Jedi's Progress

Jedi has been here for just over four months.  I am very pleased with his progress since he arrived in mid-April.  When he came, he was skinnier than I had expected (hadn't laid eyes on him in a couple of weeks since K3 and I had gone out for a test ride on him).  He was also way jumpier, tense almost all the time when being handled and didn't seem to know how to cross-tie.

April, a quick picture in a brief moment of stillness in the cross ties 

(at that time he would stand still for up to a minute, as long as there were other horses in the barn with him.)

I'm very happy with his weight gain, he's starting to look round now, and his spine no longer is a ridge that runs down his back.

nice 'flat' spine, not a ridge of bones

He also stands nicely in the cross ties most of the time, even without other horses in the barn with him.  I can trust him to stand quietly for a grandkid to groom him and not knock them over with a sudden jump sideways or forward, and he doesn't ever pull back on the ties.

Early August, he now stands calmly all by himself (no other horses in the barn) most of the time.

Also note how more filled out his body is compared to the April picture.

 He trusts us (me, DH, K3, and lately Faline has started handling him) now and isn't tense around us.  He does still have moments of forgetting to respect personal space--usually when being led out to the pasture--but even those are becoming fewer and farther between.

K3 and I have taught him to longe calmly rather than race around us in frantic circles.  He is learning to take polite contact with the longe line, and also to stay out on the end of it for his circle rather than crowding us or trying to cut through the center with a hugely drooping line that he could get his feet tangled in.

He stands quietly at the mounting block for kids to get on, and Faline to get off.  He still fidgets when I go to mount him, but not as badly.  We're still overcoming old habits and his prior (lack of??) training.

a business-like walk

K3 rides him around at walk and trot, his steering has improved and he hasn't walked (or trotted) through her reins in a while.  His trot, which was so tense and very sewing-machine-like (legs going straight up and down), is becoming more relaxed and longer strides forward with his legs.

K3 riding a long trot stride!

He has improved so much, in fact, that earlier this month I decided he was probably safe enough (trustworthy enough) to try putting Faline on.

Faline, posing for a picture pre-ride.

With me leading him, and DD1 walking on his right side as a spotter, Faline has ridden him twice now, about 10 minutes each time, at a walk.  She's never been on a horse before, so she's a little intimidated by his size and the newness of sitting up on a living thing that moves on its own.  Both rides have been very successful in terms of her enjoyment, and his good behavior.

We are on the right track, for sure.  I believe he will be (probably next year, since I don't see any of the grandkids riding much in the cold weather) a good horse that they all can ride and be safe on.  Which was the whole point of buying him.

Bye-Bye, Blue Truck

 Well, we finally got everything all sorted out with what to do with the Blue Truck after DH hit a deer with it back in late June.  Insurance claim, repair estimates, the insurance company declaring it totaled, do we want to salvage it (buy it back from the insurance company and take market value untotaled minus market value totaled as our settlement), let the insurance company have it (and get a settlement for entire pretotaled market value), if we salvage it do we want to repair it ourselves or pay a body shop to repair it or just sell it as-is to someone else (theoretically getting the same dollar figure overall as if we had let the insurance company have it). . .

There were a lot of scenarios to run through in making our decision.  That took several weeks, especially as we had our family vacation to Myrtle Beach not too many weeks after the deer hit took place.  There was just a ton going on during that time frame and trying to figure out each what if for the Blue Truck's future couldn't always be the front and center thing of conversation between DH and I.  So the calendar turned to August before we finally made our decision and wrapped everything up with the insurance company.

We salvaged the truck.  We did not let the insurance company have it.

DH talked to a few family members in regards to their interest in the truck as is; each of them had expressed, in the past, an interest in purchasing it if we should ever sell it.  Would any of them be interested in it now, knowing what repairs it needed?

Yes.  One of them would.  They didn't care about the cosmetics of the dented pieces that still work perfectly fine.  With no mechanical damage, the truck still operates exactly as a truck should.  They knew someone who, for their labor, would do the repairs on the safety features if the family member bought (new or from a salvage yard) the parts.

But did we really want to sell it?  Or did we want to see what a dealer (probably the one whose collision center had done the repair estimate for the insurance claim) would give us for it as a trade in if we ordered a brand new truck?  Afterall, DH has been rolling around the idea of a new truck, perhaps a three-quarter ton, for a few years now.  Plus, in the Spring, it will be four years since we bought Sweet Madame Blue, and part of DH's 'level' with his employer (and the accompanying company vehicle) requires us to purchase a new (of that brand) vehicle every four years. . . 

After many hours of soul searching (mostly on DH's part, as my opinion could only be given so many times without it starting to feel like a character attack), it was decided that we would not repair the truck ourselves.  Because a) DH really doesn't have the desire to do that stuff--work on auto repairs--anymore, b) lacking desire it would be something to easily put off for months and months and (you get the picture), c) I absolutely refuse to drive it lacking some necessary saftey features--part of the repairs that would be a pain in the ass to do and likely be put off (such as replacing the seat belts).

We decided not to pay a collision center/body shop to do the repairs because other than the seat belts and side airbags, they are easy enough for a person with desire and a little knowledge to do themselves.

We decided to sell the truck, in it's current condition, to the family member who wanted it for the same price as the insurance had deducted as it's crashed value in our insurance claim.  Late last week, DH delivered it to them.

So, bye-bye Blue Truck.  Thank you for your service.  Sorry you met that deer in late June, sorry that we won't be owning you anymore.  Hopefully family member does right by you and appreciates the work you will do for them.

