Alright, that’s it, I officially hate 2020. It can fuck right off and go back to the hell whence it came. The good news is, neither of the boys are injured (knocking on every bit of wood I can find because omg fml), but now I’m the one down for the count.

The week started off pretty well, aside from dealing with the water leak in the house and the warranty people being unresponsive to my plight. But ya know, the weather was pleasant and work was ok and I was able to ride, so by my definition things were good. I rode Henry and lunged Presto the first couple days of the week, then on Wednesday I rode Presto for the first time in almost 6 weeks. He picked right up where he left off, like he hadn’t missed a single day. We just did some w/t work in the arena for about 10 minutes then I hacked him out in the field and he was a super good boy. My plan was to start riding him more like 3 days a week after his break was over, and that was ride #1 in the books, kicking off his winter schedule.

And then the next morning I tried to rip my foot off. What had happened was…

I woke up and put the dogs out, putting Quinn in his wheelchair, then went back in to use the bathroom. I came back out to get the dogs, lifted Quinn out of his chair, took a step, and my sandal got caught on the latching arm of his chair. We both went down, me twisting to try to break his fall. I was so worried I hurt him that I got up, kicked the chair off my foot, picked him up, and went and sat on the stairs to make sure he was ok. My foot was stinging but I figured I just scraped it or something, so once I verified that Quinn was indeed fine, I got up and went in the house. I carried him straight back to his bed, then went back to the door to take my sandals off. I looked down and saw blood. Blood everywhere. A trail of blood through the house, a pool of blood in my sandal… just blood.

My first thought was “well fuck, that’s definitely gotta be from me”. I looked down at my foot and just about passed out. I’m not particularly squeamish, I don’t have a problem with blood or things like that, but there was something about watching the blood pulsing out of my own very cut foot at 5:30am that almost did me in. I grabbed a paper towel to staunch the flow and sat down on the bed for a minute until I was sure I wasn’t gonna hit the deck. I didn’t have any bandaging stuff in the house except for bandaids, which WERE NOT gonna cut it for this injury, so I taped a panty liner to it and rode my bike down to the barn.

Once I fed the horses I went through the med kit and grabbed stuff to clean and bandage it, and… it was pretty borderline for needing stitches. Just the thought of it made me woozy AF again, so I just cleaned it really well, bandaged it up, and have been careful with it.

So far it’s healing well (I’m def anal about keeping it clean) but god it’s in a really uncomfortable place. Wearing shoes hurts. I can only sleep on one side. I have to walk a little funny to compensate, which has made my old bad ankle sprain flare up again. Getting old is stupid and having a sliced up foot is just freakin irritating. I was putting my foot in a barn boot to clean stalls the first couple days, but afterward it was so aggravated I kinda gave up on that, put a bag over my foot, and put a flip flop on. Problem solved. Looks janky as hell but it’s much more comfortable. I’m trying to do the smart thing (for once in my damn life) and rest it as much as possible so I don’t just keep ripping it open, thus I haven’t been riding. Putting it in a boot seems to piss it right off and doesn’t feel particularly nice either.

It’s definitely a lot better today. I’ll probably give it at least one more day out of a boot lest I prolong this agony any further than absolutely necessary.

So anyway, all my riding plans quickly went kibosh. Presto got… a ride… and then it looks like another week off. I guess at this point it clearly doesn’t matter much, but I was trying to take advantage of the good weather while it existed. Some rain (which we desperately need so I won’t complain) is popping up in the forecast, along with cooler temps. I was hoping to have him fully back in the swing of things before the weather started to turn a little more frisky, but oh well.

Henry of course has decided he’s a feral retired horse now and has been a complete moron about everything. He’s already had almost a week off and it shows. Hopefully this foot will be ready to go back in a boot by tomorrow! We’ll see.

On to our next Glamour Shots installment! Er, well… sort of Glamoury. Glamour-ish. I love Ellie to bits and she’s very sweet, but she’s not particularly interested in dressing up and showing off for photos. She’s 0% diva and it shows. She did get braided up though, and the effort was made, and honestly… I think you can see a lot about Ellie in these, even if they aren’t particularly fancy pictures.

