Today was a day when I wondered. Lee and I went to get the mail. The mail app had said no packages were coming.
Don’t trust the mail email. Go to the website.
Wait
He opened the box. There with a couple of cards and junk mail was a large package. It was firmly wedged into the box. Why? I don’t know. Our gate was open. The letter carrier could have brought it up to the house.
But no. Cramming was the choice. Lee pulled and pulled. The mailbox moved but not the package. Eventually the mailbox and post separated with the box still firmly inside.
Damn.
After much tugging and surgerizing we got the box, which contained another box, out in pieces. I was quite relieved to discover the contents were intact: my treasured Dak Prescott bobble-head figurine along with my Dak jersey. I’m a football fool at the moment.
Go Cowboys.
Watching football keeps me out of trouble, at least. Otherwise I watch dogs. All seven were running around a few minutes ago.
We love our sandbox.
It entertains as I wish the pool people would show up. It’s becoming the imaginary pool of daydreams.
Nothing here but dogs.
Wait a Minute Here
When I went over to watch the dogs, I decided to sit by the pool. Um. Guess what? The dang letter carrier DID drop more stuff off, on the back porch! Three packages and magazines. When did those show up? Why did Dak have to get shoved in the box?
Not job work. Work around the ranch. I’ve been being sure to get a couple hours of chores done every day. Today I crafted, I guess. The end result was this.
It’s a tree-like thing.
I took the old brown naked tree and revived it.
Reminder of its previous state.
First I spent a LONG time cutting the nonfunctional lights off. I’m so glad I found the wire cutters (they also helped me attach wreaths by the gate).
They are sorta small. Like our holiday spirit.
Then I tried to perk the tan tree up by painting it green. I artistically used two shades. It’s debatable how successful that was.
Looks like a naked mesquite tree.
I did use paint designed for plastic, so maybe it will stick.
Yes. It’s ugly.
Still, since I spent all that time on it, I put it on a table and did my best to put lights on. I’m too short. There is also nothing on top yet. I wish I could find my white peacock from the house in Austin.
Before ornaments.
I put a bunch of old ornaments I found but stopped short of putting all the childhood ornaments of my older son. Made me sad. Next year I’ll find my nice ornaments and make a pretty tree. Until then, it’s at least cheerful.
I did gaudy up my counter chickens, though.
Tomorrow no more holiday cheesiness. I hope to ride the horse.
When you live in a small town, things affect the whole community. We lost a friend yesterday. I’ll skip the gory details and just say it was a real shock to lose Christi.
Horse riding a few years ago.
I have Christi to thank for Fiona. If she hadn’t remembered I wanted a little donkey, Fiona might not have gotten rescued from the sale barn. Thanks to this kindness, I’ve had five years of donkey love.
At Christi’s ranch in 2016, the day I met Fiona.
We had many horse adventures and shared an interest in essential oils. In fact, it’s thanks to Christi and oils the I became a Master Naturalist. I went to a class she held at our beloved Dutch Towne Deli. Dorothy (not normal dot in the comments) was there and told me about the next class. Thank goodness for that bit of fortune!
Sigh. Our political differences split up our friendship, and I really miss lunches with her and her mom. But I still cared about Christi. She had a kind heart. She did not deserve to be taken from her friends and family this way.
I’m sending much sympathy to her grieving family, friends, and community. It’s hard to believe.
Today I had to do grownup things. Things I do not enjoy doing and that exhaust me physically and mentally. I cleaned up some stuff that had been sitting around too long, and the hardest part was taking all the ornaments off my “nature tree,” which is this weird leafless artificial tree we’ve had up in this house since we started building it, even before it was finished. I used to put it in the closet every year, but there is a bunch of padding from Lee’s sleeping arrangements. The really cute lights stopped working a couple of years ago, so it was time to remove it.
Poor nature tree is all naked and about to be peed on by Alfred. I am washing it tomorrow.
Plus, my autumn tree had gotten knocked down by some dogs one time when I was gone (I came home to find it missing, and the ornaments in a bowl…the ones that made it). It was time to do something else.
My plan is to spray paint the tan tree green and put some nice lights on it, then put it up on a table in the family room, so I can put good ornaments on it. I may paint the nonfunctional lights red, to look like berries or something. I hope I am able to do that, anyway. Maybe then I can take down my weird decorated branch that lives in the family room. But, I love that thing, even if people keep turning the lights off.
Strange but beautiful to me.