Blue Truck, when it was new

Anansi

In late July, I stopped in my local library to return the book I had taken on vacation with me, and while I was there I saw a tray with about six tiny cups holding baby spider plants.  I also noticed that the library--which is very tiny as libraries go--had been somewhat rearranged in the about three weeks it had been since I was last there.  There was now a big spider plant in a pot in the front window behind the checkout desk, and, I suspected, that big spider plant was the source of the little 'potted' babies.

The tray had a sign that said "Free", and each little spider plant had a popsicle stick in it with a small envelope hanging from the stick that said "Adopt a baby spider plant".  Inside the envelope was a small booklet on baby spider plant care.

Each little (paper, looks like a ketchup cup from Burger King) pot had a small, infant sized wrist band taped around it, and each of those bands sported a name.  Every name was a character in a book, and while I didn't recognize all of them, I suspect they had something spider-related in common.

When I read this one, Anansi, I knew that I would be taking a baby spider plant home with me.  Because Anansi is not only a character in a book, but it is also a song by Raffi.  When my kids were little, we listened to a lot of Raffi. We had many Raffi cds. The lyrics to Anansi immediately popped into my head:

Anansi, he is a spider,

Anansi, he is a man.

Anasi, he is a lazy one,

Do as little as he can. . .

The song goes on of course, look it up if you don't know it (beware, it will stick in your head!).

Yep, that little plant, that Anansi, was definitely waiting for me to show up and claim it.  So I did.  He went home with me, cherished like an unexpected prize.

Once home, I opened the envelope and found the care booklet. Also inside the little envelope, was a teeny tiny certificate of adoption with the plant's name on it and other parts to be filled in by the adopter.  The envelope, booklet and adoption certificate are all very cute and remind me of the little things inside the pages of the Jolly Postman books.  Whomever at the library came up with this idea for rehoming their (unwanted--not enough room) baby spider plants did a brilliant job.

This little Anansi has gotten a new, bigger, more durable pot.  And a place with indirect light.  I had been wanting a spider plant for a while, it's been many years since my last one died (cats?  young children?), and now I have a new baby one to enjoy.

Games Horse People Play

 There are many 'games' that people who spend copious amounts of time around horses are familiar with.  Probably the most well known is "Catch Me If You Can" (which sometimes is also called "Tag, You're It"), where the horse person goes out into the pasture to catch the horse and bring them in (usually to ride, sometimes for the farrier or the vet), and the horse, spying the person from across the pasture comes part of the way to the person, then spins and runs off in the opposite direction.  If the person gives chase, following the horse, this can go on for a long time. That one is one of my most hated games, and I refuse to play it unless absolutely necessary (there are ways to train this out of a horse, but you must be diligent in the process).

There's also "Find the Shoe", in which the horse loses one of their shoes, either by getting it sucked off in mucky spring mud, or steps on the heel of it with the toe of a rear foot while running and wrenching it loose (in which instance it may go briefly airborne).  Either way, there's a metal shoe out in the pasture somewhere, and the person is tasked with finding it.  Over the years, and working and multiple farms with shod horses, I've gotten to what is probably expert level in that game.  It's time consuming, but I can succeed.

Another is "Where's My Halter?",  where the horse, turned out with a halter on either rubs it off on something (their leg, a tree, the water trough, a fence post, the edge of a run-in shed or other building) or entices their pasturemate(s) to play Bitey-Face and pull the halter off for them.  Then the horse person must search the pasture to find the halter so they can put it back on and lead the horse from the pasture back to the barn or whereever else the person had it in mind to take the horse.  I also avoid this one by not leaving halters on during turnout (a few exceptions being if the horse is new and unfamiliar with the barn routine or hard to catch [see "Catch Me If You Can"]).

The latest one I have had the dubious honor of playing (thanks, Tubbs) is "Fly Mask, Or Pile of Horse Poop?"  Tubbs always wears a fly mask over his face when he goes outside, even in the cold weather when there are no flies.  This is because he once had a cancerous tumor on the lower lid of his right eye, which, during treatment of said tumor, left him with light sensitivity and decreased vision in that eye as well as missing a small chunk of eyelid.  So he wears his mask as both protection from bugs and other things that might get into that eye and as sunglasses against the UV rays.

Tubbs, however, would prefer not to wear a mask.  He likes to try to rub his off.  He also has a tendencey to shred them.  A couple of weeks ago, his owner brought him out a brand new mask to replace the one he wore into dilapidation.  The 'old' mask was a light grey color.  The new mask is a stylish black (he's a black horse, so this one, at a glance, blends right into his head).  Unfortunately the mask not only matches the color of his hair, it matches the color of every manure pile in his pasture.

So, one recent evening, when I went to bring the horses into their stalls for dinner, I found Tubbs mask-less.  Which meant, ready or not, I got to play "Fly Mask, Or Pile of Horse Poop?" and try to find his mask in the expanse of pasture.

In the three pictures above, can you tell which black splotch is a pile of poop and which is the fly mask?

If you said the fly mask is in the third picture, you'd be correct.  But without getting up close, it's hard to tell which is which.  Definitely not a fun game when you are searching an acre of pasture.  Then again, none of these games horses like to volunteer their people to play are very fun.  Just another reason horse people are crazy.

