Sorta-measured him the other day and it looks like he's slightly over 12:2 right now. Fingers crossed for at least one more inch (I need to borrow a proper stick to get an actual reading on him - assuming I can get him to stand still long enough).

The current plan is for him to go back to his breeder, Irene Harvey at Briarfair Farm, next spring for his saddle training, so I'll have him back in the summer to ride. Can't wait.

Typhoon Melor
Tuesday 13 October

...or at least the remnants thereof. This is what we spent three days getting ready for:

It took pft two hours to get to work this morning (he left at 6:30 to get there for an 8 am meeting. So much for that). The power miraculously stayed on, although it went off for 5-10 seconds about twenty times (thank goodness I'm working on a laptop at home, or my work would have been toast).

Renaissance Faire
Saturday 17th

Ann, Jenny and I went to the Ren Faire in Folsom this day. It was hot-hot-hot and muggy and crowded, but we had fun looking at the "garb" and trying to pick out an outfit for Jenny to wear on her Friesian, Enzo. We watched the jousting (gret big horses galloping up and down with men whacking things), and people-watched (lots of scary bubbies in evidence). The more I watched, the more I wanted to look at the clothing and see how it all fit together. I think SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms) events would be better - less bubbies/people trying to sell you things and more people making things/showing you how.

I managed to pick up some stripey stockings which are most excellent, and got Jenny a great deal on a bodice which had a small flaw (which I was jealous of and afterwards couldn't figure out why I hadn't bought it for myself?).

Chook Quilt - started up on this quilt again, only to discover the cats had peed on the blocks <grrr> despite having hidden them under books and other coverings for that very reason. I'm thinking it must be ammonia, or sommat, in the dye that makes them want to do this - it's about the third time it has happened. 

Debated on just ignoring the smell and working on the blocks, but couldn't stand it so hand-washed them in the sink and the dark blue fabric promptly bled into the yellow beaks <grrrr>. I swear I pre-washed this stuff, but it isn't done leaking yet, apparently. Oh well, they'll be more muted. 

I trimmed all the blocks to the same size (13 1/4" x 12 1/2")(obviously), so now I'm ready to put the thing together. On the way to the Ren Faire, we stopped by the quilt store in Cameron Park and I got some blue (surprise) fabric for the sashing. I was aiming for brown or green, so was surprised this blue worked so well. I also bought a bottle of "Retayne" which is supposed to stop leaky dye. Got home and discovered I already had a bottle. Oh well, I can dump tons of the stuff in...

Rasping and Dremelling
Sunday 18th

Another good deed done - I worked on Chilli's raptor-length toenails with the dremel. Since she wasn't dealing well with rides of more than a mile or so (getting v. creaky) and since I've been riding Uno who didn't deal well with her running up behind him, she's been staying home all summer and not coming out on trail rides, much to her chagrin.

Ha! I thought her toenails were long before - that was nothing compared to how they looked this morning <ack>. 

Later in the afternoon, I got Fergus all rasped up and fitted with his new set (i.e. ones with toes) of EZ boot Gloves ready for Lake Sonoma, then I started to move Roo out of mothballs by doing his feet.

ACK. 

It was like Night of the Living Dead - I couldn't even find his frogs. He was only on eight weeks (he used to get shod every five when he wore shoes), but GAH, his feet looked like no one had touched them in 15 weeks. It was scary. Much better now they are back under control.

One odd thing - I got some tiny pin-pricks of blood when working around the seat of the corn on his heels, even though I didn't feel like I'd gone that short. Not sure what that was about - he didn't seem particularly sore when I was done thank goodness. He still won't get ridden for a couple of weeks, so that gives his feet a chance to sort themselves out.

