Day Trip

I finally got together with my psychologist friend and drove with her into the mountains to find my mother's Native American friend and discuss various mysteries of the universe.  After getting hit over the head with reality day after day, it sure was nice to get out and talk about possibilities beyond the realm of the mundane.

Of course, I had to stop at every old barn and cabin along the way to take pictures.  I've got a bit of a barn obsession now.  I guess old barns represent slower times for me.  I won't call them simpler times or easier times or less stressful times or even better times, because it's hard to compare my life to the lives of others when I haven't walked a mile in their moccasins. 

We visited a creek and a river where I fished with my father when I was a child.

I asked my psychiatrist friend for her assessment of my nosy neighbors' behavior, but she was just as baffled as I am.  She thinks that they have picked up on my unusual sense of awareness and are either frightened by it or fascinated by it.  They are probably used to being able to observe other people without the people knowing, but I always seem to know when they are watching me, which for some reason makes them watch me more.  She didn't have any suggestions on how to deal with them.

My mother's Native American friend was very warm and open about her beliefs.  She discussed topics such as the afterlife with me.  I told her about the dancing crow doll, and though she wasn't familiar with the doll or it's meaning, she did tell me that I should have kept the doll if it was my mother's favorite thing.  She said her own dolls are very special to her.  I later read that most Native American tribes create dolls that symbolize various things and some are considered to be sacred.  I also stopped at a Native American trading post, and the owner did say he carried those dolls at times, so it is likely that my mother bought hers there.

On the way home, we had to stop at Walker Burger just for the experience.

This is the little roadside hut where they cook the food.  Yum.

This is the little park they created beside and behind it for people to sit. 

They decorated it with all kinds of interesting items.

Test Drive After Training

I know, it seems ridiculous that it took me two weeks to get around to riding Gabbrielle after bringing her home from two months of professional training, but I've been having health problems and neighbor problems and have just been plain busy.  I prepared to ride her Sunday morning, trying my best to ignore the neighbor who is still putting a new roof on his house two weeks later.  If he hired a professional roofing crew, they would have been done in two days, but this guy has to inconvenience his neighbors by doing it all by himself, and he'll probably take the rest of the summer and fall to do it.

Anyway, I had asked my husband to come out in 15 or 20 minutes to removed the step stool from the round pen after I mount.  I didn't want anymore rearing incidents.  However, 20 minutes later when he came out, I was still trying to get the cinch attached.  When Gabbrielle left for training, she would pin her ears back when I tightened the cinch, but she was never aggressive toward me.  This time she was pulling back on her lead rope, trying to slam me into the side of the trailer, and just completely overreacting as soon as I'd reach for the cinch.  I was pretty angry.  When you send your horse off for training, she should come back better behaved -- not worse.

So, I brought out my clicker training kit and worked on cinching her up in very small stages, clicking and giving her a treat each time she held still and kept her ears forward.  She cooperated then, with the exception of bloating her belly.  So, I told my husband to come out in another ten minutes, because I would need to lunge her to get the bloat out of her belly.

I remember the trainer telling me two things:  1.)  She gets irritable when you cinch her up, so do it a little bit at a time, and  2.)  Don't bother lunging her.  Just hop right on.  The part about skipping the lunging phase goes against what all of my other trainers and equitation instructors taught me.

What does that tell me?  The trainer was probably in a hurry, training too many horses, and cinching her up too fast and too tight, thus creating a monster.  I always lunge my horses to get the bloat out, so I can cinch them up a little at a time before mounting.  I noticed that when I stood on the stool to mount, she'd throw her head up into the air as if bracing herself for something terrible.  It was obvious that she felt uncomfortable having people ride her.

She did hold still for the mount, so I gave her points there.  She also had no problem with forward movement, which was one of the things I asked the trainer to work on.  Before I sent Gabbrielle off for training, she often wouldn't respond or would move backward when I asked her to walk forward.  After training she moved forward immediately and kept a consistent pace.

I worked on steering her in figure 8's, and though she tripped and stumbled, she was responsive -- just not graceful.  I wanted to try out her beautiful floating trot while my husband was still around.   At first I forgot to post, and she interpreted my butt coming down on the saddle as meaning for her to stop.  So, I tried again, but while posting.  It was awkward.  My husband said she wasn't moving fast enough.  Then she tripped and fell down on one knee and I got thrown up onto her neck.  I really didn't need that.  She didn't need it either.  We needed to build up confidence together -- not break it down.

I tried trotting a third time, making sure I had her head set and was ready to post with her rhythm, and she trotted beautifully around the pen.  My husband said she looked like one of those professional dressage horses you see on TV.  So far so good.

Then I said, "Whoa," sat back and pulled a little on the reins.

I remember the trainer telling me I'll never have trouble with her running off on me, because her reaction when she's confused is to stop and back up.  However, for some reason she reacted to my commands by going faster.  I repeated the same series of halt commands, and she started trotting super fast and going willy nilly all over the place.  She was banging my foot and knee into the round pen panels, and jerking sideways.  I couldn't get a posting rhythm, so my butt was slapping around in the saddle, then my boot flew out of the stirrup when she ran sideways.

