gottawonder

Today I am grateful for:

That my foot isn't worse than it is. It was a bit swollen when I got up, and I had some body stiffness, but a lot of it loosened up as I got on with my day.

It sucked, but it could have been a lot worse.

I got a call from the glass place, and our window was ready for pick up.

So, after chores and such I headed to the "other town".

I got our mail and paid the one bill that was there.

I stuck my head into the little thrift store by the post office, but didn't buy anything.

Then I picked up the window, and thankfully it was a straightforward process this time.

Then after weaving through some very dense traffic and road construction, I managed to get to the thrift store.

Again I noticed a lot of new Zara brand clothing with tags, and I'm wondering if this is just because people shop and miss the return window? Or people just over consuming and then dumping stuff at the thrift store from time to time?

I found a few nice things, and more that I decided to put back. It was just fun to hunt for the nice things, if nothing else.

Every time I go to the thrift store though, I am struck by how wasteful we are as a society, and how much utter CRAP is made, cheap garbage clothes that can't be recycled (I guess? Or just isn't being recycled). It's awful.

I mean, piles and piles of books can be recycled if no one wants them, or they will break down. Not polyester.

Anyhow, then I headed home. I got there about the same time as my Sweetie.

It did rain today, and it rained a bit last night. A bit of lightening and so on last night. Not a violent storm though.

My Sweetie didn't feel like eating much, so made some toast and eggs. I ate more or less the usual.

We chatted and he headed to bed.

He found "The Witcher" series for me, as I wanted to watch that again (we watched it a few years ago. I only watched it until Henry Cavill left, as I hear it went steeply downhill after that point).

So I watched the first episode, and it really is good stuff.

Today I am grateful for:

Decent sleep.

I had a dream that did not feel "sad" the way that dreams usually do when you dream about people dying. I think the purpose was something else. I dreamed that my husband had passed, but I had no idea what to DO. It's something I've been thinking about, in the sense that I don't know if I would be prepared in the legal and organizational sense if something happened to him. I don't.

He refuses to discuss things like where he would like to be buried, and assumes that "everything would just go to you" though I've told him that stating that in his will would greatly simplify the process.

It weighs on me.

If something happened at this time, I just know his parents would walk all over me and try to make me have a Catholic funeral and bury him where his family are all buried, and I probably wouldn't even want to attend that service, and they would want it back in Manitoba.

In truth, it would probably be cremation with a non-denominational service, and I don't know that I would have any kind of plot for him. Maybe?

I don't know. That's the problem.

I have no idea what I would want for myself.

How about any of you? Do you have your burial plans and so on figured out?

I gave myself a bit of time to just sit before rushing right into feeding the animals and myself. I'm tired of just getting out of bed and them yelling at me the whole time.

I'll be honest, the cat drama at feeding time drives me crazy. I wish I could just put out a giant bowl of kibble like I did once upon a time, but the cats we have would gorge themselves and the one timid cat would get nothing. Jones also has to be on special food.

It's funny, when I had Babe and Greta and Squeaky, they could just have a bowl of food and no structured feeding time, and thus no screaming or timed food delivery. They didn't over eat, didn't fight, and it just worked. I miss that. The vets say though that dry food isn't good for kidneys.

Anyhow.

Then I did some cleaning. I cleaned the filthy utility sink in the mud room. FILTHY!!!

Then I cleaned the cat litter, and cleaned the filthy room the litter is kept in (FILTHY!!!).

Then I vacuumed the FILTHY!!! rugs.

I swept the FILTHY!!! floor too.

Then I did chores outside, and Ursula the pony bit my thumb as I was trying to feed them hay. Dammit. I have a good bruise under the nail now.

Then I went to see River. R had brought him into the barn for me.

His breathing wasn't great, as today was a warmer day. He did try to be forward for me though, and I gave him lots of breaks to catch his breath.

We worked again on being forward in the walk both on the ground and mounted. We did lots of work with the pole bending, on the ground and mounted.

The farrier that comes to the barn has been pretty sick, and has pushed the date for doing the horses a couple of times. River's feet are getting long, and one crack is getting a bit out of hand. I showed R, and she was able to file it a bit, and she says the farrier is supposed to come Thursday.

