December 2006 Activities
Back to November 2006 • Forward to January 2007 Friday - 1 December 2006 This morning I decided to steal one of the panels-with-a-door from a stall in the barn and put it on the front of the shelter where Roo eats. It's OK sliding through the panel when it's dry, but you get soggy doing it in the rain when the water collects along the bottom edge of the rail. Right now my #3 stall is being used for storage, but if I can get the doors sorted out on the hay-area this weekend, I could probably drag everything out of there, put it in the hay area and give the stall back to the pones to use. I've been rethinking what I want to do over Christmas. Had considered going to DVE, but then started to think about all the things I wanted to get done around here and think maybe I'll just stay home and do them instead.
It does feel that way. I want to stay in there all the time, now. It's a little colder, because the sitting area is closer to the windows, so I might have to make some curtains to keep the cold out. Or better, chop down a tree so we have firewood and can run the stove - it's chilly in here compared to the bedroom/bathroom/mudroom which is on the sunny side, plus we keep the doors shut to keep the cats in there, plus the freezer in the mudroom gives out lots of heat and makes it toasty in there.
I've got a couple of dead trees down here that we need to take down, though. Need to buy a chainsaw. I'm bummed - the six-trunked oak tree at the bottom of the horse
paddock died this fall. No reason for it that I can figure - most of its
roots are outside the paddock. It was big and shady and the pones liked
to stand under it. Now it's standing there, covered in dead brown
leaves. I'm hoping that if I ignore it, it'll come back to life next
spring. Not holding my breath, though. The main trouble is that I only have one monitor in here, which isn't as good, but the major problem is I keep opening up menus on programs and the little menu "opens" on the monitor that isn't there (I use two monitors side-by-side that are linked like one big one at work, and when I'm working in my office in the back of the house). I think there's a quick-command to tell windows to automatically move to the middle of the screen, but I haven't found it yet (despite pushing lots of buttons). Wild Blue Beams I just found a map showing the different beams that carry the
WildBlue satellite 'net. See, and scroll down to the bottom: Saturday - 2 December So after putting down wimpy rock and seeing it disappear into the sludge within a matter of minutes, yesterday we brought in the "BIG rock". pft and I spent today on another load of gravel. This time it was 2"+, which is working very nicely in terms of not disappearing into the muck instantly. Before we could put it down, I had to scrape the 8" of soggy mud out . We did a yard and could use at least one more yard, but more probably two. It's just a bitch to unload, since it's hard to get the shovel into (I liked unloading the DG best, since that was so easy we kept inadvertently scooping it onto the roof of the shelter), so not something you look forward to. The only snag is the drainage "creek" that runs through the area just in front of the green gate - not sure if the rock will survive when that starts to run when we get the big rains.
We finally got wise enough to get a full-size trough to replace the bushel bucket - Provo likes to play in the water and the bushel bucket wasn't quite up for that and we kept coming home and finding it half- tipped over, goldfish in the dirt, water pouring out continuously from the automatic waterer. The goldfish finally all died, so I've got little mosquito fish in there now and so far they've survived one light freeze. I also worked on the barn doors for the hay area, which have been much harder than I thought to figure out - chicken and egg trying to figure out what bit had to be erected first to work out how big/where something else had to go. It was made worse by the fact I forgot to eat anything, so had the brain power of a slug. <sigh> Still, I have one-kinda door now and at least know how to do the other so it's progressing. I lunged Zini and she's *still* as lame as she was when she went lame. Urk. I've no idea what she did. How long has it been now? Three weeks or so? <grrr> At one point the other horses were racing up and down, so she got all excited and forgot about being lame for a bit and was leaping about and rearing and I thought maybe she was faking it... but then she settled down and started gimping again :( Sunday - 3 December Roo and I went out for a quick spin with Ann this afternoon -
first time in a few weeks since getting sick over Thanksgiving. He was very,
er, "cheerful" to start with <g>. There's a house right
next door to the staging area and the people keep goats
and sheep. He can just about cope with the goats - even
when they stand on their back legs to eat stuff off the
trees. But those woolly, round sheep really freaked him
out - I could hear his heart pounding while I was standing
next to him. Got another door finished when I got in from riding, so feel like I accomplished stuff (my legs tell me so, anyway, since my ham strings are tight, tight, tight and I can't believe it's from riding 6 miles). It hasn't stopped them peeing right there - I hoped it would be too splishy, so not as appealing, but Jack is convinced that's *the* place to go (which is why it had gotten squishy in the first place). I chased him away from it three times today (and chased him out of the stall - he thinks you're supposed to go in there to poop <grrr>). I put down some nice shavings for him and showed them to him, but he didn't seem very convinced. Monday - 4 December pft went to the Dr's this morning to have "mohrs"
surgery done on a carcinoma thingy on his shoulder. He had Mouse Update Mouse has been at Ann's house since the end of September, with the idea that Ann would ride her little and often to get her up and running again, and turn her back into a real riding horse instead of a pasture ornament. After being a bit sprightly for the first few rides, she settled into a routine of walking like a slug on the way out and jigging home. Because she was so slow and so disinterested, Ann and I were concerned that her attitude might be due to pain in her feet, rather than lack of enthusiasm for work. We formulated a plan to Bute the heck out of her and for Ann to then ride her their normal route to Greenwood Lake and back - and see if she improved any.
