Crying Uncle

Winter from hell, tornado (too close for comfort), earthquake, and now a hurricane? UNCLE!!!!

Preparations start tomorrow. Gathering anything in the yard that might take flight and stuffing it indoors - somewhere. Putting a new tarp on the two-stall barn roof. I was hoping this one would hold until I buy new metal roofing for it this fall, but last week's normal drenching proved otherwise. Leaky leaky. Cutting down two trees, both in poor health due to damaged trunks, that would undoubtedly land on the barn if the wind is bad enough. Hoping to temporarily relocate two ponies to the neighbors' sturdy barn for the duration, due to my unwillingness to cut down a big beautiful elm tree that could land on their housing. What I'm going to do with the chickens I don't know. Stuff them in the garage too I guess. I'll probably wind up chasing them around the rafters for days afterward. That'll be fun, I'm really looking forward to that. Groceries to buy, propane tank to fill, every water-holding container to be filled. Generator to start, since it hasn't been fired off for a while. Like, over a year awhile. Candles to find. I refuse to buy more, I have so damned many, it's just a matter of what box they're in. Hope I labeled it :) Batteries, of course. Stock up on dog food, horse grain, hay. Make the doggies wear their collars with their little name tags and my phone number - Just.In.Case. They hate collars. Oh well, I hate sobbing for lost dogs more.

I hope this all turns out to be unnecessary, but am inclined to assume the worst at this point. Stop the ride, I wanna get off!

The Weight of the Weekend

Stacked 800lbs of hay. Ditto for 600lbs of shavings. Cleaned 20 stalls - each day. I don't want to know how many pounds of manure that is. 40lbs of dog kibble. 150lbs of horse grain. 100 of chicken feed. 50lbs of stall deodorizer, 50lbs of rock salt for the well water softener. 9 precious eggs from my newly laying hens - 1lb? Installed half the siding for the new hen coop, inventing some amazing new yoga contortions while wielding a sawz-all while I was at it. Lugged 20 water buckets - each day - at 40lbs apiece. Again, I don't want to do the math. Picked 6lbs of luscious blueberries. Ate that much too, I'm sure :)

But the twelve ounces of prime steak hot off the grill, accompanied by the 750ml bottle of wine that I just shared with a good friend, is what put me over the edge. Goodnight. Hope your weekend was a good as mine!

Pourdown

I just came in from feeding horses and chickens, but stood outside with my dogs for a few extra minutes in the downpour, and marveled at the perfect silhouette of the huge old elm tree in the fading dusk. Light like that isn't possible without the rain to suffuse the glow.

Tornadoes to Rainbows

In 24 hours, no less. I spent yesterday afternoon and evening hunkered down in my basement with my doggies, waiting for the world to be rearranged. Thankfully, me and mine were spared. Other towns just to my south were not so fortunate. Utter devastation. This isn't supposed to happen here. Sure, every year we get an EF-0 or EF-1 twister that blows the lawn furniture around, maybe peels some shingles off a few roofs, but nothing like this. This was no joke, and I'm glad I took it seriously. I did come up a few times, thinking it was over, but each time I did a new warning would be issued in minutes, the 2nd and 3rd wave storms following the same path as the first. Intense is not strong enough a description. I've heard surreal used a lot today, I've used ugly, usually capitalized - UGLY! It was that.

My neighbor, braver and/or more foolish than I, actually saw the tornado, in the distance, from his upstairs window. I saw enough warning signs in the sky and clouds as the thunder began to rumble that I closed the horses up tight in their shedrow and was not surprised to see the tornado warning as soon as I got back inside. I also saw, through the opaque basement windows, the light outside grow dim and take on that greenish-black color of a bad bruise. If I never see that tint again it will be too soon.

This was not my first tornado experience. Naturally, tornadoes are my one phobia. I dealt with this throughout my childhood by educating myself about them as much as possible. I probably should have become a meteorologist. So I already had a plan and knew just what to grab when the warning came up on my screen. Dogs, flashlight, cell phone; check, check, check. Grab 'em and go. I was anxious but not scared. I felt prepared. I am more freaked about it now than I was at the time. Probably because I have been looking at pictures all day, letting the what-if's run through my head.

Procrastination

Pouring down raining sideways day. Need raincoat to do horse chores (horses are finally home, post forthcoming, I keep forgetting to take pictures for illustrative purposes). Leave dry warm mudroom apartment for main house, where aforementioned raincoat has been left due to lack of motivation to hang proper coatrack in mudroom. Notice basement lights left on. Go down to basement to turn lights off. Notice water dripping onto basement floor, from ceiling. Quickly put two and two together, arrive at four. Return to first floor to assess damage. Laugh out loud due to irony of drip from second to first floor impacting dead-center on a book titled "Dry" (awesome book, btw, by Augusten Burroughs - highly recommend anything and everything he's written. His brother's not bad either). Rescue piles (plural) of books from deluge, hope they freeze tomorrow until I can dry them out proper, like maybe in the spring. Continue past second floor, also soaked but bereft of belongings, to attic. Laugh out loud due to irony of line of empty buckets under recently repaired and therefore no longer leaking roof at back of house while water pours unabated through leak in roof at front of house. Spew forth vile invective at self's procrastinating tendencies okay long-term behaviour pattern. Move buckets.

