When J. and I were still doing youth ministry, we made a point to see the shows that the youth in our program were in. One of these was the local high school's annual student written, led, and directed production. One of the songs in the show was about Chuck the Tractor.  "Oh the life of Chuck the Tractor was a long, hard one. He plowed the fields of farmers in the hot, hot sun. But when the day was through, he would sit inside his tractor shack and think of all the things he'd do if he were not a tractor. ... " I wish I could share the tune because it is very catchy. So catchy that ove ..read more

I don't have anything progress to show on anything. It's been that kind of a week. Actually, I wasn't even sure I would do a Fiber Monday post there was so little to say. And then I went to the horse fair over the weekend. I'm wandering around the exhibition center where all the vendors are and happen to see someone selling jewelry made with horse hair. Since I still had Bristol's tail hair sitting in the studio, I decided to take a look. (For non-horsey people, when someone has a beloved horse die, often they will cut off the tail hair to have made into some sort of jewelry to remember them ..read more

I left two of the clinics we had gone to yesterday at the horse fair. Sometimes a clinician's personality just doesn't match your own and sometimes there are just so many egregiously wrong things that you can't stay because to do so would indicate support. I want to briefly discuss the latter. The minute the word 'respect' came out of his mouth, I knew we were in trouble. Not only do I problems with requiring respect from children, but I have even more difficulty with using that frame of reference with a horse. It just doesn't make sense and if you read current ethology research it is not how ..read more

G. and I were up and out of the house to head up to the Midwest Horse Fair this morning. We had a great time and only saw a handful of snow flakes. This is an improvement over actual snow one year and drenching rain another. I feel as though I do not bring good weather to the event as it has never been even vaguely warm when I have been there. But we assumed the weather would be unpleasant, so were prepared.  We saw many beautiful horses, did some shopping, learned some new things, and watched some clinicians who were a decidedly very mixed bag. One of the highlights was watching a team ..read more

L. woke up with significant pain in her lower right abdomen. Now, I don't know about you, but this is one of those things which causes parent alarm bells to go off. I'm pretty low key about most medical things these days, often taking the wait and see approach. Pain in the lower right abdomen that caused a child to squeak a bit when I push on it? Not good. Since W. had an emergency appendectomy a while back, it makes me even more jumpy. It makes me so jumpy that I actually called our doctor's office to see if they would rather us come there first. I try not to ever call the office because the ..read more

Vienna continues to improve. What relieves me the most is that she is standing much more normally instead of having her back legs tucked underneath her. She is not, however, entirely convinced that she is pleased with Buddy's appearance in her life. Buddy is cute, but he also has no problem taking what he wants. This is what Vienna objects to. She spends a lot of time standing far away from him and staring. It's still early days in their relationship. It's actually not unlike how Major was in his relationship with Java at first. He was not a fan of Java's pushy ways. Somewhere along the line ..read more

Negativity bias is the description of our brain's tendency to focus and remember the negative or scary things that happen to us. It really did serve a purpose because it's how humans stayed safe from saber toothed tigers and the like. It's important to remember the times you saw a predator or the near misses to ensure they didn't happen again. This was great until it wasn't. There are very few predators in our modern life, yet the way our brains are hooked up didn't change along with civilization.  This is not unlike modern domestic horses living in fenced pastures and barns far from gri ..read more

Taking a break from cleaning out yet more flower beds, I decided to sit in the shade next to the hot tub pond. If you sit very still while the chickens are out, they will wander over to you. Some may even pose. The roosters even joined the fun.  Fluffy, who is now six years old. See his spur? They are wicked looking things. And Zorro who is about nine months old and just starting to grow a longer tail, but the spurs are yet to grow. And spring is officially here because the very large frog that lives in the pond has reappeared.  This picture m ..read more

Today was one of those beautiful though somewhat rare days that are both the perfect temperature (high sixties, in my open) and sunny and fall on a weekend with nothing on the calendar. We did quite a bit of cleaning up outside, but some time was also spent working on the tree house.  Floor boards are getting installed, so I sent L. up with my camera to the some pictures.  The ones of J. and L. working on it I could manage myself. Here is a better picture of how high up it is. I sat for a while and watched. It was a perfect day just to sit outside and enjoy spring. I had ..read more

I spent the evening at our church's inaugural disability inclusion game night for older teens and adults. I think it went very well. H. had a great time.  But since I have nothing left, I'll leave you with a fritillary picture. This afternoon I discovered the fritillary in our side garden was blooming, but I hadn't noticed because it was hidden in the dried ornamental grass I had yet to clean out. I freed the fritillary and discovered this year it has six blooms! I was so excited because I love it.  ..read more