It becomes clear that I am more of a fan of trees than of Christmas, since these things stay up all year around and have a distinct lack of specifically Christian elements. I respect that religion, but my fondness for Jesus and his acts doesn’t make me what counts as a Christian to most people in the US.
Where was I. Yes, I spent a long time taking down ornaments and dusting them off, then I put the tree outside. I put up the few decorations I can find around the house, so it looks like wintry cheer around here. I’ll spare you photos.
Then I decided that, since I’d made space in the entry, I could put a tree in the entryway, where people could see it driving by and we’d look at least a little American. I went to the dollar store and got an inexpensive white tree and a bunch of lights. First, I could not put the tree on the table I intended to put it on, (which got damaged on the trip between the church and the ranch anyway, sigh) because it would hit the chandelier. Okay, so I can only put unbreakable ornaments on it.
Mandi came over and we were chatting as I put the tree together. It doesn’t look bad, I thought. Then I went to put lights on. Oh, poop. Green light cords do NOT look good on a white tree. So, I just put up all my nature and dog-related unbreakable ornaments. It looks, well, okay.
It will look better with a tree skirt, anyway.
I’m going to order some lights with white cords from Target or somewhere, and they will get here soon. I need a 2021 ornament and my annual Target Christmas globe, too. There, I am decorating for the season of light this year, and doing a much better job than last year, when I simply failed.
I dusted off this little tree I used to use in my office, and I swear it’s the best looking decoration in the house.
I also unpacked two, count them, two boxes from the move. One contained some nice things from my old living room. The other was a mystery! Lee had brought it in when he dragged some things in the last day of the move. I do not recognize the contents. It’s dishes from some grandmother.
Some ironstone and decorated plates. Huh.
The dishes were wrapped in Chicago Tribune issues from 1988, then later wrapped more in Austin American-Statesman paper from 2003. Whose could it be? None of my relatives ever lived in Austin. Nor did anyone else who ever lived in my house, unless maybe Declan’s girlfriend from high school. Well, everyone loves a good mystery.
I now have some plants in the house. I will attempt to keep them alive.
My next unpleasant adult task is to repot the plants that got messed up in the move. I also hate repotting plants. But, these are good ones, so I will do it. And Lee is helping me unpack at least a couple of boxes per week. And some furniture will show up here soon as we have some help and they have time. When does deer season end, anyway?
Today I was supposed to go to a horse event with Sara, but I decided it would be better to do lessons with both my horses. Lee was a good sport and drove me. A trailer I can pull is on my wish list!
Look! I’m on Drew!
Apache was annoying and ran off twice before coming to be haltered, which slowed things down. But I got his sweaty self groomed and made it to training. The idea was to figure out what I need to do to get him focused on me and my agenda.
We first did round pen work, and eventually got him quite attentive. Then I bravely got on and practiced getting him to walk quickly and not trot. (It hurt to trot, but I lived.) I’m going to keep doing those things next week to get him totally focused. It’s back to basics. I’m the mean mare.
No, she’s the mean mare.
Oh my, Apache was not yet done with learning who is boss. The trainer got on him to figure out his issues. And that she did. He did all his backing up, turning, and such, just like with me. He was not interested in going straight, staying on the fence, or anything.
It was fun watching the trainer patiently work with him, gently but firmly, until he figured out it was easier to do what she asked. Spurs helped.
She said the way I’d been taught to do the one-rein stop and make him yield his hindquarters actually gave him power. So I will learn new things and so will he. I’m so glad we did this.
Settle your ass down.
He is not bad hearted or untrainable, so I can keep working with him. That was good news. I was wondering if I was fooling myself investing in training him. No, we just have to go backwards and fix us both. Sigh.
Apache sure was sweaty when we were done.
Things were better with Drew, who is working so hard! He has to do all these exercises with his shoulders or haunches in. It’s really strengthening him, but isn’t easy. He keeps trying.
I back up a lot.
In fact, he is strong enough now that he can canter under saddle without falling down. I was so happy to see it! His back legs are so much stronger and coordinated!
Look at me go!
He’s where I hoped he would get during his initial training. And he is still so sweet.
Canter time
As you could see at the beginning of the post, I did get to ride him. Embarrassing thing was that both my hips cramped when I got on. I’m tired of hurting. I did get to learn his cues, which was fun. I’ll enjoy learning more. I’ll leave you with a movie of Drew practicing getting into the canter.
