hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

hqueen13

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It's not much better up here, FEM, that's for sure!!!
So the BF finally caved and put the borrowed window unit into the bedroom that we had sitting in the house for like 3 weeks. *Insert eye roll here* I think he's finally decided he's got to do it now. Now he knows why I was trying to bug him about it last week... oh well, he's the one suffering. I'm glad he put the window unit in, even though the dang thing ROARS every time it cuts on. And I'm actually almost TOO cold sleeping with it, but whatever. It's better than having nothing in the bedroom. Price of having 1960's tiny windows. No air flow what so ever if there is not much breeze.

Not much else happening in other news. Picked up a few extra hours in the office putting up the mirror and paper towel holders. I HOPE the BF can get himself together to go back over there and hand the paper towel holder in the bathroom. He needs a drill bit that will go through tile, since he doesn't have one, and he's been late and grumpy almost every night this week. He was REALLY in a mood last night.

He's getting jaded about this job again. It is SO frustrating. He's really not cut out to work in a corporate situation AT ALL. He hates the corporate BS and rules, and his boss is a micromanager all the way. Which to the BF is an insult to his intelligence and ability to get the job done. So he comes home every day frustrated and irritated at what infraction the boss was breathing down his neck today. He will happily follow rules if you stay off his case about it, and if something needs to be said, just mention it and he'll correct. But the boss harps on him about stuff. I think between that, and VO's encouragement he's going to go back to school. In the mean time he's got to get himself in a position where he can do that. So he knows this job is helpful and important at the moment, but that doesn't stop his whining about it. I finally just had to do what I needed to do and go to bed last night. I tried to do little things to make him happier, but there was no getting him out of the mood fully. I'm going to send him a little note today to make sure he does ONE thing to move towards getting himself back into school. I think he needs to get his transcript from the college he was going to, and then find out if they offer these tests that will allow him to just take a test and get credit for a course. Each "class" test is about $100 for the test and study guide, which is a GREAT way to jump through a bunch of hoops quickly. He's smart enough to be able to pass them with ease, I'm sure, and so it's just a matter of getting to it, and pulling the extra funds together to get it done.

Part of his bent yesterday was they had a meeting and the boss was harping on the safety crap they have to do. They're supposed to do this "flex and stretch" every morning, which is a ridiculous CYA policy from corporate to "reduce injuries" and is pretty much total BS because nobody cares nor sees any real value in it. They have so many safety rules to follow it gets in the way of doing the job effectively because they have to remember which rule to do when. Chocks, cones, hard hat, gloves, safety glasses, flex and stretch, blah blah blah. It takes away from the personal responsibility to do what you need to do to stay safe for yourself. This is a dangerous culture to condone, and its everywhere in the corporate world. The good news of the meeting, though, was they're getting a 'profit share' bonus for the first time in a while. I HOPE that it's hefty because that sure would make life a LOT easier right now. The old Explorer has to have new tires, the ones on it are dangerously bald. Plus we've got to pay for the rest of the a/c stuff and get that done this weekend. So yeah, about $800 or $1000 would be TERRIFIC to make life easier!! At this point ANY will help, but I'm rooting for more than enough!

Oh, I almost forgot, I finally got a call back yesterday from the Soil Conservation District office, and the gal was able to come over yesterday afternoon to take a look at the property. I was really happy to get that box checked off, and we came up with a plan. I'll have to post a picture of our very rudimentary not to scale what so ever drawing. Right now, the design is to put the sacrifice area in the center, lower on the slope, and have 1 limited use pasture uphill from that, and then divide the lower area into 2 pastures, an then have the wooded area as a 4th pasture. The process is to prepare the sloped area with the first 3 pastures first, and then work on fencing in the wooded area later, once it is cleared and taken care of. It's a pretty neat and really functional design. It will take some grading to be able to put the shed in place, but I think it will work really well. It should also make it pretty easy for me to manage keeping it clean, and it will be further than I'd like for water and electric, but it also puts the shed and main sacrifice area off of most of the septic drain field, too, so that's a good thing. I'm really excited about it, and I think when my parents are here in a few months I'll get my dad's help to really lay it out and figure out how it's all going to work. I was surprised to find that the recommendation for a sacrifice area is only 800 to 1000 square feet, which is 50x20 per horse. That's a lot smaller than I expected, but that's a good thing because it means I can preserve most of my grass that we have.

