hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

[sumi]

Happy belated birthday to you too! Best of luck with your business! Have you got a FB page set up? There is amazing potential for advertising and getting word out there… Just saying. PM me if you need any help/tips.

 

[hqueen13]

Thanks yall!

I hear ya, Deb, that's the hardest part about being on a farm, there really aren't any snow days. You bust your butt more with snow than on a regular day!

Thanks for the ideas, @sumi I do have a facebook page, but am always open to ways to get more business in!!

I'm having a good week so far. I didn't get to work Storm on Tuesday like I hoped, but the weather should be clear from Friday through Sunday, so I'm aiming to work him every day. He's in for it again! I'm not happy about all this warm weather, but darn it I'm going to enjoy it if it's here.

Yesterday I had a phone call with one of my biz mentors, which went well. We haven't gotten to talk in a while, and we're shifting how we work together so that will be a good thing. I'm looking forward to it continuing in the future. Then I went to lunch with a lady that I've met once before, but we reconnected and she is going to be a big help for me business wise. She is very involved in the holistic community in the area, and has tons of contacts for me. I have 2 pages written in my little notebook of names and things to look up. Now I have to figure out how to follow up with it. I need to get some new marketing materials made up, I'm thinking I'm going to do postcards, so I can drop them off at various places.

Today I'm back in the office, and tomorrow I'm at home again. It'll be yoga, and a couple of phone calls, and then going out to work Storm. I really need to get the house vacuumed again, I'm trying to do a better job keeping up with it since we did the marathon cleaning a few weeks ago. It is so nice when it is clean and I'm not walking on grit all over the house.

Saturday is Riverdance, and then Sunday we're probably going to go and pick up a friend's car to haul it back to the farm so that BP can work on it for her. He has a shop set up and she's super tight budget, so it will be worth it for her to bring the car all the way here in order to get it fixed up. It's older and she only paid $500 for it, so it needs a bit of work to get it running again. Hopefully the work doesn't turn out to be too bad. We'll see. It's got a blown head gasket, so that could go either way.

I reorganized my finances again, and got another credit card to do a balance transfer with to reduce the strain of my debt a bit. I've got a big job coming up at the beginning of March so that will help take some more pressure off. All of that will get dumped onto my credit card, and then I'll do a balance transfer to another card to reduce the interest. I swear, I'm getting out of debt this year! It's going to happen!! I'm tired of living like this, worrying about every little thing that pops up. Waiting to hear back about our tax returns, I hope that they are big!!!

 

[sumi]

I'll PM you. Poke me if you don't hear from me in a few days. I've been a bit and distracted lately and started forgetting things

 

[hqueen13]

Well, I guess I'll poke you now, @sumi LOL I haven't heard from you that I know of and I forgot about it, so now is as good of a time as any

