Furry Four Legged Kids

2011 Ch 5 ~ Finally Picked One

2011-10-10T15:35:00.000-07:00

Also during the time we were working on the arena I was car shopping. I was very close to just settling on a Honda Accord, but couldn't find quite was I was looking for available at a price I wanted to pay. And I still wasn't thrilled with that choice. I've had 2 other Honda Accords, a '91 and a '00, both coupes and I loved them both, but for whatever reason, I just couldn't get excited about them this time around.

Then I started looking at the Acura's. Man, those are some cute cars! So I started doing some serious shopping for an Acura. We took a break from the arena one day to run out because they had significantly dropped the price on one that was exactly what I wanted. Of course, by the time we got there, it was sold. *sigh* We stopped at another Acura dealership that was close by and they had a few options, though most were a little more expensive then I really wanted. One, a charcoal TSX with fairly low miles was a decent price so we went to take it for a test drive, but apparently there was someone trying to buy it already. Figures. The sales guy took us over to a different one that was just a few grand more, but had WAY lower miles and was a newer model that they had made some pretty good changes on. I was in love. It was pearl white with beige leather interior, wood grain dash, nav, every option, 18k miles. It was GORGEOUS! The sales guy went in to get the keys so we could drive it, but the ~~jackass~~ gentleman inside had changed his mind and wanted that one instead. We had other obligations that day and could not wait around for him to make up his mind so I just took it as a sign and we left. I was a bit bummed. But after sleeping on it realized it was for the best. It really was more then I should have been spending. I really was trying to be practical, a word that isn't generally in my vocabulary.

Anyways, long story short(ish), another TSX caught my eye at a dealership a little ways north. They actually had several options that were what I wanted and mostly in my price range. We got there and test drove the one that I had my eye on, but it was a bit rough. The interior had some scratches and dents and broken pieces (stuff that drives me a bit nutty) and the exterior had not been well cared for. I decided it just wasn't floating my boat for being barely in my price range. I looked at a couple other cars that were on my list and one didn't have all the options I really wanted and it had black interior instead of the light interior, but they had dropped the price significantly on it so I had to take a peek. Boy was it clean. The miles were a bit higher then I wanted at 100k, but it's an Acura. My first Honda had over 210k miles on it when I finally got rid of it. The exterior of it was very nearly perfect and the interior had one tiny little scratch on the arm rest, the seats looked like they had hardly been sat in, every thing was clean, it smelled good, even the metal plates in the door jams still had the factory plastic covers on, by far the nicest and cleanest car we had looked at. It was a very basic TSX, but still had plenty of bells and whistles and I was able to check off all of my "must haves" and most of my really, really wants.

We took it for a drive and it even ran better then the other TSX's I had driven. It was a nice car! Of course, comparing it to the TL's (V-6's, vs 4 cyl TSX) or other cars on the lot that were my favorite colors or had other options that I really wanted, it was hard to really appreciate the little silver TSX. But I just told myself that I would be perfectly happy with it once I got it by itself and wasn't comparing it to everything I COULD have. And I was right. I love that little TSX! And the best part...out the door, we came in right AT our "wishful thinking, but never going to stick to it" budget. Man, I felt so practical!

So I finally picked a car! And found a good one and bought it! Wow! That's only been 3-4 years in the making! lol

This car also marks the first time in my life I've had a sedan. Which I guess is appropriate since I'm now 30 and all. ;)

2011 Ch 4 ~ The Project

2011-10-10T15:31:00.000-07:00

After selling my truck I had some dough to play with. Being me, I couldn't just be responsible with ALL of it, so I decided we needed to knock out one of our lingering, much anticipated and dreamed about projects: the arena.

Of course, being February, the timing wasn't great, but we lucked out with a very nice dry break in the weather and we were able to get it done. And of course when I say "we" I mean mostly the boyfriend. I pretty much just wrote the checks and cheered him on. I did run the roller for an hour or so one day. That was an adventure.

We rented a big (to me, boyfriend wasn't real impressed) roller and dozer for the project. First we (he) leveled the pad off with the dozer and got it to slope the way he wanted for drainage.

After he had that right, he rolled it pretty good so it was solid.

When that was ready, we brought in a few truck and pup loads of gravel, leveled and rolled that. Because the weather was so nice for us we actually spent a lot of time watering the gravel so that we could get it compacted enough. Who'da thunk that it would be too dry in February in Washington?!

The boyfriend spread the gravel out with the tractor and the TR3 rake, to make it all even and nice before we rolled the crap out of it.

That was the part I got to run the roller on and since I was actually working, there are no pics. Those things are pretty weird! Needless to say, my passes across the pad were not all straight and perfectly lined up like his were. Mine looked a little drunk. Maybe a LOT drunk! lol

The whole time we were working on this project we were checking the weather reports constantly. Hoping that it wasn't going to freeze too bad or rain or snow. Like I said, we really lucked out. After the base was about as good as it was going to get we started getting sand in. The dump truck driver was really great to work with and realized that we needed to get the base covered up before a storm rolled in and made it happen. He was so considerate of how he pulled in the driveway and drove nicely across the base so he didn't mess anything up and left as little evidence of his being there as possible. The extra care he took was definitely appreciated!

We got the base mostly covered up just in time for a big storm to roll through and the rest of the sand was delivered in the snow.

Once the weather cleared up a bit, the boyfriend got the sand all spread out and drug it a few times and we were ready to go!

We don't plan to put rails around it. Right now all of our horses are broke enough that we don't need fence and we've got portable panels we can put up if we do end up needing them. Plus, this way we can expand it later when we get tired of loping little circles.

I got my first ride in the arena on March 2nd! So far it's been a fabulous arena! Even with the massive amounts of rain we've had this year there were only a couple days that it was too wet to ride in. It drains great and has been excellent all weather footing! And let me tell you, having an arena at home so we can just tack up and ride is the most fabulous thing EVER!!!

2011 Ch 3 ~ Week 3

2011-09-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

So after how fabulously craptastic the first two Wednesdays of the year were I have to admit I was feeling a tad bit paranoid about the third Wednesday. I try not to be superstitious and paranoid, but you know bad things *always* come in Threes, right?

I was a bit jumpy that day. If I could have bubble wrapped all the animals and stayed in bed all day I probably would have. But I could not, so I went to work and tried not to look over my shoulder too much. We did all survive the day totally unscathed. Yay! I convinced myself that one of the other minor (and too insignificant to even remember now) "bad" things that had happened over the weekend must have been The Third. And life went on. The third week was fairly uneventful. Whew!

After that things really got going, though thankfully they were on the more positive side. Like I said, this has been one heck of a year. We fell in love with new horses, posted old ones for sale, the boyfriend and I duked it out at the last winter series show for the buckle and we got a very exciting property project going.

2011 Ch 2 ~ The Second Week

2011-09-10T11:32:00.000-07:00

So the second week of January 2011. One I certainly could have done without. Exactly one week after I was rear ended I came home from work to find the boyfriend more upset then I'd ever seen him. He could hardly even get the words out. Cletus had been hit by a car, killed instantly.

It was surreal. I couldn't believe the words I had just heard. My Dude Man. I did not want to believe it. The boyfriend had already buried him, picked the prettiest spot on the property under a little fir tree and marked his grave with a nice rock.

It was an extremely rough time dealing with his loss. It's amazing what a gaping hole one dog can leave in your life.

Everything reminded us of him. The house was soooo quiet without the two dogs wrestling and playing and barking at the neighbors.

Of course it didn't help they Cheyanne was feeling the loss too. They had been such good buddies. They played hard and constantly. Wrestling in the yard, chasing the horses, picking through the frozen poo, the most interesting thing around when everything was covered with snow.

Chey didn't eat for a couple weeks, until I started hand feeding her and basically forcing her to eat. She just laid around, looking forlorn. That was just as hard to deal with.

The Dude was my buddy. He was the sweetest, friendliest, most affectionate and goofiest dog I've ever had. We had gotten in the routine of snuggling in the evenings when we were all stuck inside because of the winter weather. I would sit on the floor in front of the heater (my favorite spot when it's cold) and he would come snuggle with me. I would scratch his belly and play with him. Then when I would curl up on the couch and read, he'd put his head on the couch right by my leg (he knew he wasn't allowed on the couch) and stare at me with those big brown eyes and I'd scratch his ears and pet him while I read. His eyes would half close and he looked so content, just to be close and have a little love. He always chose sitting at my feet with his head in my lap over laying down to sleep or chewing on his bone.

I still miss him like crazy and would give just about anything to have him back. I do believe everything happens for a reason, but I'm still having a hard time figuring out why this had to happen. I am so glad to have had him in my life for the short time we did though. He was just a damn cool dog.

2011 Ch 1 ~ The First Week

2011-09-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

I was determined to make 2011 a big year heading into it. My motto for the year was just "Get Sh** Done!". No specific new years resolutions, just "Get Sh** Done". Do something. ANYTHING that will get me closer to accomplishing my goals. Even little tiny baby steps are progress and get me that much closer to being finished. Anything helps. I was getting tired of having deja vu every time I looked at my project list and saw the same things again and again. I wanted to "Get Sh** Done" and checked off that blasted list so I could move on to bigger and better things.

First up - the truck situation. Fuel prices were already high and just going to get higher. Every time I looked at how much we were spending on diesel every month I died a little inside. I had just paid my truck off and was reveling in not having that payment every month, but still, it was getting older. It was still a diesel 4x4 truck and nothing about those suckers is cheap. Not fuel, not oil changes, not brakes or tires or fixes. And we had 3 diesel trucks, all getting up there in miles. It just was not practical. At times I'd just shake my head at the stupidity of it, but other times I could totally justify it. We're country people and really USE those trucks. And it's Blue. I love Blue.

This has been a pretty constant debate for me for years now. Getting a gooseneck trailer and not having a hitch installed in my truck was the beginning of the end for Ol' Blue. Since I couldn't haul the horse trailer with her I was having a much more difficult time justifying keeping her. The prospect of getting her paid off and having one less payment every month spared her for a little while, but in the end, I just couldn't do it any more.

My main hold up had been that I didn't know what I wanted to drive instead. Nothing was appealing. Anything I wanted wasn't practical enough to justify selling the paid off truck. Anything practical just wasn't floating my boat. I test drove car after car after car after car after car (and so on) (and on and on, seriously, it was epic) and nothing spoke to me. My commute isn't exactly short and I do love driving so I "needed" something that I would enjoy being in. I just couldn't find something that struck that balance in practicality and fun.

At some point in December in occurred to me that we had 3 vehicles. I didn't HAVE to replace her. I could just drive the haulin' truck until something spoke to me. Not ideal, since the haulin' truck isn't my fave to commute in, and it sure was nice not having to hook and unhook the trailer every time we wanted to ride, but certainly doable. And so the decision was made. Blue was to be sold. Right after one warranty issue was fixed.

Of course with the holidays and busy schedules it was a couple weeks before we could get her in at the shop, but we got her in and January 5th I went and picked her up, planning to head home and clean her up for her photo shoot. But alas, it was not meant to be. On my way home I was rear ended by an old guy in a Buick. It was dusk and raining and they came out of no where. I had been sitting stopped at this light for a while with no one behind me when I saw an odd flash of headlight in my side mirror. You know the flash...when you know something's not right and crap this might hurt? Ya, one of those.

Luckily he was able to swerve and only hit the corner of my truck. And of course his Buick was way worse off then my truck. He couldn't even get his door open. But still, I was not happy. I had plans for this truck and this was not helping things! Plus, you know, accidents and dealing with all the insurance crap afterwards is not great either.

I had a few weeks of chiro apts and got the truck fixed and then, finally, was ready to post her. I slapped the ad up on craigslist and went to bed. The next morning I had an email time stamped less then an hour after the ad was posted. This guy wanted her. Bad. I had the boyfriend call him to "talk truck" and, after working through some issues, the guy bought her and I put her on a barge to Alaska. I cried when I dropped her off. Then realized that I left my gate clicker and favorite cd in there. Doh!

I got a picture from him a week later. She was safe and sound in Alaska, happy trudging through the snow with icicles hanging off of her. She always did like the snow. :-)

So the first week of January I was rear ended. Ugh. Never a great way to start off the year! But I still got the truck sold. After 6 1/2 years and 100,000 miles, Ol' Blue was gone. One giant milestone for me and one happening I could have done without.

But, everything happens for a reason. Selling Ol' Blue was one of the "for the greater good" things. I didn't want to, but in the grand scheme of things, it made more sense to. And without asking or anything, I got a small settlement out of the accident for my troubles. Nice!

The second week did not turn out so well...

2011 Thus Far

2011-09-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

Wow. I can't believe it's already September! We'll just skip over the whole "I'm a sucky blogger" thing again, cuz really...seems like every post from me for the past year or two have started out that way.

I've had so much to write about for so long, but I've just been busy and the story that I felt needed to come first was not one I was ready to write so the blog just sat. With the exception of a couple random posts.

But now it's September and I am really inspired to write and document this year and all that has happened. Boy do I have a lot to get caught up on. 2011 has been quite a year! There have been many exciting things happening, some really big bummers, some sad endings and fun beginnings. It has overwhelmingly been a year of change and progress. Most of it good. Or at least for the greater good. Certainly a couple things I could have done without.

So, if there are still people out there that haven't given up on me yet, I hope to be back this weekend with tales of our 2011 adventures.

A Funny Story...

2011-05-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

I just have to share this story because I think it's funny and hope you'll get a chuckle out of it too!

I decided that with all the pots I'm planting this year, the seeds that I started indoors and need to bring out to harden off and my bad luck with pots/plants and the dogs in previous years, it would be best to block off the porch area to the dogs. I figured it would be temporary and one side already had a gate that we could close so there was just the stairway to worry about. I was just going to see what kind of baby gates they have available and stick one on there, easy peasy. But after a day of running errands and no baby gate and really needing to get it blocked off so I could get to work, I decided to just scavenge stuff we have and see what I could do.

This is what I came up with...

A roll of fence that we took down in the back yard when we bought the house. I was too lazy to cut a hunk off, so I just brought the whole roll over. Yes, I realize that the effort "saved" in cutting the fence was negated by the effort expended in moving the entire roll. After wrestling with that thing for a while I was really wishing I had just taken the time to hunt down a pair of wire cutters!

So after getting the fence in position I fastened it in place with none other then....

Yep! Baling twine! Any horsey person knows that this stuff is almost as good as duct tape. And there is ALWAYS some around! But, I have to admit, it was maybe just a smidge ghetto looking. I reassured myself that it was free! And temporary! And easy to get the job done! And did I mention it was free? I figured I'd look a little harder for a baby gate later, but for now, I could get to work on what I needed to do.

That's when I heard the Boyfriend banging away in the garage so I went to see what he was working on. Apparently, he'd had a very bright idea for the gate issue. I thought he was busy with other things, so I'd just gone ahead and done the ghetto fence.

Well, 10 minutes later, he had this hung...

He had stuck two of the garden border panels together, one on top of the other, then used some hinges and a latch that I had gotten for another project that we hadn't used and voila! We have a nice swinging, latching wooden gate that coordinates with the garden border all the way around the front of the house and doesn't look completely ghetto. LOVE it! And the best part? It was also free, made with things we already had laying around the house.

And really, with all the time I wrestled with that darn roll of fence, it probably didn't take any longer to get done either.

I try. But I probably don't have to tell you that my ghetto fence was taken down shortly after that gate went in. lol

Sunday Stills Challenge - In The Sky

2011-05-22T19:04:00.000-07:00

This week's Sunday Stills Challenge was In The Sky: planes, clouds, birds or anything you can come up with.

The Boyfriend is rather obsessed with his hummingbird feeder and they have really come out like crazy this year for it so I couldn't wait to see if I could catch them with my camera.

Happy Sunday to you all, hope you had a great weekend!

SSC ~ Rust!

2011-05-01T18:08:00.001-07:00

I wouldn't be my mother's daughter if I didn't do this Sunday Stills Challenge!

First we have a rusty old horse shoe from a few different angles.

And the Boyfriend's rusty old Ford

All pics are SOOC, no editing done.

I can't believe I haven't blogged since January 3rd. Bad Blogger! I'm hoping to start blogging again soon. I have so much to write about!

Happy 2011

2011-01-03T11:35:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's really here already!

I hope 2011 is a fabulous, prosperous and HAPPY year for each and every one of you!

Going Through The Motions

2010-12-21T12:35:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again. Time to drag out all the boxes of lights and decorations. Time to see family and friends and buy gifts and bake and be jolly. And eat. Lots and lots of eating.

Do you ever just feel like you're going through the motions of Christmastime?

My Christmas cheer seems to be coming and going this year. Right after Thanksgiving I had a few days of "Yay, it's almost CHRISTMAS!!", dragged all my decos down from the loft, started making lists for shopping and baking, all while listening to Christmas music and smelling my "Holiday Cheer" candles burning.

Then it just disappeared.

Most of December I seemed to be just going through the motions. I put up the decorations, got a tree, did some shopping, got my cards sent out. But I just wasn't feelin' it. I was feeling pretty darn Grinch-y. I just wanted Christmas to be over. I wasn't inspired to bake or wrap gifts or even finish up my shopping. But I needed to, so I just got 'er done.

I was really just ready for this year to be done and just kind of "over" Christmas.

I usually love Christmas time. I love the traditions and seeing family and giving gifts and decorating and seeing others' decorations. I love the whole spirit of this time of year.

But for whatever reason, I just wasn't feeling that spirit.

Some how, this past weekend, I got over it.

I think it was when I was wrapping every one's gifts and sticking them under the tree. For some reason, it just doesn't seem like Christmas to me until there are lots of pretty wrapped gifts patiently waiting to be given under my tree. When I finished wrapping and got them all arranged under the tree, I smiled, turned on some Christmas music, lit my "Holiday Cheer" candles and all was right with the world once again.

The pic above is our tree this year, pre-present wrapping extravaganza. Doesn't it just look naked without gifts under it?

Besides being so bright you could probably see it from space... I some how managed to get like 900 lights on it. Maybe 850 since half of one strand went out and I'm not about to try replacing it.

So what about you? What get's you in the holiday spirit?

Merry Christmas!

My New Buffardoo

2010-10-31T14:11:00.000-07:00

As I may have mentioned before I have been some what passively looking for a new pony. I knew Midori didn't have the natural talent to take me places with the new direction we wanted to head (reining and reined cowhorse). She is great to tool around on and, while she is doing better now then I ever thought she would, she still has her issues. I've been keeping my eyes open and basically if the right horse came along, something that I clicked with for the right price and couldn't pass up, I'd get it.

My trainer was helping me look, but nothing felt right. I wasn't bummed about it, I still had Midori. Another local trainer in the area had a couple young horses come home from getting started and one of them was small. He had consigned her to the auction in Reno during the futurities, but was afraid with how small she was and the economy the way it was that it wouldn't even be worth taking her down there. He wanted someone small for her that would show her and knew that I was kinda sorta looking. He wanted me to have her and was prepared to make me a deal that got me interested.

I fell in love with her pretty much the moment I saw her. She is an absolute doll, so sweet and pretty darn chill for a baby.

Meet Buffy the Buffalo Slayer.

It's the name she came with and unfortunately, it stuck. I tried to change it, but every one already knew her as Buffy and I'd been calling her Buffy for about a month by the time I actually picked her up. It was a lost cause. I usually call her by some variation of Buffy...B, Buffardoo, Buffardoodle, Doodle...anything but Buffy. lol

She is a 2 year old out of a Shine Like Hail mare by Laredo Blue. My trainer has a gelding also by Laredo Blue and apparently he puts that head on a lot of his babies. It's not the cutest head, but it grows on ya. I just hope she grows into it! lol

She is a really strange color and it changes almost weekly. She looks really gray now, but not too long ago it was going to be bay roan on her papers. I'm not really sure what to put at this point! I'm pretty sure she'll end up gray, but she's not quite there right now.

Check out that ass though!

Love those nice Quarter Horse asses!

She's got quite a chest on her too for how small she is. She was 13:2 at the wither and 13:3 1/2 at the hip when I got her. I meant to measure her today, but forgot. She is probably just over 14HH at the hip right now and in the middle of a not so flattering growth spurt.

Her mom was short, a little over 14HH, but stout and super athletic looking. She was shown as a 3 year old in cow horse and did well. I think she's pretty much just been a broodmare since. B's sire, Laredo Blue, is apparently not to shabby of a cutting horse. I don't know much about bloodlines and such so I won't pretend like I do.

