Wednesday, November 4
Nov. 5th, 2026 12:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Decent sleep.
Doing a few small things like filling the cat water tower and moving laundry around. Minute things.
I did begin the process of finding a company that would remove the giant slab in our drive way. This company specializes in cutting and removing concrete, so think of who would remove a concrete driveway, or a sidewalk or something like that.
I gave them details of the size of the slab (roughly 6x6 feet, and about 8 inches thick) and someone said they would give us an estimate. They DO come out to our neck of the woods.
I have no doubt that it will be expensive, which sucks, but if my husband can't/doesn't want to get it out of the yard any other way, than what choice is there?
The good news is that someone who lives not far from us says they want the wooden deck, since my husband is very invested in having someone else use it instead of throw it away.
They don't live far, but my husband will have to get the deck onto our big trailer with the tractor (this person will help, whatever that means when you have to lift it with a tractor) and then we will have to take it to his place and get it off the trailer. For free.
I suppose this person may do us a good turn somewhere down the road, but whatever. If it makes my husband happy and gets it out of the yard, then good enough.
So I felt a weight lift from that. I've been in fight mode for about the last two days over those stupid decks. My husband was already making the "they might be there now until spring" noises, and I'm not having that if I can help it.
Friend D called, and we talked for awhile. She had a visit with someone from our class, and of course she found out about all the recent drama. We talked about it too (another recent source of being in fight mode).
She's doing okay, but living with a lot of pain. She's just sore all over, and she doesn't know why. She's trying to do things to reduce general inflammation and she's reasonably active, but so far nothing helps and she's having trouble sleeping. All of which sucks big time.
I'm glad she called. It's nice to be remembered.
After doing chores and such I headed to the barn. We have a lesson tonight.
R is home, so we had a lesson with her.
L came into the barn before the lesson started, and we talked about her experience in Kentucky. It sounded very chaotic, stressful, and on and on. I know they had fun too, and of course even if it is incredibly difficult to go somewhere like that and work with horses they don't know (Patrick brought his horses for them to use) and so on, it's a real experience in learning to perform under pressure and to do the best they can with no re-takes (when we do "tests" at the barn, there are retakes).
I think her description of the difficulties of working with Patrick's horses was also a useful experience, since his horses didn't have much show experience and were having issues with being separated from their friends and environmental distractions. R's horses are all pretty seasoned show horses now, and most of the time the students who went to Kentucky either work with their own horses at home, or R's horses at THEIR home, and they don't have the stress of traveling to a venue and all the noise and distractions and so on.
Showing "away" is a whole different ball of wax.
L also gave me another one of her wonderful art works. It's so well done! I very much appreciate it.
River's breathing was not good tonight, and in general he was kind of draggy. That seems odd, given that it is cool (though warmer today than it has been). His shoulder is still subtly off, so we gave all of those things consideration.
We worked on getting him forward (of course we did) in hand before asking for a stationary circle, and in ridden work focused on getting yields with an ever lighter cue.
There was another young rider from our barn there tonight watching our lesson, as she was doing this for "job shadowing" credits.
It was fine, but not a lot of energy.
I did spend more time in the barn after giving River a massage and doing some stretches. I talked with R about her experience in Kentucky.
It's interesting that from what she said, and what L said, that Patrick (who runs our Liberty organization) is not particularly organized and a bit "spontaneous" in a way that made it hard for everyone else to know what they were supposed to be doing.
So LOTS to take in for information from L and R.
I came home, and my Sweetie was making supper. I do appreciate him doing so, and I tell him so every night, as it makes my life better to come home from either town or the barn and there's a hot meal on the way. I do cook sometimes, but maybe only once or twice a week.
He seemed tired too. I know this pain thing is pretty much constant for him, I hope they can get to the bottom of it with the ultrasound. He's also getting really tired of his job. It feels repetitive and unrewarding for him, and he's tired of management making the same mistakes over and over again. He's probably pretty tired of his wife being angry at him too.
Well, I'm tired too. My nervous system is finally coming out of "fight" mode after the last few days of being angry for several reasons.
Decent sleep.
Doing a few small things like filling the cat water tower and moving laundry around. Minute things.
I did begin the process of finding a company that would remove the giant slab in our drive way. This company specializes in cutting and removing concrete, so think of who would remove a concrete driveway, or a sidewalk or something like that.
I gave them details of the size of the slab (roughly 6x6 feet, and about 8 inches thick) and someone said they would give us an estimate. They DO come out to our neck of the woods.
I have no doubt that it will be expensive, which sucks, but if my husband can't/doesn't want to get it out of the yard any other way, than what choice is there?
The good news is that someone who lives not far from us says they want the wooden deck, since my husband is very invested in having someone else use it instead of throw it away.
They don't live far, but my husband will have to get the deck onto our big trailer with the tractor (this person will help, whatever that means when you have to lift it with a tractor) and then we will have to take it to his place and get it off the trailer. For free.
I suppose this person may do us a good turn somewhere down the road, but whatever. If it makes my husband happy and gets it out of the yard, then good enough.
So I felt a weight lift from that. I've been in fight mode for about the last two days over those stupid decks. My husband was already making the "they might be there now until spring" noises, and I'm not having that if I can help it.
