Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Short ride today

 We only went just over 3 miles this morning.  

L is off to Austin, leaving tomorrow morning 'unless I can get out of it.'   My sympathy meter is broken,  she's been whining that it will be a hot drive, but I don't think her DH's car has serious issues with its AC.  I told her that is why some people take off at night in the summer a couple weeks ago and "oh that is dangerous."   Well, yeah all of life is pretty much a trade off of  risk, convenience and cost.  I can't see traveling to see her spouse's adult children by his ex-wife as a huge hardship even if it is driving through much of Texas in July to do it.

I told the draft cross mom that she shouldn't tempt me to leave Lady there and she was all like "oh we'd totally love to have her, we are often wishing we had a 2nd horse."   I am very seriously thinking of telling L that I have a great opportunity to place Lady for the rest of summer and between her summer travel and my traveling to endurance rides and clinics that is going to start to happen in 2 to 3 weeks, I want to go for it and she can resume coming out this fall if she wants to.

   Its not like she has paid me lately.   I had her do some painting and was quite generous in not counting weeks she had travel and weather conditions not good for riding etc for working that off to say it was good through May.     Then I  was going to have her work off the lease this summer with weeding and stuff and I have been blowing off weeding and touching up the hallway paint where dad scuffed with the rubber mallet putting in the laminate flooring and its six weeks and L has yet to offer to stay late, come early, whatever and do any work.

If I gave her one project chunk, especially an inside job, I think she would schedule it and do it but what I wanted this summer was to get out from under some of the ongoing piddly stuff I don't like to do and I'm at least mildly annoyed at the lack of initiative for that; not to mention the occasional "Oh I could put some conditioner in Lady's mane and rebraid it" and similar comments that she makes but she never just does it,  it is getting to feel like she is just hinting for me to do it.    I dig my heels in like a mule when I feel like people are trying to maneuver me into doing stuff for them and I am in NO way charging anywhere close to enough for the part/time 'lease' on Lady to be providing any extra wrangler/groom what have you service. 

2 comments:

Gerrick said...

If she isn't paying you, she isn't exactly "leasing" from you either.

I have seen way too many people like that "rent" a mechanic shop my Dad built for a guy who wanted a cheaper building. Four guys have rented it, only one actually paid his rent consistently when he could afford to do so.

The third one "rented" it for 3 years and managed to pay his rent for 3 months. When he left he also stole a lot of our tools and stuff went missing from around the property. I knew he was trouble as soon as I saw him, but, nobody listens to me.

Teresa/ride4fun said...

Wow, it sucks that all the takers keep flocking to your dad. Somehow they seem to know who the softer touches are, but 3 out of 4 renters being like that sucks.

My leaser actually has paid fairly well the last 2 years, albeit I've also been very generous with 'just pay per ride' in winter months since I have no inside riding facilities.

And she did say last time she was out "I should pay you or do some work" I suppose she had some money in her wallet right then, but I showed her the weeding and pruning I wanted done because I'd have preferred the labor to cash right now but "its too hot, I'll have to come out at night or early some morning"