Doodle is a very curious pony. Of course, she's 2. She was in my face the whole time I was out there taking pics today.

Like, reeeeally in my face!

Despite her small stature, she doesn't ride like a little horse at all. She has a big stride and since I am only 5'2" we make a good pair. People are always surprised when we walk up to them after watching us go. They don't expect us to be so short.

These last two pics are from the first time I saw and rode her. The last picture is the one that sold me on her. Check out that smile! I LOVED her from the very beginning.

My goal with her is to do the NWRCHA futurity on her next year. I'm hoping she starts growing because I don't want to be looking those cows straight in the eye while I'm chasing them down the fence! If she doesn't grow and I don't feel like she's ready to go down the fence, I'll do one of the local reining futurities with her. She's already got a sweet little lead change, decent turn arounds and plants her butt when I say whoa. She is super talented and a total natural. I just need to get my stuff together and learn to stay out of her way!

If futurities don't work out I still have her derby year. I'm not going to push her faster then she's ready to go. My first priority with her, above all else, is to raise a good, solid horse.

Sunday Stills Challenge - Halloween

2010-10-31T03:00:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a loooooong time since I did a Sunday Stills Challenge! Way too long!

I've got a bit of Halloween paraphernalia around my house and I was finally able to take a little time with my camera to get some pics of it for this challenge. Mostly just because I was procrastinating doing other things.

BOO!

These last ones are some candle holders that I have.

Happy Halloween!

To see more Halloween pics go through the comments here.

They Lived!

2010-10-30T13:07:00.001-07:00

I actually had some sunflowers that came up this year! Wohoo! Last year I planted 3 packets of seeds and not one single one came up. I did start these inside first and then transplanted them to the flower bed. In late July or so. I was just slightly behind. Gardening and yard work isn't generally very high on my priority list.

I took this picture at the end of September. They didn't get very tall or big, and the dogs took a few out, but they bloomed so I'm happy! :)

That Marriage Thang

2010-10-07T11:51:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking lately about the whole marriage thang. I am currently teetering on the edge of 30 years old and not married. I don't have any thing against marriage, nor was it ever part of my "life plan" to be nearly 30 and unmarried.

Actually, I believe my life plan went something like: graduate college with bachelors degree at 21, meet guy, fall in love, marry at 23, buy house, have horses, live fairy tale. May or may not have included kids, I don't remember. Never been much of a fan of them.

Instead of that, life has gone more like this...go to community college. Meet guy some where in there. Buy car and horse that you need to continue working to pay for. Work 2 part time jobs, go to night classes, still a full time student. Take a little time off from school. Go back. Finally get AA after 4 1/2 years. Never make it to "real college". Get engaged to guy because we've been together for 3 years and that's what you do. Besides, I'm almost 23 and that's when I'm supposed to be married. Break up with guy after a month of being engaged. Date some more. Pass 23rd birthday, which is when you were supposed to be married. Buy yourself a truck and horse trailer to cheer yourself up. Continue living with parents. Date some more. Finally meet boy of my dreams. Move out of parents house into house with boy of my dreams after 2 years of being together. You're 25 by then. Talk about getting married. Buy house together instead. Talk about getting married some more. Buy new tractor instead. Buy new horse trailer. Buy new horse. etc. etc. etc. And now, here I am, owning a house, truck and horse trailer with boy of my dreams, firmly cemented in this relationship, possibly more then if we had that piece of paper telling us we're legally married. But we're still not married. Technically.

I've never been one of those people that thinks it's "just a piece of paper". Ever. I've never NOT wanted to be married. I certainly never expected to be here and not married. But life has a funny way of carrying on and changing priorities. I'm happy. We are happy. We love our life. Neither of us has any thing against marriage. No previous marriages, no baggage with parents surrounding the idea of marriage. We do plan to get married, just haven't done it yet.

It is strange to me when people that I haven't seen in a while ask if I'm still with the same guy. We bought a house together. We are in it for life, just as much as any of my married friends. Does not having that piece of paper making it legal or rings on our fingers make our relationship not as committed?

Every once in a while I get the wedding bug, but it usually passes fairly quickly. It's just not a priority. I refuse to go to Vegas. Just not my style. I'm not opposed to a court house wedding, but I want to include my family and friends. That means doing the whole wedding thang which requires planning and time and money and that is probably the main hold up. There are other things I'd rather do with that time and money. We own and show horses. 'Nuff said. lol Besides, why mess up a good thing?

And so here I am, almost 30 years old (OMG!!!), been together with the Boyfriend for nearly 6 years, and I have the whole fairy tale life I had envisioned (mostly anyways, there is always the crappy real life stuff that comes up, like work), with every thing I hoped for. Except that little piece of paper.

I know at least a couple of my bloggy buddies have been with their bf's for quite a while and are not married. It's not uncommon. And this isn't a rant or anything, I'm just really curious about this. Why? Was it a choice to not get married? Was it something that just happened, like me? Why is that "piece of paper" so important? Or so important to avoid?

It's a very curious phenomenon.

To me at least.

A Place For Everything...

2010-09-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

...and everything in it's place. That's my motto. Generally speaking. Most of the time.

It's at least my goal in life.

The Boyfriend? Not so much.

I keep the house reasonably picked up: the kitchen organized with a "home" for most things, laundry put away (on good weeks), don't leave things laying around too terribly long, etc.

Even things that don't so much have a specific home, have a general area that it can usually be found in.

So why does the Boyfriend have problems finding things? If he goes looking for things a few days after he left them laying on, say, the couch and it's not there, he turns the house, his truck, where ever he thinks he might have left it, upside down. Then finally mentions to me that he can't find whatever it is. I, of course, ask if he looked where it's supposed to be, as in, I probably put it away, did he look for it in it's "home".

*blank stare*

So of course I have to go show him where it is put away. Again. *sigh*

I realize he spent years living by himself and things stayed where he left them and most things didn't have put away "homes" so much as spots on the floor where they were conveniently dropped. And stayed until he needed them again. And I cut him some slack for a while because it was a new house, he probably just hadn't really gotten used to where everything goes.

We've been in this house 2 1/2 years. I don't think he gets that slack any more.

He is a boy though. At work we call it "boy disease". As in, they can never find things if they are put away, or sometimes even if it is right in front of their face. They need us to go find it for them. And we do. 98.7% of the time it's right where it's supposed to be.

Back to The Boyfriend...

The most recent scenario involved a dremel bit that he thought he had purchased, but was doubting himself because he couldn't find it any where. If you saw his garage (his domain, I don't move anything in there) this would not be such a surprise. It's just a bit messy.

If I do have to venture in the garage for something, I sneak through the piles of stuff, grab what I need (if I can find it), go use it, then put it right back, exactly where I found it (usually). We don't use the garage to park our trucks, we have a carport for that, so the garage houses his dirt bike, his Land Cruiser (off roader), a couple large old stereo systems, a surround sound system that never got hooked up, his tools, quite a few boxes of random contents that he has moved twice now and a whole bunch of stuff. Every where. The walls of the garage are covered in cupboards, cubbies, shelves, hooks and basically massive amounts of potentially organized storage for said stuff. But it sits on the floor in piles, waiting to be organized.

Ok now, where was I....Ah yes, the dremel bit. So he has mentioned the elusive dremel bit a few times to me. As I don't remember it coming in the house at all, I am not much help. I asked him if he looked in his tool box or his dremel case where, I would assume, it would have been "put away".

Again with the *blank stare* Like, why would it be there? Why would I have put something away?!? Sheesh!

So finally, he concludes that he must have imagined purchasing it (if you had ever watched the guy shop, you'd know that this is not an entirely unlikely scenario!) and during a trip to Home Depot over the weekend bought another one.

A little while after we get home he comes in the house with an amused looking grin on his face. Apparently, he went to put away his new dremel bit so he didn't lose it and guess what he found? Yep, the one he thought he had bought, but couldn't find any where. Right where it was supposed to be, in it's "home".

This is not the first time this has happened. That boy cracks me up! On good days anyways. It really is rather amusing. Most of the time. ;)

My question is...Is this a general "boy phenomenon"? Or is it just all the boys that I associate with?

I Have Issues

2010-08-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

It's no secret to those that know me that I have some "issues". Some of them are laughable, some we'll just call "quirky" and others are downright annoying. I'm not going to delve into most of them because we just don't need to be airing that all out. ;) One that I do want to get into is my obsessive tendencies.

While I don't mind this quality so much (most of the time), I'm sure others (the boyfriend, my animals, my trainer, my friends and family, my boss and co-workers) may be pretty annoyed by it.

For what's now been almost two full years I've been rather obsessive about reading. It all started with the Twilight series, which I've now read multiple times. That segued into the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, which led to the Sookie Stackhouse series, both read more through more than once, along with quite a few other random books in between. So that's quite a few books.

But I love reading. I mean, L-O-V-E it. I'll take reading over tv any day. So I don't mind all that much that once I find a good book, I get rather obsessive about finishing it. It's not such a problem when it's a random book here and there. But I've been finding all of these excellent SERIES to read lately, some are 5 or 6 (or more!) books long! And while I love reading, it can be seriously time consuming! And it's not real effective to multi-task while you're reading. It's not like I can clean or ride my horse or drive while I'm reading. I've managed some cooking while reading, but it's not the best way to cook or read.

Basically, bottom line is, I read every single spare moment I can somewhat responsibly manage. Which means not much cleaning gets done, many more fast food drive thrus are hit up or cans of chili cracked open for dinner, not much riding gets done and I all but check out of the world around me as soon as my butt hits that couch and that book gets in my hand. I have been known to avoid opportunities to socialize preferring to stay home and read. Again, doesn't tend to bother me all that much, but I'm sure it's rather annoying to those around me.

Most recently I had the Harry Potter series forced on me. Like, really, I was told I HAD to read them, there were no excuses, here's the books, now READ. Ok, so maybe it didn't go exactly like that, but mostly. I swear.

Of course about half way through the first book I was completely hooked. Such a great series, even reading it at 29 years old! But 7 books, a few thousand pages and a month and a half later... Where the hell did summer go?! How can it already be the END of AUGUST?! And how have I not blogged since MAY?!?!

Yikes. Time seems to just evaporate when there are books to be read.

I know I've said it before (but I'm far too lazy to go find the post and link to it here), I need to quit. Cold turkey. No more reading! At least for a little while. I still need to paint my bathroom. And my bedroom. And my living room. And clean. And ride my horseS (story to come one of these days, hopefully). And take pictures. And blog! There are TONS of things that I should be doing with my time that would be WAY better uses of such a precious commodity.

But the wheels are already turning on what my next book will be. *sigh*

Our New Addiction

2010-05-03T17:43:00.000-07:00

This year on our great new showing adventures we have decided to give reined cow horse a try.

Well, the boyfriend decided he wanted to do the reined cow horse shows, mostly so he could do something and not compete against me. I decided that if we were going to be spending gas money to haul all the way there and for hotels and stuff anyways, I would rather just bring my horse along, pay a bit of extra money and have myself some fun with it too!

And boy howdy is it FUN!!! The boyfriend is going down the fence, having done his first fence run ever in his life exactly two weeks before the first show. I figured since he had wanted to get away from competing with me I would just stick to the boxing classes this year, see how that went.

I guess I should give a little background on what cow horse actually is. There are three parts to it:

1. Herd work - basically cutting, taking a single cow out of the herd and keeping it out of the herd.

2. Dry work - basically a reining pattern, though cow horse patterns are condensed a bit.

3. Cow work - which also has 3 parts, boxing - keeping the cow on the end of the arena to show you can control it, going down the fence - pushing the cow down the long side of the arena and turning it at least once each direction, and then circling the cow - turning the cow at least 360 degrees each direction.

In my boxing class I only do the boxing part, not the fence run or circling. The cow work can get pretty crazy. I've done lots of boxing at shows and practice, so I've got that down. The rest of the work is often done at a full on gallop, balls to the wall, down the fence, inches from the cow who is (in theory) on the fence, with a quick dive around the front of the cow into the fence to get it stopped and turned. Then you have to launch back out to the side of the cow, keep it on the wall and run past it again for another turn.

Can you imagine what an adrenaline rush that is? Sha! Just a bit of adrenaline!

And then you get to circle! It's very exciting to watch and quite the rush to ride. I have done it a few times at clinics (read about that here and here) and it is just a blast! I'm itching to go down the fence, can you tell?

Anyways, the whole weekend was pretty darn fun. The shows are amazingly laid back, every one is super duper friendly and helpful and it's just darn good times. We had our second show of the season this past weekend and my last run, late Sunday night, was just a kick in the pants. I have no clue why, Midori was being a bit of a spooky dink, but I was laughing so hard at my silly horse that by the time I did my last stop on the dry work I paused and went...huh...I sure hope that was the pattern! I hadn't even really thought about it. lol

The boyfriend was nice enough to video it, even though he got distracted a couple of times and forgot to move the camera. I just have to post it because I had so much fun on it. We nailed our flying lead changes. And we even got some pretty nice stops in! For us. Remember, Midori was pretty much a drill pony up until about 8 months ago. I think our run is pretty impressive for lessons and one month of training! We've come a long, long ways! Still have a loooooong ways to go, but we're making progress so I can't complain!

Please note the scary, horse eating monster behind the gate that she is spooking at. You can see it when we walk in, the yellow thing poking up over the tarp. It was pouring rain and the cow guys were in full rain gear and hiding by the gate trying to stay out of the weather when they could. Apparently they were scaring a lot of the horses. Midori decided she wanted nothing to do with that whole end of the arena and I had to push pretty hard to get her down there the whole pattern and we bounced around a bit, but I guess that was probably part of why I had so much fun. I do love a good challenge with her!

Also, please note the nice shot of her fabulous ass after we finish our dry work and walk over to get our cow. Midori has a great ass, I've always loved it!

Our dry work score was a 68 and our cow work was a 70, total 138. Not fabulous scores in the grand scheme of things, but I was thrilled with them.

Goodbye Old Friend

2010-04-15T20:12:00.000-07:00

I need to say another goodbye. This one to a very good old friend of mine...my old horse trailer.

I had this trailer for almost 6 years. It treated me pretty good, always got me where I needed to go and put up with a lot of crap. heh crap...get it?

Anyways, it was the first trailer I ever hauled, my first experience hauling a horse, my first big adult purchase. I have so many great memories with this trailer and before I said good bye to it I had to document all of it's...ummm..."character". Each bump and bruise, dent and scratch, a different memory.

Like this one...

A nice big ol' dent right on the nose. It happened the first time I tried to park it in my soft dirt, 90 degrees off of a narrow driveway parking spot after I got my trailer brakes hooked up. I wasn't used to having trailer brakes and didn't realize that they would lock up very easily on the soft dirt. I jack knifed it. Oops! The boyfriend had installed the brake box for me, so it's kind of a sweet memory. The first truck improvement of our relationship.

Then there are these chew marks...

The first time I pulled in to the boyfriend's mom's pasture to turn my trailer around after one of our first rides together and one of her other horses decided to visit the horses in the trailer and chewed on it. Kinda pissed me off at the time, it was one of the first scratches in my trailer, but I laugh about it now. Just adds character.

Then there was the front wall...

Oh, that darn front wall. As you can tell, many a horse fought with that wall. No clue what the issue was but my Midori was the only horse that EVER hauled quietly against that wall. I had a few horses come out bruised and bloody from fighting with that wall. It was annoying.

And this divider...

Oh the divider! Had a few horses get stuck in the front stall when the middle horse leaned on this divider and it got stuck closed. That was always fun. And then there was my friend's horse who decided to get stuck up on it. That's right...Up. On. It. That was really good times.

Then there was the branch that fell on it during a wind storm and took out all of these lights...

And the fender that Sugar loved to chew on any time we left her tied for any length of time...

And Sugar's tie spot that she would immediately chew on when she was unloaded...

And the kick marks from my nice little mare any time a horse was loaded in behind her. Made it an interesting game since she was the only one that would haul quietly up front.

And the little tack room that held an amazing amount of crap in a reasonably organized fashion...

Though it may not sound like it, it really was a good little trailer for me for a long, long time. So many good memories with it...trail rides, a trip to the ocean, drill practices and meets, good times with friends and many, many opportunities that I wouldn't have had without it. It was a great little trailer!

But something tells me I'm not going to miss it too much...

Oh ya! Hello, new Logan!

Howdy!

2010-04-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness, it's been entirely too long since I blogged last! So many blog-worthy things have happened in the last month and a half, but I just have not had the time or the motivation to blog about any of them. Very sad! I'll get caught up on all of it one of these days. I hope!

One of the more note worthy things that has happened was this impulse buy...

We have talked about getting another dog off and on for a while, but never really pursued it. Then one day we were just finishing up a bunch of errands and on our way home we just happened to pass a "Puppies for sale" sign. The boyfriend saw it, said the puppies looked pretty cute and suggested we go look. I kept right on driving. For a little bit. I did eventually turn around. After all, what does just looking hurt? lol

Obviously, the "just looking" didn't work out so well. And we came home with this little guy...

Born January 1st

Border Collie and Australian Cattle Dog (Heeler) mix

Absolutely freaking adorable

We have finally decided on the name Cletus for him. His full name is Cletus D. Pooper, but don't tell the boyfriend that. He hates that I all him Pooper. And the D stands for Dude, my other nickname for him.

The parents weren't onsite, but we were told that both mom and dad were small-ish for their breeds. We figured he'd probably be about Cheyanne's height, but probably a little bulkier. But do you see the size of his legs and paws? I'm having my doubts on that!

I finally got inspired to get my camera out today and got all of these pics of him. He was quite the sport, posing pretty for the camera! :-)

I just love his eyes. When we got him they were this really cool almost purpleish gray. Now they are a really rich chocolate brown.

And he has the cutest little bum!

And I wish so, so much that the darn wheel barrow wasn't in the background of this shot! I love him peeking out from behind the tree, but that blue kinda ruins it. Bummer!

Hope you all are having a wonderful spring!

Another burning question...Shoes!

2010-02-16T12:21:00.000-08:00

Since I've actually been sticking to a routine of cardio and strength training workouts for a couple weeks now, and have every intention of continuing that routine, I have decided that I desperately need new shoes. The shoes I have now are probably a good 8 or 10 years old. Not that they've been used much on those years, but they have seen better days and my feet are sore after running in them. They don't provide much support for my fairly high arch and the last time I ran I felt the beginnings of blisters on my big toes. Not so much fun!

Plus, I'm always looking for excuses to buy new shoes. :-)

The thing is...I have absolutely no clue where to start. I want something comfy and am willing to spend some dough for a real quality shoe. But what shoes are quality? My current shoes are Asics, which did treat me pretty good for a while. I know Nikes and Adidas can get expensive, but are they still quality? Is there some other brand that you love and would highly recommend? A certain style or feature I should look for? Something you hate and think I should avoid like the plague?

While I am mostly concerned with the comfort and functionality of the shoe, I can't hate the color or style either. Since I'm pretty darn picky I have a hard time finding the right style/color/comfort/durability/functionality combo.

I got some pretty good input on the last "burning question" about mascara, so I thought I'd pick your brains some more and see what we come up with.

What gets you going?

2010-02-14T17:51:00.000-08:00

Another burning question...What motivates you to get going (and keep going) on your fitness goals?

I've tried here and there to get in better shape in the past few years, but have just never found the proper motivation/reward system. I'm not in bad shape, which is probably part of my lack of dedication to the issue, but I know I could be in better shape. I'm not over weight, but my strength and stamina are severely lacking. As is brought to my attention at every lesson I take with my horse. My trainer makes fun of me, big time. And I don't blame her one little bit. I'd make fun of me too, probably have made fun of people doing similar pathetic kicks in the past. I know I'm pathetic, I just don't have the strength in my legs to do much about it! And usually run out of breath trying.

Despite my weaknesses, Midori was still coming along in leaps and bounds. Her spins were getting more correct, we had a decently reliable flying lead change, her stops were getting better, we had switched to a bridle and were doing really well one handed. I was very pleased!

I was still considering getting a new horse though because Midori just wasn't where she needed to be so I could go play with the big kids this year. After some considering the situation and talking to my trainer about my options and Midori's potential, I decided that putting her in training for a month was my best option. She has potential and the trainer was confident that she could at least get her to a point that I could be competitive at the entry level, which is what I planned to do anyways. So off to training Midori went.

