Tuesday, August 8

Today I am grateful for:

That the rain we got today DID come today, and not yesterday when the bales I need were still sitting on the field.

A nice, gentle rain. I hope not too many farmers got their hay wet. I know a lot have been cutting and baling this past week.

I texted to Trainwreck to see if she wanted to chat today, and she actually texted back that she was moving! Maybe this is really happening!

I know this is not a magic cure for hoarding, and there is a good chance that the small suite she gets at the Lodge (which while meant for seniors, is more like apartments that charge rent on a sliding scale) will be overflowing with stuff and she will have to deal with that, and finding a way not to get kicked out of there.

BUT, if she can manage to live within the rules (has always been an issue with her), she would finally have a working toilet, a shower, a place to do her laundry, and a place that she will have consistent expenses (not paying to heat a giant garage, or trying to haul water). She could sell her truck (though she keeps saying she isn't going to, she doesn't need it anymore) and really pare her life down to something manageable.

If she tries.

Anyhow, detachment from her outcomes is what I need to remember.

I spoke with Sister E, and ended up having to give her a little boot in the butt, so to speak.

She was hemming and hawing about having someone paint the interior of the house they are moving into, because she is a little shocked at what it will cost. It's probably been a long time, maybe never, since she hired a contractor to do any kind of painting. I was kind of firm with her, and said that it pretty much has to be done right now, if they are going to paint at all. It is ten times harder to paint the interior of a house once you move in, and a lot of the time it doesn't happen because it's too hard to move everything away from the walls once you are in.

They have money, and plan to be in this house now until circumstances force another change, so why not go in there with nice walls?

Then I went to see River, and it is good weather for him; cool and a bit rainy.

He had reasonably good focus today, finally. Overall he did well with our work, but again he was sticky about going through some pool noodles, an obstacle I wanted to work into our Liberty freestyle. There is NO reason for him to hesitate, he did not show fear or concern at all, just kind of kept trying to go around them. I don't get it.

He would go through them, but inconsistently.

He was pretty good with everything else.

In our ridden work, back to the bareback pad, he was ignoring the cues from my softer neck rope, but if I used the stiffer one, he was fine. It's kind of a step back, but if this is what I have to do, then fine.

I did work out how some of the elements I want in the freestyle will flow together.

I came home and let everyone out for a while, and because it was raining did not do any other yard work. Kind of nice, actually.

I spent a ton of time today, and the last while, trying to find a good song for the freestyle, which is not as easy as it sounds. Try finding songs that aren't about sex or falling in love or breaking up (all seem creepy for a video with your horse) or about gang stuff or political things, or has bad language or uses the "n" word, and aren't just sentimental garbage.

It also needs to be long enough for me to have time to do what I want, so over four minutes. It also has to be peppy, but not TOO peppy, because then we will be out of sync. It has to more or less match his trot tempo.

I did find a song, and I had to struggle for quite some time to figure out how to download it from Youtube to my phone, but I DID IT!

I learned that Heineken bottles were once designed to be rectangular and interlocked, so that when they were done being used as drink vessels they could be used as bricks to create housing in developing nations. They never made it to production, but it was a very cool idea and some buildings were made from those bottles to prove that it could be done.

I personally think it is a great idea, and wouldn't it be interesting to challenge more packaging to serve a greater purpose?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-heineken-bottles-were-square-62138490/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_term=882023&utm_content=archival&fbclid=IwAR1IBuGs0SxLJm94MoPb85jVFI4N0Wh846aTOYJFL0wu4TkXAww9MkHlZwk

Wednesday, August 9

Today I am grateful for:

Part of me liked the nice rain we got, but part of me is sad for all the hay that will be wet, and the fields that won't be cut this week because of the rain.

The stretches where I sleep well.

Kitty love. Puppy love. Love.

I spoke with Trainwreck, hoping for positive forward movement in her life, but seeing where she is already steering herself towards the rocks, as she pretty much always does.

She is SUPPOSED to sell her property, hoard and all, to a guy who is willing to do the work to clear it himself. She is already hedging on that, talking like she still "has to deal with her things" herself.

I can see that what she is going to do, is the thing of not fully committing herself to living in the Lodge, and keeping one foot in her hoarded shithole. Not letting go of it.

She will pretend that she's living in the Lodge, while not dealing with or letting go of her other place.

THEN, I can see that she's already working on getting herself kicked out of the Lodge, maybe by walking around in the halls with inappropriate clothing/no shoes (her favorite way of messing up her life is to refuse to wear appropriate dress and saying it's everyone else that has a problem with her pretending that men's boxer shorts are valid outerwear, or that there's nothing wrong with being barefoot, or whatever. She's creative.)

She has been elusive about rehoming her cats, therefore she's not really planning on doing that. They will continue to live at her hoarded property, and she will just keep driving out there to feed them in the winter, but also likely going long stretches in the bad weather without feeding them, and she will make it out that she is a saint for taking care of them. Then she will try to sneak them into the Lodge, which doesn't allow cats, thus getting kicked out.

When she gets kicked out, she will cry "victim" and look around at us for help. She will either go back to her hoard, triumphant that she was "forced" to go back to it.

Or, she will just think it's someone's duty to take her in. Her son, or Sister N who has always been sympathetic.

She really doesn't get it. If she gets kicked out of the Lodge, it is the only clean, decent place she can afford to live, and she won't be able to get into another one.

What an idiot.

Once again, I struggle to separate myself from her life, because it's hard for me to understand how she does this, and thinks that somehow life is SO AWFUL to her.

No, she hasn't done it yet, she just got her suite at the lodge, but nothing in how she speaks indicates that she is giving up her other place, rehoming the cats, and some of what she is talking about with bringing things into the suite makes it sound like she's already planning to bring too much, and not treating it like a "real" home.

Like just making a nest on the floor out of camping blankets and not making actual plans to bring in a proper bed. She's treating it like a flop house, a place to shower while her "real home" is the hoard.

I have to prepare for her fucking this up, and just let her do it, and not feel bad for her.

Moving on.

I went to the barn to see River, and I spent some time with him in the pasture first, giving scritchies.

It was lesson day, and it was helpful to work through what I wanted to do with my Liberty Freestyle with R, though then it doesn't feel like much of a lesson.

We did work out logistics for the pattern, how it fits together, and how it works with the music in terms of time (very good).

At least today River didn't have issues with the pool noodle gate. No. Instead, he was off with his back up cue in Liberty. Sigh. Well, we have time to work on it.

Our overall goal is to make it all smooth and with as light a cues as possible.

For our ridden work, we worked on getting that lead in the canter, and spiralling in and out to collect, and a bit of work on the trot to see if we can keep my legs more still and use my knees and hips more than putting weight in my feet.

I came home, let everyone out for a while, but it was pouring so I didn't do yard work.

I did the dishes instead, and some laundry.

I learned that some fish eggs can survive being eaten by birds, and then are passed into water where they may go on to become fish. This is possibly how isolated bodies of water end up with fish in them.

https://youtu.be/qLkhx0eqK5w