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Monthly Archives: December 2010

Susan the Frozen Icicle

It’s cold here. Getting the water from the pump into the heated horse water buckets is a big deal.

Getting the hose cleaned out of water, so the next time I use it, it works is a big deal.  Using the sprayer is a big deal. Otherwise I have to kink the hose to stop the water until I get from the pump to the bucket.  Eventually, the kink makes a hole in the hose. Get the picture?

Sometimes the pump freezes up because I didn’t manage to make the water go back into the ground. That’s really irritating because I have to carry water from another pump to the barn. Another thing that is irritating is that I discovered I still had a hose attached to one of the 3 outdoor pumps.  That entire water pump and hose is frozen I have to wait for a few warm days before I can get the hose off that pump.

So tonight, everything was perfect.  I screwed the hose onto the water pump.  Oh rats. The sprayer is in an open position..frozen.  I have to turn on the water and run to the water bucket with high speed water going everywhere.  Finally enough water got into the bucket so I could hold the sprayer in the water.  The frozen piece of metal finally melted so I could turn off the sprayer.

I am an icicle tonight hovering over my ceramic heater. That’s just from feeding my horses!

I just love freezing weather. It’s only 28 degrees.  No wind, No snow. It’s not even really miserable outside.

Four Outdoor Horse Hours

Thank you Jennifer Vaught for the great lesson and the fun time riding with great friends. Great friends, a great teacher and great horses.  The greats pile up!

We rode slow with occasional times of speed and many rest periods.  We didn’t want sweat.

OK, most of the four hours wasn’t outdoors.  Most of it was in an indoor arena. Someone did forget to turn on the furnace.  I left home at 11:30 and came back at 4:00.  The lesson was from 1:00-3:00, but it always runs longer. We did toast up in the indoor lounge after the group lesson, but most of the time I was without heat.

I discovered, once again, that I can ride in the winter.  I remember discovering this fact every year.  It gets to be winter and I always assume, I can only survive in my lounge chair.

But then magically, I’m forced to ride and discover…I can survive!

On the flip side, the other half of the partnership was convinced that she would die.  In the last part of the lesson, we had to canter. We cantered quite a bit and had an ongoing argument. 

NOVA  “I can’t breathe!  I must stop and I must stop NOW! Are you kidding me?  You haven’t exercised me for 3 weeks and now you want to run me into the ground?  NO!  I am going to balk! Why don’t you ride Velvet, not me?”

Susan “Only for a little while longer.  You can do it. Don’t die on me.  Keep cantering. Stop arguing with me.  If you would just canter nicely, we could stop!  Velvet lived thru this, it’s your turn now.”

Nova was so tired at the end of the lesson, that she couldn’t walk to the exit gate.  Her saddle was loose.  Her bridle was off. She balked twice while I was leading her to the gate.

Nova is a dominant-argumentative- only-child mare.

We’ll be riding a lot more winter nights now.  No more recliner chair!  Well, let’s say, “less recliner chair nights”.

Muck Boots and Dollar Store…and great old Xmas Pictures

Tonight I got all ready to ride outside.  I thought that I could wear three pair of socks with my muck boots.  Muck boots are rubber.  They stretch.  Oh, I forgot to mention that I have heat generating insoles already placed inside my muck boots.

As I live and breathe, three pairs of extra heavy socks plus the heat generating insoles were too much for the muck boots. They didn’t stretch.  They just squeezed my feet and cut off my heat generating insole device.

Tomorrow, I’m going for two extra heavy socks plus the heat generating insoles.  Let’s see how that works.

After this trauma was over and I got my husband to get those tight muck boots off, I went shopping at the Dollar Store.

Long ago Christmas with young son, grandma and grandpa

My goodness!  I can still find amazing fun things to give my adult children.  I think that I should tour all the “Dollar Stores” in my area.  They aren’t all called Dollar Stores, but they are the same wondrous place of discovery.

Oh adult children…I betcha just can’t wait to find what I discovered at the Dollar Store!

Winter at the Computer – Yeccha

I do love making web sites.  I do love advertising horses.  I do love updating my web sites and finding new stuff that the software developers have added to make my experience better.

I use angelfire.com for my web sites.  It’s an old friend. Recently they have updated the place where I can almost make a pretty web site do anything I want without having to do the entire site in html coding.

I’m in the process of making Prides Traveling John John’s new web page.  There are glitches, but that’s the fun of it. Fighting with software is what I do in real life too.

And without further ADO: Pride’s Traveling John John’s new web page.  It’s supposed to have Nova and Diva’s picture on the page.  It’s supposed to not have that map at the bottom.  I don’t know where in the heck that came from.

I’m fighting with the software.  It’s winning.

New Weight Loss with Horses Plan!

Ride after Work to Size 12

Here’s what I came up with…

The plan is that I come home from work in the dark, miserable weather.  I put a horse into the trailer and drive to Pine Dell stable and ride.

I come home frozen, take care of the horses and eat a few bites on my way into the shower to unfreeze my body parts.  Try on a size 12 shirt.  Hit the bed and sleep for the next day to come.
Repeat until size 12 shirt buttons.

See how this is working?  Isn’t it a cool idea!

Now here’s the problem.  I can’t make myself do it.  Instead I get home, feed the horses and hit the recliner with my heated blankie.

I’m a cold weather weenie

I thought maybe my idea would work for some of you.

Feeling Your Body Freeze Means You Are Alive!

I’m getting old enough now to really appreciate being alive and being able to ride.

Here’s Velvet and I riding in front of Jazz and Hope.  I heard Hope talking and knew she was filming!

Velvet and facing into a freezing gusty wind today, Boy Howdy…full alert life up on that one! 

Having my body parts freeze today was a good reminder of being alive.  I suppose my feet froze last year, but I don’t remember that feeling.  I suppose my thighs froze last year, but I don’t remember that feeling either.

 Hope androde Jazz.  How many layers of clothes does she have on?  Even her hunter vest is padded against the cold.

Hope asked me if I wanted to wear one of her hunter vests.  I replied it would be better if one of them just shot me and got me out of my cold misery.  She yelled at me for being grumpy.

We broke the rules today. 
(Rule Number 1 – Ride Outdoors when it’s in the high 40’s and above.)
It was Hope’s fault. She wanted to ride.  I whined to no avail.  I grumped and was shut down. At the end of the ride, I moaned.  Moaning was allowed.

We met a big tractor-combine combination on the trail today.  The tractor tires were bigger than we were.  We had no where to get out of the way. We just stood on the side of the trail and let the big beast go by.  Velvet is used to stuff like that.  I’ve got to admit that I was just the slightest bit worried. The tractor combine guy waved when he went by.  Neither Hope or I waved back.  I wanted both  my hands on the reins!  Then the semi passed by us too.   I did manage to wave at the truck guy!  We were out in the middle of the park-on the trails.

We see big vehicle tracks now and then when we ride at the park.  In fact, we saw some today and commented on how big of a monster made those tracks.  And then we met it!

Just think if I had got my way and rode in an indoor arena, I might not have got to experience going one-on-one with a huge combine-tractor.

whoooo

PS:
Where are my Muck Boots? Where are my insole heat inserts. Gotta find those.  I live in Muck Boots all winter long.  Where are they!

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