Karma, Stupidity and Concussions

Monday was my birthday, my 30th birthday *sigh*.  But, as most everyone knows, birthdays on a farm, even one as small as mine are just another day – there’s stuff to be done!  So!  Vince went to pick the 2 older boys up from a sleepover party and I went to work moving some fence to keep the horses out of the belly deep mud.  I was using the steel T-post pounder which in general is a safe thing to do, loud but not dangerous.  Unless your name is Alysha.  I was pounding in the second post, it wasn’t going in despite my pounding and yes, I was getting frustrated – I looked up and away when I heard a car coming around the corner and wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing.  I slammed the pounder onto the post but it was at an angle so it caught the top of the post and the pounder came backwards…..right onto the top of my head. 

I dropped the pounder, hit my knees with a string of not so nice things coming from my mouth at the top of my lungs, bawling my eyes out as the blood poured down my face.  I couldn’t see straight, I thought I heard the blood rushing in my ears but that turned out to be Lucy wuffling in my ear.  Anyway, the car I’d looked up and seen thank heavens was Vince and the kids coming home, Vince came in behind me and Ethan jumped the stock fence and came to the front.  I asked Ethan to go get me paper towels quickly and Vince not realizing that I’d asked Ethan tried to get James to go get papertowels….James though was too engrossed in his video game to even realize anything was amiss!!  Ken just kept trying to hold my hand.  Vince helped me to my feet, and I left the pasture to sit for a minute and try to gather my wits.  I got myself in the house to try to clean up my face some, I had blood in my eye – Vince pounded in the posts for me and then came in to help me clean up and inspect the cut. 

Turns out the cut was VERY small but my lord it bled.  It bled more than the back of my head did when I fell of Doc and THAT cut needed 10 staples for heaven sake!!  We finally got the bleeding stopped, and I’m feeling better but I’m dealing with the dizziness, headaches and nausea that’s typical for concussion type injuries.  From what I’ve read, due to my prior concussion, it could very well take me longer to heal this time around so even though the injury was less severe the effects could hang around longer.  :(  I never do things half way!!

Now for the karma part of the story.  Last fall, I asked Vince to put in a post for me where the fence was sagging.  He was driving the post into the frozen ground and went to give it some extra oomph and somehow he did the SAME THING I did…..only, at first I hadn’t realized what he’d done and I LAUGHED AT HIM!!!  SO!  Later, after I’d stopped sobbing and the bleeding had stopped – I leaned on him and said “it really really hurts”…..his response?  “It’s not so funny when it happens to you huh?”

OH!  I almost forgot the best part.  As I was sitting on the bed crying and holding a wad of papertowels on my head, he sent the boys to the jeep for their “stuff” – I had to close my eyes and opened them to a dozen roses, my hunting/fishing license (I’d asked for that for my birthday) and a nice book on raising beef cattle.  Happy Birthday :) 

Busy Day!!

Today is James’ 10th birthday.  *sigh* Nothing makes a mom feel older then having her oldest child hit the double digits.  I did tell him that I will not be turning 30 on Monday therefore he has to stay 9.  He didn’t like that.

Ethan has been having a hard time at school and we finally got some of the story from him last night after getting bits and pieces from Shawn.  I told E that I’d call his teacher today but before I had a chance to she was calling me.  See, Ethan is being bullied at school.  This has made him an emotional wreck.  So I spoke with his teacher about it and she thanked me and promised to speak with the teachers of the student(s) involved.  Crisis solved….right?  WRONG!  I got a phone call (that I missed) from the school nurse just after lunch time.  The message she left said that E had gotten hurt on the playground and was ok, but that she wanted to speak with me.  So I returned her call, only to find that she wasn’t there.  The secretary transferred me to E’s teacher though.  Apparently while on the playground, some of the kids were out of the teachers sight (down a hill or something?) and E got kicked in what he calls his “wrongspot”.  The solution?  E was told to stay by the teacher at recess and not to go play out of the teachers sight.  Excuse me?  What is wrong with this picture?  HE gets kicked and harassed and HE is the one who has to stay by the teacher???  Grammy got more of the story out of him tonight and tomorrow Grammy and Daddy are going to talk to the Principal.  *sigh* it’s never ending.