Proceed back downstairs. Dial headquarters to inform answering parental unit of new leak newsflash. Sperm donor answers. Inform sperm donor his roof is leaking. Download less succinct, more profane version of prior paragraph. Best he can come up with is "okay, well, we'll clean it up", to which I retort "actually, I was thinking more along the lines of FIXING IT". "okay, I'll tell your mother". Perfect. Thanks for that.

Hang up. Curse day surfed equinesite real-estate ads. Don raincoat, head out into storm to do horse chores. Question sanity. Briefly consider selling farm, re-homing animal collection, quitting day job and assuming new identity. Decide not tonight, maybe tomorrow.

Systematic Torture

I joined a gym near my office over a year ago. I've gone there to work out precisely three times. You don't want to know what that works out to in $ spent per visit. I've been keeping the membership current so that I have a place to shower when I move to the new house this spring, knowing I will not have the luxury of indoor plumbing for some time. But I'm well and truly tired of being a fat ass. So I decided to spend still more money to hire a personal trainer at said gym. I like her basically, but not at 6 o'fucking clock in the morning. I don't like anybody at 6AM, especially myself. I like me even less at 4AM, when sheer willpower is almost not enough to get me out of my cozy warm bed and out the door to pay for the privilege of being systematically tortured. Military school was easier than this. I want to be 17 again, and effortlessly svelte.

Reasons to quit; not getting up at o'dark thirty, procrastination is immediate gratification, really not a masochist, save the money, avoid seeing myself in gym's full-length wall-to-wall mirrors, to say nothing of the locker room.

Reasons to keep going; justification to buy new (smaller) summer clothes, of all the things I've lost I miss my waist the most, make it easier for my aged gelding to tote me around, get strong enough to start my blind mare under saddle without flopping to the ground the first time she scoots or spins, need muscles to build my new fencing, no longer walk miles in the course of a workday so must increase caloric output elsewhere, stop avoiding cameras, I miss my cheekbones and jawline, etc.

So I went. So I shall go again. And because she'll never read this: Patty, personal trainer extraordinaire; you're mean.

What Price Progress?

Baby steps at the homestead these days. I don't know what to throw money at first.

Do I buy a camper or try to make the mudroom live-able? Mudroom is cheaper, camper can accommodate additional people thereby increasing the pool of available labor.

Do I build a barn or buy portable stall panels to put up in the garage for now? Garage option is cheaper, and likely best, so long as I am not living in the adjacent mudroom. Barn would add resale value in the event I decide to throw in the towel, or the bank says we cannot borrow sufficient money to do this.

Do I rent a tractor or hire someone to run a machine to make corral space? Hiring a tractor is cheaper and I would have the machine for longer, but to hire a pro is likely more cost-efficient and would result in a neater job.

Do I splurge on RAMM Fencing? I think it would be the safest for Tag, but I don't expect these first corrals to be permanent. This is definitely what I want in the future, however.

Re-commissioning the well is the one item not in dispute, I need it to live there and to burn the brush I hope to get cleared next week. Well guy is coming out to evaluate on Wednesday, hopefully he can get the work done shortly thereafter.

Construction bids are coming in fast and furious, and all over the map. Eeney, meeney, miney, moe... Methinks a call to the building inspector is in order, to level the playing field somewhat.

Took a walk out to the back forty and found the old well that is marked on the plans. Shallow, hand dug, stone-lined and pretty. I think I will put a bench nearby and call it a reflecting pool.

Right now, in the Underground Lair...

I have a fairly big sofa. I also have three small dogs. Somehow, three pomeranians (collectively known as the muppets), with a combined weight of no more than 35 pounds, have me neatly confined to one corner of it. And I soon as I get up they try to take that too. I am typing with my left wing clipped by the arm of the sofa, and my right elbow resting on the back of Willow. Her muppet name is Miss Piggy. Wylie, muppet name Gonzo, is making himself as large as his fluff can on the other end. Midgie, muppet name Animal (or sometimes Beaker, but usually Animal), is actually behind me, sprawled across the back of the couch while resting his cute little chin on my shoulder. I think he's spying on my web-surfing habits. He'll be pissed if he sees me on Petfinder looking at Poms that are waiting to be adopted. He likes being the baby and has no desire for a new sibling.

Speaking of babies, Pepper is growing up quite nicely!

Sucks to have to sell her. Maybe I won't. I paid the stupid tax and bought a Mega-Millions ticket tonight. You can't lose if you don't play! If I don't lose I'll be sure to post it here first. Ha.

