Tag Archives: Bean Acres

On Writing and Horse Bootcamp

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This blog has been oddly silent.

I mean, I’ve never been the most dedicated poster, but lately I’ve been even quieter than usual.

This is because I’m writing.

I know. “Sorry I haven’t been writing, but I’ve been writing” is a weird excuse, but it’s the truth. In a perfect world I could manage to write and do regular blog posts at the same time, but the truth is I’m not very good at typing on phones anymore. I miss phones with real keyboards – I can’t write effortlessly on these new-fangled contraptions like I used to. It ends up being 90% typos, and fixing it is more trouble than it’s worth. I try voice to text, but it usually ends up gibberish…. so I find myself waiting to write until I’m sitting down by a real keyboard.

Of course, once I’m sitting in front of a real keyboard, I always ask myself: do I want to write a blog post, or do I want to write something that will eventually earn me money?

I know, I know. Some people want to publish because of lofty dreams and aspirations. That’s not me.

I’m not saying that I’m entirely mercenary. I write because the words bubble up inside me and explode out in unhealthy ways unless I let them spill out like lifeblood on paper.

That’s why I write.

Publishing, on the other hand, is a whole different ballgame. I want to publish because

I’m not dumb – I know I won’t make a ton of money. Still, it’d be nice if I could make enough to do little projects around the farm. Maybe I’ll name my books after my hopes and aspirations?

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

Anyways, I’m writing. And for once, I actually have a pretty good feeling that it’s going to be done sooner rather than later. This is all because of a Facebook ad that I stumbled across a couple of months ago. I can’t remember exactly which book it was trying to sell me, but even if I did I probably wouldn’t say… and that’s because I want to be honest about it without hurting anyone’s feelings. And here’s the honest truth:

Holy crap, the writing was AWFUL. It was some kind of dragon story, and the excerpt was so horrible I downloaded a sample. People would shout things wincingly (<– I’m not making that up. “…he shouted, wincingly” was honestly part of the book.) The plot was confusing and cliche, all at once.  The grammar was all over the place, and the whole thing was just… just WOW. It was bad. It was really, really bad.

It also had 4 star reviews from several hundred people, which meant that it was selling pretty well.

If you’re curious how that is even possible, it’s because there’s a science behind independent publishing, and if you churn out a book every 30 days you can beat the Amazon algorithm, and then if you give some of your books away for free, people will respond favorably.  Once you  get the 50 review minimum Amazon will start recommending the book to people, and…..

And if you’re really interested in learning more, there are better blogs than mine to explain about it.

I sent a screenshot of the book (even the cover had problems!) over to Melinda over at Dr. Mel Newton. “Look at this! This is awful! We could write ten times the book, without even proofreading it once.”

We laughed, and then went on with our day.

The reason I shared it with her is that she’s kind of an awful human being.

I mean, she’s really the best kind of human being, but she’s just awful in that she actually follows through on stuff.

She’s like that kid in high school who does all their homework before they watch TV… only they’re not actually going to ever sit down and watch TV, because they’re off learning how to play classical piano, and eating only salads and lean grilled chicken.  You kind of like them, because they’re the best people ever, but also you don’t’ want to hang out with them too much because you can’t relax on the sofa with three ice cream sandwiches and binge watch Grey’s Anatomy.

Although, now that I think about it, I never binge watched TV in high school. What did I do? I guess I binge read Dragonrider of Pern books? It’s getting to the point I don’t even remember what life was like without chasing after a pack of kids.

Anyways, in case you think I’m making this up, here’s proof:

Back in 2015 I went to a writing conference. I attended a couple of “how to write magazine articles and make money” classes and came away with some great notes. I’ve shared those notes with a couple of people. We all agreed it was really good advice.

I’m not sure any of us ever did anything with them, but seriously – it was super advice! It was just the best advice.

When I found out that Mel was looking to do more nonfiction writing, I shared the notes with her.

“Oh, that’s great!” she said. “Thank you!”

And then she did something really weird.

She actually went and DID all the stupid advice I sent her.  Like, immediately.

Ick.  Who does that?

As a result started getting picked up by Equus (a very big name horse magazine) and having people regularly buy her columns, and just… I bet she went out and ate a big bowl of salad and went for a run in celebration. Oh, that’s right, she probably did do that, because she regularly runs 100 mile ultras.

Sigh.  She’s not even human, I swear.

Still, she’d enjoyed the advice so much I sent her some fiction tips. Once again, she expressed a ton of gratitude, and went off and PLOTTED AN ENTIRE BOOK.

Everyone who knows anything about writing knows that you’re just supposed to dabble, and endlessly revise the first 30%, and never actually finish anything. I mean, duh.

Anyways, one evening as I was having trouble falling asleep, I started thinking about this wish list, and how much I wished that I actually could do Tinder For Writers and find someone to collaborate with.

And then I remembered the crappy dragon book, and I got an idea.

The next morning I got up, and started writing an email to Mel. In the subject line I typed “A Really Good Bad Idea”. In the body of the email, I basically said “Do you remember that crappy dragon book? Dude. We could do that. And I’m not just saying it… I mean, we could literally do it.”

And she took me up on it.

And you know what? It’s kind of perfect. We’re both good at what the other person is not-so-good at. We made a list of ideas, and we chose to start off with…

Wait for it…..

Crappy Dragon Book.

Yes, that’s it’s current working title. No, that’s probably not the title we’ll eventually publish it under. There’s still a lot of behind the scenes work to do between now and a finished book, but it’s actually really, really working. I stay up in the evening and vomit a bunch of ideas and scene suggestions onto a document, and then she shows up in the early morning and basically turns into the annoyed robot from Wall-E and sweeps it all up into some kind of format and works on it… and then we go back and forth and back and forth.

And now we’ve got the thing, like, 80% plotted and have about 20k words in it. I kid you not, I’ll be very surprised if we don’t have a finished product by January.

So, yeah. I’ve been writing. I just haven’t been writing here.

Anyways, now that you know what I’ve been doing with all of my “free time”. As for what else I’ve been doing, I’ve been pretty busy. Last week Carrots had some laminitis, so I sat there and imagined the worst.

By Friday she was visibly limping, horribly uncomfortable while standing, refused to do more than nibble at her meds, and I steeled myself for the worst.

When the vet showed up on Saturday morning, she walked right up to the fence, no trace of a soreness, no heat in her legs, barely registerable digital pulse, all bright eyed and bushy tailed. She nickered happily.

I glared in relief, which I didn’t even know was possible to do until that moment.

That pony is just…. She’s kind of too perfect.

So she’s on a diet now and on an exercise regimen. Last night we moved the goats in with her, and it’s been very entertaining to watch. I figured she could use the company, because Reverie went off to boot camp yesterday.

Here’s the thing with Reverie – if she’s not the smartest horse I’ve ever worked with, she’s in close running. I don’t say that as a compliment – I kind of like dumb, happy-go-lucky horses.

Reverie is not lazy and dumb and happy-go-lucky. Reverie is sweet, and loving…..and eerily intelligent and easily bored.

She’s also alpha – very, very alpha. The good news is that she’s a nice alpha, not one of those bitchy mares that takes joy in ordering others around. She just stands her ground and doesn’t like to give in when another horse heckles her. She’s also sweet natured at heart.  She’ll trot away from a giant pile of food to meet me at the gate to let me scratch on her (IT’S SO NICE HAVING A HORSE THAT ENJOYS BEING SCRATCHED ON!!!).  She’s also happy to accept my leadership – I’m sure we’ll have battles in the future, but for the most part she doesn’t challenge me too much.

PHEW.

The bad news is that she’s alpha enough that she’s been ordering Carrots around for several months now. I think the passing of the baton happened some time right after her first birthday, and I just can’t help but think that it’s an absolutely horrible thing for a yearling to grow up thinking she runs the entire world, and that everyone 4-legged needs to get out of her way.

So, I contacted my farrier – Rose. Rose is amazing, and runs a happy, healthy herd. She has a bunch of Appaloosas she’s owned almost since birth, and a tiny herd of rescue minis that were all foundered and lame enough to put down, that she nursed back to health. She came with a trailer and I walked Reverie over and loaded her in.

By “loaded her in” I mean I made a complete hash of the job, and I’m too embarrassed to talk about it, but Reverie doesn’t phased at all by my ineptness (I swear, I used to know how to handle horses.) and I resolve to do much better in the future. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that for today.

Anyways, when we arrived at her place and unloaded Reveri, she looked around alertly, paused at the entrance, and hopped neatly down.

One of Rose’s appaloosas whinnied hello – a high, bright tenor.

Reverie raised her head and answered back in her deep, almost stallion-like baritone.

I walked her over and let her sniff through the fence – there was no squealing or striking – just a lot of intense interest.

Aside from a rare glimpse of a neighbor’s horse when I walk her in the lower pasture, she hasn’t seen another horse since January, when Caspian was put to sleep. (One of these days I’ll get around to owning a trailer.)

I was surprised that she didn’t seem as short as I thought she would – I guess she really is growing up. She was still literally less than half as wide as Rose’s foundation bred Appaloosas (who are all GORGEOUS), so she’s not that big yet.

