Hoofers and Catch 22s

My farrier phoned this weekend to schedule an appointment to trim the horses hooves. He always chooses Tuesday, which is the one day of the week that I'm not home. There have been some weeks in which Tuesday is the only day he could come by, so my husband stood in for me and did the job of catching, haltering and holding the horses. We keep telling the farrier that we can do any day except Tuesday, yet he always picks Tuesday. At first I thought it was because he had other clients in my area who could only see him on Tuesdays, but then the truth hit me: He purposefully chooses Tuesdays because he enjoys talking with my husband more than he does talking with me.

So, when he called this past weekend and picked Tuesday, my husband told him that he has no interest in standing outside in the freezing cold for an hour and a half holding horses. Horses are my hobby, so it's my responsibility to do that job. The farrier ended up settling for Wednesday.

He usually shows up between 9:00 AM and 9:30 AM. When I logged into my computer in my home office on Wednesday, I was met with an urgent email regarding an emergency code release at noon. I calculated how much work would be involved and knew that even if I canceled my farrier appointment and worked as fast as I could, it would be a miracle if I met the noon deadline. I resigned myself to canceling the farrier appointment.

Then I remembered that both my kids are home over the holiday break. I asked my daughter if she could catch, halter, and hold the horses on my behalf. She agreed. Let's just say that thanks to a series of mistakes made by other people and mishaps with electronic equipment, that noon deadline slipped into tomorrow, which is supposed to be a company holiday. I never even got outside to say hello to my farrier, because I was being jerked around in so many different directions by people at work.

I asked my daughter later how the horses did. She said that Gabbrielle was antsy, but the other two horses did well. Several hours beyond that it hit me that I should ask her if our nosy neighbors came out to watch her, since they always do that to me every time that I hold the horses for the farrier. Sure enough, she said that the woman was loitering around the perimeter of our property while they were working with Gabbrielle. She said the woman first went into her back yard. That is usually where she stands on her tip-toes and peers over the fence when I'm out there. My daughter said that Gabbrielle was also pointing with her nose at the barn, so she figured the woman was hiding back there at one point. I asked if she and the farrier talked much. She said they didn't say much beyond talking about the weather. My poor nosy neighbor must have been so bored.

Despite me trying to catch cases of thrush ahead of time, the farrier did find some on one of Gabbrielle's back hooves. I had only treated her front hooves, because the back ones looked good last weekend. So much can change in just a few days. As soon as I got a break from work, I ran out there and smothered some gunk on her hind hooves. She's good as new now.

Hopefully, I can actually get a break from work with the next appointment, because no one will be home to help me then. I have so many appointments that I hate to have to inform my boss of every single one. I'm always responsible about making up the time I miss by either starting work early or ending late or working on the weekend. The problem is that things get out of control when I don't inform my boss of an appointment (because I'm embarrassed for having had too many other appointments recently), and then something comes up at work that prevents me from being able to attend my appointment. Then I have to choose between canceling my appointment at the last minute or telling my boss without advance notice (which is required by my company) that I can't do what he wants because I have to be somewhere else. It's a stressful life when you always have to be in two or three difference places at once.

I wish our economy could improve enough to get back to allowing one person per family to stay home to manage the household. Right now my husband works full-time, I work full-time with overtime hours, plus I have a couple of other jobs on the side, my daughter works full-time and is a full-time student, and my son is a full-time student who is involved in sports. That's just too much, but without three adults within the family working, we wouldn't be able to afford our current lifestyle.

Big sacrifices would have to be made for me to stay at home. Considering how expensive it is to keep horses, they'd probably have to go, and then I'd have no reason to stay home other than to cook and clean house. The kids are already raised. We are now concentrating on putting them through college at a time when college tuitions are nearly doubling over the course of a few months. State governments are running out of money to fund their universities, so now the students have to foot the majority of the bill. The only reason why I would want to stay home is to work with the horses, but without my job, I can't afford to keep the horses. With the job, I can't get the time to handle all the farrier and vet appointments necessary to maintain the horses' health, and it's difficult finding the time to train and ride the horses. It's a Catch 22.

Reflections on the Old Year; Wishes for the New Year

I have always thought it was a bit silly that people expected a fresh start with each new year. It's just a date, so unless you change your habits, January 1st will most likely end up being not much different from December 31st.

