Rainfall warning? Rainfall WARNING???

Rain.

It's one of those things that we can't live without.  Or live with.

In the spring it rained so much we were damn near floating away.  I couldn't work; I could barely get to the barn without my boots getting sucked right off my feet in the mud.  Our neighbours and friends couldn't get into the fields to plant, and those who did worried that all the seed would wash away.  The cellar of the old farmhouse here had rivers going through it, and this house is on the highest part of the property.  My father muttered, "I've been living here for 67 years and I don't think I've ever seen it this wet."

In June, the rain finally stopped.

It stopped for over 6 weeks.

The fields were full of stunted corn that started late in soggy soil, only to get pummelled with heat and dryness.

Nature gives and takes away.  She don't care.

The crops ended up being okay... but the price of hay has gone up.  If a farmer could normally get four cuttings off a hay field, he'd get three, if he was lucky, this past summer.  Hay is scarce and expensive.

And today.  RAINFALL WARNING.  All the little cricks around here are full and still rising, there is standing water in every low field, and my corral is slop.  It rained so hard on Sunday, the water actually got in under the big barn door and trickled down until I ended up with a tiny river running down the aisle in front of the stalls.  And now we have a rainfall warning.

I get all catastrophic about things, so in my mind, my horses are already half dead from starvation, the house is half underwater, the old stone walls of the barn have been pried apart by torrents of water rushing against the foundation and the whole damn thing is falling down.  Also, in my worst case scenario the dog will never go outside to defecate ever again because he's convinced he will melt.

In reality, the horses are in the open shed... one is wearing a rain sheet to keep her dry when the other two chase her out.  I have a bright yellow rain suit and waterproof boots.  I have a couple wheelbarrow loads to push across that wet corral this afternoon, and I have to just do it, because it ain't getting any drier.

Well, at least, not until the temperature drops to where it usually is this time of year... and it starts to freeze over and snow....


(And despite all of this, I still want to live in the country for the rest of my life.)

Wasn't gonna blog about the American Music Awards, but then Chad Kroeger got a haircut and J Lo showed up, and....

I have to write about this.  I mean, it's bedtime.  I should be turning off the lights.  But it's already Tuesday and if I leave it till tomorrow it's no longer relevant, and I have to write about this.  CHAD KROEGER. HAIRCUT.  This is the kind of news I need to spread!

SHOCKING!

Honestly I don't even know why this show exists.  It's not the proper Grammys, it's not the wack-job MTV awards.  Two of the big stars there are Canadian and at least one was British.  I think they should go for the all out, stoooopid, ridiculous, I mean totally Gaga-esque showbiz vibe.  Why not?

It's going there already. The show opened with a Nicki Minaj thing involving a robot suit, or something similarly uncomfortable looking.

I think I like this girl.  She's cute and charming, entertaining, and she has great hair!!!!

At some point we were treated to a Bieber thing, and I'm sorry, I sort of tuned out.  I got tired of doing that game we always play in our family, "Is It Live Or Is It Track" and then I got bored, and I have a mild loathing  - okay fine, a strong hatred - of insincere Christmas music, so I folded towels. 

The Band Perry have an odd name.  But I liked their performance.  I'm pretty sure they were actually playing it but I could be wrong.  I'd like to think they were.  

Check out the dude on the right there.  He's debating how low he can hang that bass and still be part of a country band.  I say go for it.

Somewhere after the towel-folding job, Kelly Clarkson did a ragtime/ newsboys/ swing performance while wearing a very snug red dress.  I think she's a monster talent, and I'm so happy that she's not trying to be skinny.  That's why I yelled to Jethro in the other room, "Get out here and watch, Kelly Clarkson is wearing a red booty dress!"  We're big fans of a good backside in this family.  Big bottoms drive us outta our minds.  Kelly looks fantastic.

It's bordering on Jessica Rabbit territory, which actually isn't so bad, mostly because this lady can actually sing.  (If she wasn't singing for real I don't want to know.)

I was getting tired.  I considered packing it in for the night.  Did I really care about the rest of the show?  Nah.

But THEN.

Nickelback came out to present an award.  Just present, not perform.  And holy smokes, I could not believe my eyes.  CHAD CUT HIS HAIR - HE NO LONGER HAS THE NICKELBOB!

(That's him on the far left.  In case you didn't recognize him.)

I love this picture.  They're all making funny faces.  That's great stuff.