Eventually, once the excitement had calmed down, we turned her loose. Ears pricked, she floated out in a graceful, delicate trot straight at the big horses, neck arched, eyes bright. She moves like poetry.

She made a beeline straight for the alpha mare, reached her neck out as if to sniff at her, then suddenly pinned her ears, planted her front hooves, and double barrelled the alpha mare straight in the chest.

C-RACK, went Reverie’s hooves, as they made impact with the much larger mare’s chest.  I couldn’t believe my eyes. To be honest, I’m pretty sure the only reason it made contact was because Rose’s big mare couldn’t believe her eyes either. Did she just….. Did she really just…..?!?!?!?!

It was a little bit like taking your 11 year old scrawny pre-teen out for a nice dinner and as soon as you turn your back, your kid strides right up to some giant thug on the corner – the one with the tattoos and the hard eyes – and ineffectually shoves at their chest, telling them to “Get off my corner. This is my neighborhood now.”

Luckily, Rose’s mare and I were on the exact same page.

And thus began Reverie’s schooling.

The neat thing was, none of the horses were particularly mean about it. When I worked up at the ranch we had a large herd of 40-50, all divided up in different paddocks (or sometimes running altogether). Horses can be downright cruel sometimes. Rose’s herd could have been much, much meaner with their discipline. They didn’t corner her or kick unnecessarily. They just decided to push her all over the property, whether she wanted to go or not.

We’re trotting….

We’re trotting…..

We’re trotting in total unison….

Oh, crap! I didn’t see you there. My bad. I’ll just….I’ll just go around you.

Ack! With emphasis! I’ll go around you with emphasis! Sorry!

If she refused to move out in a submissive enough way, she got a double barrel kick in her direction.

Oh, are you over there? Well. I want to be over there now. SO MOVE, little snotty red horse.

I would feel sorry for her, but honestly, these were foundation appaloosas, and while powerful, they weren’t exactly moving at the speed of sound. Reverie only got kicked once, and that was because she tried to stand her ground and let it happen.

Even when she was trotting off, she didn’t look very repentant. In fact, she looked like she was enjoying the heck out of herself.

Okay, maybe she is looking at me for a little backup in this pic.

I mean, look up at that last pic. That is not a horse who is having a bad time, despite the fact that in that pic she has 8 horses trotting after her.

Despite the action shots, the whole thing was pretty low key, and by the time I left, everyone had settled down.

Reverie was exploring the place with an unbelievable enthusiasm. I did feel a bit guilty about that – I know she has been bored, but I didn’t realize she was that bored. The look on her face as she navigated the hills and explored the different terrain made me feel a bit sad for her.

We are in the process of fencing in the lower pasture – it will be done by next spring, and I will probably even have the upper part fenced off for light grazing by the middle of September. Still, up till now, Reverie has been 100% bored stiff. She’s in a dirt paddock with a stodgy old pony who has no sense of playing. I gave her things to play with, but she’s not mouthy and doesn’t really enjoy that. I did consider letting her play with the goats, but I am not entirely convinced playing with the goats would result in happy, not-hurt goats. The few times she’s been able to herd cats in the paddock, she’s enjoyed herself a little too intensely. I could see her happily herding goats to death, or trying to engage in a fun little kicking fight. Maybe when she’s older? We’ll see.

I was pretty impressed at how brave she was with terrain. At one point she was exploring a lower area that was blocked with a bunch of scrub brush. She walked up to it, and picked her head up high to see if she could see over.

She couldn’t, so she busted right through it.

CRASH CRACKLE SNAP, went all the brush as she disappeared.

Rose’s herd stared at her, horsey eyebrows raised.

“That’s mostly stinging nettle”, commented Rose.

CRASH CRACKLE SNAP, went all the brush, and Reverie came out the other side, tail flicking in annoyance at the welts rising on her skin…. and with a giant, tomboy grin on her face. Well, alrighty then. I guess she’ll be okay on trail?

Anyways, that’s where Reverie is right now – learning how to play nicely with the other horses, and take orders, and share her toys on the playground.

Scat, Reverie

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Hey, Reverie. Yeah, I see you sweetie. You just need to back off for a bit, okay? You can’t share Carrots’ grain. I mean, even on a normal day I want you eating out of your own bucket, but right now hers definitely has too many medicines in it. I’m just going to stand guard till she finishes it.

Yes, you look pitiful. No, I’m not changing my mind. Scat.

Yeah, see, where I come from “vaguely turning your head to the side while giving me sideye” does not constitute a “scat”.

I’m sorry, did I use too many words? The basic underlying definition of “scat” means “get further away from me”, not “try to get as close as you can with a soft, sad expression.”

Why, yes. Yes, that is Finn. And no, I’m not buying your sudden intense interest in the 3-year-old. You and I both know that as soon as I move away, you’re going to dive headfirst into the grain pan that you’ve “forgotten” all about. Yes, I just waved my hands in the air with sarcastic quotes around the word “forgotten. It’s a human thing – you wouldn’t understand.

What you can understand, right now, is that scat means move. So, you know, move. Away.

Yeah, nope. “Move Away” does not mean “move to the other side of the pony and try for the grain again.” Nice try, though. Keep on moving, sister.

Oh heeeee-double-hockey-sticks-NO.
Uh uh.
No you did NOT.
You did not just subtly angle your butt towards me and give me that pissy body language. Uh-uh. Nope. I don’t think so, girlfriend.

I hope you like moving, because this was just going to be a 3 minute scat thing, but now it’s going to be a whole session.

That’s right, pissy pants. Move.
(And yes, Finn. I see you, “wunning with Wevewie.” That’s such a wewy, wewy, bad idea. I’m gonna have to ask you to stop when I notice it in a few laps.)

(Insert joke about chestnut mares)

Okay, but for real. Why are horses prettier when they’re being total snots? Did I just bond unnecessarily hard with some evil-eyed carousel horse at Disneyland or something? Why can’t I get that fluttery feeling looking at a placid-eyed horse in a stall? What is wrong with me?

That’s a vaguely better expression, but not good enough. Keep moving. In fact, why don’t you turn around and go to the right.

Yes, yes, I know you prefer to do everything in a half rear levade thingie. Impressive.
Now go left.

Nice, but your eyes still look..,.I dunno. Not kind? Keep going.

Holy moly, you’re beautiful. Like…. like seriously. Wow. You totally fill my eye. How are you only a yearling and already so gorgeous?! You are 13.2 hands of absolutely perfection. Someone who desperately wants their next show horse is gritting their teeth in frustration at my luck, while I’ve got you ungroomed and just hanging around in my backyard, jogging through poo piles. Ah, well. Such is life. I have to admit, you’re pretty enough that you kind of make me want to take you to shows, although I’d probably end up throwing dirt clods at anyone who points out your supposed faults.

Maybe it’s better if I don’t take you to shows. I don’t think I want to be known as Dirt Clod Becky in the Morgan showing world. Still – golly, you’re pretty.

Oh, are you trying to say you’re sorry? Are you all calm and submissive and wanting to “join up”? Are you lowering your head and asking to be my friend and… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA – Oh, man. Sorry. Sorry, I’m out of breath from laughing so hard. Reverie, I was not born yesterday, and I have lived with you for almost a year. You are such a dirty liar. Don’t you dare start slowing down.
**Insert kissy noise**
I said MOVE.

Uh-huh. That’s what I thought. What happened to that soft, sweet, totally apologetic filly from three strides ago? LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE, that’s what. Now, move.

Mmm hmmm. Don’t you wish you were over here, getting scratched and loved on, instead of moving out in endless boring circles? Well, maybe you should have thought twice about talking back to me with your butt earlier, hmm?

Keep going.

That’s a much better expression. Good girl. Please turn around.

That’s a good girl on the side, too. I love that look on you – listening, respectful, but still enjoying yourself. I believe that expression a lot better than your earlier pretend head skating.

Okay, I’m gonna get closer, just to make sure you can still be polite with a little bit of pressure. Turn around, please.

Very good girl. Now, turn around and see if the right side of you is still in a better mood, too. I need to make sure both RightReverie and LeftReverie are in agreement.

You are gorgeous when you gallop, but you don’t have to run if you don’t want to. We could do this at a walk if you wanted.

Excuse me. Yes, I know Carrots is over there, but I’m over here. Kindly pay attention to me.

Much better.

Gorgeous, inside and out.

There you go – good girl. See, now that’s a face I believe. Turn around again, please, one last time. Does your left side still remember how to be a nice, respectful filly?

Oh, good. Good, it has. It looks like you’re good, through and through. You may stop, whenever you want. All pressure is off.

(Literally every single time I set aside a weekend to clean the paddock this summer, it has poured and made everything wet and super heavy. Every. Single. Time….. which is why I now have photos like this. I shall title this one: Million Dollar Dream Horse Standing Proudly On Poopie Mountain.)

But seriously, very good girl. Stand there for a moment, so you don’t think you can run at me every time I take off pressure….. okay. Good. Would you like to come over for a scratch?

I’ll take that as a yes. I love you too, girl.

Conversations With The Goats

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“Good morning. We’re baby goats. Come snuggle us.”

“I wish I could, guys, but I have to go to work.”