Then I came home and let everyone out into their pastures for a while.

My Sweetie made supper, and we watched an episode of "Your Honor".

I brought everyone back in, and it was dark. Sigh, I like the long days of summer.

Today I am grateful for:

Okay sleep, and some time with my Sweetie before we had to get to work.

We snapped and bagged more beans (ones I had picked a few days ago). Then we changed the sheets, washed those taken from the bed, folded and put away other laundry, started quinoa, made dense salads for lunches, and washed dog diapers.

Then we did outside chores, and picked more beans. About three gallons (not cleaned or snapped, whole).

The cucumbers keep getting eaten by Roxy before they get a chance to amount to anything. We're literally going to have to fence off the garden I think, next year. Or at least the cucumbers.

There are many yellow zucchini coming, and a few spaghetti squash and pumpkins, if we have time for them to grow before frost. Green tomatoes.

There are still some raspberries.

Then I headed off to the barn to see River, and my Sweetie went for a bike ride.

His bike ride was a bit of a struggle as it rained, and he got a flat tire (luckily very close to home, and he walked the last quarter mile).

River did well. It was a cool day of about 15 C, with rain, and his breathing was good. He was wet from the rain so he enjoyed rolling in the dry sand of the arena before we worked together.

We worked indoors, and he was doing well with being forward. We worked on barrel pattern, and general yields and backing, and some ridden work with the garrocha.

Then I came home, my Sweetie made supper, and we watched an episode of "Your Honor". The premise is good, but there are often these niggling details that detract from the effect.

I don't know if it's just that we're heading into autumn, and maybe everyone thinks like this going into the end of summer, but of course it's time to think about endings and change and death again.

It's been a different summer for sure here, with the enormous amount of rain we've had. The animal pens were just slop most of the summer, and not great for their feet. A lot of the summer they looked pretty miserable as they spent a lot of time in their sheds, or standing in mud.

Then there were the mosquitoes, making life miserable for everyone.

Aside from that, it's just that feeling again, of looking around and seeing people looking older than you remember, and some people having health problems.

I thought my Sister P and my Brother M looked old this year when we got together. Maybe I look old too, but I'm used to seeing it. I probably think I look a lot younger than I am, and I think everyone thinks that they are frozen at thirty something for a long time, then forty something for a long time, etc.

I don't know if I seem like an old lady pretending to be younger than I am by being at the riding barn, or I just seem my age to other people, or if I come across as one of those people who are doing "well for their age".

I know mentally I can feel young at heart sometimes, and then on a rough day I feel every one of my years.

I feel like a lot of people in my family are going to be dying in the next ten years. Probably not statistically unreasonable, or all that unexpected, but there are several frail people now.

Of course I wonder about myself too. How long we'll be okay out here on our place, how we'll fare given that we don't have kids or family to fall back on, how long we'll actually be fairly healthy.

The friends we visited the other day, well, the wife went in for a colonoscopy right after that, and had some kind of complication and needed surgery. I'm not clear on what she needed done, it SOUNDED like they had a problem with some scar tissue from having a polyp removed at another time, and wanted to cut away the scar tissue? I will have to speak with her directly, I'm getting this from my husband talking to her husband, and you know how that is.

Then there's D's Mom dying. She was fairly healthy but very frail, and fell and broke a hip, as so many do. She had surgery, was doing okay, and then all of a sudden wasn't okay. I'm not even sure what the cause of death was, it came on very suddenly, I want to say it was an infection unrelated to her hip?

Now R's Mom had her hip replacement surgery, and is having complications in the form of bleeding ulcers. She too is in the hospital, though she is doing okay so far.

Other changes: Our local gas station is for sale, and the owner that has become a familiar fixture for me would retire if he sells it. I like Asa. We chat when I get fuel, and while I wouldn't say we have a deep connection, it's one of those things. It's still a connection, and I wonder if the station changed hands, if it would go to a card lock situation where there aren't even people there. It wouldn't likely be the owners working there, some bigger fish would buy it and just hire someone to work there (again, IF they still have people).