A Drive Down Memory Lane

 Or, actually, down Queens Lane, which is the name of the road my paternal grandparents lived on for about 10 years after my grandmother retired from her factory job (Grandpa was 11 years older than her an had been retired for a while) and they moved from Michigan to Southeastern Ohio to be nearer to her family (she was born in eastern Kentucky and had several siblings still living in Kentucky at the time).  For several summers, my brother and I would go spend a week with Grandpa and Grandma at their 'farm', which was two acres on a hill side next to a small dairy farm, and they grew a huge garden.  Our visits always happened to coincide with the peak of green bean harvesting and canning.

But it's been over 35 years since I was last there.  When they moved, and sold it, in early 1992 to be nearer my Uncle in the Akron area because Grandpa had quite bad Alzheimer's by then, and Grandma had never learned to drive a car, I was living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with DH as he was working on finishing his engineering degree.  

On our way home from the Myrtle Beach vacation in July, our route took us not terribly far from the little town they had lived outside of.  DH asked if I wanted to detour and drive past their old place, and I said sure!  He had never been there, only heard stories from me about it. That was the piece of land that inspired so much of my desire for my own plot of land in the country with a big garden, and I had so many fun memories of the place that how could I pass up this chance to revisit it?

I knew that their old single-wide house trailer was long gone from the property. The people they had sold the land to had built their own home on it.  But I thought I would recognize the land, the big red pole barn.  And surely the neighboring dairy farm would be a dead giveaway.  Or the small house and metal sided shed that belonged to the neighbor on the other side of Grandpa and Grandma's place.

Nope.  Nope.  And nope again.  Instead of having been built up in the last 34 years (35 since my last visit), the whole area seems to have become grown over and more wild.  Even the narrow road, always about one and a half car widths, had become less civilized.  More of a two-track in some sections than an actual county-maintained road.  The old houses I remembered?  Most of them gone. The chicken man's shack of a house, I couldn't even tell you where it had been. The dairy farm?  Not a building left!!  The big red pole barn at Grandpa and Grandma's?  Also gone. The other neighbor's house and shed?  You guessed it, gone.

The only way I even recognized the place was as we came around a curve in the road, and it began to rise to a hill up ahead.  My whole body strained forward, towards that hill.  My body knew that hill even though absolutely nothing else was how I'd remembered it.  As we crested the hill, my head turned left and I saw an unfamiliar house with unfamiliar small outbuildings, and I knew, I just knew sure as the sun rises in the east that once upon a time, I had swung on a stick tied to a piece of rope tied to the sturdy branch of a tree that grew atop the embankment edging the road.  Right there.  In the early 1980s, a 9 or 10 or 11 year old me had swung out over that exact spot in the road.  And somewhere hidden behind the house that now stood on the hill, my Grandma had been inside the house trailer pressure canning beans, and Grandpa had sat in the shade of an apple tree that no longer existed.  And behind that house trailer, behind that apple tree, on the other side of a field fence that was long gone, in a pasture that now was full of brush and trees,  brown Guernseys once grazed, waiting for the farmer's son to drive around on his three-wheeler to round them up for milking.  Way down at the bottom on the hill, now all in brush, used to be the other neighbor's shed, that if I threw with all my might, I could lob an apple from that apple tree by the house trailer on top of the hill and just barely peg the shed with a satisfying pinging sound.

Everything was both familiar and totally unrecognizable at the same time.

For a good hour or more after that, as we drove, on the interstate again, DH and I talked about what that piece of land had been, who the people had been, how life had been.  It was a great way to pass the time on our long journey home to this little place here.  A place that in many ways, is now what that little two acres in rural Ohio had been then.

(Except I don't swing out over the road on a stick on a rope no more.  I also don't lob apples at other people's sheds.  I do pick and can green beans, and walk in fields, and hear the mooing of cows at my neighbor's dairy farm.  Unfortunately those cows don't graze in grassy pastures, they stand in free stall barns all day and have ground food brought to them by tractor loads.)

New Socks, Underway!

 After finishing my Dad's socks for Father's Day, I took a short break from knitting.  Not because I wanted to, but because there were so many things vying for my time (like prepping the farm for a farm sitter while DH and I were on our big family vacation in July).

However, I knew I wanted to take a knitting project with me on the long drive to and from Myrtle Beach, so two days before we hit the road, I went into my stash of fingering yarn and grabbed out a blue tonal skein.  Why blue?  Because for over a year one of the things on my Want To Make list has been a pair of blue socks for myself.  

At the time I wrote that list, I didn't have a specific pattern in mind, but now I did.  Because in late June I had been working ten minutes here and twenty minutes there on darning some of my handknit socks that had worn holes in the balls of the feet or the heels (or both!) and in that pile of socks to be mended I found my Cadence socks.  

I had knit these socks ten years ago, and they had been darned at least once since then.  Unfortunately, when I gave them a good look this time, I had to admit that they were just too worn out to darn again.  It would be more like trying to knit new heels and soles for them.  And I definitely didn't have the time, talent, or enough of the original yarn left to attempt that.  So I sadly said goodbye to them.

All of which meant that my next socks, my blue socks, would most definitely need to be knit using the Cadence pattern that I so loved.

With my pattern chosen, and yarn in hand, I cast on the first sock.  Knit two rows of the cuff, then packed yarn, needles, pattern, and row counter away in my travel bag so it would be handy on my trip. 

On the way to Myrtle Beach I didn't get a whole lot of knitting time, as we had K3 and Faline riding with us.  I managed to get through the cuff and the first chart for the leg.  I also knit a little (an inch?) off and on while at Myrtle Beach some of the times I was hanging out on the balcony having a breather from all my vacation-mates.