I was trying to hold on with my thighs and knees without putting any lower leg on her and could tell that she was about to break into a canter.  I really did not want that to happen, considering how tight my round pen is and how many times my horse tripped during both ground work and our ride.  A stumble at that speed would be disastrous.  I yelled out to my husband, "Heeeeeelp meeeeeeeee!"

He grabbed the lead rope and by the time he got to me, Gabbrielle had stopped and was backing up with her back hunched up like she was ready to throw me.  I let loose of everything.  I loosened the reins, I took my legs completely off her, I let my pelvis become jello, and she stopped.  My husband hooked her up and led her to a place where I could dismount, since she had backed us into a corner.  I was just too shaken up to continue riding.  I think I've only ridden Lostine twice and Bombay once all summer, so I'm seriously out of practice, and Gabbrielle is still very green and used to the riding style of her trainer.

My husband said, "Why did you stop?  That was awesome.  There was some real riding going on there."

I got the feeling that he would have enjoyed a full-on bronc show with me being face-planted in the dirt as the grand finale.  He's worse than the nosy neighbors.

I'm thankful that she and I didn't get injured.  I've been purposefully avoiding riding this spring and summer because there were too many people depending on me to take care of things, which I can't do if I'm laid up with broken bones.  I decided to take a chance, because even though my mother's estate still isn't settled, I should be done having to make long trips to her house.

However, I was so close to coming out of that saddle that I don't know if I should take anymore chances this year.  I'm not only riding a green horse while I'm out of practice, but I'm competing with biting flies and neighbors doing construction.  And we don't have real health insurance, nor the cash to pay should I need to go to the hospital.  It's one thing if I get injured doing something mundane and harmless like stepping off a curb, but you know you are doing something risky when you ride a horse.

So, folks, I'm afraid that until my mother's estate gets settled, and either I have a job or we have some money or some health insurance, I won't be doing much riding this year.  What I really want to do is send Gabbrielle off to a different trainer who can make her safe.  This last trainer did a great job making her look gorgeous and in control, but it's all an illusion.  I need a horse that will whoa when I say whoa.  Gabbrielle had whoa down pat before I sent her off for training, but I suspect that this trainer spent so much time on forward movement that she might have inadvertently taught my horse that every cue means "go forward faster."

Her argument is that without forward movement you have nothing.  My argument is that without the halt, you could lose everything including your life. Somehow I'll have to retrain Gabbrielle so that she understands that both forward movement and whoa are good things that don't contradict each other, and neither is negotiable.  

I told Gabbrielle that if she were a car I was taking for a test drive, I wouldn't buy her because her brakes are faulty. She didn't seem to care. She just kept digging around in my pockets with her muzzle in search of a treat.

Sunday Stills: Pests

There was some old, dirty water in the troughs in the horse stalls because I don't put the horses in their stalls in the summer months.  I noticed that some spiders had woven webs around the troughs, so I decided to dump the water and break up all the webs.  I noticed what looked like a pod of peas behind one water trough.  I was trying to figure out what it was and almost picked it up, but fortunately a spider web was in the way.  Once I dumped the water and all the spiders scattered, this is what came running out from behind the trough to chase them down...

It's a good thing I didn't try to pick it up.  Praying manti do bite.  As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to run in the house and grab my camera.  Then I remembered that this week's Sunday Stills topic is pests.  Perfect.

I wanted to use my Nikon, but figured the mantis would be gone by the time I attached the macro lens, so I grabbed my point-and-shoot zoom Canon.  It was a good thing, because this guy tried to attack me a couple of times, and I would have had to get in too close with the macro lens.

I looked around for other pests.  When it comes to animals and insects, some are pests, but are good to have around because they eat other pests.  It's all about trying to find a balance so that there isn't too much of one pest.  Birds are pests because they poop down the walls of my barn and fall into the water troughs, drowning and decomposing in the water, putting my horses at risk of acquiring botulism, so I have to check the water troughs every day.

But birds are good because they eat spiders, who are pests that spin webs everywhere in my barn, and sometimes they get inside the house and bite us. 

They breed like rabbits and you can see little spidey sacs everywhere.

Here's a 3-tiered web.  Even spiders have to tolerate having neighbors build their houses too close for privacy and comfort.

But spiders are good pests, because they catch and eat these...

Flies irritate our horses by crawling in their eyes and all over their bodies, sometimes causing infections.

I'm still waiting for someone to invent a fly spray that works.  This year I tried putting gel around the eyes, but the flies weren't deterred.

The horses spend a lot of time rubbing flies off their eyes with their legs and rubbing flies off their legs with their noses...

...if stomping their feet doesn't have any effect in shooing those pests away.

Does this shadow make my butt look big?

Horse butts can be pesky, because they are manure machines that attract flies.  If you look carefully, you'll see a third butt in the background belonging to another neighborhood pest who always comes outside to disrupt my photo shoots.

