Tuesday, September 3

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

Good sleep last night.

Beautiful weather, though it is SO DRY around here. It poured rain for about 20 minutes in the city last night just as we were leaving, but nothing at our place. Of course, the city IS about a 45 minute drive.

That we got our land line working again.

The repair crew have been working on since last week (they had the weekend off, but WERE working on it Friday), and this afternoon one of the crew people just drove into our yard and started laying on his truck horn to make me come outside to talk to him.

Wow, that was rude and annoying. I told him so too, since we gave the phone company our CELL PHONE NUMBERS and told them to please let us know they were coming first so we would be ready for them.

I asked him why he didn't call first, and he said "I did call..." but trailed off realizing that of course the number he tried to call was OUR FREAKIN' LAND LINE, the one that WAS OUT OF SERVICE. The one that he was actually trying to fix.

Wow.

He had wanted to make sure AGAIN (they already checked last week) to make sure the damage to the line wasn't at the connecting box in our yard. It is not. It's somewhere along the road, the same as the last time several years ago.

I imagine the phone company isn't doing much more than the absolute minumum to keep these old systems functioning.

Anyhow, we do have restored service.

I started some laundry, to be dried later, and cleaned the cat litter.

I went to see River, and he was lazy with the heat, but his breathing was good.

R was going to do a little trail ride around the yard, so I joined her. It was very interesting to me, that when I did a little trail ride last time, L was riding a horse that is probably the leader for River, and River was really only following that horse, not listening to me in any way. It was unsettling, because if that horse had chosen to act up, River would be listening to that horse, not me.

Today it was just R and I, and R was riding Maverick. River was happy to ride with Maverick, but did not have that funny feeling that he was listening to the other horse over me. I did feel like he was listening to me today, and even tested it by walking the other way around some trees and stayed working on some obstacles while R and Maverick left and River was not looking for the other horse.

At one point, we were riding past the garden, and R was upset to notice that her husband K had pulled a long piece of wire mesh out of the garden that I think was used as a trellis, and just left it lying on the lawn only a few feet away from the garden shed.

Then she uttered a phrase that echoes through time "why didn't he put it AWAY? It's literally TWO FEET away from the shed!". We paused and looked at it for a moment in silence, then moved on.

It was nice to have a little yard ride where River was relaxed and listening to me.

Then I did other groundwork/Liberty stuff.

I came home and my Sweetie was making supper (he had some veggies from friends of ours, he had been over there helping them with their computer) we folded a bunch of laundry that I had started earlier, and watched part one of a miniseries called "Pacific", about the part of the war between Japan and the U.S. after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Comments

[cf2princessawnw]

Not that I ever wish you frustrations, but you're sharing them made me realize some of what I deal with here is just people in life right now in general. Because you're moron service repair guy sounds like so much of the workforce in my area period!! Glad though that your landline is fixed! :)

Glad you had that moment of understanding as wives. One of my friends says that her husband will consistently take the trash and leave it 3/4 of the way down the driveway. Just there. She said does he think the magic trash fairies are going to take it the rest of the way and put it in the cans?

Glad for the good things in your day and of course that you had a good night's sleep!

[gottawonder]

It's funny for me to see R have the same day to day small frustrations with her husband K as I have (and I would think most couples), because in many ways R is VERY CLEAN AND ORGANIZED. She's a powerhouse. Her property and her barn are VERY CLEAN. To see that she can still have a giant chunk of wire mesh left in a straggled heap on her lawn from her husband not..quite...putting it away help me see the universality of such things.

Lets me know we're all human after all.

[cf2princessawnw]

I'm glad you got the experience that. I'm sure it took a little off the edge and frustration off the moments you have. Sometimes being isolated here, I realize it would help to just have other people so I can see at least where some of the frustrations are similar problems and not just unique for my own life. It at least takes the edge off.

[gottawonder]

When you see someone else experiencing something similar to your own life, and it bugs them too, it's like knowing you're not crazy that those kind of things bother you. It's also a kind of kinship.

Like how women laugh together about all kinds of things that are just unique to being women, like trying to find a bra that fits or underwear that don't ride up.

[cf2princessawnw]

I know things have been difficult with her in the past, so I'm glad you had that moment together.

[gottawonder]

"Difficult" is on a sliding scale. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say we get along on about a nine. Out of ten or maybe even more interactions, there might be one where I don't 100% agree with her, and it's not always that big a deal. It could be like my recent concern about the horses being finished the grass in their pasture, and next time I went to the barn they were moved to one with more grass, and getting a bit of hay since it's been dry and the grass isn't growing a lot.

There are times when my discomfort is because she's asking me to do something very hard, like work with River more on loading in the trailer, or to participate in a show when I'm not really comfortable doing so. Those things are probably important for me to do, and it's her job to make me do things a bit outside my comfort zone, and I struggle with that.

