gottawonder

Today I am grateful for:

Cool, rainy weather. We need it.

A phone call with Trainwreck that was not about her hoard. I mostly wanted to pick her brain about our brother in law's Mom, and why he thought she couldn't be moved. TW didn't understand that either, as it is totally possible to move someone from one care home to another. Of course it is, it's not prison after all. She's going to talk to Sister E about this, and see why they think the MIL is trapped in the evil care home.

That my anger CAN be turned into productivity. When we dug trenches this past weekend, my husband had promised to remove the extra clay from the trench over to the side of the barn with the tractor. He did not do this, and instead left a big ridge of clay RIGHT WHERE I LEAVE THE HOUSE. The ridge is all the clay that would not go back into the trench because the drain pipe takes up part of the volume.

He won't be home again for two weeks, so in that time I would have to deal with the mess.

If you walk on it, it will pack down and become hard to remove later. If it gets wet, it is sticky and will make an inch thick platform on your footwear.

This is the way I walk EVERY DAY to leave the house, and to go to town. So if I wear nice shoes, they would get a layer of mud. In the dark, I go that way with pails of water for the goats and ponies, and have to try not to trip.

It is ugly.

So, I decided to just MOVE IT MY GODDAMN SELF.

It took FIVE wheelbarrow trips (big, full ones full of heavy clay soil) taken across the yard to the barn, to get rid of most of the clay from digging the trench for the drain pipe. Then I moved three more wheel barrow loads a shorter distance to a low spot that needed filling in.

Then I went to see River.

River's breathing was good because it was cool and rainy. He was nice and crusty because he likes to roll when he gets rained on.

Our lesson went well. I wanted help with the turn on the haunches, but he did SO WELL today R couldn't even offer us pointers. It's kind of hilarious, because we struggled all week with it, and today he's suddenly a pro.

Our Liberty circles were very good.

Then I rode, and we went through a mounted Liberty pattern. We did pretty well with it, need a little work on making the circles rounder.

I let River graze for about 15 minutes on a patch of nice, thick grass in the yard that isn't part of their pasture, so therefore not already chewed down. He was delighted.

Then I came home and just farted around because I felt like I had done enough for one day.

I learned about this man, and his remarkable success in receiving two full arm transplants.

https://youtu.be/rbx_srPdWQs

Twofer: I learned that fruit has now become too sweet for zoo animals, as it has been altered over and over again for increased sweetness.

https://weather.com/news/news/2018-10-03-fruit-so-sweet-zoo-stopped-feeding-them-to-animals

From my own experience, and my efforts to reduce sugar in my diet, I have stopped eating most fruit. I actually got noticeable blood sugar swings from eating grapes, pineapple, bananas and so on.

I pretty much just eat blueberries and raspberries and the occasional apple as long as it is a Spartan, which is not horribly sweet.