No No No No No No No

I knew my inability to say "No" was going to catch up with me eventually. So I find myself in the damnable situation of having one too many horses. Reason is my old man Monte, who has been leased out as a lesson horse for many moons now, has to come back to me. Not enough lessons to go around, apparently. So I am searching for someone else to lease him, at least half, preferably full. My horse priorities (man, this is like having to pick your favorite kid), are as follows: Tag above all others, Monte 2nd (he's old and has earned the right to a happy semi-retirement), then Pepper ('cause I'm god as far as Pepper is concerned, she is on this earth because I made her), then the pony girls. But really it's whoever I can sell first, Pepper or the ponies. Or lease someone, at least until I can get moved into the new house. Taking care of them myself costs half as much as boarding.

In the meantime, if anyone is looking for a super-safe, been there and done that lesson horse, let me know. Showed Morgan class A until two years ago, former Reserve World Champion, rides, drives, loves trails, honest as the day is long. All the kids have to do is sit there and smile and they leave the ring with a ribbon. Available for free lease, and I visit often. Here's my old man:



I just love him so much. He's the best boy ever. Adding him to the feedroll means I have to stop contributing to my 401(k). And I really don't want to do that. But of course I will. 'Cause the only stock I buy has four legs!

Here are the pony girls:





Matched pair of buckskin shetland ponies, registered, ride, drive, proven broodmares. Make me an offer. Someone. Anyone. Please????

Rock Star

I'm pleased to report that Tag's surgery went well. To quote the clinic vet "she's a rock star" :)

She handled everything as serenely as always, and her extended stay at the clinic while I was out of town did not bother her at all. I love that she is such a great blind horse ambassador. Also happily (for me), the eyeball was removed without rupturing and it is now in a jar, on my desk. It's bigger than I expected, but otherwise pretty much like you'd expect an eyeball to look like. I can't wait to freak out my nieces and nephews with it. And anyone else squeamish . I'd post a picture but I don't think a photograph conveys the full effect. If I get any requests for it I will post one, how's that.

I felt validated in my decision to remove the eye, and a smidge guilty for not doing it sooner, when the surgeon told me that Tag's resting heart rate pre-surgery was an elevated 40, and post-surgery has dropped back to a normal 30. So that is my best gauge so far of how much pain and stress she was having, poor baby. I can already tell she is feeling better. She'll be hand-walked for a few more days, mostly to keep her from rubbing the eye on anything outside that might pop the stitches out, and after that her life resumes as normal.

On a non-horsey note, when talking on the phone to a guy for the first time, having met online and been emailing, and he mentions having a hard time getting a pistol permit due to a prior arrest for assaulting a police officer, don't walk, run. Run and be glad you preserved your anonymity. I was rendered speechless, truly. I suppose it could have been a joke, but who would joke about that with someone during their first-ever conversation? Yikes. I'm going to be single forever.

Evolution

This blog is evolving, as is everything else on this planet. So rather than having it be exclusively about someday farm, I am hereby throwing open the gates to the rest of my life. Which my non-existent audience will undoubtedly find just as boring as I do. So. Here goes nothing.

My sweet, blind mare Tag will be having her right eye removed Tuesday. After five and a half looong years of trying and failing to slow the progression of vision loss due to Equine Recurrent Uveitis (ERU for short, aka moonblindness, aka Periodic Opthalmia) , glaucoma has set in, secondary to the ERU. While glaucoma was not unanticipated, I did not expect it to sneak in the way it did. Looking back , I have known for several months that Tag was really not quite herself, but with everything else that was going on in my life last year I did not worry as much about it as I should have. So when Tag started a bad flare-up last week, I began treating it as usual, although it did prompt me to have the talk about enucleation with my vet that I kept forgetting to have. Vet encouraged me to have a consultation with a vet from a nearby equine urgent care clinic, as they have a specialty piece of equipment that vet does not have; i.e. a tono-pen. Tono-pens measure intra-ocular pressure, that is, the pressure inside the eyeball. Normal is below twenty, over twenty is glaucoma, over thirty is bad. Tag's left eye (also blind but thankfully flare-up free, for now, at least) was an excellent 16. Tag's right eye was a very alarming 87. 87!!!! What a migraine that must be causing. So do to the danger of the eyeball rupturing on it's own, I scheduled surgery post-haste, for this Tuesday.

The hard part is that I will be out of town for work when my baby goes under the knife. I will be able to bring her to the clinic on Monday morning, to help her make that transition, but I cannot be there for any of her post-op care. So Tag will stay at the clinic until I return, she will come back to the barn a week from Monday. I expect by that time she will be quite her old self, pain-free and spunkier. Lookout world.

On the "DarcC is a freak" front, the surgical vet, while surprised my request, has promised me that yes, I can have Tag's eyeball in a jar, assuming it comes out in one piece as planned. Apparently sometimes, well, they don't. For all the squeamish people who don't read this, I won't elaborate. That eyeball has cost me a lot of money, damnit; it's mine and I want it back. Someday in the hopefully distant future I want to be able to bury it with her so she's whole again. Or maybe I'll just keep it to freak out small children - it can become a neighborhood legend, Boo Radley-esque. I'll be the crazy eyeball lady. "did you know she keeps an eyeball in a jar? No-one really knows whose it is, but some say it was a little kid who gave her a dirty look one day..." Or something to that effect.