Wednesday, July 28

Today I am grateful for:

Gorgeous weather. Hot and sunny, but not hellishly hot.

I got a few things done before my riding lesson. I found some more canning jars, I did a bit of cleaning in the bathroom, I got the little pool for the turtle onto the back deck.

Then I went to see River, and his poor nose was burnt again. I thought he was okay because his nose looked like it had tanned a bit, but no. So I slathered more sunscreen on him. I really don't know why he's burning so badly this year. I've had him for six years or so, and he's never burned like this.

Anyhow, we had a good lesson. We did a bit of a new pattern for a potential class to enter in August. It's leadline work. Then we rode, working more on keeping him collected during transitions, by doing spirals inward and outward on circles to keep him lifting his shoulder. Hard work. We did do some spirals at the other barn, but R is way more...thorough? The coach at the other barn would get me to do a spiral, but then it would be for one lesson and we wouldn't look at it again, so we didn't fulfill the point of the exercise. R does something with me, and then we'll evaluate it in the next lesson, and look at it again in the next lesson, and if it still isn't there we'll do it again. We don't just move on because she's bored and wants to do something else.

Then I chatted with R while she worked with another horse.

Then I came home and we went out and weeded the garden for awhile.

Then we watched the second half of "The Right Stuff", which is great.

Tuesday:

Today was a crappy day for me, that started off bad and sort of kept on going that way all day. Basically I was just tired of all the endless work ahead of us on the house, and it gets so overwhelming. I got mad at my husband, and then of course he got mad at me, and both of us are just tired.

We're fine. We were pissed off at each other all day, but we're fine.

I KNOW on some level that we are getting things done. It just never feels like we can ever get ahead. There's always more. Lots more. Huge tasks. Huge amounts of work. You can feel at many points like it's just too much. I feel like I don't want to go through another winter not having the addition finished, but likely that will be the case. Likely we won't have the basement ready for all my books and craft stuff either.

Right now, a lot of my stuff is sitting in our sea can (storage). It's safe there, but I can't see it or use it. My husband is talking about moving it into the basement this year so we can sell the sea can, but you know what? If the basement isn't finished, it's just going to be in the way. The idea is that the stuff is out of the way so we can work in the basement without boxes of stuff in the way. We're supposed to be making kind of a living room, a guest room, a guest bathroom, and a storage area. I think I'm going to have to put my foot down, and if the basement isn't finished, or at least the walls up and painted, then my stuff doesn't come into the house.

Sure, I know, just take one day at a time, look at just the small task right in front of you. I know.

I get mad because sure, sometimes we'll put in a big day where you can really see things happening. Then we'll have a couple of days that nothing gets done that feels like progress. Sure, we might dick around and get one or two little things done, or spend the day in town, but that's not enough. To get through this we should have at least one bigger thing just about every day. It needs to be more like an actual JOB site, where materials are showing up and stuff is being installed just about every day.

The one thing that DID get done is the farrier for my animals at home made it today. She's had to delay twice, and they REALLY needed their hooves done two weeks ago. Oh well. They got done.