“What is work?”

“It’s where I go sit for 9-10 hours a day and move around pieces of paper, and -”

“And eat them?”

“What? No? I don’t eat them, I just push them around my desk, or from department to department, and make sure people scribble the right words on them.”

“That sounds boring.”

“It’s actually not too bad. Although, sometimes people who are mad about government or something that happened to them try to take out their grumpiness on me.That’s not really fun.”

“Is it because you chewed on the wiring on their BBQs?”

“No, no, I don’t do that. That’s just you guys. I’ve never acquired a taste for BBQ wiring.”

“Oh, it’s the best! I mean, nothing really beats whole cows milk mixed with buttermilk and evaporated milk, heated up and served in an old soda bottle….

Mmmmmmm…. It makes our tails wag just thinking about it! But seriously, BBQ wiring is a close second. Maybe you should offer some BBQ wires to the grumpy people to appease them.”

“I don’t think that will help.”

“Have you tried?”

“…. No. No, I have not.”

“Well, then how would you know? Besides, you should definitely stay home from this “work” and hang with us instead.”

“I can’t. I really can’t.”

“We could snuggle, and then later we’ll go outside and run around aimlessly, darting about and then randomly stopping, over and over. The goal is to dash around as erratically as possible.  It’s best if you pretend the floor is lava and that it’s burning your hooves, so you need to sproing in the air as high as possible. You get extra points if you twist around at the apex of the sproing.”

“I don’t think I’d look as cute as you, if I sproinged around the yard. Moms in their late 30s definitely don’t sproing as well as baby goats.”

“Sproinging is the best. You’ll love it. When we get bored with sproinging and running around we can climb up things and jump off of them. That’s always good for an hour or two of fun.  When you get hungry, since you don’t like BBQ wires, you could enjoy some of the weird moss that grows on the muddy hillside by the house. That will make you happy.”

“Eww. No thanks. I’ve been meaning to ask you – why don’t you eat the goat food and Timothy hay I left out for you?”

“That stuff is boring. Moss is much better, although we’re seriously beginning to question your taste.  You really don’t like eating old moss OR BBQ wires?”

“Nope.”

“Shoelace strings?”

“Nope.”

“That dangly sleeve on the sweatshirt your kids keep forgetting to put away?”

“Nope.”

“One of our neck wattles? Chewing is no good, but you could suck on it for awhile? We find it very soothing, almost as soothing as laying on your lap and getting scritched.”

“I’m NOT sucking on your neck wattles. That sounds….. uncomfortably gross, like something that should only happen between two consenting adults.”

“Oh, no, it’s very soothing. Try it! Patches has the best wattles, but Gazelle’s can do in a pinch.”

“No. That’s gross. And frankly, I wish you guys would quit doing it. It weirds me out.”

“It’s not gross, it’s wonderful!”

“We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Look, I really need to get to work. You guys have a great day doing all your…. your goat things. Sorry I can’t stay with you.”

“We don’t think you’re making good decisions. Work is silly. Hanging out with us is obviously the better choice.”

“On that we can agree.”

What I Want

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It’s International Women’s Day.

According to what Google said about this year’s theme, I’m supposed to be wishing for empowerment via social protection and sustainable infrastructure, or something like that…..

But I’m not.

I know that sounds kind of mean and unsupportive, and I really don’t mean it that way.  It’s just….sustainable infrastructure is not very much fun to daydream about, no matter how hard I try.

Here is a list of stuff I actually want instead:

  1. A pause/erase/do-over on all voicemails – Yes, I know some voicemails offer that option, but why the heck is this not a standard thing? There is nothing worse than being halfway through a voicemail and realizing you said the wrong thing and sound like an idiot, or you gave them your cell phone number instead of your work number, or, or, or…..

    … but it’s too late, you can’t fix it because you’ve already started talking and now you’re being recorded, LIVE, and every single thing you say could conceivably be saved forever, or be turned into a viral video, and maybe if you get lucky you can figure out a way to talk into the judgy silence of the voicemail recorder and save this situation….but no. 

    No, you’re not that lucky, and now it’s too late. 


    Image result for i hate voicemail


    Now you’re sounding weird and rambly, and you don’t sound professional or coherent at all.  In fact, you passed the line from too-talkative into “hey listen to this weird voicemail I got” about five or six sentences ago, and oh geez, you just keep hoping that you’ll find the right combo of sentences to make you seem like a functioning, intelligent adult who represents your company with pride, but you can’t, you just sound like a freak,  and it’s 2019 and technology is nearly limitless and WHY CAN’T I DELETE THIS VOICEMAIL AND START OVER?!

  2. Sarcasm font- How hard can this be?! It’s such a simple fix. You could use italics for emphasis, and then you could use backwards italics (slanting to the left instead of the right) for sarcasm.

    Image result for THE WORLD 'NEEDS SARCASM

    Do you know how many arguments and hurt feelings could be avoided by letting people text as sarcastically as they speak?

  3. A giant plastic/wooden model of a horse that I could use to practice mounting, posting, dismounting, and maybe even trick riding – You could set it up in your backyard, and not only could the kids could play on it, but it would be a great workout, too. Forget squats, or Pilates, or CrossFit – just practice mounting without cinching up the saddle very tight, ten times in a row. Could you imagine the workout you could get, and how much happier a horse would be if you could practice this sort of stuff without having to flop around on their backs? I could practice trotting without stirrups and build my leg muscles without worrying about whether my crookedness is going to make a horse chiropractor necessary. Plus, I could slowly but surely teach myself to swing up bareback onto a horse, or how to do that “run at them from behind and vault over their butt” without worrying about getting kicked.  I’d get so much use out of one

  4. Wireless/Bluetooth Video Game Edition Of The Giant Fake Horse – Once someone invents the fake horse from the last daydream, I want to have an indoor, electronic version that pairs with my TV/Video game console.  It would be like Wii Dance, or Wii Sports, but with horses.

    Kind of like this, but full size and a bajillion times awesomer.


    You could “compete” against friends in a cross-country jumping edition, or practice “riding the fence” in a reined cowhorse competition, or just practice your two-point on a virtual ride in Mongolia… ALSO,  DUDE, JUST THINK HOW COOL THE NEW RED DEAD REDEMPTION WOULD BE IF YOU COULD ACTUALLY RIDE INSTEAD OF JUST USING A CONTROLLER!



    I think I remember seeing somewhere that this technically exists in some “just for Olympics level” riders, but I want one in my living room.

    Also, I want my giant fake horse to have hinges so it can fold down small enough to slip under the couch when I am not actually using it.


  5. 19 Acres for dirt cheap: I would like my two next door neighbors to grow irritated with owning land, and decide to sell all their horse/hay pasture to me for a ridiculously low price.

    “Are you sure?  That’s so…. So cheap!” I would exclaim. “I would feel bad buying it from you for so little.”

    “Oh, seriously, don’t feel guilty.  We just don’t want the hassle of all this land ownership. Owning all this land is such a drag.  If you can just take all this rolling, treeless pasture off our hands, you’d be doing us a real favor.  We’ll even sweeten the deal by fencing all of it with brand new horse fencing before we sell it to you for .30 cents an acre.”

    “Well…. If you insist……”

  6. A Robotic Perpetual Puppy – Sometimes you want snuggle a puppy, but you don’t actually want another dog and all the care that goes with it.  The Robotic Perpetual Puppy would have all the cuteness and fluffiness of a 7-week-old puppy, but when you don’t want to deal with it you could just turn it off and stuff it in the closet.

    Image result for basket of puppiesI admit I daydream less of this now that I have the goats, because honestly, they’re kind of like puppies that I can legally lock away whenever I’m tired of playing with them. I cannot recommend baby goats highly enough. 

  7. An Indoor/Covered Arena: 200 x 100, please.  Also, if it could have a raised, covered area with a couch for the kids to hang out in, that’d be great, too.

    Image result for indoor arena lounge

    I would never leave. Ever. I would happily live on that couch the rest of my life. The Bean could take over the entire house as his man cave.



  8. Jeans with shapewear sewn on the top, like maternity pants – I know some people hate pregnancy wear, but at the risk of sounding stuck up, dude, I rock maternity jeans. They’re the only jeans that I can wear down low around my hips, where the back pockets sit low enough to make my butt look good. I mean, I suppose I could wear all jeans like that, but maternity jeans are the only ones I can wear like that without worrying about bending over the wrong way and flashing the mom version of plumbers crack.

    With my imaginary shapewear jeans, the jeans portion would be completely normal, but then there would be a bit of shapewear sewn to the waistband. To keep it from rolling down you could make the shapewear kind of like a tank top (the shoulder straps would keep it in place). Not only would you never have to worry about plumber’s crack, but you’d also never have to worry about muffin top or sucking in your belly or wearing a belt to keep your pants from slipping down. Control top jeans. Why don’t these already exist?  I’d buy the heck out of them.

  9. Stitch-Fix, but for broke people – It’d be exactly the same as Stitch-Fix, but they’d fill your monthly box with stuff from Goodwill so you could actually afford it. Who spends $40 on a single shirt?!  Are you high, Stitch-Fix?!