However, this time around I am really looking forward to the year 2010. (It feels so futuristic, doesn't it?) A part of me wants to believe in astrology, especially Chinese astrology in which different years are ruled by different animals (i.e Rooster, Rat, Pig, Horse...) I'm a Dragon based upon the year I was born. 2010 will be the year of the Tiger. Apparently, Dragons and Tigers are incompatible, so I supposedly have a rough year ahead of me.

However, I am more than ready to say good riddance to 2009. First off, it seemed that every storm that came through my area this year came through over a weekend. I work Monday through Friday. I can't ride my horses then, yet that is when we had the most awesome riding weather. Then when I finally got a break from work on the weekends, the sky would open up and dump rain or snow all over us. What was up with that?

I also struggled throughout 2009 to get a vacation so that I could train Gabbrielle under saddle. The first vacation had to be canceled because as soon as I saddled her up, a house painting crew showed up next door and started making a racket. My second attempt at a vacation got thwarted due to another neighbor doing construction and bad weather. Each vacation request I put in after that got denied by my employer, so I ended up taking time off around Christmas, because that was the only week they would give me. I can't train a horse under saddle in the depths of winter. I'm too wimpy for that. What do you think I am? A Canadian? (Wink, wink, Shirley. I've seen you training horses in the snow. I guess the fall is softer that way, isn't it?)

In addition to scheduling problems, Gabbrielle had her own series of mishaps that led to long recovery periods without riding. She lost the tip of her ear, she cracked her hoof way up beyond the comfort zone, she cut the circumference of her coronet band, and she somehow sliced open her knee and got a puncture wound in the process. As a result, I'll be training her under saddle when she is a 5-year-old.

On a positive note, I got both Lostine and Bombay out on the trails. They both seem to enjoy it, getting excited over the sights and sounds, and all the activity around us. My daughter completed her freshman year of college, and my son got his driver's license. I won two free tickets to a Clinton Anderson Downunder Horsemanship Clinic and was able to take my blogger friend Lisa with me. I didn't lose my job, though I might have actually wished that I did at times. I didn't move to my dream farm void of neighbors, but I did get a new kitchen.

This is what I wish for in 2010:

1. Train Gabbrielle under saddle successfully.
2. Do more trail riding with all three horses.
3. Get a riding partner for the trails.
4. Make a career change into some field that moves at a slower pace and never asks for more than 40 hours a week of my time.
5. Move onto a 40 acre farm with no neighbors and ride to my heart's content.
6. Oh, and we can't forget the need to lose weight. I won't go into specifics.
7. If I have to see a doctor next year, let it be a good one, for God's sake.
8. Let it rain on the weekdays so that I don't have to hand-water, but leave the weekends clear and warm.
9. I want someone to invent a food machine that drops food into my mouth, so that I don't have to stop doing the things I enjoy in order to cook and eat three times a day. (Geez. What a time waster -- having to eat.)
10. I want one of those soft, fuzzy jackrabbits under my apple trees to let me pet it for once instead of hopping away.

Yes, and I want happiness and good health for everyone, not to mention, world peace.

Macro Monday

My daughter found this Arabian horse pendant and made the beading for me for Christmas.

Last Chance Ride

Today is the last day of my 12-day vacation from work. The temperatures have been hovering around freezing during the day, so there's been too much ice on the ground to ride. I kept hoping the sun would come out long enough to at least melt the ice in the round pen, so that I could have one ride on a horse before I have to return to the grind. Though snow was forecasted for today, the sun came out instead. Go figure. I wrapped my arms around Bombay's neck and said, "Will you take me for a ride today?"

He nodded his head up and down.

I watched a movie I got for Christmas while the horses were eating their lunch. I kept checking outside to see of they had finished their hay, and had to cut the movie short once they did, or I would lose my window of sunshine to ride in. I saddled up Bombay and he started getting all jittery, dancing around and snorting. "What is your problem?" I said.

He pointed over to the neighbor's place with his nose.

Sure enough, I heard voices and car doors slamming. They had come home from church three hours early. "You've got to be kidding me!" I exclaimed.

These people must have a satellite trained at my house and be watching me remotely from their pews in church. I can just hear them saying, "Honey! She's saddling up a horse. Quick! Let's race home and see what we can do to disrupt her ride."

See how fat Bombay is from not being ridden or exercised in so long?