But that still left the issue of my being a weanie. I certainly didn't want to waste that money on training because I couldn't kick and I could definitely see Midori flipping me the hoof after her experiences with the trainer, who has about 10 inches and probably 60 pounds on me. Not to mention riding horses all day 6 days a week. So I decided to put myself "in training" as well. But I knew I needed to figure out some sort of reward/motivation and way of tracking my workouts so I could see what I was accomplishing.

This is what I came up with...

Gold stars. And ya know what? It's working! My goal is a minimum of 3 gold stars a week, totaling 12 for the month of February. So far I'm doing pretty darn good.

It is so satisfying and fun (in a totally pathetic, easily amused kinda way) to get done with my workout and go stick a star on the calendar. The calendar is in the kitchen so I see it often and it's a really good feeling to walk by and see lots of gold stars...

Yes, that is a Twilight calendar. Surprised? I didn't think so.

Anywho, at the end of the month if I stick to it and reach my goal I plan to reward myself with...something. I haven't quite decided what yet, but I'm leaning towards a mini shopping spree. I do love me some new clothes!

Besides the gold stars and looming shopping spree, the best reward that is surprising me at just two weeks in, is a visible improvement in the muscle tone of my legs. Definitely helps the motivation factor! And my stamina at my lessons. My trainer didn't even tease me at my last lesson! I even got my horse to grunt a time or two when I kicked her after she was naughty. Wohoo!

I think I'm liking this gold star thing! Hopefully I can stick with it for a while!

What gets you motivated? Do you post SI swimsuit models on the fridge and treadmill? Hang the bikini that you WILL get into this year where you see it all the time? Do you just have super duper self control and can stay motivated without little tricks?

A Burning Question

2010-01-19T19:47:00.000-08:00

I have a question for you ladies out there. And I suppose guys too, I don't want to discriminate, but probably (hopefully?) mostly ladies.

I have recently decided that I need to explore the realm of mascara a bit. I have no clue what brought it on as I've been a Maybelline Full N' Soft girl for years and I'm certainly not dissatisfied with it.

I think I just feel the need to make sure that there isn't anything better out there.

In doing some research on the subject I noticed something. Have you really looked at the price of makeup lately? $7-$12 for mascara at the drugstore? Wow. I would really like to know what exactly costs that much. I suppose someone needs to pay Drew Barrymore and Queen Latifah.

Anyways, where was I...oh yes, so once I got over the prices, I started looking around at the different mascaras. Full n' Soft, Long n' Lush, Volume Express, Volume Shocking, Voluminous, Lashblast, Lash Discovery, Great Lash, Define-A-Lash, Lash Out...wow. Where to even start?!

There are the different brush styles...maybe I'd go that direction. This is the Full N' Soft brush that I've been using.

It's great. I've always thought it was the way to go. I have no idea why though. So I picked a different type of brush. Something more like this...

Wow! HUGE difference! I think the mascara was Volume Express (also by Maybelline). My lashes are longer and thicker, for sure. Only problem is, unless I carefully brush and separate them, they look a little like this...

Yikes! I only wear a smudged/smokey look charcoal eye liner with Very Black mascara, no eye shadow, so if I have tarantula eyelashes, it stands out a bit.

So I like the longer and thicker eye lashes part, but not having to be so careful and take the time to brush it. I have to have waterproof mascara.

So my burning question to all of you is...what mascara do you use? Do you have a tried and true? Something you hated? Suggestions on brushes to look for? Any tips or tricks? Anything at all?

Sunday Stills Challenge - Moods and Emotions

2010-01-17T09:14:00.000-08:00

Well howdy strangers! Long time no see! I have a confession to make...I haven't even picked up my camera in months. Months! I'm not sure exactly why, but I didn't even realize how long it had been since I really took some pictures until I picked up my camera Friday night with this SSC in mind. It felt weird in my hand and that made me very sad.

But I'm back! And hoping it's a regularly back thang, not hit and miss. I really want to challenge myself to take better pictures and learn more about my camera this year.

On to the Sunday Stills Challenge this week, which is Moods and Emotions. "This challenge is for you to get a shot that enables a response in the person who views your pic not one that is your personal emotion. For example if I see a pic of a tranqual stream or a sunrise I feel mellow, If I see a pic of a doggie smiles or a horse doing his rolling in dirt thing It makes me smile, you get the idea."

This is definitely a challenge, but I know my pets always evoke some sort of emotion in me (good and bad, lol) and May Belle (aka: Chunk, Fatty, Tubby, Chubs...she's a little....um...rotund) was a happy and willing subject for me. Each of these pictures makes me feel a little different, what do they do for you?

Chunk stretching out of her little ball to glare at me and the camera.

Chunk on her back. You might think she's all sprawled out sleeping, but no...the dog is on the ground just out of the frame and she's teasing her.

Bath time!

*YAWN*

And here we have poor, pathetic Cheyanne cuddling with her substitute kitty, the hedgehog, because the kitties are playing outside and she is stuck in the house. If that doesn't make you stick out your lower lip and feel bad for her, I don't know what will. :-)

That's all for this week! Hope to see you all again next week!

In Other News...

2010-01-04T12:20:00.000-08:00

Well, now that I've gotten those posts out of the way, on to 2010! This year is going to kick some serious booty, I just know it! 2009...well, it just kinda sucked, to be quite honest. Maybe it's just because it went out on such a sour note, I'm not really sure. It wasn't the greatest year, so I'm glad to be done with it and getting a fresh start in a new year. Decade even!

We started off the year riding our ponies. Doesn't get any better then that, does it? I was careful and used my "best judgement", but I rode. I got off regularly to check and make sure her guts weren't falling out (the exercise wasn't bothering her incision), since she had just gotten her stitches out and all, but it did just fine. We loped and she was enjoying herself, so I decided she would probably be just fine for the show over the weekend.

My goal for the first show of the year had been to finally, finally get our flying lead changes in our pattern. I was a little skeptical though. We hadn't had any lessons since the last show because of her lameness and surgery. The day before the show was the first real ride I had been able to have on her since the previous show more then a month ago. Yikes. While warming up I asked for lead changes and she did them with just a swish of the tail. I couldn't believe it. The pattern had changed for this show, the first time in years at the series, so I was ready to have some problems with Midori thinking she knew the pattern. And I did. She just knew that after 2 large fast and one small slow circle to the right, we were supposed to change leads and do those circles to the left. Unfortunately in pattern number 4 you stop and do 4 spins to the right after the circles. She was not about to stop. We had already changed leads (simple, as we had always done before) and were heading into the next circle, battling it out before she finally stopped. Damn. There went our score. Oh well. I finished the pattern nailing both of our flying lead changes. WOHOO!!! She was all sorts of confused when we walked out of there. That was certainly not the pattern she was trying to do! I was thrilled just for the fact that we got our flying lead changes. As you may remember, they've been a pretty major battle for us the whole time we've been together. We had a little "school the naughty pony" time, but for the most part I was pretty darn satisfied with the class, even though we didn't get a score.

The boyfriend won his beginner reining class, had a fabulous run, and then two handed his bratty pony in our rookie reining class, getting him a no score as well. It was still a good day. I was just so happy to be back on my horse!

Our lessons are going well. What few I've had. I did take a couple lessons on Sugar while Midori was out of commission. That was fun and a great learning experience. She is in a bridle so I had to ride one handed, which is always a challenge for me. It was good though, helped me relax a bit. We have been talking about getting a new horse for me because we're totally diggin' the reining thing and would like to get into it a little more. Midori isn't much of a reiner, so if I want to really get into reining, I'll need a different horse. Midori will still be my dink around with everything else horse, I still plan to do some cutting and rail shows, I'd like to do sorting again, stuff like that. Don't have a whole lot of cash floating around to put into a horse right now though, so that may have to wait a while.

We've got some ambitious plans for 2010. I'm hoping this will really be the year that we get our barn situated. And our arena. I won't hold my breath though. Of course there are the requisite pay off debt, save-save-save, get on the blasted tread mill and get in better shape, get organized, etc. resolutions that are always around. And plenty of house and yard projects that we'd like to tackle as well.

So here's to 2010! I hope you kick 2009's ass!

Midori...

2010-01-03T19:51:00.000-08:00

Don't worry, Midori is still alive and kickin'. We had a rough couple of weeks with her too though. The same vet appointment that sealed Mister's fate also brought some news I wasn't expecting for Midori. She had just recently come up lame, which is not like her at all. She also had a small bump on her belly that had just recently gotten bigger. The vet wasn't particularly worried about the bump, but offered to remove it with a simple surgery and send it in for testing, so that's what we did. We did a lameness exam and concluded it was either an abscess or bruising. I left with antibiotics because of the surgery and instructions to soak and pack her foot, in case it was an abscess. Goodie, my favorite.

She trotted out sound after just a day, so that made me happy. Must have been bruising. The vet appointment was Thursday afternoon. The vet said she would probably have results back on the bump on Monday. Saturday afternoon I received a rather panicked sounding voice mail from the vet asking me to call her back as soon as I could. I honestly don't remember much of that conversation, other then the lump was a fibrosarcoma which is a malignant tumor. After some good ol' internet research, I was pretty much freaking out thinking my horse was dying. Everything that I read said that it is a very aggressive tumor that is difficult to get rid of unless caught early and removed entirely. It spreads quickly and there is really not much to be done about it. Great. Fan-flipping-tastic.

So two weeks, Christmas, a bunch of swelling, a second round of antibiotics and a whole lot of freaking out later, we went back to the vet on New Year's Eve to get her stitches out and have "the talk" in person. I was afraid to hope for good news and trying not to think of the possible bad news. I was pretty darn nervous.

Luckily, the news was all good. Great even. The lump was dermal so it shouldn't have spread internally. The margins on the removal were good, so it was all removed and the vet was confident that we caught it early. Of course I will still need to keep an eye out, there is always a chance that it may come back, but for now, that was the best news I could have asked for.

Better yet, she said I could ride her "immediately". I just needed to use my "best judgement" on how hard I ride. Well, I'm pretty sure her "immediately" and my "immediately" were a little different. She probably had a different idea for "best judgement" as well. Oops.

As soon as Midori was awake enough after being sedated, I loaded her up and headed straight to the arena. She was still a little drunk, so we just walked with a little bit of jogging. She had been pretty wound up before the vet, so it was probably a good thing she was still a little doped up, no funny business. Even though we took it easy and she was still a little drunk, it was one of the best rides I've had on her. I was so stinking happy that she seems to be okay!

Mister

2010-01-03T19:12:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure that I can do Mister justice with a bunch of words. I just feel like I need to do this as part of saying good bye to him.

We made the decision to have Mister put down the week before Christmas. He'd been having issues with chronic abscesses and was not a happy camper. After a visit to the vet and xrays, it was clear that he would never be 100% sound again. In addition, his outlook was "very grim" as far as even being comfortable and pain free. As much as it was hard to hear the vet tell me that, it was the concrete answers we needed to make our decision. He was only 5 years old, which meant he had a lot of years ahead of him to be in pain. Euthanasia seemed like the kindest thing to do for him.

So good bye Buddy. Rest in peace.

Bucket List - Equine Version

2009-12-14T13:07:00.000-08:00

Hey there! Long time no see! Man, I couldn't tell you what the heck I've been doing lately, but I know that I've been darn busy with it. Time is just flying! Seriously, wasn't it just Halloween?!? And now we're staring down the barrel at Christmas and New Year's already. Wow!

I've got some updates and good stuff to share that I'll get to one of these days, but I was reading this post of Fugly's that links to this article and it got me thinking. The article is particularly interesting. I've done quite a few things on that list, but not nearly as many as I would have thought.

I have galloped a horse on the beach and I think everyone should have this experience! It was amazing! Even though I was on the slowest horse there and ate a lot of sand.

I have won a blue ribbon or two. Even a buckle. Or two. Sorry, I'm still way excited about that.

I've tried cutting and while I know what a cowy horse is like(really freaking cool!), I have yet to actually ride a seriously cowy horse.

I used to jump all the time, anything and everything I could point my horse towards, bareback and bridleless even, but that was before I knew what the heck I was doing.

I have been bucked off and gotten right back on. Many, many, many times.

I have attempted a sliding stop on a fairly well trained reining horse, but I couldn't make myself relax enough to stay out of her way and let her do it so I'll have to try that one again. Hopefully many, many, many times.

I have nursed horses back to health, though calling it a "crisis" may be a bit dramatic.

I have had to make the right decision for the horse, no matter how much it sucked.

I have ridden gaited horses, tackled some pretty darn cool trails horseback, been camping with my horse and all are highly recommended.

I have woken up to whinnies and done my share of daily mucking, feeding, watering, etc.

But by far my favorite accomplishment on that list is the last one: share a bond with your horse that is deeper then words. There is just nothing that compares.

The more I get involved with horses as an adult, the more I realize just how sheltered I've been from the "real horsey world". It's big. Huge! I thought I had experienced a decent chunk of it, but I'm discovering more and more that I'm pretty darn innocent. I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't even know what a couple of things on that list were. I do know that there is a TON more of the horsey world that I want to experience, so I am making my own Horsey Bucket List. Here goes...

Patches' Horsey Bucket List

1. Ride a finished reiner and be relaxed enough to enjoy it!
2. Ride my own finished reiner at a NRHA show and not totally embarrass myself!
3. Ride a finished cutter, and hopefully not end up in the dirt!
4. Go to Texas to watch the NCHA Futurity
5. Go to Oklahoma to watch the NRHA Futurity
6. Go to Las Vegas and watch NFR
7. Find out more about other associations and go watch their big shows
8. Ride english more, take some lessons
9. Give jumping a "real" try
10. Learn more about dressage
11. Go swimming with my horse again and not get swept off this time
12. Watch, and possibly try, polo
13. Take my dream vacation and stay on a real working cattle ranch that doesn't dumb it down for city slickers. Well, not too much anyways.
14. Learn how to rope, take a stab at either team roping or breakaway roping. Maybe try goat tying too!

I'm sure there are many more, but that's all I can come up with off the top of my head right now and since I've been mulling this over for a week now and not come up with anything else and it's been almost a month since my last post, I'm just going to get this posted. Looks like a pretty good start anyways!

Hopefully I'll get a chance to get some other updates up one of these days and maybe make it around to everyone else's blogs as well. 'Tis the season I suppose.

If I don't talk to ya before then...Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! ;-)

A Confession

2009-11-19T08:02:00.000-08:00

Ok, I have a few confessions.

First, in case you've missed it...I'm rather obsessed with Twilight. Reading those books has been a life altering experience, as much as I tried to fight it, and I don't regret it one bit.

Second, I am beyond excited about the New Moon movie. I have tickets to the midnight showing tonight with a bunch of girlfriends and I cannot wait! I also now have tickets to go see it AGAIN tomorrow, during school hours, in hopes of actually getting to really watch the movie without all the screaming tweens, packed theater and general excitement and distractions from the movie that I expect at the midnight showing.

Third, and this is the big one...I'm a New Moon movie virgin. I have somehow managed to avoid all of the movie trailers that are out there. I have seen plenty of pictures and other good stuff from the movies, but I figure that's only 2nd or 3rd base. I have avoided most things that could be a spoiler for me. I ordered the soundtrack when it came out, but have only listened to the first couple songs on it because I decided I didn't even want to have that experience going into the movie.

Let me tell you, it was no small feat to avoid all that stuff either! There are spoilers, trailers and pictures every where! I've heard it said that if you piece together all of the trailers and pictures out there you could probably watch the whole dang movie. I have clicked away from temptations online, avoided searching them out and closed my eyes and hummed through ones that were unavoidable. It was really hard to continue to get my Twilight fix without accidentally seeing something I didn't want to. And I thank all the blogs and sites that had warnings when posts contained spoilers! That helped a lot.

As I've heard so many other Twihards express, I never expected to get this caught up in a book or a movie. I've never done the midnight show thing before. I've never bought shirts, sweatshirts, movie guides, magnets, puzzles, candies, stuck small pins in conspicuous places to "out" myself to others like me and spent countless hours browsing through merch to see if there is anything else I have to have. I've never "squee'd" and "eeeeee'd" and bounced around so much over a book or movie in my life. It's ridiculous. I feel like I'm 12 again and I alternate between laughing at myself and hanging my head in shame over it. I try to keep myself under control, but it doesn't always work. And the excitement building up to New Moon coming out has pretty much taken over my life lately. My friend, the one I blame for all of this, I'll call her The Enabler, has only encouraged my Twitardedness. Whenever I see her I pretty much involuntarily start bouncing up and down. I can't help it. If there are a lot of non-twihard people around I can atleast usually keep my SQUEEEEEEE down to a 6 inch voice. I've still gotten plenty of looks.

So here's to hoping this movie totally rocks! I'm pretty confident that even if it is bad I'll still love it just because it's Twilight related. I've heard very good things about it though and it looks like it's going to be amazing from the little that I have seen. I do have moments of panic that saving myself like I have will have the opposite effect that I was hoping and I will have put the movie on a pedastal (get it? 40 Year Old Virgin reference. Any one?), but I don't think that will be the case.

What are your feelings on the New Moon movie or the whole Twilight deal? Are you head over heels for it? Think it's the stupidest thing ever? Do you have a plan for seeing the movie? I want to know!

Lookie What I Got...

2009-11-09T19:38:00.000-08:00

So I mentioned here that I ended up 2nd place in the cutting series that we did over the summer. We had our awards banquet this past weekend and I got a buckle for my second place finish in the Green/Green class.

Reserve Champion buckle...not too shabby!

It's a pretty buckle and bigger then my other buckle, though not quite as flashy. It's a little more simple and classic.

Do you know how excited I am that I even have buckles to compare right now? Oh my goodness, coolest thing ever! I'm pretty darn excited about it!

I also got 5th place out of quite a few teams in the team cutting they did for fun at the last show so I received one of these...

These hoof picks are so fun! I just love them.

It was a very fun banquet and great end to the year. The boyfriend has decided to concentrate on reining for now and doesn't plan to do cutting next year, but I would like to do another season of it. The shows are a lot of fun, every one is super duper nice and it's just a really good time.

Boot Camp, Shows and Mister

2009-11-02T17:12:00.000-08:00

Midori and I have been working hard continuing with boot camp. Since the last post I have tried a few new things, one of them being switching bits to what I affectionately call my Miracle Bit. It's a gag bit and it's fabulous! Midori is almost soft in it! I'm not playing tug-o-war with her any more! She is way better and any time she thinks about hanging on the bit I can just bump her right off of it, though it does bother me wondering what made her so hard in the first place. I've always thought I had pretty soft/light hands. Regardless, it makes the lead changes so much easier! And of course as soon as we got her head under control other issues that were hindering our progress popped right out, which made it easier to understand why we were having so much trouble. Amazing how that works! Now that I know about those issues, we have been working on them and things are really coming along. Our lead changes still aren't pretty but atleast left to right they are consistant. Right to left, they are still a challenge, but she'll atleast DO them and even in a mostly collected manner (for us anyways).

So our lead changes are getting better. Still have a loooooong ways to go, but we are getting them. YAY! Our spins are looking more like very slow motion spins instead of watching and going, WTF are you trying to do?!? lol Our stops come and go, but I'm not sure that she'll ever slide. Our rating and circles are decent, we don't work on those much. She's spent the last 5 years rating and running in circles in drill, so that's not a concern for us at this point.

It's very exciting to feel that progress is being made! Unfortunately due to illnesses and scheduling conflicts we have ended up with a couple week break in lessons and riding for the most part. The ponies have all been a bit under the weather for the last week or so, recovering from a day or two of major runs, and with 2-3 shows coming up this month, I wanted to make sure they got a break and were 100% all better before we worked them too hard. Midori especially dropped a bunch of weight in a matter of days, but never got dehydrated or ran a fever and didn't look anything more then unhappy about her circumstances. I got them on Fasttrack and electrolytes to help their guts and make sure they didn't get dehydrated, but other then that I couldn't find much else that I could do for them. Sugar and Mister seem to have gotten over it just fine, but Midori is still not 100%. She was the only one that was ridden hard as she was getting sick and I wonder how much that has to do with it. I'm hoping she gets back to 100% this week! We've got our next show this coming weekend and I need to get a couple rides on her before then! We should still be able to take it pretty easy though, it's just one reining pattern and I don't think a lack of warm up time will be what hurts us. lol

There are two of the winter series shows this month and then we skip December. There is also another show at the arena that has a schooling reining pattern that we are thinking about going to. Practice is always good! They also have a trail class, which I really like so I might have to do that one too. Also happening this coming weekend is the awards/year end banquet for our cutting club. I'm looking forward to finding out if I get a buckle for my second place finish in that series!

