Queen Of Denial

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?

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!

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

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...

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

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

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.