ll.

And let’s not think about all the riding and training I need to be doing.  Really, let’s not think about it.  Please?

So once I got over the depression caused by thinking about all the stuff I need to do, I had to come up with a solution.   I needed to hire some help, but who?  I really didn’t want to put an ad in the paper and go through the process of interviewing people.  That would be just one more thing on my to do list until I found someone reliable and sober.  Emphasis on sober.

Well, duh.  Anastasia teaches adult re-education classes and also has about a million nieces and nephews.   So I sent her an email to see if she knew anyone reliable and hard working looking for some part time work.  She called me back within two hours with the perfect family!   Dad used to be a truck driver, but was held at gun point at a truck stop and is ready for a new career.  Mom has always been a mom, but is now getting ready to start college in the Fall.  They came over Friday evening to meet me and talk about hours and pay. 

Dad has carpentry and mechanical skills, mom will be cleaning the house once a week, and their two teenage boys will be keeping up with the mowing and weedeating.  I warned dad that he will  be put to work!  He’ll be tackling all those building projects that I’ll never get to and the whole family will be replacing fence while I take care of the horses and finally do some riding.

Keep your fingers crossed that this works out because I’m really excited about finally getting some projects done around here and having more time to spend with all these horses!  They start tomorrow evening so I’ll let you know how it goes!

 

Because nature abhors a vacuum and I abhor a post without pictures, here’s a pop quiz for you!  Don’t worry, it’s an easy one.  Who does this muzzle belong to?

 

 

If you don’t know who belongs to that adorable, velvety little muzzle, then I know you all know who this is!

A taste of the Philippines

A friend and coworker of mine that lives in the Philippines shared some photos of a floating restaurant a few hours from where she lives.  And because she shared, I felt the need to share.   I’m  also sharing because I want something like this in my yard.

 

Or one of these.

 

I could probably do without one of these.

 

 

On a side note, I brought home two more rescues last night -- two yearlings, not even halter broke.   They’re practically feral, although I did get a halter on the filly while she was in the trailer last night.  It took about 20 minutes, but it was rather uneventful. The colt wanted nothing to do with me or that halter.  Pictures and story to follow later today!

Yes, I’d like some cheese with my whine

I was on-call for work this past weekend, hurt my back on Saturday and am now pinching a nerve, woke up Sunday morning with the sinus infection from hell, and am not feeling any better today since I couldn’t sleep the past two nights.  I have once again misplaced the camera, the house is still a mess, I feel like my seedlings are WAY behind for this time of year, and Pinetree is taking their dear sweet time in shipping seeds I ordered almost a month ago.  The place we got compost from last year for 20 bucks a truck load is not selling to the public this year and I can’t find a supply to top off my raised beds or to fill new beds.

Make that sharp cheddar if you could.  Thanks.

The good news is that while there were small men in my ears hammering away with ice picks yesterday and I couldn’t breathe well enough to sleep it off, I found a new blog filled with all sorts of useful information for gardening, farming, sustainable living, etc.  Check out the How To page for great advice on everything from canning, seed saving, butchering, and hand milking a cow.   On the Fruit Room page you’ll find a list of everything they put up last year by canning, freezing, and drying… what a list!

http://matronofhusbandry.wordpress.com/

Saying it with Salad

I had a really crappy day. Seriously crappy. I dealt with one idiot client on the phone after another. Not only were they intellectually challenged, but they were incredibly annoying in that they couldn't shut up long enough for me to tell them how to resolve the issue. They just kept talking over me and repeating themselves. I HATE that. If you're calling with a problem, shut up and listen when you're told how to fix it. You're only making it take longer to fix if you just keep yapping.

Thanks. I feel better with that off my chest.

Glenn is home this week studying for his CDL. He'll take the test Friday, and if he passes this time he's back in school next week. So I've got to make use of him while I've got him this week. The honey-do list stretches pretty much into eternity and I'm not sure how he'll ever get it all done, but he got a good start on it today. Even though it was cold as a witch's tit, snowing, and windy enough to blow a cat away this morning he was out there mending fence, breaking ice on the troughs, feeding horses and chickens, cleaning out the trailer, and running errands.

He even washed dishes, yaw'll.

Some might think he's still trying to make up for wrecking Bertha. Or for failing the CDL the first time. Or for any thing he's done wrong in the past year and hadn't yet kissed enough butt to be forgiven. I don't care about the why, I'm just happy he's doing it.

While I was on the phone with my last client of the day and trying very hard not to throw the phone, he was making the salad for dinner.

Don't worry, be happy.

What's the point?

Some nights I have to wonder why I even bother going to bed. Take tonight/this morning for example. I fell asleep shortly before 11 PM and have been awake since 1:30 AM. Why do I even bother? Had I not wasted time going to bed I could have been halfway through season two of Heroes on Netflix by now. Why did I wake up at 1:30?

Penguins.

In my dream I was a caretaker of a flock (?) of penguins at the North Pole. Sometimes the fish that we were sent were bad. Please don't ask me why we needed fish sent to the North Pole. Maybe Santa's stock was running low. Anyhow, when the fish were bad the penguins would sometimes get sick and I had to help them over to a hole in the ice so they could throw up. Eventually I woke up and realized that it was my stomach that wasn't happy and I had to throw off the cats in my hurry to kneel before the porcelain god before it was too late. I made it. Barely.