That's about all that's happening around here at the moment. It's hot, humid, and threatening to rain, but I don't know that it will happen today.
 

frustratedearthmother

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What is this "sacrifice area" of which you speak? Never heard of that here.

Glad you got at least a window AC - definitely makes life more bearable!
 

baymule

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I have lived without AC before and while I did ok, it did get hard to sleep with sweat rolling off. Glad you at least have a AC in the window. I am like your BF. Teach me what to do, then get out of my way. Shut up, go away, and i'll get it done. Micromanage me and I'll quit and go find another job. Now, I'm retired and I do what the hell I want--which I've done all my life anyway.....
 

BarredBuff

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I'd be miserable in the summer without it. It is so humid and hot here--- I'd melt! Back in the good old days, everyone did without it but didn't sleep much in July and August...
 

hqueen13

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Yeah, the window unit has helped tremendously!! We actually didn't use it some this weekend, it cooled down a bit, thankfully!!

FEM a sacrifice area is an area that is small enough that the animals will destroy all that attempts to grow in it (save for what they won't eat). For horses, I just learned, they recommend 800 to 1000 square feet per horse, which isn't a very large space. So you have this space that you know will get destroyed, and you move the horses in and out of it according to how much grass you have available, and how wet it is, at any given time, in order to preserve the health of the grass in the grazing spaces. So one space is sacrificed in order to maintain the quality of the rest of the spaces. It is used with rotational grazing, and in winter to keep the horses off the grass so they don't damage it while it is dormant. This is seriously a science to manage spaces in a healthy way. I'm learning a lot, and I am kind of excited to see how well I can maintain the grass (hopefully, eventually, without a massive hay budget, but we'll see...)

Friday, the BF went and picked up the A/C units!!!!!!!!!!! We had to dip into the savings account in order to get it done, but we have them!! Saturday he managed to get the old air handler out of the attic (HOT work), and got the old lines off the wall outside. Sunday he set up the new air handler (some settings or something rather that he had to do), and then we got it up into the attic and that was as far as we got. We had some errands to run, and a few things to take care of, so he didn't get any more done. We finally finished the extra work that needed to be done in the new office, and we also had to go get a new load of hay for Storm. We chatted with KD for a bit after he put the brick into the pickup truck, and he said that he's a solid month behind on everything due to the rainy weather we had. That's NUTS. Hopefully our hay prices don't go through the roof, but we'll see. I have a feeling the quality is just not going to be there. But there's not much to be done about that.

Friday I picked up KN from the airport and we went out and did lessons for the afternoon. Then my lesson was Saturday morning and I got to ride! It was really awesome to finally get back up there, and Storm did SUPER well, despite the rain hitting the roof now and again, AND despite being left in the barn after everyone else was turned out. He was calmly standing in his stall, and was quite cooperative while I got him ready and then we got to work. I was really pleased with that. We worked on the ground, which was harder work than riding, for the first while, and then KN rode him to start with, and then I rode him for the last bit. I need to adjust my saddle, I hadn't done that since the last month, but he did great anyway. I'm REALLY happy to be riding again, though I'm super cautious about it right now because I know he can still be so unpredictable. Hopefully he'll get more reliable as we work, and I'll be able to do more. It's been tough with time, and the weather and everything.

So it was a busy weekend, but we got some good stuff done. I'm ready to keep moving forward!
 

sumi

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FEM a sacrifice area is an area that is small enough that the animals will destroy all that attempts to grow in it (save for what they won't eat). For horses, I just learned, they recommend 800 to 1000 square feet per horse, which isn't a very large space. So you have this space that you know will get destroyed, and you move the horses in and out of it according to how much grass you have available, and how wet it is, at any given time, in order to preserve the health of the grass in the grazing spaces. So one space is sacrificed in order to maintain the quality of the rest of the spaces. It is used with rotational grazing, and in winter to keep the horses off the grass so they don't damage it while it is dormant. This is seriously a science to manage spaces in a healthy way.
This is a brilliant idea!
 

hqueen13

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There's actually a LOT of science out there about managing animals, but most people don't know that it's available to them for FREE, AND that they can have folks come out and help them assess what they have at no charge, too. She spent 2 hours with me, and I still haven't dug through all of the info yet that she brought me!