Like the fact that she was far more interested in shmoozing with the humans than anything else. She lives for rubbies and pets.

Or how, even though this was meant to be an ELLIE photo shoot, she really seemed to be more interested in hamming it up with her friends.

And while trying to get her to fancy prance around didn’t really amount to much, she did give it a little bit of a try. For a few seconds anyway. She does like to gallop sometimes.

She also rarely misses an opportunity to remind everyone (ok, Ollie, mostly BFF Ollie) that she’s the biggest.

She did humor us by throwing in some very noble headshots too. They even make her ears look normal-sized.

Mostly though, this girl likes to eat, and photo sessions are no exception. She’s always here for the snacks.

She’s just a low-drama, jeans and t-shirt and pizza kind of girl. Glamour shots maybe aren’t really her thing. Glamour-ish is good enough.

All we’ve got left is Ollie’s glamour shots and then that’s a wrap for the 2020 foals!

If there’s one thing Presto’s got, it’s persistence. And chutzpah… pleeeeenty of chutzpah. Therefore it should be no surprise that he’s started to tear down Henry’s extra spikey walls, and while I wouldn’t quite say they’re friends yet (does Henry really even have actual friends?), there has definitely been a truce. This time last week Henry was chasing Presto around, trying to pin him in a corner and murder him. Now… Henry’s being civil at least.

A big part of it is that Presto stopped running from him, and stopped trying to hide behind Quinnie. He’s got a lot of bite marks to show for it, but it was a wise choice to be brave and take a stand. Henry is a bully to the worst extent, and only respects other horses if they don’t seem weak. If they run from him, he is brutal and unrelenting. So as long as Henry said “move” and Presto said “yes sir” with fear, Henry was just the worst kind of asshole. Somewhere over the weekend a shift began in their dynamic, and Presto stopped running. Henry would come at him with teeth bared, and Presto would take a step back, but he didn’t run and hide, and as soon as Henry relented he would step back up again. Kiddo decided enough was enough I guess. Henry has decided maybe this kid isn’t such a weak sorry excuse for a horse anymore after all. He’s earned some respect.

I mean, don’t get me wrong – they aren’t buddies. Henry has just moved from outright disdain to mostly just pretending that Presto doesn’t exist. I’m not sure if y’all know a damn thing about Presto, but… he is hard to ignore. That kid is in-your-face, and he’s persistent, and he’s not the best at taking no for an answer when he really wants something. And what he really wanted was to play.

Presto loves to play. Bitey Face is his game of choice, but he’s also really into Chase. He and his buddy JB would play a lot, all throughout the day, and I think now that JB is spending the winter in Florida, Presto is missing having a play buddy. He knows better than to try with Quinnie – she is NOT messing around – but he’s thinking there might be a chance with Henry. So Presto did what Presto does best: antagonized the shit out of him.

To Henry’s credit, he put up with it for a while before Presto finally broke him down. It’s hard to ignore a giant bouncing baby horse that’s trying to bite your face though. Subtle, Presto is not. After a few minutes Henry finally reacted, and while he wasn’t quite sure he really wanted to play with this BabyIdiot, he did humor him a little bit at least.

Since then they seem to have come to an agreement. Henry still makes grumpy faces and pretends to hate him, but it’s all empty threats. He’ll bite Presto at night check when I’m giving out cookies and Presto puts his face in Henry’s stall, but it lacks the viciousness it did in the beginning. Plus Presto doesn’t seem to mind, which apparently takes all the fun out of it for Henry. I’ve even caught them playing actual Bitey Face a couple more times. It’s not at the level that Presto and JB played, but it’s something. Dare I say that Uncle Henry might be developing a bit of a soft spot for the kid that just won’t take no for an answer?

Well, I think the Pivo has officially paid for itself in pure entertainment value. Some people say that it doesn’t work well for jumping – PFFFFT! I beg to freakin differ! It works well for jumping AND for vaulting.