Beyond the Latest Wave

Lostine got past her colic, and Midge is doing much better after I put my son on speakerphone and let her sit in my lap while my son and I talked.  Hopefully, my diagnosis of doggie depression was correct and she doesn't have any physical ailment that will come back to bite us. 

I've decided to take a break from walking dogs at the animal shelter.  The time that is convenient for me to go is no longer working out for me, because other volunteers beat me to the afternoon walks and intentionally leave the most difficult dogs for me.  I've taken several dog training courses, but these dogs are just more of a challenge than I have the energy to work with.

They are both very young, untrained Pit Bulls.  Their behaviors are identical.  They sit in their kennels looking cute and acting polite until you step inside.  Then they start jumping on you and scratching your arms up with their claws while you try to put the choke chain over their heads.  If you don't walk them out the door and keep walking as fast as you can, they'll start jumping up and biting your arms.

With one of the dogs I was able to get into the dog yard right away and play ball with him, which helped burn off all that excess energy.  Then once the dog started to settle down, I was able to work on basic commands like "heel" and "sit".  He did really well and received a lot of praise and a doggie biscuit for his hard work.

The other Pit Bull was a different story.  Someone was in the dog yard and I had to wait.  Waiting is bad.  Waiting results in a bored dog, which results in the dog jumping all over me and biting whatever body part he can wrap his powerful jaws around.  This dog was literally trying to bite my face off, so I kneed him each time he jumped up and said, "OFF!"

The woman in the dog yard was just watching me get attacked and not doing anything to help.  I started getting angrier and angrier, probably because her behavior reminded me of my nosy neighbor, and I yelled at her to give me the dog yard now, before I lose my face.  She skedaddled out of there, and I cut that hyper Pit Bull loose to run around.

When it was time to go back in, I tried a little bit of the "heel" and "sit" commands, but this dog interpreted every word as "Let's play!"  He jumped all over me, clawing my skin and wrapping his teeth around my arm.  They say not to turn your side or back to a dog when it does that, because those are submissive poses.  So, I faced the dog and kneed him each time he jumped up while saying "OFF!", but he just kept getting more and more aggressive.

I realized that things had crossed over from puppy play to this dog attacking me.  He bit into the flesh beneath my upper arm, and I scrambled to get through a gate before he mauled me.  Now I was locked into a dog kennel, and this Pit Bull was pacing at the gate preventing me from getting out.  I thought about using my mobile phone to call the front desk at the animal shelter and ask somebody to come get this dog away from me, but I knew that would be the dog's death sentence.  We have a no kill shelter, but that doesn't mean they won't ship him off to a kill shelter.

I assessed my wounds and saw that there were only red marks and the dog didn't break any skin or make me bleed.  He was just a puppy and didn't know any better.  I decided to give him another chance, and came out of the kennel, picked up his leash, and started walking.  He followed obediently and did not jump on me anymore.  I realized that separating myself from him by locking myself into the kennel was probably the best thing I could have done, because I taught the dog that I don't want to be around him when he jumps on me.  I praised him as he walked next to me all the way back to his kennel and handed him a biscuit once he sat quietly and let me remove his choke chain.

Despite the incident ending on a positive note, I've decided to take a break from this volunteer job, because this is the second time that I've come home feeling beat up.  It takes a special person to work with Pit Bulls, and I just don't have enough experience with the breed to understand how to head these aggressive behaviors off at the pass.  I've had better luck working with wolves.

It was nice to get home to my little Chiweenie and Corgi who sweetly sit next to me and give me kisses.  Who says older dogs don't make good new additions to families?  We adopted Scrappy at the estimated age of 10, and he has been the best dog we've ever owned.  My husband calls him "the cutest dog in the world".  When Scrappy runs, he looks like he's got a load in his pants, but he doesn't.  He hasn't soiled our carpet once in the last year we've owned him.  He just looks really cute when he runs.  It reminds us of a baby in a diaper. 

Slow Hope

Everyone knows what a difficult year this has been for me.  I know it's not obvious by my blog posts, but I've been making a concerted effort to invest a lot of my thoughts into having faith and hope -- the premise being that positive thoughts attract positive events.  I'm desperate to get out of this rut in which I just keep getting bombarded with emergencies, bad news, bad luck and an endless slew of problems that line up and wait for me to fix them.

I made it for a few days without any major hassles beyond my To Do List growing faster than I can keep up with it.  So, today I decided to start a new To Do List that is just for today -- something much smaller that I can manage without imploding in on myself each time I look at it.  I was so confident that I could easily complete everything on the list, but right off the bat I ran into problems.  Long story short, I only got 3 out of 5 of the errands on my list done because I forgot something I needed to bring with me.  I just never seem to be prepared, even with all my lists.  I wouldn't be surprised if I have an early onset of Alzheimer's at the rate I forget things.

I decided to return home, get what I needed and head back out for a second round of errands, but when I got home, I discovered that Midge, my Corgi, took a turn for the worse.  She's been sick, but not sick enough for it to be obvious to us what the problem might be.  She's the sickliest dog we've ever owned, and we've probably invested well over $5,000 into her medical care over the years, the majority of it being lots of tests that tell us nothing and then her getting better on her own.  So, I don't like to race out to the vet the second she starts acting under the weather. 