In other news, I've gotten a few rides on Mister. We started with a new shoer who is aggressively correcting his club foot. The previous shoer was simply maintaining it and Mister had been pretty much chronically lame with abscess after abscess for most of the past 6-8 months. He's been mostly sound with this new shoer. Very exciting! From so much time off and so many issues though his shoulder was extremely atrophied so we spent a lot of time ponying him around or hand walking and light lunging to build his muscle back up. Other then some soreness, he's been just fine and in the last month or so I decided he looked ready to carry my butt around a bit. I've gotten 3 rides on him, even getting up to loping both directions. He is still, of course, very green, but seems much more confident packing a person around then he did last time I was riding him. He has been such a good boy! Last time I was on him the arena was pretty busy so I didn't want to push him with loping. He took everything going on around him in stride and stayed focused on what I was asking him to do, but instead of loping I decided to work on moving off my legs: sidepassing and pivoting on his haunches and forehand. He's very sticky with moving his shoulders or hips, though he seems to understand moving off my legs while I'm riding. He'll try to shape away from my leg or move over the direction I ask while he's going forward. It was a completely new concept for him when standing still, but after he got those wheels turning, he seemed to pick it up pretty quickly, I was pleased. I'm hoping to get some more time on him soon, but he was sick too and does still have some issues with lameness, so I don't want to push him too hard.

We had a wonderful day outside yesterday enjoying the sunshine and possibly the last of the nice weather. I only had one long sleeve thermal shirt on with my puffy vest! The ponies enjoyed some attention and a little TLC. I'm sure they appreciated having clean butts and tails, even though the water was cold. :) We got another paddock up for the boyfriends sister's horse that we are boarding and that freed up the arena-to-be area and got us motivated to have more sand brought in so we can atleast get the round pen up with some good footing. It would be really nice to have that available for turn out this winter and so that we have some where to atleast get the ponies some exercise on nice days, even if it's not great for getting any real work done with them.

Lots of work to be done, as always. And of course not enough hours in the day, but we'll get there! Atleast there is progress being made on many different fronts!

Hope you all are enjoying fall!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Halloween

2009-11-01T18:23:00.000-08:00

This weeks SSC was anything having to do with Halloween so I've decided to showcase my mad pumpkin carvin' skillz. And the fact that I'm a 28 year old Twitard. Ya...

So I had some girlfriends over for the Great Pumpkin Carving Adventure 2009 a couple weeks ago and this is what we came up with.

All very cute and all totally different. Love it! Can you guess which one is mine?

Yep, I'm the twitard, complete with vampire fangy smile and all. In my defense, there was alcohol involved, but probably not enough to make this acceptable. I also may have been breaking in my Edward/Jacob tshirt that night, but there are no pictures to prove it.

So here I go, outing myself to the world with my Twitard pumpkin sitting on my porch. Only you can't see my porch from the road, so no one knows. Except you. And all the good people that read Twitarded, because I apparently made JJ and STY's day when I sent it to them so they posted it there as well. Eeks!

All righty then. I think that's enough embarrassing myself for one evening. Hope you all had a happy Halloween! And we're into the teens for the countdown to New Moon! YEEHAW!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Landscapes and Fall Foliage

2009-10-25T14:18:00.000-07:00

I love fall! I love watching trees turn and seeing all the colors. It's my favorite time of year. Other then the frosty mornings. I'm really not ready for frost and cold again. It seems like we were just here.

Regardless, the colors are beautiful. Unfortunately, the weather and my schedule did not cooperate this week at all. It has been cloudy and gray all week so that combined with the 20 seconds of daylight I have when I get home from work, getting pics for this challenge just wasn't looking promising. Then yesterday I got lucky! It was still cloudy and foggy most of the morning, but when I came home from running some errands I noticed the mountain was peeking out just enough and the sun was shining on this lone little maple tree at the bottom of our property. Of course the tree is somewhat past it's color turning glory, but I think it's still pretty.

Happy fall!

Kitten Update!

2009-10-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

I realized I haven't done an update on the kittens in quite a while so here's what they've been up to. They are getting big! Well, bigger. I think they will stay pretty small cats though. They are growing up quickly. I got over my over-protective tendencies and have been kicking them outside all day. I think they like it, they aren't terribly anxious to get back in when I get home.

They are really good tree climbers. Too good, actually. They love it and they won't stop. The turkeys.

This was Chunks first tree climbing experience. We left for a bit one day and when we got home she was up the tree meowing pathetically.

See her peeking out? She was quite a ways up the tree. In the picture below you can see her little face about a quarter of the way down the pic next to the wire. She was probably 30-40 feet up.

I made the boyfriend climb up the tree and get her down before it got dark. The next day she climbed it again. I told her she had to figure it out this time, she only got one get out of jail free pass. She was down just after dark. Smart kitty!

Legs on the other hand...apparently not so smart. She was climbing trees the whole time I was out holding horses for the shoer a couple weeks ago. She would meow like she was stuck for a while, but always figured out a way to get down. Then she got stuck. We figured she could find a way to get down on her own, but she never did. She spent the night in the tree. Poor thing. Must have been a miserable night. I woke up in the middle of the night to check if she had gotten herself down and was ready to come in, but she was still stuck. It was just as well though because there was a rather large sounding pack of coyotes very close so atleast she was safe in the tree. She was down when I got home from work the next day though so I didn't worry about it too much.

I went out of town this last weekend and she got herself good and stuck while I was gone. She did it sometime while the boyfriend was out running errands Saturday afternoon. She still had not come down by the time I got home from work on Monday. The tree she was up was not one we could climb easily so after some figurin' I decided I could pull my truck under it to stand on and snag her out of the branches. She was one traumatized little kitty after 48 hours in a tree. She hasn't been climbing trees much since and I hope she learned her lesson!

When we are home and Chey is outside they are her entertainment. She likes to stalk them.

She is one smart little puppy dog too, cracks me up. She hides behind the truck tires and peeks around them to watch the kittens come out of hiding and then pounces.

The kittens are much braver when we are outside to yell at Cheyanne. They are such trouble makers! So funny to watch though!

This is a close up of Chunk aka: May Belle. Overall she has darker coloring and her tabby stripes are really coming out. She's very pretty! She has a very white belly and paws and light yellow-green eyes.

Legs aka: June Bug, has much lighter coloring, more orange and light colors. Her eyes are a really dark gold color.

They are both just adorable and super friendly. They love to curl up on the couch with us when we are watching tv.

The poor things are cutting teeth right now though. I was holding Legs and petting her and noticed something on her chest. It was a tooth! So I had to inspect and see where it came from. It was Chunks tooth! Not sure how it ended up on Legs' chest! In my teeth inspecting though I found this...

Poor Chunk has two canine teeth on her top right side. Her gums are all red and sore looking. And neither of them are loose. Legs has a really loose tooth on her bottom left, but I couldn't get it out. Poor kittens. I'm sure they aren't enjoying that experience too much. And it's about time to be getting them spayed too. They may not like me for a while.

G.A.G.

2009-10-13T11:49:00.000-07:00

Well here we are, October 13th already. Again, time is just flying lately. I swear I just posted about entering the G.A.G. and now it's time for the drawing. Where does time go?!?

Before I get into the winners of the G.A.G. I told y'all I'd fess up to what I believe is the quirkiest of all of my quirky habits. It's nothing spectacular, but it is definately weird. Please don't think less of me.

Here goes...

I have issues with washing socks. I don't mind doing laundry all that much, my issues are with socks in particular. I will stick my hand in dirty socks to turn them right-side-out no problem. Well, most of the time no problem. Sometimes during the summer I have a problem with the boyfriends socks after a particularly hot day, but that's another story.

Now, here is the weird part. If I miss a sock and it comes out of the dryer inside-out, I have to turn it right-side-out and then wash it again. No clue why, but I feel like I stretched it out or dirtied it in some weird way if I turn it right-side-out after it's washed.

Yes, I do have issues and I do realize exactly how ridiculous this sounds.

Here is where it gets even weirder (if that's even possible) and where the boyfriend looks at me like I've totally lost it...if I find one of the boyfriends socks in the clean clothes that is inside-out, I will go hand it to the boyfriend and make him turn it right-side-out and then I will go along my merry way putting it away. That is okay. It's not dirty because it was his sock and he turned it right-side-out. If he's not around and I have to turn his sock right-side-out, back in the wash it goes. My socks don't usually get turned inside-out, but if they do, I will usually wash them again.

*blushes*

Ok, now that you all think I'm a total weirdo, let's give away some prizes!

Thanks to those of you that commented and fessed up to some of your quirks! It's nice to know that every one has them, even if they aren't as crazy weird as mine. ;) jrosey, I twirl my hair too, constantly! Paint Girl - totally there with you on the TP. Lisa I have to seperate the colors when I eat Skittles, or I chose carefully which ones I do combine. And Pony Girl, I unfortunately do not have moments of panic like that and have left the stove on more then once. Oops!

Now, since I only got 5 comments/entries (a very sad day for me!) I have decided that instead of having 2 drawings and leaving 3 of you out, all 5 of you get something! WOHOO!!!

Here are your choices:

1. I will preorder a copy of the Pioneer Woman Cookbook from Amazon for you. It is scheduled to be released October 27th. I really can't wait to get my paws on this cookbook and preordered mine as soon as it was available! I have made many, many, many of the recipes on her website and they are always delicious and HUGE hits at parties or with friends!

2. The Mystery Gift Package, which will be some combination of my fave wine, coffee, chocolates or candy with something horsey, Twilighty, doggy or kitty thrown in. You'll have to let me know your preferences or tell me to take a stab at it and surprise you.

Send me an email (furryfourleggedkids@gmail.com) and let me know what's floatin' your boat! And thanks so much for participating and reading my blog!!!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Photoshop

2009-10-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

This weeks challenge is Photoshop. Play with the settings and make something interesting. Well, I pretty much suck at editing pictures. I'm not exactly known for my soft touch and the term subtle is not in my vocabulary. I'm not sure how interesting these pics turned out, but they are definately edited!

I took these pics last week for the challenge, Happiness, but didn't get a chance to get them loaded and posted. I figured they'd work just dandy for this weeks challenge. As my sister says, happiness is a hairball. These are my most favoritist hairballs, the ponies. They definately make me happy.

This in particular is the best...getting snarfed by Midori when I go to visit. She just can't stay out of my face when I'm out there. Not even long enough for me to snap a decent pic of her.

And this is the edited version. I played around with these in Picnik, trying out different filters and adjustments. I believe this one was "Night Vision".

Even when the ponies are crabby at me for interrupting their naps, they still make me happy. Somehow I get a lot of crabby pics of Mister, but he is just a big teddy bear.

I believe I cranked up the contrast, lowered the saturation and used a HD filter on this one.

And then there's Sugar Pop. She loves posing for me.

And picnik had all these fun Halloween tools so I made Sug a vampy pony. Somehow it just fit with her better then the others.

Hope you are all having a fabulous weekend! Don't forget to click on the G.A.G. pic at the top of the sidebar and enter the Great Anniversary Giveaway!

Winter Series and Boot Camp

2009-10-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

Well, we started the Winter Series this past weekend. We did the Winter Series last year which is where I won my buckle. I won the Beginner Reining class which meant that I also got kicked up to the next class this year which has a real reining pattern and requires flying lead changes. I'm not really ready for the next class, but oh well. I've started lessons and I'm determined to be competitive in it by the end of the series. We are making progress on our flying lead changes, but they are still rough and very inconsistent. We still do not spin. Midori's head is still up in the air, she is not soft or light right now. We have a LOT of work to do, but we are making progress. I just have to keep reminding myself of that since I am having a hard time not getting discouraged and frustrated.

The boyfriend and Sugar are coming along fabulously with their lessons. Sug was a futurity flunkie and came to us as a 3 year old fairly broke reiner, though slightly neurotic. Sug knew way more then we did and we have since done a fantastic job of totally screwing her up. It isn't taking much for Sug's training to come back to her though. She is already back to doing beautiful flying lead changes, trying to slide when she stops, even though she doesn't have sliders on right now, and loping very nice circles framed up. They are improving in leaps and bounds, while I'm still struggling with flying lead changes and playing tug-o-war with my horse while she goes mach 5 around the arena refusing to change leads. It's hard not to get frustrated. I want a broke horse. I haven't had a broke horse since I was 12 or so and was riding my mom's QH Jingles. I'm pretty sure she was broke, even by my standards today. Every horse that I've had since then I've had to train to do what I wanted. Usually I enjoy it, I think I'd get bored just hopping on a finished horse all the time, but sometimes it just gets frustrating having to be patient and appreciate the baby steps.

After a particularly gruelling and unproductive lead changing attempt last week I was seriously writing up a sale ad for my horse, wondering how much I could get out of her and if it would be enough to buy a more broke reiner. One that at least did flying lead changes. Yes, I do have quite the hang up on flying lead changes. I have struggled with them ever since I've had Midori, they have always been an issue for us and they are the only goal I have repeatedly failed to accomplish with her.

We had another lesson together on Friday (me/Midori and the boyfriend/Sug) and once again I sneered at the boyfriend and Sug the whole time. They are such showoffs! Since it was the night before the show Midori and I didn't even attempt flying lead changes. We didn't want to start that battle and blow our mojo for the show. We still managed to get in a pretty good brawl over sidepassing. Sidepassing!!! She has always been good at that, it's practically second nature to her. She was being pissy and ended up throwing a major tantrum, which I just had to laugh at. Really it was pretty darn comical. When she finally got over it, we went back to work and the rest of the lesson went just fine. She was still a little bent out of shape when I was untacking her though. Mares! lol

The reining was Saturday morning and all I wanted was to complete the pattern correctly and as respectably as I could. I knew I was going into it with 4 penalty points already since we were going to do simple lead changes, but I figured we could at least do the pattern clean. And we did. I had a moment of panic wondering if I did 4 spins or had stopped early at 3, but I had counted right. Yay! They weren't pretty at all, actually they felt absolutely horrific, but we did them. I felt pretty good about the rest of our pattern, it was a respectable pattern for where we are at. That was all I asked of the day so mission accomplished.

There were 8 people in our class and when they announced the placings, usually from 3rd up, they only announced 2nd and a tie for 1st. I was 2nd. The boyfriend tied for 1st. What the heck?!? I couldn't believe I had 2nd place! We ran over to look at the score sheet and found that out of 8 people in the class 5 had gone off pattern and gotten zero's. Oops! My score was not good, I got a 62 1/2, but I was only 1 point behind the first place tie. They both did flying lead changes, so considering I had 4 penalty points for that and was still only 1 point behind them I was very pleased with our pattern!

I made sure our pattern was video'd so that I can (in theory) look back on it down the road and see how much progress I've made. I've decided to post it here, for your viewing displeasure. Feel free to skip the first minute or so, in fact, I highly recommend it. Seriously, our "spins" are worse then watching paint dry. They are baaaaad. And try to ignore the jibberjabbering. I couldn't think of a good song to put over it.

Overall it was a fun day, Midori behaved herself and didn't get pissy. We did turn back for a little bit while the boyfriend was cutting in the afternoon. That was fun! I've never done turn back before and Midori seemed to be totally diggin it. We have our next lesson tonight and a month to the next show so plenty of time for some major schooling without blowing our mojo. I'm still planning to be doing simple lead changes at the shows for probably the rest of this year. Yes, that is how bad we are. I'm going to shoot for having consistent, solid lead changes by the first of the year for the rest of the shows. Wish us luck!

My Anniversary!

2009-10-01T12:36:00.000-07:00

Wow! Did October totally sneak up on anyone else? Holy cow! I can't believe it's here already!

I meant to do this post before now, so I could hold the drawing on my actual anniversary, but since I'm a bum and can't seem to keep track of dates to save my life, I'm late. *sigh*

Anyways, I started this crazy blog a year ago October 3rd! I can't believe it's been a year already, this past year has just evaporated! I've had so much fun writing this blog, taking pictures for this blog, making blogger buddies...it's been quite an adventure!

For my anniversary I've got a completely original idea! I'm going to have a giveaway! I know, I know, I'm brilliant, aren't I?!? The things I come up with! lol The loot is yet to be determined and will depend on who wins it, but it will likely be a scintillating combination of Washington/Horsey/Twilight/Doggie/Kittie themed items. Whatever it is, it'll be grand, I promise!

To enter the Great Anniversary Giveaway (GAG) just answer this question in the comments...

What is your quirkiest habit and how long have you had it?

I know I touched on a few of my quirks here and probably a few other places that I can't remember right now. I believe I have yet to fess up to my quirkiest quirk to anyone but the boyfriend. It's weird. It's the one quirk that the boyfriend looks at me like I'm seriously nuts for. And I'll tell you all about it when I announce the winner of the drawing on October 13th.

So whip out the big guns, I want to hear all about your weirdness! We're all friends here! You have until 10:03 pm (get it? My anniversary is 10/3...10:03 pm...anyone? Anyone? *crickets*) PST Tuesday October 12th to tell me and I'll get you entered in the drawing for the super cool prize that is TBD!

I'll also do a super special bonus GAG drawing for everyone that answers this question...

What is your favorite post from this blog?

Is there one that sticks out in your mind? One that had some profound effect on you? One that you read and went wow, this chick is crazy? One that is simply memorable for whatever reason? Let me know! I like feedback and want to know exactly what you guys think, good or bad!

So Close!

2009-09-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

Well, we had our last cutting show of the year last weekend. It was a series of 6 shows that started back in April. I competed in the Green/Green class which is basically the easiest of all beginner cutting classes that there is. You don't even have to come out of a herd, they kick one cow out for you and you get to work for 2 minutes. You have the option of calling time for a second cow, but you only get two.

We've made it to all 6 shows of the series and I was leading the G/G class by a half a point heading into this last show. Half a point!!! You just don't get any tighter then that unless you're tied! I've been having some really consistently good work on the buffalo and the flag since the last show so I was pretty hopeful going into this last show. I was also really trying not to think about it too much. Certainly doesn't do anyone any good to be nervous!

Your run and score are also heavily dependent on the "cow gods", as we call them. Since you don't come out of the herd, you don't get to pick and choose which cow you get and you are stuck with whatever comes out that gate. It can be good and bad. I've had pretty decent luck all year and figured even if I got a runner, our work has been pretty solid lately so I didn't think I'd have too much of a problem.

I was wrong.

I entered the arena and they kicked a cow out for me. It just stood there, watching me come around to the back wall to push it up and start working. It was calm and seemed pretty laid back so I breathed a sigh of relief. We got behind it and started pushing it up and *poof* it was gone. I was able to keep her under control and never did loose my working advantage, but we did a lot of running. I called time with just under a minute to go. I was thankful they took some time to get the second cow out because Midori needed to air up a bit. Then the second devil...er...cow came out. Head and tail up, wildly looking around. I thought it was going to turn around and jump right over that gate before I could even get to it! Crap!!! I got behind it and didn't even get a chance to push it up before it took off. We kept it under control for a little while but then I lost it. We stumbled thru one turn and it was outta there. Ran around, hit the corner and pushed right thru us on the wall. Damn. Loss of working advantage. I brought it up again and worked for a little while longer, then it did the same thing again. I did get it stopped on the wall but that little bastard literally pushed us out of the way, which meant I had another loss of working advantage, right at the buzzer. Blast!!!

I'm not sure if he was just trying to comfort me or not, but one of my herd help told me that it was just bad cows, that last one I got was absolutely unstoppable, nothing I could have done about it. I know the cows I got were a lot more challenging then most of the other cows that came out for my class (seriously, I watched them all, I'm not just feeling sorry for myself here!), but looking over the video (again and again and again and again) we made a slow turn both times and should have been able to catch the cow before he ever got to the corner. Oh well. I got a 63, came in 2nd or 3rd to last in the class of 10. Ouch.