My farrier is retired, after having a similar kind of familiar connection with her for about ten years now.

One of my hay guys retired too, also the same kind of familiar connection for closer to 15 years.

Just people you like, talk to whenever you need fuel, hoof trimming, hay. You know who you're dealing with.

Now at the riding barn, there's the shift from L being a kid to being an adult and more in the role of teaching lessons and so on. It's a little tough for me, since I've been there for six years, so I have seen her progression from being 13 and full of mood swings and angst and so on, (though also fun), to needing to "take her more seriously", which I find hard to do given that I am 54 this year.

My husband doesn't "need" to hire out all of the work on the house, but he has no time to do the work. He does work WITH Dan, so that's good. It saves us money. Still, what used to happen is that our friend (the one whose wife had the colonoscopy stuff going on) would come and help us, but since he had a heart attack my husband is reluctant to get his help. So we don't have another very capable friend like that who can do the work. We have to pay Dan.

I see some of our animals showing some age. That's hard too. Though I have already gone through the loss of quite a few animals, it never gets easier.

So, nothing horrible. Just seeing the age progression of everyone, and in myself, and feeling sad for that progression.

Then there's "the churn". The Churn is an expression used by a character in a science fiction novel (The Expanse Series). It's a term used to describe the constant churning and shifting and disruption of...everything.

If you're adaptable, The Churn can be an opportunity. If not, it can be the end of what you had going for you.

It encompasses everything. Politics, economics, environmental events, events like Covid, and things like the people coming into and out of your life.

So I'm feeling like all of the events going on right now politically feel like the world is shifting. I feel like the Alberta government is part of that churn and it could go in several directions. Either we end up separating and becoming more or less part of the U.S., or we just go right the other way and vote in someone like the NDP and move into a new, more socially progressive era.

I feel like the ever increasing costs are part of that churn, and I don't know what the breaking point for everything will be, but it can't keep going on like this.

I'm angry at the hay guy, who was selling his square bales for $12 each last year, and wants $15 each this year, no explanation necessary, even though less than five years ago I think he was selling them for $8 each. I'd have to check.

Everything feels like the gold rush era, where prices for things in gold rush towns like in the Yukon or California were CRAZY, like $40 for an egg, even though almost no one struck it rich, it was all a perception of scarcity.

I feel like there's no stability in the government of the U.S, and it's creating a sense of instability in other parts of the world. Like in Canada. Canada is TRYING to be stable, but the U.S. is naturally doing what it can to rock the boat, because he who shall not be named LOVES chaos.

I don't think I've felt a sense of reasonable stability since before Covid. Covid really messed with my sense of safety, and the way everything turned on it's head for the next two years was shocking. NOTHING seemed right.

I also feel like that's when it first really became obvious to me that there were people who believed in keeping a level head and doing what we needed to do to stay safe (isolate, vaccinate, mask up and so on) and those who would rather watch it all burn rather than give up their "freedom".

Those people emerged in Canada to become the idiots who took their trucks to the capitol, and seem to have grown into MAGA here.

So I feel like there are a lot of Canadians who..aren't Canadian. What I don't understand, is why don't they move? I don't even mean that in an unkind way. Why do they not simply pack up and move to the U.S? Surely they need truckers and oil field workers there? Why stay if you hate everything about Canada?

Anyhow, that's the stuff I've been feeling. I'm worried about Canada not being "Canadian", I feel like I'm losing supportive people like the hay guy and the farrier and worry about finding similar helpful people, I don't like losing familiar faces like the gas station owner, or seeing the gas station go from a friendly local place to an anonymous card lock station.

Sure. Maybe there are opportunities in all of this change too. Maybe I'm not seeing that.

I mean, when I had to leave the other barn just before Covid, I was really scared about finding a good barn, and yet I found the barn I ride at now, and it has literally been life changing for me.

Maybe shifting away from the drama at the pottery studio in town (forgot to mention that) to working at home will be a positive change.

Who knows.

Today I am grateful for:

Decent sleep.

I called friend D to see how she was doing (her Mom passed recently, and she's been busy with the service and so on). We chatted for a while, and she mentioned she was taking her Granddaughter home soon, and would be driving past our place, so I invited her to come for a visit.