  10. A minivan capable of hauling a horse trailer –  Wouldn’t that be amazing?  Then I wouldn’t have to choose between fitting all the kids in one vehicle and being able to haul horses places. Also, I’d really like it if it could get decent gas mileage. Also, also, it would be affordable, unlike those big SUVs that are still going for 30k when they have 100,000 miles on them.

  11. Facial Recognition Glasses  – The glasses would have facial recognition software, and then you could program them to show you important information about the people you run into (only you could see what you programmed into it.) It could be something as simple as the person’s name, or as complex as where you met them and why you sort-of-but-not-quite remember them. I know this is verging into Black Mirror territory, but there’s nothing more frustrating than recognizing someone, starting to say hello, and then remembering too late that the reason I recognize them is that they were a total jerk to me (nobody goes to City Hall to be nice to the person behind the counter) and I don’t actually want to talk to them but now it’s too late to back out of the conversation because I was the one that waved at them, and Hiiiiii, how are youuuuuuuu?

  12. Affordable Kids’ Summer Camps: The camps would be local, and affordable, and educational…. And the kids would think it was really, really, really fun.  I would send the kids to it for a week while I went on a catch-up-on-all-our-lost-sleep vacation with The Bean, and then when I came back I’d discover that my children had not only had a great time, but they had also they learned how to cook healthy meals, build a fire from scratch, how to change the oil in a car, and also maybe they accidentally learned how to do pre-algebra while playing nerf wars with the camp counselors.

    “Did you have a good time, boys?”

    “It was wonderful! We learned so much, thank you for sending us, Mom!”

    “I’m so glad you guys enjoyed it.  What was your favorite part?”

    “I think it was when they taught us how to be kind to others, and how to always be polite and well-spoken with adults so that other people think you’re an amazing parent!”

    “No, no, my favorite part was how they read to us every evening and now we are magically voracious readers completely in love with books, and they taught us the secret of how to persevere even when it’s difficult, and always be grateful for the small things, and make our beds, and eat salads even when offered a candy bar. Can we pretty please go again?”

    “Well, I dunno boys, it’s $25 a week with all your room and board included…. but okay, I suppose we could afford another week!”


    Image result for kids summer camps

    Look, we’re learning how to divide fractions and having a great time doing it!



    Shhhh. It could happen.

  13. Human Kibble. I’m serious about this one.  If they can make a dog kibble that my dog gets excited about, and if they can make canned cat food that my cat will sprint across an entire field for, then they can come up with some kind of cereal that has all the protein and vitamins and whatever a human body needs, but also tastes like Reese’s Pieces or something.

    Dude, I’m so tired of cooking. Cooking all the time for four kids is exhausting, even if you liked cooking (which I never have.)

    Human kibble. We needs some.

  14. Tinder For Writers: It’d be like an online dating service, except instead of swiping right and having to deal with STDs or marriage or whatever it is all those single people do with Tinder nowadays, you would find someone to coauthor a book with you. I used to play an online Pern-based RPG that was text based – it was called Dragonsfire Moo, I think? I always had a good time, but every once in a while I’d stumble across someone whose writing style just absolutely meshed with mine, and writing scenes with them was pure magic.

    I have absolutely no idea how this would work, and I’m sure in real life the paperwork involved would be a giant headache, and now that I’m really thinking about the practical aspects of it I imagine most people who used it would end up with more lawsuits than actual money, but I don’t care. This is my wish list, and I want a Tinder Writing Service to help me find a coauthor. In this scenario I could come up with the big picture ideas and the zany female characters and funny situations, and they would come up with the boring middle section of the book and the witty male dialogue, and we’d churn out, like, five books a year and live like royalty on the proceeds. We could totally be the next Ilona Andrews team, and end up with a bunch of giant movie deals, and then I could afford most of the stuff on my daydream list just by the money we brought in.

  15. Alfalfa Candle: I want a candle I can burn in my house that makes the whole house smell like fresh cut alfalfa warming up in the summer sun.

  16. The Forever Outfit: I’d like the ability to hire someone to come up with the perfect, wear-every-day-for-the-rest-of-my-entire-life outfit for me. This person would look at my skin tone, and coloring, and body type, and then they’d design the perfect outfit.  The jeans would fit me just perfectly and never need a belt to keep from sliding down my hips as they stretched out throughout the day… the shirt would be long enough that I would never have to worry about it riding up when I reached for something above my head.  It would be tailored at the waist so that I didn’t look like I was wearing a box with sleeves, but not so tight I felt uncomfortable. It would be layered, so that I could wear the outfit in both summer and winter…..

    And then I could just order that same exact outfit, forever and ever, and nobody would ever think it was weird.

  17. The Everyday Cloak: Okay, so if nobody actually ever invents The Forever Outfit then I want to be able to wear whatever I want, whenever I want, and not have it be weird. I know I live in America so nobody really judges me on my clothes, and more specifically I live near Portland, so I really could wear whatever I wanted and short of it being a MAGA hat or literally  being on fire, nobody would judge me….  but I want to wear weird stuff and not have people stare at me, even if they’re just staring out of curiosity.

    Okay, if I’m actually being specific…. I want to be able to wear cloaks again. I just have a thing for cloaks, okay?




    I want to have an array of cloaks hanging up in my closet, and some kind of, I dunno, basic adventurers outfit beneath it, like a black tank top and a pair of jeans. It’d be like the Forever Outfit, only it’d be Awesome Cloak edition.

    She must be overwhelmed with the awesomeness of her cloak. That’s the only reason I can figure for her weird, blank expression. I don’t blame her. It’s a COMPLETELY awesome cloak.

    Every day I’d put on a pair of jeans, a tank top, my Ariat Fatbaby boots, and then I would just pick out my cloak depending on my mood that day, and stride down the street looking totally magnificent. I could swirl through the aisles of the grocery store, with my cloak flaring out in whirling, colorful splendor behind me.  I could use it to sit down on the grass at the park without worrying if my butt was gonna get wet.  I could pull up the hood whenever I was cold, or just didn’t want to talk to anyone.



    I know I could wear cloaks and maybe I’d be the person to help them make a comeback… but I don’t’ want to be a fashion trendsetter.  I want cloaks to be normal, the same as wearing a hoodie.



    Also, I want them to be easy to wash and dry and be wrinkle and stain-resistant.  If I’m going to daydream, I might as well daydream in a practical fashion.


  18. Book On Demand Coffee Shop – I want a coffee shop that can print a book on demand. Like, you go into Starbucks and you sit down with your coffee, and enjoy it, and then you order your book on demand with an app, and 2-3 minutes later a kiosk spits it out, all warm and freshly printed and smelling deliciously of paper so you can sit with your coffee and read your new book.  It’s 2019.  Why is this not a thing?

 

So, there you have it.  That’s what I want. 


What do you want? 

 

Baby goats!

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I could talk about where we got them, and the amazing generosity that enabled us to to have them, but I’m exhausted, so I think I will just do a giant photo dump instead.

Portland sunset skyline

Daddy goat

He didn’t smell at all, but apparently they wash him with dog shampoo a lot.

Mama goat to the red and white buckling. Sorry about the low quality photos, but the flash spooked them so I took the photos in dim light.

Red and white buckling on the right. He belongs to DragonMonkey, who named him “Patches”.

More of Patches

This is the mama to the twin doelings. She has blue eyes, but every photo of her with her eyes open was way too blurry to bother sharing.

I have to admit, I’m jealous I didn’t get to pick a goat for myself. Being a “fair mom” is hard sometimes. I wanted to take first pick of the doelings as mine (solid red with blue eyes is such a cool color! I want Squid’s doeling). , and leave them with whatever two I didn’t want.

I understand it doesn’t matter whose goat it is technically, that we will all love and care for them ….. but my inner-8-year-old doesn’t agree.

This is doeling #1. Doeling #1 is technically registered in DragonMonkey’s name in case he wants to show her at 4-H this year.

“Family doeling” also has blue eyes.

Basically, the breeder thought he should have the buckling, since he’s the only one old enough to do 4-H this year, and the buckling is nice enough to maybe win some ribbons, etc.

Since DragonMonkey got to have his name on the papers of two goats, I gave Squid first choice of the doelings, and then this other doeling is kind of the family goat, albeit registered in DM’s name.

If we decide for some reason the buckling/probably-a-soon-to-be-wether is not a good fit for us because we want only females, then DM will still have a doeling.

He’s so in love with the buckling because I’ve been very careful to to it s “his” goat her the “family goat” to try make everything fair, I sincerely doubt that will happen.

And then the final baby goat, little sister to the one above. She belongs to Squid. She’s the smallest, and a blue-eyed solid red with a couple of moonspots. He hasn’t thought of a name yet.

Only two days difference between these kids.

And here are some videos of our first bottle feeding:

The downstairs fencing we have will keep them in maybe a couple of days more (if we’re lucky) without a lid, but we have a fully enclosed 12×12 shelterlogic corral we’re making goat proof this weekend.

They are so small they’re basically hawk-bait at the moment, so they can’t roam freely until they’re a little bigger.

This was a good decision- maybe not time wise or sanity wise, but joy wise it was a GREAT decision, and sometimes we all need a little more joy in our lives.

