hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

Denim Deb

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At this point in time, I'd be happy to just get rid of junk!
 

hqueen13

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It doesn't really stay that way at my house, either, FEM! Which is why it takes so much work to get it there...
We had a LONG day on Friday, but it was pretty good. The BF borrowed the flat bed truck from work and stopped by a lady's house to pick up a shed they were getting rid of. It is 4' x 8' and she was selling it for $200.00. I specifically asked her if it had any rot on it and she said no. The BF went to strap it down to his truck and the edge of the eve on the low side of the roof crumbled, and then he looked and found that the whole overhang was rotten, to the point where we'll need to replace the entire shingle part of the roof and the edge to repair it. I was really irritated that I'd been told it was in good condition only to find out that it wasn't. I wasn't as clear with the BF about that fact, so he didn't argue and haggle with her (he's not at comfortable doing that as I am anyway). It still seems like a good deal, and won't cost us that much money to fix up. I'm not terribly worried about it anyway because we plan on turning it into a chicken coop, and the BF will modify it quite a bit as it is, so we'd probably end up changing the roof out.
SO, now we're the proud owners of a chicken coop shed!
He didn't get home until after 6, and we needed to pick up KN from the airport at 9, as well as return the truck and pick up his jeep from his work which is basically AT the airport. We decided just to squish in the jeep with KN rather than drive my truck and double the gas. We dropped off the flat bed and picked up the jeep and then went to find some dinner and relaxed for a little while before heading to get KN, who was 45 minutes late due to delays anyway. That wasn't fun, and we didn't get home until almost 11. Thankfully my riding lesson wasn't until 12 the next day so I was able to not have to get up too early.
My lesson went really well, though Storm did not want to come out of the barn yard. He was fine until he caught sight/sound of everyone hanging out at the round pen talking and laughing really loudly, and he got really nervous. I walked him back and forth until he finally settled down and then all the sudden he completely relaxed and was fine, and we walked right to the round pen. Crazy horse.
He got a little worked up when we went get started, but KN helped me get him settled. She showed me again a method of lunging called Decarpentry that really seems to help him get off his front end. She also pushed me to make sure that I am working him at least once a week HARD. She reminded me again that he just needs the work in order to be calm. So we need to really get our nose on the grind stone and get it done. I checked the weather and of course its supposed to be crazy windy on Tuesday and raining on Friday which are the only two days that I'll really have any time at all. Fun stuff...
Yesterday was ok, the BF and I got into a little tiff in the morning, but I think we worked things out. I don't blame him for getting upset because he's stuck between me and his mom. With farm sitting for this other friend of mine, it takes about 20 minutes to get down to her farm, and about 20 minutes to feed, then the 20 minutes back, plus we had to take care of our horses in the morning, and his mom wanted us at church at 9, and the church is about 15 minutes beyond my friend's farm. I was not interested in going, especially since I've been getting up for over a week to bust butt and get chores done in a hurry to take care of the rest of my day. When the BF got irritable that he was going to have to hear it from his mom, I pointed out rather bluntly that she doesn't respect the fact that feeding the horses is a JOB that we get PAID to do. I made note that she wouldn't have given his brother any flack for having to go to work as a police officer on a holiday, so why is it any different when we need to do our JOB on a holiday? We didn't end up going, which was a good thing I think, we spent a little more time together. We also found out that the lunch we were supposed to be at was at 11 instead of 12:30 like we thought (I swear his mom told me 12:30 before...) we had to hustle and get everything together to go and stop by the store to get food that we were supposed to bring.
Hanging with his family was fine, it wasn't anything really exciting, though we did get to talk to his other brother that is away for tech school for a while so that was nice.
We came home and mostly crashed, we were so tired. But of course we had to go back down to my friend's farm to get her horses fed again. We were almost there and found the road blocked by a cop. Her driveway is right at a sharp dog leg in the road that is also on a hill and somebody had wrecked (again). We ended up driving around, then talked to the officer there (who it turns out we knew) and he allowed us to go through. Thankfully her driveway wasn't blocked so we pulled in easily. It looked like they were just waiting for the tow trucks to come, so at least there wasn't an ambulance or anything there.
We finally came home and made tacos for dinner and then crashed. We planned our grocery list, and go ourselves organized for the rest of the week. Its going to be crazy busy since we'll be out of town the week after. I don't know how I'm going to get everything done! I guess one way or another things will happen...
 

hqueen13

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Forgot to mention that my friend LH had her lessons early on Saturday morning, and she brought O back with her. I came up out of the barn, and he saw me from the round pen and he whinnied at me. Best feeling in the world. I miss him so much.
 

frustratedearthmother

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Holy cannoli! You are crazy busy...but glad you're getting things done. Good job on working with Stormy. I do miss my 'riding' horses, but the mini's are a bit of a substitute, lol.

Isn't it funny (not) how many folks don't understand that a job with animals is a real job!

So cool that O said 'howdy' - that's such a good feeling!
 