There are times that I'm frustrated because our lesson covers things I feel like we've gone over a thousand times, but then I have to admit that I probably had to revisit something I think of as basic.

The relationship I have with R is intimate in the way that relationships with coaches or trainers of all kinds can become, in that she has to work me past my fears and weaknesses and sometimes lack of motivation, and it isn't always easy.

I am also knowledgeable enough about horses to have my own opinions, but I can feel frustration about how to voice them when I don't agree with R in any way because it is her barn. Not the same as her being bad or wrong, but you know how it is with opinions.

There are pretty much no human relationships that have zero difficult moments, just like how I can have all kinds of dead serious anger and conflict with my husband but still not think he is a bad person or I don't love him.

The recent rant I posted about her making decisions about "who gets to work with the nice horses", i.e. Ferrari, is because the whole situation with that horse is kind of a grey zone. He's not for sale, but somehow R already has people lined up who can "use" him, because she wants to present this option to the owner as a way to sway her to keep Ferrari at R's barn. Other people have been allowed to ride him, but I was never asked, and I feel left out. That said, if I was serious about wanting to ride him, I guess I should speak up. I would probably then have to part lease him, which truly I am not going to do at this time.

I'm at a funny place right now with River. In the summer he is VERY lethargic and hard to work with most of the time because...well I'm not sure why. I don't know if it's because he's old, or if it's a bit of damage from his breathing issues that only shows up when it's hot or dusty, I don't know. Nothing has been diagnosed.

I wonder how long it makes sense to keep working with him, as it does limit my own progress if he doesn't have any energy.

He's usually better over the winter, but winter is only half the year.

So, part of my feelings about Ferrari and so on are because I am really wondering what's next for me. Should I be looking for another horse, or should I keep going with River?

I wonder if I would find another horse as steady and gentle as River. He is a bit of a rare find that way.

I wouldn't get rid of River, btw, he would just be retired at home.

Anyhow, just like people can often think that I am on the brink of divorcing my husband over issues with house progress, I wouldn't want you to think that I don't get along with R because of the occasional conflict. A lot of the time, the conflict is more of an internal struggle with myself, as much as it is anything to do with her.

I don't deal well with any kind of difference of opinions, and it's hard for me to not see everything as a personal attack, and I feel very threatened. I know that this is just the fall out from a lifetime of trauma, and it's hard for me to not see everything as some kind of slight, an attack on my worth or value, safety, intelligence, etc.

I try to post the fact that we also have conversations and inside jokes and as a group we went out together a few times too. She's often had more faith in me than I've had in myself, when it comes to riding.

[cf2princessawnw]

❤️

[ratunderpaper]

I've heard that some put stuff near the stairs "to be taken down the next time one goes to the basement", but the stuff is never taken. Hmmm.

[gottawonder]

I do that a lot myself, though things DO go upstairs/downstairs after a while.

[ratunderpaper]

There's also a pile of recycling by the back door again. I might give up on this and start taking small amounts of it to recycling depots through the city.

[gottawonder]

Recycling is an ongoing challenge for us, because as rural denizens, we have no recycling pickup, or anything even close to us. We have to sort it ourselves to take to the center in the town where I get groceries, or if my husband takes it with him to work, there is one where it doesn't have to be sorted.

It would be super convenient if we could get a recycling trailer in the village nearby, but why would our county try to do something helpful like that?

[ratunderpaper]

Well, piling it up in the house for pickup every two weeks isn't great, either. Occasionally it goes to the teeming garage, and more often just sits in boxes by the side door.

I'm sure you'd find plenty of people who'd say, So, what's the problem? What are you bellyaching about?

[gottawonder]

Right? Most of our garbage is actually recycling. Our kitchen garbage takes over a month to fill because almost everything is recycling or goes to our compost pile.

What we are doing at the moment is we got a big rolling bin normally used for garbage, and when the bag in the kitchen fills, we dump it into the bin.

THEORETICALLY when the bin is full, my husband will take it to be recycled. We'll see how that goes.

We used to use a big wooden thing with dividers in it, and I had big cloth bags hanging in it, and we could sort the recycling into those bags and when they were full, take those in.

Since that wooden bin moved from a convenient location out to a shed, we don't seem to use that anymore. It worked okay, but the big bags were hard to pull out when they were full, and it meant a big trip somewhere to get rid of it all.

As I've mentioned, it would be nice if there were a recycling depot or trailer in a more convenient location for us rural people. There is one at the local dump, but it's weird hours, and about 15 minutes away. Not impossible, but inconvenient.

I think it makes sense if you get in the habit of taking some with you when you do other errands and get rid of it so it doesn't pile up.