Simply Me

I have the laziest coworkers...no really, I do.

I have proof:

P.S.  Yes, poor Boo (on the left) is wearing a cone of shame. Without it, his allergies make him scratch himself until he bleeds. It's not fun for either of us.

What do get when you add a goofy cat and crazy dachshund together?

A whole lot of fun and a bit of aggravation too!

(the following is a direct lift of a post I did on TwoPeas a few days ago)

Our little Simba is not so little anymore!! Since his arrive in mid-June, he has tripled in size. He was neutered on July 11th and come through with flying colors. 

He is by far the funniest and most affectionate cat I have ever met. He loves to be cuddled and will lay in your arms like a baby or like a rag doll. When he's not in your arms, he's jumping around in silly fashion. Alternately attacking piles of hay I put out for the horses, flying bugs, an empty feed bag or one the toys we've bought him. He thinks the tack room where we have hay stored is his personal playground. So many things to attack, places to climb and jump from, not to mention great hiding places. 

By far though, his favorite past time is annoying our dachshund. Once he realized that the dogs can only go so far (constrained by the invisible fencing we have), he has come to delight in sitting *just* outside of her reach. I happen to place a "camp chair" just outside of this zone and he has come to consider this his very own thrown. He climbs and plays on it or just lounges as the dog sits mere inches away, going mad at the sight of him. 

Today, I heard the usual mad barking from the dog and went out to tell her to knock it off. This is what I found:

At first I thought Simba was "trapped"...when I got closer (with the camera I had gone back inside to get), I discovered that he was actually a picture of relaxation. My guess is that he purposely went up the tree in his on-going plan to drive the dog totally and completely out of her mind. 

This brush is a favorite toy. He was so focused on playing with the brush that he nearly fell out of the tree a couple of times. 

And here's a closeup of the poor dog who has met her match in feline form. I couldn't have come up with a better exercise program for her...she will spend hours running back and forth in front of the fenced area where Simba rules. 

New pictures of one of our newer girls...Ethel.

Most of you may remember that we brought home two new girls to our miniature horse herd in April. Back then, they were furry yak looking beasts! Let me give you a reminder of how Ethel looked back then:

 

Well, I finally got her cleaned up enough to take pictures. I had gotten her cleaned up and clipped a month or so ago, but by the time I went to take some pictures, she had gotten all dirty again.  It just didn't fit into the schedule to try again until just a couple of days ago.

Here is our Ethel looking pretty spiffy:

Cannot wait to get her into a show ring next year!

Resistance is futile, Human.

She is actually a He. And is now named Simba. 

Everyone but the man of the house is utterly smitten. 

Hermione becomes a complete frenzied mess every time we bring Simba into the yard. 

We can't tell if she's simply curious or wants to eat him.

We've decided not to find out for sure just yet.

 

 

Houston, we have a problem

Today we had another horse show. Was up at 5am and managed to pull out by 5:56am. A best departure time yet!  While putting some stuff in the truck, I heard a noise that sounded like a cat. We have lots of "cat birds" in our area and several stray or roaming cats. I chalked it up to one or the other.

When we got home around 2pm, I thought I heard it again. And again, I ignored it thinking it was the birds.  

Around 4pm, we were slammed with a massive thunderstorm system that put us under a tornado warning, meaning...it's as close to happening if it's gonna, you'd better find somewhere safe to hide. After the storm blew through, we were without power and therefore did what any other "country folk" would do...we went out to see what damage there might have been. We found there was quite a lot of trees down and figured we'd be without power for a few hours at least. I convinced Tom to head into town to find something to eat for dinner. 

Upon our return, I headed straight from the car down to the barns to let the horses out. Without power, the new area around the barns which have temporary tape electric fencing was obviously not working so we had left them in their stalls. I was on my way to let them out into the pasture where there is additional fencing.

As I started down, I heard my daughter literally cry out:  "MOM!!! There a kitten over there!!!"  Sure enough, there was this tiny little orange and white tabby girl. Sarah was able to get her quite easily as she was only afraid of the cars whizzing by. If you could have seen that girl's face. You would have thought someone handed her the moon and the stars all wrapped up in a package with a pretty pink bow on top. She was literally in tears. 

There's only one problem. One *big* problem:  her father, my husband, love of my life? He hates cats. We're not talking run of the mill dislike...we're talking hate. In our years of marriage, there have been only a handful of things that has adamantly and vehemently vetoed on a regular basis. Cats are at the top of that very small list.

I hate reptiles. I hate rodents. I'm not a fan of pet birds either. And there's never been any of these creatures as pets in our home either. As someone who likes cats, but likes dogs more, his not ever wanting a cat was not a problem for me. He has to be able to say no once in a while, right?

Yet, her is this tiny little creature that has so wholly capture my daughter's heart. We all recognize that if there's ANY chance this little gal can stay it's only if she becomes our barn cat. Right now she's safely tucked away in the tack room with a bowl of water, a little bit of kibble and a small litter pan (since she can't get out to do that business on her own yet). Not to mention a warm blanket and stuffed "momma cat" to give her something to cuddle with. I hope for Sarah's sake we can work this out, but this may be the ONE thing that puts me a step closer to divorce court.

And, if Sarah has her way, let me introduce you to Valery (I know, it should be Valerie!):

Pray for peace in our house please!!

A simply fabulous Mother's Day

Spending your Mother's Day at a horse show two hours drive away from home is not the ideal way many moms would like to spend their day, but it turned out to be a fantastic day for us. 