So she did.

First I pulled quite a few weeds out in the garden. Not ENOUGH weeds, but it'll have to do.

Then she arrived, and we had a great visit. Her little poodle Rosie had a whale of a time roaring around our yard, playing with Roxy (until she had enough of that nonsense).

It sounds like she's doing okay after losing her Mom. That there isn't that much to do for the estate, other than a tax return. She's enjoying her apartment and the freedom to leave it to go somewhere and not have to worry about a yard.

It was very nice to have her stop by, it's been probably a month or more since I've seen her in person.

My Sweetie got home and she was still here, which is nice too.

When she left I went back to weeding, but in the mulched area by the house. My husband watered the garden for a while, believe it or not we needed to do that.

Then we ate and chatted for a while, and my Sweetie went to bed.

I went out to work in the pottery studio for a while. I don't have much clay in good condition, and I probably won't make anything worth keeping, but I miss throwing, so I just mucked around to see what happens.

Today I am grateful for:

Decent sleep.

Quite a nice day. Warm but not hot, and sunny. Plenty of mosquitoes if you go into weeds or grass, but not bad in clear areas.

I didn't do much before heading to the barn. Usual animal care. Some laundry. I did pull some weeds for about half an hour.

The power went out as I was getting ready to leave, and checking with Fortis the outages were all over the county.

I went to the barn, and River was pretty happy to come in and get his mash.

R and I chatted. She got an update from how another barn client/friend is doing. She and her husband had their first baby a few weeks ago, there were complications, and the baby is still in the hospital on oxygen.

I was able to work with River outside today, which was nice.

My Sweetie stopped in on his way home, and he's feeling discouraged about work. His current supervisor wants to talk with him about his "career plan", which has become a sore point for my husband. My husband has worked VERY hard for this company, and he's overall happy with the pay, and okay with his position.

That said, he often ends up doing work above his pay grade, for no extra reward. Often just gets handed the work and is expected to do it, even though it should come with a promotion and the perks that come with one.

Several times now, supervisors have sat with him when it's "career path" time, and they say "hey, you should have been promoted a long time ago, you're a great employee", but they don't. They get back to him by saying "we're not sure where to go with this", and everyone pretends that the meeting never happened until next year.

This has been going on for at least ten years.

So when THIS supervisor emailed him with the taunting subject of "hey, let's talk about your career path", my Sweetie just quietly had a melt down.

What do you say when this happens over and over again? What would be different this time? Why are they wording it almost like it's my husband who is somehow holding back the process of being promoted?

He's already doing the work for that role, and his pay is very good, but it's not the pay from that office.

So he's sort of feeling that sense of helpless frustration of expecting this to go the same way all the other meetings have gone.

He says if nothing else, they should just go ahead and say "we will never promote you, but you are doing such a fantastic job right where you are that we absolutely appreciate your work, and will pay you as much as we can in that position". Or something to that effect.

His job is not at risk that he's aware of, just that they don't seem to want to promote him, and he's never given a good answer, yet they always come back to it again the next year, only to go through the same charade again.

Then he headed home while I continued to work with River.

He did REALLY well with the barrels today, even in the larger outdoor arena where he was "leaving" more a few weeks ago. I gave him LOTS of praise and a big rest for doing a great job.

Then we worked on a different approach to weaving in and out of pylons.

His breathing wasn't great today, so lots of breaks and mostly walk/trot. I still felt like he was doing really well with being forward, in spite of his breathing.

Then I chatted with a person coming for her lesson, her power was out too, and we talked about that for a while.

Then I went home.

I knew I needed to spend a bit of time on my Sweetie's feelings. He's had a frustrating week and it's only Tuesday.

We did more putting away of frozen raspberries, and putting out more to freeze that I picked a few days ago.

He cooked. We didn't watch anything, just chatted some more.

Today I am grateful for:

Good sleep.

My Sweetie had Dan here to discuss the several projects we would like to get finished before winter.

One of them is to put a nicer deck and stairs on the front of the house. The current set of stairs is one we recycled from someone else's house, and they aren't nice stairs, and they have no hand rail, and they don't even hold paint.

