Monday, April 26

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

A decent day, temperature-wise. Sunny.

We were finally able to pay the guy who installed our furnace. He's been very patient with us, since our bank screwed us over on the mortgage thing last year. Since we finally worked something out with the bank, we paid him, and that's a relief. He's a good person and he did good work for us, and he deserves to get paid.

A phone conversation with my doctor that saved me from having to make a doctor's appointment, thus a trip to town. It was just to renew a prescription, but things keep shifting with Covid, so they're allowing a phone appointment instead of having to make an office visit.

That my sweetie helped me with cleaning the corral that I need for Wonder. We took out two more loads of manure today with the truck, and that's left it in good shape for summer.

We cleaned out the leaves etc, and some grass from around the onion/chive patch (the onions are multipliers that come back every year).

My sweetie dug out a cart frame meant to be towed behind a bike. One of those things that would be for a kid to sit in. The fabric is gone, but the frame is good. We were going to turn it into a yard cart at some point. Anyhow, for now, it is a good training tool for the ponies. I don't think I'll hook them up to it, but I can pull it beside them to get them used to a wheeled contraption right next to them.

So, we worked with the ponies today. I made progress with Dandy in lunging, a small circle close to me for now, but he moved away from my pressure a lot better today (most horses end up panicking a bit, and just turning their hindquarters away from you, and stand there facing you, because they don't know what to do). My sweetie helped, and we led them around, then took turns putting the surcingle on them with the pole dragging like a cart shaft. Then we walked, one of us on each side with the cart in between us. They were a bit leery of the cart, but not too bad.

Then we came in and cleaned up, made a nice stir fry, and watched "Smilla's Sense of Snow". We read the book about a year ago, and I recently found the DVD at the thrift store. It was a good movie, but I don't think you could really appreciate the story of the character without having read the book. The movie didn't do a good job of explaining Smilla's relationship with her father, that he was a famous surgeon, what the deal with his girlfriend was (in the movie, I think you would have thought it was Smilla's sister if you hadn't read the book), and so on. The kind of book where there was a lot going on in her head, and in backstory for the other characters.

Sunday: Nice weather.

My sweetie and I took a load of manure out of the corral that I'm trying to clean. We spread it on the bigger pasture.

We went to go see River. I worked some more on the outdoor obstacle course, and then rode for a while in the outdoor arena. It was really a nice temperature outside, and lovely to ride in the evening during "golden hour".

We came home and watched "Balls of Fury", which is an older, silly movie that is a lot of fun.

I worked on my painting for a while. I listened to a really good horsemanship podcast by Warwick Schiller.

Saturday: Mostly I worked on cleaning the corral. This is where we kept Hollywood all winter, and it's gotten pretty built up with manure, so I'm cleaning it, one truckload at a time, so that Wonder can be in it this summer (I limit her access to green grass). I took out a load, which seemed to take forever.

I worked on a new painting. This time it's in water soluble oils rather that watercolors. I listened to a Russel Brand podcast with Edward Snowden.