NOW!  Trailer progress.  I got the rest of the sanding pads that I needed this morning and got the entire inside of the trailer sanded.  I started in on the primer only to discover that one can didn’t go NEARLY as far as I thought it would.  Back to the hardware store I went to get FOUR more cans – I think in total I ended up using only 3 total so I have some extra BUT it’ll go to good use on the outside.  I ended up with plenty of it on my face, in my ears……I’ve got a lot of it up my nose.  *sigh*  I was asked more than once if I’d been tanning lately!! 

 

Dad is going to do the white tomorrow when he gets home from work.  I’m getting super excited!!

We had a small birthday dinner for James at mom and dads.  Vince and I bought him his first gun as his gift from us and figured that letting him have it tonight was best as opposed to Saturday with about 20 kids running around!!!  We had a good evening and I got some cute pictures which I’ll try to post tomorrow.  I dug the old homemade stilts out of the barn and practically broke my ankle trying to use them.  Dan (with his still screwed up ankle) got on the stupid things and although he did a couple of Goofy’s moves, he did a great job walking on them.  Then of course, competitive nature won out and he and dad bet $3 on who could go the farthest.  Dad won so Dan decided it was double or nothing LOL  Dan STILL lost.  Anyway, like I said, I do have some pictures and will try to post them tomorrow – tonight I’m exhausted and ready to just fall dead asleep.

Horse Trailer Transformation

When I get something in my head, I tend to have a one track mind.  I had a not great trailering experience a month or so ago and made the “decision” that I needed a different trailer.  I listed my trailer for sale and started looking for another one.  Everything I found in my price range either needed a lot of work, the seller responded well until it came time for me to actually go SEE the stupid thing and then disappeared or someone responded to my wanted ad with exactly what I wanted – we even discussed my going to see/buy the trailer and the seller just POOF vanished.  No response to emails or phone calls!!!  I even drove TWO HOURS in the snow to see one horse trailer that the seller neglected to mention was in hicksville USA and didn’t give me a phone number – I got lost, frustrated and ticked off and finally gave up and came home!!  SO!!  In all of this, I’ve also had my trailer for sale – had some interest but for the most part nothing serious.  I did have one person that was going to come with cash to buy it, but because I’d just driven FOUR HOURS only to not find the trailer I was going to buy, I backed out and explained that I just couldn’t be trailer-less.  The person was very understanding. 

Anyway!!  There is a point in all of this rambling!!  Thru all of this trailer “shopping”, I keep coming back to the fact that I LOVE my trailer.  Yes it’s old.  Yes it needs some work, but it hauls nicely, I can back it and maneuver it with great ease – I just love this stupid thing.  SO!  We all put our heads together and decided that we’d replace the floor in it, throw some paint on it and call it good.  Great?!  Well…..with anything that’s 27 years old, there’s going to be problems.  The biggest one on this trailer is that the back piece that the ramp is welded too was rusting thru.  I was assured that it wasn’t as bad as it looked and an “easy fix”.  By now I should know that my idea of an easy fix and certain other male members of my family have different ideas on what an “easy fix” is…..

Here are some before pictures of my trailer –

These just show the basics of course.  You can see it needs paint but nothing majorly wrong.  The escape door handle is taped shut as you can see in the first picture – that’s already fixed.  Vince drilled out the rivets and took the handle off.  He fixed the pin and then re-riveted the handle on again.  Good as new.

So now for the “good stuff”…..not really good per-say but this is what needed to be fixed.

The bad floor boards can be seen here and vaguely the bad spots in the metal.

This one was taken right after the boards came out – Once the boards were out, we realized there was more rot on this beam than we’d realized.

