hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

[frustratedearthmother]

We're finally swinging into spring and that means lots to do!

As if you don't always have lots to do! Good to hear that you and Storm are making progress. I know that feels good.

So sorry to hear about Toby - it's hard to watch the oldsters decline. I'm glad you get at least a little more time with him. I do believe that he'll tell you when it's time.

 

[hqueen13]

Thank you, FEM I need to give myself a bit more credit and compassion than I do. The reminder is helpful.

 

[hqueen13]

Well, April is here, still can't figure out how that happened. I had to do some extra covering in the office, so I haven't been around as much.

Things are swinging into busy as spring is rolling around. Not completely a bad thing, but it means that I've got to be super careful with my schedule just because it is easy to end up with too much.

I've gotten to do Reiki with my friend JanS (great, now I know 2 JS's!!). She has been so wonderful helping me work with horses. I'm learning, and it feels great, so that is good. She is also doing a formal class in a few weeks, which I'm excited about.

Yesterday's weather was delightful. I actually got some sun on my face and it felt great! I ate my lunch outside, and then sat in the sun for a while semi meditating/running Reiki. Then JanS and I met over at a friend's place and worked on one of the pony's again. This time we worked in the pasture with the herd, and I think it helped quite a bit. Almost every horse checked in with us at various points, including the little mare that we were working with specifically. Got to chill in the sun more with the herd, so that was yummy!

I started the free 90 days of coaching that I won from a woman a few weeks ago on Tuesday and I'm excited. I can't wait to get some of this stuff organized and progress made on getting my business humming along. I'm ready to move forward and start really reaching some goals!

And speaking of business, the boarding business is sort of overflowing now. Ooops. I have space for 7 horses (and really only pasture to handle that many) and somehow I have 9 that are all in various stages of here or waiting to move in. So I currently have 5 - Storm (mine), Simon, Top Gun, Cowboy & Coyote. Top Gun was supposed to leave after the winter was over, but CM's mom isn't doing well, so I don't know if he'll be leaving at all now. Cowboy & Coyote were supposed to leave also, but I REALLY didn't want them to leave since they are farm sitting clients, and it's so much easier to feed them at my house than to have to drive to their house twice a day every single time they are out of town (which is more often than not, usually). Scooter isn't here right now because he's been away all winter in FL for training, so he makes 6. Then I have 2 ladies that have given me deposits on stalls, one lady will be bringing in Frank on the 21st of April, so that makes 7... and the other lady has paid me the deposit on 2 more stalls for her 2 horses... that's 9! I have no idea how all this is going to work out, but I'm sure it will. I will be ok if Scooter doesn't actually come back. His owner is high maintenance, and he's a really young boy so he's ALL play and can be rather goofy sometimes. Last year several times he stirred up Simon and Storm really bad to the point where I couldn't catch anybody for feeding. So yeah, life is interesting!

We wrapped up our quarter in the office, but I won't know for another week or so if we hit our goal. I REALLY hope we did cause I could use the bonus!! And I worked damn hard to make sure that we had every possible chance to hit our goal, too!! So we'll see what happens with that.

In news of things falling apart, my Explorer is about to fall apart into pieces around me, I swear. I wish I knew how to get a new vehicle, but right now I just don't see how that will happen. I know it will, because it has to, but still. So the leaf springs in the back are SHOT in the truck, the gas tank (I think the hose into the tank) is leaking, the drivers side lock won't unlock with the key or the push button, so most of the time I have to go to the passenger door, and then climb in and reach across to open the drivers door so I can get in. It's very frustrating, but somehow even with all that I'm getting better gas mileage than I have before. I totally don't understand that! And my computer is about to give up the ghost, too. The battery no longer works (it's a laptop), so I HAVE to keep it plugged in at all times. How exciting...

Not much else happening in other news, hopefully I can get caught up on some of my business stuff here in the office today... then I'll have less to do tomorrow!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

A full barn - awesome! That's gotta make you feel good (and add to your workload). Hope your office hits it's goal because isn't it great to get a bonus? That's gotta help. Hope your Explorer holds up for you for awhile longer. Duct tape and baling twine, lol!

 

[hqueen13]

Yes, it does make me feel better. Hopefully it won't be too much more work, and I've got some help, so that is a good thing.

Thanks, yes, it probably has both on it somewhere already. Let me tell you, opening the passenger door to get to the driver door is not enjoyable when it's raining...