Now here's the thing: I've been brewing up a weird love/hate for this band over the years.  I think to myself that I don't really like them, but I should cuz a) they're a rock band, and b) they are small town boys, much like every guy I went to school with, and I can relate.  But then, I hear a song, and find myself rocking' out, and by the time I realize I'm enjoying Nickelback, then I'm like, wait, I'm a rock snob and I can have intelligent conversations about the musical stylings of Rage Against The Machine... I can't like Nickelback!  They only write songs about driving and bad breakups!  I've declared that I don't like them!  But.... I think maybe I kinda do.  

THERE.  I said it, okay???

Anyways, I've been disliking the Nickelbob for some time now and I am sooo happy that it's been shorn.  I'm sure this comes as a surprise to you, faithful blog readers, because we all know I love a scruffy-pretty man with long hair.  I'm weird that way.  But I just did not love the Nickelbob.  

I think he looks good! (But does he look like Chad?  Who the hell does he remind me of???  Is this how he reminds me????)

However, and this is important: I am very concerned about the lack of belt buckle here.  

This is alarming!  No belt buckles??  Noooo!  This is Nickelback - they're supposed to have buckles almost the size of their guitars!  You KNOW I love belt buckles.  What's not to love?  They look awesome and hold your pants up!  (If you're built like me, with lots of caboose and not much of anything else, you need that belt to keep the waistband of your jeans from turning into a backwards kangaroo pouch.  Not good.  Belt it up.)

It just... they just... this doesn't look right.  Maybe busting out the new hair the same day as the belt buckle disappearance is a bit of a shock.  I like the hair.  Lookin' good.  Please wear the belt buckles again.  For me.  I need the inspiration.  

Seriously, who does he look like now with that short hair?  Help me out here, willya?

I was beat.  That squealing over the demise of the Nickelbob wore me out.  I announced that I was going to bed.  Then the TV told me that Jennifer Lopez was coming up and damn, how can I sleep when I know J Lo is going to do... anything??

Wow, she did not disappoint.

Did anybody else fall for it at the beginning when she was all serious and then, the downcast eyes, the pressing her hand to her face like she's holding back the tears... No!  Do not tell me she's gonna weep! 

 

Ha!  With a grin and a wink her transparent dress flew apart and she was slightly more naked than when she came out on stage.  

J Lo will not be reduced to whimpering!

She will wear an outfit made out of gold tinsel and she will RULE THE WORLD.

Nobody can catch her in her getaway car!  Which she sings in.  If you turn the A/C fan on high enough, it becomes a wind machine, handy for looking fantastic while driving.  And singing.  "Singing."

(Heck I do that all the time.  I call it "60 mph air conditioning" which is a standard feature on 23-yr old pickup trucks.)

But.  She wasn't naked enough yet.  

She's all like, oh yeah?  42 years old, grew two babies at the same time, wearing nothing but a skin-coloured suit and sparkles!  I RULE THE UNIVERSE!  She should develop a slightly evil cackle.  

What really cracked me up was that Jethro and Bucky were both on the couch with their iGadgets and almost missed this.  Of course Jethro had to grumble about the lack of a battery pack on her costume, and how that mic on her face is not the kind of thing you sing into, or something, honestly I sometimes try not to listen to these things because every now and then I actually want to buy into the illusion.  I want to believe that J Lo can do all of these acrobatic fantastic feats while singing exactly like she sounds on the record.  But really, singing?  Who cares.  Who even noticed she was singing?

This is not singing.

This is... well, I'm not sure, really... is this legal in public????  Although Jethro had no objection.  You know, talk about mud flaps, my girl's got 'em.  That kind of thing.  

But awkward!  Cuz that dude would later do a performance with the ex-Mr-J Lo and whoa, I sure hope it doesn't go this way, I mean, wouldn't that make for some serious jealousy issues?  

Well in the meantime, she got swung around by dancers wearing giant fuzzy stilts.  Look, I know it doesn't make any sense.  Words fail me.  Stilt leg warmers?  Pole legs fringes?  Ridiculous-awesome?

AWDICULOUS!

I just don't know what to say about this.  

Except, it knocked me out.

I crept upstairs and fell into my bed.  I no longer cared that there would be more J Lo, some Katy, and a Hasselhoff.  I was worn right out.

I'm lucky I didn't have nightmares about J Lo fronting Nickelback for a song about drinking in the front seat of a Fiat while wearing a sparkly nekkid suit with a giant belt buckle.  

Although that would be interesting... 

Demi dumped his Ass-ton.

So it's official.  Kutcher messed up big time.

If I actually knew him, I think I'd likely get in his face and say, "What the hell did you THINK would happen?  You don't get to cheat on your wife and get away with it!  Moron!"

But I don't know them.  It makes no sense that their break-up bums me out.  Other than, it's awesome that a lady in her 40s married a handsome young fella and it really seemed to work.  From what we could see. But, they're actors.  You never really know what's real?