The bright spot in all of this is that I still got a 63! In cutting, you start out with a score of 70 and the judges adds or takes away points as your run goes, marking different columns on the score sheet with +/check/-. The lowest score you can get is a 60. Loss of working advantage is a 5 point deduction. I had two. Meaning, if I wouldn't have lost that cow twice, I would have gotten a 73, which would have won the class. Bummer. When I looked at the score sheet I had +'s all the way across, which is really good! I think that's the first time this year I've had all +'s! I was pretty darn excited about that so I'm trying to focus on that fact. I had a good, solid ride, I just got rowdy cows.

Also on the positive side, I was far enough ahead of everyone else in the class that I still ended up in second place for the series. WOHOO!!! Rumor has it that there are buckles to second place. I won't know for sure until the year end banquet, which won't be for another month or so.

So overall, I'm happy with the day. Our practice run went well too, Midori does really well going into the herd and I really think she likes playing with cows. Next weekend we start the winter series. I'll just be doing reining again for that since I want to really focus on getting Midori broke and more finished for a while. Should be another fun series!

Macro Monday

2009-09-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

My Macro Monday post this week is "The Lip". I believe I'm mentioned before that my horse has rather large lips. It's pretty comical to watch how far she can stretch them when there is grass just outside of her paddock fence. And when she snoozes they get really droopy and it cracks me up to play with them.

Her lower lip always hangs down further and gapes open and you can stick your finger in there and the skin is all dry and she'll usually just sleep right thru me flapping it around and making her "talk" and all sorts of silly stuff. She puts up with a lot from me! lol

In these pics the girls were taking their afternoon siesta at our last cutting show of the year. We'd already had our runs and were just waiting to watch some friends go before we took off. Even Sugar looks a little tuckered out in this pic.

Midori was just totally zonked out though. I was almost surprised she didn't try laying down. You can see how wild they are. The boyfriend has to keep a watchful eye on them so they don't run off.

Or not. Sug perked up when she realized I had the camera. She's a total camera whore. Looooves posing for me! :)

Sunday Stills Challenge - Signs of Fall

2009-09-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

Well, due to some technical difficulties, I'm getting this up a little late. Darn computers! Here are some signs of fall from my neck of the woods...

First off, we have all of my pots and hanging baskets drying out, turning brown, dying...

Though that may have more to do with me being in "fall mode" which does not include watering plants. Oops!

Our ponies are all shedding their nice, short summer coats and getting a little fuzzier...

They are also getting very hair chinny chin chins. Atleast before they got clipped for the show this weekend!

And is it just me or is there really way more of these guys hanging around in the fall time? They seem to be every where! Ick!

The leaves are starting to change...

And a sure sign of fall at my house is mushrooms. There were a bunch that popped up when we had a week or two of cooler, cloudy weather, but of course the last week has been sunny and hot so they all disappeared, except for these little guy. We really do get quite the variety of mushrooms all around our house in the fall though.

Happy fall to everyone!

Hibernating Already

2009-09-15T12:44:00.000-07:00

Well, as I've been trying to make my rounds and get caught up on the regular blogs that I read it sounds like the general consensus is that this time of year is just darn busy! I know I've been pretty busy lately, getting summer stuff wrapped up, getting going with boot camp, trying to take advantage of the nice weather while it lasts, soaking up as much sun as I possibly can while it's here. I know it won't last me thru the winter, but a girl can try, right?

I've got a long list of Summer Projects that I really wanted to get done this year, but just didn't happen. I'm trying to figure out how many I can squeeze into the next few weeks. It's not looking promising.

I still owe my friend a trail ride that I promised her for her birthday. In March.

We still don't have stalls. That's all I'm going to say about that.

My main issue, however, is that I'm already going into hibernation mode. I can't seem to help it. I got sucked back into the black hole of reading and it may be next spring before I come out of it. I guess I'm already preparing myself for another long winter. One thing that I really loved about last winter (quite possible the only thing) was how much reading I did. I loooove to read. I really haven't read much in a really long time, like years, but last fall I got sucked into Twilight and it was all down hill from there. I read a lot. I can't even remember how many books I plowed through, but I know it was quite a few. Probably atleast a dozen, and I read some of them twice. It was fabulous! I tried to keep my nose out of books this summer so I could ride my horse, do laundry, get some yard work done, maybe tackle a project or two around the house, you know...be a responsible adult. It's so hard to be productive when all I want to do is finish whatever book I'm in.

The weather was pretty nasty around here for a week or two: cold, gray, rainy...I think that was what got me thinking about hibernating. I couldn't help it. After a crazy hectic summer, I was perfectly happy to grab a book, a blanket and my fleece yoga pants and park my butt on the couch for a bit. The weather has cleared up again but I still seem to be in hibernation mode. I'm still perfectly happy reading, though I do feel a little guilty when the sun is out. Ok, a lot guilty. I've discovered that reading in the rocker on the porch or stretched out on a blanket in the backyard to soak up some sun while I'm reading does help with that guilt though. Still not getting anything done, but atleast I'm enjoying the nice weather while it's around.

I've stocked up my "to be read" shelf, it's good and ready for winter. Amazon makes it WAY too easy to order stuff, those butt heads. And then the free shipping with a qualifying $30 purchase = trouble! I love free shipping. And those bastards even send me emails with suggestions of books to buy based on what I've ordered in the past. The nerve! So many books to read, so many other things I should be doing instead!

I'm also really looking forward to reading Twilight yet again. I'm thinking if I start it around the beginning of November, I should be able to get through it just in time to go see New Moon. I'm excited for that movie! I'm trying not to be because I really don't want to be disappointed, but it's really hard because there seems to be a lot of hype surrounding it. I hate hype. I would really rather have low expectations going into a movie and come out totally enamored, then be let down from listening to all the hype. I may, just possibly, be planning to be a total Twitard and go see the midnight opening night show. Maybe. You didn't hear that from me.

In other news, boot camp is going well. I've been so busy with other things and since we still don't have an arena at our house (another epic fail for us this year) I haven't been getting a lot of saddle time on my own, but our lessons are going very well. We're making progress. Midori is getting more responsive and I'm getting better about not being such a control freak. I know, I know...me? Control freak?!? Who'da thunk it?! lol

We have one more cutting show for the summer series. I'm hoping it goes well! I would like to end on a good note. After that I'm really going to focus solely on our boot camp. The winter series starts the weekend after our last cutting show. I plan to do the reining portion again. The boyfriend is still deciding if he wants to do reining or cutting. Or both. Since I won the rookie reining class I was in last year I have to move up to the next class. It is still two handed, but requires flying lead changes. I'm not expecting anything out of the series this year as I've got some pretty stiff competition. The classes are $12 and it gives me an excuse to get on my horse and have something to work for all winter. I plan to use the series as a way to measure my boot camp progress. That is all. I certainly wouldn't mind winning, but that's not what it's about for me this year. I'll have to bookmark that statement and keep referring back to it after every show. ;o)

Other then that, I think the summer craziness seems to be winding down. I'm looking forward to fall and all it's glory and hoping the sun sticks around for a while. I'm excited for pumpkin flavored anything, hard carmelled apple cider and all the brilliant fall colors. I really do love fall.

Boot Camp!

2009-09-06T19:46:00.000-07:00

Boot camp has commenced. I decided last spring that as soon as drill was over this season I was going to begin intensively working on getting my horse really darn broke. I want her light, responsive, soft, supple as well as doing flying lead changes, spins and stops. I'm sure our backing and roll backs can be improved upon as well, among other things. I want her to be able to do all of that framed up and on a loose rein. I want to feel like I deserve to wear my "Reining Champion" buckle, not laugh at myself when I put it on because I still cannot do a flying lead change, which, to me, is part of being a reiner, like needing oxygen is part of being human.

So as soon as drill was over mid-July I got to work. At first it was just working on my own, when I could manage to get on my horse. It was a busy few weeks so I didn't get as many oppurtunities to ride as I would have liked, but when I did I thought about where I wanted my horse to be and what I needed to do to get there and worked on it. I made progress and I was happy with it.

While I do love drill and it was very instrumental in getting Midori to where she is today, it has seemed lately that it is a little counter-productive to getting where I wanted to go with her. I had always drilled with Midori. With the exception of our end of the season break from mid-July to Labor day and holiday break from Thanksgiving to New Years and a hand full of skipped practices here and there, I've drilled Midori pretty darn faithfully every single Sunday for the whole 4 years that I've had her. I don't regret it. Not one bit. I think drill horses are amazing athletes and some of the most rock solid horses out there. But I am to a point where I want to really fine tune Midori and it needs consistent, dedicated work. I can't just forget it for practice every Sunday. I don't think that's fair. So I made a deal with myself that as soon as drill was over this season I would begin boot camp. And I did. I even enlisted some help and I'm pretty darn excited about it.

There is a trainer at the arena that we ride at. I finally got up the nerve to see if she could fit me in to her seemingly very hectic schedule. She found room for me and I had my first lesson in years last week. It was great! While I was a little disappointed that we ended up working on spinning and flying lead changes, I was still very pleased with the difference I could already see in Midori's responsiveness. I was amazed. It didn't seem like we had really done a whole lot, but I could definately feel progress was being made.

I feel like there are a lot of holes in our training, steps that we skipped, building blocks that we missed. I'm also aware that most of the "issues" we are having with progressing like I want to are just my lack of knowledge and experience. I've already gotten Midori further in her training then I thought I knew how to. I have to admit, I'm pretty darn proud of the little horse that I've made. Of course she's just a rock star in her own right, so I've had good help in the matter. But back to the holes....I wanted to kind of go back to the beginning and fill in those holes and gaps and work up from there, which is why I was disappointed that we ended up getting to work on flying lead changes on the first lesson. I did mention to the trainer that I'm doing the winter reining series, which starts in one month, so I'm sure she registered that and realized it's crunch time. Or maybe, and this is my reaching for the stars here, she just figured we are more ready for the big stuff then I feel like we are. I guess time will tell. Ultimately my goal is for my horse to be as close to a finished reiner as we can get with our limited resources, both financial and available local trainers (good trainers are hard to come by around here) and I'm just happy to have someone helping me learn how to reach that goal.

So for now I'm pleased with my new trainer. She is nice and seems to know what she's doing well enough. I'm happy to pick her brain for a while and it's way better then continuing to flail around on my own. I'm excited to see how we progress this winter! My next lesson is tomorrow and now that I've had over a week to digest the last one I've got all sorts of questions I want to ask and things I need to understand better. I'm excited. Progress is being made!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Rule of Thirds

2009-09-06T09:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I hope I'm getting this right. I love the rule of thirds when taking pictures and thought I had about a million pictures that I could use for this challenge in my archives (I had a super busy week this week so I didn't have time to get any new pictures). Of course once I started looking thru my archives I realized that I really do still center most of my pictures. I was a little disappointed in myself. ;)

I did find a few that I think qualify.

I have always loved this picture. It is jrosey and my bff Sarah trail riding down by the river on a beautiful fall day.

This is another one of my faves of the boyfriend. He was taking a walk while they were dragging the arena at a cutting show.

And a snowy branch draping over our hitching post last winter. I think I was trying for the rule of thirds here, but it's kind of right in between being centered and thirds. The snow is mostly in the top third and the vertical post is mostly in the left third. Mostly. I suppose I could have cropped a bit, but I like it just the way it is.

And then we have the ominous cloud picture with the ground and trees in the bottom third. Or bottom quarter. Close enough.

To check out more Rule of Thirds pics go thru the comments here.

Macro Monday

2009-08-24T20:31:00.001-07:00

It's not flowers this time - Yay! This may be self-indulgence at it's worst though. I was having fun taking pictures of the stack of ribbons I won at the SAFE Benefit Horse Show. For the rest of the story of these ribbons you can check out my previous post.

SAFE Benefit Horse Show

2009-08-23T20:07:00.001-07:00

Well, I did it. I went to the SAFE Benefit Horse Show yesterday and I survived! It was a whirl wind day, but I have to say that it was such a wonderful show! Everyone was super nice, the whole thing was very laid back and it was just a great day! Very fun!

I decided to do a bit of everything at the show and ended up in ten classes. I started off the morning with Showmanship. I have done Showmanship before, back in my 4-H days, so I had an idea of what I was getting myself into. Unfortunately patterns have gotten a little tricky since my day and I only read the written description, didn't study the diagram, which did not describe the pattern entirely. Or I just managed to skip about half of it. lol I did the pattern totally wrong, but still walked out of the rather large class with a 5th place. Bummer I did the pattern wrong! Halter was next, which I've never done before. It was pretty simple though and we did well.

Wanna see something funny?

Check this out....

That's me and my little cutting/reining/drill horse riding english! I was laughing at myself pretty much the whole time. I felt like I was going to go flying right over her head! I rode english for the first time in 3-4 years the day before the show just to make sure the saddle and everything fit and I could really do it! I'm pretty sure it's the first time Midori has ever been ridden english. We only did two equitation classes because I don't really have a pleasure horse. The funniest part of the whole thing was the second equitation class that I went in I won. I couldn't believe it when they called my number for 1st place. I was cracking up!

After english we took a little break, changed saddles and headed over to the trail course. It was a pretty easy course, except for the little buggers tied to the fence to the right of me in this pic.

Yep, there were GOATS! Not just any goats, but Horse Eating Monster Goats! Midori was eye ballin' them as soon as we hit the log you see in the picture. She wouldn't hardly stand still to do the gate that I'm working on in that pic. Luckily she does trust me and will usually do what I ask so we made it past the goaties just fine and the rest of the course was a snap.

Some where in the course of the afternoon my camera got a smudge on the lens so most of the rest of the pictures have a big smudge across them, but there were still some cute ones!

This is us in a western class, probably one of my equitation classes. I did both pleasure and equitation classes in western. I went to the show with jrosey and we would give each other a super cheesy smile when we came around the arena and saw the camera pointed at us.

Here is my super cheesy pose with my first place ribbon in Western Equitation.

I also did bareback and survived! Oh my goodness that was a long class though! My legs were burning before we had even reversed! Guess I don't ride bareback enough!

I loved this picture, even with the smudge. The goaties' trailer was parked right by us and they were hanging out in the shade for a bit until it was time to go home so I took Midori over to visit with them for a bit.

WARNING: This is where I get a tad bit self-indulgent...I had fun at the show...

I've never walked away from a show with a wad of ribbons like that! It was fun! :-) In my 4-H days I wasn't bad, but I never won a class. I did get a 2nd place. Once. I would get in the ribbons here and there and was usually just good enough to make it to state or championship classes, but then I was bottom of the pack there, so this was new and very exciting for me!

The best part.....

I won the western high point! Well, technically I tied for the western high point, but they broke the tie with our overall scores, which means it was a darn good thing I did english! I couldn't believe I won though!!! I was so excited! On top of the super cool big fat ribbon I got a cool little western package that included a pretty purple saddle blanket and a pretty nice headstall. Wohoo! That was a VERY fun way to end the day!

It was a great day and I'd highly recommend the SAFE Benefit Horse show to anyone wanting to dip their toes in the show world, looking for an excuse to get their horse out, former 4-Her's wanting a rail class fix (like me) or anyone that shows regularly! It's just a really fun show! And the Bribe Your Horse class at the end of the day was just hilarious to watch!

Macro Monday

2009-08-17T17:29:00.001-07:00

Last week my mom brought over a beautiful bouquet of flowers when she came for the family reunion that we hosted. I always get excited when I have a bouquet of flowers because I looooove getting macro shots of them! Here's a few of my faves, all straight out of the camera, save for a little cropping...

Happy Monday everyone!

Updates ~ I Am Alive!

2009-08-16T10:46:00.001-07:00

Yes, I am alive! Even though I've only managed to get some of the Sunday Stills posts up for the last umm...4 weeks. Yikes! Man, time funs when you're having flies! Or something like that.

So lets go back and start at my state meet for drill. Midori looooves going to shows because she gets a nice clean stall and shavings to roll around in. Seriously, not 5 minutes after I stick her in the stall this is what she looks like. Isn't she the cutest pony ever?!

The state meet went well. Of course it wasn't without drama, but it was all resolved fairly early on and the rest of the weekend went well. I remembered all the drills, loped a couple of them for the first time that weekend. It was really fun! We came in 6th over all out of 13 teams. Not fabulous, but considering all the shaking up and filling spots and switching around we did, not too shabby!

This is me in Freestyle. I was the only flag. I liked my spot though, other the Midori running off with me a bit. She liked being on the outside of the sweep for a lap and a quarter and didn't want to check back to make he 90 degree turn into the center to be on the outside of the crack.

Also, notice we are on the wrong lead in this pic? We're not going to talk about that.

We are also not going to talk about this...

I will say that our quad placed 6th (I think) out of like 20 something teams, so that was fun! It was a fun ride, but the first time I had loped that drill this year and to say we hauled ass in an understatement.

About 2 hours before I rode the flag in Freestyle I was at a cutting show. The timing ended up working out perfectly, I was so happy! We had a fabulous ride, Midori really cowed up and I think enjoyed the break from the drill team boot camp she had suddenly found herself in. We didn't score well, but I was thrilled with our ride considering we hadn't worked buffalo in a couple weeks. The boyfriend called me as I was pulling in back at the drill meet and informed me that my score had held for 2nd place! Yahoo!!!

That was a very fun weekend. It was nice to hang out with my drill team again and I've always loved state.

Next update: Chey has kitties for lunch!

Just kidding! She got to meet them for the first time without bars between them! She was SOOO excited, she could hardly contain herself. Just imagine her little nubbin tail going a mile a minute here.

The kitties were just as curious about her. Chunk was a little more timid about walking right up to her and tended to keep her distance, but Legs would walk right up to her, rub up against her, roll over in front of her and swat at her.

Chey did really well with them, though did get a little excited a few times. She is definately intense and we keep an eye on her to make sure she's not mauling them to death on accident. Do you see the kitty tail sticking out from under her paw in this picture?

She loves to nibble them, like sort of cleaning, like I imagine a momma would do to her puppies. She also stands over them protectively. She really is gentle and good with them, just really intense. Go figure, since she's an Aussie. Since she didn't eat them for lunch that time we let them out in the house to play now. For the most part it is just fine, though there have been some epic chases. The kittens run from Chey playfully, she tears after them, the cats go oh sh**! and run, Chey continues to chase them...etc. And then there is the comedic relief that is Chey trying to herd kittens. Oh my goodness, funniest thing ever! She just does not understand why it doesn't work! She tries to push them up and they lay down in front of her. If she does happen to herd them together for a second, they'll take off in opposite directions. You can just see the smoke coming out of her ears as she tries to decide which one to chase!

The kittens haven't gone outside yet, but I guess it's getting to be that time. I just have to let go of my overprotective tendencies and kick their butts outside. They are also officially June Bug and May Belle now. Legs is June Bug and Chunk is May Belle. I still call them Legs and Chunk most of the time though. They are getting huge! And rambunctious! Holy cow, they are tearing my house apart! Part of why they need to go outside!

We had another cutting show a couple weeks ago. That one didn't go so well. It had been really hot, record highs around here, and we hadn't been riding at all. The cows I got were just awful and my turn back riders were no help at all. Sugar was full of piss and vinegar and Justin was having no luck with her either. Fortunately, everyone seemed to be having an off day, so my 65 held for a tie for 4th and 5th out of 8 riders. I'm still hanging on to 1st place in the series by a half point. No pressure for the next show, huh? Ugh!

The week leading up to that show we learned that the boyfriends mom had been admitted to the hospital and was scheduled to have open heart surgery. That made for a very hectic week, going up to the hospital every evening. We were also trying to get our house and yard presentable because we were hosting my small family reunion a couple weeks later. I had just started a painting project when we found out she was in the hospital, and what should have taken me 2 evenings to finish up ended up taking me a full week. We were busy and it just wasn't a fun time. But the surgery went well and she is doing good. It's amazing how staining the deck and planting flowers in the front flower bed are suddenly not a priority when stuff like that happens. :-) We did manage to get the house and yard somewhat presentable and the reunion was fun. We had tons of leftovers so I haven't had to cook all week and I was really happy to have a clean, clean house for the first time in a while!

This week and weekend has been really nice to catch up, relax and just not have any big obligations. I really love summer and the sun and warm temps, but fall is by far my favorite season just because it's not as crazy busy as summer. Next weekend I will be attending the SAFE horse show. That should be interesting! It's been a while since I've done pleasure, equitation and showmanship classes! And I'm doing a halter class, which I've never done. No clue what I'm doing there! :-) I'm looking forward to it though! I do miss rail classes every once in a while.

