Tuesday, July 1

Today I am grateful for:

Lovely weather. A bit hot, but at the same time, it's good to really feel like it's summer.

My Sweetie, after a bit of prompting, did some more work in the basement on the window frames today. It's weird how if I didn't say anything, he probably would have done nothing today, or just something not very useful like clean his garage (his go-to useless keep busy never ending job that makes it seem like he did something useful).

Once he actually gets going on something (though it is brutally difficult to get him to finish something all the way to completion, he generally abandons a project the moment there is some challenge, to do something else that is easier or more exciting. He can leave an 80% finished job for years before I finally yell at him to do the rest.) he often seems happy enough to do it.

I did household things. I got mad enough to finally attempt to tidy up the unruly mudroom. I brought the coat tree out of the basement to hang jackets, since it looks like we are never going to settle on how to have hooks on the walls.

I threw out all of the last years now withered squash, only to find that they have stained the wooden counter top. I know I told my husband not to put them there, and he did lay a sheet of plastic under them, but they still leaked.

We installed that nice wooden counter top in the mud room less than a year ago.

I did several loads of laundry too, some of it being chore coats.

I talked for a while with Sister E. She had a pretty bad fall, caused by her son's unruly dog who got tangled with her when she and her son were trying to walk their dogs together.

I have met this dog of her son's, and I do not like this dog. It is everything an untrained, unregulated dog becomes when no one trains, socializes, or sets boundaries with it. When I met it, I honestly thought it was going to bite me when I arrived, and at different points if I got up to go to the bathroom or something, it acted aggressively when I returned again.

Her son is just...lazy I guess. He very much needs to go to a trainer with this dog, so that he can learn how to correct it. It's a very unpleasant animal to be around, and potentially dangerous.

My sister ended up falling and landing on her face, breaking her glasses and getting a good scrape on her cheek. She's about 75, and very lucky that it wasn't much worse.

I went to see River, and it was so hot today, so I gave him a nice, cool shower first. He seemed to appreciate it.

He is still sore in one leg, and I spoke to R about it, and since he's not puffy in his leg and his hoof seems fine, and he reacts if you massage his shoulder, he probably is stiff/pulled something in his shoulder. There's not much to be done other than to give him some rest, massage, a bit of gentle stretching.

We did very gentle work today, I practiced standing on him outside and tossing the umbrella and jacket, and some yields.

I came home, and my Sweetie and I ate, got cleaned up, and headed to town for the Canada Day fireworks.

Our little city does a nice job of them, and it's in a big park where it was very pleasant to sit on a blanket.

I am very grateful to live in Canada. It's a great country, and man, do I want it to stay that way.

Wednesday, July 2

Today I am grateful for:

Not really needing to do anything THAT badly, so that I could stay inside for the hottest part of the day.

It wasn't even all that cool inside, but at least the sun wasn't beating down on you.

I did put away clean dishes and change the cat litter.

I did talk with Sister S, and at least it wasn't the usual "everyone is dying", though it was the "I should be getting rid of everything in the basement for the inevitable move to somewhere small". It was fine.

I know her health has been pretty rough, and I think that for the first time it's really hitting her that she is getting to a certain point in her life. Up until last year she was so absorbed in working that I don't think she made any room for processing anything else, and now she's sitting at home alone all day (her husband still works) and it's weighing on her.

After that, I went to see River. He's still sore, but not as bad. We did very gentle work, mostly on yields and some ground work, a tiny bit of ridden work. I practiced standing on him and tossing the umbrella and jacket.

I did the same thing of hosing him off first because of the heat, then some stretches and the liniment afterwards.

I came home and my Sweetie had replaced the lawn mower blades. A few days ago he looked at them because I felt like it wasn't cutting properly, yes they were bent, so he had to go get new blades today, put them on the lawn tractor, and mowed a bit to make sure it was all good.

I'm very glad that he's so handy.

Then I watered the garden for about an hour, also letting everyone out into their pastures for an hour, and then put them back.

I finally managed to work with Dandy for a few minutes in the round pen. I don't know why, but I haven't managed to do any work with him or Wonder at all this summer so far. I guess things have been a bit nuts, but still.

He did pretty well, considering how inconsistent I've been.