Hitting the Road

What is up with these 10-day weather forecasts?  I checked it on Friday and we had sunshine for the next 10 days, and then I checked it Saturday and suddenly we had rainstorms for 5 out of the 10 days.  Can't somebody send these cold fronts up north, so that they can take a different tract for a while?

I am going to have disappear for a while again.  I've been home for the past two weeks, but was mostly sick, limited by the legal process, and tied to the phone.  The gods have spoken, and now I am finally able to make that trip down south to plan the funeral and settle my mother's affairs as much as I can in the few weeks I have.  If I get any Internet connectivity it will have to be through an Internet cafe.  Of course, the day I have to make the 400-mile drive, it's supposed to rain throughout the entire stretch.  All I can say is that it had better not rain at the funeral.  I've had my fill of bad luck.

A number of other unneeded mishaps have happened including my brother's apartment getting robbed while he was in the hospital.  The robbers threw a party and thrashed his place, so he had to return home to a mess and is unable to clean it up with the use of only one leg and one arm.  People suck.  I can't help him because we are hundreds of miles apart and I need to be traveling the opposite direction right now.  Also, I received news that a lifetime family friend is terminally ill.  You know you've hit rock bottom when you have to choose between a relative who died to the south, a relative who is suddenly handicapped to the north, and a family friend who is on his death bed to the west.  There are so many people who could use my help right now.  I'm telling you -- something is in the air... and it stinks.

I wanted to spend my last day at home riding a horse on the mountain trails, but my husband said that too many people are relying on me right now, and I really need to avoid taking any kind of risks that could result in me being disabled.  I know I also need to take better care of my immune system because I've had so many different illnesses and health complications in the past few weeks.  I've also been very distracted, which makes me accident-prone.  I was stupidly walking forward while looking backward over my shoulder and I ran right into the bench press bar bell.  It had about 50 pounds in weights on it, plus the bench itself, and I managed to lift the entire thing up off the ground with my ribcage.  I didn't break anything, but it was a wake up call.

I hope the boys can hold down the fort and keep the neighbors and their guests from killing my horses while I am away.  I haven't taken pictures of the horses in a while, so here's how they are looking this spring after I put them on a diet:

Bombay has already had two baths and Gabbrielle has had one, but it all seems to be in vain this time of year since the ground won't stay dry and the horses take perverted pleasure in lying in their own poop.

Poor horses.  It looks like they will have to be dirty pasture and paddock ornaments for a while.

I Looked Out My Window And What Did I See?

Six pretty maidens chomping on my tree.

I had to take pictures through the blinds at first so that I wouldn't scare them off. I know this is a common sight for many of you who live in the country, but considering that my town is quickly turning into a city, I found this gathering on my front lawn to be pretty exciting.

When the first couple of white tails strolled off toward the next property to the north, I stepped outside to get a few better shots. Oh oh, I've been spotted by the stragglers.

I always wondered why we never find deer roadkill around here, because I know that these deer having been frequenting our neighborhood at night and I also know that people drive like idiots, way too fast, often talking on cell phones while under the influence of one thing or another. We get a lot of car accidents and dead skunk, but never any dead deer.

It is because these deer are very cautious. They freeze and investigate whatever threat comes their way, and then they casually walk off, careful to stay on the side of the road away from vehicles.  The don't bolt across highways.  After seeing how this herd behaved, I realized why it is so easy for hunters to shoot them. I wish I could take a portion of my horses' flight instinct and pass it on to these pretty ladies -- just enough to get them to be wary of people, but not so much that they run blindly onto roads.

Just Waiting For What's Next

My life has been on hold thanks to the slow processing of forensics.  I'm sure my mother would appreciate a funeral so that she can rest in peace, and I would appreciate getting her debts settled so that I can relax again, but there's nothing I can do except exercise patience.  In the meantime, my in-laws decided to visit.  I wasn't in any mood to be entertaining guests, but it was their spring break and they always come on their spring break.  I got sick while they were here.  I think my immune system just couldn't take anymore stress.  I ended up with another eye infection that left me temporarily blind in one eye, a head cold, and some flu symptoms.

I've been passing the time by researching the legal system, walking dogs, and by lunging the horses in an effort to get them into shape for trail riding.  The trails I ride are steep and I don't want the horses tying up or balking because they aren't in shape to tackle those hills.  Lostine and Bombay are steady as can be.  They both feel like seasoned horses this year. 

Gabbrielle is a different story.  One day I trotted her, and she was lame as a duck.  I made the decision to only ride her at a walk and not use her as a trail horse.  She would just have to be my pet.  However, the next day I lunged her and there was no sign of lameness.  She trotted, loped and galloped all over without missing a beat, so who knows what's up with her?  Whatever it is, it must be more related to stiffness and it works itself out over time.  She's been off and on for the past couple of years.  Her soundness just isn't reliable, and every time I attempt to set up an appointment for a lameness exam, she plays the role of the little girl who cried, "Wolf!"

