I suck and I know it

Really quick post while I'm thinking about it and in the five minutes I have left before dinner comes out of the oven. Yes, I know that it's after 9:30 pm and we haven't eaten dinner yet. Kind of a fact of life around here. Guess I should have realized the shoulder roast was in the fridge and not the freezer on Sunday when I had more time to cook it.

It's still raining. No, it hasn't been raining non-stop, just any time that I would like to do something outside. We did manage to squeeze in a trail ride with friends on the 4th, but we literally had to run back to the house to try to avoid another storm. Surprisingly, it didn't rain, but the risk of lightning was enough to get me back to shelter in a hurry. Something about spending your work week researching the hazards of natural disasters is enough to give you a new found respect for mother nature.

We didn't end up taking the dogs to the trainer's party on the 4th. With all the trees around us, our neighbors aren't ones for setting off fireworks, so the dogs didn't really need the distraction. Matt, however, really wanted to see fireworks. We actually got a bit of a fireworks show all the way down CR 41 to Dade City. We could even see another town's display from the top of one hill. Zephyrhills maybe? Dade City's show had already started when we got there, but there was still a good bit of it left. We pulled off the side of the road, being sure to position the car for an easy escape. It was a fun little outing. And we calculated our escape just right. It took the same amount of time to get home as it took us to get there. Pretty good considering I talked to one woman at Publix who spent two hours trying to get home from the Weeki Wachee fireworks.

Gosh, now that I'm writing, I'm thinking of so many other things to write about. Pretty good considering I started out not knowing what to write about. Oh yeah, dinner's already been served and eaten. Anyway, we actually had a really good 4th. I mentioned that we had friends over for a trail ride. Well, we got to a late start, partially because of an uncooperative pony who preferred to visit rather than have shoes nailed to her feet. So we opted to cook lunch before going on our ride. I had just gone to the farmer's market the weekend before and was looking for an excuse to cook up some green tomatoes, zucchini, and egg plant. I was quickly replaced as head chef when one of the girls asked why I was using flour instead of corn meal to coat the veggies. Now, for my grandmother's sake, I was taught to use corn meal; however, over the years I've gotten lazy and usually never had corn meal in the pantry, so I started using flour. Leave it to a southern cook to point out my mistake. I'm not mad at her in the slightest though. She can make some damn good veggies. We had a lot of fun cooking in the kitchen. I cut the veggies, Marcy cooked, and Theresa sprinkled with parmesan cheese. And we gabbed. The guys disappeared outside for most of the time. Three women in the kitchen probably scared the crap out of them. Men are safer with their power tools. Then, like I said, we went on our trail ride. Note to self: when the farrier tells you to take bug spray on the trail, take the bug spray. The deer flies were horrible. They were swarming all over my gelding's face. And Maverick, being the coward that he is, thinks that the solution to anything that he doesn't like is to run from it. My shoulders are still sore from holding him back. Not like I could keep him walking anyway. Marcy and Theresa were riding gaited horses and it was everything my quarter horses could do to keep up at the trot. Then our frantic race back home on out of shape horses, carrying out of shape riders, to quickly untack and race into the house before the onset of the impending storm....that never came. Ah, story of my life.

Rain rain go away

Just so you know, "The Sunshine State" is very close to being considered false advertising. They should call it the "If it's not raining, it's sunny state". They probably couldn't fit that on a license plate. But no joke, no sooner than I have the grain bins uncovered, the sky opens up and just completely soaks me. Then the two fat mares didn't want to get caught. And the Aussie wouldn't stay out of the paddock and kept barking at the horses. And it was muddy and I was wet and grrrrrr. Dolly's ears are scabby and bloody again. I'm pretty sure it's mites, but she makes matters worse by scratching her ears on the trees and causing scabs on the outsides of her ears. She's the only one of the horses with it and it just doesn't seem to go away. I've been putting Swat on it, but apparently not often enough. I need to get back to treating it daily. That and the scratch on Lilly's shoulder. I'm worried that's going to turn into a scar. It started growing proud flesh on me, but I got it caught early. I'm just worried that the hair won't grow back. I'll try to update this blog with pictures tomorrow. It's tough taking pictures in the rain.