Go Drew!
So thankful that I have such good guidance on this journey.
Hey there, readers! Do you remember that back in September we started building a swimming pool over here at the Hermits’ Rest Ranch? You haven’t been hearing much about it lately, have you?
Lee inspects his plastic palm trees. They will help keep people from falling off the steps, which has already happened.
That’s because, just as Lee feared, the workers disappeared for about a month. Naturally, the only day all this week that I was gone was when people showed up, at last. They came to put the plants in the flower beds. Hooray.
Workers, working. Photo by Lee.
They also put in Lee’s fake palm trees, which I have to say look pretty good right now. We will see how they hold up after a few rains. I was glad to see that the real plants are hardy items like palmettoes and those yuccas with the red blooms. They will at least lend some color.
The dogs seem to approve of the plants or whatever peed on the rocks before they were delivered, perhaps.
Lee and the gang were glad to see that they did put landscape fabric down and they put tan rocks in, not glaring white (which pretty much cooks plants in the summer sun here).
They didn’t have enough rocks. Oops. My job is to remind the owner to order more rocks.
The frog pond is now dry, as well. There is a lot of silt and such in the bottom of the pool that they will need to get rid of before the plastering can occur. I have been told that the plastering will commence tomorrow or Monday. We’ll see.
I think the plants look nice, but I do hope they remember to make the electricity work and make the pool actually work after the plastering. I want that hot tub.
In Other News
I enjoyed a book club at a nice restaurant last night with Anita and the women from the old neighborhood. Finding the restaurant was challenging, because it is in a dimly lit (but lovely) shopping area and its sign is not lit up at night. You are just supposed to know where it is, sorta like Bob’s Steak House in Cameron. It was really nice to see everyone and get caught up, at least a little bit, on what’s going on with them.
It’s not quite everyone, but is most of the neighbors!
They gave Anita a lovely poster with lots of photos of them as a going away gift. Wasn’t that sweet? No wonder we’ll miss them once Anita is no longer cat sitting on the next street over!
They say hi.
You will also be happy to know I got a replacement helmet for riding the horses. I actually ordered two, in the vain hope that Anita or someone else concerned with the safety of their noggin will want to go riding with me some day, once I have two horses. I guess, though, if one’s my son, I’ll have to get an XL helmet.
I figure if my horse is named after a Native American group, I can have a matching helmet design. The other one I ordered is plain white and has more air vents, like for summer.
At least Sara and I won’t mix our helmets up anymore.
That declaration should come as no surprise. There is always something new that needs to be done, or more likely, something broken that needs to be fixed. It’s a good thing we get to enjoy such lovely sunrises and sunsets! Today, the sky was pink 360 degrees around the ranch. Ahh.
A nice sight to wake up to!
The good stuff is that the dog fencing is all done, and most of the gates are in. The big ones are wide enough for a tractor or truck, so that equipment can get into the yard to work on various projects.
Dogs get to stay in, people and equipment can move about as desired.
The gates are already handy, since some repairs needed to be done within the fenced area. For one, the pool guys discovered a leak in the pipe leading from the garage to the septic system. I guess it’s a good thing that water isn’t used too much. We would have guessed the earth shifted and broke it or something, that is until our intrepid team found the duct tape that had been holding the pipe together. There’s no way we would ever have known if the pool guys hadn’t dug that hole.
It’s fixed now.
Perhaps you now see why we no longer use the general contractor for this house. But wait, there are more reasons for that, right near the problem pipe.
Hmm.
Whoever ran the water lines and air conditioning stuff to our garage building did not bother to seal the holes into the building. That was sort of okay at first, since in the tack room (former office, living quarters, and other things) the walls kept the room sealed. But, something broke at some point and a hole had to be put in the wall.
You don’t want to know what’s in there.
You could easily see daylight from that hole in the wall. Guess who else could see it? Rats and mice. They got in and ate a bunch of chicken food and made a huge mess. Worse, they ate the plastic cover on my expensive refill container of fly spray. Why on earth? I really didn’t like them in there, and neither did anyone else, since they also ate cattle cubes.
One hole blocked. And yes we need to get the mold off the north side of the building. Of course, the pressure washer is broken. Ranches also break a lot of things.
Today we got them sealed out or in. All holes have been covered up. Now we just have to kill off whatever rodents are still in there. Otherwise, they could live a long time, and reproduce just like rodents tend to do. I’m not sure what we are going to do, since I don’t like keeping rat poison anywhere around dogs.