I don't know what I want the outcome to be. If she gets better with Bute, I'll be bummed because it means, more or less, she'll never be a riding horse for anyone. But if it makes no difference, it'll make me cross at her for being so pissy. Mares. <grrr> (Zini got whacked this morning for turning and nipping the back of my sweater as I walked past. Crabby thing). Later that afternoon:
:)))) <roll eyes>
for a horse who's so pleasant on the ground, she isn't half pissy when it comes to being ridden sometimes...
They were obviously in the Wrong Place
That's one thing I have liked about her when she was going from greenie to real horse - she'd stop and gawp, rather than turn tail and gallop away
so the experiment has told us precisely nothing? :))) Do I need to bring more bute so that we can repeat the experiment with Jess as chaperone? Tuesday - 5 December
I got him to bring the mower and its little trailer (a luxury item! <g>) over to the front steps and dragged all the pieces down and loaded them into the trailer, drove them up to the garage and unloaded them again. Must have twisted funny somewhere in the process as none of it was *that* heavy and now I have to sit weirdly to stop the muscle tweaking. (Saturday night they showed professional ice skating and I was inspired enough to remember my resolve to stretch, stretch, stretch. Monday morning my ham-strings were so tight I couldn't walk properly - don't know if it was the stretching or the "trying to lift the barn door" that did it <g>). Oh, and while we were up by the garage, I discovered that our green Subaru (the one we're supposed to be washing and selling, not leaving parked up by the garage and ignoring) had the back window left open and all the rain went in and made the book on the seat soggy and mouldy. <grrrr> As luck would have it, I also noticed the book-on-tape that was sitting on the passenger seat... the same book-on-tape that I swore we took back to the library three weeks ago and has now probably been accruing a late fee at $1 a day since that time. Evidently we have not been paying very good attention.
Actually, it was much easier doing it the way I did it this morning than when pft and I wrestled the first one up together. Third generation engineer R me. Alas, they are still peeing on the rocks, so it doesn't look nearly as spiffy as it did two days ago. It's due to rain at the weekend, so we'll see how it all holds up (bummer on the rain - I wanted to try and do a longer ride). The moon was SO GORGEOUS last night. I might try and ride late today and stay out in the moonlight. Wedneday - 6 December They opened a new IKEA *across the road* from pft's office (be still my beating heart <g>).