I tried making them look nicer with paint, but every year it would peel off almost as soon as I had painted it. Now one of the treads is rotting, and I put my foot down and said to my husband that we don't even use the steps now because they really aren't safe.

He was putting off replacing them because he thought we would be replacing the shingles with tin this year, but that isn't happening. He thought he would have to get a truck backed up right to under the eaves to make it easier to toss shingles, but now Dan says he could easily set up a canvas slide for the shingles, so we can go ahead and do something nicer for stairs.

I don't know if we'll get EVERYTHING on my husband's list done, but it would be nice to have better stairs in the front.

I'm glad my husband has found a course of action, he was really stuck on the tin for the roof, and nothing else.

We snapped the beans I picked a few days ago, and froze them in bags.

We changed the sheets and folded laundry.

Then he went outside to work on the brick path and mulch.

I made his salads, tried to make some kind of syrup out of the cherries, but it's a little thin.

Then I changed the cat litter, swept, and just did a whole bunch of small but necessary tasks.

Then I went to the riding barn to see River.

It was only about 24 C, it didn't feel that hot, but he was having trouble breathing.

We worked on low jumps, cantering around the barrels at Liberty with lots of breaks, and some ridden work with the garrocha. Oddly, his breathing seemed better after some work, as it often does.

Yes, I've had vets look at him, and you can spend a lot of money on that, and they didn't have any solid answers.

When he has problems, we just take our time, have some breaks, and see how it goes.

I admired Spencer the new barn cat, who seems absolutely at home now. He seems confident, pleased with himself, and loves rolling in the gravel. R says he is doing a great job of killing mice.

I came home and my Sweetie was making supper.

We ate and watched an episode of "Your Honor".

Today I am grateful for:

Better sleep. Not rushing anywhere today.

I talked for quite a while with Friend D. They had the service for her Mom, and it went well. Her Dad seems to be dealing with things okay, though he is much more frail recently because of a stroke. D says his memory is going, and he might not be hearing very well, so there's a lot going on with him this last year.

She sounds okay, maybe a little bit running on adrenaline from planning everything and all the extra things to do after her Mom passed, like cleaning out her room and taking her things to the people that wanted them, the service, food, extra visiting and so on.

We talked about the upcoming pottery season in September. She is not going to be part of the craft center at all this year, not even wood working, and I think she's happy not to have the drama.

I am still not ready to be independent of the studio, as there is work to be done on my part to learn how to mix glazes and run the kiln.

I would personally LOVE to be independent and working exclusively at home, and to no longer be irritated by pottery studio politics and drama.

This year is probably going to be difficult because of all the new "security measures" and strict adherence to studio times and so on. The recent shortening of our time to work and all the new students has already sucked most of the fun out of it for me.

I want to go back to just being creative, and not feeling like I have to defend what little time and freedom we have.

I did chores, and was chagrined to see that Wonder is indeed sore in one front foot again, likely an abscess. We went from very wet to drying out, and that's often a trigger for them. I thought she was just sore from being wet, but it seems to be more one foot right now.

Sigh.

I talked to my Sweetie while he was at work, and it sounds like he is talking with Dan about preparing for more work before winter. Hopefully an improved set of stairs in front of the house, maybe a concrete pad in the car port (though that seems low priority, it would keep weeds out, and I dearly would like that to be all finished and the tractor finally parked there, instead of just parked in front of the garage where it's been for the last...three or four years?).

Today I mowed. The whole property needed it. Some areas were done more recently and were just needing it again, other areas were getting truly overgrown to the point of being difficult to mow.

The ride on makes it not too bad, but it still takes over two hours to mow everything if you are going full tilt the whole time.

I did let everyone out for a while, and brought them back in (mosquitoes!).

My Sweetie only wanted cereal, he was too warm to want cooked food. He worked on trying to get a hole in the wall of the house for a vent we need in the basement for the wood stove area. The house is thick-walled, with very old (and effective) concrete stucco under the new siding, so it was a challenge.

I cooked for me, and we watched another episode of "Your Honor".