Gabbrielle is also getting sassy.  She used to always have her ears forward and was eager to work with me, but now she pins her ears back and tries to evade me.  She also has started testing me, but it's easy enough to gain her respect back.  She's lost her sweetness and is morphing into a bitchy mare.  Dang hormones.

My son honored me by accompanying me on a hike this past weekend.  I had to get out of the house, but had to stay out of the public eye since my face has been all messed up.  This eye infection spans the length of both eyelids and down my cheek a little ways.  I could go hiking and wear my sunglasses and no one would notice. 

Along the way we found and signed the logs in 11 geocaches!  This was my first geocache outing in which I found every item I looked for.  I'm getting so used to searching for tiny containers that I got thrown when I stumbled across my first ammo box.  It was a huge green metal box bigger than a lunch pail and I just thought it was part of some electrical equipment at first.  The smallest geocaches were little bullet-sized containers on key chains with screw off lids.  People hang them on the inside of sagebrush plants and along fence posts.  I can imagine that once the sage starts blooming, those would be impossible to find within the bushes.

I still had many more geocaches on my list, but we were both sore, tired, and hungry.  Plus my in-laws were visiting, so we had to go back home.  In other news, my son won his first silver metal and broke his personal record in pole vaulting.  I remember thinking that when he started pole vaulting his sophomore year that there was no way he would ever be able to place in the top three, because there were so many competitors who had many more years of experience than he did. 

However, now that he's a senior, he is one of those competitors with many years of experience and he is finally placing in the top three at track meets.  Pole vaulting is one of those sports that you have to work at for several years before your effort starts paying off in metals.  My son is fortunate enough to have worked with one coach who was an Olympian and another coach who owns one of the biggest pole vault manufacturing companies in the country.  He always makes sure his athletes have the best equipment for their current skill level.

I haven't ridden any horses in recent weeks mainly because I've had to stay by the phone, the weather has been lousy, my in-laws have been visiting, I've been sick, or because my neighbor refuses to go inside his house.  The guy has totally taken over my riding space with his construction tools.  He opens up every hood, trunk, door and toolbox on all three of his trucks and putts around moving tools between trucks and his garage like a pack rat all freakin' day long. 

He runs his powers tools just a few feet away from my horse paddock and round pen.  He brings in big trucks to dump dirt and rocks and whatnot into his yard.  He brings in guests who sit in their trucks and rev their engines and honk their horns like little children who can't get enough attention.  Then he takes these long breaks in which he sits on his porch and stares into my yard for hours on end, leaving his truck doors swinging and banging in the wind.  I've never met a person who is so oblivious to the fact that he and everyone associated with him is constantly polluting the air with loud noises.  I know he's partially deaf, so that probably explains it.

The horses are finally starting to get used to the noises, but if I ride them and am taken by surprise, I'm sure I'll jump, which will cause the horses to spook.  I have a hypersensitivity to loud noises.  That's why I rarely attend parades, and if I do, I wear earplugs.  Plus I don't care to be stared at the entire time I'm riding.  There's a reason why I don't show.  Having eyes on me makes me uncomfortable.  I much prefer to be alone with my horse in the mountains.

My posts and comments will probably continue to be few and far between for a while.  I'll have to be doing a lot of traveling and won't have Internet connectivity.  I want to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers.  I know that my life has a pattern in which everything bad is followed up with something good.  It's just a matter of me being patient and waiting for better days.

In Limbo

I apologize for my absence from the blogosphere.  I've been experiencing such a deep sadness that it has been difficult to do anything normal.  I am in limbo at the moment and unable to do much other than make and wait for phone calls.  When your last parent dies, you expect there to be some kind of warning such as a hospitalization.  Then you expect to be able to enter the person's home and get their affairs in order.  You expect to be able to plan the funeral, have access to his or her mail, bills, will, and know how to contact his or her estate attorney.

Things didn't happen like that for me.  I can't go into much detail right now, but I can tell you that when all is said and done, I am going to write a book or something that will help others who have Power of Attorney traverse the legal system in a more successful way than I have thus far.  Bureaucracy is a pain.  I always assumed that I would be able to handle things in a timely manner in the event of my mother's passing.  I never dreamed that the government would just take over and mess up my life like this.

In the process of notifying relatives and friends of the news, I could not locate my brother, whose signature will be needed for legal documents.  I filed a Missing Persons Report with his local police, and they tracked down his neighbors and found out that he had an accident and has been in the hospital and hospice care for several weeks with a broken shoulder and knee.  I have never received so much bad news in such a short period of time.  Something is definitely in the air and I know that I am currently struggling through probably, and hopefully, the biggest challenge of my life.  I honestly don't know if I have the strength to get through anything bigger than this.

In the meantime, I discovered why my horses keep having nasty bouts of colic.  One day I went outside to cry on a horse's shoulder, and a little girl who was visiting next door came out of the house right up to my fence calling out "horsey!"  My horses were busy eating their lunches, so I figured they would just ignore her.  However, Bombay happily left his food to greet her at the fence.  The girl then proceeded to start pulling up grass and weeds out of the ground and hand-feeding them to him.