So that's my story. Nothing terribly interesting, but it's been a busy, busy summer!

Hope everyone is enjoying their summers!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Clouds

2009-08-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

I have lots of pics in my archives of clouds and since it's been a little dreary and gray around here this week I'm putting them to good use! These were all taken last year with my little point and shoot and are all straight out of the camera, no editing done.

This was taken at Alki Beach. I love going up there, it brings back so many memories, but I just don't get up there all that often. This particular day we were meeting my cousin for a quick lunch and it happened to be an absolutely gorgeous day at the beach. We didn't stay long, but I had to snap some pictures before we left.

These next two were taken at the boyfriend's parent's old house. I think some thunder storms were moving thru and the clouds were just beautiful.

This one was taken from a hay field where we were picking up 5 tons of hay for our ponies. I was driving the truck around the field while the boyfriend loaded the hay up. I got a little distracted by the sunset and the sky.

This one was taken from our "arena-to-be", when we had the round pen up. It's the only place on our property that you can see the sunset.

Check out lots more cloud pics here!

Sunday Stills Challenge - The Elements

2009-08-08T10:35:00.001-07:00

I've been just a touch busy lately *snort*, but I had the perfect picture for this challenge just chillin' in my archives so I had to get it up.

Check it out...all 5 elements in one pic! My interpretation of the 5 elements in one pic, of course, but I think it qualifies.

It's a picture from when we were clearing our property last year and burning all the brush. So we have 1. fire (obviously) 2. earth, lots of dirt, rocks, etc. 3. wind - the industrial fan 4. water - there is a hose that I promise you is full of water 5. love - Cheyanne and the boyfriend are both in the pic, they are my loves (and while love isn't neccessarily pictured, it counts because I say it does! ;) )

I added this pic in just because I like it. Earth, wind and fire.

Alrighty, I'd better get my butt back in gear. Hope you're all having a wonderful weekend!

Macro Monday

2009-07-27T20:34:00.001-07:00

Here are some macro shots that I took this week.

First up, the hated thistle bloom. I think I may dislike these more then the bastard dandelions.

These are my Bachelor Buttons that actually came up. I grew these from seed, can you believe that?!? There was a row of tall sunflowers planted behind them and a row of short, bushy sunflowers planted in front of them, but 5 stalks of bachelor buttons is all that came up from 4 packets of seeds. Love it! Not.

This little buzzy guy was just chillin on the flower posing for me.

I'm really happy that atleast some of these Bachelor Buttons came up though. The packet of seeds had some sentimental value. It was in a little springy gift basket type thing that I got as my trophy the last reining show that I won. :-) I was really happy to see some come up!

Then when I was out watering I noticed this little guy soakin up some of the cool, fresh water. He had a prime spot, hanging out under the leaves in the nice cool, damp soil.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Monday!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Toys

2009-07-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I survived last weekend! More on that later. I haven't had much time to take pictures lately, let alone get them loaded and do a blog post, but I wanted to get back to the Sunday Stills Challenges so I'm making time for it this morning! :-)

My kittens are my new toys and they are a hoot to watch! They play hard and long and are always entertaining. Especially when they are attacking my toes when I walk up to the bed that they are under and try to climb up my legs when I'm wearing shorts. That's a blast, let me tell ya! lol

For the most part though, I am having so much fun with my little kitties. Still haven't officially named them, but right now they are Chunk and Legs. One is a little tub and the other one is tall and skinny. Nothing like giving a girl a complex early on, huh?

This was Legs playing with the camera lense from my lap. I thought it was hilarious. I was sitting down on the ground taking pictures of them playing together when Legs jumped on my lap and started swatting at my camera. I pulled back at first but then realized she only wanted the dangling lense.

On a side note: do you see those back claws digging into my leg?!? My poor legs have little kitty scratch scabs all over them. Ouchy!

This morning as I sat down to go through my archives for Toy pics I looked over and both the kitties were wrestling with Chey's toys.

Here Chunk is showing the hedge hog what's up! This poor hedge hog has been through the wringer! It's survived Chey for over a year now, been partially de-fuzzed and had it's ears and eyes gnawed off, but it's still going strong and even still honks!

At the same time Chunk and the hedge hog were going at it, Legs was over teaching Piggy a lesson. She hadn't spied me in this picture, though it does look like it. She was eyeballin' a fly that was buzzing around. She loves chasing flies!

Piggy is Cheyanne's favorite toy.

I'm interested to see what she does when she smells the kittens all over it!

Poor girl.

Kitty Smackdown

2009-07-13T20:29:00.000-07:00

Alright, as promised, here is the Smackdown that occurred on the boyfriends knees the other night. I was shooting in continuous mode and the house was dark so please forgive the quality (or serious lack thereof) of the photos. They were just too funny to not post. Sorry, it's kinda long, but mostly pictures.

Here we go...

Fighters, take your corners...er, knees!

Get those claws warmed up and Prepare to fight!

Round 1...FIGHT!

*POW* And Girl 1 gets a left jab in right at the bell...

Uh-oh, looks like Girl 1 has a claw stuck and Girl 2 is going in for a left hook!

*BAM* G2 nails G1 with that left hook, but G1's claw is still stuck

G2 winds up for another left hook...

*KAPOW* Oh, that ones a doozy, but that claw is holding strong!

G2 winds up for a third hit, but it looks like that claw is finally coming loose.

*KABLAM* G2 lands a third blow, knocking G1's claw loose finally and takes Round 1 with 3 punches.

Ok, fighters...Here's Round 2...FIGHT!

Look at the speed G2 has in that left jab! Amazing! But G1 is winding up for a good one while dodging that swipe. Just look at her coiling up, ready to pounce and really put the hurt on with those claws!

*WHAM*

G2 looks a little stunned by that blow, but is recovering quickly. But will she be quick enough to get out of the way of the next blow coming?

*BLAM*

Oh! Not quite fast enough and she takes a direct hit to the head.

You can just feel the focus in G1...look at that stance, those ears, the tail straight down for balance...she's one tough little kitty!

But wait...G2 is still fighting!

G2 looks like she's about to bring some serious heat!

*KABLAMO*

Oh! She lands a solid hit on G1's head and winds up for more!

Looks like another solid wind up...look at that speed!

But wait, what's this?! It looks like G1 managed to get out of the way, sending G2 sprawling...

G1 goes in for the kill while G2 is still off balance!

*BAM*

And G1 lands another solid hit on the head for the knockout punch!

Our winner and feather weight King of the Mountain is Girl 1!

Okay, okay...I know I'm a total dork. You don't have to tell me. It totally reminds me of some weird mix of the Simba/Scar slow motion fight scene in the Lion King and the old comic book cartoons. I totally picture the big *POW* *BAM* screens flashing after every hit. Anyone else? Is that just me?

*tap, tap*

This thing on?

(name that blog!)

Well, it's apparently way past my bedtime and I think I'm getting delirious...ya, that's it. ;) Stay tuned for plenty more Kitty Tales coming soon!

Macro Monday

2009-07-13T16:51:00.000-07:00

Ed from Sunday Stills has included a Macro Monday now. I'm more then happy to jump on that bandwagon! Even though I joined Sunday Stills to try to branch out, broaden my horizons, etc. etc. I'm still very partial to macro!

I was at my parents house last weekend and a trip up there just isn't complete without me taking a trip through my mom's gardens with my camera. Here are my fave shots of the day...

Sunday Stills Challenge - Textures

2009-07-12T10:11:00.003-07:00

I'm back after missing last week's SSC. I was bummed too! I've got plenty of wild flowers to take pictures of and even had tons in my archives, but I just did not have time to sit down and actually put a post together. Oh well, I'm back this week with textures! I decided to do the different textures on my saddles. Please excuse the dirt, I'm not very good at keeping my saddles clean.

This is my favorite saddle, my Reinsman. Unfortunately my horse doesn't like it so much and it's kind of heavy and the stirrups don't go short enough for me now that I'm riding with cutter length stirrups (much shorter then, say, the equitation length stirrups I used to ride with).

It has these very pretty and different conchos on it with a hand carved acorn leaf and very unique basket weave type pattern. It's also the softee leather that I love so much and is an incredibly comfortable and secure saddle. It was my "investment" saddle, after getting a cheaper one before it, but I hardly use it. Very sad.

Next up is my old show saddle. It's a Circle Y and I love this one too. It's got a flower pattern on it and just a little bit of silver and is the older "good" Cirle Y's that also had the softee leather. I got this saddle when I was showing 4-H for one of my birthday's, maybe my 15th? I don't remember. It was a collaborative effort with all of my family and friends chipping in on it so it has some sentimental value.

This next saddle and I have a LOT of history. We've had hundreds, probably even thousands of hours together. It's my "antique". It's the saddle I learned to ride in, when I wasn't riding bareback. I "barrel raced" in it (hahaha), jumped, played in the lake, spent hours upon hours on trails...so many memories.

Funny story of the day: My best friend who I used to do all of that riding with had this exact same saddle. I have never seen another one like it, but what a small world that we both had this particular saddle.

It's very simple, plain, smooth leather with the checker board stamped on it with a few little flowers on the corners. It's not nice leather at all and hasn't been very well taken care of. It spent many a winter out in the barn getting damp and moldy, but it survived and earned itself a nice retirement being decoration in my house.

Check out this seat...

It is rock hard and evil. I cannot believe I spent as much time in it as I did. Evil. The last time I rode in it, I think I opted to go bareback after a whole 3 minutes. Evil.

Anyways, those are my different textures for the day. My other "cheapy" Circle Y saddle is in my trailer. It's my every day rider and is currently under a quarter inch thick layer of dust from the dry arena we practiced in last weekend. I didn't feel like cleaning it so you could see the textures on it. ;) It's got the same Circle Y flowers as the other one, just no silver.

To check out more textures go here and click through the links in the comments.

Kitten Tales

2009-07-11T09:33:00.000-07:00

I am having so much fun with my new kitties! They are the cutest little things EVER! Possibly cuter then Cheyanne when she was a puppy. I dunno though, Chey was a darn cute puppy. I think the fact that I don't have to potty train the kitties gives them the win though. ;)

I am enjoying getting to know them and figure out their personalities and similarities and differences. They are the friendliest little kittens, run up to the door with their tails straight up when I go in to visit and won't go play in the house when I let them out until I give them each some loves.

This is from their first night at the house when Cheyanne smelled them under the door and was growling.

Immediately they puffed up and started spitting. Freakin' hilarious! Smart kitties though! Cheyanne wanted to have them for lunch! We have to be super duper careful with them and not let Chey in while they are out, or even go out the door if they are out. Chey caught sight of one the other day while the boyfriend was sneaking out and she lunged at the door. Luckily, the boyfriend saw it coming and was able to catch her and get the door closed. It's going to be a long process getting them introduced, but I think more then anything it's just going to take the kittens getting bigger and growing claws to earn her respect. Right now, Chey digs up and kills moles in the yard that are bigger then these two!

And of course any suggestions on introducing an apparently aggressive Aussie dog to new kittens are greatly appreciated! Right now Chey gets to smell them under the door and just in the last week or so it has turned into more of a game with them then the original "I want to eat you" thing it was. The kittens meow at her under the door and she pounces and backs off, they stick their heads under the door again, etc. etc. Before she was rather aggressive, but now she is happy while she's doing it. She smells every where they've gone when she comes in the house too, so she is getting used to their scent that way as well. We did have a face to face meeting with me holding kittens or letting them play near her while the boyfriend held Chey in a death grip, but she was still very aggressive and lunged at one, mouth open, as soon as I held it close enough for her to smell. I think we're going to wait a little while to do that again.

Anyways, they are very cute! And they play, play, play, play, play! Oh my goodness! It doesn't seem like they play a little and sleep a lot like the puppy did. And anything is interesting. Anything!

Here, a pebble is the coolest new toy on the block.

They also spend a good chunk of their time out playing in the shoes.

Their favorite jungle gym was the shelf of pop and water. Here they are playing thru the clear plastic of the water case. They would also go in the pop boxes and attack the other one thru the carrying handle hole.

They do a lot of running around the house chasing eachother! They are loud! I expected cats to be light on their feet, graceful, agile...you know, like cats! But these two sound like a herd of elephants running around!

Unfortunately, it didn't take them long to discover the couches. They loooove to climb them. *shudders* This was my big fear, that they would trash the couches. So far I haven't noticed any snags and I'm hoping that by the time they are big enough to leave snags, they'll be able to jump on them instead of having to climb them. Fingers crossed! They can almost jump up on the seat of them right now so I think we should be ok.

The boyfriend layed down on the the floor the other day and they immediately used him as a jungle gym. Here they are playing King of the Mountain on his knees. I did some of the continuous shoot mode while they were up there and I plan to do a post on the smackdown that occurred. I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes while looking thru those pictures!

I am also noticing that they are fast! Like really fast! Probably 90% of my pictures of them are blurry because they don't sit still for even half a second! Even my sports mode on my Nikon doesn't always catch them! Crazy kids! I'm sure it does't help that my house is pretty dark though.

In these pictures I was in the bedroom folding clothes and they were keeping me company. They ended up climbing up the jeans on hangers in the boyfriends closet and playing on them. They were having a total blast too! It was hilarious to watch since the hangers would move and tilt.

Don't they just look like TROUBLE?!

Queen Of Denial

2009-07-09T12:38:00.000-07:00

Oh my. I think I'm in a great state of denial right now and I have a feeling it may come back to bite me in the booty. I could be wrong, I may just really not have all that much prepping to do, but something tells me I'm going to seriously regret my laid back attitude right now next week when I'm running around like crazy.

And it's not like I've been sitting on my butt getting nothing but relaxing accomplished either. I've been busy! I had birthdays to celebrate, new kitties to play with and clean up after, horses to ride, drill practices to attend, 4th of July parties to go to, etc. etc. etc. It's been a crazy busy couple of weeks. I think I might finally be recovering from the long weekend last weekend. It was exhausting.

But see, here's the thing...next week is the one and only drill competition I'm doing this year. NEXT WEEK! It's a big competition that lasts 3 days and we go in the afternoon before so I will be there for three nights.

I have really enjoyed being an associate member this year. It's been a much more relaxed summer so far. I believe my team has already done 4 or 5 competitions this year, which means that is 4 or 5 weekends that I wouldn't have had at home, had I been a full riding member. That's a lot. It's made a huge difference. Huge!

Nevertheless, this one competition has managed to sneak up on me. I'm not terribly surprised, competition season always does. I just can't believe it's next week! I feel like I should be super busy getting ready, but then I try to think about what I actually need to do and it doesn't seem like all that much. I really should try on my jeans and make sure they still fit and check out the status of my "competition tubs". I have everything I need in great plastic tubs and am usually really good about cleaning and organizing everything in them when I get home from a competition so they are ready to go for next time, but by the end of the season last year I was so beyond burned out that I may have just not wanted to look at them ever again. I really need to get them down from storage and check them out. Among other things. I know there is stuff I really should be doing.

I think this year is going to be a lot more relaxed for me though. In past years I've been in charge of stall decorations and the team scrap book. Of course, since I am also the queen of procrastination, I was usually throwing the scrap book together the week or two before state and doing last minute replacements/additions to the stall decorations, rider/horse names and pictures, etc. It also made for a whole lot of packing and preparation that I needed to do going into state. This year I am not doing any of that. I just need to bring me, my stuff and my horse. You don't even know how fabulous that is.

The best part of this whole thing though...I'm in four drills. Since I am taking others spots in 3 of the drills, I have hardly practiced them at all and the 4th drill, Compulsory, we only perform at state so we just haven't practiced it much period. We are also not doing extra practices this year so in the two weeks between their last competition and state I have 2 practices to learn the drills. I'm trying not to stress about it, I know I can do it, but I do get a little worried about it on occasion. I certainly don't want to let the team down if I forget a part and screw every one up! That's not fair to them and all the hard work they've put into the drills.

In Freestyle I carry a flag (one of two flags in a column of ten riders) and lead part of it and have my own special little spot for part of it, so if I screw up it's bad. I have been able to fill in in "my" spot a couple times in the last month so I know the drill a little bit. In Short Program I lead for part of it and am mostly a follower for the rest, but I rode that drill for the first time last weekend so it's not as familiar to me as Freestyle. The quad that I am a part of is the quad that I've been riding with for the past few years. I wrote the drill so I know it, but I'm in a different spot then I had been riding so I need to basically learn it backwards from what I was used to riding. I think I mostly follow in it though so hopefully it will be easy enough.

To make the weekend even more interesting, there is a cutting show on that Saturday. I'm leading the standings for my class right now, but the boyfriend is sneaking up on me, along with a couple other people that could take the lead if I miss a show. The arenas are about a half hour apart and my ride time for drill is later in the afternoon so I'm hoping that I can sneak out and get my cutting class in before I have to be back for drill. Should be interesting. Fingers crossed that it works out! I'm not holding my breath though.

So wish me luck with drill! I'm going to need it! Kitten updates coming soon, promise! I hope to have a little time this weekend to get some pics of them up. Thanks for some really cute name suggestions! I really liked Ethel and Lucy, Patch and Tabitha (love it!), and Romy and Michelle. Great ideas! I was going to call them Rita and Tini, like the drinks, but they just weren't fitting. I think I have some cute ones picked out though, I'll let you know what they are if they stick.

Hope you all are having a great week and enjoying some good weather! Any fun adventures for you guys on the horizon?

What Is This?

2009-07-01T05:01:00.000-07:00

Birthday kittens!!! That's what that is! I'm sure I would have gotten them anyways, but it just made it that much more fun that they happened to be ready right around my birthday.

They are 7 week old patch tabbies. They have little white paws, one has a mostly white face and the other has a white belly. They are so stinkin' cute!!!

I'm currently trying to come up with names for them. They should be girls, so I need some good chick names! I've already got a couple in mind that seem to fit pretty well, but I'm going to hold off for another couple days to get to know them a little better and see if anything else comes to mind. Or appears in my comments. ;)

That's all for now, but more on this later. Lots, LOTS more, I'm sure!

B&A - The Front Pasture!

2009-06-29T05:37:00.000-07:00

We have pasture! Of course we don't have our fencing up yet, but we have pasture. So exciting!

This is our "Front Pasture". Hopefully one of two or three pastures that we'll get in eventually. We still have the jacked up fence along the perimeter that came with the house and it's just cross fenced with t-posts and one strand of tape that isn't hot, but the pasture is graded, seeded and growing grass beautifully!

For a little comparison, here is the before picture from when we first bought the house.

We didn't take out too many trees from this particular section, but we did remove lots and lots and lots of brush and blackberry bushes and the big pile of junk that I assume was from when they originally cleared it. There were 3 large piles of debris around the property that they never got to burning apparently. I know I've mentioned the panicked clearing of our property in 2 weekends time with less then a weeks notice before and I promise I'll tell you that story one day.

This is a picture of the pasture while we were clearing. We (and by we, I of course mean the boyfriend because I was pretty much just supervision/support) moved the original pile up, fluffed it and added TONS more to it. It pretty much burned for two weeks straight and we got rid of a lot of stuff. Luckily the boyfriend is an expert on heavy equipment and whipped the property into shape really quickly with just the rented dozer.

If you can focus on the pasture behind my shaggy horse in this picture, you'll see what it looked like after the clearing. We wanted the horses to still have turnout, but it was rocky and uneven and only a few small spots had grass and it just wasn't very pretty at all. There was still about 15 feet of blackberries along the bottom fenceline also so the pasture didn't go all the way down.

Here the boyfriend is on Holly in April cleaning it up, making sure it's all level, getting rid of most of the blackberries and rocks and clearing all the way down to the bottom fenceline. Quality Control (Cheyanne) is watching intently, making sure the job gets done right!

After he finished with all that he seeded it and counted on the spring rains. Well, we got one good drenching, like torrential down pour, where a lot of the seed was just washed away, and then not much else. He reseeded the upper portions where it had washed away and then set up some sprinklers since we weren't getting much more rain. It was hard to complain about no rain after the loooooong winter we had, but it would have been nice for the grass growing operation.

It all worked out though. There is plenty of beautiful, tall grass out there.

