2007 feels the same

First things first: Happy New Year and all that blather.

For me, it's just another day and another number to try to remember. I've never been in to the whole New Year celebration thing. I don't go out drinking. I don't watch the ball drop. I don't stay up past midnight to catch the first minute of a new year. When I wake up on Jan. 1, no matter what year it is, it feels exactly the same at Dec. 31, the previous year. No sudden illumination about life, no bright lights and inspiring revealations about anything. Nada. Nothing. It's just another day, all things considered. Dirty laundry, dirty dishes, whining kids, unfinished lists of stuff to do, fat thighs, they all remain the same, no matter how much I resolve to make them all just go away.

The youngest troll's birthday is tomorrow and I'm going to have to figure out how to manage to swing by the Coldstone Creamery store to pick up her cake and get it home before it turns into a syrupy, gooey mess of icecream goodness. Frozen food is a challenge when just about everything is an hour away from home.

During the three day mini-vacation I had this past weekend, my sister and I managed to almost completely clear the lower pasture. We ripped out tons of invasive brambles, chopped down massive patches of leftover goldenrod stems and other unidentified weeds, cut down trees, cleared the fence line and took down barbed wire. The fence was so overgrown with weeds it could barely be seen and mostly consisted of prickly clumps of vines and brambles. With thorns, lots of pointy, hurty, hair-grabbing, arm-scratching, finger-puncturing thorns. It was an absolute mess. We burned a lot of stuff. Now, the whole lower pasture is mostly cleared and the posts ready to be restrung with electric fencing and some of the weedy patches mowed.

My body is sore, but it's a good kind of sore, that deep, throbbing feeling of a hard job completed. Thank goodness for my sister! I guarantee I would not have managed to get even half of what we got done in the same amount of time without her help. I'd still be taking down fence and trying to get the weeds cleared. I get frustrated sometimes, when I'm out there sweating and working, and I just don't see the progress happening as fast as I'd like it to. I know, I'm only one person and I can only push myself so hard and do so much, but it's still frustrating, and there is STILL much to accomplish. Years of work. Years. By myself. Unless my sister comes to visit again. Boy, my arms are going to be bulging masses of masculine musculature by then!

By the end of the month there will be a horse in that pasture. A fat, spotted Appaloosa gelding by the name of Chief. He's nearly 20 and a veteran trail horse. He doesn't do much but mosey along in a straight line and ride the trails, but that's all we need him for. He is going to be a family horse, but mostly, I think he will be Unruly's. Wild doesn't have much interest in all in horses beyond looking at them. She doesn't like to get dirty, can't stand hard work, and honestly, she's afraid of many animals. I don't see her ever getting very involved in horses at all.


Unruly? She is the polar opposite of her sister. She is very, very much like me in her obsession with the equine kind. She loves everything horse. She loves to ride and muck around and groom and has even professed her love for the smell of leather. Every horse is her friend, every horse is beautiful.

The biggest bonus about having a horse on the property is it automatically sets me up for getting a second one, my own, sooner than I expected. After all, poor Old Chief can't be expected to be all on his lonesome for too terribly long, can he? *grin*