Usually when I get overly irritated by dumb little crap like the office used up the sugar I brought in and then some nut brings in organic coconut sugar that doesn't taste great I can review my diet and vitamins and go "I've been drinking extra coffee" or "better order more of my female balance capsules or start taking magnesium again." Well maybe the pricey magnesium + tablets I bought to support my friend with her latest MLM venture aren't delivering much Mag to my system and I need to get liquid gelcaps again. Surely many stores carry them and I can find them somewhere other than Target. I am not a boycotter normally but I really don't want to be giving any business to such a snooty company; calling concerned customers who warned them perverts would abuse a dumb "transgenders can choose the bathroom that matches what gender they self identify as in our stores" policy.
I have been trying to get the yard into nicer shape and eradicate goats heads in the horse pens. I have made progress on the eradication front although I will still be spraying plenty next year. We have been cutting off some dead branches and that project is depressing because after a good bit of work we still have scads of dead branches on trees scattered throughout the yard. I overdid the yard work on saturday and had no oomph to ride that evening and then Sunday was hot when I thought the cooler weather would last. Plus I tried to transplant a few trees. That project took a lot more out of me than I thought it would and I don't know if any of the moved trees will survive. The cottonwoods are not looking good.
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Sunday, August 14, 2016
I've got the blahs today
Dumped and filled horses tank last night but left the water running and ran the cistern and well dry. It is slowly recovering but I am so annoyed with myself. Feeling generally stupid today this weekend. Perhaps I need to not poke at the chess threads on the blog I follow, I often feel like an idiot for missing obvious stuff and having to ask. Hmmm, well I guess its very theraputic to write it out. I was thinking there was other stuff I mucked up and can't recall now. Just general politics and feeling like I can't get enough of the yard work and maintenance done dragging me down. Eventually the crucial stuff is done.
Monday, August 8, 2016
Cowboy up
AKA as suck it up buttercup, put your big girl panties on and deal with it etc.
When I took Lady up to the ranch in Golden for her summer feed lease the daughter asked me about Shamrock. Well I had not gotten a coggins test on Lady, had figured they would be booked on the 4th either with grandparent stuff or pet sitting so suggested I could haul them to a ride here in Colorado that has an intro/fun ride. Me and my big mouth.
The son had been staying with dad and I thought mom and daughter could ride the fun ride. Ended up that son wanted to come and ride. This was a good thing; he is a big help with camp chores, but it meant that the two kids would need a sponsor so I messaged that info to the mom and also passed on RMs email when the trail boss said they should contact her. And I emailed the RM to let her know my plans to ride the 50 only on Saturday so wouldn't be camping thursday night and that I was trailering horses for these teen kids and they would need a sponsor.
A week before the ride I get an email from the RM saying mom has not been in contact with her. I am like WTF? messaged mom and said ummmm if you don't want to do this I can haul you out for a day ride sometime. "no we'd love to come" I had to text her that the RM and riders offering to sponsor stranger's kids were doing me a big favor and I needed to know their time and efforts would be respected and thanked. Also a bit previously mom had announced that daughter had to volunteer for orchestra so they would not be able to come on Friday. Dear lord I am so bad about saying "OK fine" without thinking about the extra work involved. So I also added to the text that I probably needed son to come with me to help with horses on Friday.
Well son was a big help if a bit unorganized. I get there on Friday, thinking they would all be there to pack up the horses and stuff and it was just son and daughters horse was still out in the big pasture. Son and I had to go catch him. Get on the road and I had a loose trailer tire that I did not realize. The nut that holds the bearing on the axle was loose. Thankfully other drivers alerted me there was something wrong with hand signals and I got pulled over before the wheel broke off entirely.
I cowboyed up at this point and called my dad to see if could bring his stock trailer and p/u and I would still go to the ride even w/o my LQ. I have awesome family and dad did drop his plans and came out. We moved horses and essential stuff to his rig and he limped my trailer home on the 3 wheels. I got Tanza vetted in, paid the RM for meals and ate a super quick sammich of the pulled pork. Son set up his tent and crawled in before it was even full dark, I had more prep stuff to do before I could sleep. I decided the nose of stock trailer was too musty and I would try sleeping in cab of the p/u. Not the best choice as I couldn't stretch out good, but I did nap some and I never sleep very well before a ride.
Tanza rocks and completed his second 50 mile ride. I was so tired at the end I was grabbing the saddle pommel to help myself post. I hadn't taken time in the morning to wake son and remind him that he needed to deal with horse poop and make sure waters were topped up etc and neither mom nor daughter who should have had more awareness as the horse people had done a thing about it either. Well I said they could take care of that after eating but mom shooed the kids up to take care of things before the ride supper. Daughter was a whining diva because allergies were flaring. I had no sympathy for it; she is old enough to know she is allergic to grasses/hay and pine trees and that the ride location was Colorado pine forests and duh; lots of people camping with horses means lots of hay around.