	Lake Sonoma 50 Saturday 24th How much fun was that!? Uno and I did our first 50 together at Lake Sonoma this weekend (and thinking back - Roop and I did our first 50 together there too; and Mouse and I did our first (and only :( ) 50 there too... I'm picking up a pattern). It was also Fergus and pft's second 50.
I love this ride (can you tell)? and even though it's not long, it's deceptively tough - there's very little straight flat stuff and probably 90% of the ride is singletrack - singletrack that either goes up, or goes down. By the time you're done, you've done around 6500' of climbing and 6800' of descent. Big fun trail, though.
Roop got very back-sore on our first time we rode this ride and was reluctant to go down hills towards the end - he'd only come from AZ a few weeks before and hadn't done a lot of hill-work at that point. Uno, OTOH, did *great* and stayed strong until the end, I was so proud of him. During training rides he's not the always most exciting horse to ride (tending to conserve energy) and I hoped he perk up at a "real ride" - and I was right.  Uno's got quite the little competitive streak going on. He's not out of control-idiotic, but sights onto a horse ahead and speeds up to catch up with them, moving along strongly. But he's super-smooth and an easy horse to deal with - doesn't try to stand on you and isn't continually wriggling around (like some grey pones I could mention). He was very itchy (managing to unclip his reins at least once), but he was also sporting a thick woolly coat, so we can forgive him. I clipped his jugular area and afterwards wished that I'd clipped more, but in retrospect it's probably just as well I didn't, as he did recover pretty well after the first humid check.
	Other really good things about him: He doesn't tailgait He doesn't have a melt-down if the horse ahead gets further than 6' away He doesn't get pissy with other horses on the trail (in fact I had to discourage him scratching his itchy face on the stranger horse with the red ribbon in its tail) He apparently pulsed down without too much difficulty (note, prior to this ride, I'd never even taken his pulse - just assumed he had one) He doesn't spook (!!!!) He will lead (and not spook) and although he's not super-fast, he's pretty consistent He conserves energy very carefully - doesn't overdo it, but will happily plod up hills and be ready to trot at the top He doesn't act like you're trying to poison him when you elyte him He managed to complete this ride with less than 100 miles of conditioning on him. I felt bad that we hadn't managed to do as much as I'd wanted with him, but he seemed to cope well with the distance and the climbing. He didn't eat quite as well as I'd've liked, so we took it really easily - taking longer at each check to give him time to really recover, stopping at every water break and letting the pones munch
Not so good things: He didn't eat as well as I'd like him to (immediately giving me paranoid thoughts about ulcers), just picking at his feed (but considering he managed to munch his way through two flakes that night, I don't think I need to be too concerned) He tips over his water in the middle of the night He's still scootly (shoots forward, flipping you off the back of the saddle) if you put him in the back and he imagines he sees something back there He will fall off the side of the trail if you yell loudly when you get thwocked hard on the head by a large buckeye He's a bit slug-like uphill and when you're walking (this means I tend to almost never walk with him, which means we'll get everywhere quicker).
He wore Gloves all around (as did Fergus) and we never had a single boot failure. I checked their gaiters carefully at the 12 mile check (found a small twig in one of Fergus'), but after that, never looked at them again until it was time to yank them off back at the trailer.
Other cool things about this ride: Renee got to ride Brandi Apple with us - that's two rides in one year - woo! Fergus and pft completed their second 50 in fine shape. Fergus was suffering from quiet gut sounds at the 12 mile check, so we took extra time for him to get around to eating and he was back to As by the time we got to the lunch check. He was a little tired in places (mostly going uphill - needs a lot more hillwork), but overall coped very well given how little riding he's had since completing his first 50 at Bridgeport in August. Towards the end he got quite unmotivated... that is until we put Brandi in the front and she set off at Mach 17, leaving us flailing in her wake. That woke Fergus up plenty fast and he was zoomy all the way to the finish. Actually, the best thing about this ride was running three horses together that knew each other and could each take up the slack when one got tired. Fergus led for much of the start, and when he was done trail-breaking, we put Brandy up there. Finally, towards the middle of the last loop, Uno got his turn. Having a perky horse up front motivated the other two so they all stayed very cheerful throughout the whole ride. That's the first time I've ever ridden like that and it was very fun for the pones.

Roop Comes Out of Mothballs
Tuesday 27th

Sooner or later I'm going to have to slow down a bit, but not quite yet... but that said, I did take a nap this afternoon when my eyeballs were hurting in my head - which is why it's past midnight and I'm just finishing up my work and quickly writing this..

Started out today with all manner of plans involving going up on the roof to clean out the gutters and taking Roop for an out-of-mothballs ride. But by 10 am it was getting pretty windy and I was eyeing the large pile of work on my desk and rapidly losing interest. I never did make it up to the roof, but at 6 pm the wind had dropped enough that I thought a shortie along the lane was in order for Roop.

He looked a little surprised but not unhappy to be going out. I had to rearrange his breast collar that Uno used over the weekend, but was smart enough to mark Roo's size on it before adjusting in the first place so it would be easier to put back to mini-size.

