My brand of heroin

Wow. I feel like I'm 12 years old, obsessing over the cute boy in math class or something. I really, really cannot get Twilight off the brain lately. Again. I finished re-reading the entire series a week or so ago and have been trying to focus on other things since then. I was doing pretty good for a while. Ok, like 5 days, but still, that's pretty good. Then I started missing Forks and the Cullens. Missing them like I miss my horse when I don't ride for a few days or like I would guess I'd miss the boyfriend if he ever left for any length of time.

Finally, last night I couldn't take it any more. I needed a Twilight fix and I needed it bad! Somehow I ended up at Borders. I didn't need to be there, I hadn't exactly planned to go there, but I found excuses. Then Borders just happened to have a whole table dedicated to everything Twilight right up front. I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell. I walked out of there with the magnet set and Twilight: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion. Cuz I needed them and all. I am such a nerd. It worked though, I got my fix. I was a happy girl last night.

Then I see this morning that Twilight the movie is available for preorder on dvd already. Crap. The frenzy started all over again.

So now I've got the dvd preordered, along with the Official Guide and I threw in a soundtrack (already available) just to be thorough. I don't know when I will actually get either of the preordered items, I didn't see any actual release dates, but as soon as they are released I'm going to have one in my hot little hands! I can't wait!

On a not entirely unrelated subject...one of the "other things" I've been trying to focus on is The Host, Stephenie Meyer's other book. I've been struggling to get into it though. It starts out a little slow and weird. Plus, after Twilight, I figure reading anything else is going to be something like eating hamburger after filet mignon. After I was satisfied with my Twilight fix last night I decided to force myself to read just one more chapter in The Host before I went to bed. Over an hour and 4 1/2 chapters later, I realized I had reached the "BAM, you're hooked" part of the book. Twilight had it and I guess it shouldn't surprise me that The Host does too.

Up until last night I wasn't terribly worried about The Host. I figured nothing could touch my Twilight addiction. But now I'm not so sure. I hope I'm not finding another brand of heroin that I can't put down. I don't know if there's enough room in my head for both addictions and I'm pretty sure there isn't enough time in my day for either!

I wonder...

...does Mother Nature get P.M.S.?

I think she must. Why she has chosen Western Washington to pick on for the past few weeks I'm not sure, but I do know that she is being rather nasty. First there was rain. Then there was snow. Then there was melting snow. Way below freezing temps. Ice. More snow. More ice. Rain. Rain. More rain. Some wind thrown in for kicks. Then more snow. Then non stop rain on top of suddenly warm temps causing way too much snow to melt and come gushing down the mountains. Add that to lots more rain and we've got quite a mess out here!

I'm very thankful that it was rather soggy and near flooding when we were house shopping so that we were concious of how wet any land that we looked at got. Our house is up on a hill and the whole property slopes just enough that it doesn't get too terribly soggy. Atleast I hope not. I guess we'll be finding out for sure here shortly. There is a creek that runs thru the front of our neighborhood that is now more closely resembling a raging river and I think I heard we have a new lake down there too. Things are getting pretty dicey down here by my work too. Sounds like there are evacuations going on all around me. Good times.

Could someone please tell me where I might be able to locate good ol' Mother Nature so I can pass along a big bottle of Midol? Thanks!

Totally cleaned up!

I'm beginning to like this snow/cold/bad weather and roads stuff! Apparently it keeps all the good people home from the shows so we can clean up! :-)

Yesterday I did sorting for the first time ever. I've been hesitant to try it out because my horse gets a little amped up around cows and being in a small pen with a bunch of them just never really seemed like a great idea to me. After our work last summer with cows/buffalo and watching the boyfriend sort at a clinic and the last show I was itching though. It looks like fun and I was beginning to really understand it. I hadn't ever really paid too much attention before, but when I actually watched closely and figured out what they were doing it started to appeal to me. So I decided to take a stab at it this weekend. I figured I would either get it or totally suck and never do it again. Apparently I got it. My very first sorting run ever I ended up tying for first place with a couple other teams. My first run was also with the boyfriend so we both came home with pretty first place ribbons and a small jack pot. It was kind of fun!

The exciting part was, Midori was great! She was mostly quiet and went into the herd just fine. She picked it up really quickly and we did awesome for our first time, in my opinion, placings aside. During all three runs she was cooperative and did great shaping to the cow I wanted and cutting them out and pushing them. I didn't feel like a fish out of water trying to get the cow I wanted, like I've seen so many people do. I was thrilled. She wasn't so happy sitting in the gate, but she did alright. Until the big black baldy charged us. She didn't quite know what to think of that on the second run and we ended up letting him thru so we got a no time. But when the same cow tried the same thing on our third run we were able to stop him, twice, and we got 3 cows.

Yes, that's right. 3 cows in 90 seconds. The sad part is, our "winning" run was 4 cows. Love the small shows! I'm still very excited with how well Midori did sorting and I think I may be hooked now. I can't wait til the next one to see if it was just a fluke! :)

We cleaned up!

This weekend the boyfriend and I went to another reining show in the winter series that we're participating in. We're both doing the beginner reining class and so far this series we are pretty much stuck in the middle of the pack. We had debated even continuing with the reining since the sorting is way more fun, but decided that since we started it and it's a pretty inexpensive class we may as well finish the series just for kicks.

This weekend in particular we were really debating going since we hadn't been able to ride much because of the weather. On top of that, the few oppurtunities that we did have to ride I had passed on because I was just burned out. I wanted to stay home and clean my house (yes, I do realize how crazy that sounds) and just relax instead of being outside freezing and riding. I was going thru some major pony withdrawals and would stick my nose in my horses neck any chance I got, but I just couldn't bring myself to actually ride.