So, I walked Bombay out to the round pen and noted that the neighbors left their trunk open again. That means that they will pick the worst possible time to come out of their house to slam it shut. I lunged Bombay for a little while at a walk and jog, waiting for them to come out and slam that trunk. I couldn't lunge Bombay at anything faster than a jog, because he kept slipping on ice and falling.

Then Gabbrielle got the fits. She started galloping around the outside of the round pen baiting Bombay to chase her, and he did. Of course, he promptly slipped on ice and fell on his side. After that he listened when I said, "Easy!"

Just when I was about to mount Bombay, I noticed that one of the belly straps on Gabbrielle's blanket was hanging. I tied up Bombay so he wouldn't roll with the saddle on and approached Gabbrielle to fix her strap. She still had the fits and kept running away from me. I calmly followed her and kept trying to get a hold of that hanging belly strap. I was afraid to reach under Gabbrielle's belly, because if she decided to take off at a gallop in that instant, she'd probably take off my head with her hind hoof.

What happened next is amazing.

Lostine saw my predicament, and she trotted over to Gabbrielle with her ears pinned back as if to discipline her. Lostine then positioned her body to block Gabbrielle from moving away from me. I reached down underneath Gabbrielle's belly to grab the strap, and Gabbrielle started walking away. Lostine swung her hind end at Gabbrielle and backed into her to stop her. She stopped, I reattached the strap, and then Lostine released her. I gave Lostine a ton of praise. She has done things in the past to help me deal with the younger horses, but this was by far the most amazing.

It was time to mount Bombay, and the neighbors still hadn't come out to close their trunk. I mounted quickly figuring they'd choose that moment to shut it since I'm at my most vulnerable being off balance while mounting. Fortunately, they didn't come outside. I rode Bombay at just a walk, because I could feel him slipping on ice under me. Then the neighbor came out. She ducked into her car and dug around in there for something. Bombay heard her shut her front door and became tense. I debated on whether to point him at her as she's digging around in her car, knowing he'd spook as soon as she popped up out of the car, or whether to keep his back to her so he wouldn't see her pop up. I opted to keep his back to her.

Once she started walking her dog around in her front yard, I pointed him at her so he'd be aware of her presence. As we came around, my back was to her, so I figured she'd use that opportunity to run behind my barn, because God forbid -- she can't let her dog take a dump on her own property. I quickly turned Bombay to face the woman, and not surprisingly, she was gone. The only way she could have made it from where she was standing in her yard to behind my barn would be if she ran.

I moved Bombay over a ways and spotted her letting her dog do its thing behind my barn. She looked up, saw me watching her, and quickly yanked her dog along to pretend like they were just out for a walk. She walked her dog toward the end of the street, then came back. I had to keep turning Bombay toward her each time she appeared out from behind a tree or a car or the barn. What I thought was really odd was that she left her trunk open while she took her dog for a walk. Doesn't she know that wears the battery down, because there is a light that gets triggered when you open the trunk?

When she finished her walk, she pulled a white plastic bag out from the trunk and waved it in the air, which made a rattling noise and caused my horse to spook sideways. She then slammed her trunk loudly, causing him to spook again, and went into her house as if nothing happened. After that Bombay was spooking at every little noise including icicles falling from the roof of the barn. I lost control for a little bit and then remembered my equitation instructor's voice yelling, "YOU'D BETTER RIDE, GIRL!"

So, I kept better leg contact, better rein contact, collected my horse, and kept him moving at a swift walk in different directions. That kept both his feet and mind busy, so that he couldn't look around for things to spook at. It was a bit of a pitiful ride, since all we did was go in circles at the walk, turn, back up, and sidepass, but it was better than nothing. If I went my whole vacation without at least being able to sit on a horse, I would have been very sad. By the end of our ride, Bombay was more relaxed. He gave me his usual nicker of appreciation when I dismounted, and happily ate his peppermint reward.

Rolling with Gabbrielle

What's that off in the distance?





Shake it, girl!

Oh oh, here comes Bombay to hassle her...

Nope. It looks like Gabbrielle gets the last word in on this spat...

Joy to the World!

Merry Christmas to All!

Scratching with Gabbrielle

It's so funny the way she purses her upper lip. It's as if she twitched it herself to get those endorphins flowing...

Together Again

I decided to remove the horses' blankets this morning and let them hang out together. Gabbrielle made a beeline to the chicken wire and started rubbing herself on it...

