That’s about how the last 4 days has been. One sigh after another! Sunday night I started smelling propane out of the heating vents in our house so we turned off the heater, opened the windows, and I called the propane company first thing in the morning. Our bedroom is in a separate one room cabin with a wood stove which was awesome since we didn’t have to hang out and freeze and smell propane in the house. Monday morning I called the propane guys who said 98% chance cracked air exchanger and not good news for our heater. He gave me some phone numbers for heating repair companies and I called around for quotes. A guy came out and said yep, cracked exchanger. Meanwhile I was busy researching prices of the type of heater we needed to see just how jacked we would get on the estimates from the repair guys. The first company quoted us $1500 more than the cost of the heater itself! The second company quoted $1,000 less, or about $500 over the heater price. They’re both pulling from the same heater supply (as comfirmed by both companies) so the difference in price has to be labor/installation fees. Needless to say I went with the much cheaper of the two but he can’t come out until Friday. With 30 degree nights the house is rather a tomb at this point, but hey. Today I had to go look after a neighbor’s animals and finish up Christmas shopping (I know, I thought I did that already too) and when I got home there was no hot water. Recalling the endless propane smell coming out the heater compartment the day after we turned off the heater (on the back of the house, out of doors, thank god) not to mention whatever leaked through the house, I feared the worst. The worst being that the heater taking a crap had also drained the last of our propane–we were low and about due for refilling. Ran down and checked the propane tank gauge and sure enough, all gone. So this fine evening my house is ice cold and there’s no hot water for a shower. The joys of being a home owner, yes? The propane tech is supposed to call me in the morning and bring me some amount of propane or other for a special fee. The heater guy is coming Friday. Of course if the propane folks don’t come the heater won’t work anyway…haha! I think its a sign of how much life I lived in the last couple of years that I’m just amused/resigned to all this instead of losing my shit over it.

Well that’s pretty much what I’ve been up to, I’ve had to cancel two lake rides now and possibly tomorrow’s depending on when the propane guy says he’ll show. Such a waste of amazing weather, but got to take care of the home quarters. Hope others are enjoying their pre-Christmas week!

This is wordy, and there are no photos, but stick it out because I had a highly comical day of Christmas shopping in Chico in The Bomber today. First and foremost comical because let’s face it, a redheaded girl all dressed up and driving a big ugly Caltrans orange diesel truck is just funny. Probably rather standard for the folks that read this blog, since many of them are horse folks and wouldn’t think twice about going through life in their diesel trucks, but by the looks on so many people’s faces and my own internal glee, I’m thinking it’s comical. Also comical because the truck has a small, single cab with one bench seat in it and no room for, well, anything. And by the end of the day said single cab was stuffed to overflowing with me, Georgia my travel dog, Christmas presents, and groceries. Oh and if you’re thinking “what about the bed of the truck?” Well that was full too, with my awesome score present for my husband which I can’t reveal here since he might, heaven for fend, read this blog before Christmas.

Chico was absolutely PACKED today, no surprise I suppose since its a weekend–oh, crap, THE weekend–before Christmas, but I was still surprised at the sheer numbers and cluserfuck-ery of it all. Maybe I just never left my shopping this late before, but I’ve never seen the mall and shopping areas in such a state. I had my concerns about parking big ole Bomber in the laughably small parking spots at the mall (seriously, who do they think fits into those? Normal sized cars I guess, haven’t driven one of those in a while) but I succeeded without incident all day. The key is to drive to the farthest end of the lot away from the store entrance and viola, manageable parking! I’m a lackluster shopper at best, perfectly content with my bi-annual shopping extravaganza trips when my mom comes to visit, so my patience with the Christmas rush was short lived as expected. Still I got what I needed, scored my dress to wear to family Christmas/dinner for $19 (originally $60, yes!), and was on my way back towards home in no time. It’s an hour drive to Chico from our house and The Bomber’s radio doesn’t work so I entertained myself as best I could singing to Georgia, who became resigned to her fate long ago. Definitely going to have to fix the radio situation, all I really need is a basic radio with the right iPod plug (which I think is a standard plug these days), so I can listen to my NPR shows and music. In the meantime, enjoy my broadcast, Georgia!

