I enjoyed my lazy holiday

I rode Tanza wednesday after the farriers were done with the mares.  He still isn't just going out and coming back w/o a fuss but he reins well even when he is being a twerp and doesn't do anything too dramatic, so I feel like I'll be good to get through his greenie stage although I'm telling myself this may need to be my last young green horse.

Made fish and sweet potato fries for supper.  Stupidly cut my hand as I was cutting the fries.   Not very deep but its an awkward spot to bandage right at top of palm on the little finger.   Was a mess getting the bleeding stopped that night, I couldn't find my bandages after finally getting the super glue to come out and ending up mashing some paper towel down which and the paper/glue combo stopped the bleeding so I just cut off the excess paper toweling and put some vet wrap over it.

Got the paper off next morning and put a nice bead of glue on it and then a bandage to protect the glue and some vet wrap to keep the bandage in place and restrict bending.   Crazy amount of vet wrap for one shallow, maybe 1.5 cm cut but vet wrap is cheap and almost everyone in office is on vacation so I don't have to give a song and dance explaining why I have my hand so wrapped up.

Thursday I got a short ride in on Sadie before the cold front and snow blew in, then baked the ham I bought at Target.  Its a tasty ham thank goodness.  I also baked squash, added apples and extra water after the T-day squash was dry and not very sweet.  Plus I covered it, had to improvise covering ham and squash as we were out of foil and the casserole I normally use for squash was not washed yet from meatloaf I made 2 weeks ago and I wasn't going to hand wash it with the stupid cut hand.  But the 2.5 or so stainless steel sauce pan and same height cover worked OK.  Had an inch or so of air  as it was a big ham but it baked up fine and I used two loaf pans with one as a cover for the squash and it came out very sweet and tender.   I just made up Idahoan mashed taters from the packet,  I like them just as well as mashed from fresh.   Just heated leftover gravy from T-day instead of making some from the ham drippings.

   I thought everything tasted fine,  Dad did his usual snack on a big cup of M&Ms but he's been doing that no matter if or what I cook so I bit my tongue and kept telling myself its not my problem that he chooses to shove junk food in his pie-hole.  But I'll still make ham and bean soup this weekend, well I must admit that that is one soup I like myself and its not just to get a few veggies into  the dadster like making turkey soup.

We are skipping decorating this year.

I was lazy and did not ask Dad to get stuff down for me to put up.  I asked/volunteered to help him if he wanted to decorate late on Saturday but we were both meh, not interested in doing it this year.  I can see the neighbors nice lights as I drive home and it feels like that is good enough this year.  I don't feel like I'm being a bah humbug, but OTOH I do a lot of crap like going hunting,  cooking soup beyond my interest etc for Dad all year round and don't feel like I need to wrap something to hand him on Dec 25.

I rode Tanza and Sadie friday and Saturday again.   Just rode Tanza in the paddock.  He was pretty good,  was fine with road grader going by with blade up but then the other horses got all Lookie Lou -- I think at someone walking on the road at bottom of pasture and Tanza decided maybe the grader must be scary.   So I decided not to push and do a 3rd canter on him but instead did some small trot circles and stopped on the fence side away from the road.  Got off, gave him his horse treat for standing nicely while I did so and then led him over to the fence line along the road as the grader went past.  He had to jump and kick out a bit even though I was between him and the grader but then settled down right away.   So my "I'm 50 and have to be cautious" thinking was about right.

 Thanks to the centered riding clinics the last 5 yearsI feel like I'm OK riding a green horse, my balance feels decent and I can sit most spooks just fine,  but I don't want to push my luck and end up with a bucking/spooking rodeo.

My mares will get their hooves trimmed tomorrow.  Hopefully it helps with the bit of thrush Sadie has had.  I probably have to make a point of spraying her frogs and sole with bleach water 2-3 times a week for a few weeks too.  

Not doing much journaling lately.

Almost my same post as last week.  I rode Tanza on Friday 12th.  He was a stubborn redhead  --sorrel horses are often called red horses and his coat and mane color are close to my red head hair.  I'v got over 4 decades more experience at being a stubborn redhead and he didn't do anything very scary so we did the ride I had planned about 1 mile out and back plus all the backing and circling that Tanza initiated.  On Saturday I rode Sadie about 5 miles.  I have got to contact someone to trim her SOON.  I keep thinking I'm good with just using the gal that trimmed her last time but not contacting her.  I suppose my subconscious may be helping me forget because I'm a bit leery of the other half of the tag team that came out even though she did a good job on Sadie and the other horses she trimmed.

Saturday I was trying to get something ready for my boss and found I had a big mess with how I was doing some clock solutions.  Yuck, I feel like an idiot for not doing comparisons to known good clock solutions, and was tossing and turing a bunch saturday night even though I know from experience that those sleepy thoughts are very rarely useful for me.   Today I think I'm making good progress getting that straightened out.

I made sweet potato oven fries for the first time last night.  Pretty tasty so I think I will cook the other yams I bought this same way.   I also made meatloaf with mushroom sauce.   I used about twice the chorizo I would have needed with the very lean ground deer meat so it was pretty greasy but it was tasty.