Stomach virus? Bad dinner? My thoughts for the past three hours have led me to believe that Sugarcreek is the answer to my nausea. That's all I've been thinking about this morning. Today is the day. And although the one friend changed her mind and decided not to get a draft from Sugarcreek, the rest of the gang still wanted to go even if we weren't rescuing any horses.

I'll try and post tonight with pictures from the auction, but no guarantees. I may need to spend the night out in the pasture hugging horses instead.

Curiosity killed the blogger

Something rather odd is going on today... I've had about a gazillion hits in the past two hours from people all over the world. What the heck? I tried that "wholinkstome" widget, but it said no one did. So if one of you new comers wouldn't mind leaving me a comment, I'd love to know where you guys are coming from!

Joe is my hero

In my little blog roll over there on the left I have TBFriends listed. This is not a typical blog, so it never gets moved to the top of the list when it's updated. But it's updated daily. That's right, seven days a week you can read how Joe and his wife Cathy are helping horses, and recently, helping kids. I don't know their story, I only started reading their web page late last year. They have been saving thoroughbreds otherwise headed to slaughter for many, many years out in CA. Times are tough for TB breeders right now. Tracks are closing, tracks are coming down hard on trainers and breeders sending their horses to slaughter, some just because they aren't winning any more. Perfectly sound and healthy TBs are being bought for pennies on the pound at auctions by meat buyers. Then they call Joe to make a profit from his big heart. Hey Joe, I got a healthy one here that I want to make a couple of hundred bucks off of rather than cart them up to Canada, you willing? Of course Joe says yes. He can't help it.

The demand for horse flesh is so high right now that Canadian slaughter houses are offering kill buyers dinner and motel coupons, as well as fuel vouchers. Buyers that used to go to Mexico, now go to Canada. Or they go to Joe. Who should have a No Vacancy sign at his ranch with over 100 head of horses right now. But the number of horses coming in seem to be matched by the number going out. Joe has approved adoptions flying out of his ears. Girls and families from all over CA come to him for a horse. People from all over send Joe money for to help save and feed horses. So Joe keeps saving them.

Joe is my hero.

And maybe I'm weepy for a female reason, but for the past two days Joe's posts have had me all teary eyed. Not only is he saving horses and making girls happy all over CA, but now he's helping a selfless little girl that takes her school shopping money and gives it to Joe for a horse called Cope.

I want to grow up to be just like Joe.

Joe's posts only last a day, there's no archive that I know of. So get over there and read it. You won't regret it.

Zombies

78%

Aren't I glad I couldn't sleep last night? Now I know exactly what my chances are when Shaun of the Dead becomes reality.

You can check out your zombie survival skills next time you can't sleep.

Isn't it good to know that I use my nocturnal time productively?

Fun stuff

I'm sure you've noticed that new little widget over there on the left. The black box, as it's called, seems to be the new addictive fad in blogging. And I'll admit, I'm hooked! Already this morning I've found three new blogs that I've added to my favorites. Click on it, I dare you. It's kind of like potato chips (and cats), you can't click just once. So have "fun" at work on this Monday and meet some new bloggers that have more interesting things to say than I do.

I didn't grow up wanting to be an astronaut, but I was as much into Star Trek as the next sci-fi teenage geek. Except for the original. There was just that male chauvinist, egotistical, put the woman in her place (while wearing a very short skirt) attitude on that show that really turned me off. My step-father, the tried and true rebel without a cause redneck, loved that show. Now that I'm older, I understand why.

So it was much to my fascination that I discovered this NASA site by using the black box widget. Not only do I find space photographs intriguing, but now I can compare what I remember from Star Trek The Next Generation to the real photos from NASA. Somehow, I doubt the crystalline entity has been seen by NASA yet.

Yup -- the house is still a mess

And I can just picture YD tsk tsking me while shaking her head in disappointment. I'm sorry. I just couldn't be bothered with brooms and vacuums. It was much easier to bask in my self-pity over not sleeping and being stuck in the house on such a beautiful day. It really does take a lot less energy than cleaning the house.

But I canned another five quarts of chard in between working client calls that started coming in like crazy after my last post and kept me busy well into the night. Does that excuse my lack of a post all week? Um, no. I just haven't had a darned thing to say all week, except for some training posts over on Training the Unwanted. So I apologize profusely to all 12 of you that read my blog. There have been no monster maters, no missing dogs, no new adorable Thor pictures, and nothing new to share about the guineas. In a nutshell, my life is boring.

I did get spinach and collard seeds started on Sunday and they are already coming up and are almost ready to be transplanted to bigger pots. The beets that I sowed on Friday are up and growing fast. My tomatoes are still putting out like crazy and the bells peppers are finally starting to realize they are not meant to be green. The pineapple tomatillos are still doing way more than their share to supply me with fresh food and the Litchi tomatoes are really starting to produce in huge numbers. I think next year I'll plant a few more of those! I would like to try dehydrating them, but they never make it into the house. Kind of like the red raspberries -- victims of my impatience.

I see that I still have nothing to say. Sorry about that.

Tomorrow, Kita and I are headed over to Anastasia's for trail riding and picture taking (and I'm sure there will be more sorbet in there somewhere). I'll be taking a lot of pictures for Hunter's training blog, as well as pretending to be a giddy schoolgirl as part of his "kid" training. I anticipate much giggling and silliness tomorrow, but will NOT be taking pictures of that!