And now, off to bed, because I now have SEVEN KIDS to get ready in the morning before I leave for work.

Getting ready for Reverie

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I introduced the twins to Reverie yesterday.

I figured it was time, since she’s going to be coming home in less than a month (GACK!). I didn’t want the first time she saw a pair of loud, hyper two-year-olds to take place during the stress of her move.  There’s enough craziness at our place that every day is a lesson in desensitizing:  kids on trampolines waving towels over their heads, flying kites over the paddock, wagons full of shrieking children being pulled all over by a hyper Labrador….

If I can take any steps ahead of time to make her transition to Bean Acres easier, I definitely want to.

In case you were curious, the answer to “How many people actually refer to it as Bean Acres?” is still “just Becky”. Even when I do use it, it’s usually only in my head.  There’s something about naming your property and then saying it out loud that feels a teensy bit pretentious, like you’re talking about yourself in third person.

Well, I don’t care. I’m going to keep calling it Bean Acres, in hopes that one day it will catch on.

Of course if really wanted everyone to call it by a name, I could probably should have named our home FartFartPoopFart Acres.

And if you don’t understand why that is, then I congratulate you, because you aren’t living in a house filled with mostly males. Seriously. I will never understand why farts are so unbelievably funny.

Anyways, I had a few minutes in between getting off of work and showing up at the house to get started on dinner, so I decided to stop by and see if I could say hi to Reverie, and scratch on her a little bit.

There have been times when I’ve come to see her she was waaaaay out on the back side of 20 acres and all I could see was a tiny brownish speck next to a larger brownish speck, but lately Kathleen has been putting her in a shady paddock during the day, to protect her incredibly sensitive pink nose.

I foresee a lot of Destin/long-nosed fly masks in our future.

Luckily for me, Reverie and her mom (Sparkle) were hanging right by where I normally park, so it didn’t take very long to find them.

Reverie was very, VERY interested in the twins, almost to the point of spooking. It didn’t help that Finn was in a hyper mood and kept jumping rather than walking, and that Magpie had dragged along the singing puppy she takes with her everywhere.

 

His (apparently it’s a boy?) name is Doggie PurpleBow, and bless the makers that gave him an off switch that’s easy to switch off but hard for toddlers to find.

Seriously, thank you. There are only so many times you can hear “That’s my tummy!!! Tummy begins with ‘T’!!!! T…U…M…M…Y.. spells TUMMY!!!!” followed by semi-maniacal animatronic giggling before you get the urge to run away and join a cult. That off switch saves my sanity.

For being only 3 months old, I am really impressed at how laid back Reverie seems to be. I know a lot of adult horses that would not stand still with two screechy twins coming running full tilt at them, complete with creepy singing dolls in their arms.

I prepped the twins as we got near, to better direct them.

“This is Sparkle. Sparkle is a mommy horse. Sparkle is nice.”

And dude.

Sparkle is SO nice. Every horse should be a Sparkle.

Sparkle is just a gem of a mare in a very pretty package. You could tell she really liked the twins, because she just came alive when they drew near, swooping low to snuffle at them and standing patiently as they patted the sensitive tip of her nose with their inept little hands.

Magpie, who lives up to her namesake more every day with her penchant for shiny, sparkly things, was in awe of the name.

The horse was named Sparkle.

Not only was the horse named Sparkle, but she, Magpie, also had on a pair of sparkle shoes (light up Sketchers with sequins I found at a yard sale.)

She couldn’t get over it- it totally blew her little two-year-old mind.

“Yook, Spahkle. Hi, Spahkle. Spahkle shoes! My Spahkle shoes. You Spahkle. Dese my spahkle shoes!”

Sparkle is thinking, “You’ve literally been showing me your shoes five minutes straight, saying the same three sentences over and over. I get it. I see them.”

 

While the twins were VERY interested in Reverie, and she in them, I discouraged it as much as possible.

“That’s Sparkle, she’s a nice horse. And this is Reverie, Sparkle’s baby. Reverie is Mommy’s new horse. Reverie is a baby, and Reverie bites. Hard. It will hurt. No touching, or she might bite you. This horsie bites.”

Okay, maybe Reverie doesn’t actually bite…but hey man, two-year-olds and three-month-old horses don’t mix. Reverie would probably nip out of boredom given half a chance, and I’d rather terrify the twins a bit and have them keep a safe distance than try to explain the concept to them or give her a chance to learn bad manners.

After all, for all Reverie is amazingly sweet and calm, she’s still just a foal. I trust her as much as I would trust a hyper kitten near priceless lace curtains.

The twins were horrified at the concept that Reverie could bite, and proceeded to spend the rest of their time lecturing her.

“No biting. No bite. No. Ow. No biting,” they said, over and over…. and over and over…. and over and over, in a kind of squeaky tandem Gregorian chant.

It almost made me miss the whole “Dese my Spahkle shoes” litany. I wish I’d thought to take a video instead of a pic.

You can actually see Finn saying “no bite” here.

Anyways, it’s a little disconcerting that Reverie will be coming home in a few weeks. For the one thing, it means summer is almost over, and that makes me sad. With my full-time job, I feel like I barely spent any time outside.

In addition, although I’m not nearly so worried as I would have been if I hadn’t brought home Jupiter last year…. She’s only going to be four months old.  Jupiter was the youngest horse I’ve ever owned, and he was already a yearling when I got him.

The idea of her actually being here, so young and impressionable, is totally terrifying.  I know in my head that it’s actually not, but my heart disagrees and keeps insisting it really is terrifying.  Reverie represents years (decades?) worth of dreaming come true.

The most disconcerting thing about her impending arrival is the fact that she’s, you know, going to actually be mine. I’m a perpetual daydreamer. I’m used to daydreams – they’re easy, and airy, and fun to live in…. but the Bean is a realist. When I daydream, he tends to take it literally.

 

It used to cause us issues in our marriage, because I would want to daydream with him (“Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get 30 chickens and make money selling eggs? Wouldn’t it be great if we had more property, and could raise our own beef?  What if we packed it all up and headed to Montana? Look at this gorgeous chocolate Labrador, I wouldn’t mind owning a dog like this”, etc, etc.) and he would start to get stressed, trying to figure out all the complexities of turning my imaginary scenarios into a reality.

Even after ten years of marriage, it still weirds me out when the Bean manages to turn my daydreams into reality ,and I think that’s where I am at now. The sheer realness of Reverie makes me nervous.

In my head I am Alex Ramsey on a deserted island with my amazing Black Stallion who is bonded with only me. I am athletic and confident and young, galloping bareback over deserted stretches of sand, and I always know the right thing to do.

In reality…. I’m a 37-year-old mom of four who is out of shape and struggles with depression and has never really taken many riding lessons or had a foal this young, and what the heck am I doing with a horse this nice? What if I ruin her? What if I break her?  I asked for water, but someone handed me the nice china, and can I please just use one of your plastic tumblers to get a drink out of so I don’t have to worry about dropping it?

Caspian is also an amazing horse, but he wasn’t necessarily my decision so I didn’t feel as responsible for him as I do for Reverie.  That’s not to say he’s not magnificent – he’s athletic and amazing and calm and wonderful and talented and I’ve never met a horse as honest as he is.  Still, I didn’t set out to buy him. A horse trader sold him to a horse trader, who sold him to my parents, who needed to find him a quick home after they had some unexpected hospital time.

I’m sure I’d feel just as panicky if I’d bred him from scratch.

Of all the things that are not on my control, there is one thing I can actually do something about, so I’ve channeled all this:

Image result for now what do I do

 

into slowly getting back into shape. I set an initial weight loss goal for myself back in May, and I’m almost there. Once I hit that goal I will then let myself join the local CrossFit.  I know, I know, Crossfit is the devil/the best/the worst/your savior.

I’ve heard it from a lot of different people, trust me.

The thing is, I tried CrossFit before, and it suited me perfectly. The trainers were wonderful and modified all exercises for out of shape me….

But during the free trial week I found myself getting super competitive and I pushed myself too hard for where I was phsically.  I didn’t injure myself – I just ended up having to go up and down stairs on my butt for three days because I didn’t trust my quads to hold my weight.

You haven’t really lived until you’ve tried to navigate stairs on your butt with a set of 7 month old twins in your arms.

I know you’re imagining that in your mind, and let me assure you, the reality of it was even more ridiculous.

Anyways, I figure I’m almost as the point where I can try again, and hopefully by the time Reverie is rideable I’ll be in a place where I can sit a three or four-year-old green broke horse (you better believe I’m sending her away for the first 90 days!) and not feel totally off-balance from lack of core strength.

Giving myself something to do helps. It gives me something to do while I think, and as I ponder, I’m also realizing that it’s okay. It’s okay to love something this much.

In those quiet moments where I’m honest with myself, I think that loving Reverie may be my biggest fear of all.

When I was in my early 20’s I had a flame point cat named Fuego. If you’ve never had a close connection with a pet, it will sound weird to say this, but he was my best friend.  When he escaped from my house and got hit by a car, I was devastated. That’s not hyperbole either- after I received the phone call letting me know he’d died I started crying so hard I had to leave work, and for the rest of the week I barely managed to pull myself together enough to show up for my receptionist job.