I walked over to the fence and said, "I have a rule that no one feeds my horses other than me."

She went on feeding him and said, "It's just grass."

I thought, "Like grandmother, like granddaughter."  Every time I have ever asked her grandmother to please stop doing something that is affecting me negatively, the woman always dismissed my complaint with comments like, "It's just a little bit of noise," or "We don't do this often."  Anyway, I informed the girl that two of my horses nearly died the other day from tummy aches and that she was not to feed them anything.  Period.

She said okay, but I could tell she had no intention of stopping, because at this point she obviously had been feeding my horses for so long that she had them trained, and she felt as if they were her horses.  So, I had to go into guard dog mode and keep going outside every few minutes to patrol the perimeter of my property.  I was really angry about this intrusion, because I needed to stay by the phone after having a death in the family.  Unfortunately, the little girl, her parents, her sibling and her dog have apparently either moved in next door or nearby, because they are always there.  I can't go outside for ten minutes without them showing up.

If they are going to continue living there or visiting ten times a day, I'm definitely going to have to abandon my dream of training my horse from scratch by myself.  Right now so many people need me that I can't afford to have any horse accidents, and every horse accident I have experienced over the past five years has been caused by activity going on either next door or behind my barn. 

These newcomers have their vehicle set up so that it honks every time they lock and unlock it.  They slam doors, they scream out their conversations, and they hang out behind my barn and walk back and forth in front of my house just like their relatives.  It's like I don't even own my own property anymore.  My nosy neighbors brought in all their relatives from out of state and they just took over my space.

I have several problems with people feeding my horses.  First off, this time of year a lot of people spray weed poison, so these people are most likely feeding my horses poison.  Secondly, one person hand-feeding my horses may not hurt, but this is the time of year when all my neighbors have guests and all those guests start feeding my horses without my permission.  I'm not aware of how many people are feeding them, but I can tell you that my horses are more overweight than I've ever seen them, and I hadn't done anything to make that happen myself.  Since they are so overweight and now that I know neighbors have been feeding them, I had to cut out their lunches to avoid founder and any additional health problems.

Thirdly, people could be feeding the horses naturally poisonous plants.  Wet grass can get tangled up in their intestines and cause blockages.  These are the same neighbors who mow their wet yard and just dump all the clippings over the fence thinking that they are doing me a favor by feeding my horses, unaware that wet clippings can kill a horse.  Lastly, I don't want to get sued if someone gets bit while hand-feeding my horses.  I am not being unreasonable by making this simple request.

The people next door have horses in their own yard, but for some reason they won't let their guests near them.  Instead they send their guests over to my property.  I was so irritated that I contemplated grabbing a can of white paint out of the garage and painting "DO NOT FEED THE HORSES" in huge letters on the back of my barn, but I knew some of the nicer, more respectful neighbors would be upset with me for making my barn an eyesore with graffiti.

I was contemplating asking my neighbor friend, whose window overlooks my horse paddock, if she could keep an eye on things and chase off any trespassers, but tragically, I spoke to her the other day and realized that her brain damage from her horse accident is more extensive than I originally thought.  She's not in any condition to be asked to take responsibility for anything.  Within a very short time, I lost my real mother in body and lost someone who I considered to be my "second mother" in mind.  I may just have to go door-to-door and make my rules clear to everyone in the neighborhood.  My horses are not for their guests' entertainment.  I don't want to return from handling my mother's affairs to find any of my horses dead too.

Sunday Stills: Camera Equipment

My first digital camera, a gift from my husband, was a Kodak EasyShare DX7630 with a Schneider-KREUZNACH 19mm to 117mm 3x optical lens.  I carry this portable camera in my saddle bag when I ride, so that I can easily take pictures from the saddle.  I'm always happy with the quality of the pictures and rarely need to do any post-processing.

My second digital camera, another gift from my husband, was a Canon PowerShot SX10 IS with 10.0 mega pixels and a 5.0-100mm 20x zoom lens.  I'm always impressed with the speed and auto focus of this camera.  This is the one I grab when I need to take a picture in a hurry.

My third digital camera, another gift from my husband, is a Nikon D300s.  It's a very powerful camera that picks up on small details that I don't see in photographs from other cameras.  It has just about every manual adjustment under the sun, but also allows you to set things to automatic if you want.  I trust this camera.  I've performed a gray card test with it, and know that it's light meter is spot on.  It's great for portraits as well as capturing high speed sports.

I have a good variety of lenses, some that were gifts from my husband and some that were hand-me-downs from film Nikons that he and his father and grandfather used, everything from a 50mm prime lens to a telephoto to a macro lens.  I'd love to have a wide-angle lens some day.

A sturdy tripod will serve you well.  I keep this one in my studio because it is rather heavy.  I take a lighter tripod and my monopod with me on trips.

This is one of my studio lights aimed into a metallic silver umbrella.

Now that we've finally got some sunshine, I can get out and start taking new pictures.  Say cheese!