On the way home, it was just DH and I in the truck (Faline rode with her parents and brothers, who were marathon driving straight back to Michigan.  K3, along with Toad and Rascal, stayed in South Carolina visiting their other grandparents--K2's parents) and I got a ton of knitting done.

When we arrived back home, I had the leg about three-quarters knit.

Then it sat for a week, untouched, while I scrambled around trying to catch up on housekeeping and farm work post-vacation.  Recently I have worked on it a couple of brief spells and currently I have finished the length of the leg and am about half-way through the heel flap.  

I have no illusions of any great spans of time to knit on this in the near future.  If I can have both socks done by my own birthday (December), that would be great.  But more than likely I will be setting this project aside later this month and working on a different knitting project instead.

Because Faline, seeing me knitting while we were on the road to our vacation destination, dropped hints in the way that only a five year old can do.  "Amma, I don't have any socks knit by you.  I like pink.  That would be a good color for knit socks."

Her birthday is mid-November.  I have at least one skein of fingering yarn in pink.  If I focus my knitting time on it, I could probably whip up a pair of youth size 1 pink socks by then.

Books Read in 2026: July

 Laughed Til He Died by Carolyn Hart.  Liked it.  I picked this up at the Spring book swap not realizing it was number 20 in a 26 book series!  That said, it read well as a stand alone, although I do think I may have read one of the earlier novels years and years ago.  The main characters felt familiar.  Anyway, this mystery has a quick pace, lots of characters, not gory and also not too cutesy like I find the modern (last 8ish years or so) cozy mysteries to be.

Summer State of Mind by Kristy Woodson Harvey.  Sucked me in right from the start.  While I didn't like how some of the characters behaved (way too rapid met-to-bedroom for me), I did like the story even if it did seem to resolve a little too quickly and easily in the last few chapters.  Compared to most of the book, which had many messy complex things about the characters, the last portion just wrapped up everything too neatly and 'everybody's fine with it' for me to find believable.

The Shippers by Katherine Center.  This is her newest rom-com and it was absolutely the most perfect beach read to take with me on summer vacation.  I loved it.  I devoured it.  I could have easily read it in one continuous reading marathon if there hadn't been family with me to interrupt my reading time.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson.  This is another book I picked up at the Spring book swap.  I threw it in my suitcase while packing for vacation in case I finished my other book I was bringing along (which I did).  And, while I do like the author's descriptive style, I have to confess that overall the book just felt like it had no real point and I started to struggle with my desire to keep reading it right around page 70 or so.  I kept going to page 120-something and decided to DNF it.

Call It Horses by Jessie van Eerden.  Another book swap find.  I have to admit I just opened it near the end of the month, so haven't read enough to have an opinion of it yet.

A Puzzle A Month

I pick up jigsaw puzzles in spurts.  Sometimes none for months (or maybe even a year???), and then two to four or even five at once if I happen upon a bunch I like for a good (cheap) price.  My 'free' time varies throughout the year, and historically I do only a few puzzles over the course of twelve months, mostly in the cold dark months of winter.  Which means I have found myself with a backlog of puzzles waiting to be put together.  Some from as far back as 2015 according to this Goodwill sticker on one.

I like to do puzzles 'in season' by what their picture is: winter scenes in winter, summer scenes in summer, etc.  Some are harder to peg down the exact season, and those I tend to do if my eye happens to catch that one more than a seasonally recognizable one at the time I am grabbing a puzzle to work on.  Which is how I have 11+ year old puzzles in my stash that still haven't been done (rarely do I do a puzzle more than once, so I tend to give them away after completing them).

 This past winter I put together a big one.  In spring, none.  In late spring I decided that I should, if possible, devote some of my scarce summer free time to working through that puzzle stash.  If I could get one puzzle put together each month that would be a good thing.  Not just for reducing the amount of puzzle boxes I have stashed, but because working puzzles is a relaxing thing for me who has a hard time sitting still if her brain (and hands) aren't working away at something.

In June, I did this one:

And for most of July, I picked away at this one for about three weeks:

This is the one I have chosen for August: 

I find it both entertaining and a bit frustrating to note the difference in price on puzzles from the exact same Goodwill location in 2015 (99 cents) to the 2025 sticker on my August puzzle.  It's not like it costs them any more to acquire them in 2025 than it did in 2015 (ahem, free donations).  Then again, overhead costs (utilities, building maintainence, minimum wage) have gone up a lot in 10 years, so I guess that 'explains' the price jump.  (I'm looking at it in percentage increase--a tad over 131%, rather than simply $1.30 more).

Anyhoo. . . 

Maybe I'll try to keep up this puzzle a month thing for the remainder of 2026.  That would open up some currently used (for puzzles) storage space as well as bring me some tidbits of enjoyment weekly and would move along five more puzzles to new homes by 2027. Win-win, right?

A Pocket Full of Shells

 (My apologies if you will now have "Bulls on Parade" running through your head the remainder of the day).

This month, DH and I took our first family vacation in probably twenty years.  I know we didn't take one in 2007, the year DS1 graduated from high school, and the next year he was in the Marine Corps when we took the other three kids out to Oregon and back roadtripping to (and from) the family reunion hosted by DH's second youngest aunt. So it's been twenty years, or maybe even 21, since DH, I and all four of our children (and population exploded family) went away together on vacation.

