The tumbleweed is my spirit animal

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time." - Leo Tolstoy
~~~
last week i:

* celebrated my lovely pumpkin-daughter's 18th birthday

* test-drove a horse

*got into a pair of breeches that are on the larger (but def not largest) side of "normal" (woo!)

* got told by a relative that I was fading to nothing (not true, but lie to me more, fam....lie to me more)

* started wall pilates because every horse person in the world is talking about core strength right now and i'm annoyed

* bought a pair of pants that are my next-size-down pants, certain they'd not fit....BUT THEY DID. 😳 they were not as forgiving around the waist as i like, so i think 5 more lbs should do what's necessary for them to be where i like them. i haven't been in this size in over ten years! 😳 I FEEL LIKE A WAIF! (ha)
~~
I think we're going to get the horse I test-drove if she passes her vet check. I can't express how big a deal it was that I was willing to just get on — there was a momentary flutter of "am I too big for her?" but the trainer scoffed at me. SCOFFED. 😃

I'm holding on to this excitement to help me stay on track, because honestly? The snowy cold is making me want to eat all the carbs. It's going to be a rough month or so with the holidays. Still, I keep reminding myself that I only have one pair of breeches that fit nicely, and if I spread any around the waist, I will have NO pairs of breeches that fit nicely....the other ones are just too big and are being held up with a belt of bailing twine. 🙁 plus they're baggy around the thigh and butt, which no amount of bailing twine can help. 

here's a video of the trainer riding the pony — she's a pretty, kind, amazing girl. ;) more about her when the for real happens. 

I can't express how deeply and profoundly thankful I am to the husband who works so hard every day to make my dreams come true. SWOON. 

And pictures, because....

~ lucy ricardo is not doing as well as i'd hoped — but this seems like something she'll recover from. poor old girl has trouble walking in the mornings (stiffness? side effects from a chicken heart attack? mites? dengue fever?) and seems content to just stand about, so this morning we put her in a little coop with food and water for rest and recovery. 

her sister, mildred, was acting like a fool a little bit ago and i finally figured out she was looking for lucy. so i put her in the little coop with a way to get out — she stayed for five minutes then her little chicken brain was satisfied that lucy was OK. all is back to normal with her. 

which is good, because my sweet ursula (who has notoriously been the biggest bitch on the roost, but turned angel baby when she popped out her first egg) has decided SHE wants to go on morning walkabouts with escape artist ethel-simone, so that drama has needed to be a focus for the morning. 

i'm having to work harder for chicken eggs than i truly anticipated. =D

[update: one of the other chickens laid an egg today! it's blue!]

~ the vet came yesterday for bluebelle and here are the results:

* blood was drawn, tick-borne illness identified, medicine procured. this is most likely a significant reason she's so stiff in the hind. 

let's focus on the positive instead of me launching into a long-winded entry on how i HATE this time of the month with the bill paying and the budgeting and the trying to figure out how to live a champagne life on a stella artois income. IF i were going to write about the pissy, i'd also include a rant and rave about how high our electric bills are going to be this summer as i DGAF about cost when i am battling humidity. 

ahem.

so, the positive — and there's a lot! =D 

~ my garden is growing like mad and i've given up being meticulous in keeping track of what's going where and just gloriously embracing the chaos of scattering seeds. so what if i don't get all of the seeds in the ground? there will be, lort willing, next year. :) 

over the next few days, there will be potatoes, flowers, herbs, tomatoes planted and i may be able to get some seeds started for late summer planting. we'll just have to see! 

+ i finally got to see the northern lights! we had such a spectacular show for two nights — one night we had all the colors and the next night we had a lot of movement and shimmering and dancing in the sky. i've always wondered what indigenous people thought when they saw them, but really didn't understand how scary and amazing they would be to people who had no idea of the why behind them. 

+ mother's day was super quiet around here. :) we celebrated our 23rd anniversary the day before, so it was a really nice weekend. twenty three years! i'd do it all over again, too — i shopped smart with that one. life without him would definitely be a much darker and desolate place; he brings me sunshine and happy, peace and calm. 

good things for a dark and broody girl to have in her life, yo.

+ the horse barn is up, friends! well, the shell is. we need to still get the stalls in place before horses come and doors up before winter comes, but we're so so so so close! =D

i spent a few hours today grooming the arena area with my little drag and lawn tractor — it's looking really good and pretty soon there will be fencing and pasture areas and then? then? horses. 

h.o.r.s.e.s.

of course we don't HAVE horses right now, but i'm all about the "build it and they will come" mentality.

my "happy light" arrived friday and i've had it on quite a bit since then since the weather has been composed of lots of clouds, lots of grey, and lots of drizzle. while i appreciate any and all bright light right now, i was hoping for more of a hard hit of "it feels like sunshine!" 

oh, well. tuesday and wednesday are sunny days and i'm going to take advantage of them. 

