Friday, January 12
Jan. 13th, 2024 01:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
My strong body. I'm doing my best to keep up with the demands of this weather.
It's an odd mix of go outside and feel like you're in a heavy space suit and do chores, and often you still have a cold face/hands while the rest of you is okay, then come inside and just sit around in the warm house.
The entire time you're outside, you're aware of the brutal cold, have to be careful with everything (stuff breaks easier in the cold), being aware that if you hold something with your hands your hands will get cold much faster, etc. Lots of our normal things get a bit harder, like the outdoor water taps froze solid so now we're getting water for the ponies from inside the house, and I'm feeding about twice as much hay, and I'm checking the animals more often. The goats are in the garage, and I try to give them time outside of their small pens in a larger area in the garage for a while each day.
I plugged in the car and started it to run it for an hour to make sure the battery was charged up even though I didn't need to go anywhere. If you don't run the car every other day or so in weather like this, it can kill the battery.
I asked my husband to buy groceries so that if I did not get groceries on Monday, that he had enough for lunch. It's still supposed to be this cold on Monday, and if it is, I'm planning to stay home.
I haven't been going to the riding barn, as there is not much point. I've been texting with R, and River is doing okay. She's brought him in to warm up a couple of times and to give him some extra food.
Roxy pretty much doesn't want to go outside; her feet are instantly too cold. She still has to go outside to do her business, but she really doesn't want to do it.
I've been processing Hollywood's passing, and I miss her. At the same time, I am not feeling tortured or in pain about her death, likely because this has been on my mind for a few years now. She has been in that zone of wavering back and forth about whether or not it was time long enough that in some ways, it was a relief to finally make the decision with assurance that she was suffering enough that it was the right thing to do.
I HAVE felt tortured about the passing of other animals, mainly because I felt like they suffered and I didn't do enough at that time for them, or I was less confident about the situation and wondered if it was my fault. With Hollywood, I feel like I have done the right things to care for her, and that my ability to help her had reached the end.
I did feel a bit annoyed with Trainwreck, who has been texting me with "how are you today" kind of texts. She's trying to be kind, but the day I was trying to talk to her about Hollywood's passing, she was just so wrapped up in her own drama that she never even let me talk and I had to force her to listen to what I needed to say. For her to have kind words now feels...insincere? Yet, she's ALWAYS more attentive when she thinks I might be in pain, but otherwise doesn't let me talk if I'm doing okay. She often even cuts me off if I have nice things to talk about, like "oh, you don't need to speak if all you're going to talk about is something nice", and we go back to this thing where she always assumes that my life is perfect.
I like talking about my life when things are going well too, and why should we put more value on suffering?
I know she feels like suffering makes her important.
My husband did go climbing after work today, and then he picked up groceries.
When he came home he put a bigger heater in the pony water tank, since the one I was using wasn't keeping up with the cold weather. Hopefully this works; the top of the water was still freezing with the smaller one.
We watched an episode of "The Expanse".
So, we are just doing our best to keep everything together in this weather, doing what we can for the animals and each other.
I learned about the popularization of the combination of salt and pepper: Salt and pepper were fated to end up together inevitably, but it was a Frenchman, Francois Pierre La Varenne, France's first celebrity chef and a royal chef to Louis XIV, who encouraged folks to combine the seasonings in the 17th century. It was said that King Louis XIV was a picky eater and didn't want seasonings to overpower the taste of his food.
https://www.allrecipes.com/article/why-are-salt-and-pepper-paired/
My strong body. I'm doing my best to keep up with the demands of this weather.
It's an odd mix of go outside and feel like you're in a heavy space suit and do chores, and often you still have a cold face/hands while the rest of you is okay, then come inside and just sit around in the warm house.
The entire time you're outside, you're aware of the brutal cold, have to be careful with everything (stuff breaks easier in the cold), being aware that if you hold something with your hands your hands will get cold much faster, etc. Lots of our normal things get a bit harder, like the outdoor water taps froze solid so now we're getting water for the ponies from inside the house, and I'm feeding about twice as much hay, and I'm checking the animals more often. The goats are in the garage, and I try to give them time outside of their small pens in a larger area in the garage for a while each day.
I plugged in the car and started it to run it for an hour to make sure the battery was charged up even though I didn't need to go anywhere. If you don't run the car every other day or so in weather like this, it can kill the battery.
I asked my husband to buy groceries so that if I did not get groceries on Monday, that he had enough for lunch. It's still supposed to be this cold on Monday, and if it is, I'm planning to stay home.
I haven't been going to the riding barn, as there is not much point. I've been texting with R, and River is doing okay. She's brought him in to warm up a couple of times and to give him some extra food.
Roxy pretty much doesn't want to go outside; her feet are instantly too cold. She still has to go outside to do her business, but she really doesn't want to do it.
I've been processing Hollywood's passing, and I miss her. At the same time, I am not feeling tortured or in pain about her death, likely because this has been on my mind for a few years now. She has been in that zone of wavering back and forth about whether or not it was time long enough that in some ways, it was a relief to finally make the decision with assurance that she was suffering enough that it was the right thing to do.
I HAVE felt tortured about the passing of other animals, mainly because I felt like they suffered and I didn't do enough at that time for them, or I was less confident about the situation and wondered if it was my fault. With Hollywood, I feel like I have done the right things to care for her, and that my ability to help her had reached the end.
I did feel a bit annoyed with Trainwreck, who has been texting me with "how are you today" kind of texts. She's trying to be kind, but the day I was trying to talk to her about Hollywood's passing, she was just so wrapped up in her own drama that she never even let me talk and I had to force her to listen to what I needed to say. For her to have kind words now feels...insincere? Yet, she's ALWAYS more attentive when she thinks I might be in pain, but otherwise doesn't let me talk if I'm doing okay. She often even cuts me off if I have nice things to talk about, like "oh, you don't need to speak if all you're going to talk about is something nice", and we go back to this thing where she always assumes that my life is perfect.
I like talking about my life when things are going well too, and why should we put more value on suffering?
I know she feels like suffering makes her important.
My husband did go climbing after work today, and then he picked up groceries.
When he came home he put a bigger heater in the pony water tank, since the one I was using wasn't keeping up with the cold weather. Hopefully this works; the top of the water was still freezing with the smaller one.
We watched an episode of "The Expanse".
So, we are just doing our best to keep everything together in this weather, doing what we can for the animals and each other.
I learned about the popularization of the combination of salt and pepper: Salt and pepper were fated to end up together inevitably, but it was a Frenchman, Francois Pierre La Varenne, France's first celebrity chef and a royal chef to Louis XIV, who encouraged folks to combine the seasonings in the 17th century. It was said that King Louis XIV was a picky eater and didn't want seasonings to overpower the taste of his food.
https://www.allrecipes.com/article/why-are-salt-and-pepper-paired/