Months later, still in the midst of  my private mourning, I lay curled on my side under the covers as silent tears dripped down my cheeks. I still felt aching and raw, lonely for the way he used to crawl under the covers and sleep against me. And that’s when I had a total lightbulb moment, to the point I even muttered it out loud:

“Well, this is stupid.”

Fuego would have lived, what … Fifteen years at most? Seventeen? It just didn’t make sense to give away that big of a piece of my heart to a pet only to have it destroyed every decade or so. There wouldn’t be anything left of me when it was all said and done.

And that was that. That was the last time I let myself get really close to a pet. Oh, I still love my animals, but it’s an easy-going love, more like warm affection.

With Reverie I can sense it is going to be so much more, and it makes me nervous.

Of course, maybe I’ll get lucky?  Maybe it’ll turn out that she has a nasty PMS cycle or that she likes to pee on my shoes whenever I get close to her, or barely tolerate me scratching on her neck.  Maybe she’ll be a habitual stall kicker, or like to stomp chickens, or rub her mane out, or pin her ears a lot?

It’s a weird thing to secretly hope for, but then at least I’ll feel like I can relax, because then she wouldn’t be quite so perfect, so the idea of being responsible for such a perfect daydream of a horse won’t be quite so daunting.

And in the meantime…. if you’re looking for books on training young horses over at the St. Helens Public Library, you’re outta luck.  I’ve already checked them all out. After all, when in doubt, go to the library.

 

DragonMonkey and the Disappointing Dinner

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It was too hot to cook last night.

After six summers in Oregon I have finally acclimated.  I sweat and whine and flop about bonelessly whenever the sun gets too warm, which is generally anything over 90 degrees.

I know.  I know.  Feel free to mock me – I certainly am.

While that’s still a lot more stoic than most of the other “anything over 80 sucks” long-term Oregonians around me, it’s still a far cry from the Becky of the early 2000s, who would patiently mutter “I really don’t enjoy doing an 10 hour day in the Bakersfield sun whenever it hits over 102”.

Yesterday was a balmy 95 degrees, and despite a house with central AC and an office with AC so crisp that every patron who steps through the doorway smiles in pleasure, I just couldn’t bring myself to embrace the idea of cooking when I got home.

I tried asking my friend Google for help.

“Google, it’s too hot to cook. What kind of dinner should I make for my four kids?”

I did my best to keep it simple.  I learned long ago not to ask Google to consider the fact that Magpie is dairy-free or that DragonMonkey is gluten-free… the results are too weird and difficult.

Even so, the results were fairly predictable.

“Becky, you should have grilled up tri-tip two days before you needed to ask this question so you could marinade it in your fridge and slice it up today to serve with a variety of cold salsas!”

“Sorry.  I forgot – Google, what kind of quick dinners can I feed my four kids when it’s too hot to cook?”

“Becky, you should make hamburgers!  Fire up that grill that stands right in the sun with no shade and then roast things for an hour.. that’s the perfect no-cooking meal!”

“Google, NO. You’re not listening. What kind of I DON’T WANT TO COOK AT ALL meals should I make my kids tonight?  Meals for a hot summer night that kids will actually eat?  And I swear, if you recommend some kind of garlic spinach Brussel sprout salad again, I’m going to hate you for the rest of my life.  What kind of kid starts jumping up and down in excitement at the idea of a garlic spinach Brussel sprout salad?”

“Becky, you should make chilled bean dip!”

“Huh, that sounds kind of good.  How do I–”

“You take black beans and mix them up with garlic and sliced cilantro harvested beneath a winter moon.  Mash it with a silver fork and blend for 2.3 seconds n a counterclockwise direction with acai berries and je ne sais quoi and sprinkle it with foreign spices and blood of a virgin and…”

So I turned to Facebook, where people are much more reasonable, and got a bunch of wonderful answers.  Deli meat platters.  Veggies and ranch dips.  Ice cream sundaes.  Order Dominos.  Send the Bean out to grill for me.

I finally settled on cereal, and decided to make an event of it.  I stopped off at the store on my way to pick up the kids from the sitter’s, and grabbed four boxes of forbidden, name-brand, sugar cereal.

After herding all four of them upstairs into the house, I pulled out the boxes with a flourish.  Lucky Charms. Fruit Loops.  Cap’n Crunch.  Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds.

“Dig in and have as much as you want!” I announced, gesturing at the boxes with a flourish.. “It’s too hot cook, so today and tomorrow are cereal dinner nights!”

Three children cheered.

“Wow!  Yummy!  Thanks, Mommy, you’re the best!” cried Squid.

“Ceweal!” chirped Magpie with a giant grin, and then glancing sideways at her big brother, she added an absolutely adorable, “Gank oo, Mammy.”

“CEWEAL!” echoed Finn, dragging on his high chair, trying to pull it over to the table.  “Wan up.  CEREAL!  Wan up!  Pease.  CEWEAL!”

DragonMonkey crooked an eyebrow, the weight and responsibility of his preteen years settling heavily on his shoulders.  “Really, mom? This is dinner? Don’t you think we need more vitamins and protein than this?”

“Dude.  It’s cereal.  We rarely even eat it for breakfast.  Relax and be happy.  This is a fun treat.”

He picked up a box and squinted at the side.  “It says here it has 12 grams of sugar.  That’s too much sugar.  You’re really going to give this to us for dinner?”  His gaze settled on me, waiting for me to make the right decision.

“Relax, DragonMonkey.  I’m not sitting you in front of a TV and cramming M&Ms down your throat on a nightly basis.”

“M&Ms?  We have M&Ms?”  said Squid, perking up with interest.

“No.  It’s a simile…. wait, it’s a metaphor…. Oh, I forget.  No.  Eat your sugar cereal and be happy.”

“Thanks, Mom!” Squid said.

DragonMonkey took a deep breath and proceeded to explain slowly, as if I was the world’s slowest learner. “Mom, it’s not good for us to have this much sugar.  Our muscles need protein.”  He shook his head, manfully shouldering the burden of his oh-so-disappointing mother.

“Fine. Everyone but you gets Lucky Charms.  You can go eat a limp hot dog and gnaw on frozen broccoli, or wilted lettuce or something.”

“No, no.  It’s fine.”  He poured a bowl with a sigh.  “I just think that maybe other moms out there are feeding their kids real dinners.  It’s okay though.”  He sighed, heavily.  “It’s fine.”

Image result for you get coal

 

For sale:  pre-teen with opinions.

CHEAP.

 

1+1+1= 4? I think?

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About six weeks ago I had to call it quits.

I am a huge believer in unlimited grass hay and salt blocks as a feeding regimen, with a little extra vitamins to top up and make a horse’s coat shiny. You may not get the same well-balanced, non-hay belly look that alfalfa gives horses, but for what I use my horses for, grass hay is perfect.  They seem so content to just nibble all day long, and it keeps them nice and round.

Oh, sure. They’d have better muscle tone and look prettier on Alfalfa, I’m not negating that truth… But it seems unfair to pump them up with that much high energy feed and then expect them to be calm and non-reactive around my squirrelly kids.

Besides, grass hay keeps them fat and round and happy….

Until Carrots.

This is not a fat and shiny pony 🙁

 

About six weeks ago, I had to call my grass hay feeding plan a failure. When she arrived back in early February, beneath the two to three inches of winter coat she had, Carrots was somewhere between a two and a three on the Henneke scale.

Three weeks into refeeding. I didn’t post a lot of pictures of her before, because I actually think her old owner was a bit clueless more than deliberately not feeding her enough and I didn’t want to set the Internet Angries on her.  Shes’ much thinner than she looks, because her winter coat was UNBELIEVABLY long and dense.

She gained steadily for quite a while, and then somewhere around late April she began leveling out. Oh, sure, she looked tons better than she did when she arrived in February, but she still looked crappy. Her coat wasn’t very shiny, except in a couple of places, even after she shed out. Worse, I was beginning to see ribs again. We were sliding back instead of moving forward in the weight department.

It was irritating, because Caspian was gaining almost too much weight with the amount of hay I threw out. Shouldn’t ponies be air ferns, not hard keepers? Caspian weighs around 1300 pounds and eats more than any horse I’ve ever encountered, in order to keep his weight up.  Carrots is maybe 550.

Still, pictures don’t lie. She looked like crap. Some angles she didn’t look too bad…

but from other angles………

So, I started supplementing, and the weight started coming back.

I also started hand grazing her and that helped even more. We haven’t finished fencing our property, so alas, no pasture turnout. The weight continued to come back, and I was content.

Only…only it seemed ridiculous, the amount of food I was feeding her vs. the amount I was feeding Caspian, a horse literally more than double her weight.

I began to worry…did she have Cushings? Was she worm resistant? Why was she needing so many calories? It was bothersome enough that I called the vet. Besides, it was time to float Caspian’s teeth anyways.

I laid it all out before the vet, and eventually voiced my biggest fear: did she look pregnant to him?

I mean, when you get a mare off Craigslist, you never know what you are gonna get.

He looked her over some, and said based on her history, probably not. She was probably just wormy and I could step up my worming regimen…. but you can never tell. The problem was that she was too small to palpate, which left only blood tests to the tune of $150 bucks.

