Didn’t Miss
I was wrong. Turns out, the rain didn’t miss us. It was simply delayed. When it finally moved over us, it arrived with a vengeance.
The precipitation began in the early morning hours yesterday, and thrashed down with significant gusting winds. I was awakened about a half-hour before my alarm by the tempest, allowing me a chance to lay and wonder how the horses were handling the assault.
The nasty weather added unwelcome drama to my commute through the cities in the early darkness, reducing visibility to the point that most decisions become mere guess-work, while my car was shoved to and fro unexpectedly by the extreme gusting wind.
The temperature hovered just above the freezing point, and throughout the day the precipitation oscillated between wet, icy, and flaky.
Cyndie sent me some pictures and reported that the horses were soaking wet, jumpy as heck, and shivering to beat the band when she arrived to offer the morning feed. Poor Hunter was beside himself, looking thoroughly undone and having a tizzy about getting into the barn. When he is cold and wet, the first thing he does upon entering the confined space of his stall is to lay down and roll in the wood shavings we use for bedding.
It makes a scary racket, because he inevitably hits the walls with his feet in his wild gyrating. Cyndie said he successfully got himself covered with wood shavings from head to tail.
By afternoon, the rain gauge had captured 2 inches. As I neared home on my return from work, I began to see water flowing in ditches that are usually dry. Every creek I crossed was spilling out beyond its banks.
Delilah had to traipse along beside the trails in places that were under water.
If we get a quick freeze, I’m afraid Cyndie will need to wear skates when she walks the dog in the days ahead.
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It Missed!
It turned out that my concerns were unwarranted yesterday about even more rain falling on our already saturated grounds. From my repeated checks of the radar all day, it looked like a wall was keeping the surging mass of precipitation from moving north past a certain point. As it reached the southern boundary of our county, it stopped its advance and just seemed to slide past us to the northeast.
This doesn’t mean that we dried out any. On the contrary. The sky remained heavily overcast and the dew point high enough that wetness continued to be the order of the day.
It was a good day to have the warm glow of a fire in our fireplace!
Happily, the lack of actual falling rain was a break for our horses, allowing them to avoid the cold soaking that rain in December involves.
The bleakness of our landscape lingers on. According to forecasts, the next possibility for freezing temperatures comes at the end of this week.
Even if it doesn’t bring a dose of accumulating snow, I will be happy to at least have the wet ground turn frozen, to give us a break from the frustrating mud.
I’m pretty certain that frozen leaves will provide less hazardous footing than the wet leaves over slippery mud which we are currently enduring.
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December Rain
I knew it was coming, but the arrival of more rain today still feels like a bit of a shock. Our land is so, so wet. The ground is not frozen yet, creating a very spring-like mud-saster wherever our horses walk.
We got some rain overnight, but had a momentary break this morning. I had forgotten to put the rain gauge out, after one of the times it actually was cold enough to freeze and I brought the glass tube in to thaw. I don’t know how much fell while we slept.
The unfortunate reality is that, as of this writing, we have much more rain on the way from the south.
We are approaching the middle of December and receiving rainstorms like the middle of summer. Why, it is as if the climate is changing, or something.
I saw the comment recently that we don’t need to save our planet. The planet will still be here long after the human race has gone extinct. We need to be thinking about saving ourselves!
Maybe I should be building a boat.
At least the herd is showing enough sense to seek the high ground this morning. The areas where we have covered the dirt with lime screenings have compacted enough now that they are performing well as intended. It gives the horses a chance to get out of the mud for a time.
It is impressive, and sometimes scary, how far down a hoof will sink in the mud, given the approx 1000 lbs. of horse-force pushing down.
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Fires Return
Our chimney is fixed! What joy! But I don’t see how Santa is ever going to fit down it now.
It was back in the middle of October when we had our fireplace and chimney inspected, which I wrote about at the time in a post titled, “Important Inspection.”
They discovered evidence of there having been a chimney fire sometime in the past, which resulted in cracking of the original clay tiles lining the chimney.
Never fear, that company just so happens to also install chimney liners, for a (not so) small fee. At least they provide clear photographic evidence of the areas of concern, which our insurance company accepted without hesitation. Our repairs were covered in full, after we pay the (not so small) deductible amount on our policy.