I finished up my Christmas shopping for my sister’s kids at Tractor Supply, so we know they are getting awesome stuff, right! I love Tractor Supply. So much goodness. Actually it has become rather lacking in the horse tack area but that was never their strength (unless you ride straight western) and has just enough basic stuff in a huge range of farm catergories that it remains my favorite store in town. Plus they have a whole section of cool farm/ranch themed gifts and toys at Christmas. I saw a whole action figure duck hunter set complete with tiny four wheeler and thought it was totally awesome. If only my husband were younger..well, he’d probably still play with it, actually  😉   I had the most incredible 5 million piece (I exaggerate, but it had lots of pieces) farm set as a kid, complete with a multi-cow milking stand which at the time my brothers convinced me was for something else entirely. “Yeah see, that’s where the cows stick their heads through and then WHAM they chop their heads off!” You can just imagine older brothers gleefully convincing their younger sister of this. I’m not sure I believed them for very long but I’ll never forget their authoritative enthusiasm when delivering that news.

I had to stop at AT&T to see if I could bully my way into some plan changes for my husband and I and was informed that I could accomplish everything I wanted, WITH NO FEES, by calling customer service–but it would be a $40 fee in the store to do the same things. We’ll see if I can truly achieve my AT&T goals fee-less, I went in there with a head of steam ready to be outraged at their usual nonsense and may have just scared the sales girl into telling me that.

Oh, were you wondering about the title? We’ve finally arrived at the explanation. I wore my slate gray skinny jeans and knee high brown dress boots today, did my make-up, even wore some dangly earrings which never happens (a friend made the earrings and they have tiny gears on them, they rock!). So, I was all dressed up and out on the town, in my mind. My last stop before home was at the market for a couple of groceries. This is the market of the horse-fascinated Indian owner, who now greets me merrily with “Hello, Horse Lady!”  He came to chat with me while I was being rung up and asked what I was getting the horses for Christmas, then looked at what I was wearing and asked if I had been riding today. I was stymied for a minute, as in my mind I was all dolled up and clearly couldn’t have been riding. Then I thought about it from his point of view and managed to recover and politely say no. After all, what is my standard riding gear? Gray riding britches and brown, nearly knee high, half chaps. What were my dress up clothes today? Gray tight pants and brown boots. It was another comical moment. My perspective is SO immersed in horses and farm life that sometimes I forget how to look at the world in any other way. I’m like “Whatcha mean, these are my dress up boots, can’t you tell?!”  No, a non-horse person couldn’t tell, and that’s fair enough!

I wish I could say that was my last humorous moment of the day but perhaps the most comical happening was yet to come. For some reason I decided to take the dirt road cut-off to our house (that I ride to get to the Wildlife Area, it comes out right below our property) rather than the paved way around. I believe my thinking was “I bomb this way pretty quick on a horse, surely it’s faster to get home here than driving around the paved way??” Well faster or not, I regretted my decision and won’t do it again. Things went fine the first mile and half and then I came down a little hill and around a sharp corner and around that corner found a nice selection of DEEP potholes. I’m still not used to the way the Bomber sort of free spools quickly down hills like its in neutral so I was going faster than I should have been, certainly. I did my best to avoid the potholes but slammed into one pretty well which sent one of the precariously balanced gallons of milk flying to the floor where it struck my gingerbread barn set I’m going to build tonight–and burst! I mean BURST. Like milk splattered everywhere, on me, the seat, the floor, the bags of presents..and it wasn’t stopping. There was a brief hilarious moment as I snatched up the gushing jug, flung open the door, and continued to drive while dangling the quickly-emptying jug out the door, then I realized what a losing battle it was and dumped the last milk out and flung the empty carton over the tool box and into the back of the truck. All this took mere seconds but boy was it dramatic. There was milk fricking everywhere. Luckily I had bought two gallons. And luckily I bought Armor All and planned to shop vac and clean The Bomber when I got home anyway. It took the vac, half a bottle of Armor All, and a couple of old towel rags to clean up the milk debacle and get the truck into acceptable shape. I found milk under the seats, splattered across the driver’s door, just about everywhere. Somehow, wonderfully, all my shopping was well wrapped in plastic bags and I managed to remove it all safely with no milk damage. Phew. I’m realy glad all this fun didn’t happen in summer as I did the best cleaning job I could do but I imagine there are milky remnants still lurking the truck..and I’ll probably get away with it thanks to the 40-50 degree temps, whereas spilled milk cooking in the truck in 100 degree summer would be most unfortunate.