We (DH & I) have talked about doing this for a long time, especially in the last several years.  Then, in 2025, on the flight back from taking K3 and Toad to Sedona over Spring Break, DH asked the two of them for ideas of places we could all go on vacation together in the future.  K3 said "The beach!"  Specifically she was thinking of Myrtle Beach, where we had taken her and Toad back in 2022, and her alone way back in 2015 (which she couldn't remember that trip because she was only 3 at the time.)

Which was how this family vacation went from concept to reality in 2026.  DH. Me.  Our four kids.  Their spouses (and DD2s current boyfriend [whom I really do need to assign a blog name to because he's looking more and more like a lifer]).  Nine grandkids (Two-EEs daughter Cowgirl didn't come; at 17 and having been living with her father and step-mother for the last few years she has in the past 8 months or so decided she doesn't 'need' her mother or that side of the family.)  Myrtle Beach.  Four days, three nights, lodging for everyone covered by DH and I. (They were on their own for food, transportation and activity expenses.)

It was chaotic.  I mean, is it even possible for anything involving 19 people, 9 of them children, to not be chaotic?  It was often loud. (NINE children!)  Was it enjoyable?  Do any of us ever want to attempt such a thing again?

YES!  And another YES!  In fact, on the long car ride home, there were texts flying back and forth vehicle to vehicle and state to state (it's about a 14 hour drive for most of us) proposing we do a huge group trip every 2-3 years.  Possible future vacation destinations were tossed around; from mountains to beaches to National Parks.

But back to this current vacation.  I tried to walk the beach every day.  Sometimes at low tide, sometimes at high tide.  Sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening.

And it seemed that I couldn't take a beach walk without coming back with shells in my pocket.  Which brought to mind the lyric "rally round the family with a pocket full of shells".  Different context, different shells from the song mentioned above, but it sorta fit.  Lotta family.  Lotta shells.

some of my favorite shells are teeny, but intact

In addition to finding shells, there was 

--swimming, both in the ocean and several of the resort's pools (most of which I did not have my phone for, so very few swimming pictures)

9 grandkids together on the beach!, 

Buck, K3 holding Lucky, Toad holding Octavia, Rascal, Tractor (front), Faline (mostly hidden by Tractor), Sixlet

--kite flying; tiny kites that hardly show up in the pictures although we watched from our balcony other people (adults) flying huge shark and squid kites

--group dinners made in one or both of the suites we stayed in (one 3-bedroom suite and one 2-bedroom suite).  Smoked brisket and pulled pork (the first night, brought from home, smoked by DH), spaghetti and meatballs, make-your-own taco bar (Tuesday!), and white chicken chili with toasted baguettes (which oddly enough wasn't the wrong temp/flavor for a hot humid southern evening and was heartily enjoyed by all ages).

waiting to be called to dinner

waiting again

--kids babysat by aunts and uncles while sets of parents each had a turn at a childess afternoon or evening out.

DD1 in charge of (niece) Octavia

 --general shenanigans

Monkeys on the luggage cart

"Hiding"

Can a 2 year old fit in the cabinet?

Yes, yes he can.

--and even a succesful family picture (which I decided was too many tiny faces to try to make them unrecognizable/anonymous so I could share it online and abide by my own no recognizable faces blog photos rule).  I have plans for that family picture to be enlarged and printed on a canvas to hang on my living room wall before the year is through. (We also have not had a 'real' family picture since before DS1 graduated high school in 2007.  Its been a crazy past 20 years.)

In addition to our mass activities, some family members formed various smaller groups for various outings (I didn't go, so didn't get pictures) such as:

• miniature golf 
• go-carts 
• an aquarium visit 
• a driving range
• a nature preserve 

And while they were gone to those things, I enjoyed some peace and quiet, reading or knitting or beach walking or sitting on the edge of the water just feeling the waves and thinking; and recharging my (introvert) batteries for more group fun!

Make My Horse Life Easier Tip #10

 This tip on making horse owning/caring for horses less complicated is a quick, easy, and cheap one.

If you, like me, go through more than one quart-sized spray bottle of fly spray in a season with your horse and you don't like to continually buy (and eventually accumulate empty) bottles of fly spray, here's one you may or may not have figured out yet.

Many long years ago, I started buying concentrated fly spray.  It comes in a fairly potent strength, which you then dilute with water according to the ratio you want for the strength you need (warning: do not put undiluted concentrate on your horse.  They will end up with serious skin reactions, possibly even chemical burns).

But, while it is cheaper to buy concentrate and dilute it yourself reusing one spray bottle over and over, that isn't the tip.  Because I also buy a gallon size container of a pre-diluted fly spray (this brand doesn't come in concentrate), which is also cheaper than four quart-sized spray bottles of the same stuff would be.

My tip has to do with getting that concentrate, or the pre-diluted stuff in the gallon, into your spray bottle you are reusing.

For years I would remove the sprayer head on the bottle, and carefully pour in the new stuff I was refilling it with, trying very hard not to spill any.  And, inevitably, one hand or the other would always wiggle or shift just enough that the mouths of the two containers weren't perfectly lined up and I'd end up with fly spray running down the outside of the bottle.  Which meant that there was always some waste happening.  Not to mention getting on my hand/the ground/the barn aisle/the tack room floor.

Until it hit me what a simple solution there was to this ongoing problem:

Use a funnel!!!

Seriously, why had this never occurred to me before?  You can get a plastic funnel for a dollar or less in tons of places.  