I stood there and stared at Carrots for the longest time. I didn’t have a lot to go on.  She was probably just wormy, and a couple of back to back worming treatments in a row would take care of that.  Money was tight.  I had no proof other than a bloated-looking belly on a horse that had arrived incredibly wormy, and who also had a tendency towards being a hard keeper.  Maybe I hadn’t ever seen her go into season in around Caspian, but maybe she was just calm when in season?  $150 for peace of mind to make a niggling suspicion go away was not a cheap price tag.

“So, let’s say I just ignore it and let things go on like they are. If she has a foal in the same paddock as Caspian, what would happen?”

We both turned to stare at Caspian was standing placidly beside her, lazily swishing his tail at flies.

“Well, since he was gelded late, he had all those stallion hormones in his body at some point…. he might stomp it.”

I love my vet. There’s something so refreshing about straightforward honesty. He said it so matter of fact, with no push in his voice.  If I didn’t want to do the blood test, that was totally fine by him. He understood.

On the other hand, if I tried to save $150 and came out one morning to a stomped foal, I’d never forgive myself. Ever.

“Let’s run the blood test.”

And so he did. He gave me an updated worming schedule, some feeding recommendations, and life went back to normal.

Until this afternoon:

In case you can’t tell, when testing a horse for the pregnancy hormone estradiol, a normal mare will have a value of under 20. A pregnant mare beyond 100 days will have a value of 50-400.

Carrots has a value of 101.

I admit, I still can’t decide if I am surprised or not. I was definitely shocked when I got the email, there’s no doubt about that. When my phone pinged me, letting me know I had an email, I was sitting at my desk job.  I try not to read personal email while on the job, but the sender was from my vet, and who can ignore an email like that? When I opened it up to read “Give me a call in about an hour, I would say that Carrots is pregnant.”, I was so caught up in the moment I didn’t even realize I said “OH SH*T” out loud until my coworkers burst out laughing and asked me what was wrong.

So, yeah.  I was shocked….but I don’t know if I was surprised. I’ve been suspicious about so many little things going on with her, even if I haven’t really admitted it out loud.

I can tell how suspicious I have been on the inside by how many “from-the-front” and “from-the-back” photos I have taken of Carrots over last 2-3 months, now that I’ve gone back searching for them. I had convinced myself out loud that my suspicions were all in my head, but judging from the sheer amount of photos I took to compare and contrast, I think I knew deep inside.

So Carrots is definitely pregnant…..

I think?

It just seems like such a low value for how far along she probably is. The vet kind of agreed and is doing some more research on it. I suppose it’s possible she slipped the foal, but…

Here’s a view from behind with a five-week difference.

She’s bigger, and she’s dropped….I think?  You can really only see the pregnancy from the front and the back – from the side, she just looks a little overfed, which is not the case. I still think she needs a little more weight. If you discount the bloated belly, she’s barely normal.

She hasn’t bagged up at all, nor have her tail ligaments gone soft, but with a maiden mare that might not mean anything.

Her vulva appears unchanged, which is code for “Becky spends an ungodly amount of time each day lifting up her poor pony’s tail and staring at horse vagina, and good heavens, what must the neighbors think?”

So it doesn’t look like she’s going to be giving birth any time soon… but then again, if she’s a maiden mare, who knows if she would give any of these signs? As I have nothing else to go on, I’ve decided that she probably started hitting that big foal growth spurt that happens in the third trimester some time around May, since that’s when she started becoming a “hard keeper”.

 

I have no idea when (if?  I really wish her numbers were higher so I felt more secure in her pregnancy) she would be due, so I decided to start treating her like she’s due today. I popped the center divider out in the stalls, giving her a 12×24 run.

It’s a little frustrating to have to go back to cleaning a stall and buying shavings every day when the sun is out and there’s a 100×50 paddock 20 feet away, but better safe than sorry. Today or tomorrow I’ll pick up more shavings and some more alfalfa – our lovely grass hay we just stocked the barn with has tons of fescue, which is awful for pregnant mares.

I admit, I don’t know entirely how I feel about this new turn of events. If it was someone else, I’d be THRILLED!!!! How adorable! Two for the price of one!  The little Welsh pony mare we got for a song is going to give birth to the world’s most adorable, tiny foal!……

But.

But it’s my bank account taking the hit. As much as is possible, I try to have 100% of all things equine-related come out of my paycheck… a paycheck which is nonexistent during the summer months, with four kids in full-time daycare. We just bought the posts to section off part of our pasture area (my birthday present was going to be a grazing paddock for the horses), but now that project is on indefinite hold.  I need to spend money on horse supplements.  I need to buy fancy hay.  I need to save up for an expensive vet visit, because who knows what will happen around the birthing time. So the pasture project is put on hold, and so is the writing conference I was going to attend in August, and so is pretty much everything, until we’re past her giving birth.

If she gives birth?  I did manage to get ahold of the old owner, and she said the only time Carrots was out of her care was when she was boarded January through May of 2017.  She has cyclone fencing and Carrots didn’t share the pasture with anyone except goats, and she never escaped.

So is she pregnant?

I’m also feeling nervous about the issue of space.  It’s dry and easy to house horses right now, but that rain will start coming back in mid October, and as it is I barely have my area set up to work for three horses, and now I’m potentially going to have four. If we lived somewhere less rainy I could just fence off the pasture and let both babies grow up as nature intended, in a herd setting with room to run.  Unfortunately, even if we fenced off the entire acre and blanketed against rain rot, with four horses running around it during the rainy season, it would be a sea of mud in no time at all.

Right now I’m leaning towards leveling the area in front of the barn and seeing if I can find a couple more gate panels.  I have three gate panels already, with a shelter logic cover over it for shade in their paddock area. I could get one more gate panel and spend a little more and get the side covers for it, and it would make a great rain proof stall for Carrots and her foal….

 

Product

I cannot recommend this setup highly enough.

But is a 12×12 stall too small for a pony and her foal to live in during the winter, when I have limited turnout?  Would it be cruel? Do I need to try to spring and try to make it 12×24? I wish I could find used gate panels, but everyone around here hoards them, and I keep having to buy new.

Also, I have the energy now, but what is it going to be like once the grey and rain returns and depression sets in again? Mucking four stalls daily while also trying to care of four kids while also working a full-time job sounds exhausting.  Also, four farrier visits, four horse mouths to feed….

Gulp.

But then again, this is exactly how I felt about having twins. I could only see the negative, not the positives, until I met them.  And also, what’s the alternative?  I don’t want to sell Carrots.  She’s perfect for our family, and I love her personality, and the kids love her.

I’m sure I could easily find someone to foal them out for me, but I’m also pretty sure my kids would never forgive me.  They’ve already promised to muck every single day and feed every single day and do whatever it takes.  Of course, they’re only 7 and 9, so who knows how long those promises will last, but still.  They would be devastated. Also, if I’m honest, I’d be sad to miss out on the chance to have a little foal on my property.

I need to remember it’s not just work and double drudgery and empty bank accounts, and that I’ll wean and hopefully sell the foal at five months.  I will only have four horses for less than half a year, and a cute half a year at that.

And also…. her estradiol value was only 101. Why so low?  What does it mean? I’m going to make a call in to some equine reproductive specialists in Portland and see if they think bringing her in for an ultrasound would work.  My vet said belly ultrasounds were hit or miss sometimes, and she’s so small that a rectal ultrasound, which is the normal method, would be verypainful for her.  I don’t want to traumatize her like that.

And so, I wait and see what might happen. I may or may not have four horses. The boys are over the moon. My bank account is not over the moon, and neither is Bean.

My friend pointed out that I now have a “history” of asking for one baby and getting two.

Reverie is two months old now, and shedding out to my favorite color, liver chestnut. She’s so perfect it makes my heart hurt.  Her personality is everything I love in a horse, and so is her conformation and color.

I’m not sure how I feel about this new superpower. I’d much rather have the ability to try to put away one load of laundry and accidentally put away two. How neat would that be?

So, Carrots – who were you naughty with? How did you manage it? When did you manage it?  What is hiding in that belly of yours, and how long do we have to wait to meet it?

Last week’s “Man, that’s a big belly for a non-pregnant horse, and why am I still seeing ribs?!” photo

Picture from yesterday evening-  both the pregnancy and the ribs are not very visible when viewed from the sides.

A Bald Eagle is Eatin’ the Chickens

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Edit:  This was supposed to post yesterday, but apparently you are supposed to pay for your website URL, every year, or they shut it down. Whoops.

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Facebook just reminded me of something.  On this day, back in 2009, I had just passed the LAPD physical…. not by the skin of my teeth, but by the literal skin of my face.

 

It was an accident that should never have happened.  I shouldn’t have started the application process to become a police officer as soon as I had – the DragonMonkey was only 6 months old, and because of my C-section I’d had to wait two months to even begin any real exercise.  I’d been hitting it hard – getting up early in the morning to run, attending CAP physical fitness programs a couple of times a week….