That’s it for my excitement. Home safely and glad of it. I like The Bomber more every time I drive it and part of me thinks maybe I *should* just leave it Caltrans orange, as its kind of part of it’s charm. And I have a theory that people might leave it alone more thinking its actually a Caltrans truck. There are still random numbers etc visible on it that make it look like a legit service truck, though the logo itself is of course painted over. We’ll see.

I almost forgot the best part! When I was cleaning the milk mess I found that the truck has freakin flare holsters! On the floor next to the driver’s seat there are are three little flare holsters and there were two ancient looking flares still stuck in there. +500 cool points for Bomber!

As I often reiterate, Sheza is my first foal. I’ve never been through the birthing/foal raising process before, and so much of it has been surprising (read: alarming?) so far in the just-shy-of-a-year since Desire arrived here from Utah, 8 months pregnant. Fortunately we had the luxury of an easy pregnancy for Desire, a quick, seamless birth that we assisted at and filmed, and the resulting beefy beauty that is Sheza. She turned 8 months old this week and it led me to look back on her Baby Book and all of the “Firsts” we have already gone through in our brief time together.

This morning we had another first. I had to opt out of my planned ride today as we had a potential buyer for the snow plow that The Bomber (the new-old diesel) came with. A guy from a pump company was willing to drive up from Stockton to take a look at it and the plow attachment was still on The Bomber as of this morning. I also had rather a lot to drink last night at my friend’s birthday party and while I could have done it, trotting around on a horse today may not have been my favorite choice ever. Anyhoo I managed to call my riding partner early enough not to inconvenience her (I think!), we sold the plow, and I had another little First with Sheza.

I had blanketed the horses Wednesday for the overnight rain and yesterday was bitterly cold so I left them blanketed for the day. This morning was much warmer and blue skies, though blustery, and I pulled blankets. I always just pop into the adult horse’s pastures and pull their jackets with them loose in the field. Up to today I had to halter and lead Sheza out to the cross ties to remove her blanket, as she was pretty skittish about the blanket being dragged off of her. Today she trotted right up to me when I came in the gate and ran her whiskers busily but calmly all over me while I undid the buckles. Then I slid the blanket off her while scratching her favorite spot and she just stood and let it happen. YES! A small victory, but every little moment of progress with this BlazunHAAT filly is a triumph to be noted. I am really hoping she goes through a more mellow phase soon as she has been hot and spook spooky spooky for the last two months. But in the meantime at least we are still making small steps forward.

