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Sunday, July 31
Aug. 1st, 2022 03:48 amToday I am grateful for:
We had a thunder storm warning, but it passed us. We did get some rain later, but without a storm.
Our friends popped by to pick up some of that plywood, but they are just borrowing it. They need it to make tables for a yard sale. We also gave them one of the big tarps we just got, to cover their stuff for the sale.
Stuff about my friend, a bit of a rant:
This is the woman who likes to talk about herself to the exclusion of anyone else's needs. Usually she complains bitterly, mostly about her husband and her Mother in Law.
She got right into it today, mostly about her MIL. In front of her husband. Maybe he feels the same way, maybe he doesn't.
Part of me has deep compassion for my friend, because it sounds like this MIL is lonely, and calls her all the time, mostly to complain about how bad she feels. She is 82, in rough shape, and I think she should be in something like an assisted living apartment where there is less maintenance (she is in a house with a yard) and people around to help her if something happens. PROBABLY she should be looking at a care home. I think my friends need to be looking at this, but once again, everyone is just likely going to wait until something horrible happens.
These people also have WAY too much stuff, yet even when I say to my friend "just donate it" she'll come up with a reason to hang onto it. All of it.
They have rotting, falling down sheds full of things they have never needed that are likely ruined, and they can't haul it to the dump. It's worth something! It's an antique! I want to fix that up!
They have a new garage big enough for two cars full of stuff. The old two car garage full of stuff. A row of sheds full of stuff. A giant shop (I kid you not, it is nearly an industrial building) big enough for a couple of yard tractors, some old quads, old ski-doos, their RV, tools, is full. Their house is full. They have old cars parked in their yard with trees growing through them.
If my friend could set some fair boundaries with her MIL, I think she could find some peace, but she won't. If both of them could start systematically throwing shit away or selling it or donating it, their lives would be simpler, but they won't.
If I could help my friend by showing up with a trailer and just piling it with garbage for her, I would. They HAVE a giant dumping trailer, so they could do it themselves.
Instead, she just bitches to me every time I get anywhere near her, but she won't DO ANYTHING.
She lives about five minutes from the dump. She could be hauling away shit like a madman, but she doesn't. She won't even take their household waste, she makes her husband do it, but complains if there is a bag or two of garbage that needs to go.
Then she tells me how tired she is of her MIL complaining. Yeah.
Okay, rant over.
We went to see River, and he did well today.
I worked in the indoor arena because there was a horse in the pasture with the outdoor obstacles. I worked on our homework: backing using voice command, isolating the front legs in the turn on haunches (he moves his hind legs too much), side pass away, lunging halts.
I rode with just the neck rope, and he did well. We are starting to see better, rounder circles.
Spent some time just letting him relax on the Surefoot pads and doing some stretches.
There is a new horse from the rescue that R is working with (she fostered and trained a horse last summer, and found it a new home with people taking lessons with her).
This little guy is young and halter trained only, but appears not to have had any bad experiences with people. He was neglected in terms of food and such, but no bad feelings towards humans. He is super affectionate.
We came home and let everyone out for a while, and pulled EVEN MORE WEEDS.
The raspberries are ripening now, and very tasty. We are getting some peas, too. The kind that you just eat the pod and everything.
Then we came in and watched the last two episodes of Season Three of "The Boys".
My husband is hoping to clean up the basement tomorrow, so that if our contractor can start, it is ready. Then he is going to see his family this week.
I learned that in 1940s and 50s Quaker Oats and MIT conducted experiments by feeding cereal containing radioactive iron and calcium. This was conducted to prove that the nutrients in the oat meal traveled throughout the body. A $1.85 million settlement was made in 1998 for the victims.
The victims were KIDS, boys that had physical challenges that were abandoned by their parents. Quaker Oats enlisted kids by saying "join our Science club and get free stuff".
"The Fernald State School, originally called The Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded, housed mentally disabled children along with those who had been abandoned by their parents. Conditions at the school were often brutal; staff deprived boys of meals, forced them to do manual labor and abused them. Boyce, who lived there after being abandoned by his family, was eager to join the Science Club. He hoped the scientists, in their positions of authority, might see the mistreatment and put an end to it."
Apparently, back then (1940's) kids like this, or people in mental institutions or prisons, were often used as test subjects in all kinds of horrible experiments to test drugs or chemicals, or surgical procedures. All kinds of awful things.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/spoonful-sugar-helps-radioactive-oatmeal-go-down-180962424/
We had a thunder storm warning, but it passed us. We did get some rain later, but without a storm.