Still – I knew I wasn’t quite ready.  It’s just….  thought I could force myself through it.  After all, it was a numbers game.  You had to pass the physical portion of testing to even begin backgrounds, and backgrounds at the LAPD took a notoriously long time, sometimes up to a year.  Plus, there was no telling when the next academy would even be, even if I was accepted. A best case scenario would give me an additional 6 months to whip myself into shape.  A more realistic timeline would give me 9-12 months… maybe even closer to a year and a half.   I figured if I could just push through the easy treadmill portion I could continue with my fitness regime and by the time I was through backgrounds and accepted into the next academy, I’d be physically ready as well.

The test was harder than I thought it was going to be.  The treadmill was narrow and had no handrails, which made me feel surprisingly dizzy – I am not afraid of heights, but something about the lack of handrails gave me an odd sense of vertigo.  The test itself wasn’t very long.  They had it timed just right to simulate the effect of running 3 miles at a 9 min/mile pace, starting off at a walk and slowly increasing inclination and speed until the final minute was spent at a near sprint at 45 degrees of inclination.

Still, I figured I could do anything for 10 minutes, and I was right.  I passed, and the treadmill turned off…. And in that instant I stepped wrong, tripped, stumbled, and my legs fell out from underneath me.

Falling on that treadmill was like one of those viral videos.  I pitched forward, and then in a last-ditch effort not to fall flat on my face I threw myself backwards, and I ended up falling on my side.  The treadmill was still booking along at a pretty good pace, so it immediately flung me backwards into the wall behind it, where I crumpled, wedged into the space between the treadmill and the wall.  I lay there, panting for breath, my chin bouncing on the still-running belt, scraping the skin off of it.

By the time I managed to pry myself out of there I was too horrified to accept a Band-Aid. Not only did I not want to draw attention to it the stupidity of my injury with a giant Band-Aid (I didn’t realize the injury was as visible as it was), but I also didn’t want to give the person any time to reconsider handing me the “passed” certificate.  I thanked him and grabbed that certificate and went to get changed for the next portion – the questionnaire.

Eleanor Roosevelt may have said that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

You know what?

I bet you Eleanor Roosevelt never headed into police candidate testing, the only woman in a room full of chiseled young men, her chin bleeding all over a button-up lavender shirt that was snugly buttoned over too-large nursing boobies.

I threw back my shoulders and pretended I belonged, but I still felt like a poser.

Still, scraped chin or not, I was hopeful.  I could just see myself as a police officer, so clearly. I’d always been interested in law enforcement.  I’d been a part of a police and fire cadet problem in high school and had thoroughly enjoyed my time on every ride along I had during my time with 911 Dispatching. Sure, I’d left that field to go back to school to purse a degree in the medical field, but now that life, a baby, and finances had gotten in the way of that, a career in law enforcement seemed like the perfect fit.

Spoiler alert:  I totally didn’t become a police officer.  I failed on backgrounds, and by the time I could reapply, the dragon of my rheumatoid arthritis had woken back up from its slumber and made me a permanent physical D.Q.

Sometimes I still feel sad about that.  I know it would have been a very, very hard job, and I know that there’s a lot of anti-police sentiment out there right now…. But I still think I would have found it fulfilling.

But you know what?  That’s not what this post is about.

What this post is about is that on this day, back in 2009, I had one baby, lived in a one bedroom duplex in Fullerton, California, and had just passed the LAPD physical.

This morning, in 2018, I have four kids, a minivan, 3.5 horses, and live on acreage in St. Helens, Oregon. I was in the process of being mobbed by twin toddlers, trying to shrug my way into fancy little low heeled boots so I could go to my nice little office job in the city, when I heard the Bean call out in a strange voice from the bathroom:

“Becky?  Be-e-ecky?  A bald eagle’s gettin’ the chickens!”

“WHAT?”

“A bald eagle is eatin’ the chickens!”

As a mom, I’ve come to expect to hear a lot of strange stuff before 7 in the morning, but even I have to admit this was a first.

Not wasting the time it would take to look out the window and confirm, I darted out the sliding glass door, hollering for Artemis to follow me.  I could hear her claws on the hardwood floor (sorry, floor) as she leaped to obey, so I jumped out the door and bounded down the steps, trusting her to follow. If it sounds like a bad idea to bring a Labrador to a bald eagle fight, it wasn’t. I still think it would have worked.

Artemis is one of the most intelligent dogs I’ve ever owned, but she has one failing that is impossible to train out of her:  If you throw a pretend ball, she’ll chase it.

Every time.

She’ll chase it like her life depends on it – leveling out low to the ground, hind claws churning the dirt up behind her as she digs down deep with the force of her frantic run.

I’ve tried teaching her the difference since she was 4 months old, but she can’t help herself.  If you say, “Ready?”  and palm a fake ball, she’ll perk right up, and the second you “throw” it she’ll level out in a dead sprint in whatever direction that was.

I thought this might come in handy with the bald eagle.  Artemis doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, which is good –I would never be stupidly cruel enough to pit a dog against a large bird of prey, and I especially wouldn’t do anything to hurt a bald eagle.  I don’t know all the details, but I’m pretty sure they’re a nationally protected bird, and bad things happen to people who try to hurt them. I knew the bird was separated from us by a very secure 5 foot tall no climb fence.  My hope was that the sight of an angry adult human and a large 80 pound dog sprinting towards it at a dead run would be enough to make it reconsider ever coming back to this particular bit of land for its breakfast.

I headed out on the deck and down the steps, running as best as I could in my trendy little heeled boots (as in, not very well at all.) Even separated by a couple hundred feet, I could clearly see the bald eagle.  It was a full size adult, rich brown body contrasting with the snowy white of its head, flapping awkwardly around the paddock on absurdly long wings as it desperately tried to reach one of my chickens.  It would have succeeded, but every time it had almost grasped her in its talons one of the horses would thunder by in a spooked gallop, and it would have to take to the air again to avoid being trampled.  The chicken in question was the appropriately named Nugget, one of my Easter Eggers.  She was crouched down low, separated from the rest of the flock that had taken refuge beneath the horse shelter. I don’t know how, but she had somehow managed to squeeze herself between the fence and the water trough , making it nearly impossible for the eagle to reach through and grab her with its talons.

“Scat!  Scat!  ARTEMIS, WHERE ARE YOU?  COME?”

From back in the house, I heard one of the boys, “Mom, she’s inside!”

“What?  Artemis COME!”  Where was my dog?  I needed her to be sprinting at the eagle to truly scare it.  The sight of me slowly lumbering after it, with my pear-shaped hips and tottery heels was not exactly fear-inducing.

“MOM!  She’s not outside!  We got her!  She’s inside!”

And that’s when I realized they thought she’d run off, and that I was running off to try and catch her. They saw her coming out the door after me and had stopped her, locking her inside the living room. “NOOOO.  I need her!  Let her come out!”

“What?”

“Let her outside!”

“What?”

“ARTEMIS, COME!  ARTEMIS, READY?  ARTEMIS, GO GET IT!”

“Mom, we got her! Mom, she’s inside!”

“LET HER OUT!”

“What?”

By this time I was only about 50 feet away, and close enough to the eagle that it finally decided to give up.  It gave me a somewhat disgusted look. “That was MY breakfast, not YOURS.  RUDE,” before launching into the air.  Its wing span, its body, its everything… was huge.  HUGE.

Aren’t they huge? http://trapfreemt.org/media/bald-eagle-release-headwaters-state-park

It’s one thing to know that bald eagles are big, and to admire them soaring in the sky above you.  It’s one of the things about Oregon I’ll never grow tired of.

It’s quite another thing to be about 15 feet away from one, waving your arms and saying, “SCAT!  SHOO!  You leave my chickens alone!  Just…. Just SCAT!” and realize that if it didn’t feel like moving, there really wouldn’t be too much you could do to change its mind.

 

Bald eagle caught on hunter webcam

Luckily it did take flight.  Its wingspan was so large it looked awkward those first few beats off the ground as it tried to dodge the horses, but after a beat or two it levelled out and was out of sight surprisingly fast.

I’m hoping we can get the materials to cobble together a chicken tractor before it returns. Our hopes were to build a really big chicken coop this summer, but with all the nesting eagles in this area doing double time to feed their young, I don’t think the chickens are going to last that long.

Still.

I am definitely not in California anymore.

The lower pasture is so pretty. It would look much prettier fenced with electric tape and horses grazing in it – one day. One day.

 

Winter, Blessings, and a Barn

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What an absolutely brutal winter.

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That star up above represents the 800 words I just cut from this post, where I went into a bunch of boring detail describing how sucky it was for me, linking to articles proving how abnormally rainy and grey it was to “prove” it was okay for me to feel that way, etc, etc.

When I’m boring myself with my whininess I know it’s probably time to cut the words.

Suffice it to say, it was an abnormally rainy winter.  There were only 3 mild days between October and March (when there are usually 17), some months broke rainfall records that have lasted since… well, since they started recording rainfall records. Other months didn’t break those records… but they fell short by less than a tenth of an inch.

At the library we had a lot of people coming in and printing bus tickets, or plane tickets, or any other ticket they could find to get outta Dodge.  “I can’t handle it anymore.  You never see the sky,” they’d say, with a half-crazed, almost caged look to their eyes.

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