It's not fair for me to judge, but... COME ON.  Is it really that hard to stay married?  Is it harder for the Famous People? Is it different if they have to pretend they're in love with other people for a living?  Is it more difficult because all kinds of people get all infatuated with them and want to throw themselves at them?  Is it easier to wreck everything?  

Celebrity divorces are often a bit of a joke.  For us, if not for them.

Okay, celebrity weddings are often a joke too.

(Although I do think it's hilarious/awesome that she barely comes up to his shoulder.  Makes me and Jethro look a little less size-incompatable in comparison.) 

But I digress.  

As I often do.

Dashmi looked happy together.  And for what it's worth, they looked awesome together.

In most of pictures he's looking adoringly at her. (Or at her body.)  And who wouldn't?  She's gorgeous.  

But gorgeous isn't enough to hold a marriage together.  It helps.  Attraction is the magnet.  But commitment is the glue.  

They looked pretty happy in pictures.

Now it's more like this.

Oh, buddy.  You screwed up.  Baaaaad.  

I mean, really badly.  He used to be on Bruce's good side.  Used to be.

Clearly he did not think this through.  

You wouldn't want to be on Bruce's bad side.  

There are usually public statements made after a Famous People Breakup.  You know, dumb things like, "I really hoped this would last forever but sometimes things don't work out." That is the dumbest thing ever.  Really, you hoped your marriage would last forever?  Hoped???  You shouldn't make a big decision like that out of hope.  And gee, golly heck, oh shuckums, sometimes things don't work out.

Or this one:  ""I will forever cherish the time I spent with Demi. Marriage is one of the most difficult things in the world and unfortunately sometimes they fail" 

It is true.  Marriages fail.  It happens, and for reasons that are not anybody else's business.  Yes, marriage is difficult.  I've been married for 20 years.  We've had our hard times.  People see us getting along really well and it's obvious that we like each other, but don't think for a second we haven't had our huge fights. To be fair it's usually me fighting at him.  

But here's the thing: I LIKE HIM.  He's my favourite person.  I love him unconditionally.  Just because he is who he is.  That love doesn't go away because we have a fight.  I can be angry at him and still love him.  You know what?  If he's angry at me, he still loves me.  The bad times happen, but they don't last.  We are a team.  We get through troubles together.  

Maybe I'm not the one to weigh in on this, because marriage, for me, has been the one steady constant thing in my life.  No matter what, I know I've got a man who loves me and it's been like that since I was a teenager.  Has it been EASY?  pffft.  Hell no.  If anybody tells you marriage is easy, they haven't been married.  But most good things in life are not easy, right?  Marriage is worth it.  Worth the squabbles, the conflicts involved with living with the same person for the rest of your life.  It's worth having your heart broken regularly by that same person. I love the man. It's that simple.  I love him more than I did twenty four years ago.  Amazingly.  We stuck together and that's our reward: it gets even better!

Marriage isn't a shackup.  It's a death pact.  

You think I'm kidding?  I'm not.  Till death do us part?  Yeah.  The only way this marriage ends is if one of us dies.   

Oh, and also, we get it that one of the basic concepts of being married is that we don't have sex with anybody else.  

So that's me going off on my judgmental rant, standing on my little soap box among the smoking burnt ruins of somebody else's heartbreak.

Me and my goofy geldings...

Phoenix has the kind of horse-face that makes you think he's about to speak.  In words.  I don't know what it is, he just looks clever.  He's abnormally expressive, I guess.

He's a GOOF.

During a lesson, I know exactly what's going on with him.  I know when he gets bored - which happens easily.  He does the 11-year-old girl lessons.  It's pretty basic stuff.  Ten minutes in, he's all eye-rolling and stumble-hooved.  That's when I have to change it up, make it more challenging, do something different, anything.  That is, without making it to hard for the rider.  So it's mostly a challenge for...me.

He has one particularly funny/ annoying habit.

He knocks things over.  He seems to believe that he gets points for putting a barrel on the ground.

I might never be able to take this horse to a show.

He'll be going past the little orange pylon set there to mark the corner of the pattern, slow down to a stop, and ever so gently set one hoof on top of it and  - toppled.  The blue barrels are his favourite.  He'll actually lean in until he's close enough to get a knee into it.

He's not a klutz.   Those same little orange pylons will stay up if the rider doesn't quite give him enough to room to get around it, even if he ends up going right over it.  He's capable of walking all four hooves over it without touching it.  It's like he knows.


The little girls think it's hilarious.

Me, not so much. I mean, yeah, it's okay for a laugh, but he's not supposed to be doing that!

