Hello from the formerly-frozen hellscape, part 2

In retrospect?  That should have been a sign.

That is a 135-car pileup on Thursday, the 11th.  Before all the actual ice and snow started.  (There's a decent article about it here, but fair warning - video at the top auto-plays, so if you don't want to see cars stacking up...)

I mean, don't get me wrong... this was kind of a sign too:

I am roughly north of Dallas and Fort Worth, so deep, deep into the blue.

But honestly?  Snow and ice here isn't that unusual.  We get a couple of inches, everything shuts down because it happens like once a year and nobody knows how to drive on it - and it usually comes with ice and we have way too many overpasses and nothing but sanding trucks - and that's it.

Except... there was this:

And that thing on Monday is a five.  We don't get single-digit temperatures here often.  Like... sometimes we get a 9?  Mostly we get teens and twenties.  So that was gonna suck...

This was pretty shitty too:

And y'know... by this point, we're all bracing for cold and that was really it.

I mean... by Friday afternoon, this had shown up and I was threatening to leave the state:

THREE?!

Aaand we ended up here:

The fuck. I did not know that "igloo" was an option for the day.

Because what the fuck, why not.  It's not like any of my friends actually had teleportation rituals or technology to get us the fuck out of this cold.

For the first day or so, the whole thing was kind of fun, ya know?

Fun fact: this dog in this coat?  Will pee.  But he will not poop.  Apparently butt flaps mean one cannot poop.

I annoyed the shit out of one of my BOs with questions about whether I should bring up Cessa's blanket. ("No."  "Are you sure?"  "Yes."  "Okay, but it's gonna get down to negative numbers and snow."  "She is a beach ball and they'll chase her away if she's wearing the evil striped blueberry costume."  "But... cold and snow."  "You can bring it up if you really want to, but even if we put it on her, it'll get taken off so she can share the round bale and the shelter."  "...Okay, fine.")

Dragon temporarily got a blanket - oh my god, my not-quite-a-yearling wears a 63" blanket - and promptly shed it.  We think because that blanket didn't have leg straps and that wasn't noticed in time to fix the problem, she or one of her pasturemates just kind of... peeled it off her.  It was still buckled and everything, which is impressive.

And then Monday hit.

Around 2 AM, my husband and I both woke up out of a sound sleep.  We keep a big fan running at night, both as white noise generation and because our bedroom is somehow the warmest room in the house, despite being right across from the AC unit.  And when the power shuts off... the fan shuts off.

And then, an hour later, when the power comes back on, the fan comes back on.

And then, an hour after that, when the power shuts off again, the fan shuts off.

We weren't smart enough that night to actually turn the damned thing off, so it kept us up the rest of the night.

All day Monday, the power cycled on and then off.  On and then off.  We had a period of about 3 hours in the middle of the afternoon, which let the house warm back up to normal temperatures, and then back to the hour on/hour off cycle yet again.  I spent half the afternoon working on a blanket I'm crocheting for one of my BOs; it's in that awkward stage of "need to sit down and sew bits together," so this seemed like an ideal time.

Granted, we also found out as the sun was setting that we had... two AA batteries, four AAA batteries, two 9-volts, and a 4-pack of Cs of questionable age.  And approximately half a dozen battery-powered things that needed... you guessed it, AA or AAA batteries.  Fortunately, all of those had fresh batteries.  We also had a dead box of small matches (matches die; who knew?), a box of long matches, and the worst long-necked lighter in existence... and two tea-light candles and a pair of emergency candles that I just realized I failed to point out to my husband - oops.  And our chimney hasn't been cleaned in the... erm... fourteen years we've been in this house, and god only knows if the church that owned the house before us ever did it.  So we weren't having a fire, that's for sure.

That evening was when my parents let me know that after rolling blackouts since midnight, they were entirely out of power starting around dinner.  Concerning, but not the end of the world.  Also spawned this piece of conversation, which is at least good for a laugh:

By Tuesday, this was becoming less fun.  We were smart enough to not turn on the fan before bed, so we sort of got a full night's sleep (It was too quiet. I could hear the dog digesting, I swear to god.).  Power continued to come up for an hour, drop for an hour.  Come up for an hour, drop for an hour.

Well, ok.  Let's be realistic here.  It was never an hour.  It was 50 minutes.  Or 70 minutes.  Or 48 minutes.  Or 55 minutes.  Always came up at roughly the same time - we started on the half hour, but by Tuesday morning were on the hour - but we'd lose power at slightly different intervals each time.  I thrive on order; it was driving me insane.