Bombay enjoyed what was left of the salt block...

Miss Piggy, I mean Lostine, raided what was left of Gabbrielle's breakfast.

I'm a little worried about Gabbrielle, because she hasn't been eating all of her hay. She eats for a little bit, and then takes a break and just stares off into space for a while. It could just be that she realizes she doesn't have to rush to eat since I've been separating the horses. She has a fast metabolism, so it's hard to keep the fat on her. I always give her the thickest, heaviest flake of hay. Maybe I'm giving her more than she cares to eat. However, I did give her a dose of grain, bran and psyllium just to keep things moving in case she has a bit of a tummy ache forming.

This is what the ground is like at the moment:

The horses' hooves break through a thin layer of snow, a thick layer of ice, and land in some mud. Since they have been spending so much time standing around in mud and wet manure, I knew they were at risk of thrush. I cleaned out their hooves, and sure enough, both Gabbrielle and Bombay were getting that gunky, stinky black stuff building up in the crevices.

I had bought a bottle of Thrush-XX at the local feed store a while back when I needed something in a pinch and couldn't wait for a better product to come through the mail or figure out how to make my own mix. As soon as I set it down on the ground, it tipped over and spilled, because the cap was loose.

I picked it up and got the green gunk all over my hands. I washed both the bottle and my hands really well, but it's hard to get out. All day my son kept saying that he stunk. He'd sniff his feet and his shirt, trying to figure out what exactly was making the stink. Then I realized that he said that each time I came near him. I said, "Sniff my hands. Is this what you are smelling."

He nearly vomited. It was the Thrush-XX. I was self-conscious about going to bed, because I knew my hands would stink up the whole room. My husband got up during the middle of the night and left the room. I figured he couldn't take the stink anymore, so I put on some mittens.

That helped cover up the smell pretty well. It turned out that my husband's nose is stuffed up and he didn't smell it at all. He was just having trouble sleeping. However, I have to admit that the stink was keeping me awake, so once I got those mittens on I finally settled into a full night's rest.

Baked Goods, Ghosts, and a Loose Horse

Introducing...

...the best cookies I've ever baked! These are the most delicious peanut butter kisses on earth.

I baked these on Saturday, because I was afraid that if I didn't use the candies for their intended use right away, I'd eat them right out of the bag. It's not often that I have a bag of chocolate around the house. You have to bake these cookies for 8 minutes, stick the candy in the center, and then bake them for another 3 minutes. It worked out great with the Kisses and Rolos, but the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups didn't fare as well under the heat. Yet, the mushed Reese's still made the most delicious cookies.

These are Dandy Candy Oatmeal cookies...


Look who came home from college to help...

She said it feels so weird to not be under stress. I told her I'm still having nightmares about work even though I'm on vacation. We were baking to the tunes of Johnny Cash and Duffy.

We are all still fumbling around trying to locate items we need in our new kitchen. I think this is the first time we've ever been able to bake together without having to use the dining room table for extra surface space.

We have a ghost in our house...

Nah, it's just my son acting silly trying to escape my camera.

He knows I can't get a good picture if he keeps moving, so he walks really fast around the house making faces.

Last night my son and I realized that I had given him permission to go ice skating with his friends today and we have a dental appointment at the same time. He begged me to cancel the dental appointment. I have some kind of low grade infection that I can't get rid of that is now attacking the left side of my face. I have an ear infection in my left ear, a sore throat just on the left side of my throat, a cold sore on the left side of my lip, and a sore on the inside of my left cheek. I decided I'd call us both in sick for the dental appointment. I hate it when they stretch my lips out while I've got a cold sore, and I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that somehow I always have a cold sore every time I go in for a teeth cleaning. It may be another six months before we can get in, but I'd rather postpone it than to suffer and possibly infect the hygienist.

Ridiculous things keep happening to me, so I'm getting particularly sarcastic about life at the moment. For instance, my son's girlfriend was coming to visit for the first time and I wanted to clean up the house a bit. Of course, the vacuum cleaner had to break down, which only happens when people come to visit. Our vacuum repairman hates Dyson's because they are difficult to take apart. He told us that if it breaks down one more time, we'd be wasting our money to repair it and may as well just buy a new vacuum cleaner. Though he hates Dysons, I love them. Most of the Hoover and Eureka vacuum cleaners I've used over the years didn't even last one year before breaking down, and they had no sucking power. Dysons can pick up anything. The repairman was trying to sell me some brand that only he sells and repairs that costs between $800 and $1,100. I can smell a trap in that deal, so we're buying ourselves another Dyson just to piss him off.