The weather was still bad and the roads were a little icy since temps had dropped way lower then they had predicted over night, but we still braved the elements and headed out to the show. I went into it with the attitude that I really didn't care, I just wanted a good ride on my horse. I had ridden once in the past 3 weeks and that was just briefly so I wasn't expecting anything. Of course with the weather a lot of people decided to not chance it and stayed home so the show was tiny. There were only 4 people in the beginner class that usually has 8-10.

We got there extra early to have plenty of time to warm up and get their kinks out. Midori was being an angel. I didn't ask for much since I hadn't been on her in a while, but she did everything I asked. I think she was excited to be out. I even got a flying lead change out of her, though it wasn't pretty and sort of by accident. lol

The boyfriend went third and I went last in the class. I didn't watch the first two, but the boyfriends pattern was much improved over what he had been doing. I was really happy to see that. I felt pretty good about my pattern, in relation to my other patterns. We got our leads, our "spins" weren't any worse then they usually are, the stop was good and she backed nicely. She launched into the big fast circles. I was afraid I wasn't going to get her back to slow down for the small circles, but she did. I think she knows the pattern, even though I never do it except at shows. Brat.

Since it was so freaking cold we put them away as soon as they were cooled out after the class. While we were at the trailer untacking we heard placings for our class. The boyfriend got 2nd and I got 1st. We wohoo'd and high fived eachother and laughed. We rocked that show! But only because everyone who usually beats us were too chicken to come out. Oh well, I'll take what I can get! Atleast I was happy with my pattern that I won with! We're both improving and that's all that matters. The ribbons and jackpot are just a bonus!

My Midori

While I was out taking pictures of the snow, Midori decided to come say hi. She's usually pretty camera shy, which is the one characteristic that I can surely tell you is not like her "mom" (me).





She let me take quite a few pics before she got completely bored of me. I credit the new camera. :-) I can't wait to take more pics of her when she's not a shaggy, hairy, soggy mess!





Speaking of a shaggy, hairy, soggy mess...here she is in all her glory. She is perfectly dry and warm under that blanket, believe me, I check. A lot. But still: barn is priority this summer!!!!!! We are pretty darn sick of the hair (and dreading shedding) and swear next year they are getting lights, heaters, heavy, heavy blankets, the whole 9 yards because they will not be hairy next year!!! Maybe.



Here she is with the sun behind her. She was drying off a bit.





Here she is trying to decide if I'm really important enough to come say hi to. Notice Sugar peeking at me under her neck. Sugar is a peeker. I rarely see her look up and over the fence, she always peeks thru it. She's funny like that.





Midori finally decided to walk over and see me and she was greeted with a big glop of melting snow from a tree above falling right on her head.

She still stayed and visited for a few minutes.

I love my pony. And I love horse's eyes. Can you tell? :-)

More snow!

We got more snow the other night. It was a complete surprise to me this time as the last forecast that I saw only included rain, rain and more rain. I wasn't terribly upset about it though since I had a long weekend ahead of me, no commuting required, and I didn't have anything better to do with my time then go out and take pictures with my new camera! I was particularly thrilled when I saw that there were also sunny blue skies. Wohoo!

So almost 200 pictures and very numb fingers and toes later, these are some of my favorites.

Chey had fun digging things up to play with. Crazy dog!

The ponies weren't so amused by the snow. They were actually pretty darn soggy.


This threw me for a loop. The snow was accumulated on the bottom of the rails... ??? How does that even work?

Happy New Year!

Wow. It's 2009 already. I think I may be in shock. I really can't figure out where the heck 2008 went! I swear it just disappeared. I guess it was a pretty darn busy and BIG year though. We bought our first house. My best friend got married. My sister bought a house (she got hers first and was probably most of our inspiration to get off our perfectly-sassified-renting-butts and go buy a house). We moved. We cleared our property. We started cutting and reining and chased buffalo. We got a new horse and a puppy. I was introduced to the world of blogging, eventually starting my own, even though it's more for my own amusement then anything. I started getting into photography. I came to know and love all things Twilight. I'm sure there is plenty more, but that's what sticks out in my mind at the moment.

It's hard to imagine (and even harder to really appreciate) how far we've come in the past year. Looking back over my list of resolutions and goals for 2008 I'm sure I didn't imagine myself in my own home, living out here in BFE with all that I have now. I really didn't do very well with my goals and resolutions in 2008, which is hard to not be disappointed with myself for, but I'm pretty sure I didn't factor in actually buying a house and all the work that being a home owner entails. I've decided to not beat myself up too badly for not accomplishing my goals and just try to set more realistic ones for myself in 2009.

So far my 2009 resolutions and goals include:
~Getting our credit cards paid all the way off
~Making a budget and savings goals and sticking to them

And a very ambitious list of home and property improvement projects like:
~Painting the rest of the interior of the house - bathroom, office, living room, bedroom and extra bedroom
~Getting our barn finished so that the ponies have real shelter next year
~Getting some sort of arena in, even if it's just footing for now
~Fencing for our perimeter and pastures
~Finish grading and seed our pastures

It's already shaping up to be a busy year, but I think it will be a good one. Hopefully we'll be a little closer to having our property functioning the way we want it to for the horses, which is a very exciting prospect. And I'm sure we should be able to accomplish more this summer because I think we were still kind of in shock that we actually bought a house last summer. The whole clearing the property with 3 days notice thing certainly didn't help that either. I'm thinking this summer we'll be a little more prepared and really be able to dig in and get things done. That's my plan anyways.

So here's to a fabulous, happy and productive 2009! Cheers!