Late last night I watched a movie and processed most of the fresh yellow beans we picked.

Today I am grateful for:

Okay sleep, but it's often fragmented. If something wakes me up, it can be hard to fall asleep again.

I got a text from my farrier, asking if I wanted to board two horses for someone she knows.

There wasn't much information in the text, but I got the sense that this friend "no longer liked" where her horses were boarded, and needed to take them somewhere else.

I am not a boarding facility. I know I've mentioned to my farrier from time to time that I wouldn't mind having someone else's horses come eat all the grass in the pasture because Wonder and the ponies can't be on grass, so she was not unwarranted in thinking I might be open to it.

The thing is, boarding another person's horses is never going to be a simple thing. It's not someone I already know and deem to be trustworthy, so do I really want them having access to our property?

I also would only be a very temporary place, because it is now August, and winter here begins in October. I would not want other horses here past October, because then I would have to have hay for them, and to get hay for two more horses would literally mean double what I currently have in the barn.

It would mean more chores in -30 C. It would probably mean putting on blankets, and changing them if they get wet.

Would this person be paying me for board, or...? WOULD they pay board, or just give me excuses? If I had to buy hay for them, would I end up just feeding them out of pity if the owner didn't pay?

What exactly is the nature of their reason for leaving their current boarding situation? Is it because they can't afford it? Are they difficult people?

I suspect it's that they cannot afford board, and if that is the case, then if those horses came to our place, what would happen if the horses needed veterinary care? What if I ended up just not hearing from that person for months?

So, I declined. If I were to have someone else's horses at our place, I think it would have to be horses belonging to known friends that I trust.

I did some laundry and put away clean dishes, and I knew I had to go pick beans in the garden. We picked a few that were ready a few days ago, but you could tell there were going to be a LOT coming.

It was all the yellow beans. So far the green pole beans aren't doing much, though there are some flowers. So many things in the garden are late, or maybe not going to produce.

Picking was miserable, as the mosquitoes all hide under the plants, until you disturb them.

I picked about two, maybe more gallons of beans, and that was about half the patch.

I asked my Sweetie if he could pick when he came home from work. He too got about two-ish gallons.

For now, the beans can wait to be snapped and bagged for freezing in the *ahem* salad fridge.

I went to see River, and while it wasn't especially hot or muggy, there were lots of mosquitoes. It's hard to get him to focus when he's itchy and being bitten all the time.

My Sweetie stopped in on his way home (before the picking), and that was nice.

River did better with the barrels at Liberty, but he still seems to be drifting on some of our other work.

He is offering good effort and we're trying to have more energy in everything.

I came home, I let everyone out for a while, I made supper, and we watched an episode of "Your Honor".

I brought everyone back in, and my Sweetie headed to bed.

Today I am grateful for:

Not bad sleep.

Having a slow paced start to the day with my Sweetie.

Then we went outside and worked more on the brick walkway. That was a couple of hours.

Then I went to see River, and my Sweetie did a bit more work on the walkway on his own.

There were some black clouds as I pulled up to the barn, but thankfully they only had a smattering of rain that didn't prevent us from working in the outdoor arena.

River wears a mesh sheet when there are lots of mosquitoes, like now, and when I brought him in today and took off his sheet, he somehow managed to poop in such a way that it went through a tear in the lining of the sheet, and collected between the layers. It was a LOT of poop, about five pounds. I was able to shake it out, but WEIRD!

He did well today, giving a good effort and decent energy. In order to get more "oomph" from him, I have to have more oomph too, and I hope I can increase my oomph endurance.

L was preparing a scavenger hunt for the kids camp that starts tomorrow. She got me to do some of the searching for clues, to see if it made sense. Some of it did, some of it not so much.

It sucked that she had the clues on slips of paper, and when I am wearing contacts I can't read anything because I need bifocals (I can read with my glasses, not my contacts), so she had to read the clues for me. Oh well? That's life and getting older, and it's not the worst thing for L to realize that about life.

It was fun to do the scavenger hunt though.

Then I came home, my Sweetie made supper, and we watched the first episode of "Your Honor", which was pretty intense. Maybe a bit TOO intense. Good though.