The really bad hole, also fixed.
Now wasn’t that an appetizing blog post? Let’s see if I can produce something less icky for tomorrow.
There’s always a surprise around here. Today’s surprise was a horse I didn’t know in my pens this morning.
Hello, I’m a large, black mare.
I knew that someone had come back last night after I went to bed, because the dog alarm went off. But I didn’t know who. It turned out to be the nephew and the stock trailer. I recognized Dusty, Remington’s buckskin buddy, but who was the black beauty?
I’m built like a brick house.
I finally figured out it’s Kathleen’s horse from the farm, T, who I’d only seen once before and who did not look quite so fine at that time. It turns out she’s here to get all checked out and such. How about that?
Look, I’m friendlier that Apache and Fiona!
Do you see how shiny she is? Her secret is living for 3 years in a herd of cows and eating grass (and cattle cubes). It works!
She seems happy to be around other horses, and they all seem to be getting along. And she is friendly under all that muscle.
Meanwhile
I didn’t go into detail about my lesson with Drew yesterday, but it was very enlightening to see how hard he is working to learn new habits and build good muscles.
Developing his back legs
He is now going over his little hill under saddle, backwards and forwards, and he is working on using a bit. He doesn’t like them, probably because he had a pretty uncomfortable one before I got him.
And he is developing patience.
We talked about the plan for him, and currently the thinking is to bring him back home at the new year to do ground work and grow to a more adult size. Then in some number of months he can get back for finishing. I’d still be bringing him in for lessons.
Canter practice
I got a lot out of watching Sara’s lesson on Aragorn, who had been feeling agitated for a few days after being spooked by a horse wearing a blanket. He was trying his best to annoy Sara, but she didn’t let him. We were impressed at how she kept her cool and fixated on getting the job at hand done.
Here I was trying to capture his red mane tips, but it didn’t come through.
We had a darned pleasant afternoon with our horses and our trainer.
Today was also pleasant. I walked Apache all over to build back our relationship. Yesterday he turned and walked away from me, but today he came up, eventually and we had a good walk. Fiona, of course, is the best. What a donkey.
We’re all good.
My bruises on my lower abdomen are swollen and painful. I hope it’s just healing. If it gets worse, I will have it looked at.
I’ll tell you more about this tomorrow, but what’s important is that I got to visit Drew and see how he’s progressing today.
Where have you been, Suna?
He’s getting really muscular and filled out.
No ribs showing!
I went with Sara, so we got to watch each other’s lessons. I was not alone when I was watching.
I watch lessons all day.
The resident bull sat with me, sighing periodically like he thought these horses should be doing better. I also had another friend to entertain me.
Who’s a good dog? Me!
This guy was with us the whole time. Every time we go to training, one of the dogs joins us. This one sure reminds me of Harvey.
We also enjoyed getting to know some very curious new horses at the training center. When we drove in, they ran up like cars were very exciting.
We like people.
I went in to look at them to learn about confirmation. The big buckskin and the two fillies were fascinated by my water bottle. I wish you could see their three noses all sniffing at it. Such curiosity!
Two pretty babies
I’ll share more tomorrow. I spent so much time with horses today that I’m zonked.
Come back soon, Suna!
Plus I’m full from a nice dinner my friend Martha made for us. Sunday family dinners are back!
It was suggested that I make a giant Grandma’s Favorite dishcloth pattern as a baby blanket. It’s also been suggested that babies no longer use blankets. So, it is also a “tummy time mat” or whatever modern babies use.
It’s not plain and boring.
I had two balls of this nice, soft baby yarn, Sridar Snuggly Pattercake, in two different pastel color ways. I used the same stripe sequence as with my hexagonal blanket I just finished.
The colors lined up similarly, but it ended up looking nice, I think. It’s certainly soft and snuggly. And it can be washed by machine if soiled by normal baby activities.
This will go to one of three upcoming little ones in my friend and family circle. I like making baby things, because I can give them away! That makes less yarn in my soon-to-be-bursting yarn room.
Speaking of not bursting, my closet is less stuffed today, since I packed up 6 large bags of clothing (size small and medium mostly) and a bag of shoes this morning. Maybe I’ll have room for the remaining clothes and shoes that got moved here. The purge has begun!
It’s Penney’s turn.
Rainy days off are good for something after all. And since it’s chilly, there are more dog snuggles.
The Hermits' Rest 