I began flip-flopping around on whether to take her to the vet or not.  I felt there was a good possibility that she is simply depressed over my son disappearing off the face of the earth.  She spends a lot of time in his empty bedroom and waiting for him to walk through the door.  But then I think, "What if she has a fox tail burrowed inside some internal organ?  She'll need surgery to remove it before it can do anymore damage."

I went outside to feed the horses while contemplating what to do about Midge, only to find Lostine acting strangely.  She was running away from her food into the shade and jumping around.  I thought perhaps a horsefly was pestering her again.  Her vibrant chestnut coat tends to attract all the biting insects.

I sprayed her down with the new bottle of fly spray I had just bought at the feed store.  Then I saw her spread her front legs way out in front of her and push her back legs way out behind her, and stretch her belly. 

Damn.

It.

She had a case of colic.  I administered Probios and Bute, and then began the long process of walking her.  She was tripping and stumbling and dragging her nose on the ground, so I knew she was hurting bad.  Of course, my nosy neighbor had to come out of her house to watch.

I did something I've never done before during a colic episode.  I don't know if it was right or wrong, but Lostine felt overheated and it was close to 100-degrees outside, so I hosed her down to cool her off and bring her body temperature down.  Then I continued walking her.  She did perk up after her bath.

I didn't want to give my nosy neighbor the privilege of watching our every move, so I walked Lostine down the driveway and up the road out of her line of sight.  Unfortunately, I nearly ran right into another annoying neighbor who was making the rounds, probably trying to recruit people to join her church.  Trust me, this is not a church I want any part of.  It's one of those churches that makes money off of laying guilt trips on people. 

I immediately spun Lostine around and headed up my friend's driveway to avoid this woman and whatever negativity she was dragging along with her.  I was busy trying to save my horse's life and the last thing I needed was to be told that I'm a sinner and I must tithe what little money I have to this woman's church.  She followed me in her car for a little ways, but then gave up and went back to her house when I disappeared around the bend of my friend's garage.  Lostine perked up some more after our long walk, so I put her back in the paddock and am keeping a close eye on her now.

I've given up on finishing my errands.  Things kind of started going downhill after my husband announced last night that we have a gas leak behind our oven.  That was the first bad news I had heard in a few days and I just let out a moan and said, "Here we go again."

I dug my fingernails into the armrest of the couch like I was about to take off on another roller coaster ride against my will.

I'm so frustrated with all these financial hits we keep taking.  Every new problem costs money to resolve, and I've had more problems in the past six months than I've had in the past six years.  Every day when I go to the mailbox, I think positive and tell myself there is money in the mail and I am finally going to start getting reimbursed for all I've been spending paying off my mother's debts.  I open the mail and guess what?

I do find money in the mail.  Only it's not a large check from a life insurance company.  It's a nickel or a dollar bill sent by some charity with some kind of gimmick saying, "Here's some money.  Now turn around and send it back to us, but multiply the amount we gave you by 100."

Of course, there is usually a few hundred dollars in bill statements mixed in with the mail as well.

I really, really, really wish the world would stop making demands on me and help me out for a change.  I've been a good girl this year.  I've been settling my mother's estate, I've been helping out my brother every time he needs money, I haven't killed my neighbors yet.  What more do I need to do?  I've clearly communicated to both people and God what it is that I need, and I'm still waiting for someone to say, "Okay, you've have enough.  You passed the test.  Here's your reward.  Now you can get back to your life."

You know, it really annoys me that we pay our life insurance installments on time every month, but when someone dies and you need to cash in on that to pay for funeral expenses and debts, the life insurance companies sure take their sweet time in cutting us a check.  I feel like Lois Lane in a burning building waiting for Superman to swoop down and rescue me, and if I get any more roasted than this I'll be the main course on some cannibal's dinner table.

Ha ha!  That just reminded me.  For the past three days each time I have gone outside there has been a flock of vultures circling my head.  I'm not kidding.  Between that and my neighbors stalking me, the creepiness factor in my life has been taken to a whole new level.

Argh!  Just now the phone rang and it was some woman's voice in a recorded message yelling at me that there is a problem with my credit card account.  I freaked and overreacted by hanging up the phone.  I was just like, "I can't handle this.  I can't take one more problem.  I don't want to hear it," and I hung up.  Of course, now I'm wondering what the heck is going on.  We've had these calls before and they are triggered by identify theft flags.  Just what I need.  Sigh.  Why does life have to be so dang stressful?  Maybe I should give myself a shot of that Bute, hose myself down, and then roll over on my back and ask someone to rub my belly.  Maybe that will do the trick and help bring some normalcy back into my life.