The no-spill solution: a funnel.

So that's my tip for today.  If you don't all ready have and use one, go buy yourself a funnel for your barn.  Really.  Go do it.  They're cheap and they also don't take up much space to store. I'm pretty sure mine paid for itself in not-spilt fly spray the first season I owned it.

A Trash Story

 

 This is an old picture, because a) this is our truck DH hit the deer with and it is not broken in this picture, and b) there's no leaves on the trees.  It's actually from late fall, if I do remember right.  Anyway it was a while ago.

It shows a bunch of junk in the bed of the pickup.  That is not our junk.  It is junk--likely a countertop and cabinet from someone's remodel--that lay smashed on the shoulder of the road at the intersection where our road meets the main road about a half mile north of this little place here.  Don't know whose junk it is; one day I drove to that intersection on my way somewhere else and saw it.  I assumed someone had been hauling junk in a trailer and this bounced off and smashed on the edge of the road. 

A week later, it was still there.  The owner had not come and cleaned it up.  Did they know?  Well, if I had a trailer full of big things, like a cabinet and a countertop are, I definitely would notice when I got to my destination that one was missing.  I would probably retrace my steps and try to find it.  This person, apparently not.

Two weeks later, yep, still there.  Not only hadn't the owner cleaned it up, neither had anyone else.  A large pile of busted wood, some of which was laminated on one side, and a smashed concrete countertop with sparkly pieces in it.  Plus some metal drawer rails.

It didn't make it to three weeks blocking the shoulder of the road.  Neither DH nor I could stand driving by it any more.  One evening we took our truck down there and cleaned it all up.  We hauled home all the junk somebody else had left there. 

The busted concrete countertop ended up spread out in a low spot on our woods road that often floods and bogs down in the Spring.  It raised that up several inches and also provides tractrion for tractor and four-wheeler tires (although not for horse hooves; I wish DH would add a few inches of dirt on top).

The metal drawer rails went into our scrap metal bin.  The wood  was either burned (if it was a piece without a laminated side) or put into our trash bin if it was laminated.

Not a difficult task to dispose of at all.  Why it had to sit there for so long, I don't know.  It's not like we're the only traffic that drives through that intersection and saw it for days and days and days.

Even more irritating is the fact that for the first week, the county road commission had a "road work ahead" sign almost right next to this pile of broken crap.  They removed their sign, but left the junk right on the shoulder of the road where it lay.  I would have thought the road shoulder was their jurisdiction, not mine (who lives half mile down the road).  Apparently not.

Now I feel like an old fogey saying "What is this world coming to?!?" and shaking my head about the general lack of care about things.

Broken, Broken

 It's been a long six days.  There's the whole holiday weekend thing.  But there's also been some unexpected mentally exhausting things (not that the holiday and social gatherings aren't all ready mentally exhausting enough for me).

Last week, during the heat wave we had, DH and DD1 decided to go up north and go canoeing/kayaking with her two oldest (Faline and Buck) as well as DS1's two oldest (K3 and Toad). It was going to be a head up north one evening, spend the night at the family cabin, go float the next morning/part of the afternoon the next day, possibly spend another night depending on a number of factors, and then head home kind of trip.  DH wanted, since our truck is a 6-passenger kind, for all of them to ride together in one vehicle rather than taking two vehicles on a 400 mile round trip journey.  In terms of expense, it would cut fuel costs roughly in half.

Luckily, logistics (and DD1) prevailed, and she drove herself and her kids separately from DH, K3 and Toad.  This not only gave them a second vehicle to run the shuttle from put-in to take-out on the river with, but it avoided having three kids (two in car seats) crammed together in the backseat, with two overly large adults and a fourth kid (the unlucky skinniest teen/preteen) crammed together in the front seat for 200 miles of hot humid driving (even with air conditioning going) each way.  Not to mention gave them room to keep their clothing and bedding bags inside the vehicle rather than putting all baggage in the open bed of the truck and hoping they didn't encounter pop-up thunderstorms to get everything wet along the way.

Well, they didn't encounter any thunderstorms on the way there (they did almost immediately after getting off the river and loading boats onto the trailer the following day).  However, DH, along with K3 and Toad encountered a deer when they were about 45 minutes short of their destination the first night.

I got a phone call from DH about the time I expected him to be calling me with the "We're here" phone call he usually tries to give me when he's traveling without me, so that I know he's at his destination safely.  Instead of hearing "we're here" though, what he said to me was "We hit a deer."

OH F---!

The world came to a screeching halt.  My gut fell through the soles of my feet.  The pre-sunset daylight went black.

"We're all okay." Was the next thing he said.

The sun shone again, if not quite as bright as it had five seconds before.  My gut rose somewhere around my kneecaps.  Because I was expecting the next statement I heard to be "Get in my (company) truck and come get us please."  I knew that DD1 had left a few hours earlier than he had; they weren't caravaning, so wasn't there at the scene with him and the older two grandkids.  Plus, hers is only a five passenger vehicle.

Instead, I heard "The airbags went off, the side ones, I cut them off so we can see, the truck seems to be fine mechanically, and we're on our way again.  I called 911 but all the cops are busy elsewhere*, so they said it was okay to continue on and we'll do the police report in the morning."

*there aren't a whole lot of police officers in that rural part of northern Michigan, so it's not surprising that there wasn't one available to do a non-injury non-wrecked vehicle deer hit accident report.  Probably busy with other, more serious deer/car accidents, honestly.

