Friday, January 31
Feb. 1st, 2025 01:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Good sleep.
That we are reasonably prepared for the upcoming cold snap this weekend. I put blankets on Wonder, Dandy, and Ursula, and made some preparation for taking the goats to the garage this evening.
I did speak with Trainwreck. She was wanting to call and text and so on about Aunt E's passing a few days ago, but I had already talked with her just before, extensively, and with others. I was just tired and burnt out on talking about something we can't change.
I had asked her to give me a few days to recharge, and she respected that, so I chose to call her today.
It was okay. She decided to give up her vehicle, because her building doesn't have any available parking spots. She was parking on the street, but you have to move your vehicle every day or you get tickets/towed. She couldn't afford to get it safetied (when you take a vehicle to another province, it has to pass an inspection) and she was too tired to walk outside to move it every day.
It's pretty sad, because having a vehicle is adult independence.
So, she's OF COURSE, VERY DEPRESSED, and it sounds like she's still just staying inside her suite, day after day after day, doing nothing at all.
Well, nothing I can do about that. She has options.
She DID thank me for the Christmas card that finally arrived (postal strike made them very late), which was nice of her.
At some point, she mentioned that she and Sister E were talking, and how Sister E said "how LUCKY it was that I have my horse River, and a place to ride...). No one's fault, but that hit me the wrong way.
There IS a certain amount of luck in finding R's riding barn, except I also went looking for a place that fit my criteria, went to a few places, interviewed the owner, and so on. Through my experience with the other barn, and years of having our own place, I had some idea of what I needed.
There is a certain amount of luck in finding River, and I also got the help of the previous barn owner to come with me to look at him, try him out, see if he was well enough trained, and then WORKED MY ASS OFF for the next ten years training him and taking lessons and riding him several times a week to get where we are. He is a basically kind horse and is fairly healthy, but from there it was my work that improved his training and our relationship, and I've kept up with his feet and teeth and care, as well as blanketing and extra feed...
There is a bit of luck in having decent finances, but my husband has also worked his ass off for the last twenty some years for us, and we've made some big decisions to follow the jobs, including moving to ANOTHER COUNTRY for seven years, then moving to a province that was not close to our families, and never mind my mental health when most of the time he worked away from home, leaving me pretty much alone most of the time for YEARS because we needed that job. Having decent finances hasn't been a straight path, nor an easy one.
I've heard people say we're lucky for being able to live on an acreage, and for being able to do so much of the work ourselves, and there IS some element of being fortunate, and then the rest is because we WENT LOOKING for it, and worked hard to make it what it is.
The luck part is the opportunity, but it's whether or not you do something with that opportunity.
Moving on.
I went to see River, and it was nice that he was already in the barn for me.
I got to work with him and listen to my new playlist of "Absolutely Shameless Dance Songs", mostly from the early '90's. Great stuff.
He did well overall, though it took a lot of motivation to get some good, forward movement. We did finally get some that passed.
His yields are getting nice.
I stood up on him for a count of 30 again, and got a bit of nice side passing in each direction.
The young woman with health issues did come today, so I stayed to work with yet another different horse named Amber.
Amber is a pretty arabian that was once put in the same pen as River, and River acted like a stallion trying to keep her to himself. This was about two years ago, and was pretty disruptive and potentially dangerous to River's health, and to anyone who might have to separate them (such as myself, when I came to ride).
We managed to separate them, with great difficulty, and R keeps them separate now. It was so weird, as River has lived with other mares, is currently living with a mare named Halle, and never acted like that before.
A different gelding, also a "gentleman" gelding reacted the same way to this mare last summer. She must be a femme fatale in the horse world.
She was okay to work with, not as hot or flighty as I thought she might be. She was a little on the lazy side if anything, but maybe she was testing me to see if I would actually make her do the work.
The young woman's lesson went well, no drama, which is nice.
Then I helped R clean up the barn and put everything away for the night.
I got home and my Sweetie got home not too much later. I put Dandy back in his pen, we took the goats to the heated garage because of the cold snap that's coming, and we got a sled load of fire wood, and my husband cleared some snow with the snow blower while I got supper ready.
We didn't watch anything, but we ate and caught up on each other's day. He had gone to the climbing gym and was happy with his session.