Since it's still baby grass the roots aren't strong enough to stay put with the ponies nibbling on it, but the boyfriend said too bad! They need turnout! They have been getting stalked (or is it stocked?) up standing in their little paddocks and bored out of their minds. They need the exercise and freedom. And the grass! Though hay prices have come down to around $11/bale here, from the $17+ it was, it's still nice when they get to graze. I think they were really loving it. We had some very content ponies.

I just love this shot....

It's a dream come true on so many levels: the horses, the pasture "done", owning the property, having a view of the mountain...it's still almost surreal to me. And seriously, how many people do you know that are lucky enough to have that view from their front porch? I could stare at it all day.

Sunday Stills Challenge - Things With Wings

2009-06-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

This week's challenge was pretty fun for me. I've been wanting to get out and try to capture some of the critters around here anyways, so this is gave me a deadline to git'r done.

Early in the week I went to roll up the hose and found this little guy chillin' on it. It's the smallest grasshopper I've ever seen. Not sure if it's a baby or a mini variety. I'm going to go with baby because I don't recall usually seeing them this early in the summer. And I had to google to make sure grasshoppers really have wings. I was pretty sure, but not 100%. They do! Isn't he cute?!? He just sat there and posed for me while I took his picture.

Our house came with a ton of birdhouses hung every where on the property and lots of eaves and places to stash nests so we get lots of baby birdies. This particular bird house is of the tri-level variety and actually pretty cute. I think the guy that used to live here liked wood working as they all seem to be home made. As far as I can tell there is only one nest in this house and the daddy bird was eye ballin' me hard when I was hiding behind a big shrubby thing trying to take pictures of him.

And here's his little wifey. She took one look at me and flew off. I didn't see her again while I was out there. Must have been her woman's intuition, she knew something was not right, even though I meant them no harm.

When I was wandering around outside picking flowers for my bouquet I happened upon this little guy.

And this bumble bee on this thistle. Oh, actually it looks like he's on a clover flower next to a thistle. He seemed a little tuckered out. He must have had a busy day because he was pretty much just hangin' there, not getting much work done. Slacker worker bee!

I liked this picture of the bumble bee with more of the thistle and my pony in the background.

Hope everyone is having an awesome weekend! Off to check out the other entries.

In Other News...

2009-06-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

It's been a very interesting week. I've actually had a bit of a rough week. I think I'm getting a little burned out at work. I need to get some time off planned so I have something to look forward to and so that I can recharge. I should be able to take a week off sometime in the next month or two so that'll be good. I think part of my getting burned out is not taking the time to relax in the evenings. Like, relax by reading. I decided I needed that down time again so Wednesday night I grabbed a book. Hey man, I lasted like, almost a whole two weeks! I think. It seemed like two weeks, maybe it was only one. I can't remember. Anyways, it worked wonders, but I'm still burned out at work.

Tuesday night working buffalo was good and bad. Midori worked really well, she was cowing up and turning nicely, but at one point when I stopped her to get the back in and turn properly, the buff got away from us so she took off after it and tripped. She went flying when she tripped and my head snapped back. We were fine other then that, but I ended up with whip lash. Then I had to ride Sugar on the buffalo also because the boyfriend ended up working late that night. She is a total spaz and I was not quite prepared for it. She was all over the place and I could not hold my seat to save my life. It was hilarious!!! I was totally cracking up at myself hanging off the side of her. Poor thing. She was probably wondering who this jack ass was on top of her and where the heck her dad was! lol Needless to say, after getting whip lash with Midori, that ride really did a number on my lower to mid back as well. So Wednesday I was pretty sore, probably why I decided to grab a book and get some down time.

By Friday my back was still sore and a little crackly, but getting better. I was sitting at my desk and decided to stretch. Innocent enough, right? Well, not this time. Something popped in my neck and suddenly I could not move my head. You know in that movie Romey and Michelle's High School Reunion (atleast I think it's that movie, correct me if I'm wrong jrosey, I don't know that movie all that well) where one of them has the deformity or something in her neck and has to wear the neck brace? Well, I looked like her before the neck brace, with my left ear practically on my shoulder. I couldn't turn my head or even hold it straight up. It was painful. Every time I moved it I would get shooting pains. So I checked out my insurance's preferred providers and there was 3 chiropractors within a mile or two of my work. Yay! I made an apt with one for a couple hours later and suffered thru work until then.

That was a momentous occasion for me because I have never been to the chiropractor before. Ever. I've had them out for my horses and I'm a firm believer in them for horses, but I've always been afraid to go or just not felt it was necessary. Funny thing, when you can't move your head a chiropractor suddenly seems necessary and that appointment could not come fast enough!

So some xrays and minor adjustments later I could hold my head up almost straight. Yay! There was definately some swelling in my neck and I was told to ice it as much as I can over the weekend, take it easy and come back on Monday for a follow up. Apparently I more or less sprained my neck. I did not know you could do such a thing. It kinda sorta really sucks too. It hurts. Looking at myself in the mirror yesterday if I held my head straight up and down my neck looked crooked. It was trippy. After the chiro I took the rest of the day off from work and headed home.

I loaded some pics, got caught up on some blog reading, blogged a little myself, just couldn't bring myself to park it on the couch with my book. I was all fidgety and wanting to get something done, but knew I was supposed to be taking it easy. Eventually I did lay down and do a little reading but then the boyfriend came home and was outside doing some stuff and I couldn't handle it any more. I went out and watered flowers and horses and tried to pick easy things to do. The whole time the boyfriend was telling me I should be inside relaxing.

I ended up outside with my camera taking a whole bunch of pictures and picking this bouquet of daisies, grasses and other random pretty things I found around the property. The boyfriend was laughing at me trying to bend over to pick flowers without turning my head. I'm sure it did look comical, but he could also tell that I was having a good time doing it, whether it hurt or not.

I like the way the bouquet turned out! There were some tall grasses out there that looked almost burgundy and all different shapes and kinds. It was fun to put together with the different textures and things.

There were the daisies out there and these cute little yellow flowers and this odd red stemmy stuff too.

I just picked whatever I thought looked interesting and came inside and got it all arranged.

This weekend is my birthday weekend, but we've got so much other stuff going on that I don't get to celebrate quite yet. It's usually the way so I'm not complaining. I'm actually usually down in Oregon at a big drill competition this weekend. It's kind of nice being home for a change. There is a loggers rodeo that we really want to go too, so that should be fun if we make it out there. The boyfriend signed up for a two day cutting horse clinic before he realized what weekend it was on, so that is what we'll be doing for most of the weekend. He's riding in it and I really should go audit it. I need to learn lots from it too so that he doesn't start kicking my butt in cutting on a regular basis. :) Speaking of that, I really should go jump in the shower and get over there.

Next up (hopefully) ~ why this picture is so darn exciting! Any ideas?

Have a great weekend!

My Gray-ish GreenThumb

2009-06-26T21:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I've said before that I don't really have a green thumb. I've called it my black thumb of death before because I can kill just about anything. I had a much longer record of killing things then keeping them alive. But this year, that is starting to change! YAY! So I'm considering my Black Thumb of Death more a Gray-ish Green Thumb. I'm still killing plenty of things, but I actually have just as many, if not more, things staying alive and thriving this year.

First up ~ the raspberries in the garden. They came with the house and are super duper low maintenance, they grew totally on their own last year, so they hardly count. I would like to think that all the weeding and rearranging and tlc I've given them this year is helping them produce more then they did last year though. They are really going to town so far this year so I'm thinking that may be the case. The first of the berries are allllllmost ready! Wohoo!

Next up ~ What is this I see? It's a little tomato starting to form! So cute!

Next ~ we have the Bachelor Buttons that I planted as seeds. They survived the last couple frosts (in May!) and are growing quickly. There is supposed to be a row of tall sunflowers behind them and shorter bushy sunflowers in front of them, but I don't see any of them coming up. I'm bummed about the sunflowers, but at least the Bachelor Buttons are coming up!

Here we have take #3 on the porch pot. Chey managed to get the purple leafy plant out of one of the pots and destroy it so I had to find something to replace it. Again. This is the same type of flower that was in there originally, just a different color. Next to it is a pretty vinca vine that I intended to use some where else, but ran out of room so I stuck it in there. So far so good on try #3. Hopefully they stick around, I kinda like these ones. Trying not to get too attached though, just in case.

The hanging baskets are still going strong, lookin' good and getting HUGE!

This whiskey barrel pot is in front of our garage and also up on a stump because Chey loves playing in it. I was passing my new fave nursery last weekend and decided to stop in to see if anything inspired me to try out in the whiskey barrel. I have been hesitating to plant anything in it because I didn't want to waste the time and money on it if Chey was just going to dig it up. She seemed to be leaving it alone up on the stump and there were some really pretty flowers that I was totally diggin' at the nursery so I decided to just bite the bullet and give it a try. Again, so far so good on it. Fingers crossed!

It's not the most color coordinated barrel ever, but it's colorful and pretty and I like it. I already had some bright red, white, purple and blue in there, but everything that caught my eye at the nursery was pink, orange and burgundy. It works! I can't wait til it fills in better and really gets going!

This is my favorite flower in there. Again, no clue what it's called, but it's very pretty. It's almost iridescent with oranges, yellows and pinks. I love it! The photo doesn't do it justice, of course. I want a room in my house those colors!

So my gardening skills are slowly improving. I'm not going to consider the curse of the Black Thumb of Death lifted quite yet though.

And of course we have Cheyanne. She was helping me take pictures of everything. I just love this picture! She looks like she's winking at me conspiratorially. Funny stuff! In reality, her eye was bothering her and she wouldn't open it.

Can you see all the sticky balls on her chest? It's ridiculous! They are like little velcro balls that stick every where on her! She's not so happy about me brushing them out all the time either. I hate the sticky balls!

Hope everyone had a wonderful week! I've got more updates to come, just need to find the time to get them all on here!

Sad, Sad Week

2009-06-26T15:51:00.000-07:00

Man, this week has been a doozy. I don't know about you guys, but Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon were names I heard often growing up. I loved them all.

Frankly, I was a little surprised that Ed McMahon lasted as long as he did and Farrah's passing was looming, but Michael Jackson totally caught me by surprise. I thought my co-worker was yanking my chain when she mentioned it. He can't be dead! The guys a legend!

I'm having a hard time coming to terms with it. It's just weird. He was the King! He was such an icon when I was little. I love his music. I was rockin out to Thriller, Billy Jean and Beat It on my way home today. One station had a MJ lunch hour with people calling in to tell stories of fave memories and requesting songs. I got choked up more then once listening to it.

I just can't believe he died. Too weird.

Rest In Peace, Ed, Farrah and Michael.

Honest Scrap

2009-06-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

I received the Honest Scrap Award from Paint Girl over at Adventures of the Painted Creek Farm. Thank you very much Paint Girl! I just love reading about her adventures! It seems that we have quite a few things in common! It is fun to hear about her aussies and know that I am not alone in the amazing things that they can collect in their coat. She's got quite the herd of animals over there and always has entertaining stories to tell!

The Honest Scrap Award comes with a caveat or two. First, you have to tell your readers 10 things about you they may not already know, but are true. Second, you have to tag 10 people with the award. Third, you have to let the people you've given the award to, know that they've received this award from you. Finally, make sure you link back to the person who awarded you.

So first up, lets see if I can think of 10 things you may not know about me that are somewhat interesting...

1. I was in 4-H for 7-8 years when I was younger. I can't remember exactly how long. I showed dogs first, then added cats and then, finally, got the opportunity to show horses as well. Horses was my favorite and I made it to state for Horse Bowl my first year.

2. I can't stand having naked toe nails. I'm open to going barefoot, though I don't usually. But if my toe nails don't have some sort of color on them, even if it's a 4 month old paint job that is mostly chipped off, I will avoid exposing them for anything other then a shower and bed time.

3. I think I have a bit of the girl version of "little man syndrome". I'm petite, 5'2" and skinny and I drive a big truck and my favorite thing in the world to do is dominate horses (more or less). Seriously, the fact that I love pushing around 1,000 lb animals has to say something.

4. The boyfriend and I are together because of a horse named Captain. Long story short, my friend sold her horse to his mom and they conspired to set us up. The rest is history.

5. I hated country music until the end of high school. I absolutely could not stand it. Then all of a sudden I decided to embrace being a little country and now look at me!

6. I am an office manager for a small construction company and I love my job.

7. Apparently I scare people and I have no idea why. I think it is the same reason that horses tend to respect me though. I've been told that the guys in the shop at my work are "afraid" of me. As in, they won't come in to talk to me if they can avoid it. Usually, they'll talk to the other office girl, who will then have to come talk to me. I think it may have something to do with the stupid questions that they sometimes ask that I just don't tend to have the patience for. Or maybe I'm just a bi-otch to them all the time. Who knows. I try to be nice, I swear!

8. I played volleyball in 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades. Didn't try out freshman year of high school then got cut sophomore year because I was too short and a little rusty. As far as I know I still hold the record for consecutive serves in a volleyball match at my junior high. 17 straight serves over the net. Yes, volleyball games are only 15 points. So I served one entire game (the other team really sucked) and then talked the coach into letting me stay server to start off the next game of the match.

9. I have a serious weakness for peanut m&m's. They are going to be the death of me. Okay, maybe not me so much as my jeans. It's getting a little dicey.

10. I am an olive fanatic. I love olives. I love black olives, greek olives, green olives, pimento stuffed olives, onion stuffed olives, jalapeno stuffed olives and, my personal favorite, garlic stuffed olives. Mmm MMM!!! I haven't met an olive yet that I didn't like.

Alrighty, so there are ten random things you probably didn't know about me. I'm sure you are all going to lead happy, fulfilled lives now that you have that knowledge.

On to tagging...

Since pretty much all of the few blogs that I read have already gotten this I'm only going to tag a couple people that I don't think have had the pleasure of the Honest Scrap Award yet...

1. Amers425 over at The Inside Workings Of... I blame her for my Twilight addiction and recent book obsession. She's totally my enabler.

2. Caspian over at This Kuntry Arabian because he is such a character and I would love to learn some new things about him! ;)

3. Jenny and Missfire who just finished up the Extreme Mustang Makeover. Jenny was able to adopt MissFire and I'm excited to see MissFire's training continue!

4. Foxypants - probably the funniest blog I read. Her animals just crack me UP!

I think thats it from me. If I didn't list you and you want to do it, consider yourself tagged!

Now off to leave comments and then get my beauty rest.

Sunday Stills Challenge - Tri-Colors

2009-06-21T11:29:00.000-07:00

I'm back after missing last week's challenge. It was a crazy busy week and I just couldn't find any grain or water towers. Darn it! First challenge I missed.

This week's challenge was to get three or more colors in a picture. Once again I'm trying to be a bit creative and branch out from my typical flower pictures. This is what I came up with...

These are three of my favorite lotions that I have sitting on a little makeup table I have in my bedroom. I loooove Bath and Body Works lotions!

I may have mentioned before that I'm a bit of a shoe whore. I love shoes. This walk in closet all but sold the house for me when we looked at it. I believe I hugged the shoe rack when I saw it and I have had fun filling it up with shoes. There is one more shelf up that is full of flip flops and a pile of shoe boxes on the other side of the closet that are full of shoes as well. I think I have a problem.

I'm also totally anal about how my closet and shoes are organized. The shoes specifically are arranged by color, heel height and style.

This is my "fun shoe" shelf. They are different colors or styles that don't fit in so much on the other shelves.

These are some of the more colorful and fun shoes from that shelf. There are my hair on cowprint heels that I mentioned here, my red wing tip sling backs, my black and white wing tip sling backs and my brown alligator print sling backs.

I picked these ones because they all have pointy toes so I could do this with them...

So not terribly colorful, but certainly three or more different colors in there.

Looking forward to the next challenge!

All Is Forgiven

2009-06-16T20:49:00.000-07:00

Well, it didn't take me long to forgive Chey. Less then 24 hours actually. By the time I left work yesterday I couldn't wait to get home and give her some love. On my way home I got some more plants to fill in the gaping holes in the pots and informed the boyfriend of my new plan that he needed to help me with. As soon as I told him what I was thinking he jumped on board and said he had just the thing. He had set it aside, saving it for some higher purpose, which this just happened to be.

This is my new plan...

I had the boyfriend cut off these stumps from a tree we took down last year when we cleared the property. He had saved it aside because it was cedar and most of the rest of the trees were maple and cotton wood which he cut up for firewood. They look kinda cute and woodsy on the porch and will hopefully get the pots up high enough that Chey won't bother them again. I hope!!! If she does decide to bother them again, they will fall and really be toast!

I also tried to piece together plants to recreate the pot that I had before the one got completely demolished. I'm all about being matchy-matchy and balance. I didn't totally nail it, but I think I got it close enough that once it fills in it should look just fine.

Of course I couldn't find the big pretty flower that had originally been in there. I was bummed because I was rather fond of it but I was on a mission to get them filled in and be done with the whole messy business so I could totally get over it and I didn't look terribly long and hard.

I did find this strange leafy plant though...

I don't remember what it's called at the moment (of course! I cannot retain plant names to save my life), but it's got these odd bright purple leaves.

I'm still trying to decide just how exactly I feel about it. I'm not totally in love with it, but I think it will be pretty once it fills in a bit. Luckily (I'm trying to be positive here!) Chey pulled the big plants out of both of the pots so that part is balanced at least.

So here's to hoping this new plan of mine works!

Oh, and the big bonus to all of this...the cedar smells sooooooo good!!!

Dog For Sale!

2009-06-15T05:21:00.000-07:00

New owner must not take any pride in their yard or have any attachment to their flowers, especially tulips and potted plants.

I can hardly even talk about this. I certainly can't even look at my dog right now. She is SO on my shit list right now. Being cute isn't even helping her with this one.

Remember these pots that I planted on my deck? The ones that I blogged about just a couple days ago? These big, beautiful pots that I was so proud of myself for not killing?

Well, Cheyanne helped me out with that...

Notice the big, tall, beautiful and thriving flower in the back is missing? Look at the next picture up, then come back to this one. Ya, totally massacred. Pieces of it all over the lawn. Still, the rest of this one fared pretty well.

This one on the other hand...

Not so much. Take a look at how the mini petunias in front were draping over the side so perfectly in the very top picture. Not any more! This pot was toast.

And keep in mind this was after we cleaned up and salvaged what we could, hunting down anything with roots left on the lawn, and put them back together. This was not what they looked like when we found them.

Cute isn't going to help her on this one. I don't think anything short of shitting solid gold bars would help me not be mad at her right now.

Progress!!!

2009-06-14T20:27:00.000-07:00

Whoa! Check me out! I quit reading and y'all get 3 posts in 3 days! hehe

Anywho, on to my very exciting story of progress...

So I've had Midori for going on 4 years now I believe. When I got her she was really, really green. She had been a trail pony and could go down a trail quiet as can be but didn't have much steering, no back, no brakes, not much of anything other then go forward, follow the leader. So I've been working hard to install things like power steering, brakes, bending, giving, etc. etc. The one thing that I've been wanting to do on her and have made my personal goal and mission in life for the past 3 years is flying lead changes. I believe I've mentioned the elusive flying lead changes here before. We have not been able to get them. I watch her in the pasture and she doesn't generally do them naturally either. So this year I've been trying really hard to work on the basics behind the flying lead change so I can maybe, just maybe, get this goal accomplished.

For a little background I'll tell you how I've been taught to do flying lead changes. I know there are all sorts of different ways to do it, but this is the way I've been shown and the way I try to do it. You basically make a big figure 8 in the arena, going straight across the diagonal, around the short end, down the diagonal, around the short end. Say you start out on the right lead. You come around the short end and head straight down the diagonal lifting the right shoulder and kicking the hip in to the right. To ask for the lead change you then push their hip the other direction and lift up their other shoulder. With that, they should change leads, back to front, and continue on their straight line down the diagonal, around the short end, up the diagonal, repeat.

Those are the basic mechanics of the flying lead change I'm going for. I've never actually taken a "real" (aka paid for) lesson on flying lead changes, but it is what I've picked up from the short little free Tuesday night clinics I've had the opportunity to attend and wherever else I can glean information from. Funny story: as much as I'm a total book whore, for some reason I am not great at transferring techniques from book to horseback. I don't know why, but it's never helped me much to read about how to do things with my horse.

Anyways, I've been working really hard on getting her hips to move and her shoulders up the last few months. We've always had a hard time with her hips so I've been paying extra special attention to that. Every time I ride I make her move her hips in and out, in and out. I've been doing lots of forehand pivots and backing in circles too. All trying to get her moving better off my legs.