We had a nice weekend, other than some family drama. We went to see Riverdance on Saturday, and it was a lot of fun. I had forgotten about a lot of parts in the show, so it was nice to see it again. We got stuck in the parking deck on the way out, the gate broke or something so everyone had to sit there. At least the weather was nice so we just turned the car off and waited. We were late getting to his cousin's house for her daughter's 1st birthday party, and by the time we got there, they had eaten all the pizza. We hung around a nibbled on cake, before taking a swift exit when the first part of the drama erupted. His brother and another cousin (married into the family) decided it would be funny to move a bunch of his Aunt's stuff around. She is the kind of lady that is OCD and LOVES her china and knickknacks. She keeps lives in an in law apartment next to the BF's cousin's house, and so she's decorated everything in the main house, and keeps it spotless, despite having 4 kids in the house. I think she runs herself ragged doing it. Well, when she found the things moved, she blew her gasket. In a big way. The the guys wouldn't go apologize for doing it. Mind you, they're 26 and 31 years old. She was crying and shaking she was so angry. She's got some trauma issues in her past that obviously aren't cleared up if she reacted that badly. The BF was furious because he TOLD them that she was going to be super upset when she found out, and he was right, but they didn't listen. So we ducked out as quickly as possible, and headed to our local haunt for some appetizers so we didn't wake up starving the next morning.
Sunday morning we got up and headed down to pick up my friend's car to bring it back to the farm so BP can fix it. It needs some serious work. We got it on the dolly fine, and then learned that it's not a good idea to try to turn it around in a cul-de-sac with cars parked in it. Apparently the dolly doesn't like turns THAT tight. No harm done, thankfully, and we went on our merry way. We were driving through the curvy roads almost home when one of the straps popped off one of the tires. Thankfully it happened at a tiny "town" (I say that, there's a post office, a gas station, and a little restaurant and some businesses, that's it, it's really a 4 way stop) where we could pull off easily. There were a lot of other places that it would have been pretty disastrous had it happened then. So we got the strap reset, and then headed home.
The BF cleaned up from that, and then he headed out to go to the shooting range with his brothers while I stayed at home to work on my Reiki class stuff, and work Storm. I ended up not working Storm because he had a cow over the car dolly sitting in the driveway. So we didn't do anything other than hang out and relax. It was disappointing, but I at least did do something. I headed in the house and did a bit more work before getting in the bath to soak.
Oh, that's part of the story I forgot about. I was going to get in the bath on Saturday before we headed to the show. I started to run the bath, and then sat down on the toilet, and my stomach decided to rebel. So I didn't get to check the water until it was pretty full. It was WAY too hot. So I tried adding cold, still not enough to make a difference. So then I tried to let some water out of the tub. The drain won't open up again. So now I have a huge tub of very very hot water and no way to adjust the temp. I waited for a while, and it didn't cool down. Finally I decided to do it the old fashioned way, and stood in the tub, and washed off with my sponge, and then rinsed down, and then bent over and washed my hair. Thank goodness for all those yoga classes, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to stand with my head upside down for that long!! It was funny after the fact, especially since the water was so hot that my feet stayed beet red for about an hour afterwards!!
My bath sunday was much more comfortable! LOL
The BF got home and we fixed dinner while he told me about the next round of family drama. When he went to pick his brother up from the house, he got into a conversation with his parents. They were bugging him again about paying the phone bill for his cell phone (they have a big Tmobile family plan). Meanwhile, his 2 brothers, ages 24 and 26 live at home, with jobs making more than twice what the BF makes and live RENT FREE. Oh, but they pay their cell phone bills. His youngest brother confessed that he has almost 100K in the bank right now. And his middle brother made 100K working as a cop last year. I would be SOOOO EMBARRASSED to say that I still lived at home with a job like that. But his parents won't kick them out, and apparently won't ask for rent, either. It might be a little different if they were at least paying SOMETHING towards living there, but they pay nothing. His father's answer? Well you can move back home. I was furious when I found out. So the BF is going to be getting his own cell phone plan. It'll be more than he's paying through his family, but it will be one less thing they can hold over his head. I can't wait to move further away from them and their drama. His father has turned out just like his father, not supporting his oldest son (He's the IV, too, btw, which only makes it worse), and always riding him for not being good enough, and not approving of anything he does. Meanwhile, his younger brothers get to do whatever they want to do, riding the coat tails of their parents while making buckets of money, but that's not a problem.
So yay family drama. I seriously can't wait until we can move away from them. They have such toxic relationships.
The up side to yesterday was the weather was GORGEOUS!! I had the windows open and it felt great. The sun was so warm, and the breeze wasn't too bad. It was a really beautiful day. I was almost too warm in a long sleeve tshirt while I was out in the sun with the horse. We have nice weather for a while longer, which is great. We'll see what happens, soon, I'm a little worried about what is coming if we are having such warm weather now.
Related to that, I think a couple of the horses have been dealing with worms. I'm going to do a fecal count this week and see where we are at, I think with the mild winter we might be having an early outbreak. Toppers had diarrhea for a while, I can't tell if it is gone or not because his butt was icky, so I washed him off yesterday since it was so warm. Simon doesn't want to finish his food, either, and he's lost a bit of weight. I'll do a count on Wednesday and see what's going on. I wish I could wait for the sale on the fecal counts, but that won't be for another few months. We just had the full moon, so I'll be ready to make any other adjustments if they are needed when it comes around again.
That's about all the news from this neck of the woods!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Wow - family drama! That stuff is the worst and it's such an energy drain. So sorry you had to deal with that
Had to laugh over your bathing challenge, lol. That sounds like something that would happen to me!

 

[lcertuche]

Wow! How does people make that kind of money? I would never have a billing plan with any of my relatives because I know how they are. We are having a family reunion this summer and I regret it already, lol (and it hasn't happened yet).

 

[sumi]

O.K. poke received.. gracefully Link me to your FB page?

I hear you on family drama. There is a reason I don't speak to most of mine any more, including my mother.

The bath… don't hit me, but I have to ask: couldn't you scoop out some of the water with a bucket and replace that with cold water… I wish my bath water would stay hot for so long. My bathroom is so cold, even with the heating on. If I leave a hot bath for 20 minutes it's ruined for me.

 

[hqueen13]

FEM, yes, the drama is not ok. We'll be staying away from family events for a while I think. He doesn't really enjoy them anyway, and I don't enjoy having to keep up appearances and socialize with people that I don't really connect with in the first place.
LOL, Glad I gave you a chuckle!!

@lcertuche his one brother works for the City PD, and works a TON of overtime (apparently last week he had 80 hours of *overtime* I'd die if I had to be on a job that much... but then I suspect that he doesn't really want to be at home, either, since he lives under mommy and daddy's roof, and they drive him crazy enough. He's just lazy enough that he doesn't feel like doing anything else for himself), and the other brother is in the air force and still in school. But he got bumped up to $30something an hour, so he's making gravy, too.
I looked at my BF at one point and said you know what... I don't ever want to hear one word of complaint about someone who uses welfare for support... that's basically what your brothers are doing to your parents. So how is that different from someone using welfare for the same reason???

LOL @sumi It never crossed my mind, and I didn't have that much time. I also don't have a very big sink anywhere in the house, no utility sink or anything, so that would have been tricky. I could have, but at that point I was just exasperated. And I agree on the cold bathroom thing. The house sits on a THICK concrete slab, so the floor is always COLD, and the bathtub usually gets cold too. I didn't bother to turn a space heater on (which I normally do in winter), because the sun was coming in strong, so I made the water a little warmer. A little too warm, I guess!! I guess that being warmer outside it didn't cool off that fast, either. It's a funny story now

 

[NH Homesteader]

I hear you on the family drama. My husband's family is insane. We don't see them much because we can't handle it!

 

[hqueen13]

Yeah, NH, it's almost that bad. The struggle is that my BF has a certain level of attachment to them, but he would be so much better off without being so close. His father is always right and his mother is a victim. It drives me nuts.