This project benefited from the wonderful luck of the original chimney dimensions being large enough to make it one of the easiest installations possible, according to the guys.
They installed sections of stainless steel tubing inside the old clay tiles from the top of the chimney and didn’t need to break out any of the existing structure to complete the job.
A cement rated for high temperature is also used around the outside of the tube. Everything gets sealed and then checked for leaks. When they finished our installation, one of the guys burned some paper in the fireplace to verify the draft was good, and that was that.
It was instantly available for use. That meant I needed to haul some wood!
Cyndie and I filled the rack on the deck with one fully-stacked row of split logs from the wood shed. I had mixed emotions about the excitement of finally making use of wood that has been drying for a full year, and comical distress over seeing the stores in the wood shed decline at such a rapid rate.
I also found myself surprised over how moving it felt to have a fire in the fireplace once again. It has been almost 2 months since we learned of the problem, and at the time of year when we especially cherish the return of this cozy enhancement.
It refocuses the energy center on our main floor back to the special space that functions as our “living room,” with the couch providing a vantage point that takes in the fireplace centerpiece, as well as the doors and windows on either side providing views of the great outdoors beyond.
It doesn’t hurt that we just so happen to be undergoing a magical transformation into a Christmas wonderland this weekend, as a result of Cyndie’s never-ending visionary efforts.
I think the addition of last night’s fire provided her with just the right spark as a bonus.
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Workplace Potluck
At the day-job we decided to split the difference between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and celebrate the season with a potluck lunch halfway between the two. Today is our day.
My contribution consists of having reported the scheduled date to Cyndie and providing creative support while we reviewed ideas for fun and festive possibilities. Then I provided moral support and took over all horse and dog/cat duties while she worked her magic in our kitchen.
The last steps are most difficult since she won’t be coming to work with me, as I will need to serve up everything she made in a pleasing presentation at mealtime. I can probably pull that off.
This year we started with tiny fruit pies baked in her mini-tins. I helped by testing a couple of them.
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Next, since we had so much fun making little bacon cheeseburger bites last Friday for the futsal gathering, we decided to throw some of those in, too. Why not? Cyndie put extra love into them for all the folks at the day-job. We hope they are a hit with the crew.
I don’t know how the staff will get any work done today. I do know that no one will have any excuses to go home hungry.
I will not be putting in a very thorough effort toward calorie counting until this day is over. One lucky aspect to eating extra calories… I can have more sugar! My goal is to keep my sugar intake to a daily percentage of my total calories.
More calories = room for more sugar. 🙂
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Horse Peace
One of the many things I like about our horses is the fact they don’t reflect back to me anything that outrageous politicians say, nor cruelties unleashed by demented terrorists. To stand among the herd in their pasture, there is no sense whatsoever of headline grabbing non-celebrities, no road-raging selfish drivers forcing their anxieties in every direction, no pharmaceutical advertisers listing sickening numbers of possible side effects with encouragement to ask my doctor if their product is right for me.
Nothing but eons of evolved horse sense, and all the peace that comes with that.
It is a priceless gift.
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Sweet Work
This time of year, I don’t think a day goes by without something extra sweet going on in our kitchen. While I continue to monitor and moderate the total amount of daily sugar I consume, I have not gotten to the extreme of completely avoiding treats. In a way, that means I face a greater need for self-control to manage my goal.
It would probably be easier to just completely refuse any of the sweet things that Cyndie prepares, but I’m not sure. On an annual basis, it’s not that much of an issue for me, but in the weeks around Thanksgiving and Christmas, it does require greater effort on my part.
Last night I sat at the counter with Cyndie, cutting and wrapping the last of the caramels she made. I think we did it at a good time, because I was stuffed from having just finished eating dinner.
I didn’t eat a single one.
I mean, an entire single one. There was one that came out a little too wide, and needed to be trimmed.
I suppose that fraction of a caramel added a few grams of sugar to my daily total. I probably worked that off in the calories I burned working so diligently on cutting and wrapping.
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Horse Explore
It’s been a while since the horses saw the big pink soccer ball. When we brought it out on Friday, there was a fair amount of apprehension in the herd about the reappearance of the strange object.
Legacy took the lead and tentatively investigated while the other horses stood by. Cayenne wasn’t as excited with the ball and stood by me to observe at a distance.
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