Long Post About Pests

My nosy neighbors are on a roll and I swear, if they don't back off, I'm going to lose all self-control with them.  Sunday evening, after having both the woman and her husband buzzing around me literally every time I walked outside for three days straight, my blood pressure was through the roof.  So, here I was trying to clean up my horse paddock next to their front yard, and of course, the woman had to come running out of her house with her dog on a leash.  I stopped shoveling and gave her look that could kill.  I wanted to confront her and ask why she must walk her dog around the perimeter of my property every friggin' time I come outside.  I mean, how many times a day does that stupid dog have to be walked? (I know.  It's not the dog's fault that his owners are idiots.)

She ignored me and marched right down her driveway, down the road, right up to my driveway and let her dog do its business in my bushes, then turned around and came marching back like there was absolutely nothing wrong with her behavior.  I was fuming thinking about how this witch has been pulling this stunt for five or six years now -- specifically walking her dog over to my property to do its business and now she doesn't even try to be sneaky about it anymore.  She blatantly does it right in front of me.  I was gritting my teeth thinking about screaming at her, and asking her how she would like it if I marched my dogs up the street and let them do their business in the bushes at the end of her driveway every freakin' hour on the hour.  She acts like my property is her precious dog's toilet and she has every right to do what she does.  How rude can one person be?

I saw her coming back up her driveway, looked down at the manure I was picking up, dumped it in the wheelbarrow, looked back up, and she was gone.  I knew she was hiding behind something spying on me, so I just stared in the general direction of where I just saw her, and sure enough, I caught the top of her head peeking over the roof of her car at me.  As soon as she knew I spotted her, she rushed back inside her house.  I was so angry over her pulling that hide-and-spy stunt for the millionth time that I couldn't even speak.  It's like when you have a nightmare and you are screaming for help, but the words won't come out.

I think the little dog fairy needs to visit their property and leave some stinky deposits.  An eye for an eye.  She goes to church.  She knows what that means.  The problem is that once you start giving someone a taste of their own medicine, it makes it harder to hold them accountable since you are doing the same thing to them as an act of revenge.  It really doesn't solve anything, but then again just asking them to stop hasn't had any effect either.

One morning I woke up and spotted the woman sitting in a car in front of my house again.  I walked outside with my camera and snapped off some pictures of her sitting there.  Then I noticed that it wasn't even her car.  Her vehicle was still parked in her driveway.  She acts like she's a secret agent with the number of different vehicles she uses to do surveillance on my property.  I'd swear that she borrows people's vehicles just so that she can stalk me and not have me recognize her car.

Then one night I went outside to feed the horses, fill the water troughs, and clean up some manure, and here came the man driving up the street.  I walked to a part of my property where he would be blocked from staring at me by my horse trailer.  He has this ritual of driving up, parking as close to me as possible, opening his car door, swinging his legs out, and then sitting there staring at me for the duration of when I'm outside doing chores.

I was relieved that he drove past the spot where he usually parks and stares, so I sat down in a chair on my patio while waiting for the water troughs to fill.  The man drove around to the back of his house, pushed a gate open with the front end of his truck, did a loop in his horse paddock and came back so that his front end was facing me in my chair on my patio, and then he turned off his engine and sat there staring at me through his windshield.  I got disgusted and moved to a location where my horse trailer blocked his view of me again, and he got out of his truck and walked to a location where he could see me.  I shut off the water and went back into my house feeling like I was going to vomit.  There ought to be a law to protect women from being raped by dirty old men's eyes.

He has also started this habit of coming home late at night when we are in our family room with the lights on.  That room has almost an entire wall french doors and windows that span floor to ceiling and are only covered by transparent lace.  The guy purposefully parks his truck in his back yard so that it is facing our french doors, and then he sits in his truck with his headlights shining into our house for hours on end.  All I can do is hope that he wears his battery down with all the peeping.  

But the biggest incident that went beyond ridiculous was when I went outside to move my horse trailer to a specific location for a specific reason.  It was a tight spot, so I had to keep pulling forward and backing up to adjust my approach.  When I back my horse trailer through my gate, there is only one-foot on each side for clearance, so I have to be very careful or I'll damage both the trailer and the fence.

I was pulling forward in my own driveway, but looking in the side mirrors to carefully position the trailer when some movement caught my eye and I had to slam on my brakes.  That witch came running out of her house with her dog the second she saw me get in my truck, and she literally ran down to the end of my driveway, and then froze like a deer in headlights.  I could have hit her because my eyes weren't in front of me.  But what really makes me angry is that I was in my own driveway.  People should not loiter at the end of my driveway period.  We have a wide street.  She could have easily walked on the other side of the street, but for some reason she always has to hug my property.  What kind of idiot runs in front of a moving truck?  It's not like she didn't hear my engine or see my truck moving.  The lady is absolutely insane.

I know everyone is going to tell me I should have hit her, but unfortunately, that is against the law even if she is on my property.  I'm not going to let her ruin my life further by putting me in jail.  Anyway, I started backing up again, even though I really needed to pull forward a few more feet, but couldn't because that witch was blocking me.  I got angry because now I was at a bad angle and was going to hit the fence.  I pulled forward again, and the woman lurched out of the trees at the end of my driveway and jumped in front of my truck a second time!