The good thing is, I can turn it into a fun challenge.  "He thinks he's supposed to knock over the barrels, but you have to stop him from doing that!"  It's actually good if he doesn't just do everything automatically, whether they cue him correctly or not.  They have to do it right, or he'll just roll his eyes and flap his ears and walk straight into a barrel.

They still love him.

He reminds me a lot of another goofy gelding I loved.  

Is it possible they start off as normal horses and after living with me for awhile they go silly in the head???

Y'know how I like to park beside something big and play "Who's Longer" and my truck usually wins?

GAME OVER.

I think driving a school bus could be fun.  Especially putting on the brakes and telling all the brats to siddown and shuddup I'm not yer babysitter.

I mean, c'mon.  Big ass International diesel?  Giant wheels?  Fun.

Sadly, they're all automatic now.  Remember the old Saginaw transmission in the 70s and 80s?  I watched my bus driver double-clutching that thing through the gears, with it whining and chugging all the way up.  Awesome.  He used to literally throw the shifter into gear.  

Good times.

However I am 40 years old and still having nightmares about running down the lane to catch my bus, with the north wind ripping at my flapping-open coat and all the snow drifts ending up inside my boots,  so I don't think I'll be making a career of being Bus Driver Dude.  

"I stand by my record.  14 crashes and not a single fatality!"   --Otto.

Payin' some bills...

You might notice some advertising on my blog.

I've decided to try and earn some income from my writing.  Ultimately I'd like that to be from writing novels that people want to read, but this is a long difficult process, often verging onto frustrating and confidence-destroying, and at its worst, soul-sucking, but a process that I insist on putting myself through.

I mean, theoretically, we're supposed to get paid to do something we like and are good at, right?

I like to write.

I think I'm decent at it.

It's taken me years to figure out how this whole "making a living" thing works.  I'm not good at being an employee.  I'm forgetful and scatterbrained and tend to be thinking about really awesome things/ really worrying things instead of thinking about what the boss wants me to be thinking about.  But blogging is great, because I get to do all the thinking!  So then, that thinking turned into... hey... I hear some people get paid to blog.  WAHHHHT?  HOW DO THEY DO THAT?   Well, other people pay them to put ads on their blogs.

Now that I've had a couple years of getting paid to teach people how to ride horses, I've discovered what a buzz it is do get paid to so something I love, and may I say, I do believe I'm pretty good at it.

The satisfaction of paying for something with money that I earned is something I gave up for a few years while I raised the younguns.  It was worth it, but now?  Now I'm ready to pay some bills!

Never thought I'd be the person whose life goes totally sideways without my cellphone....

...but holy heck I just had a tricky couple of weeks here.

Long story short, we are now a FOUR iGADGET FAMILY and I have a brand spankin' new, not hand-me-down, all mine iGadget.

Long story long, I am officially one of those people: useless without my damn phone.

I held off on having one until two years ago, when I no longer had a land line.  It's taken me this long to really get the hang of it.  I have finally figured out how the "contact" section works and how to copy things in email and how not to text a message meant for the husband to the farrier instead.  (Good thing it was just boring stuff like what came in the mail today...)

As of two weeks ago, the family situation was like this:

Jethro - newish iPhone 4 with a sticky home button that sometimes worked right.

Me - his previous iPhone 3GS (whatever the heck that stands for) which I really liked even though there was a little dark spot in all the pictures it took.

Bucky & Annyong - his first iPhone, 3G I believe, which I thought was totally adequate in the first place but apparently not bell- and-whistly enough.

He'd given Bucky the old Gadget to use as an iPod, since Annyong already had a nice iPod.

Then the two teenagers landed a babysitting gig which they traded days... and the family has no land line.  I had awful thoughts about a kid breaking an arm or something and one of my kids out there beside a corn field needing to cross a busy highway to use a neighbour's phone to call for help.  So after a long discussion about responsibility usage and blah blah blah we activated the old Gadget.  No data, no email, just text messaging and calls on weekends and after 9pm.  Bucky gives the Gadget to Annyong when she goes to work.  And they'd have to each come up with some cash for the phone bill, what with them being employed and all.

It was working halfway decently, this system.

About two weeks ago this thing started.  My phone didn't work.  I missed a call from a student and wasn't here when she showed up for a lesson.  OOPS.  She was cool about it but I was getting worried. I wasn't getting calls, I wasn't getting messages, I was afraid I'd lose all three of my riding students!!!

Turns out it had to do with Jethro getting really sick of that wonky home button.  So he went out and got a new iPhone 4GS SS R/T whatever the heck acronym that phone's hauling around.

Everybody moved down a phone.