Denim Deb

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It's a job, even if you don't get paid for it. It doesn't matter what the animal is, if you own it, you have a responsibility to it. I have no problem w/someone missing something because they need to care for an animal. Things happen. They can't call a vet or 911 if they get hurt or sick. They depend on us.
 

hqueen13

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Yup, yall understand! Honestly, if I get paid for it, it doesn't matter if I'm scooping poop, I have an obligation, and therefore need to take care of things! It doesn't matter if its Easter, Christmas, or the king's birthday. It gets done. Hopefully someday we'll live farther away from them and it won't be a big deal... and then when they come to visit they'll see what we have to do every day and they'll get it a little better.

Not having a great morning. I'm PMSing which isn't helping, and my boarder EE is driving me UP THE WALL. She's so high maintenance and it is nuts. I can see where she's probably a bit like me, which is probably what is driving me so crazy about her. Except I'm a LOT less scattered, and willing to do more for people when I am making life challenging. She's so scattered that she leaves gates open to the round pen all. the. time. And I found manure and a dirty barn aisle the other day where she completely forgot to clean up. Last month her board was late, this month she didn't pay the right amount. She is willing to pay, but its like pulling teeth to get things right. And on top of all that she is switching around Scoots feed CONSTANTLY. She can't leave well enough alone and give the poor horse a chance to figure things out. She is now putting him through a course of ulcer treatment, which is fine, but one top of that she's trying to change his feed 15 different ways at the same time. Anybody that keeps horses knows thats a bad idea to make to many changes at once. You can't tell what's working, what's not and what to shift if there is a problem. And that's changing the feed on TOP of giving him medication. The horse is thin, but lordy, he's not emaciated! Every day its 10 to 15 texts a day about whatever the latest issue is. And then in addition to that I have to keep after her about keeping the place neat. The BF gets stuck on the gate being left open, so then I have to hear him whine about that to me, all the while I've already been dealing with her ALL day. This morning she sent me a lengthy email about the feed changes she's making, and then texts me 2 hours later to find out if I got it and to tell me she can't read her email today because she's at work. Argh!!!

And all of this is happening on top of trying to get ready to go out of town. So. Much. Fun..... :barnie

The vet came yesterday afternoon to give ML's horses their vaccinations and pull coggins. She checked them out for their health certificates for when they travel. I guess I really need to call the shipper now and get that arranged. My schedule is so crazy after we get back home that its going to be a real challenge to get them shipped out of here. I'm just praying the shipper doesn't decide to come in the middle of the night. That will make life really really difficult.

So that's the scoop right now... just trying to get things done before I have to leave, and its making me crazy!
 

Denim Deb

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I hate it when people want to change things that way. I always make any changes to feed slowly and over the course of several days. I don't need to deal w/colic!
 

hqueen13

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Its not even just that she's making changes quickly, she's making too many changes at once. If you switch around all the supplements and feed all at once, you won't know what caused a problem if the horse has one. I also decided that I'm going to ask her to bag up her supplements so that all anyone has to do while feeding is grab a single bag and dump it into his bucket. I don't want to have to deal with not feeding her supplements correctly. Anything I already feed she can leave out, but she needs to organize the supplements. Plus I don't want 50 containers all over my feed shelves in addition to the things I already have (which is quite a few, but they are MY supplements and part of MY program). The feeding area is open to the barn, so if things aren't really secure then a horse could get into trouble if they get loose or aren't supervised.
All I have to say is she'd better not bother me while I'm away LOL
Trying to get things ready to go. Finally fed for the last time at ES's house this morning. She got home from her red eye flight as I was feeding, so I stopped in and picked up what she owed me. I feel like that money is already spent, between having to pay TM for taking care of the animals, plus needing to keep things covered. Money is way tighter than I want it to be right now, and going away won't help. But at least its cash, so that helps make life easy to keep things out of my other budgets. I'm so glad to have that DONE with. I don't mind caring for people's animals, but when they get home, I'm always VERY happy to be done with it! That means tomorrow morning I won't have to go anywhere before I head to yoga. Which means I should be able to pretty easily get my horses fed before leaving the house, which will be one less thing to do tomorrow night.
I need to get gas, stop by the grocery store, plus stop by the dollar store to get birthday cards for all the people in the family that have birthdays between March and April (its a LOT... hence the dollar store!!). I'll head home from there and then run over to drop the last check off for the hay from the winter. I'm SO glad to be done with that. Of course, now I should start saving for next year... ugh. I think we're going to come out ahead, though, and have several bales left over, so I won't need it as early as I did last year. We'll see how they do. They are getting kicked out onto the grass when I get home, its looking nice and strong, but I don't want to start that process until I'm home because its a pain in the butt if they get to running instead of coming in.
I realized this morning that I should probably start packing, LOL. I need to make sure that the BF gets everything out that he wants to pack today so that I can take care of doing it tomorrow. Too many things to do and too little time! (but what else is new?)
 

Denim Deb

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That's why I bag all of my feed. It makes feeding so easy. And if I'm not there, there's no question as to what anyone gets.
 

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