It was like she was just walking her dog back and forth at the end of the driveway where I was obviously trying to maneuver my truck and trailer, when she had the entire length of the street to walk her dog.  I knew that she specifically came out to harass me.

I was so floored by her bizarre behavior that I didn't have all the reactions I should have had in retrospect, like leaning on my horn, rolling down my window and yelling at her to get the heck out of my driveway.  Instead I shut off my engine, gave up, went in the house and screamed, "That woman next door is the biggest pain in the butt on earth!  I can't even move my horse trailer on my own property without her physically getting in the way."

I had plans to ride Gabbrielle, but I was shaking all over in anger and didn't want to subject my horse to that mood.  Plus I knew as soon as I put my foot in the stirrup, that witch would come running outside and start doing something distracting and disruptive, so what's the point?

That night it suddenly hit me that I was so sick of being stalked every time I stepped outside, that I never gave Bombay his medication for his latest ailment, and it was dark outside.  I asked my husband to hold a flashlight for me while I administered the stuff.  I said, "I guarantee you that woman will come out of her house and interfere in some way, because she hasn't given me two-minutes of alone time lately."

But, of course, while I was out there with a witness, she stayed in her house.  It's like she's trying to drive me insane and each time I bring someone else outside with me to witness this harassment, she won't take the bait.

The next morning I had all these plans to clean up our outdoor spaces just in case a customer came to my photography studio.  I had leaves to rake, weeds to pull, junk to hide, etc.  I also had to get out there early enough to beat the heat.  So, I carried my broom outside to commence sweeping and immediately heard male voices.  I looked up and there was my nosy neighbor and some other man standing at the corner of their property that meets up with the corner of my property and is high enough to allow them to look down over my fence at me in my backyard.  They were just standing in front of my neighbor's truck, which was pointed at my back door.  I stopped what I was doing and stared back at them.

They turned around and wandered to the back of the truck and stared into the bed as if looking for something, so I continued my efforts at cleaning the back patio, but as soon as I'd glance back over next door, the two men would be back at the front of their truck watching me.  I gave them the finger and went back inside my house feeling nauseous over the fact that I can't go anywhere on my property without being watched like I'm the star of some porn movie.

I then pulled out my To Do List and wrote an "N" next to every task or chore I tried to complete in the past week, but was unable to do so because my neighbors either interfered or made me feel uncomfortable by staring at me.  There ended up being an "N' next to every outdoor chore.

About an hour later I let the dogs out and noticed that they had finally unloaded a bunch of plywood from the back of the truck and placed it up against the barn.  Then it hit me:  The horse boarders are on their way back.  These relatives board their horses on the neighbors' property between September and May, and every year this man attempts to finish repairing the barn before they come, and every year he only gets as far as piling up more junk that the horses can hurt themselves on.

I can't stand it when they have horses in their yard, because the traffic in front of my house increases, the noise level increases because these horse boarders are really big on honking their horns and slamming their truck doors, and the woman has one more excuse to come running out of her house each time I come outside, because now she can pretend like she's doing horse chores.  Most of the time she just mimics whatever I am doing.  If I fill my water troughs, she fills hers.  If I pick up rocks out of my paddock, she picks up rocks out of hers.  The only thing she won't do is groom or ride them, but she usually sneaks around in the bushes and behind vehicles so that she can get in really close to spy on me when I do it. Anytime my horses shy or get themselves into a corner and refuse to come out, I know she's sneaking around somewhere nearby.  It's like having your very own predator next door.  Some days I'd welcome a mountain lion over this woman.

Also, I lose the peace and quiet of Sunday mornings, because the horse boarders always show up then because they don't want my neighbors interfering with their horse training either.  So, then I have to work around my horses being distracted by the boarders and what their horses are doing.

Monday morning a funny thing happened.  I went out to the paddock to feed the horses, then went back in the house and turned around to shut the sliding glass door.  I saw my nosy neighbor in her backyard cleaning some windows that were not attached to her house.  Her husband seems to collect windows, frames and all, and has them leaning up against the barn so that the horses they board can kick them and cut their legs up on them, I guess.  Trash and horses don't mix very well.

Anyway, just as I was turning away from the sliding glass door, the woman stood up and stared directly at me.  I thought she could see me through the door, but being morning, chances were that a glare would have blocked her view of me inside my house.  She then walked right up to this bush by my fence and peered around it in a sneaky manner to look into another neighbor's backyard.  I could see that she was looking in all the windows of that house.  When the coast was clear, she stepped right up to my fence and leaned over it to look into my yard.

First, she looked around as if looking for me, and then she started studying the ground of my horse paddock.  I found that interesting, because for several months now I keep finding foreign objects in my horse paddock that someone obviously threw in there from my neighbor's yard.  I always pick those things up and throw them right back into their yard.  I waited to see if she was going to throw something into my yard, but then she walked further down the fence line and hid behind a tree.  She parted some branches on the tree and peered through them at my barn.  I suspect she thought I was in it.  When she realized I wasn't around, she started working in her garden.  It was rather fascinating watching her sneaky behavior when she, for once, wasn't aware that I was watching her.