I have a new plan for Blaze’s hooves. Having now gone through two sets of steel shoes without riding him, I’m not seeing the point of keeping him shod. He needs to go in front hoof protection of some kind, but his hind hooves are rock hard and do fantastically barefoot. Granted, he had such a long time off since August because of my saddle issues and he will be used more in the future, but realistically I’ll be focusing on Desire and we are going into winter. I’m not happy with my shoer lately, either. He had truck troubles a few months ago and since has stopped hot shoeing, part of the transportation issue I guess. Anyway, I’m not seeing a need to keep now-cold shoeing Blaze in steel shoes going into winter when I won’t be riding him much and when I do it will mostly likely be on soft footing (over winter, and into next year I plan on gymkhanas and team sorting with him). So the plan is, pull his front shoes, fit him up with a pair of Easyboot Gloves for his fronts, and he can work on transitioning to nice barefoot hooves over the winter. He has quite nice, large hooves anyway, but has always been sensitive on the fronts so I kept him shod. I’m wondering now if that is another concavity issue/keeping him in steel shoes, and if my trimmer and I can’t get him successfully barefoot.

Phew, I had fun last night but I’m still feeling it. Tomorrow I get to go do the small amount of Christmas shopping I will be doing this year, and The Bomber and I will take our true maiden voyage together. If you see me, wave, I’ll be hard to miss: The Redheaded Endurance gal in the bright orange truck!

We have had gorgeous cool crisp sunny days throughout this first half of December 2011. I suppose its only fitting that we finally got a mini storm. I threw the blankets on the horses last night and good thing, as it POURED off and on throughout the night. Most of the storm has already blown through but its 35 degrees and dripping wet and gray this morning. The sun is supposed to return tomorrow with no more rain in the forecast as of *yet* though that can change quickly of course. I’m actually quite grateful for the rain, I was just grumbling yesterday morning as I was once again wedging Desire’s feed tub into the corner in the bitterly cold morning, getting covered in dust and dirt. It seemed off to be shivering in the December morning but still getting dusty, rather than muddy. I like my filthiness to be seasonally appropriate, after all. A thorough rinse and wash of the place and some dust-busting was needed. That said the sunny weather has been fantastic and I’ll miss it when it’s gone, as it no doubt will be soon enough.

Tonight is a good friend’s birthday dinner at a great Sushi restaurant–I can’t wait as it will be a good time and we haven’t had really good sushi in ages! Yum.

 
Horses getting cozy last night:

 

I haven’t been posting a whole lot about Sheza lately, I’ve been having so much fun riding momma Desire. But I have been hanging with the filly one way or another every day–that is the beauty of finally having my horses here at home, in my front yard. I boarded my horses out since my first horse when I was a teenager, and just since buying our home I am keeping them right here close to me. It is fantastic to look out my living room window and watch my horses. But I digress, I just wanted to post a little something about Sheza filly, 8 months old as of today. She is 13 hands and has a belly. Lovely feet. And looks great in bright grass green, right N? : )

Today we just rode out from home, ahead of the 60% predicted showers coming tonight and tomorrow. It is bright and sunny and COLD. 27 degrees this morning and pipes would definitely have frozen if we hadn’t left a hose cracked on overnight. I have plans to meet N at the lake Friday so I thought I would just cruise out from home today. It was a short ride, just 6.3 miles total, but it was really enjoyable. I headed out around 10:30 so that things had had a chance to warm up slightly, though I still wore a down vest, long sleeved shirt, and gloves. All the cars that passed and people I passed in their yards and even the slightly sketchy guy hitch-hiking on the road, were all merry and smiled and waved. I saw a house with a yard FULL of cars and teenagers in pajamas wandering around–family home for the holidays and all there waved and smiled. It was a really happy, peaceful ride, even with all the loose dogs. One dog that is usually fenced in ran loose on the road after us and actually coiled itself as if to spring at us, but I broke out the Scary Voice and it turned and ran back to its gate as fast as it could go. I really have a great Scary Voice and it causes almost every dog to turn tail. And when that doesn’t work I point the horse at that them and take a few steps, also quite effective.

The weather today (and for the last few weeks, really) is my absolute favorite. Bright and crisp and clear, need a layer or two on but not too cold, just perfect in the sun. I would be 100% okay with this weather being our fall, spring, and summer. Heck, why not winter too. I know that we certainly need the rain and hope we get enough of it to fill the lake etc but boy, am I loving the crisp sunshiny days in the mean time!