So, as if my evening wasn't eventful enough, I had obedience class with the dogs. Notice how "I" is singular and "dogs" is plural? Yes, for the second night in a row now, Matt has been asked to work late. And I'm not talking an extra hour or two. Last night he didn't get home until midnight. Tonight will probably be more of the same. And we carpool so he doesn't have a car. See, the payback for me letting his boss keep him late is that his boss has to drive out here to BFE to bring him home. hehehe Anyway, lets just say that obedience class was amusing. I need to be extra nice to my trainer because I think she's starting to find me and my dogs annoying. The class started out with Woody in a crate and me working Greta. That lasted about five seconds until Woody started barking as loud as possible to get our attention. He's never been crated to my knowledge, so I shouldn't have been surprised. I ended up having to start with Woody and put Greta in the crate. Then the rest of the class was spent working with one dog and switching. Woody did get better about the crate as class went on. Overall, they did pretty good. One big problem is that my dogs like to snap at other dogs. Greta never had this problem before so it really frustrates me that she's doing it now. I knew that Woody could be that way. He has very little training and plus Aussies are known for being protective and territorial. Well, out of my frustration, I smacked Greta in the face when she did it...not once, but twice. I know better than that, especially in front of a trainer, but she really made me angry when she did it. So I got reprimanded and I need to work on punishing her correctly. My trainer is having a July 4th party tomorrow, so we'll see how the dogs do then.

So now I'm home with the realization that I have friends coming over at 8 am and my house is a mess. I'll be lucky if I get dishes done before I go to bed. We'll just have to entertain ourselves outside.

Life Happens

Well, June was certainly an interesting month. It started with me in the hospital. I've never had to stay in the hospital before and suddenly I found myself there for two weeks. I was losing my mind. I missed my house, my bed, my husband, and my animals. The thought of one more night in the hospital had me in tears. I wasn't sure if I'd ever get out of there. Then, to top things off, my laptop started going down the toilet. It finally crashed on me over the weekend. Just won't turn on. My husband is going to see if he can recover my information from my hard drive, then it's off to the shop to get fixed. I'm actually rather enjoying the computer in the office though. I feel more productive. It's even motivating me to write in my blogs. Hopefully I can keep this up. Considering the amount of actual business I've been doing on the computer, I've got high hopes for my blogging success.


So on to what's new in a good way. I've taken up a new business venture. Face it, the economy sucks and we all need to find ways to make more money. Plus I have a horse in training and I need to find a way to keep her there. More on that later. So I wanted to find a home based sales company to start with because of the variety of products with a limited need for start up capital. Bascially think Avon and Mary Kay. The problem is that I'm not much of a girly girl. I live on a farm. I don't wear make-up on a daily basis. I love Pampered Chef, but my kitchen is already overflowing with gadgets. So I'm looking on the work from home websites for ideas and I found one that had a listing of all of the various party planning and home based sales companies. I had to do some research because a few of the companies had gone out of business. Then I found a couple businesses that sold pet products. Now that is something I can sell. I certainly do buy enough of it. It was easy to pick between the two companies. Company #1 didn't have squat that I would actually buy for my pets. Company #2 had a whole catalog full of stuff that I wanted to buy. So I inquired a little further and I am now a Pet Consultant for Shure Pets. Check out my website for more info: http://shurelovemypets.shopshurepets.com/ I'm excited. I got my sample kit last night and have already started playing with stuff. The kids love the toys and treats. I love how good the shampoo makes them smell. I better be careful or I'll use up all my samples before my first show.


Now on to my poor pony who's being forced to become a productive member of society. A little background first. I started riding Poco Steppin Rena when I first moved to Florida in 2005. She's only 14.1h and the owner was afraid of her. I found out why. The little snot is cutting bred and is quick as a cat. For those who don't know horses: that means she dumped me on my butt the first time I rode her....TWICE. But I figured out her trick and went on to really enjoy her. It came to the point where I actually wanted to buy her, but the owner didn't want to sell. Then I tried to convince the owner to send her to a trainer for cutting or reining, but she didn't want to ride her western. Well, time went by, two of my horses from Ohio moved down to Florida, and soon I didn't have time to ride Rena anymore. By the time the owner actually decided to sell her, I knew that I couldn't take on a third horse. Instead, I agreed to help sell her. Let me preface this by saying that I hate selling horses. People send you a million questions via e-mail, waste your time, lie about their experience, and then never call you back. That's basically what happened with both of the people who came out to see Rena. By the time the second family came out to see her, she had been on the market for a few months and I was attached to her again. This is where my wonderful husband comes in. He bought her to be a "project horse." That was a year and a half ago. Guess what, I think she's here to stay.