We had “tested” the floor, on several occasions really – and the boards although they LOOKED crappy, seemed solid.  When we started pulling boards out though – the back most parts of the boards were awful.  The board on the left-most side disintegrated (basically) when I whacked it with the hammer accidentally while trying to get the small piece of angle iron off that was there.  The right side was worse!!  When Vince leaned on the drill to try to remove a screw, the drill went right thru the board!!!  YIKES!!

Here is the repair job that Dan did on Saturday.  I took my camera to the garage with us, but forgot to take pictures of the job in progress!!  :(

 Yesterday afternoon, I spent putting a nice coat of rust inhibiting primer on the floor beams and supports.  On one of our many trips to Lowes this weekend, we bought the floor boards to put down.  We were planning to use rough cut hemlock boards from a sawmill, however, upon closer inspection of the layout of this trailer – it would have been extremely difficult if not nearly impossible to get rough cut lumber in here – it just wouldn’t have worked easily and without much “dove tailing” and “cramming” – so I made the command decision to just use pressure treated planks instead.  I made the mistake of letting Dan and Vince do the math and we ended up a board short – with further math “junk” we made the decision to get one more 2x8 when we took back the broken 2x10.  So this afternoon, we started on the floor.

 

Ethan supervising

Even my dad got in on the action – he needs Vince’s help getting a barn done for his new calves before they get here so he’s hurrying Vince along in this trailer process.  Dad wants to paint his truck this summer, so he’s volunteered his time and air compressor/painting stuff to “practice” on my trailer.  Once we got the floor in, we got some sanding done too!!  Dad says if the sanding is done tomorrow evening, he’ll get the inside painted for me!! 

And finally – this was my barn help for the evening.  Tosh and Keags came over to visit Skippy – Keags fed the babies and then went to work on stalls!!! 

Stay tuned for more pictures and updates – I’ll try to keep up from here on out so that I don’t have mile long blogs after this one!!

Spoiled rotten little dog

No one can say she isn’t spoiled!

Some Pictures to catch up!!

Ok so first and most importantly…..Louie!! These are not the best, but it’s

all that I’ve got for right now.  I think I mentioned this, but I’m having computer issues – finally found the disc to wipe the hard drive and with EIGHT discs of pictures, I’m not too excited to go digging thru them to find all of my pics!!!  At least not tonight!!

These were all taken March 12 I think..it was either the 12th or 13th.

Now – a quick pic of ZM and Z from our ride at the wildlands – check out her blog for some more pics and story!

And last but not least, my 4 new kids!! 

This is Abby(L) and McGee(R) – We have an NCIS theme going here.

Top is Ziva, bottom Gibbs.  Ziva and Gibbs are Alpine/Boer and were born March 26.  Abby and McGee were born March 27 and are Nubian/Boer.

It’s like feeding time at the zoo I swear!!

Ken and Abby I think – she had a really hard first day, but is the most vigorous eater of the bunch now.  They look like little raptors when they get hungry!!!  I have a REALLY cute picture of Tosh, Gibbs and Keags but don’t want to post it without permission from her.

Now …..let’s see if I can do this, here is the attention hungry dog……can you tell that NO ONE ever pays any attention to her???

Playing catch up!

So Meg has given me hell for not sharing pictures of Louie - Poor Meg. She hasn't seen any pictures of him other than the OLD one that I took way back when I went to get Skippy!! BUT! I'm very sorry to say she's going to have to wait even longer!! Sometimes I hate the computer/digital age!! My computer has decided that NONE of my photo programs can be opened, half the time I can't get EITHER web browser to open (hence the two blogs today) - So I'm sorry to say, there are no pictures to share. I spent all day yesterday taking all of my pictures off this computer and putting them on discs (8 disks later - maybe that was part of the problem?? ha - nope still not fixed). SO! Here's the best I can do for an update without pics!!

Still haven't been on Lou again although I did buy a nice Zilco Halter/bridle and reins - can't wait to try it all out - I put it on him but haven't actually RIDDEN him yet!! Going to try today hopefully but the mud is making riding hard right now.