In retrospect, I probably should have tried to sneak up on her and let her catch me staring at her while she worked in her garden.  Let her be the one with her hair standing on end for a change.

The other pest in my life at the moment is that stinky skunk who keeps getting into our dog run and spraying my dogs.  I put plywood boards up blocking all gaps between fence posts to try to keep it out, but my husband discovered that it has been burrowing under our chain-link fence.  So, he's been placing large rocks in each new burrow hole that he finds.

A lady he works with has been having the same problem with a skunk that seemed to be seeking out her dog each night and spraying it, so she shot and killed the skunk.  I'm somewhat envious that this woman was able to put a quick and permanent end to her problem.  I don't like guns, nor do I like killing animals no matter how obnoxious they are, but I also don't like losing sleep on a regular basis to bathe dogs in the wee hours of the morning either.

Come to think of it, my nosy neighbors' behavior is very much similar to this skunk.  They trespass on my property and spray me with their repulsive presence every time I'm just trying to take care of business.  You know, I don't know why I haven't thought of this before.  I have a friend who is a psychologist.  Maybe I could show her my log of all the strange things these neighbors have done to me and get her input on what their motives might be, or what mental illnesses they might be suffering from, and perhaps give me some tips on how to beat them at their own game.  She keeps popping into my head, so I know I should call her and see how she's doing.

Stiney and Me

I've been under the weather for the past several weeks and slept all day Saturday. Sunday I woke up and knew I had to get out and get some exercise before my muscles atrophy. Yet another neighbor is having a new roof put on his house, so I took Lostine to the mountains for a trail ride to escape the annoying ongoing sound of hammering.

When we arrived, some other horseback riders were desensitizing their horses to the big front loader in the background of this picture...

Lostine was more concerned about the sheep, as usual. It's been a long time since we've traveled these trails, so we found out that the sheep owner recently adopted some burros, and boy were they loud.

Lostine began our ride saying, "I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared," halfway through the ride she kept saying, "I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry," as she tried to snatch sagebrush off the side of the trail, and she ended the ride saying, "I don't want to go home yet, I don't want to go home yet, I don't want to go home yet."

We ran into quite a few other riders on Arabian horses. One lady was ponying a yearling. I told her how I would like to pony one of my horses, but worry that the trails are too narrow and that Gabbrielle might get away from me. She said, "As long as they are unfamiliar with the trail, they'll stick close to the horse you are riding."

Lostine didn't bat an eye at the 50-foot high front loader. You just never know what's going to trigger a spook. It was nice getting out with just Stiney and me. Now I need another nap.

Empty Nest

In knowing that my youngest child was leaving for college, several people have asked me if I'll feel happy or relieved to have the last one fly the coop.  I said, "No, I'm going to miss him.  He's my buddy."

I guess my husband and I are fortunate to have raised two kids who always treated us with kindness and respect.  They went through their teenager stages in such a subtle manner that there was no obvious rebellion against us.  Our family bond always out-stuck any connections they had with their peers, and most of the kids they brought home were good kids too.  I think kids in ranching and farming communities tend to mature faster than kids in the suburbs.  I was a suburb brat when I was growing up, and both my brother and I gave our parents hell.  It would have done us good to have some responsibility.  Instead our parents did everything for us and kept subjects like how hard they worked from us.  We didn't have a clue as to how much respect and gratitude they deserved.  My kids are well-prepared for the real world... I hope.

Anyway, we've been without any teenagers in the house for a week now and it does feel strange.  There are adjustments that need to be made, like buying less milk.  I bought our usual 3 gallons of milk last weekend and here were are still with 2 full gallons left and a refrigerator, freezer, and cupboards stuffed to the gills with food.  Never before have I not needed to go to the grocery store on the weekend.  Last week's marketing should last us 3 weeks at the rate things are going.  Of course, I'll have to get fresh milk, eggs and bread at some point, but everything else should last.

The dogs still sit by the door waiting for my son to come home in the late afternoons and evenings.

I look out the window and see my son's truck parked in the driveway, and then think of something I want to tell him, walk into his bedroom only to find it empty and clean.  I wish I took before and after pictures, but will have to describe it instead.  Previously, I never cleaned my son's bedroom.  That was his responsibility.  Why?  Because I literally could not walk further than two-feet past the door.  Piles of clothes covered his floor and somehow he knew which piles were clean and which were dirty, because he did his own laundry.  Every once in a while he'd put on a shirt and get bit by a spider, and then I would say, "See?  That's why we hang up our clothes in the closet."

Natural consequences -- they never seemed to work.

His desk was usually covered in dirty dishes and packages of food.  When it would start stinking, he'd buy some potpourri or spray air freshener instead of just removing the source.  His window shade is broken and  leaning diagonally, which I kind of like because it points at the nosy neighbors' house and they think someone is watching them, I'm sure.  One of my goals once we get some income is to replace the broken shades in the kids' bedrooms with Graber blinds like we have in the main living quarters.