The problem is that she's 10 years old and never really been "finished." Plus she is a very independant thinker. In front of a cow, that's great. Riding in an arena it means that she's going to try to get out of everything you ask her to do. I was making progress with her, but I still could not get her to canter on the right lead. It got to the point that she would have a temper tantrum every time I asked for the canter. I finally had to admit that I needed professional help. I was getting no where fast with her. Plus, she's too good of a horse to go to waste. I was trying to take reining lessons on her, but we couldn't get anything accomplished because of her problems at the canter. So I saved my pennies and sent her off the end of May. She's already made a lot of progress. I was able to ride her again on Saturday. We still didn't canter but that was in part because I was coming off surgery, in part because my balance needs work, and in part because she's still very hesitant to pick up her leads. I didn't want my balance issues to throw her off. Hopefully I can get back out there this weekend and I'll be able to report that I did canter her, but right now I'm just happy to report that I saw the trainer's assistant canter her. She picked up both leads with minimal temper tantrums.

McCain Gets My Vote

McCain Rejects Parsley Endorsement

I really try to avoid politics. McCain had my vote before this incident, but I will admit that I wasn't totally behind him. But I'm from Canal Winchester, Ohio where the esteemed Mr. Parsley leads his cult...I mean church. I have never been a fan. To see McCain turning Parsley away because of some of the rediculous things that he has said is just music to my ears.

The Gardenias are in Bloom

I really need to post more often. Part of the reason I even started this blog was to work on my writing. I guess I should also use it to work on my discipline. What's laughable is that I thought I could manage two blogs at one time. I am notorious for over stretching myself.

So the gardenias are in bloom. I've been waiting two months for them to finally bloom. I guess I got jealous seeing them in bloom at the nursery and not at my house. Yes, I know that those bushes are forced in a green house, but I never claimed to be realistic. Part of the reason that I love to see them in bloom is because of the way they smell. Gardenias and Peacock Orchids are two flowers that amaze me with how much fragrance can come from one flower. Even with the few gardenia blooms that we have right now, I can smell them as soon as I step from the car. Granted, by the time the whole bush is in bloom, I may find the smell sickening, but that's another story. See, my gardenia is more like a hedge than a bush. It's four bushes in fact. Or at least I think it's four bushes. They're planted close together so it's difficult to tell. The whole hedge is over five feet tall and it's easily ten feet long. And it is loaded with giant buds ready to bloom at any moment.

So, in an attempt to keep the hedge trimmed and my house smelling sweet, I've been taking cuttings every few days and putting them in a vase in the house. I love fresh cut flowers. Last week it was all roses. This week it's mostly gardenias. The way my garden is looking, there could soon be some lilies in the mix. I didn't expect lilies so early. It's been very dry here lately and lilies typically need an inch of water a week in order to bloom. I guess it goes to show that the soaker hose has been doing it's job. By the way, wonderful invention soaker hoses. Only about $10 for a 25 ft hose and it's much more effective at watering my garden than a sprinkler.

The gardenias blooming really have been the highlight of my week. My gall stones are back and eating anything with the tiniest bit of fat gives me more pain than even Vicodin can take away. I really don't see what all the hype is about regarding Vicodin. It takes two hours to kick in and then it still barely masks the pain. Then it only lasts for a couple hours after that before I need to take another one, but I digress. Needless to say, it's been a crappy week complete with a trip to the ER, a follow up with my doctor, missed days from work without pay, and the possibility of having my gall bladder removed. The pain tells me to get the dang thing out of me, but faith tells me that I shouldn't be so quick to take an organ out of my body that God put there for a reason. Even if the doctors think it's a useless organ.


I always like to end on a happy note, so I give you frolicking goats. I'm sorry that the picture is so blurry, but they always run up so quickly it's next to impossible to get a clear picture of them. Plus Bella kicking up her feet is just so cute. I guess it's good that the goats are always so happy to see people. Some people would call them trained, I just call them spoiled. And yes, that would be the male, Rusty, whose stomach that looks fat enough to be pregnant.

New Dog

We got a new dog. No, I definitely did not need a new dog, but how many of the things that we have do we actually need? Anyway, his name is Woody. I'm not totally sold on the name, but I guess I'll get used to it. I won't change it unless my hubby says that he wants to change it. He is a pure bred Australian Shepherd. The story as I know it is that his original owners got tired of him and set him loose hoping that he would run away. Someone found him, found the owners, was told to keep him and gave him to the girl I got him from. She had him for about a month before her 4 year old little boy stepped on him and he snapped at the toddler. That prompted her fiance to say the dog's got to go. A girl who rides with her found out about the dog's situation and posted a call for help on Flahorse, which is how I found out about Woody. The fiance pretty much agreed to keep him for a couple days so that they could find him a home. After that he was taking him to Animal Control.