Twelve weeks is long enough for your body to adjust away from the comfy shoe effect and Roo felt very fast and short movement-wise compared to Uno's laid-back dough-boy style. But on the flip side, Roo demonstrated his bestest really fast walk (yay! I'll take that!). 

Strangely, I felt like I was continually falling off his right shoulder. Not sure if this was because he's missing muscle on that side (he is), or because I'm missing muscle on that side (I am), or if the saddle was crooked. I also felt a bit like I was falling out the back of the saddle, but that may have something to do with unexpected acceleration (Uno doesn't have a lot of that, unless he's scootling from his monsters).

We'll see on Friday if it feels any better. Odd when you don't ride a horse for a while, all the lopsidedness on both of you is so much more apparent.

We only rode a couple of miles but it was big fun. Chili got to come with us (first time in 12 weeks too) and she had a fine time sniffing around. I worked on her toenails again last night, so hopefully as they get shorter she'll get more comfortable.

And today I ordered presents from Amazon: 

• BMW touch up paint (thanks to scritchy pone noses on the bonnet, a little TLC is in order)
• toothbrush tops
• a new citronella bark-collar for Chili (her old one died and she needs it since the neighbour dogs lead her astray with their bad-mouthing back and forth)
• and best of all, a lil' sink for the trailer (Cinderella shall have a place to splish her face, rinse out coffee cups, wash her hands, and dump out hot water bottle water without opening the door at Death Valley this year.)

On the Roof
Saturday 31st

Had my yearly review on Thursday. That in itself wasn't anything too alarming - I do my job, and I do my job well. What was alarming was the announcement from my boss that the powers that be have decided that - effective in January - after nine years of a "three days in the office, two days at home" work schedule they now want me and my co-worker in the office every day.

Well, that pretty much screws me for ever having a life. 

Right now, the two days at home mean I can keep my life under control - keep my house from getting totally out of hand, do laundry, ride the horses during daylight hours and work in the evening, get hay when the hay store is open, catch up on sleep, go to the post office to pick up packages, work extra hours during the week and then bunk off early to go to endurance rides on a Friday - that sort of thing. It was just like being a real person.

Going in every day will mean none of those things happen. The commute into the office is 60 miles each way and takes about 2.5 hours. In the winter it can take me an hour in the morning and an hour at night to care for the horses. Add the 12 hours I'm out of the house (which increases on a Friday as the ski season gets underway and the happy weekend skiers add to the going-up-the-hill traffic), just about leaves me two hours a day of "personal time" in which to shower, get dressed and eat, assuming I have the audacity to sleep 8 hours a day... which of course I won't, because squeezing one's life into two hours isn't really possible. So I can look forward to no sleep, reduced performance, falling asleep at the wheel if I have to do the commute on my own (possible, given that pft will start working at home one day a week in January), and general depression.

Two ironic things about this event. 

One is that I just started regularly riding three days a week and couldn't believe how much it helped my emotional and physical health. I was finally keeping it together really well, feeling energetic and emotionally competent, I was focused and the flatly-absent creativity had reappeared with avengence. I was practically buzzing. In short, I was feeling the best I had in months. <Sigh> so much for that.

Secondly, my friend Renee commented how great it was that I finally had managed to get two horses 50-mile-fit. I told her I wasn't quite there yet, but close. And that probably something would happen to prevent this happening. ...Sometimes being right isn't good.

And the lesson here? Is that–as always–it doesn't pay to be too happy. After 43 years of this, you'd think I would have figure that out by now, eh?

Today I went up on the roof.  Some people describe their gutters as being full of leaves that they cheerily blow out as though the contents of gutters was light and fluffy. Mine, OTOH, were full of mulch and I needed a small trowel to get it out.  But as of today, the gutters are clean, the trees are cut back from leaning on the roof (just in time for fire season to end), and the decks are swept of grolly-gutter crap. pft even made a chimney grate to stop the bluebirds trying to nest in the stove (which they do with sad regularity and don't always get discovered in there before it's too late). Add the barn floor overhaul and the driveway gullies dug out,and we're in relatively good shape for winter.

Tonight the clocks go back. This is allegedly to stop small children from being hit by cars in the dark on their way to school. So now they get hit on their way home from school instead. I might be missing the point. 

And it also means that a person has approximately 27 minutes in which to ride horses in the afternoon before it gets dark.

Here's Chili modeling my chook quilt who's blocks got sewn together this evening. As usual, I don't like it (why does this always happen??). Once it has the border on and is quilted up, I'll probably fall in love again <fingers crossed>.