When I was a kid, I spent a lot of my free time doodling about the Big Horse Barn I’d build when I got to be a grown-up: a couple of stalls for my riding horses, a couple of stalls for my team (I really really did not want to rely on horseless carriages; guess I was Amish at heart!), the tack room, the feed room, the wash rack etc…
These last heavy rains flooded out my big pole barn so it’s been a mess - just mud, thankfully no structural damage! Our gravel driveway is heavily rutted up - my farmhand seems to be falling behind on basic maintenance like blading the driveway (ahem). I fear for the suspension of my little car every time I creep up and down it. When I came home Sunday afternoon while it was raining, my driveway looked like a small creek flowing merrily downhill - the ground is so saturated there’s nowhere for the water to go.
I’m trying to figure out a safe way to fence off a section of my pond for Aphrodite - now Zach has me scared to death about the dangers of predation (for her; she’s still too small and weak to be a threat to much of anything!) Alligators have been able to recover from the brink of extinction by sheer reproductive numbers, but baby gators are tasty snacks for a lot of wildlife. After all, I never restocked our chicken coop after the heartbreak of watching my flock be picked off one by one, mostly by raccoons but I know we’ve got a few bobcats around here. So I’ve bought pond netting, but I worry about Aphrodite possibly getting entangled in it and drowning - that would also be heartbreaking. So for now she’s got to stay in her oversized goldfish bowl of a water trough until she gets a little bigger and stronger.
Susie and I detoured by the town square of Lancaster after our ride Monday morning since there was adequate shade for the ponies and had a nice mini-luncheon. Susie expressed how “this is how life should be”: a four-day work week with a three-day weekend is just about ideal. Of course I already have my four day week with my Thursdays off, but while Thursdays used to be a riding day for me, they now seem to be eaten up with errands. Le sigh - welcome to adulthood, I guess!
But the best news of all is that Zach accepted the job offer from Quest Diagnostics - I am not supposed to publicize this until he actually signs the contract, but hopefully that will be accomplished today or tomorrow. He had actually gone on another interview with Dallas County (ironically enough, his father worked for the utility district decades ago) but he realized that his (ahem) lack of ethnicity would not work in his favor despite his academic qualifications.
I’m still waiting for Victoria, who is supposed to be ordering his graduation announcements. I’ll give it one more week and then I’m ordering something myself even if I don’t have formal photos
I think I always wanted a horseless carriage. The day I turned 16 I was with my mom at the DMV waiting for them to open. I passed my driving tests, my step-dad gave me his 1965 candy apple red fastback Mustang and my mom and step dad joked that they never saw me again. LOL. At 17 my parents gave me a new Chevelle but it was totaled, not my fault. At 18 I bought my first vehicle with my own money - a silver GTO. At 25 my first new car I bought - a 1975 MGB. So I think the horseless carriage has been my longest relationship, by far. My most successful except for the Pinto purchase. We won't discuss that mistake. Should have bought the horse kind, not the car kind.
ReplyDeleteMy mom designed clothes. I got into that a little but hated to sew and was terrible at it. But I remember designing houses a lot as a kid. My dad did that as a part time job. He always had a drafting table set up making blueprints. Seems kind of weird now that I designed houses but I still do love architecture. I never designed ranch houses like Dad. They did not appeal to me. Mine were mansions. Log houses, English Tudor, Mediterranean, or Spanish usually. So if you need a hacienda to go with your fancy barn designs I probably have plans for one here somewhere. (Sometimes I actually know why people called me "different". You and I were weird little girls, GF. No doubt.)
Sounds like Texas is going to have to say "no, thank you" to more rain plus Illinois is tired of the storms you and Oklahoma are breeding up and sending to us!! Is Texas not completely destroyed yet? From the news it sounds like Texas is gone!
Suzie sounds fun.
Congratulations to Zach on the job! And for looking out for Aprhrodite, his little sister. LOL. You would have a heart attack if she were eaten.
I will pass on the neck python. When they say things like Boas, I think of those pink frilly feather thingees. Bonnie is cute though. Snakes need legs.
Yeah, it isn’t as if I didn’t “grow out” of my youthful Luddite convictions: my beloved maternal grandfather (who kept me in ponies & horses) died when I was 12 & I inherited his ‘67 Chevy. As a consolation prize of sorts, my dad started teaching me to drive & I was also first-in-line at the DMV to get my hardship license at age 15. When Michael divorced me & cleaned out our joint accounts, I had to sell beloved Ol’ Blue for some emergency cash to fill in the chinks as I was still getting my clinic established. Just one more indictment on M’s list of crimes; I hated having to do that!
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So horrible to have to give up a car like that. There is a special place in Hades for M.
DeleteLOL! Believe it or not, I identify a LOT with the "ashamed of all the diret and cobwebs she stirred up" as a deterrent to taking photos, and also with the "excuse to get that cleaned up". The puppy is my excuse to clean up a LOT of things!
ReplyDeleteCongrats to Zach (and to you, as support team) for the graduation and the new job, both!