My bottle baby goats were born this week - Ziva and Gibbs were born on March 26, Abby and McGee were born March 27. I picked them up and brought them home the 27th! I am totally in love with the little critters!! Ziva and Gibbs are Boer/Alpine crosses and Abby and McGee are Boer/Nubian. I'm enjoying them but so aren't the kids. LOTS of pictures to come as soon as I fix this stupid computer!!

There's not much else going on - well, I did get one of "those" phone calls this morning. You know, the ones that generally start with "He's ok but...." - just to recap, I got 2 of those calls when I lived in Virginia - both from Judy telling me that my brother had been in a 4 wheeler accident and the second one was the scary one - he and a friend wrecked their dirt bikes and at the time of the phone call it was just known that one of them had a head injury. Luckily, both boys ended up fine, but it was scary. Then there was the call from his girlfriend a few years later "He's ok but...." He'd been in a fight in a bar in CA and had been beaten up pretty badly. He was unconcious when the EMT's arrived and they HAD thought that he was dead. He was in rough shape but alive and "ok". The last 2 calls have actually been from him himself. The first was last spring - very nonchalant "hey what're you doing?" type of conversation followed by "I was hoping you could take me to the ER" I was in Massachusettes at the time so I couldn't take him, but my dad took him. SO! This morning, I get a phone call from him - "Mom said to call and tell you that Ken is with Dad." "Ok....why?" "well, she's taking me to the ER I think I broke my ankle" - which of course was followed by a recap of the night - let's just say - my brother and his friends need chaperones!! Good grief. I told him he's grounded - and at almost 26 years old, he said "good I need to be"!!

So there - that's basically my life in a nut shell. As soon as I get my computer fixed I will post some pictures!!

First Real Ride & Trailer Loading

I am kind of late in posting this but there's been a lot going on around here!! I've only ridden Louie about three times since we got him home. Two of those times were just quick "hop on and let's see how it goes" rides - both went very well. Zephyrs Mom and I were talking about going to the beach and riding and also going up to the Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust to ride since it's so close and has great trails/roads. This planning though brought about a problem....Louie does NOT load well. He's not nervous, he's not scared, he's just plain obstinate and it takes a stand off to get him on the trailer - battle of the wills, who can hold out the longest.....which, by the way - is ME! LOL

So I asked ZM for some tips on the sending method she uses with Zephyr, wouldn't that be nice? I've NEVER had a horse that I could just point at the trailer and say "go" and have them get on all by themselves. Buck was good (for the most part) but even he had to be led in. So anyway, she gave me some tips and even invited me over to see her work with Z on my trailer and work with him some myself - which he was entirely too nice to me of course!! ZM invited me for dinner which was yummy, and we had a nice visit - between her work schedule and my kids/zoo around here, we really don't spend much time together unfortunately!!

I came home and set out the next morning to work with Louie the way ZM showed me.....it didnt' work. I don't know what I'm doing, he doesn't know what I'm asking - can you say FRUSTRATING!!?? So I sent an email to ZM and asked for her help, she was available the very next day and was more than happy to come help. She worked with him for 1 1/2 hours and he finally got on the trailer!! YAY!! He was going on fairly well as long as the divider was open. We learned a few things about him.....#1, he is very sensitive and over reactive - ie: he bit ZM she let him know that that was NOT acceptable however she was NOT mean or harsh about it and the way he reacted you would have thought she was trying to kill him! #2, he gets mad and almost braces himself for you to explode.

Before ZM left, we made plans to work with Louie on Saturday, maybe head to the wildlands for a ride afterwards and the beach for the following Monday! I got Louie on the trailer no issues on Saturday morning and headed to ZM's house. We unloaded him, and ZM asked me to show her how he was doing - he immediately got resistant and shut down on me. I went to grab my gloves and ZM started working with him. She had her trailer all set up so we could get him on that too - her's is a 2H slantload/step up - quite different from my 2H straightload/ramp! It didn't take too long and she had him on her trailer. As I'm writing this, I don't really remember all of the details but if you follow that first link, I know she posted more details.