We did end up getting a chair we'd had our eye on - very comfy. We had an old rocking chair in the living room that looks cosy, but is the most uncomfortable thing in living history, so the new chair is a vast improvement. Thursday - 7 December An old friend was due to visit on Sunday - the mom of my best friend in school who was a sort of surrogate mom to me in my teens. I haven't seen her in years and she and her new husband were coming to CA to see his grandchildren, so planned to drive up to see us also. We spoke on the phone and agreed they'd come on Sunday, so pft and I knew (looking at the state of the house) that we'd have to do *blitz* cleaning on the house Friday and Saturday. Thursday morning I get a call from her saying "We're in Stockton [1 hour south of Sac] - what time should we arrive at your house?". ACK!!!! Luckily pft was at home today, recovering from having his melanoma
thingy taken off his shoulder last Monday and he was supposed to be sitting quietly and icing his
shoulder. Not. He spent the day cleaning-cleaning- He did such a spectacular job, we didn't look like total slobs when the visitors arrived 5 pm on Thursday. ... Since we are, actually, total slobs and I'd much rather go out to play in the sunshine or make quilts, or read a book than do housework, and since I can hold up the "I work a full time job and care for a husband, a dog, four horses, seven cats, five chickens, and a parrot" card, I can avoid doing housework until it gets really bad and is probably a health hazard. Anyhoo, having set the scene, I found the perfect Christmas present for myself - a Roomba: http://www.irobot. (have ordered one but it won't ship until Jan 6th...) People were saying how much more "cat friendly" these things were compared to normal vacuums - they not only pick up cat fluff and cat litter (no more gritty floors! yay!), they don't scare the cr*p out of the cats the way normal vacuums do :) Actually, yes - it's called a "Scooba" :)))) http://irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=128 It washes the floor as well as vacuums it. I've got my eye on one of those for Phase II. :) Anyway, I'm going to entertain them tomorrow and then they leave early Saturday, so hopefully the rain will hold off so I can ride/get hay at the weekend. Friday-Saturday - 8-9 December Our company was fun. It was really nice to see Marie-Anne again after so long. Nothing really changes, despite the years going by. Thank goodness they came on Friday instead of Sunday - the weather was lovely and the views good - compared to today - eck. Sunday - 10 December
It poured all weekend, so no riding for me. I sat and
made cushion covers for the little bargain cushions I
got from IKEA *the previous* time we were there (99c a
cushion... how could one resist?), as well as some nasty-coloured pinkish ones we inherited from pft's mom. Monday - 11 December I'd still like to go to DVE, but considering poor Roo
has only been ridden about 20 miles total since
Lake Sonoma, it wouldn't be fair on him. I made five cushion covers over the weekend. Still have two more to do. Wednesday - 13 December We had dinner with Dorothy last night - she was in town doing some training. Very nice to see her, albeit briefly. It's still raining. In theory it might stop today and tomorrow (when I'm working down in Sac) and then start again Friday/Sat/Sun when I'm at home again. :( I inspected Roo under his blankie yesterday and his shoulders are now practically bald, so I have to figure something out. He's wearing one of those nylon "jammies" that protect his shoulders, but it's evidently not doing the trick. I can spray him with ShowSheen (I think I did this for Provo the winter I had him blanketed), but since there's not much hair left, I'm not sure how effective it would be. I don't care if he's bald, but I worry it'll get so bad he'll start getting sore from it. The herd dynamics are working well. Zini dislikes Jack, but likes Roo; and Provo dislikes Roo and likes Jack. Zini won't tolerate Jack being anywhere near her hay and bites him. Jack has gotten crafty enough that he stays *just* out of reach of Zini's teeth. Provo chases Roo away if he tries to come up to the barn. However, with the mud, he doesn't chase him as far (wouldn't want to get your feetses wet and muddy), so Roo has discovered how close he can get, so now often eats under the overhang. But they are all getting on quite well considering the rain and mud are forcing them into closer contact than usual. Roo has his special hay net (stuffed extra full) in the bottom shelter and his scoop of pellets if there's no-one around, which there often isn't because I feed in the barn first. My "big rock" has now vanished into the muck. They don't sink up to their fetlocks, so it's doing something, but you can't see it any more. The DG (caliche-a-like) in the shelters is doing "ok", although I need to add another load to it the second it dries out - I could probably do it if we get a week of dry (can't drive the truck down to where I want to spread it, for fear of getting the truck stuck in the mud). At this rate, I'm starting to consider the idea of riding in the rain, which is against my religion, but if I don't resort to that, it may not happen at all - it has been over two weeks... :(
