Tuesday, September 13
Sep. 14th, 2022 02:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Nice and sunny again, and pleasant.
The contractors continue to make good progress. They have the drywall up in the cold room and most of the bathroom.
My Sweetie and his nephew put in one last post and then took the fence post pounder back to the rental place.
I got a bit of sleep. It's to the point where I am just fantasizing about having two or three days completely alone where I can sleep, the way other people fantasize about winning the lottery.
We all went to see River, and I went good and early to avoid K's lesson at 6 pm, only to discover that he had another lesson anyhow. So what is the point? There is literally no time on Tuesdays that I could come and NOT be in his way.
I never even took River into the barn. I just tied him up outside and brought everything outside to brush him and tack up. Whatever. This won't work in the winter at all. What the hell am I supposed to do?
River was lethargic, but did well on what I asked. I rode with just the neck rope, and he listened to it very well.
I don't know that the nephew gave much in the way of rat's asses about the horse, or the fact that I could do work with him at Liberty and riding without a bridle. I don't think he knows enough about horses to be able to appreciate the skill and effort involved. The fact that River is so calm and well-trained makes it seem like it must be easy.
So I got him to come and try a very simple draw, and River just ignored him. See, not so easy.
Then we went home, and the nephew's leg was bugging him (he fell during the bike ride a few days ago), and he probably needed some down time alone, so I convinced my Sweetie just to go to the lake with me for a while.
We took the kayaks, and went to the park/lake down the road. It was a super lovely evening with a very pink and orange sunset, very little wind, no bugs, and that perfect fall temperature. I really enjoyed it and I'm glad we went.
I had bought some frozen flatbread pizzas for the guys to eat, and we added some more toppings to them (you kind of always have to do that with frozen pizzas, don't you?). They seemed pretty happy with them, which is good. I am never sure what to feed people, since my own diet is a bit odd.
Then we all watched an episode of "The Witcher". We've already seen it, but the nephew has been watching it. I'm fine seeing it again, I've been meaning to watch them over again at some point.
Today I learned about the concept of a Potemkin village.
"In politics and economics, a Potemkin village (Russian: потёмкинские деревни, romanized: potyómkinskiye derévni) is any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country that is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better. The term comes from stories of a fake portable village built by Grigory Potemkin, former lover of Empress Catherine II, solely to impress the Empress during her journey to Crimea in 1787.[1] While modern historians agree that accounts of this portable village are exaggerated, the original story was that Potemkin erected phony portable settlements along the banks of the Dnipro River in order to impress the Russian Empress and foreign guests; the structures would be disassembled after she passed, and re-assembled farther along her route to be viewed again as if another example."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village
Nice and sunny again, and pleasant.
The contractors continue to make good progress. They have the drywall up in the cold room and most of the bathroom.
My Sweetie and his nephew put in one last post and then took the fence post pounder back to the rental place.
I got a bit of sleep. It's to the point where I am just fantasizing about having two or three days completely alone where I can sleep, the way other people fantasize about winning the lottery.
We all went to see River, and I went good and early to avoid K's lesson at 6 pm, only to discover that he had another lesson anyhow. So what is the point? There is literally no time on Tuesdays that I could come and NOT be in his way.
I never even took River into the barn. I just tied him up outside and brought everything outside to brush him and tack up. Whatever. This won't work in the winter at all. What the hell am I supposed to do?
River was lethargic, but did well on what I asked. I rode with just the neck rope, and he listened to it very well.
I don't know that the nephew gave much in the way of rat's asses about the horse, or the fact that I could do work with him at Liberty and riding without a bridle. I don't think he knows enough about horses to be able to appreciate the skill and effort involved. The fact that River is so calm and well-trained makes it seem like it must be easy.
So I got him to come and try a very simple draw, and River just ignored him. See, not so easy.
Then we went home, and the nephew's leg was bugging him (he fell during the bike ride a few days ago), and he probably needed some down time alone, so I convinced my Sweetie just to go to the lake with me for a while.
We took the kayaks, and went to the park/lake down the road. It was a super lovely evening with a very pink and orange sunset, very little wind, no bugs, and that perfect fall temperature. I really enjoyed it and I'm glad we went.
I had bought some frozen flatbread pizzas for the guys to eat, and we added some more toppings to them (you kind of always have to do that with frozen pizzas, don't you?). They seemed pretty happy with them, which is good. I am never sure what to feed people, since my own diet is a bit odd.
Then we all watched an episode of "The Witcher". We've already seen it, but the nephew has been watching it. I'm fine seeing it again, I've been meaning to watch them over again at some point.
Today I learned about the concept of a Potemkin village.
"In politics and economics, a Potemkin village (Russian: потёмкинские деревни, romanized: potyómkinskiye derévni) is any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country that is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better. The term comes from stories of a fake portable village built by Grigory Potemkin, former lover of Empress Catherine II, solely to impress the Empress during her journey to Crimea in 1787.[1] While modern historians agree that accounts of this portable village are exaggerated, the original story was that Potemkin erected phony portable settlements along the banks of the Dnipro River in order to impress the Russian Empress and foreign guests; the structures would be disassembled after she passed, and re-assembled farther along her route to be viewed again as if another example."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village
no subject
Date: 2022-09-15 06:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-15 07:51 am (UTC)It really helps to dress it up with extra ingredients.
Out in the country, you're not going to get delivery. The only time we've eaten proper pizza since we moved here is by driving somewhere and sitting down to eat it.
no subject
Date: 2022-09-16 01:57 am (UTC)There's a pizza place at the top of my street, but it's a chain and I don't much care for it.