Friday, May 15

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

Nice weather; sunshine.

My sweetie and I planted the potatoes. Nice to get that done.

A good ride on River. More of the same work; focus on rhythm, staying collected, bending, and walk/canter transitions. There was a young rider there today (we were able to go back to two riders per time slot), and that was nice. She hasn't been riding long, but she's doing really well.

Letting Wonder out for awhile with her grazing mask on, and letting the ponies and goats out into their bigger pasture for a while. Spent some time just being friendly with the ponies and giving them some attention.

Getting pony poop picked up. No shortage of that!

Thursday:

Getting one half of the garden tilled. I had to go get the jerry can filled up first; the tiller was out of gas.

Getting the pressure washer set up, and cleaning all the clay off of the concrete pad on the North side of the house. It had been part of the deck for the trailer, and it will serve as a deck again with this house. Getting it clean feels good; I'm going to put some flowers and such here, and we'll have one nice spot to sit.

Going to town and getting groceries. I haven't gone myself for about a month again. We got groceries about a week ago, but we're low on fresh produce again. My sweetie eats a TON of fresh veggies for work, and we end up having to go for food more often. I've been kind of talking to him about taking other things to work to cut back on the veggies a bit, because it's not going to be easy to go for groceries twice a week just for him to have snacks.

He likes to take a giant container of carrot sticks, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber, and kind of eat them all the time he's at work. I think it's kind of become a nervous habit; to gnaw on veggies all the time. When he's at home and working outside, he compulsively eats sunflower seeds. Like we cannot go anywhere without him eating them. In the car. At the riding barn. Working in the garden. If we go for a walk somewhere, he has to take them and eat them the whole time. I think eating the veggies at work is so that he doesn't eat sunflower seeds. I hate to discourage that, but it's a LOT of fresh veg. It's tough to keep up with. If he ate half that amount of veg, and took soup or something, we might get by with one grocery trip per week. It's likely not about being hungry though, it's about using the veggies as a stress release. I guess it's better than him smoking, or cracking his knuckles or something.

I did a pretty big haul. I'm the one who actually buys enough to make meals and all the stuff like coffee and cereal and spices. My husband, when he goes, tends to focus on what he needs for lunch. It's exhausting to do this kind of shopping, it's SO MUCH stuff! I am very grateful to have the means to buy so much at once, and to be able to buy things that are healthy and tasty. I'm grateful to have a car to make it possible to stock up, and to have the physical strength to carry everything into the house and put it away.

I got a flat of pansies. I always love their little faces.

Wednesday:

Talking to one of my sisters, and having a good conversation.

Getting lots of compost onto the one part of the garden that I thought was still very hard soil. The pony manure is really making some nice compost.

Getting the mares at home and the ponies dewormed without too much drama.


I've been phoning Mom fairly regularly at the hospital. She's been staying there while they do physiotherapy with her, and they're trying to get her to walk more. She should have had her knees replaced ten years ago, maybe sooner, but somehow it always seemed like too much trouble. I know that she would be thinking that it meant someone taking her to a hospital, someone having to get her, people helping her while she recovered, and it likely seemed like too much bother. Yet, she more or less stopped walking ten years ago, and she's been in a lot of pain that whole time. She's also lost a lot of muscle from not being active, and that's led to her blood pressure issues, feeling cold all the time, and many of the things that we just associate from getting old. She might have stayed a lot more active had she gotten her knees done.

At least this is prompting one of my sisters to start the process of getting her knees done. She's almost 70, and I think that's the perfect time to do it. If she waits, they're just going to say she's too old.
That's the trick doctors use, tell you to wait for a while, then say you're too old. She's had trouble with her knees for a few years now, to the point where she almost can't walk and is in near constant pain, yet she wavers back and forth saying "maybe If I just walk around more this summer it won't be so bad" and realizing that she's nearly crippled because she can only shop in stores that have scooters available. She forgets how bad things are because she doesn't go anywhere, and if she uses a walker in the house and sits most of the time it doesn't seem so bad. Then she has to go to the city and run errands and it nearly kills her. She forgets that beyond just the mobility, she's gained 70 pounds, she's likely having a lot of other health problems from not exercising, and it's only going to get worse. Fast. She may already be a poor candidate for the surgery because of her weight, but how do you lose weight when you can't walk?

I know she didn't want to get the knee surgery for the same reasons my Mom didn't. Other people would have to help her in getting her to and from the doctor, and then the long recovery time. If she doesn't do it though, she's just going to be in a wheel chair, and likely won't be able to live independently in her house.