On Sunday I moved a few jumps around to make a semi-new course, and took Henry out to jump. Nothing fancy, just our once-weekly hop around to keep most of the rust at bay. I hadn’t used my Pivo in a while and have definitely been lacking on media, so I carried it out with me and set it up. I will admit that sometimes when I first set up the Pivo I get kind of paranoid about whether or not it’s working, and half of my attention ends up on it. That’s exactly what happened this time… I jumped the first fence, passed behind a tree around a corner, and flicked my gaze over to the Pivo for a few strides to see if it had stayed with us past the tree. Henry could 100% tell I’d stopped paying attention, by the time I looked back at the jump again my distance was off, the canter was shit, and while sure he could have bailed me out and gone anyway, he thought instead he’d give me a quick riding lesson.

He was, as usual, 100% right. I had that one coming. He’ll cover plenty of mistakes for me, but not ones where I was being a complete asshat. You have to admit though, it was a really good flip. And the fact that he deposited his sidepull on the ground with me, then turned around and flipped me the bird before sauntering smugly off… savage. Point taken, dude.

Luckily if you’re going to fall off, that’s one of the best ways to land. It rattled my bones, for sure (honestly my back has felt better since then so maybe he adjusted something for me) but otherwise my sufficiently fleshy ass absorbed the majority of the impact. And, bonus, my helmet never even made contact, which was literally my first thought as I hit the ground.

I got up, caught Henry, put his bridle back on, apologized profusely, and got back on. He seemed to think that he’d said all that was necessary, and he was right. I got my mind in the game, focused on what I was doing, and never once glanced at the Pivo again. We jumped around two courses with no problem, Henry’s mood undeniably chipper, and called it a day.

When we were done I made my way back to the Pivo, really hoping that it had managed to catch that. And of course, because Pivo has very rarely let me down (why do I feel the need to stare at it sometimes then??? shit.), it got all of it. It didn’t miss a single thing the whole time, and even calmly followed Henry after he deposited me on the ground and sauntered off. Excellent. That’s the kind of performance I’m after right there. What a dutiful little gadget.

By the time I got back up to the barn and watched the video, I was chuckling. By the time I got it into my editing app and played it in slow-mo and reverse, I was in absolute fits of laughter. Pivo, you tricky little bastard. I’m not sure if I should blame you for being the reason I fell off, or applaud you for not missing a beat and ensuring that this particular blip can be enjoyed forever. Is he the hero or the villain of this story? Undecided.

Anyway… obviously I’m fine. Henry made his point loud and clear, and my days of obsessively checking on the Pivo are over. Obviously it doesn’t need to be checked on anyway, since it has yet to miss a beat – for better or worse. Lesson learned? Hopefully…

Good news first, right? First and foremost, I officially have internet service in the t!ny h0use. I could get enough wifi from the barn owner’s house to at least do my work, so that was convenient to get me started, but obviously we needed our own service. We don’t get most types of internet out here so there aren’t a lot of options – wireless broadband or satellite are about it. Last Monday the first provider came out, the one the barn owners use, and they couldn’t get a clear line of sight to any of their towers, even running a pole 30′ up in the air. I admit, I started to sweat a little bit. Your mind immediately goes “what if we’re in some weird dead zone where literally nothing will work and we can’t get internet at all omg”. Well… if you’re me that’s where your mind goes anyway.

The technician from that company was super helpful though, and recommended another company for me to try. He used to work for them and said he was pretty sure they’d be able to get something set up for me. I went on my phone and made the appointment before we’d even finished our conversation, and they scheduled a technician to come the next day. Many props to second company for ease of experience. The first company required that I email them so they could call me to ask me questions, so they could then email me an application form, so I could then email it back so that they could then schedule a tech to come out in a week. Second company I went on their website, entered my info, and the appointment was made on the spot for less than 24 hours later. Plus no installation fee and cheaper monthly rates.

So their tech came out the following day, was able to get service (not quite as fast as I was hoping for, so he made sure to call in to let them know what speeds he was getting so they could adjust my monthly plan appropriately and not overcharge me for speeds I couldn’t get). Now I have a little dish on the side of the house (didn’t have to go up on a pole thank goodness) that can see a little tower a few miles away, and it’s enough to get decent internet. I can stream netflix and live streams and stuff anyway, and that’s all a girl really needs. Internet service: check.