 

[hqueen13]

Well, we had a productive weekend.
Our biggest accomplishment? We didn't eat out all weekend!!!!!! That's an amazing accomplishment for us! It wasn't always the healthiest, but at least we didn't go out! That's a lot of money saved! The BF is really getting serious about some purchases he wants to make, so now he's finally deciding that while eating out is so convenient, he'd rather have the stuff. It's very helpful when he helps me figure out what we can eat at home instead of going out. I don't like the work, but to be frank, it's about the same amount of effort to go out. And I have to get dressed to do so!

So Friday I spent most of the afternoon taking care of finances. I'm all caught up now, WHEW. That was NOT enjoyable. But it's DONE, at least for now. And I'm again determined not to let things go for so long. No more ostrich. If I stay on top of things, then it is so much less work and less stress. As of right now, the biz is still in the black for the year. Of course that doesn't count the debt I've needed to pay off, but yeah... And I am in less of a hole personally than I thought. So that's really a good thing. Now I just have to get the BF to catch up on his tracking so that I can figure out where he is with his budget, and we'll be good. I'm going to insist that get done tonight, he avoided it all weekend by getting lots of stuff done, but it has to get caught up now!

I also read The 4 Laws of Financial Prosperity this weekend, which was a good reminder of a lot of stuff that I know. Like that I should stay caught up with tracking... LOL.

Saturday we got up and headed to the dump to get a load of mulch. Only disappointing thing is that they put 1 yard buckets on the tractors, so now you can't get a 'whole load' for just $10.00 anymore. It was always "$10/yard" but they used to just load your truck. Guess they've stopped that now. So we're going to need to go back for more, but it's sort of ok because I wasn't totally ready for all of it anyway.

Saturday afternoon we arranged to go work on a friend's car. I love my friend. She's a bit like a little sister, and it's kind of nice that she and I have transplanted to the same city away from where we grew up. The downer is that she's on the other side of the city, so it's almost an hour drive to see her. And she doesn't drive. She has her permit now, and she's working on getting her license, but it's slow going because her BF isn't able to help her much because he's a high functioning autistic (I think she could do better than him, but all that really matters is that she's happy. She is just going to have to learn how to take care of the things he doesn't manage well). So her BF drove her car KNOWING that it was leaking antifreeze, and of course it died on him, away from their apartment. So he left it. He's super lucky that no one bothered to tow it in the week+ that it sat. Of course in order to check the car over, it needs to have the key with it. She was working on Saturday, so I told them that her BF needed to be available to meet us at the car. He started giving me push back that he couldn't get there because their other car was dead, and he wanted us to just stop by and pick up the key. The problem is that would have put us driving basically all the way around the city, and then someone would have needed to drive the car back to their apartment anyway. When I pointed out that it would have been over 100 miles for us to drive to them, to the car, and then back again, he got upset. I told him that in order to help them I needed their help, and so finally she was able to arrange to have a Lyft car come get him. It worked out perfect, the only downer was that we ended up replacing not just a hose clamp, but also the radiator and the thermostat. Almost $250.00 later the car was running. And we went home and ate dinner at home, too! LOL Thankfully, my boarder was kind enough to offer to feed the horses, which was nice. It was helpful to not have to worry about that, too, on top of trying to get the car fixed, which my BF didn't really want to do anyway.

While returning the loaner tools we got to check out her car, he checked on a few things for my truck. He thought that I had a bad wheel bearing on the front passenger side, and so he checked on that price, and ordered a new tube that goes from the gas cap to the fuel tank for me because mine was leaking.

Sunday morning we got up and I worked in the house on a couple things, while doing loads of laundry of the winter coats. I discovered moths in the closet, which is probably from the bag of hay that I had in there for the chinchilla, but I wasn't going to take a risk at our coats having a problem, so not only did I put the essential oil diffuser in there with some noxious oils to try to kill them, but I drug out everything that is washable and am washing it piece by piece. Got that stuff hung up outside, babysat the loaf of bread in the breadmaker, and then got a few more things put away. Eventually once the BF got the fuel hose off my truck, and checked out the front to see if the bearing was bad (it wasn't, it needed a new tie rod - much cheaper!!), he headed out to run errands. I fed the horses (didn't want to do that until he wasn't making crazy tool noises), and then started on weeding. He finally got home at almost 1, apparently everybody and their brother was out and about on Sunday, and we ate lunch. I finished weeding the bed I was working on while he put the parts in my truck. Good news, the tie rod fixed the issue, downer is I need another alignment on the truck. He also got the fuel hose replaced, and the bad news is it looks like it must be the tank leaking, cause it's still leaking.
He helped me dump the mulch onto the beds that are weeded so we could get that wrapped up. Since we started seeing carpenter bees yesterday, he went off to make some bee traps, and I headed into the house to soak in the tub. My bath was great, except for the drain not closing off all the way and losing about 1.5" of water while I sat there. Fun times!