Diva was showing everyone her hives. I think of hives as bigger than the red bumps that she had. I've had similar bumps just from prickly heat rash and she had ridden bareback. I suggested that her brother and I could manage in the morning if she and mom needed to go back that night so she could take care of herself. That shut down the whining and they all piled into their tent. They did offer that I could join them as there was plenty of room. It was starting to sprinkle and I wanted all my horses blanketed because unlike their draft the light horses can get chilled when wet and then having to just stand tied at trailer. Sprinkle turned into a hard rain by the time I got that done but hurray I had grabbed my oilskin duster as part of my essentials from my trailer and the gooseneck nose did not smell musty anymore, having the door to the horse area open had aired it out I think. I was able to get a space I could stretch out in without unloading everything which was good cuz I was running on fumes. I had to tie their draft shorter in the middle of the night so he could not put his butt to the trailer to itch as the rocking kept waking me up.
The kids did clean horse poop in the morning and mom and daughter took off as mom had to work and daughter still felt off (plus Mason was lame at their finish yesterday --mild hoof bruise) son and I rode Sadie and Lady about 6-7 miles. I was feeling too tired to ride farther and he was a total good sport about turning around when I think he would have enjoyed going twice as far. Sadie was a little witch when I got on spinning and doing her sissy baby bucking, I even threatened her I would send her to slaughter if she kept asking me to do it. She settled down as soon as we got headed away from camp though and gave me a pretty good ride.
Son helped me pack up and I drove him, Lady and their draft cross home. It only took a short while to get stuff unloaded there as son had packed very lightly. I got home about 4pm and grabbed a beer which I felt like I needed. I was sore Sunday night and even Monday morning in spite of having taken doses of naproxen and ibuprofen. I didn't have all that soreness after riding the Bighorn 50. A combination of factors I'm sure including the sleeping in the p/u cab the night before the ride.
Resolved. I will not haul that draft for any horse camping that does not have him in a pen. They can set up an electric fence if they want to go somewhere where there aren't pens available but I can't have that beast trying to tip my trailer over anymore. I will set a list of requirements that must be met in order for me to haul them anywhere. Yup, glutton for punishment that I am, I am teasing the thought that I might invite them to the final Shamrock ride next year. But I won't supervise the daughter if mom is not able to come; I cannot handle the diva crap.
I will periodically check on my trailer wheels to ensure the bearing nuts on all 4 wheels are tight enough in the future.
When I took Lady up to the ranch in Golden for her summer feed lease the daughter asked me about Shamrock. Well I had not gotten a coggins test on Lady, had figured they would be booked on the 4th either with grandparent stuff or pet sitting so suggested I could haul them to a ride here in Colorado that has an intro/fun ride. Me and my big mouth.
The son had been staying with dad and I thought mom and daughter could ride the fun ride. Ended up that son wanted to come and ride. This was a good thing; he is a big help with camp chores, but it meant that the two kids would need a sponsor so I messaged that info to the mom and also passed on RMs email when the trail boss said they should contact her. And I emailed the RM to let her know my plans to ride the 50 only on Saturday so wouldn't be camping thursday night and that I was trailering horses for these teen kids and they would need a sponsor.
A week before the ride I get an email from the RM saying mom has not been in contact with her. I am like WTF? messaged mom and said ummmm if you don't want to do this I can haul you out for a day ride sometime. "no we'd love to come" I had to text her that the RM and riders offering to sponsor stranger's kids were doing me a big favor and I needed to know their time and efforts would be respected and thanked. Also a bit previously mom had announced that daughter had to volunteer for orchestra so they would not be able to come on Friday. Dear lord I am so bad about saying "OK fine" without thinking about the extra work involved. So I also added to the text that I probably needed son to come with me to help with horses on Friday.
Well son was a big help if a bit unorganized. I get there on Friday, thinking they would all be there to pack up the horses and stuff and it was just son and daughters horse was still out in the big pasture. Son and I had to go catch him. Get on the road and I had a loose trailer tire that I did not realize. The nut that holds the bearing on the axle was loose. Thankfully other drivers alerted me there was something wrong with hand signals and I got pulled over before the wheel broke off entirely.
I cowboyed up at this point and called my dad to see if could bring his stock trailer and p/u and I would still go to the ride even w/o my LQ. I have awesome family and dad did drop his plans and came out. We moved horses and essential stuff to his rig and he limped my trailer home on the 3 wheels. I got Tanza vetted in, paid the RM for meals and ate a super quick sammich of the pulled pork. Son set up his tent and crawled in before it was even full dark, I had more prep stuff to do before I could sleep. I decided the nose of stock trailer was too musty and I would try sleeping in cab of the p/u. Not the best choice as I couldn't stretch out good, but I did nap some and I never sleep very well before a ride.