I also got a few more little things for the house.

Your eyes do not deceive you, that is a purple rug. Or, according to the website, “dusty purple”. I got it for the reading nook ultimately, but until we get something for the bedroom it’s living in there. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about the color but I actually do like it, it seems like a good peaceful color for a reading nook without being boring gray or white.

The rug was also joined by a beanbag, which also will ultimately go in the reading nook but for now is serving as my only piece of living room furniture. At least until January when our couch shows up. It gives me somewhere to sit that isn’t the bed or the porch. I did drag it up to the loft to make sure it fits in the reading nook and indeed it does. I think I might get a second one so there can be two up there, for the ultimate lounging experience.

Keen observers might see the other acquisition in the above photo. That’s right, I got a robot vacuum.

I’ve been dithering back and forth on one of these for years. At first they were all expensive, and I couldn’t really justify the purchase. Now though there are robot vacuums in every price range, and some really good “budget” ones too. I spent a couple days researching to figure out what options I really wanted/needed, then reading reviews and watching videos before I settled on the Coredy R500+. AND, Amazon has a coupon for it right now that dropped it from $190 to $138. I figured for that price it was definitely worth a try. Even if all it did was help pick up some of the dirt so that I didn’t have to sweep as often, it would be worth it.

Turns out I’m kind of obsessed with this thing. It’s pretty basic, and I only want it to run when I tell it to, so I haven’t played with a lot of it’s features. I swear I’ve probably spent at least an hour watching it work so far though. Right now I’m running it every 2-3 days and it REALLY helps keep this place cleaner. Between myself and the dogs we track in a lot of sand and grass and bits of hay and shavings, plus there’s always dog hair. This little guy, already affectionately named Monster (because we did have one incident where he CLIMBED OVER MY BARRIER and got stuck under the bed, entangling himself in a charging cord in the process), is fantastic.

Mostly I’m just questioning why it took me so long to buy one of these things. For how cheap it was, I’m pretty impressed. Anything that means less time spent cleaning is a total freakin win in my book.

The dogs love it perhaps a bit less than I do. Well… Stewie anyway. Quinn, per usual, doesn’t give a single shit about it. Stewie was very distrustful of it at first but is slowly getting used to it.

Monster might be my favorite purchase of 2020, right after Pivo.

I haven’t bought anything else since last week, nor have I even given any thought to what else I need to get. For now I’ve got the things I actually need to live here comfortably, so I need a break from 1) spending money 2) thinking about this all the time.

Plus – ready for the bad news? – I’ve got a bigger problem now. On Saturday the SO and I discovered a leak under the house. A steady drip drip drip drip, and an obvious accumulation of water in the barrier that covers the bottom. Thats… not good. It certainly isn’t supposed to be there, anyway. I’ve contacted the company through our warranty person, but I’m still waiting for some resolution. Clearly there’s a major leak in there somewhere, but that’s about all I can tell.

In the meantime I turned the water off to the house. Once the leak stopped dripping I turned the water back on at the source, but didn’t actually run any water inside the house, trying to see if the problem was originating in the incoming water supply pipes, or if it was something related to the water draining out. Within minutes of turning the water back on at the source, the drip was back. So, I think the problem is with the water coming in. I turned the water back off.

While I wait, I have no water in the house. Luckily, because of the incinerating toilet (which obviously doesn’t require water), this isn’t as big a deal as it otherwise might be. I can go up to the barn owner’s house to take a shower, I have re-filled bottles of tap water for brushing my teeth and washing my hands, there’s a washing machine at the barn, and I grabbed some disposable utensils and plates to use for now. It’s ultra-annoying, but survivable for the short term. I will rapidly lose patience with this situation if they take much longer to come fix it, though, that’s for sure. I don’t really even know what they’ll have to do. I assume it will involve getting under there, peeling back the barrier, removing insulation, and finding where the problem is. Sounds like a massive PITA and not a small job.

Never a dull moment around here.