He spent a whole afternoon talking to the phone company to get us all four set up, get a number for each kid's phone, set up the data plan, bitch about the astronomical amount they're charging us and getting a better plan and oh man it was hardcore boring.

I walked away from that with two teenagers packing cellphones, something I'd vowed wouldn't darn well happen for a long time yet, and a newish iPhone 4 with a wonky home button.  I spent a couple hours setting up all the apps - which I find amusing because in my world the Apps are out in the field grazing and swishing their tails over their spotted rumps - making sure everything had moved over to the newish phone and recording a new voicemail greeting.

I also had to do some damage control with my students.

At least I had some peace of mind knowing that if one of the kids missed the bus or something, I wouldn't be driving all over the county and the town looking for a lost teenager.

Well one night Bucky decided to upgrade my iGadget to OS 10 or 10.5 or man I am not good with numbers.

THINGS LOOKED DIFFERENT.  AGAIN.

Like, I'm easily confused.  If it looks different it's like I've never seen the damn thing before.  Every time Google changes the email page I almost cry.  I'm lost.

I'm like a horse who walks into the barn one day and there's a DIFFERENT COLOUR BUCKET IN THE STALL and I cannot go in there because clearly, that is not my stall.

But Bucky 'splained it all and I was getting hip to the whole thing.


About a week into my new relationship with Newish iGadget, that sticky wonky home button just gave up.  I was on email and I had to turn the damn thing off and turn it back on again to use the phone.

Know what I hate more than trying to figure out something new?  I hate when things don't work.  I just want things to work, dammit.

I found myself at the Apple store 40 minutes away from home, relieved that it wasn't further away than that, with a young fella in a blue T shirt telling me I'd be getting a new phone.

Which resulted in a frenzied discussion with the teenagers about whether or not Daddy backed up all the crap on my gadget with the computer.

A couple hours later, I was in my bed, calling Bucky over to my room because... EVERYTHING WAS BACK TO MY OLD KIND OF DIFFERENT AGAIN AND ALL THAT STUFF I PUT ON THE DEFECTIVE PHONE WAS GONE OR SOMETHING.

I don't remember what happened next.  I think it involved recording a new voicemail greeting that might end with me giggling because Bucky tickled my foot on his way out of my room.

I'm liking my new gadget, I must say.  It's NEW new.  I got a bright pink bumper to put on it.  The screen is perfectly clear, even to my 40 year old eyeballs.  It doesn't dim enough for those eyeballs but I just look at it sideways and it's ok.  I've got all my favourite head banging tunes on it.  At some point I will again organize the pictures into albums like I did on one of the other iterations of this thing.

All's well, right?  We can put the techno-drama to rest for a time now?

Nope.

Last night the computer got upgraded from Liger to Lion.

LOOKS DIFFERENT DIOFWEHFSOIDJ.  Really slick and awesome, but different.  And of course in the morning my gadget and computer are all like, "Dude, who?  Man I don't even know you."

I try to scroll down the computer screen and it doesn't move.  Ohhhhh.... turns out it scrolls the same way the gadget does.  Backwards.  Ok.  Sigh.  I'll get used to it.

I've got all my little pictures (icons?) on the iGadget screen in the right order again.  Some time I'll reorganize the photo albums for the third time.  And delete duplicate contacts out of the phone list again.

I am pretty sure all my students can reach me if they need to.  But then, how would I know if they couldn't????????


When I go out to the pasture to visit Phoenix 1.0 and Oakie 1.0 and Copper 1.0  I'll be quietly pleased that all I need to do to upgrade them is go at them with a brush and a bottle of ShowSheen.

A year with Oakie

 Last year, Halloween was on a Sunday.  That's the day we brought Oakie to the Old Homestead.  When we left the Little Valley, my friend Susan was getting Spyder ready for trick-or-treat.  (We don't get trick-or-treaters out here.  But I had to buy candy.  Just in case, right?)

So we've now had a full year with this sweet little chestnut Quarter Horse mare.

I won't claim that she's perfect.  I always wrap her front pasterns when riding, to keep her sound.  She tends to be very forward, as in, you don't need much "gas" to make her go!  She only tolerates children, but she is awesome with my adult students.  Even though I know she could ride a little better -- more impulsion from her hindquarters, slow down some, get the lateral movements tuned up -- I really enjoy being on her back.  She's so responsive and eager.  

She looooves to be treated kindly.  I think most horses do, but she really appreciates a good spa day.  Her lips twitch with happiness when you go at her with a nice soft brush.  

And she's got the most beautiful large eyes.  

She and Annyong have developed a lovely friendship.

So yeah.  This horse stays with me for life!