Today I hung up the cordless phone into its receiver and somehow missed. Guess where it landed? In the dogs' water bowl. This was a brand new phone. My daughter was running around gathering towels to dry it with, and I said, "Now you know why I'm afraid to wake up most mornings. Ridiculous things like that happen to me all the time. All I have to do is touch something and it breaks."

She insisted that ridiculous things like that happen to other people all the time too, and then she promptly broke the towel rack off our kitchen cabinet. She fixed it, and the phone too, but she made her point in the process.

Then there's the horses. Because I'm not feeling well, it took me longer than normal to get out of bed. I stepped outside to get the horses out of their stalls and there was Lostine standing at the fence calling out "Good Morning" to me. She had let herself out of her stall. Apparently, I forgot to lock it last night. I was glad I hadn't laid out today's breakfast last night, because I probably would have found a horse with a bad case of colic. Lostine has an amazingly strong nose. She can stick her nose through the bars on the window and push that really heavy door aside in a few pushes. I struggle opening and closing that door myself.

We have a few more recipes to bake before my vacation is over. We are all exercising diligently to burn off the extra calories. Hopefully, the exercise will win out over the sweets.

December 18th

Interesting day. I honestly don't know where it went. I wasn't able to sit down and relax until 7:00 PM. I sure have a lot to do for someone who is on vacation.

I started off the morning doing laundry and odd chores such as throwing out the dead flowers leftover from Thanksgiving. Then I wrapped Christmas gifts. As I was setting the gifts under the tree, the phone rang. It was my boss. My heart dropped when I heard his voice. I figured there was an emergency at the office and he needed my help. That's sad if the company can't last three days without me. He sensed my fear and said, "I promise I'm not calling to ask you to do any work over your vacation."

That statement allowed me to relax and listen to what he had to say better. He notified me that he made the decision to fire one of my coworkers. This was difficult news to know how to react to. First off, I feel awful for the guy getting fired one week before Christmas. On the other hand, I've worked for companies that laid me off after Christmas, and I was angry that they didn't do it before Christmas so that I could have known not to spend so much money over the holidays. However, I'm actually surprised that this coworker had not been let go sooner. He made an art out of avoiding work.

Hopefully, they will replace him with someone who has a family to feed and is motivated to be a strong team player. I could really use some help. If they could just get one more person in my department who has a good work ethic, then perhaps I can put in less hours and spend more time doing the things I love rather than sitting at my computer for 10 to 16 hours a day doing everyone else's job because they were too irresponsible to do it themselves. I take my job seriously, because I know that if I don't do a good job, the company could lose a lucrative contract, which could result in all my coworkers losing their jobs. I'd rather see one or two slackers let go every once in a while than to have me struggling to keep our company's reputation afloat all by myself. Anyway, my boss told me that it's been really hard on them making it through the past few days without me, but he'll try to leave me alone for the rest of my vacation.

Once I absorbed that news, I sent out Christmas cards. An odd thing happened with that. I had put an outgoing bill payment in my mailbox and raised the red flag to let the mailman know there was something to pick up. I then went out later to put the bundle of Christmas cards in the box and my flag was down. I couldn't believe that the mail carrier had arrived already. However, when I opened my box, my outgoing bill was still in it. This is the third time this has happened in the past few weeks.

My mail carrier is really good at his job. He doesn't make amateur mistakes like putting a flag down and forgetting to pick up the outgoing mail. That means that someone has been playing around with my mailbox. My nosy neighbor's mailbox is right next to mine. I opened her box to peek inside to see if her mail had been delivered. She had a stack of outgoing mail in her box, which means that she was at the mailboxes earlier, but the mail carrier hadn't arrived yet. She immediately became my first suspect for playing with my flag. She has a habit of messing around with things that don't belong to her. The first thing she did when she moved into the neighborhood was to take down our street sign. I had to pay $150 out of my own pocket to replace it, because she wouldn't own up to what she did, despite us seeing her do it. She's so odd that I've given up second guessing her motives.

I ended up driving into town to mail my bill payment and Christmas cards just because I didn't trust her to stay out of my box. I know I opened her box, but it was with good intentions. I just wanted to know if I missed the mail carrier or not. However, putting someone's flag down when they have mail that needs to be picked up is a behavior that doesn't have good intentions.