Well, the a/c SHOULD be fixed TODAY. The BF decided to hire his friend to help him finish the work because this is where the specialized tools come in. He'll also help us top off the system if it needs more coolant (whatever it's call... R4... freyon...) since you have to have a license to get that stuff anyway. It'll dip us further into his savings, but it's necessary. Tomorrow it's supposed to hit 90, and pretty much every day for the next week and a half it's gonna be at least that. I can't handle being in the house without a/c anymore. I'm not getting stuff done, and I'm worrying about my animals and all my stuff molding. So we'll just get it done.

I went to a local restaurant for what was supposed to be a business networking night last night, and a fund raiser for a local wildlife rehab center. The wildlife rehab place had a Red Tailed Hawk and an Easter Screech Owl there, which were awesome to see. However, the business networking part of it wasn't really a thing. I have no idea what they were doing, there were quite a few people at the barn, but there weren't signs or anything else about what was happening. So instead my friend and I noshed on appetizers and ordered drinks for ourselves and spent the evening business planning together. We have quite a few ideas on the burners, so hopefully we can get some stuff going and support each other. She has a little building behind her house that she had plans to turn into a work space for herself, but it's full of junk and she hasn't even completely cleaned it out from when she moved in. It was an old workshop from the elderly couple that lived there, so there's a workbench space, plus cabinets on the wall and stuff. She works with a horse rescue and a bunch of their stuff got dumped in there because she had the room to store it. We decided we needed to use the space to hold workshops and stuff, so she's working on cleaning it out and we're going to fix it up together so that we have a space we can teach from and work in. I'm excited about it, so we'll see what happens from this.

I've noticed that I seem to be caught in a pattern at the moment. I have grand plans, and then the next day I feel like poop again, and am beating myself up for not being good enough and not knowing what to do again. It feels terrible, and I'm sick of feeling this way, but I haven't found my way out of the tailspin that I'm in. All sorts of not good enough thoughts, and I don't know anything thoughts, and yucky stuff like that is floating around today. Really not cool. I asked one of my mentors a question, and she responded with some cautionary thoughts, and my brain takes that and runs away with "you don't know what you're doing and you don't know enough to teach people...." which shakes my confidence and makes me second guess myself. I'm trying to honor what I'm feeling and see where it goes, but it's hard to find the bottom of this kind of spiral and hope that you land somewhere solid again eventually.

Add to that my Tuesday not quite going smoothly. I was on the way to the first 2 farm stops of the morning before going to the barn to work Storm and be there for the farrier when I get a text from TM asking me if I'm coming. I replied for what...? and let her know I'd be there for the farrier, but otherwise didn't have any plans. She texts me back and says "you switched with N for the chores today." I wrote her back WTF, no I didn't. I was never asked or told that I needed to trade. She texts me back something and I decided to call her. She reams me out for "not remembering" and I told her that I had NO recollection of any conversation where I was ever asked to trade a specific date for N. I asked TM to turn the horses out for me and I'd get there to get chores done, but it was really messing up my day. She replied that she couldn't do that because she had her horses to take care of and it was my fault for not having this in my schedule. I started to say some not great things, and I guess for the best, the phone went dead when I went down in a hollow towards the river. I thought she hung up on me (my negative assumption), but she texted and said she lost me and I realized what happened. I texted her back and told her I was driving, I'd text again in a minute. I get to my first stop of the morning, and scroll back through my millions of texts and there is NOTHING about me covering for N ANYWHERE all the way back through March. I saw the conversation for R's travel that happened recently, but nothing about N needing coverage. I texted TM and told her that.

I got started on the chores at my friend's place, and went into her barn where the key is ALWAYS on her table, and it wasn't there. Called her, her husband, and their adopted daughter, and nobody answered. I was feeding the horses with TW finally texted me back and told me where the key was hidden under the porch. I had to go in through the basement door which sticks real bad, and turn off the alarm, which is scary (I am ALWAYS so afraid I'm going to set it off!). I managed fine, and got the dog fed, and all the cats fed (there's a ton of ferrals around there), and took care of everything. I headed around the corner to my other friend's house (it's so awesome having friends that are neighbors) to take care of Cowboy and Coyote, and got a text back from TM that N had texted her and realized apparently she hadn't talked to me about the date. TM apologized, and told me that I didn't have to worry about any of the chores. I told her that I could help if need be to get it done, but that I had to deal with Storm and the farrier and get to the office. Apparently N was arriving back home that day, and figured that after her trip it was easier to switch the schedule than come to the barn to do chores, which I respect, but she forgot the part where she need to actually make arrangements with me to have the dates in my calendar.