The deer had hit them near the passenger side front tire, dented both the doors on the passenger side, as well as cracked the passenger side headlight area, and dented the fender too.  So, after describing to me the damage that DH had seen, he said aloud the thought that was in my head (which made my gut hit the ground again):

"The insurance company is probably going to total it, even though it looks like all somewhat minor cosmetic damage.  Because the airbags went off.  I think that's the policy these days; if the airbags deploy, the vehicle is too expensive to fix so they total it." 

For the record, it's a 2017 truck, we've been the only owners, and it has only about 85,000 miles on it.  It's in great condition--other than the current deer fiasco.  We were not looking to replace it (and have a vehicle loan in roughly the $900-$1k a month range) in the next several years.  

So that was one night last week.  The next day, I noticed that the blower on our (gas) water heater didn't seem to be shutting off even though I was using zero hot water all day.  With just me home, and not doing any laundry or running the dishwasher (or taking a shower, yet), there was no reason for the water heater to need to be firing and heating water constantly.  Weird.  I checked all that I knew to check on it, and couldn't find a reason.  

DH called shortly after that and said that they weren't staying another night, they'd finished canoeing/kayaking and gotten off the river, K3 and Toad were heading home in DD1's vehicle with her and her kids, and that he was headed over to the police station in the county where the deer had hit them the night before in order for the cop to look at the vehicle and file the accident report, then he would be heading home.  

Rather than burden him with my suspicion about something being wrong with the water heater--not only was the blower going constantly, there was absolutely no hot water (I'd checked)--I decided to just tell him about it when he got home.  I'd let him think about the truck and the police report and the insurance claim process on his drive and not further distract him with water heater issues.

But I did tell him about it within the first fifteen minutes he was home.  He checked all the same things I'd checked (proof that I'm not inept at home maintainence things):

• Getting air?  Seems to be.  Blower/fan has been running continuously afterall.
• Got spark?  Yep, can see the 'glowplugs' (not an open flame pilot light system) light up. 
• Got fuel?  Well, we have a recently filled propane tank outside, and the whole system had been checked (and pressure tested) by the fuel company just the day before.  (Hmmm, something in relation to that testing????)  Not to mention that both the (gas) dryer and the (gas) cooktop worked fine.

 and declared that we would have to call a plumber in the morning as it was all ready after business hours that day.

Which lead to the discussion that it is the original water heater to the house, circa 2003.  And, because it is dual chambered and supports both domestic hot water and our hydronic radiant heat system, (and 75 gallon capacity) was a damn expensive unit 23 years ago. Something like three thousand 2003 dollars. Also had to wait 3 weeks for it to come in after we ordered it, as they weren't a commonly stocked item at that time.  If it's dead and we have to replace it, because 23 years is way past the life expectancy of a water heater, how much is a similar one going to cost in 2026 and how available are they?

Ugh.  More money outlay in the near future.  Plus, we had cold showers that night and I had to heat water on the stove to hand-wash dishes with as the dishwasher wasn't going to get them clean and sanitary running only cold water.

Called a local (privately owned) plumbing company in the morning.  They could send someone out around 2 p.m. that afternoon to look at our water heater.

Except, DH had a 2 p.m. appointment with the Chevy dealer body shop to get an estimate on damage to our pick up for the insurance company, and I had an appointment at exactly that same time that had been made three weeks ago and I would definitely get a no-show fee if I canceled it only 5 hours before hand. Plus who knows how many more weeks out it would get rescheduled for?

So he told the plumber that wouldn't work, when was the next time slot they had?  It would be the following morning, and well, we could use the stove to heat whatever hot water we needed in the meantime, so not a life or death thing. He took that next time slot.  Partly because we'd rather support the little guy in our hometown than call the several other (corporately owned) plumbers around and see if they could come before 1:00 or after 3:30 that same day.

When the plumber(s)--two twenty-something guys early in their plumbing careers--came the next day and took a look at our water heater, they both were scratching their heads.  Ours was the oldest water heater they'd ever seen; possibly made in the same year they were, LOL.  But they bravely tried their best to diagnose the issue, then called in their boss (the company owner) to come have a look because they were stumped.

He checked everything they did, and narrowed down the issue to the most likely to be malfunctioning part based on his observations.  Then he proceeded to take that part off, take it apart, clean it off, stick in back together, put it back on the water heater, and voila!  The water heater worked immediately!

PHEW!  A $300 plumbing call is so much preferrable to who knows how many thousands of dollars for a new water heater.  Although I did joke to DH later that he should have asked for a discount, since it turned out to be an educational experience for the two young plumbers, and when the horse vet brings vet students out and the students work on your horse you usually get a discount on the service provided.

Turned out there was debris clogging the fuel line on the water heater.  Most likely related to the pressure testing done by the gas company as that day was the last day I know the water heater was working properly and I had hot water when I turned on the taps.  But kind of hard to prove three days later when the plumber found--and cleared--the clog.

Meanwhile. . . got the repair estimate from the dealer collision center.  It's a lot.  A few hundred over $15k.  That's the total on the list they gave DH of parts needing replacing.  Some parts on the list he is questioning as it was a side impact, not frontal, and the front/dash airbags were not deployed, so no damage to the dash or instrumentation there. . . 

This morning, he got a call from the insurance company; they had received an estimate too from that same dealer collision center.  And because the estimate sent to them was $16,800+, it exceeds the insurance company's repair threshhold of $15,800 for this particular vehicle, so therefore they have declared our truck totaled.