Friend D called, and we talked for awhile. She had a visit with someone from our class, and of course she found out about all the recent drama. We talked about it too (another recent source of being in fight mode).
She's doing okay, but living with a lot of pain. She's just sore all over, and she doesn't know why. She's trying to do things to reduce general inflammation and she's reasonably active, but so far nothing helps and she's having trouble sleeping. All of which sucks big time.
I'm glad she called. It's nice to be remembered.
After doing chores and such I headed to the barn. We have a lesson tonight.
R is home, so we had a lesson with her.
L came into the barn before the lesson started, and we talked about her experience in Kentucky. It sounded very chaotic, stressful, and on and on. I know they had fun too, and of course even if it is incredibly difficult to go somewhere like that and work with horses they don't know (Patrick brought his horses for them to use) and so on, it's a real experience in learning to perform under pressure and to do the best they can with no re-takes (when we do "tests" at the barn, there are retakes).
I think her description of the difficulties of working with Patrick's horses was also a useful experience, since his horses didn't have much show experience and were having issues with being separated from their friends and environmental distractions. R's horses are all pretty seasoned show horses now, and most of the time the students who went to Kentucky either work with their own horses at home, or R's horses at THEIR home, and they don't have the stress of traveling to a venue and all the noise and distractions and so on.
Showing "away" is a whole different ball of wax.
L also gave me another one of her wonderful art works. It's so well done! I very much appreciate it.
River's breathing was not good tonight, and in general he was kind of draggy. That seems odd, given that it is cool (though warmer today than it has been). His shoulder is still subtly off, so we gave all of those things consideration.
We worked on getting him forward (of course we did) in hand before asking for a stationary circle, and in ridden work focused on getting yields with an ever lighter cue.
There was another young rider from our barn there tonight watching our lesson, as she was doing this for "job shadowing" credits.
It was fine, but not a lot of energy.
I did spend more time in the barn after giving River a massage and doing some stretches. I talked with R about her experience in Kentucky.
It's interesting that from what she said, and what L said, that Patrick (who runs our Liberty organization) is not particularly organized and a bit "spontaneous" in a way that made it hard for everyone else to know what they were supposed to be doing.
So LOTS to take in for information from L and R.
I came home, and my Sweetie was making supper. I do appreciate him doing so, and I tell him so every night, as it makes my life better to come home from either town or the barn and there's a hot meal on the way. I do cook sometimes, but maybe only once or twice a week.
He seemed tired too. I know this pain thing is pretty much constant for him, I hope they can get to the bottom of it with the ultrasound. He's also getting really tired of his job. It feels repetitive and unrewarding for him, and he's tired of management making the same mistakes over and over again. He's probably pretty tired of his wife being angry at him too.
Well, I'm tired too. My nervous system is finally coming out of "fight" mode after the last few days of being angry for several reasons.
no subject
Date: 2026-11-05 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-11-05 07:23 am (UTC)Here's the thing. He also doesn't have to just give up and stop trying to deal with them. He has to stay in problem solving mode and create a plan for things like this. Not just sigh and go "well, we can always deal with that in the spring".
He has done this with so many things over the years. Just "left it till spring", so that we can begin summer with all that crap sitting around waiting for us, instead of having a fresh slate and a clean yard.
I know it's getting harder for him to muster the enthusiasm to deal with things, but that should be a warning to him. To start wrapping up the "forever project" of this house and hire more help.
no subject
Date: 2026-11-05 07:27 am (UTC)People get tired when they lose enthusiasm. Totally understandable.
no subject
Date: 2026-11-05 08:17 pm (UTC)It still functioned as a deck on that side of the house for the last six years, and it was something we salvaged from the tearing down of the deck from the trailer. So all told, it's been a deck for about 25 years or more (no idea when the former owners built it).
We wanted to go with a grey composite material that better match the siding on the house and I would never need to stain. Plus it would then match the stairs we built.
My husband is right in that it would still serve just fine for someone else, but it wouldn't be a "nice" deck, just a "serviceable" deck.
no subject
Date: 2026-11-06 08:41 am (UTC)Will you be remodelling the new front porch, someday, with design improvement?
no subject
Date: 2026-11-06 08:22 pm (UTC)I know that nothing will make it look more like a covered veranda, because there is no way to cover a deck that large and have it look right. It would only look like a giant car port.
Too many other things mean that it cannot look like the one picture I sent. The basement windows need to be open, and to make the veranda properly, it would have to be above those windows, and so on.
I don't know why my husband kept saying he could make something that would look like my vision, and then we end up with what we have, and he's still trying to say that it can look like a veranda. No, it will not. It will always look like a big deck split down the middle by a set of stairs.
Covering it is not going to fix it.
Well, no point in just picking at that scab. It is what it is now.
no subject
Date: 2026-11-06 08:54 pm (UTC)What was built, unfortunately, is a platform bisected by stairs. It might be difficult to maintain when it snows.
The verandah you wanted would not have covered the basement windows unless panels or trellis had been installed. And the attached roof would protect the porch floor from snow and rain.
I hope some day the builder modifies it closer to your nice vision.