Apparently it's paid off! I still have a very looong ways to go, but in the past week I've gotten a few flies out of her. The first time I was at a friends house riding and decided, eh, what the heck, I'll give it a try. First time, NAILED it! Unfortunately I was not able to replicate it that night, but it certainly gave me some food for thought! Then tonight our drill practice was cancelled, but I had already hauled to the arena so I decided to get a good ride in anyways. After watching the boyfriend show off for a while on Sugar (she does effortless flies) I decided to take another stab at the flying lead change thing. The first one she changed the front right away and then the back a few strides later. Try number two, she nailed. Try number three, got the front, back a few strides later. Four, nailed. You noticing a pattern here? She can change from right to left pretty easy, left to right - not so easy. She is also much better moving her hip right to left, not so much left to right, so I'm not terribly surprised.

So WAY exciting that I'm getting some flying lead changes in! I'm absolutely ecstatic that I'm getting there! Unfortunately, I do still have quite a ways to go. What I didn't mention is that by the time we get the fly in we are doing mach 5 around the arena and as soon as she changes she dives into it. After the first one she takes off as soon as I put my leg back and pick up the reins. Then when I ask for the change, she changes, then drops the shoulder I'm trying to lift and totally throws herself into a turn, even though we are in the middle of the arena. The taking off part isn't a huge deal like it used to be. I know she is still under control and all I have to do is pull her into a small circle at the end of the arena and she slows right back down. Or if I wanted to I could sit down and ask her to stop and she would, on a dime. It's been a while since I've been comfortable going mach 5 on her though so it's kinda fun. Plus, I'm getting flies out of her so I'm beyond excited!

I know I've still got a loooong ways to go, but I know I'm getting closer! And any progress on this very frustrating and slow to come goal is very exciting for me! At least now I know we can. I just have to work on getting her to slow down and move her hips without racing and stay on a straight line. I think now that I'm at least getting the fly in it should be easy enough for me to break it down piece by piece and get it going better.

That's all for now. I just had to record this momentous day for posterity. :)

Another Fun Day

2009-06-13T20:54:00.000-07:00

This is my favorite way to spend a day...

And that is how I spent a good chunk of my day today. I was a happy girl! We had a horse show, but even after sitting on my horse for a solid 4 hours I wasn't ready to be done with her when I got home. I jumped on bareback with the halter and let her graze while I sprawled on her back, trying to figure out how the heck I used to be able to do that and not fall off! Sometimes I really miss being a flexible, bouncy little kid! It was a nice way to wind down from the show for both of us.

The show was fun, but the cow gods were not smiling on me today and Midori and I just weren't on the same page. I was sore from battling thistles the night before and she felt stiff and I could tell her head wasn't in the game. She was hanging on the bit and not bending and I just had a feeling it was not going to be our day.

It wasn't. The cows we got were little pistols. They shot out of the gate and stood there, tail and head in the air, just daring me to try to push them around. I've been trying to let Midori work more on her own lately since she's really been cowing up, but that didn't work out so well for me today. By the time I would realize she wasn't going to stop and turn on her own with the cow and got to telling her what to do myself the cow had already turned and we were behind. It just wasn't our day. We lost our working advantage twice. That's the first time this year that's happened to me and to have it happen twice in one run was very frustrating. I may have cursed the second time it happened. Loudly. I still made it out of there with a 65, the lowest score I've received in my lengthy cutting career (4 shows), which landed me in 5th place out of 10. Not horrible, but I was a little disappointed with our run.

The boyfriend, on the other hand, was a total rock star on his run! Sugar was amazing! She was all over those cows like white on rice! She totally cowed up and he got a couple really good cows and they had a really great run, scoring a 70, which put them in first place. It also marked the first time the boyfriend has beat me at cutting. I'm sure I'll be hearing about it for a while.

Even though my run wasn't the greatest it was still a fun day. I love spending time with my horse and the boyfriend so I can't hardly complain.

In other news: Day 2 of no reading just sucks. I'm trying to not think about it, but I did catch myself in the office looking at the "books to be read" shelf. I made myself go outside and feed the critters and finish weeding around the raspberries instead. When I was finished with that I came back in the house and layed on the couch staring at the ceiling for a while, wishing I had a book to read. Then I made a pound cake and strawberry soup. While the pound cake was baking I was wishing I had a book to read. So I loaded pics from the day and got to blogging. I'm sure as soon as I'm done with this I'll wish I had a book to read. Maybe I'll just watch a little tv. Or maybe I'll go grab a book. I did do a bunch of laundry, baked a cake, did the dishes, finished weeding the raspberries...all very productive, so I deserve a reward, right? A reward like, say, getting to pick a book to read, right?! *sigh*

Off to watch a little tv and try to be good atleast a little bit longer.

Catching Up

2009-06-12T20:24:00.000-07:00

Whew! Man, what a busy couple weeks it's been! I'm pretty well wiped out and so happy it's Friday! Of course we have a horse show tomorrow so I don't get to sleep in as much as I would like, but a couple hours is better then nothin'!

Here's a few little tidbits about what I've been up to...

I've commenced the all out WAR on the weeds at my house. I'm DETERMINED to get them under control this year! I think this war may be the death of me though. Holy cow do we have weeds! And I think they are all super charged.

Wow. Just, wow.

I haven't gotten any real pictures of our jungle over here yet, I will have to do that one of these days. It's scary and they are EVERY WHERE!!! I took a little walk around the property tonight and pretty much couldn't go into the bottom half because the grass was up to my shoulders and intertwined with thistles and sticker bushes and nettles and all sorts of viney crap that I didn't feel like fighting with.

This is one of the weeds that is taking over our fenclines.

It was pretty for all of about 4 days while it had these cute little fuschia colored blooms on it. Now, it's just 2-4 foot long vines that have very strong roots and are rather difficult to pull up. They also seem to be rather invasive.

But then, everything seems to be invasive right now!

The war on weeds is going to take some time. We've already broken down and ended up having to spray the nice lush green areas that are supposed to be gravel. We're hoping if we're really on top of it this year, spray the hell out of everything and kill it all good and dead, then hopefully we can be a little more environmentally and critter friendly in the coming years and just maintain it. That's the plan anyways. I have a feeling the weeds didn't get the memo though.

That has pretty much been my life lately. Weed, weed, weed and weed some more. There is lots of cleaning up and just general maintenance and catching up to do around the yard too. Since we didn't do a whole lot with it last year and it had been empty for a while when we moved in, there is just lots and lots of catching up to do.

We'll get there eventually. I know it's not going to happen over night.

Anyways, on to happier subjects!

All of the hanging pots and planters that I did are alive and thriving! YAY! You don't even know what a relief this is to me! I spent some dough on getting those all put together and I was very afraid I was just wasting my time and money because I tend to have a not so green thumb. In fact, lately, I've taken to calling it my black thumb of death.

This is one of the pots that sit in the corners of the porch. It was dusk when I took this so the tall flowers in the back (no clue what they are called, sorry!) were closed for the evening, but they are still looking pretty snazzy, if I do say so myself!

Here we have one of the hanging baskets. Check out how big everything has gotten! Just in the last week or so the petunias have exploded and started to bloom. I have to smile every time I pull in my driveway and see the baskets because they are just so pretty! Which, of course, was the whole reason for doing them!

Next up we have one of my absolute favorite parts of this time of year...

Is there anything better then a cleaned up, ready to eat bowl of fresh off the farm local strawberries?!?

Ok, so maybe the raspberries from my garden are even better, but I do love me some strawberries!!! I'm lucky to have one of the best fruit stands around right by my work so it's super duper easy to swing in and get a box of berries. The stand finally opened this week and I was so happy to have a box riding shot gun on my way home tonight!

I love having fresh strawberries! I like eating them plain, and probably end up eating about a pint of them just while cleaning up the half flat. I love strawberry soup, it's so good over ice cream or pound cake or just with cream. I love strawberry daquiris and margaritas. I love freezing strawberries and having them on hand for later. My favorite pie EVER is fresh strawberry pie. Mmm MMM! My sister makes one of the best cakes I've ever had with fresh strawberry slices and bavarian cream in the middle of a white cake. Atleast I think that's what it is.

So strawberries are here, summer has begun! :)

Other then that I've been working, trying to ride my horse as much as I can, which is working out to be about twice a week: when I work buffalo and when I have drill practice. Three times a week if I have a cutting show. I've also been trying to kick this very time consuming habit I've been rather obsessive about lately. I can't stop reading. Like, really, I think I have a problem. I had been reading a book here and there last year, probably averaging like 1 every few months. And then I got sucked into Twilight, which lead to the rest of the series. Twice. Then the Host, then the 8 books of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series. With a few other random books thrown in in between. I just finished the latest BDB book last night and told myself I need to do some other stuff for a while. Just hold off on starting another book for a bit. But man, I'm jonesin'. It hasn't even been 24 hours and I feel lost not having a book to read! It's bad.

I'll take reading over watching tv any day of the week. I love reading. Trouble is, if a book is any good at all, I'm rather obsessive about finishing it as fast as I possibly can. Which means I'm picking it up any chance I have. Usually instead of doing something productive like weeding or dishes. It's been rather problematic lately since the days are long and the sun is out and the weeds are growing like...well, weeds. I have other things I need to be doing, but all I want to do is curl up with my book. It doesn't work so well. So I told myself that since I'm finished with the BDB series as far as it's gone so far that I'll just hold off on starting another book for a little while so I can get some stuff done around the house, maybe cook a meal or two, ride my horse a bit on my own, take some pictures, heck maybe even blog a bit and say hi to the boyfriend, see if he still remembers what I look like when I'm not buried behind a book.

I just didn't realize it would be quite this difficult. I wonder if I can quit cold turkey. Is there a support group for people like me? A 12 step plan?

Anywho, hopefully if I can stick to it I can actually get caught up on the blogs I read and blog a bit more often myself. We'll have to wait and see!

Hope you all are getting to enjoy some sun and summery stuff!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Silhouettes

2009-06-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

I had all sorts of cool ideas running thru my head for this one, but the weather and my week just did not cooperate. So here I am, pulling from my archives. I do really like all of these pictures, but tree silhouettes were not exactly what I had in mind!

This was a full moon a couple weeks back. Or maybe it was a new moon. I dunno, I don't keep track. I loved the way the clouds were around it though and it gave me a good excuse to experiment with shutter speeds and different settings on my camera. Who knew it would come in handy for a SSC on silhouettes?!?

This was a sliver of the moon a couple weeks before the above picture. I liked the way it was hanging right over the mountain and the little bit of color from the sunrise and the dark trees in the foreground.

This picture was taken on one of the sunny frozen mornings last winter. It's a huge tree that we have in our front yard.

I still want to play with this concept one of these days. Hopefully the weather will cooperate some time this summer!

Not Enough Hours in the Day!

2009-06-03T12:37:00.000-07:00

Whew! Do you ever just feel like there aren't enough hours in the day? Or enough energy in your body?

I think I usually feel like that. There is always a long "To Do" list for tomorrow that never gets all the way done and keeps getting rolled over to the next day. It just seems like it's been particularly bad lately.

This time last year we had just moved into our new home and were so busy getting it put together and then getting our land cleared in a panic (I swear I'll tell you that story someday!) and then with drill and my best friend's wedding, the whole summer just disappeared and the yard, with all of it's flower beds and overgrown gravel, was sorely neglected. We're paying for it this year. It's been a lot of work to get it back under control. We're still not there, but we're getting close.

Trouble is, we're also trying to get fencing done, pastures cleared, cleaned up, graded and seeded, arena-to-be's done, the barn fixed and stalls put in. We also need to get piping ran from the well house to the barn and various pastures for water. Most of the inside of the house still needs painting and we're planning to pressure wash and re-stain the exterior and the decks, after we fix a few boards. All while we're doing a cutting show series and practicing on buffalo once a week, along with my drill practice once a week, on top of full time jobs and all the other fun stuff that comes with being a responsible adult and home and animal owner.

Geez, no wonder I'm tired all the time. Just looking at that list makes me want to take a nap!

Problem is, I also like having atleast a little bit of a social life. And riding my horse in the arena. And going for trail rides. And spending the day at the lake. And laying out in the sun. And I love, love, love reading. And taking pictures. And blogging. And reading other blogs. I would also like to have barebeque's with friends and family and get togethers and do fun stuff like that. There just hasn't been much time for any of that stuff lately though. Yard work has been consuming my life!

Another "Someday" project is to rip up our entire front yard and redo it. It's not level, which drives the boyfriend insane. It's got lots of humps and bumps and a couple pretty good holes that I swear I hit and roll my ankle on every single time I pass them. I also want to get rid of about two-thirds of the insanely huge flower bed in the front, make it part of the lawn. I figure if we bring it in tighter to the house and just have a few azalea bushes or something it should be pretty low maintenance. And another hundred square feet or so of grass to mow will be nothing. I like low maintenance. Low Maintenance is my best friend when it comes to yard work!

Until we get to that Someday though, I have a crazy big flower bed to take care of. It's currently growing more grass then our pastures. And some black berry bushes. And clover. Have you ever tried to get rid of clover in a flower bed?!? We have the stuff that has the dark leaves and the root system on those suckers is freakin amazing! Drives me insane. And since I didn't weed much last year everything is reseeding itself like crazy this year. Grrr!

And then, silly us, we decided to plant a veggie garden this year. What were we thinking?!? It was fun to put it in! I'm sure it will be fun when it starts producing edible veggies (assuming it survives me and my "Black Thumb of Death"), but until then, can you say high maintenance?!

We also have raspberries that got completely out of control last year. Of course since it was the longest, grossest winter ever this year and still frosting in May (!!!) we didn't get anything done with them to get them back in order before they started their season. Oops! I'm currently chipping away at the very tall grass and weeds that is trying to completely over take them, but it's a lot of work and there are new shoots every where and I have to crawl around in between them to get everything cleared out. Did you know raspberry bushes have thorns? Not big ones like blackberries, but little needly ones. My arms were toast after Round 1. I looked like I had been in a fight with a bunch of cats. Seriously. It's been a lot of work to get them freed up. Almost done though.

I have tons of before pictures of projects we've been working on, but it seems like every time I really start making some progress on one, another more urgent one comes up and off I go! One of these days I'll get them finished up so I can do some after pics.

I'm also dying to read thru the Twilight series again. And I have a crafty projects that I owe people. And I have Lover Avenged to read. And, since I'm a dope on a rope, I started yet another series that I'm totally diggin'. And I have lots of DVR'd shows to catch up on. And lots of other things that I'd absolutely love to be doing.

But I know the satisfaction of having my yard under control will be worth it. If it ever gets there.

Someday.

Twi-Hard Alert!

2009-05-31T21:18:00.001-07:00

Excuse me for a second while I act about half my age...

The official New Moon trailer was premiered today!!!

OMG! OMG! OMG!!! I SOOOOO can't wait to see the movie!!!

If you want to see it, you can go here or here.

November 20th baby!

Ok, that is all.

What the... ?!?

2009-05-30T21:33:00.001-07:00

Could someone please tell me just what the heck kind of deer this is? I'm pretty sure it's not native to the area. It's certainly not the typical little black tails you see!

I think this little guy may be one of the babies of the odd ball group of deer we saw hanging around the neighborhood about this time last year. Of course I didn't get any pictures of them at all, but we saw them quite a few times. There were two does and three babies. One of the does looked like this guy and the other one was all white. Not albino, it had dark eyes and no pink skin that I saw, but white. I guess she would actually be grey in the horse world, but not sure if it's the same in the deer world. The white doe's baby was mostly white with some brown spots. The other doe's twins pretty much had this coloring.

Makes me wonder where the rest of the clan is. I wouldn't mind seeing them again. I'd love to get some pictures to prove that I wasn't imagining them! :-)

Sunday Stills Challenge - Powerlines and Landscapes

2009-05-30T21:01:00.000-07:00

So this week our challenge is to actually capture those pesky powerlines that always seem to be in the way of that otherwise great landscape shot. Funny, as soon as you're trying to get them, they are suddenly ellusive!

I've got this mountain practically in my back yard and the boyfriend drove me around hunting for powerlines. He mostly kept his laughing at me hanging out the window taking pictures to himself. Mostly.

On the way back home we passed this cow pasture. I was facing the sun so the closer ones were all washed out, but there is a powerline running right through the middle of it (I promise, it's really there!) and the little black cow standing up was watching us drive by and it was too cute.

Happy Sunday everyone!

It's a darn good thing she's cute!

2009-05-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

I just love my dog!

And really that's only slightly sarcastic. I really do love her. I don't know what we would do without her. But man oh man, it's lucky she's cute sometimes!

I decided to take her to the vet today. She was three legged lame yesterday, wouldn't hardly put any weight on her left front paw and would try biting or licking us to death any time we tried to look at it. I had noticed her licking and biting at it like she had something poking her last week, but she was only a little sore on it and I couldn't find anything in there or any puncture wounds. It got progressively worse over the weekend until we were watching her hobble around on three legs yesterday. She wasn't even interested in chasing the cars up and down the fenceline and was hesitating to follow us around while we did lots of yard work so I decided to take her to the vet and make sure it wasn't something serious that needed attention.

When we got to the vet's I was reminded that we really do need to get her out and socialize her more. She was pretty good considering how little she does get out, but she was still beyond excited about everything in there. Then she saw the resident feline basking on the window sill. She about knocked me out trying to get up to sniff it! She was still listening to me, as in sit, lay down, off, etc., but her attention span was like one one-millionth of a second and then she was go-go-going again. Crazy dog!

And of course with all the new excitement that was way more interesting then any pain she may be feeling, her lameness amazingly up and disappeared. Go figure.

The vet couldn't find anything. Nothing. Nadda. Zip. Zilch. Not even a twitch or an "ouchy lick".

I swear she was limping when I loaded her up in the truck! I think she just likes to make me look like a fool sometimes.

And have I ever told you that she gets car sick? Ya. She's a barfer. And I'm a sympathy barfer. And she likes to snuggle when she barfs. Luckily I saw it coming and was holding her on the passenger seat. Actually I was trying to push her onto the floor but I can't reach that far. I atleast wanted it on the seat. One thing I like about leather is it cleans up pretty easy! Atleast the older Dodge leather does.

Did she yak on the seat or the floor mat? No, of course not. She yakked right down in the crack between the seats. It's fabric there also. Goodie.

So $45, a couple hours of sick leave from work, a car sick puppy, a roll of paper towels, half a thing of Lysol wipes and a few really good gags later, we have a soft tissue injury that could take up to two months to heal completely. TWO MONTHS! It was worse over the weekend because we were home so she was out running around, being her crazy self the whole weekend. We have to keep her quiet and off of her paw as much as possible for the next three to four weeks (weeks!!!) and see how she's doing then. If it still bothers her when she starts running around on it, then we need to keep her quiet for another four weeks.

I asked the vet if she has seen this dog. She wouldn't even sit still for the exam. Besides the fact that she's going to go totally nuts being cooped up for that long and I feel horrible even attempting to keep her quiet, I'd really love to know just how exactly I'm supposed to keep a one year old Aussie quiet?!?

Sunday Stills Challenge - Yellow

2009-05-24T10:06:00.000-07:00

The SSC this week was yellow. I decided that since the whole point of my doing the Sunday Stills Challenge was to challenge myself so I told myself no flowers this week! I had to get a little creative, but when I started looking around I found plenty of yellow to take pictures of. I just had to stretch my imagination a bit.

Here is my yellow collander in the kitchen that I use for a fruit bowl. It sits next to my horse shoe wine rack.

This is my yellow flying frog that I got from my mom. You may remember her pink flying frog from this post.

Now for some creepy crawlies. I was sitting on the porch admiring my new hanging baskets and pots and heard some buzzing. I found this little guy hard at work building his new nest. Poor guy, I didn't have the heart to tell him that it would be removed shortly. Mostly I just didn't want to piss him off. While I do have a lot of zoom on my camera, I really wasn't using much of it to take this picture. I really was within a foot or two of him. Eeks!

Then I happened upon this guy when I was taking pictures of my Lilac tree. A yellow spider, perfect!

And because I can't just end on those icky creepy crawlies, here's a pretty flower for you.

Happy Sunday! Hope you're having a great weekend!