Previously, his furniture and clothing took up every square inch of space in his room.  However, right before leaving for college he cleaned his room thoroughly, shipping off most of his belongings, and moved the furniture up against the walls.  Now there is this huge empty space right in the middle of the room.  A person could dance in there.

For many years he kept this quilt on his bed that I made out of his baby, toddler, and preschooler clothes.  I admit, it was a very poorly constructed quilt because it was one of my first efforts using such a wide variety of fabrics.  It's not easy to stitch a cotton T-shirt material to polyester or rayon.  The quilt was torn and ragged with no planned out color-scheme what-so-ever.  I washed it and bagged it up, replacing it with a store-bought machine-made quilt I brought back from my mother's house, and now my son's bedroom looks like a respectable guest room.

My next goal is to replace all the ratty wood furniture with something more presentable.  When we first moved into this house 16 years ago, we didn't have much money, so we furnished it with hand-me-downs, garage sale items and freebies.  My son's dressers were two wooden file cabinets I got out of the trash pile at my office.  They are still in his room.

When he moved into the room there was a black and pink border of tulips around the wall and a pink valance.  It didn't really matter at the time, because he was just a baby.  Growing up, he never complained and we never had the time to make the room more appropriate for a boy.  At one point -- I think it was around the time he started bringing girlfriends home -- I offered to take down the pink valance, but my son declined.  It didn't bother him, and he really didn't care to be friends with anyone who would make fun of him for his bedroom decor anyway.  As far as I know, no one did bother him about it.  It pays to be big and muscular.

Removing wallpaper is a huge pain.  It has taken my husband and I weeks just to remove all the pink wallpaper from the master bathroom walls and ceiling and some of it is still there. My husband is taking a week off from work soon to try to finish the job.  Years ago I ripped a bunch of black and pink wallpaper off our other bathroom wall and painted instead, because my daughter was at an age where she could help.  We also repainted her bedroom, which was much cleaner and easier to access. 

I remember those two projects taking us all summer, so I always have to laugh when home improvement stores advertise painting a room in a weekend, and show some lady doing the last step of placing a vase up against a freshly painted wall.  Right.  By the time I'm done with a painting project, I've had to put on 2 coats of primer and 3 coats of paint and I've dripped and spilled so many times that my clothes and shoes are ruined, and we have to replace the carpet despite having a plastic cover to protect it, because those plastic covers always shift and creep around despite being taped down...

I hope that some day I can just pay a house painting crew to come in here and do a complete home makeover.  In the meantime, I'll have to go easy on the grocery shopping and pay more attention to my husband.  He's getting lonely in this quiet house.  We miss our kids.  We hope they miss us too.

Road Test

I took some pictures of the fire late last night and tried bracing my telephoto lens on the fence while the lens was open, but it still shook. It's almost impossible to hold a camera still for 30-seconds without mounting it on something. But the pictures turned out really cool...

I thought the white thing at the top of this next picture was a star, but it turned out to be a helicopter headlight...

The road is still closed because of the fire. This sign was placed in a location that I'm sure won't make the mail carrier happy. He likes to drive right up to the mail boxes without getting out of his jeep, because he has a bad back.

My perfectionist neighbor is repaving her driveway AGAIN...

With the noise next door and all traffic in the neighborhood being routed past my house, I decided to put the horses out into the thick of it for some desensitization.

Trucks don't bother them anymore as long as they are eating.

After a while the neighbor's driveway pavers did something that spooked Gabbrielle and, of course, she ran to her mama.

50% Contained

This is what the smoke looked like earlier Wednesday afternoon. Interestingly enough, it hasn't blown in our direction. The people in the next valley over and up in Reno are the ones who are suffering.

Two 15-year-old boys have been arrested for not properly putting out the campfire that caused the blaze, which is now 50% contained.

The horses started fighting over camera time...

Lostine's natural fly mask...

Oh oh, hay is getting low again...

The horses can see me coming out of the house, so they scream at me over the haystack.  Here is what the fire looked like this evening...

You can see some hot spots flared up off to the right because the wind picked up a little.

Latest on the Wildfire

At sunset Tuesday night the smoke from the wildfire turned into a huge orange plume.  A firefighting helicopter hauling a large red bucket came flying along in front of the orange plume and would have made a great photo, except I couldn't get to my camera and install my telephoto lens in time.  This photo was taken from my back yard...

I did get a silhouette of the helicopter flying back for more water, though.

Here are more pictures of the fire overlooking the Arabian horse farm...

The fire line heading down the hill over my neighbor's horse walker...

As it got darker outside, my camera lens stayed open for a longer period of time, so the pictures became blurry.  I couldn't find a tripod tall enough for this job, because I had to perch precariously on a fence or stool to look over all the fences.  There was nothing to brace the camera against.

The sun had set and it was fairly dark out by this next picture, but the camera let in so much light that it still looks like day.

This is a picture from this morning overlooking my round pen.  I was able to set the camera on a fence and got a clearer shot.