After a bit, ZM asked if I was pretty confident that "eventually" he'd get on - my response was something like "yeah eventually". So we decided to go ahead and head to the Wildlands for a quick ride. I had a family dinner at 2pm so that gave us about 2 1/2 hours to get to the Wildlands, ride, get back to ZM's house and then for me to get home. Time enough for a nice easy ride......

We got all our stuff together and headed out. When we got there and got saddled up - my anxiety was thru the roof. I'm such a 'fraidy cat ALL the time now. So, we get all saddled and then it occurs to me....I didn't bring a bucket. HOW am I going to get on?? Louie doesn't stand well to be mounted, the saddle slips to the side if I'm not standing on something.....UGH! ZM got on using the gate so I figured I'd try...I couldn't get him close enough and then get him to STAND! ZM ended up getting off Z and trying to give me a boost using her leg....I'm not exagerating, I thought I was going to break her!! FINALLY, I got Lou next to the gate and ZM held him while I got on. It's moments like these that I am totally discouraged by SO many things, my horse choices, my weight issues, my coordination, my fear! Just to name a few!

So finally we were on our way! YAY! It was nice - the sun was out, no real wind. We walked mostly and then ZM asked if I was ok with a trot. Yep! So we trotted for a bit. Louie did NOT like being behind Z, he'd pin his ears and toss his head. He definitely was not the relaxed horse of our little rides at home. When he's in front, he's happy, being behind - he's grumpy. At some point, we were trotting along and he broke into a canter. We cantered a couple strides and I slowed him again to a trot. ZM and I talked and decided to try a planned canter (I hadn't gone faster than a trot with him so far) - we were cantering along and Louie bucked. MAJOR anxiety for me. I pulled him up, he is NOT hard to control even when being "naughty" which is good, ZM said she thought that he'd broke thru the packed snow and that it wasn't a real buck so we decided to try again. With the same results. We decided to try it with Louie behind ZM in case it was the sound of Z coming up behind him that was upsetting him. Again, the same results. So we need to work on that....we turned to go home and were going along nicely. Somewhere around half way back to the trailer, maybe a little more than half way ZM let Z stop to eat some snow. Louie started to put his head down like he wanted to eat some too so I let him have his head. BIG MISTAKE! All of a sudden, we were both on the ground. Apparently he was itchy!! LOL He got right back up but um, now what?? There was NO way I was going to be able to get back up there with NOTHING to stand on. So I walked a bit. ZM kept looking for places for me to get back on , but with the snow being deep in most spots and where there wasn't snow, there was squishy sucky mud. *sigh* I walked a good bit, and then finally ZM spotted the perfect spot! She ended up having to get off and hold Louie while I got on, but I got back up there and Z is a saint so she got back up with no problems. We got back to the gate, unsaddled and took them back to see if they wanted to roll - of course not! LOL ZM had to "argue" a bit about the trailer with Louie but he eventually got back on and we headed back. By this point, I was running late (big surprise). So we got back to ZM's, got Louie back on my trailer and all my stuff in my truck and I booked it for home. Was REALLY late for the family thing but they didn't really care about seeing ME anyway - just the kids and Vince! ;)

Tosh and Dan and Keags came over a bit later for dinner and we had a good night. I was so sore though that I fell over the fence, spilled my drink and was the joke of the night. :) I was sore for DAYS after - walking funny even, and Lou was sore too. Not sure at this point if it's saddle fit or just too much work for a green, out of shape horse/rider!!

Oh! The beach! Monday got rescheduled to Wednesday - and unfortunately, on Tuesday I came down hard and fast with a sore throat, chest congestion and sinus issues so I stayed home. Z and his mom went though and had a blast! I'm hoping to get to go on the next trip!!