After dropping off the mail in town and doing the marketing, my son and I turned onto our street and headed for our driveway. Suddenly, this car flew out in front of us scaring me to death, and I had to slam on my brakes on ice. It was my nosy neighbor. She had been parked at the end of my driveway again, only on the opposite side of the street -- the WRONG side of the street. She was probably snooping and got scared when I came around the corner, so she pulled away from the fence, swerved in front of me, and got back over into her lane. She drove past with this sheepish expression on her face, so I know I caught her doing something -- I just don't know exactly what.

I was surprised to see that my husband came home from work early. December 18th is a special day for us. You may recall last year that this was the day my husband gave me my new Tucker trail saddle. It's our wedding anniversary. My husband and son helped unload the groceries. I was in such a zone that I didn't see the beautiful bouquet of roses and gift on the table.

They smell awesome. The gift turned out to be a Kindle!

Now I can read without having to go to the bookstore or wait for books to be shipped. I can get instant gratification for my reading pleasure. The timing of this gift was perfect, because I want to submit some of the poems I have written in recent years to some literary journals, but I'm not sure which journals are still in business, and whether or not they have the same address as they did years ago. My last Poet's Market was published in 2003. Now I can get myself a 2009 or 2010 Poet's Market for much less money than the hardback or paperback editions, and know I have the most recent information for the literary journals I choose to submit my work to. I can also use the audio feature and have the computer read for me when my eyes are too tired to do so.

Once we finished putting the groceries away, I gave my husband his gift, then I had to run outside to clean stalls and put the horses to bed. Then it was time to go out to dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant in town. I had the world's most delicious picadillo taco salad with a Negra Modelo to wash it down. Then we drove home and I got to sit down and play with my new Kindle. :)

Ice Skating on Hooves

So far my wish for the sun to stay out and melt the snow has been happening, but the ground is so saturated that the water just sits on top like a pond and freezes overnight. Mornings are tricky, because I have to be careful not to slip on ice or allow the horses to slip on ice. The section directly in front of their barn is an ice rink, so I can't just open the stall doors and let the horses gallop out to their feed troughs.

This morning I haltered Gabbrielle first and walked her underneath the awning, through the fence and down the RV lane to the back pen. She was fine until she saw a pile of rocks that wasn't there before. She spooked sideways, which caused Lostine and Bombay to startle in their stalls and start kicking. I had to keep Gabbrielle at a walk, because there's another ice rink right in front of the gate to her pen. That meant keeping a grip on the lead rope right underneath her chin and leaning backwards while I walked. It's a good thing I've been lifting weights.

Once she was safely in her pen, it was time to get Bombay, who was still spooked by Gabbrielle's spook, and who was bobbing his head nervously up and down from his stall window, huffing ice clouds through his nostrils. He continued spooking in his stall the entire time I put the halter on him. Lostine wasn't helping by kicking the wall every few seconds. I told Bombay to ignore her, because she's just angry that I didn't feed her first. Some days I feel like I own gorillas instead of horses with the way they throw their muscle around.

Bombay walked sideways instead of next to me, so Lostine promptly poked her head out the stall window and nipped him on the rump. That sent him flying into a pile of ice. I got control of him again and he pranced next to me all the way around the ice rink until we reached the round pen.

Then there was Lostine. She wanted to take off as if not even on a lead rope as soon as we stepped out of the stall. I pulled back and she spun toward me, getting herself stuck in the same pile of ice that Bombay jumped into. I couldn't get her to walk next to me, so I had to back her around the ice rink. Each time she backed, she reared up a little in rebellion as if to say, "Let me go! I know how to get to my feed by myself."

The problem is that on previous mornings she galloped through snow on her way to the feed trough. It's not snow anymore and she wouldn't find out until it was too late. She finally turned in the right direction and walked beside me in resignation. However, even though I led her to her food trough, she took off galloping as soon as I released her and had to run around to all the other feed troughs just to make sure they didn't have food in them too. Fortunately, she followed the path I led her on and avoided the ice.

It looks like slush and chunks of snow, but trust me, if you stepped on that you'd be flat on your back in one-second.

I could see steam coming off the haystack.

I hope the ground can drink up a little more of this meltage today. I want to ride.