[i remember watching /twilight/ and thinking how i would just LOVE to live in that sort of environment. now that i find myself actually LIVING in the not-so-sunny land of permacloud, i am sort of couching my enthusiasm.]

*

the chicks are doing really, really well and three of the girls are almost fully feathered. two or three times a day, we go out to the garden shed and open the top of their brooder so they can hop out and explore. mostly, they just like to climb and snuggle on us and it's all cute and sweet until they take a big poo. 

chickens have no shame about their poopin'. 

we have mitigated getting poop on our clothes through clever placement of paper towels, and i continue to mentally design chicken diapers. 

anyway, coop placement plans have changed once again, but i THINK i'm happy with where we're putting it and their run. 

+ barn stuff is moving along and i think we have settled on a plan — at least i hope so. :) what i originally wanted was a barn kit (i've posted pictures before) that would run probably close to forty thousand dollars. i was really trying to justify that expense in a multitude of different ways, but it makes more sense to do what most people out here do — NOT have fancy traditional barns. 

kid helped a lady yesterday with working horses and doing farm chores and i saw the woman's set-up and thought "this works so much better than what i originally wanted!" so that's what we're looking at now. price? POSSIBLY 25% of the barn kit cost. o.O MAYBE MORE. ima be so rich from saving money i will be able to get more horses, right? =D

we're going to talk to the builder in just a bit to price it out and hopefully have a final decision by the time they're open again next wednesday. it SOUNDS like they could have the frame built by mid june. i LIKE that. a LOT. 

(we're just getting the frame built and siding on it — stalls, barn doors, and any interior build-outs will have to be done by us. realistically, it might only have stalls this year to get horses out of the weather, but we'll see. even if it's ony that, it's still good movement!)

+ i told husband that i think i wasted a lot of money on seeds and feel terrible about it. i thought i could get things going with just one grow light and my little garden shed, but it doesn't stay warm enough in there and the light's not right. :( we MAY get a few more lights and set plants up in one of the downstairs rooms with a heater, but if i want to do seedlings next year, i'm just going to need a greenhouse. or access to a greenhouse. or SOMETHING. 

anyway, i have tomatoes going, got a small patch of cilantro and carrots in the ground, and need a few minutes to regroup my thoughts on what needs to be done when. there is a chance the carrots and cilantro went in too early, but i think i may be ok! mister says a hard frost is unlikely and if it's going to be TOO cold, i can cover the little plot to stay warm. 

it's so exciting!

what's not exciting is that my daffodils aren't up yet. i was SURE i'd see a little poke of green, but nothing yet. 

with the family gone to the horse event, it's so STILL and QUITE 'round here. i enjoyed it for a little while, but now i just feel lonely and want them back. come home, family....come home!

the dogs also feel their absence, with yoti the rescue watching through the front window for the car and her girl; nandor the relentless misses his dad; kim feels my frustration and wants to just sit in my lap no matter where i am; onslow the old man? he got his ketamine shot day before yesterday and wants to go out for a wander every 20 minutes and i have to wrangle him to come in. he's spunky! 

+

i finished /the fox wife/ and.... 

ok, i really liked it. the language is beautiful, the voice is lovely, and the story is really neat. but there are a few things lacking that keep it from being GREAT. next on tap is /the hacienda/ which i've been wanting to read since it came out. i'm only three chapters in because i keep getting interrupted by THINGS. 

to be fair, one of those things is binge watching true detective (the new one with jodi foster), but i so rarely get to sit in this type of quiet that i'm taking advantage of that part. =D 

i doubt i can finish the whole thing before the fam gets home tonight, but i'm certainly going to try. 

+

the snow is melting, the temps are in the 50s, and it's sunny. THIS weather is glorious! 

this bit of snow is more than we've had at once the entire winter — i have a feeling this will be the last of the storms, but the locals keep telling me there will be more. goodness. 

*

i went out for a bit of a wander today, but my step count is way, way low. :( it's just too cold to do more! mister made me a little track with the snow blower, so i've walked that a couple of times and will a couple of times more, but there's only so much a california girl can do in these circumstances. (let me hold that stereotype for a bit longer — i mean, i've dealt with snow before, but it's just DIFFERENT here.)

anyway, because i've been bitching to mister that exercise is the one thing that's really lacking in my Pursuit of Skinny Calves Riding Boots is exercise — the rower is problematic, sadly, because i seem to ALWAYS hurt my back doing it. mostly because i get a little enthusiastic and don't treat the erg like i should =D anyway, we're going to test drive an elliptical and if it works out well, we'll try to sell the rower to mitigate the costs. 

*

for the past two days, i've really been hitting my stride with getting back to eating right basics. i even had a salad today for lunch — i'm like a fucking bunny, yo. 

=D

*

it's snowing again! o.O i better get out and do a few laps on the track so i can come back in and put on my pjs. it's 3:30 and i don't even care. lol

Ouch.