Our friends popped by to pick up some of that plywood, but they are just borrowing it. They need it to make tables for a yard sale. We also gave them one of the big tarps we just got, to cover their stuff for the sale.
Stuff about my friend, a bit of a rant:
This is the woman who likes to talk about herself to the exclusion of anyone else's needs. Usually she complains bitterly, mostly about her husband and her Mother in Law.
She got right into it today, mostly about her MIL. In front of her husband. Maybe he feels the same way, maybe he doesn't.
Part of me has deep compassion for my friend, because it sounds like this MIL is lonely, and calls her all the time, mostly to complain about how bad she feels. She is 82, in rough shape, and I think she should be in something like an assisted living apartment where there is less maintenance (she is in a house with a yard) and people around to help her if something happens. PROBABLY she should be looking at a care home. I think my friends need to be looking at this, but once again, everyone is just likely going to wait until something horrible happens.
These people also have WAY too much stuff, yet even when I say to my friend "just donate it" she'll come up with a reason to hang onto it. All of it.
They have rotting, falling down sheds full of things they have never needed that are likely ruined, and they can't haul it to the dump. It's worth something! It's an antique! I want to fix that up!
They have a new garage big enough for two cars full of stuff. The old two car garage full of stuff. A row of sheds full of stuff. A giant shop (I kid you not, it is nearly an industrial building) big enough for a couple of yard tractors, some old quads, old ski-doos, their RV, tools, is full. Their house is full. They have old cars parked in their yard with trees growing through them.
If my friend could set some fair boundaries with her MIL, I think she could find some peace, but she won't. If both of them could start systematically throwing shit away or selling it or donating it, their lives would be simpler, but they won't.
If I could help my friend by showing up with a trailer and just piling it with garbage for her, I would. They HAVE a giant dumping trailer, so they could do it themselves.
Instead, she just bitches to me every time I get anywhere near her, but she won't DO ANYTHING.
She lives about five minutes from the dump. She could be hauling away shit like a madman, but she doesn't. She won't even take their household waste, she makes her husband do it, but complains if there is a bag or two of garbage that needs to go.
Then she tells me how tired she is of her MIL complaining. Yeah.
Okay, rant over.
We went to see River, and he did well today.
I worked in the indoor arena because there was a horse in the pasture with the outdoor obstacles. I worked on our homework: backing using voice command, isolating the front legs in the turn on haunches (he moves his hind legs too much), side pass away, lunging halts.
I rode with just the neck rope, and he did well. We are starting to see better, rounder circles.
Spent some time just letting him relax on the Surefoot pads and doing some stretches.
There is a new horse from the rescue that R is working with (she fostered and trained a horse last summer, and found it a new home with people taking lessons with her).
This little guy is young and halter trained only, but appears not to have had any bad experiences with people. He was neglected in terms of food and such, but no bad feelings towards humans. He is super affectionate.
We came home and let everyone out for a while, and pulled EVEN MORE WEEDS.
The raspberries are ripening now, and very tasty. We are getting some peas, too. The kind that you just eat the pod and everything.
Then we came in and watched the last two episodes of Season Three of "The Boys".
My husband is hoping to clean up the basement tomorrow, so that if our contractor can start, it is ready. Then he is going to see his family this week.
I learned that in 1940s and 50s Quaker Oats and MIT conducted experiments by feeding cereal containing radioactive iron and calcium. This was conducted to prove that the nutrients in the oat meal traveled throughout the body. A $1.85 million settlement was made in 1998 for the victims.
The victims were KIDS, boys that had physical challenges that were abandoned by their parents. Quaker Oats enlisted kids by saying "join our Science club and get free stuff".
"The Fernald State School, originally called The Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded, housed mentally disabled children along with those who had been abandoned by their parents. Conditions at the school were often brutal; staff deprived boys of meals, forced them to do manual labor and abused them. Boyce, who lived there after being abandoned by his family, was eager to join the Science Club. He hoped the scientists, in their positions of authority, might see the mistreatment and put an end to it."
Apparently, back then (1940's) kids like this, or people in mental institutions or prisons, were often used as test subjects in all kinds of horrible experiments to test drugs or chemicals, or surgical procedures. All kinds of awful things.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/spoonful-sugar-helps-radioactive-oatmeal-go-down-180962424/