Tanza rocks and completed his second 50 mile ride. I was so tired at the end I was grabbing the saddle pommel to help myself post. I hadn't taken time in the morning to wake son and remind him that he needed to deal with horse poop and make sure waters were topped up etc and neither mom nor daughter who should have had more awareness as the horse people had done a thing about it either. Well I said they could take care of that after eating but mom shooed the kids up to take care of things before the ride supper. Daughter was a whining diva because allergies were flaring. I had no sympathy for it; she is old enough to know she is allergic to grasses/hay and pine trees and that the ride location was Colorado pine forests and duh; lots of people camping with horses means lots of hay around.
Diva was showing everyone her hives. I think of hives as bigger than the red bumps that she had. I've had similar bumps just from prickly heat rash and she had ridden bareback. I suggested that her brother and I could manage in the morning if she and mom needed to go back that night so she could take care of herself. That shut down the whining and they all piled into their tent. They did offer that I could join them as there was plenty of room. It was starting to sprinkle and I wanted all my horses blanketed because unlike their draft the light horses can get chilled when wet and then having to just stand tied at trailer. Sprinkle turned into a hard rain by the time I got that done but hurray I had grabbed my oilskin duster as part of my essentials from my trailer and the gooseneck nose did not smell musty anymore, having the door to the horse area open had aired it out I think. I was able to get a space I could stretch out in without unloading everything which was good cuz I was running on fumes. I had to tie their draft shorter in the middle of the night so he could not put his butt to the trailer to itch as the rocking kept waking me up.
The kids did clean horse poop in the morning and mom and daughter took off as mom had to work and daughter still felt off (plus Mason was lame at their finish yesterday --mild hoof bruise) son and I rode Sadie and Lady about 6-7 miles. I was feeling too tired to ride farther and he was a total good sport about turning around when I think he would have enjoyed going twice as far. Sadie was a little witch when I got on spinning and doing her sissy baby bucking, I even threatened her I would send her to slaughter if she kept asking me to do it. She settled down as soon as we got headed away from camp though and gave me a pretty good ride.
Son helped me pack up and I drove him, Lady and their draft cross home. It only took a short while to get stuff unloaded there as son had packed very lightly. I got home about 4pm and grabbed a beer which I felt like I needed. I was sore Sunday night and even Monday morning in spite of having taken doses of naproxen and ibuprofen. I didn't have all that soreness after riding the Bighorn 50. A combination of factors I'm sure including the sleeping in the p/u cab the night before the ride.
Resolved. I will not haul that draft for any horse camping that does not have him in a pen. They can set up an electric fence if they want to go somewhere where there aren't pens available but I can't have that beast trying to tip my trailer over anymore. I will set a list of requirements that must be met in order for me to haul them anywhere. Yup, glutton for punishment that I am, I am teasing the thought that I might invite them to the final Shamrock ride next year. But I won't supervise the daughter if mom is not able to come; I cannot handle the diva crap.
I will periodically check on my trailer wheels to ensure the bearing nuts on all 4 wheels are tight enough in the future.
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Just been working lately
Spraying weeds. Paying neighbor teens to mow and spray the little pasture. Teens are happy enough to run the equipment but they don't seem interested in taking on more manual work like pruning or weeding. Well it has been hot, so maybe that will change with the predicted cooler weather. But I still got to spot spray weeds. I knew w/o even trying that there is no way a paid teen would walk around and kill goats heads like I do. You have to obsessively hate them like I do. Also I have been working at work, but not focused on a project with a deadline so not staying on track like I should be, sigh.
I invited the family that has Lady for the summer to the ride I am going to this weekend. I am halfway regretting that as they have been slacker on contacting RM to set up sponsor if the kids want to do fun ride. I am doing the 50 which is two 25 mile loops this year, or possibly 30/20. At any rate I did not want to ask the RM if I could sponsor them on one of my ride loops because I don't know if Lady or their draft cross could handle the distance and speed so I would complete in the time window to get official completion. Tanza is just getting into 50s and I'm re-starting after 4 years of not doing them so its not like I could go "oh we can go fast enough on the longer loop to poke as needed for the non fit horses to do the other loop safely" and this ride is pretty by the letter of the rules which prohibit pacing by people not entered in the ride distance. I wouldn't be getting help to increase pace but letter of the rules would probably say it was wrong.
Plus they wriggled out on coming on Friday and I stupidly said I could still take the extra horses instead of pushing back. I need to text and see if the teen boy is coming then, as the excuse was that the girl *had* to volunteer for orchestra. Also to remind them that if they are not there early on Saturday they won't be doing any official fun ride, but they still need to show up pretty early to take care of the horses cuz I have an early ride start. I offered to haul them somewhere to just ride on another weekend and they said they still wanted to do this, so I hope they step up.