Good sleep.
That we are reasonably prepared for the upcoming cold snap this weekend. I put blankets on Wonder, Dandy, and Ursula, and made some preparation for taking the goats to the garage this evening.
I did speak with Trainwreck. She was wanting to call and text and so on about Aunt E's passing a few days ago, but I had already talked with her just before, extensively, and with others. I was just tired and burnt out on talking about something we can't change.
I had asked her to give me a few days to recharge, and she respected that, so I chose to call her today.
It was okay. She decided to give up her vehicle, because her building doesn't have any available parking spots. She was parking on the street, but you have to move your vehicle every day or you get tickets/towed. She couldn't afford to get it safetied (when you take a vehicle to another province, it has to pass an inspection) and she was too tired to walk outside to move it every day.
It's pretty sad, because having a vehicle is adult independence.
So, she's OF COURSE, VERY DEPRESSED, and it sounds like she's still just staying inside her suite, day after day after day, doing nothing at all.
Well, nothing I can do about that. She has options.
She DID thank me for the Christmas card that finally arrived (postal strike made them very late), which was nice of her.
At some point, she mentioned that she and Sister E were talking, and how Sister E said "how LUCKY it was that I have my horse River, and a place to ride...). No one's fault, but that hit me the wrong way.
There IS a certain amount of luck in finding R's riding barn, except I also went looking for a place that fit my criteria, went to a few places, interviewed the owner, and so on. Through my experience with the other barn, and years of having our own place, I had some idea of what I needed.
There is a certain amount of luck in finding River, and I also got the help of the previous barn owner to come with me to look at him, try him out, see if he was well enough trained, and then WORKED MY ASS OFF for the next ten years training him and taking lessons and riding him several times a week to get where we are. He is a basically kind horse and is fairly healthy, but from there it was my work that improved his training and our relationship, and I've kept up with his feet and teeth and care, as well as blanketing and extra feed...
There is a bit of luck in having decent finances, but my husband has also worked his ass off for the last twenty some years for us, and we've made some big decisions to follow the jobs, including moving to ANOTHER COUNTRY for seven years, then moving to a province that was not close to our families, and never mind my mental health when most of the time he worked away from home, leaving me pretty much alone most of the time for YEARS because we needed that job. Having decent finances hasn't been a straight path, nor an easy one.
I've heard people say we're lucky for being able to live on an acreage, and for being able to do so much of the work ourselves, and there IS some element of being fortunate, and then the rest is because we WENT LOOKING for it, and worked hard to make it what it is.
The luck part is the opportunity, but it's whether or not you do something with that opportunity.
Moving on.
I went to see River, and it was nice that he was already in the barn for me.
I got to work with him and listen to my new playlist of "Absolutely Shameless Dance Songs", mostly from the early '90's. Great stuff.
He did well overall, though it took a lot of motivation to get some good, forward movement. We did finally get some that passed.
His yields are getting nice.
I stood up on him for a count of 30 again, and got a bit of nice side passing in each direction.
The young woman with health issues did come today, so I stayed to work with yet another different horse named Amber.
Amber is a pretty arabian that was once put in the same pen as River, and River acted like a stallion trying to keep her to himself. This was about two years ago, and was pretty disruptive and potentially dangerous to River's health, and to anyone who might have to separate them (such as myself, when I came to ride).
We managed to separate them, with great difficulty, and R keeps them separate now. It was so weird, as River has lived with other mares, is currently living with a mare named Halle, and never acted like that before.
A different gelding, also a "gentleman" gelding reacted the same way to this mare last summer. She must be a femme fatale in the horse world.
She was okay to work with, not as hot or flighty as I thought she might be. She was a little on the lazy side if anything, but maybe she was testing me to see if I would actually make her do the work.
The young woman's lesson went well, no drama, which is nice.
Then I helped R clean up the barn and put everything away for the night.
I got home and my Sweetie got home not too much later. I put Dandy back in his pen, we took the goats to the heated garage because of the cold snap that's coming, and we got a sled load of fire wood, and my husband cleared some snow with the snow blower while I got supper ready.
We didn't watch anything, but we ate and caught up on each other's day. He had gone to the climbing gym and was happy with his session.