Parents continued to be out of power, and it was upper 40s in their house.  Because we were getting intermittent power, we stayed upper 50s into lower 60s in the house the whole time, but... they did not.  My parents are creeping up on their 70s, so that was concerning.  They were doing their best to stay warm, but only so much they could do.

It snowed overnight.  Midday, we got word that the city wanted us to conserve water; the water treatment plants had lost power, but it came back up.  That said... with everyone dripping faucets to keep pipes from freezing, they were concerned that if the water levels dropped too low, we might have to boil water.  Note to future self: next time they say this, start hoarding water...

We woke up Wednesday to more of the same.  Fortunately, my parents woke up to power; their driveway is quite steep, so they couldn't just back out and I really, really didn't want either of them out there trying to clean it off... but they were 20 miles and an overpass over a lake away, so I wasn't getting over there in my little blue car.  I woke up that morning ready to start calling around to see what volunteer organizations were running rides to the warming station.  Well, ready to call when we had power, anyway.

It was, theoretically, starting to warm up at this point.  Lowest temperature was -3 on Tuesday morning; Wednesday morning was a comparatively balmy positive 3.

That was the good news.  The bad news... y'all, we have a fire hydrant very close to the house; our water pressure is insane.  But midday Wednesday, we had half an hour or so where we didn't have enough water to fill a toilet tank after flushing.

And then the boil water notice showed up, about the time the water pressure came back.

Do you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to boil water when you're on rolling blackouts?  Like... we had pots staged on the stove and the minute the power kicked on, someone was in the kitchen to stand over them until they boiled.  Bad experience, 0/10, would prefer not to do again. Only was not completely intolerable because I have tried home brewing in the past and had 11 gallons worth of water storage just... right there on hand.

Thankfully, some time around midnight Wednesday night/Thursday morning, the power cycled back on and stayed on.  I was able to get on and work for a little while Thursday morning, until just after lunch, when a circuit breaker switch in our breaker box failed and took out the damn internet with it - only time the entire adventure where the power was on, but we didn't have internet.

And then... Sunday, it was 75, because Texas.  The snow and ice are gone without a trace; you can barely even tell that we had precipitation at this point.

As of Saturday morning, the boil water notice has been lifted; we have drained all the things and refilled them with fresh, clean water, including the ice maker (and that was a bit annoying). Things are surprisingly back to normal in my area.

My household was very lucky.  We were careful, but we were lucky.  Barn folks were also lucky; the farmhouse at the barn lost water for 12 hours or so, because someone forgot to winterize the pipes in the crawlspace (oops), and they now know where all the holes in the siding are, but that was about it.  All the horses are fine, and for the most part still unclothed.

I have... so many thoughts and opinions and feelings about the Texas power grid and this whole situation.  It comes down to: Texas is stupidly gerrymandered - like, the district I live in only didn't make it into the court case a few years ago because there were three districts in Texas that were worse.  The state is governed as it is because everything is shifted around to keep the GOP in power.  We are reaping the "rewards" of politicians who gave their corporate donors all the deregulation they wanted, enabling them to not spend any more money than they absolutely have to and avoiding federal regulation.  Winterization costs money, so nobody wanted to pay for it... so fully 40% of our our generation got knocked out by winter.  Mostly coal and gas and oil plants went down, along with one of the nuclear plants and some of the wind farms.  People are dead.  If you want to show up here and blame the average Texan for this shit, go away or be blocked, because I am in no mood to fuck around.

WT-Actual-F, Mother Nature

 Y'all.  Y'all Northerners?  Please keep this shit in the future.  Actually cold winters are terrible, and so is ice and snow.

I don't recall if I've specifically stated it, but I'm in Texas.

Yes.  That Texas.  The one that is a giant-ass trash fire right now because it's not so much a "great state" as it is "a bunch of Republicans and oil barons stapling the rest of us into one big straightjacket and saying everything is fine."

...I'm a little angry right now...

Anyway.  Not in the worst-hit areas; those are farther south than me.  We didn't get skipped, but we are far and away not the worst off in this disaster of a state.  We had rolling blackouts from late Monday - thankfully one hour on, one hour off for the most part - until midnight last night and are under a boil water notice.  But my household is fine, the BOs are fine, the trainer is fine, the horses and the dog are all fine.  It's not great for my anxiety that none of my animals will wear clothes when it's fucking freezing, but that's a minor thing.  Even my elderly parents are fine, although they didn't have power for 48 hours and will not listen when I tell them not to try and clean their very steep driveway by themselves.

More later; right now I'm just glad to be back online and functional.