I invited the family that has Lady for the summer to the ride I am going to this weekend. I am halfway regretting that as they have been slacker on contacting RM to set up sponsor if the kids want to do fun ride. I am doing the 50 which is two 25 mile loops this year, or possibly 30/20. At any rate I did not want to ask the RM if I could sponsor them on one of my ride loops because I don't know if Lady or their draft cross could handle the distance and speed so I would complete in the time window to get official completion. Tanza is just getting into 50s and I'm re-starting after 4 years of not doing them so its not like I could go "oh we can go fast enough on the longer loop to poke as needed for the non fit horses to do the other loop safely" and this ride is pretty by the letter of the rules which prohibit pacing by people not entered in the ride distance. I wouldn't be getting help to increase pace but letter of the rules would probably say it was wrong.
Plus they wriggled out on coming on Friday and I stupidly said I could still take the extra horses instead of pushing back. I need to text and see if the teen boy is coming then, as the excuse was that the girl *had* to volunteer for orchestra. Also to remind them that if they are not there early on Saturday they won't be doing any official fun ride, but they still need to show up pretty early to take care of the horses cuz I have an early ride start. I offered to haul them somewhere to just ride on another weekend and they said they still wanted to do this, so I hope they step up.
Thursday, July 14, 2016
So pleased with my rare gem
Tanzaknight at the Shamrock ride doing the LD. We only did one LD because I went up to Shell, Wyoming the following weekend to ride his first 50. The Bighorn is a tough 50 and normally I would not want to ride it early in a horses' career but I believe Tanza may fulfill my dream of one day doing the Bighorn 100. I want to enter that as soon as I think he can handle it so seeing 50 miles of the trail early in his career was a stepping stone for that.
Tanza completed the 50 miles with about 1/2 hour to spare on the time limit and he was great for crossing water at both rides and trail riding with family after the Bighorn endurance event. My sister's horse who is normally great for crossing water was having a spooky horse trip and Tanza stepped up and crossed many streams and creeks with no leader to follow. He led a pair of riders from SD up the mountain and across a lot of water on the 50 too.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
struggling to get conditioning ride dates
A lot of the riders are retired or SAHMs and don't want to ride on a weekend when there are more trail users and I am just not good at the networking thing. Probably its the nature of it that you have to reach out to a lot of people and then personally ask for favors and leads until you get what you need and I fall into feeling rejected after one or two failed attempts. I really need to get Tanza out though.
He is doing better at home but still I have a limited area where he is comfortable and have to go back and forth to get much distance at all and have been just feeling tired and quitting after only 5-6 miles.
I need to be getting a lot more miles than that on him and I need to keep riding Sadie and should ride her a lot more miles because she is overweight and a bit footsore.
And the goats heads are going strong and I really want to spray them all this year and not have the horse pens be overrun anymore.
Plus Tanza has been getting welts every day. They go down, but with his allergies I've been freaking out. I started feeding him the Platinum allergy powder again and am trying to be diligent with spraying fly repellent on him. I should get him an appointment with the acupuncture vet; Sadie is not having much allergy issues this year. I have been feeding her the Platinum but in years past she still had raised hairs for several weeks in the summer. I also stopped letting the horses out to graze the last few days in case thicker bugs out there or Tanza is eating something he is more allergic to.
He is doing better at home but still I have a limited area where he is comfortable and have to go back and forth to get much distance at all and have been just feeling tired and quitting after only 5-6 miles.
I need to be getting a lot more miles than that on him and I need to keep riding Sadie and should ride her a lot more miles because she is overweight and a bit footsore.
And the goats heads are going strong and I really want to spray them all this year and not have the horse pens be overrun anymore.
Plus Tanza has been getting welts every day. They go down, but with his allergies I've been freaking out. I started feeding him the Platinum allergy powder again and am trying to be diligent with spraying fly repellent on him. I should get him an appointment with the acupuncture vet; Sadie is not having much allergy issues this year. I have been feeding her the Platinum but in years past she still had raised hairs for several weeks in the summer. I also stopped letting the horses out to graze the last few days in case thicker bugs out there or Tanza is eating something he is more allergic to.
Monday, June 6, 2016
Tanza completed his first ride of the season
I was going to ride a second day if I felt like he was ready but he was tired by the end of the ride and the stumbling he has been doing made me decide to call it a weekend. I didn't want to set back our ride season with an injury on the first ride we attended. He was restless Sunday morning so metabolically I think he would have handled a second day no problems. It turned out to be a good think I had not taken Sadie along. I hauled 3 horses home for someone who had lost a trailer wheel driving to the ride. They hauled their empty trailer home and it made it fine. Probably at least 95% chance it would have also been fine with their horses in it, but no sense risking injury to the horses if the other tire on that side would have blown out or broke off.
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