I am not going to cook anything just for dad anymore.  Well I didn't much anyway but he snacks and snacks whether I've got real food started or not.   So if cooking real food only improves his crappy diet a tiny amount then I am only cooking when *I* want some real food to improve my crappy diet a bit so I don't resent the time and effort spent cooking.    I think dad is missing mom and a bit depressed,  he has watched two Victor Borge specials on PBS the last two Sundays.   He may a bit just be filling in until the sunday night football games and avoiding 60 minutes just because I get so crazy watching that stupid propaganda anymore but I'm thinking the classical music bit reminds him fondly of mom and Borge is funny to watch even w/o catching all the inside music jokes.  For that matter watching football as much as he does is a bit of a mom thing too.  Dad liked football OK but was not into watching nearly as much as mom was.

We have not put up any Christmas stuff yet.  I think I will ask him to help me get some stuff down and do some decorating.  Mom was the one in the family that had a fair amount of childlike wonder with halloween, Christmas etc although she never was one to get decorations up very early she got a kick out of cute Christmas decorations, buying Santa on Harleys,  a fun light up snowman etc.  But I do like to put up the outdoor nativity scene she had bought and see it when I come home from work and will do a bit of extra decorating to see if I can evoke some good memories and chase away my grinch tendencies.

Somewhat higher spirits

I rode both Sadie and Tanza yesterday so that helps my spirits a lot.  It is good overlap having the green horse that does better with just short rides in winter when I am content just getting a short ride in.   I made a broccoli cheese turkey rice casserole saturday and turkey soup yesterday,  that finishes up the turkey and the dogs got the turkey pieces I didn't leave in the soup when I separated the bones,  there is enough that they will get good portions a couple more days too.    To counter feeling so virtuous over maximizing healthy meals from the turkey I made myself molten brownie sundaes in a cup.   Water, brownie mix, couple teaspoons of oatmeal and 1/2 teaspoon of cocoa, microwave for about 75 seconds, top with ice cream.   I tell myself that this is better than baking so I don't have a pan full of yummy calories tempting me to eat more and more but mostly its laziness that prompts me to do this instead of making a pan of brownies or chocolate cake, or making cookies. 

I got a check sent to my bro and his family.   I'm feeling slightly guilty for sending double that amount to a dog rescuer I know who had posted a panicky FB blurb about minivan seizing up with transmission woes ... something like "I'm screwed, we don't have thousands of dollars for a new transmission or new used vehicle"    It is silly to feel any guilt for that though,  I have given bro and family generous money in past when they were doing in-vitro --successful until miscarriage, oof. 

The dog rescuer was like "oh I couldn't, you've done so much already ..." when I offered but I think realized they needed to accept,   I put in note something about not messing up my shaky book keeping and if they had to be stubborn use the money for the rescue bills but IMO having the van repaired was needed for the rescue but writing check in her name instead avoids any potential IRS hassle over using donation for a dual purpose (personal and rescue use) vehicle. 

I have to contact dog rescue again and see if they need more $ to cover repair and do my other December charitable donations.  I am just not as excited to give to St Judes again after getting at least a dozen junk mailers, some with dumb ass trinkets, so the extra to the dog rescue might be somewhat balanced by dropping them.   Fisher House, Salvation Army and Soldiers Angels are cool with no or very little soliciting.   I gave to Samaritans purse when Ebola was in the news and they have sent some letters and LWR does too but at least neither of those sends quite as much snail mail or pulls that sending cheap trinkets crap. 

I'l like a double shot of ambition

I'm a serious dragin S this week.   Which is not unusual for me this time of year.  Shorter days and holiday bustle tend to give me wistful thoughts of just spending a week in bed.   But the horses can't feed themselves and I have to just keep on trudging along at my glacial pace.  

Survived thanksgiving feast

My advance planning to cook on Sunday was good,  the weather was lovely Thursday through Saturday and I rode all three days.   Took Sadie on Thursday and Saturday about 4 miles each day and on Friday I rode Tanza a couple miles solo.   He did pretty good, some stopping on the way out but when I exercised my patience and let him look for a good minute he was then ready to go on and did not try to turn and go home.   He was trying to rush when we turned around but I was in the strip they smoothed out when they put in the natural gas/oil pipeline so I had lots of room to do 'one rein stops'/ bend a whoas and he was ready to walk nicely by the time I got back to the road section so that worked out well.

Dr Mike was out this morning and we did the blood draw to get allergy testing done.   He thinks Tanza is having some continued allergic reaction to something, said its common that horses have multiple allergies and when the major thing sets them off the minor allergies that wouldn't have been a problem get triggered for a while.  I need to buy some more omega shine or other flax based supplement with lots of omega3 and omega6 and whatnot.  Sadie doesn't have any issues in the winter so I had not bought more after feeding the last of it in September.   I may need to give Tanza the Platinum supplement that is specific for allergies too but I'll wait and see what shows up on the testing.

Thanksgiving meal turned out OK,  turkey was drier than the last few times when I've brined;  I think I cooked it longer than needed or maybe at a hotter temp.   I will try the oven bag and low temps next year.   This is the first time I used this roaster and it hogged so much space in the oven I had to use a shallow pan and not even foil for the squash and the pieces of squash on top were overly dry.    Oh well,  having the food be only mediocre will lessen desire to have me cooking a whole lot and that is all to the good.

I spent a lot of my long weekend just being lazy.   Feels good to do that once in a while although I want to put my noise to the tossing junk and organizing stuff to be kept this winter.  I hate when I can't find something and don't know if I used it up or tossed it away because 'never gets used.'  I want to get things to having a place and if its not in that place then yes I forgot to buy more or tossed some item I had been saving away because it sat for years w/o getting used for anything.