First and foremost, we made it there and back safely. I'm not a seasoned trailering driver, so each trip is one that I'm glad to have behind me. I did forget to take the truck out of 4-wheel drive most of the way home (wet field necessitated I turn it on when we were pulling out). I know that's not a great thing to do to your 4-wheel drive vehicle not to mention it really blew out the fuel mileage for this trip, so I'm chalking that one up to lesson learned and will be adding it to my post-show checklist.

Secondly, what better way to spend Mother's Day than with your teenage daughter? Poor thing was exhausted and dozed most of the way home but she was a trooper for putting up with the whole deal. She even managed to seem like she enjoyed herself a bit. 

And after we made it home?  I had a fabulous dinner prepared and waiting for me. Tom made my favorite shrimp dish:  Shrimp Fra Diavlo. Yummy!!! It was absolutely perfect. 

Finally, the cherry on the topping of my special day was this:

We got ribbons! And honest to goodness earned ones this time! The blue ribbon was for the 2-year old mare halter class. Then we moved onto Grand and Grand Reserve mare halter class. The top two horses from each of the 3 mare classes are then shown as a group, so the top two mares of all entered can be chosen. A lovely mare owned by a really sweet lady named Mary Ellen, took the top prize of  Grand Champion for Mares. My heart practically skipped a beat when they called our number and said we had won the second place Grand Reserve Champion for Mares. 

Seriously, I could not have been more shocked. This little bugger of mine has been a total PITA the last few weeks as we worked on how she should behave in the ring. I was seriously going to be happy if she just went into the ring and walked/trotted on command. That would have been a successful day in my book. Sarah said that during our age class Missy stood absolutely perfectly with her feet placement just so. I was so focused on keeping her *still* and stretching her neck with her ears up and forward that I had no idea what her legs were doing! 

All the hard work of the recent weeks, especially yesterday, gave us this result. Much thanks has to go to Tom for doing such a fabulous job helping me take care of our girls every day. And my show companion Sarah for coming along and giving me someone special to share the moment with.

Then I want to give a heartfelt thanks to all the fabulous people of the Mason Dixon Minature Horse Association  for putting on such a nice show. It is such a smooth, relaxed and fun show. I have met some of the nicest, most helpful people within this organization. So many of the members encouraged me over the past two years.  People like Kathy, Linda, Melissa, Wendy, Kris, and Tammy....so many people who genuinely want to help you. It helps that they are all a little horse crazy (like me!) and find this kind of thing fun. 

If it's not obvious by now, I'll state for the record:  I am over the moon about today. Will we have a repeat performance in two weeks at the next show?  Who knows! I won't count any chickens before they're hatched. If this is the only set of ribbons we get this year, I will call it a successful year and be completley satisfied.

And now....I'll stop gushing like I just won an Oscar or something. It's time to go out and feed the girls dinner.

 

Show Season: Year 2

Boy howdy...this showing business is HARD WORK! I am exhausted and bone weary. And I still have to get to the show tomorrow! It sure will be nice to have the Friday off before a few of the shows going forward. I can try and get all the work done on Friday and gather my strength on Saturday. It's a thought?

For all my show brethern, I thought I'd share a checklist that I made up tonight so I can gather everything together and hit the ground running tomorrow @ 5:30am. If I do this right, you'll be able to download it for yourself if you'd like.

Download Horse Show Checklist

While we're on the subject, let me show you pics from last year's first attempt at showing for us:

 

Random Stuff Saturday

After taking off two full weeks from work, going back can be tough! I was relieved to find there were no major problems waiting for me when I logged in on Monday. The good news is that I made it through the week and can now breathe deep and enjoy the weekend.

What else has been going on? I've been reading, editing photos, ordering photos, stepping through the Library of Memories (LOM) materials that I've been working through for 3 years (!), watching some favorite movies and trying to sleep. Not sleeping soundly with some regularity is starting to be bothersome!

With regard to the photos, I found this awesome image of Izzy from last summer that I had previously passed by: 

I love how it really highlights what a strong and beautiful head she has. It's not the "dishy" style that is currently popular in the miniature horse world (click here to see some wonderful examples of what I mean: CLICK HERE). Still, I like it.

On Wednesday night, I stumbled across one of my all time favorite movies:  Mr. Holland's Opus.  I discovered this movie in the 90's when I joined Columbia Record's VCR club. It was was one of my "12 FREE!" movies for joining. LOL! If you've never seen it, you owe it to yourself to find it. If you've ever had a teacher in your life who was something beyond a little special, this one is for you. If you love music, this one is for you. Find the soundtrack, you'll love it too!  CLICK HERE to read a good synopsis of the movie.  Here's the original trailer from 1995:

 

Last night, we watched one of my favorite movies from 2010:  How to Train Your Dragon. Again, if you didn't see this last year, get yourself to the Red Box or Blockbuster kiosk, put it in your Netflix Queue or find it on your cable's on demand listing. I took Casey to see this expecting to not like it one bit. Expecting to take a nap during most  of it. And like Transformers and Iron Man before it, I *loved* it from the start. With it's wonderful story, great comedic moments, adorable dragons (!) and heart warming characters, you can't help but enjoy it. And if anyone knows where I can find a plush Toothless, please let me know!

 

I enjoyed this again so much last night that I'm going to actually buy a copy to keep.

That's it for today. I think!

 

Merry Christmas Eve! - Entry #10

The horses wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas too!

This is Cha Cha and Missy wondering what the heck is taking their dinner so long!

One year ago today

We were dealing with this:

And we were fighting to save the her life:

We all survived 72 hours of round-the-clock care. It was as scary as anything I've experienced thus far in my life. I will be a very happy person to never have to deal with a colic situation ever again.

So, one year later the sun is shining, the horses are happy and I may actually get Christmas cards in the mail this year.

We are blessed!