I finished up and headed up to the barn and TM apologized again, and told me to go take care of my horse. While we were chatting the farrier texted and said she'd be 30 minutes late. I was frustrated, but it was just as well at that point. I also realized I had forgotten my bridle, so I couldn't completely work Storm anyway. I went out to get him, and was going to try to set up the halter with the decarpentry style, but the clip for the line wouldn't fit through the halter piece. So we just did some walking and worked on the principles from our lesson without the bit. It was an interesting examination of his balance without the support of the reins and bit, but certainly not top quality work. I saw my farrier pull up, so we went head and quit working and just hung out in the barn aisle. He really doesn't like summer, he gets way more lethargic, which is super helpful when it comes to trimming his feet. The farrier finally came in, and she was really pleased with how his feet looked, and we didn't need to do a whole lot to them, which means she charged me less which is AWESOME right now. I'll take every little boost that I can get. I need to figure out how I'm going to work in time to get his feet trimmed because I'm having trouble keeping up with it. Hopefully I can find time with switching the horses over to being out at night finally.

That's the other piece I'm frustrated with. TM is finally switching the horses to being out at night instead of during the day since school is over. But that means that the stalls are dirty in the evening instead of turning the horses out in the morning. That complicates the schedule tremendously. I'm frustrated with losing over 8 hours of my time every week having to drive to and from the barn, not to mention the gas. That's an entire work day of things I could get done if I didn't have to go there. While having him out my back door does mean I'd need to take the time to care for him, it won't take me a full hour every single day to do it. Half hour, tops, maybe a long day every now and then. Not to mention that when he's out my back door I can go take care of him at 5 in the morning or 9 at night, whatever I feel like, and whatever fits into my schedule (and when it's not raining). I really want to get him back home. I don't see how it's going to be financially possible yet, but I've GOT to figure it out.

So today I'm all angsty, angry, and full of frustration. I'm doubting myself, and really annoyed that I can't seem to figure things out. I suppose this too shall pass.
 

sumi

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:hugs Hang in there and keep doing what you're doing. You're doing your best and trust things WILL work their way out for you! Make time for yourself to do absolutely nothing but whatever you need to do to help you relax and rebalance. And do that as often as you can.
 

baymule

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Yep, you are over whelmed. You are running in all directions and in circles all at the same time. Do you take care of the stables/horses where Storm is in exchange for board? Are you paid anything for the work you do? I am asking because if you are exchanging work for board, then having him at home would make a huge difference for you.

To get Storm home, what would it take? Be realistic. If you want the picture perfect white board fence or pipe fence, that is going to cost MAJOR money and will happen some day-years from now. You can build a nice fence with non climb horse wire and T-posts. It comes in 200' rolls. 1 acre is 208.7 feet square. So 4 rolls would fence in an acre. Do you have any kind of barn or shelter? If not, you can build a 3 sided run in shelter so he can get out of the rain and weather. Would it be magazine perfect? No. Would it work and get your horse home with you, where he belongs? Yes.

I see that you are overwhelmed with all the things you want to do, but don't know where to start. It's getting you down. I get that and I understand.

Write down what you want to accomplish. Under each one, list what it will take to get that one thing done. You can't tackle everything all at once. But you can cross an accomplishment off the list and it will make you feel like you are getting somewhere. Break everything down to small steps/chores that you can do one at a time.

Right now you are looking at the whole book. Books are made of chapters, pages, paragraphs, sentences and words. You open the book. You don't read it in 20 seconds, you start with the first word, then you read the sentence, then the next one and then the paragraph. You read the first page, then the next and the next. You complete chapter 1. Then you start on chapter 2. You can put the book down and go do something else, then pick it back up and continue reading the book.

You need to apply this philosophy to your life. Just try it. You like things to be organized and right now everything is flapping in the wind. This is driving you nuts. Start reading your book, one word, one sentence, one paragraph, one chapter at a time. You will get things done.
 
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