Random mutt photos

I don't have a whole lot to say on the horse front right now - Cessa is fat and cooperative for the farrier; Dragon is growing, getting over some sort of bug and choke, and did I mention growing?

So have some random dog stuff, because I can.  :)

Belly.  And toes.

Such a weirdo.

Last caption x2. lol I don't even know on this one.  He stayed sitting up like this for quite a while.

Sun worshipper, with extra tongue

Last year was an odd year in the land of our pittie mutt.

First, he had a persistent yeast infection - you can kind of see the discoloration in his toenails in that last photo.  So we spent March and April and May washing his feet with apple cider vinegar as a way to make sure it didn't get worse until his annual checkup in May.  Vet said "good job, and we suggest washing him with this instead," so then he spent the summer getting very regular baths, alternating antifungal and oatmeal shampoos.  Also, I made the vet techs and vets laugh when I wrote up a two-page document (with pictures!  And jokes!) to describe all my concerns for the annual checkup so they didn't have to hang out by the car while I talked through it all, because pandemic.

Around the same time, we had some AC issues and he ended up finally getting permission to sleep with us (he was too warm, and he's a kennel-escaper - we had a few long nights).  At which point we discovered that a) he takes up a lot more space than our dachshund did (duh), b) he takes up even more space than you'd think because he'll put paws on one of us and his back on the other and push, and c) if you're not careful, he can and will accidentally de-pants you during the night with one well-placed kick-scrape-stretch maneuver.  lol

He also had baaaasically a big fat zit on one ear and a much smaller one on one of his thighs.  Thigh one has vanished.  The ear one... well, it's eventually gone away, but only after it got scratched up (we think) in the middle of the night - "Why is my dog bleeding?" is not a question one wants to ask at 3 AM, particularly in the middle of a pandemic - but thankfully my barn friends talked me off the ledge and a vet exam the next day showed that he was fine.  And hey, it didn't ever burst so he never needed surgery on it.

And in the last, say, three months, he's managed to randomly lacerate his feet twice.  Two different feet, one of them on a pad and one of them right by a joint.  He's healed up from both nicely, thankfully, but the second one required a couple of weeks of babying because it was placed perfectly to tear open every time he went rip-snorting across the yard at top speed... and it had rained several times, so it was varying levels of muddy too.

Don't get me wrong, I 100% appreciate that he didn't manage to make it three years running with August emergency vet visits, but... c'mon, buddy!

Aside from those minor issues, and continued issues with being very reactive to other dogs... he's a good boy.  I mean, he's a bit of a wrecking ball sometimes, but he loves people and he's generally happy as long as he gets pets, loving, and most of all, treats.  (Even if the vet did say he needs to cut back on the peanut butter and training treats, and maybe have some carrots instead, lol.)

The pictures that didn't make it into my last post

So it looks like Blogger is still being a pain, as it was in my last post, but this time I'm much less annoyed with the universe.

One festive Dragon:

Someone did not give a crap that I stuck a hat on her ear.  "Sure, whatever."

 Two comparison photos:

Justice, about 15 months old

Dragon, 9 months old

And some bonus photos!

Dragon's uncle (dam's full brother) doing a holiday event in early December. Most of the other stuff that day was canceled; the second round was two weeks later, very little was canceled, and we opted not to go take pictures, even though it was outside. He did great - stood still for kids and non-horsey people (including a wheelchair), didn't mess with the mares he was in company with, didn't flinch at traffic.  Honestly, the worst thing he did was poop on the sidewalk and get a little fidgety after three hours, and he was not the only one ready to go home and use a restroom by that point!

Giant-ass 9 month old baby.  Who is butt-high because she is growing agaiiiin.

Outtake.  lol This is what happens when everyone forgot halters and decided to do an impromptu photo session... and all the baby wants to do is follow the photographer.

And lastly... the most ridiculous unicorn.  lol I'll have to dig up the mossy unicorn photo; I don't have either one of these on a wall anywhere, because they're frankly weird.

Please excuse the flash on the left-hand side.  I always feel a bit bad making fun of this thing - it looks sad, somehow, and someone clearly put a lot of effort into it.  But... um.  It's... yeah.

Happy Holidays!

Well, I was going to share pictures, but apparently Blogger has decided today that I don't get to upload photos, because "server rejected," and all the suggestions for how to fix this issue are crap like "clear your cache" and "change browsers." And while I have my own webspace and could theoretically upload and link, I'm annoyed, so it can fuck right the fuck off and y'all don't get pictures today.

