Wednesday, October 7

Today I am grateful for:

Nice weather. You can feel the change from early to late fall. Geese are flocking up now.

Our furnace guy came and worked on the ducts some more. We chatted for a while; he and his wife did the same thing we did...bought an old house and moved it onto a new basement and renovated it. He understands what we're doing, and has been a good source of advice.

I dug up the carrots, since it is supposed to get much colder soon. It was a lot easier to dig because we used so much pony manure this year. The soil was a lot looser; it used to be mostly clay. Since it was dry not much dirt stuck to the carrots. Very nice carrots. Ours get super sweet after a frost.

I went to the barn. We had a lesson tonight, and it was still a shared lesson. This should be the last shared one. I have to say, these were not great for me. I enjoyed being around another rider and so on, but once again I felt like R's main focus was on this other girl, who needed more help. Almost the entire lesson tonight was R helping this girl figure out what she wanted to do for her freestyle demo, then practicing it, then filming it. River and I did our warm up (which I don't need help with anymore), and then we just stood there. At the very end both of us rode for about 15 minutes and worked on two point/leg position, which was useful, but that was the only useful thing we did.

I don't know how it will go, if the next time R wants me to share a lesson time if I just decline. I pay the same for a group lesson as a private, and it is less beneficial. She wants to fit in all these different people who only want lessons in the summer, or can only do lessons for one month, but she doesn't want to add extra lesson slots because she really doesn't have any more time. Yet, I am committed to year round lessons. You would think that would be a priority?

I did enjoy visiting with the other people though.

I came home, and watched "All Creatures Here Below"', which was a good movie in terms of acting etc., but it is one of those movies about people suffering badly, without any other reason behind the movie than exploring suffering. Pointless.

Thursday, October 7

Today I am grateful for:

Continuation of reasonably nice fall weather.

Found a clothes rack on buy and sell very close, and inexpensive.

I called Mom at the hospital. I haven't talked to her since I saw her almost a month ago. I likely could have called her sooner, but other family asked us not to call her via the hospital since there are so many of us. Family said they would be getting Mom a cell phone, but hasn't happened yet, so I got tired of waiting and called her.

She sounded tired and far away, and we didn't have much of a conversation. She seems to have some recollections of people visiting and so on, so there's that. Still good to hear her voice, though the change is difficult.

My sweetie got home from work after supper. We're trying to plan out the best use of his days home, and of course it's going to be nuts. There's a bunch of stuff he needs for his work apartment. Some of it he can bring from home, a few things I told him to ask a friend of ours, who is currently downsizing parent's belongings.

I did some little jobs, like the dishes, changed the sheets and ran them through the machine, that kind of thing.

We went for a walk around the horse pasture.

We watched "Journey to the Center of the Earth" with Brendan Frazier. Mindless fun.