We made dinner and then I had my energy work class that evening. It was a good weekend, and we got a lot done, and the weather was pretty nice. It's supposed to be even warmer and beautiful most of this week, except for maybe a little rain here and there. I'm totally ok with that! I think we'll probably end up needing to get another load of mulch on Saturday, but we'll see how the schedule works out. I've got to get a bunch of work done for my animal communication classes this week, I need to start earning money! I've got another session with my biz coach tomorrow morning, and I'm looking forward to that! Trying to get stuff checked off the list and ready to go!!

Tried to get a soil test kit at Home Depot while we were there over the weekend. They don't carry them anymore, which is a bummer. I really don't want to spend $15 going through our mill to have it done when I can buy a kit for $20 that has LOTS of testers in it. I guess we'll see what happens. I don't mind having a test run for the pasture but this is just my little garden, I really just need to know roughly how much lyme we need to put on it.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Ugh, keeping up with finances is not so much fun. I finally got all my 'stuff' to the tax guy a couple weeks ago. Glad to have that taken care of. Again - you've been busy, lol! It was kind of you and BF to help out your friend with her car - even though it wasn't so easy on ya'll. Good job on eating IN all weekend!

 

[lcertuche]

It's always a good feeling to know you are being productive (and thrifty).

 

[hqueen13]

Yes!! Annndddd It's Thursday and we still haven't eaten out! I don't know what we'll do for dinner tomorrow night, but we did eat salmon last night, so the other half of the filet is in there so we should probably eat that tomorrow before it goes bad. Desperately need to clean out the fridge from a bunch of stuff that's been sitting wayyyyy too long. It's gross!
Not much else has been happening. I woke up yesterday and didn't feel so good, so I laid back down again. Thankfully it was a day when I could do that. I didn't really get my day started until about 11, and still managed to get most everything done that I wanted, so that was good. Weather is still nice, though it came down a little last night to more normal temps.
Hopefully tomorrow I can get a lot done, too. I need to do another freebie offering in one of my FB groups, and I am hoping I can work the horse, too. I bought one of those sleekez shedding blade things at the consignment shop yesterday with my credit, everybody says they work way better than a shedding blade, so we'll see. I love shopping there when I get stuff and I don't have to spend any money! And I can get stuff for the barn, so that helps a lot! Hung out with my friend TM yesterday and worked with her animals with my animal communication stuff, knocked 11 more animals off my required 65 freebies so that was good. I only have 12 more to go, and I'm hopeful that I can knock them out tomorrow if possible. We'll see, I might just do 6, and then do the other 6 next week. We'll see.
Not much else happening. I'm hoping I can get more weeding and the rest of the mulching done this weekend. We'll see how that goes. The rest of the weeding isn't going to be so easy. I also need to work on getting some plants divided and moved around. I'm so grateful that JB has his guys doing a lot of the work around the farm, instead of the lawn guys. The lawn guys can't figure out what is planted on purpose to save their lives and have almost killed so many of my plants from weedwhacking where they shouldn't be. JB's guys actually recognize a planted plant and leave it alone! So that means I can start growing things where there haven't been plants and hopefully we can get rid of the weeds soon! I hate weeding! I'd rather see flowers anyway.
TM cut my hair yesterday, took about 6" off the bottom. It took the BF a while to notice, but then he was freaking out. I was laughing at him. It had to go though, it was so so damaged. I'm going to try to do some kind of a treatment this week to help condition it. I wish I knew the source of what was bothering it so badly, but I can't quite figure it out. I know our well water is hard, but I don't know if that's the only issue, or if it is my shampoo, or what. Very annoying though to have trashed the ends of my hair
Not much else is happening. It's been warm so the windows have been open and that makes me happy! Supposed to get up to 83 on Sunday, which is way warmer than it should be. I'm fearing what's going to happen in July. Might have to clip Storm sooner rather than later. Reminds me I need to get in touch with PH to see if she can help me clip him. I'm positive she's way more efficient at it than I am!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Speaking of fridges....we do science experiments in ours, lol!

Hope you get the hair thing figured out. Many, many years ago I had lost a lot of weight and my hair started falling out - yikes! My hair dresser is the one who told me that starving people with malnutrition lose their hair. I took that as an omen to stop dieting right then and there and I'll tell you - my hair got lots better - even if I did gain some weight back, lol!!