Thursday - 14 December Still raining here - it never stopped. Ack. And we still have no firewood. pft came home with six fake logs. Better than nothing, but won't last long. I'm not uncovering him, he'll look like the others - filthy. Not going to happen. Jack is currently completely plastered in mud... not just "dirty", but completely coated. The light shines off him now. Provo is bright orange and Zini is coated in green poop. In a need to bond with pones (who all I've done is thrown hay at for the last two weeks) I stood and combed through all their manes tonight. Provo's was "braided" (read "matted beyond recognition"), but now he looks all fluffy, and both Roo and Zini now have long flowing locks. And Jack? I'm not touching him - he looks like a butterball turkey, basted in crud. Friday - 15 December I had to take 10 bales of hay over to Ann's today (to
pay for Mouse's keep) and wasn't sure I'd be able to get it
there without it getting soaked, but in the end, only got
lightly misted. Saturday - 16 December So this morning I was trying to put them all down - gah, those things are heavy. I got three in place and then unloaded the other five (as well as two bags of wood chips, to go underneath to even out the hollows) onto the little trailer that goes on the back of the lawn tractor so I could drive them the 50' to the shelter. Started to back the thing up and the tyre promptly came off the trailer rim ...it was sort of low to start with :( pft says I'm at idiot. What *was* I thinking, trying to put 800 lbs of mats and wood chips on a trailer rated for 200 lbs???? :)) (it seemed like a good idea at the time). Anyway, after the tyre fell off the rim, I came indoors to drink coffee :)))) Now I'm refreshed (sorta - esp. since I was watching "how to make chocolate mousse" on the TV), I have to go out and wrestle with them, and once they're done, go up to the garage and take the ready-made 4' x 8' wall and wrestle it into the truck. This is the final piece of the hay-part of the barn. I'm going to drill two holes into the dirt floor and put some bits of threaded rod down into them, to bolt the wall to (I'm too lazy to dig holes and concrete the threaded-rod into them, like what I'm supposed to). The trick will be figuring out where this wall has to go in relation to the doors and in relation to the hay - I want the whole thing tight to the stored hay, but not so tight that you can't get the doors open. Later that afternoon: I got my stall mats down and about broke my back carrying them. Roo hates them and, except for tentatively standing on them once in the daylight, this evening he wouldn't go near them despite the lure of "special pellets". <roll eyes>. Pellets were gone later, so someone found them, but I'm not sure it was him. Got the wall into the barn and we "planned out" how to strap it to the door rails/wall - and promptly retired to the house, on the basis that it was too damn cold out there to do any more - it reached 38°F in today (I spoke too soon about the rain - it didn't rain, but it hailed instead). Once indoors, hot shower beckoned, as did the heated waterbed afterwards, so I snoozed away the afternoon with the cats for company. :) Sunday - 17 December Today is neither raining nor hailing, so it's off to Cronin Ranch to ride in a few minutes. First time in about three weeks. Roo will be "exciting" no doubt...
Cronin Ranch is nice because you can get down to the American River and let the horses wade, assuming the river is low enough. We went down and let them drink and stand for a minute or two, then made our way back up to the trail. We'd gotten about 100 yrds when Roo let out a massive buck and took off from the ground with all four legs about 4' in the air. He then proceeded to be generally bad - rearing and leaping and bucking because it was "oh-so-exciting". That horse definitely needs riding :))))) (the flying episode was over relatively quickly, but made me burst out laughing because it was so unexpected and *so* flamboyant - he also set off Abi - Ann's horse, and Splash). After that, it was decided that going up the BIG hill was definitely in order. Horses got very quiet and weren't nearly so interested in leaping about by the time we were about half-way up :) I'm thinking that maybe I should ride him in a kimberwicke when he hasn't been ridden in a while - although as Ann warned, it may be too much for him and I'll flip him over backwards if I'm not careful. He was so funny, though. Ann said (jokingly) that a horse always comes down to the level of the rider. I explained that, no, a horse always comes down to the level of the company you ride in (having ridden mostly with her in the last couple of months <eg>). No, don't think so - but it's funny you say that because I thought the same thing looking at that pic "my stirrups look too long". They never felt too long, but then we hardly did more than walk (and buck, and leap, and ... maybe keeping the long stirrups is good? <g>). I'll check them and see. Tuesday - 19 December