But wait a minute!  Did you notice the discrepancy between the written estimate given to DH and the estimate by the same collision center sent to the insurance company?  Yeah.  DH did too.  He mentioned this to the insurance person on the phone.  They are as confused by the differing amounts as we are, and have requested DH email them a copy of the estimate he was given.  There will be some comparison going on.  

Maybe the truck is not totaled afterall.  We wait in suspense, and possibly will be taking the truck to a different place to have a second estimate done. . . 

Partly because a $500 insurance deductible bill and a fully repaired truck is much better than truck shopping and signing on for a (near) $1k a month auto loan payment right now.  But mostly because those two estimates from the same place don't match and that's kinda hinky.  Not saying there's attempted fraud going on, but what other explanation is there?  Inquiring minds want to know.

The Bear Trash Can (aka my recycling bin)

 This post might get a little long, there's a story to tell.  Bear with me.  (Ha ha, you'll get the pun if you read all the way through.)

This is my "recycling bin".  It is what I've put my recyclables into for over 20 years.  We do not have curbside recycling out in the country where this little place here is located.  We have to provide our own collection container and drive our recyclables to a transfer station or other recycling location (depending on what we are trying to recycle).  As mentioned in this recent post.

Prior to being my recycling bin, it was our trash can.  Around the time we finished building the house and moved into this little place here, most of the trash companies were getting out of bag pick-up and going to wheeled trash bins that they provided their customers.  So my trash can became my recycling bin in the early 2000's.

About ten years prior to that; in 1991, DH and I purchased it (most likely from Pamida or Kmart, as those were the two housewares shopping options where we lived) when we moved to the U.P. (Upper Peninsula for you non-Michiganders and non-Sconnies).  We kept it in our enclosed, but unheated, back porch in the first rental we lived in while DH was in college at the engineering college there.  The second rental we lived in, his final year of college, did not have an enclosed porch.  So we kept this trash can on the back deck of our mobile home which was situated on a corner of the landlord's farm, with woods about 50' from our back door.

The close proximity to the woods is important here.  Because it's how the recycling bin got to be known as the Bear Trash Can in our family.

There were (and still are) black bears in that part of Michigan.  Occasionally we'd see a bear on one of the dirt roads we drove on going to or from work (me) or classes (DH). Including the dirt road we lived on. More consistently, they could be spotted near the dumpsters behind the grocery store in town.

One night, in very early April 1993 (we remember the time frame because DS2 was born the second week of March that year, and he was not yet a month old), DH and I both were woken up from a sound sleep (remember, we had a newborn, so if we were actually asleep it was a pass out from exhaustion kind of sleep!) by what sounded like footsteps and heavy breathing in our living room.

He looked at me, and I looked at him, both wide-eyed in the darkness, and he said "Did you hear that?" To which I replied with a question and a request "Is somebody in the house?  You get up and go check!"

With hearts hammering, I checked on DS2 asleep in basinette right next to the bed, and DH grabbed a baseball bat (why it was in our bedroom, I have no clue). He quietly slipped out of the bedroom, through the utility/laundry room that joined our added-on master bedroom to the rest of the mobile home, and peeked around the corner where the kithen was to his left and the living room to his right.  Turning on lights as he went, he searched the living room, hallway, bathroom, DS1's little bedroom (where he was thankfully still asleep), then the kitchen last.  He found no person in our home, even though he checked behind the shower curtain in the bathroom; we were both that sure we'd heard the breath and heavy footsteps of a human.

Sure now that there was no one in the home, DH stepped out onto the back porch and shone a flashlight around toward the driveway, looking for a person or a car.  Seeing nothing but our own vehicles, he went back to bed where we rehashed what we'd heard.  Eventually we both calmed down enough to get back to sleep, although I'm pretty sure there was a diaper change and feeding for DS2 first.

The next morning, DH went outside for something (I don't remember what, very possibly to drive to the college and go to class), but that's when he noticed our trash can was missing.  It had been on the back deck the night before, and now was not there.  In the daylight he could see much further than he had with the flashlight the night before, and he thought he could see a bit of blue out in the woods behind the house.  So he walked out to investigate, and found our trash can.

As you can see in the picture at the beginning of this story, it has handles that latch down to hold the lid on.  When DH found it, the lid was not on it anymore, and our trash was scattered around.  That was odd.  

Finding the lid, he picked it up to place it back on the trash can (he had gathered up all the trash that he could and put it in the can).  That's when he noticed two punctures near one of the handles.  Weird, but whatever.

(Ignore the flyspecks.  Ugh.  Apparently I need to wash my recycling bin.)

It wasn't until the following weekend, when we took our trash to the township collection site (they were open twice a month for residents to bring in their trash; no pick-up service available in that rural spot in the 1990s) that one of the men working there commented on our trash can lid.

"Looks like you had a bear, eh?" he said.

 And suddenly it all made sense.  Those footsteps and the heavy breathing that had woken us up that one night?  That wasn't a human intruder in our living room.  That was a hungry bear on our back deck (the other side of the living room wall) snuffling around and absconding with our trash can.  Those punctures in the lid?  Bear tooth marks, where it had bit the lid while prying it off to get to the trash inside.

So that's why, even though we haven't needed a trash can for trash in over two decades, we didn't get rid of it.  We kept it and repurposed it for holding recyclables.  That trash can is a part of our history, with a great story of its own, and neither DH nor I will ever willingly part from it.  Its the Bear Trash Can.