No new horse

I did my budget and all the extra money I thought I had, where I could maybe get another horse is not there.  Possibly will look brighter next month,  depends on whether dad pays some of the tree trimming bill.  I put aside my petty "they treat me like an ATM" feelings and sent bro and Sil a check and a check to her son and son's gf for Christams.  I did write in the son and gf card "check out KenColeman.com"  A reasonably polite way of telling them to GOYAaGaJ methinks.   I could feed another horse but there isn't really money to pay market price for an adult horse and I'm pretty leery of rescuing one;  I'm no super keen horse judge.  I can spot some obvious 'probably wouldn't hold up for distance riding' but not enough to feel confident and we already have great plenty of horses I don't want to try to use for distance riding. 

Wrote a slightly overdue paper review this morning.   I did not catch every poor sentence but did give several  cases where a bit of word change will make things more clear.  I could hardly write "I have no idea if this is novel research because I've been horridly lazy about keeping up with reading the research journals but meh, thats why they get more than 1 reviewer.   The basics seemed fine, although I would not spot if the equations were wrong.   Got 15 cards addressed and very short notes added to the form letter on Sunday and mailed em this morning.

Saturday I finished cleaning up the horse pens from the half ass job the skid steer guy had done.  I am going to search for a new person but it wasn't sooo bad, certainly it was much easier for me to finish up the cleaning after he had moved the heavy piles of hay and manure that I had tractor raked up last week.  Also on Saturday got dad to help me get holiday decorations down, did 2 loads of laundry but skipped doing the towels and made CF steaks.  Steaks were fairly meh, but better than coming out tough or me thinking they tasted bad.   Sat evening I set up our artificial tree.  I'm going to have to get a new(er) one next year I think.  Its shedding needles and looking a bit ragged to me.  Turned out it was good I had not gotten outdoor lights put up because I remembered that its getting too hard to get enough lights for the tree with the bigger size bulb indoor lights we had always used so I took one of the strings of little indoor/outdoor lights for the tree instead of putting along our roadside fence. 

Sunday dad and I got the outdoor lights up,  he put up his laser and LED lights, which are sure a lot easier for lighting up the house and trees/shrubs next to house than actual lights.  I made fish for supper.  I have decided I like baking fish sometimes instead of frying it.  I'll still fry cod, it seems to taste good fried, but the other grocery fish benefits from a bit of soaking in lemon juice and and then bakes up fine.   I've also convinced myself its OK to use foil and make my life easier for baking a couple pieces of fish for supper.   

Well I am working FOR horses. Certainly not working the horses

I'm coming to grips; but with plenty of pissing and moaning; that upkeep of the place is 90% or more up to me now.   I'm trying to appreciate that dad is still taking care of himself and handling the routine bill paying rather than melting down because he simply is not up to doing much yard maintenance or doing the floors like he used to do.   Key word: trying, but I know that being grateful for the blessing of not having to take over the paperwork and bring in a health aide is the only way to keep my spirits up.    I know lots of folks are juggling the duties of full care for a parent or even a spouse's parent along with trying to keep their jobs and lives going and I am fortunate not to be in that spot and I am very grateful that dad took care of mom when she needed to be driven to drs. and so on.  He really did quite a good job of supporting her.

I got lucky and a tree trimmer who is moving into the neighborhood left a door tag with his information on our gate a couple weeks ago.  I called him, and he came on Sunday and gave an estimate and will come after Christmas and take down the 2 dead trees, plus do dead limb trimming on 5 still live trees that I was concerned could be a danger to the house, garage, vehicles .  He  really knows trees and the live trees will be much healthier and safer after getting this professional care and I don't have to worry about my safety nor the safety of the neighbor's friend that has a firewood business but no cherry picker to safely take down huge trees starting from the ends of the high branches.  A big relief to me to get that situation dealt with.  Barring a freak very high wind storm before Stefan gets to the job the outbuildings and vehicles should be spared.  We've been very lucky with getting away with just letting some other dead trees fall on their own; hopefully that doesn't evaporate when I FINALLY decided to be proactive and bring in a professional.

Sunday I also fired up the tractor and used the bucket to 'rake' built up manure and hay from the fence line where I feed so the skidsteer guy could just scoop it up easily and then can bring in some sand to fill in the low spots.   I meant to stay home and do more supervising/requesting of extra sand being hauled in while he was here  but I   Just   Could   Not   Do   It and left for work.    Maybe I'll try another guy advertising on CL or FB next time.   I can't help kind of resenting this guy for not being more complete.   He charges by how long it takes so its not like he gains anything by always doing only the 'quick and dirty' job.   Plus he was all grouchy with our dog today, and I never completely trust folks that don't like dogs.

Tanza is looking good.   I cut his feed back from the OMG I have to hurry up and get some weight on this horse amounts but will err on the side of him getting a bit fat this time,  I don't want to feel like "I HAVE to just end the season and get weight back on my boy" next fall.    The trailer was lame this year anyway so at least the reasons to not try hauling to a late 100 or multi-day were overlapped.

I have been kind of wanting to get a 2nd horse to do LDs, support local rides this year if I am able to attempt the 100s adventures I want  (but with a good amount of nerves) to attempt with Tanza in 2020.   But someone posted some young arabians at a kill pen.  I don't know if any of them would even be 4 to ride next year but I'm tempted.  Hopefully I'll see that someone else 'saved' them soon.   I don't really want to gamble with getting a horse that might be just another paddock decoration.