It said on the TV that the 2007 Chevy Silverado was voted Truck of the Year! Oooh. Celebrity Prime called this morning to say "sorry, could they reschedule our fud delivery for tomorrow or Thursday?" I told them no, I'm only at home Tues/Friday. She said "well, was there anything you needed before Christmas?" and I laughed and said, "er, yes, *everything*". She went away and came back with the offer of delivery on Saturday between 12-3. Not ideal, but better than no fud. She said she'd send along some vouchers for our inconvenience. Thursday - 21 December Hurray, hurray, it's Solstice Day... From now on, things only get better for riding. Sunday - 24 December I fell off Roo on Christmas Eve :) I was out riding on my own at Cronin and trotting along the ridge, heading back, and he saw a pink rock lurking in the undergrowth and spooked sideways (which put me off balance), and then he decided one spook wasn't evasive enough, so he spooked harder (which made the saddle start to slip - cinch not tight enough - and caused me to start clawing at his neck/mane/rein area to try and recover myself - and I thought I would, I really did), and then he saw me flailing around next to him and spooked sideways harder still, and I fell off :)))
The one we got is a "scheduler", so that once we decide it's trustworthy enough to work on it's own (i.e. have we picked up everything it could gag on, like blind cords and clods of dried horse poop), then we can tell it "Go forth and vacuum next Wednesday at 9:37 am when I'm at work". :)))) One of the things I don't like about the Roomba is the way it picks up cobwebs on its little infrared detector bobble and then drives around the room with its cobweb garland flying out behind it. I think that's wrong. Thursday - 28 December Four days after falling off, I rode out at Cronin again with Ann and Jess - and took them to see the bear footprints, and showed them the pink rock (which Roo spooked at violently again) and the second pink rock (which he also spooked at - at least he's predictable - and at least I was ready, so didn't fall off <G>). During that ride, we were trotting behind Abi who tends to canter up any hill. Roo would immediately start to buck whenever she'd canter (which was every minute or so, since we were going along an undulating trail). That got old pretty quickly - we'd be going along, Abi cantering, me threatening him with death if he tried to buck. For the most part, I managed to keep him at the trot, but at one point, he ran off because Abi left us behind (since she was cantering and we weren't). He stopped when he caught up with her, but it's still an unpleasant feeling that he was off balance and could slip over and squash me flat. Friday - 29 December Yesterday I had it vacuum the hall, the corridor, the kitchen, the bathroom and the mudroom (where the cat litter trays are). That filled it up - but I hadn't vacuumed in ages.
We just set it to vacuum the living room. Took out the little throw rugs with the fringes, but have two other carpets that kind of sit on top of each other. It depended on which angle it came to them at. Sometimes it would catch its foot on the edge of the carpet and stall for a bit, but then maneuver around until it got unstuck. Most of the time, however, it did manage to "mount" the rugs without any trouble.
Fringes it doesn't like (it eats them). Two choices - tuck them under the rug, or put a virtual wall in (little box that emits a beam to keep the Roomba away) to keep it away from that part of the carpet.
yes, if the fringes are long
You'd have to detangle it to avoid that. Not sure how it would deal with leaves. It's not a waste disposal unit and deals better with "little dirt" - although it did eat a peanut without trouble. About halfway through its vacuuming yesterday, I opened up the brushes (they pop right out) and cleaned off some of the fuzz/tangled hair. It still beats having to vacuum. You just put it down on the floor and go and do something else (like email <g>) and listen out for when it might get into trouble. Just now, mine got stuck on the base of the chair - it tried to climb over it and didn't quite make it. But it sucked up all the pine needles under the tree, and the crisps and dirt in front of the sofa. Saturday - 30 December Mouse is still staying at Ann's house - and she has been riding her little and often. Mouse trudges out to Greenwood Lake and then prances home. Ann's shoer, Solange, came and shod her on Saturday morning - with normal shoes, pads with frog supports, and some sort of medicated black gunk under the pads to help her slough off sole which Solange says she is retaining <shrug> (her feet do look a little stacked up) - $115 <yikes>. We shall see if that makes her any more comfortable. In the meantime, Ann sends her pones down the road to a 60-acre rolling pasture, so Mouse has been there for the last few days, having a lovely time. It's the most perfect place for her, as she's getting exercise and wandering around, instead of just standing. It's tempting to send some of the other guys down there. :) Sunday - 31 December
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