So I took a rather reluctant husband out to Lakeland after work yesterday to go look at him. The girl was meeting us at an arena there where she was going to be barrel racing. We got there about an hour and a half early, so we went to Olive Garden for dinner. The arena was really in the most unlikely of locations. Probably a victim of development, the arena is in a fairly developed part of town with soccer and baseball fields next door. I'm sure those soccer moms loved the dust from the riders blowing their direction.

Woody was very sweet. He's only about 18 months old, so he still has that floppy puppy body. He wasn't as obedient as I was told, but he did stick close really well and came back when called. Nothing a little positive reinforcement training won't fix. He seems a little under weight. The hair hides his body pretty well, but he just feels like bones when you scratch him. He otherwise seems very healthy. His second eyelid doesn't completely retract on one eye, but it doesn't seem to bother him. Since I'm guessing that's something that would have to be fixed with surgery, I'm not in that much of a hurry to get it looked at. The girl didn't know any of his medical history or even if he's been vaccinated. Greta was due for shots anyway, so I figured I'd take them both in together. So with minimal arm twisting, hubby agreed to take him and Woody hopped in the back of the car.

Hubby said that Woody absolutely had to take a bath before he was allowed to stay in the house, so we did his and Greta's introductions outside, fed the horses, and then he was escorted promptly to the bathroom. Why I bothered wearing a white shirt is beyond me. The water coming off of him was almost black. And of course he has tons of hair, so we went through several rinses before the water finally started to run clear again. I'm just glad that my bathtub is semi-contained. Every time he shook, muddy water covered the walls and me. What I wasn't expecting were the fleas. The poor boy was infested. He shook and dead fleas stuck to the walls. The rinse water would run down his legs and leave dead fleas stuck in the white hair on his paws. I'm sure they were elsewhere, those were just the ones I could see. He was still scratching last night. I doubt the bath got all of them.

This morning was filled with obedience training, horse trims, and vaccinations. I don't have any doubts on his ability to learn obedience. Aussies are very smart dogs and Woody is very motivated by cheese. He followed me every time I went to get a horse and laid under the farrier's truck during the trims. He's a very content dog. Although, I was told that he herds and he was less than helpful when I was trying to catch the buckskin. We'll have to work on that after we get his basic commands down. Then off to PetLuv spay/neuter clinic for cheap vaccinations. Rabies, 5 way, bordatella, & heart worm test for two dogs plus a microchip for Woody for less than $90. Of course then there were the heart worm and flea preventatives for the dogs and flea preventative for the cats, but we won't go into that. Just suffice to say that it's just as cheap as the company I was ordering it from online. I was surprised to find that the girl who checked us in had no idea that collie breeds shouldn't get ivermectin. I got a pat on the back for being an informed pet owner. Yeah, you work in a vet clinic and sell heart worm preventative. That really should have been in the job training. She did manage to find one of their heart worm preventatives that doesn't have ivermectin in it and it just happens to include flea preventative (Advantage Multi). So much for giving Comfortis a try. Not that I'm complaining. I like Advantage and I've been using spot treatments for years. Comfortis is just the latest and greatest. It has a drug that kills adult fleas within the first 4 hours, then another drug that continues to break the flea life cycle for the next 30 days. So, given Woody's flea infestation, I got him a single dose of Capstar just in case. He got the Capstar today. He just had the bath yesterday, so I'll wait until this weekend to give him the Advantage. Gotta wait for those coat oils to build back up or else the spot treatments don't work.

So two lazy dogs are now napping and I am once again avoiding housework. Yep, life is pretty much back to normal.

Happy Cinco de Mayo

I will admit that I'm not usually one to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. I'm more a St. Patrick's Day kind of girl. But I do enjoy me some margaritas. So I suggested to hubby that we stop by this little hole in the wall Mexican restaurant for dinner. Now, while this little restaurant is truly a hole in the wall, it is one of only two restaurants in "downtown" San Antonio, Florida. The other is the deli next door. It is definitely a small town and usually gets mistaken as part of nearby Dade City. Most of the residents are actually migrant workers from the nearby farms and ranches. No wonder they have such a great food.

So we get to San Antonio. The first thing I noticed was a band setting up in the street and a lot of cars in the parking lot. Turns out Pancho's (the restaurant) was hosting a Cinco de Mayo street party. Among the festivities was a pinata and face painting for the kids. By the time we got out of dinner they had the street blocked off, the kids were on their second pinata, and folks were setting up lawn chairs in the street to watch the band. It was just a great atmosphere. I really enjoyed it. I love small towns. Plus Pancho's makes a great margarita.