Happy holidays, everyone - whatever holiday you prefer to celebrate.

We've had a few adventures in horse ownership, including Baby's First Choke Episode (hooray...) and the realization that Dragon at 9 months old has probably a foot of height on Justice at 15 months (help, send ladders).  Cessa is so pudgy, she looks pregnant - again - and the vet thinks she probably has some metabolic issues that are gonna mean dry lot in the spring; I'm looking into getting her one of those big balls you fill with hay to keep her entertained.  And our pittie mutt managed to cut his foot on... something (our best guesses are "a broken brick," "a stick," and "thin air").

But my source of great hilarity for the last few days has been Christmas.

Now... I'm an isolated pocket of horsey in my family and in spouse's family.  Like... it's me, and then my mom had a cousin who was into horses, of whom I was fantastically jealous as a teenager (She got to pick between a car and a horse at 16!  So jealous.).  That's it.  That's all of us.  So I generally expect that I'm not gonna get horse stuff for gifts, and if I do, it's going to be somewhere on the spectrum between "bless your heart and the heart of the person responsible for this monstrosity, because apparently only one of the two of you has seen a horse in this lifetime" and "generic horse gift, cool, it's cute," with the odd foray into the land of "oh thank god, you just bought something off my Amazon list and I know you have no idea what it is, but thank you."

My husband did great this year - he got me an LED breastcollar, which I am delighted about because it's blue and it lights up ("Are you ever going to be riding at night?"  "Probably not, but it lights up.").

Aaand then there's my mother.  My mother, for whom I have to color-code my horses because she can't tell the brown horse with the tiny star and big fat snip from the brown horse with the huge-ass star, tiny snip, and big white rear socks.  Past years have included such gifts as:

• A very fancy European ceramic piece... with a donkey on it.  I think.
  
• That horse yoga calendar.
  
• The framed poster of a unicorn that has been nicknamed after a certain little blue pill because while the horse itself is lovely, if a bit overly large-eyed, the horn is... it's sad, y'all.  It's pointing down when it should be pointing up.  And kind of off to one side.  And... yeah.  It's bad and I feel bad making fun of it, but it's so bad that's all I can do.
• Along a similar note, the mossy unicorn framed poster.  It's not really mossy, but that's the best way I've found to describe what appears to be what happens when Lisa Frank tries to do a properly heraldic unicorn and quits after drawing the unicorn, so someone else comes along, takes some mushrooms, and tries to put in an overgrown jungle background - only they were tripping balls and could only find blue and green paints.
• That horse yoga calendar, again.
  
• A pretty generic grooming kit.
• I think every Breyers holiday ornament from 1997 until 2015?
• Another iteration of that horse yoga calendar.
  
• A corrugated metal thing with some... horses?... painted on it.
• A fourth horse yoga calendar.
• A number of random horse statues in various levels of misshapen, including that one rearing horse statue that you see the same horse in different sizes and materials at every freaking truck stop and tourist trap.

So, I mean... my bar is low.  Particularly after this year included a brief discussion about the My Little Ponies on the list (look, they're re-releasing them and there are ones I always wanted, ok) and particularly because although I've provided a horse-specific wishlist, my mother has a tendency to look at your wishlist and then promptly either forget about it or come up with something she (and no one else) views as equivalent.

The bar was evidently not low enough. 

My horsey presents this year included:

• That same freaking horse yoga calendar (I don't think she realizes it's the same photos with different background colors every year...)
• A little horsey first aid kit, which is cute and probably will do great when a human stabs themselves, but is unlikely to be of much use for an actual injured horse just by the quantity of items provided alone
  
• An entire box of vet wrap

Yes, that's right.  A box of vet wrap.  In blue.

That I did not ask for.

Twelve rolls of blue vet wrap.

I think, based on some things she said, that she thought she was buying polo wraps.  She talked about not being sure what width to get, and about being able to wrap my horse's ankles and make them look cute.

Only... she bought... vet wrap.

I just.  I keep thinking about this and laughing, because what else do you do?  She won't get why it's not correct; she might even get kind of offended that I don't like it.  And there's... there's really no tactful way to say, "You do realize you actually bought me a box of bandages, right, Mom?"

I swear to god, I'm gonna be giggling about this for months.

School Photos

Am I allowed to call them school photos when I go up to the barn specifically to take pictures of my baby horse before she goes away to the trainer for 2 months of baby boot camp (aka "please make sure this baby is a Good Citizen and has all the groundwork skills she's gonna need as an adult" training)?

Third time wearing a halter, maybe? She is too big for weanling halters and too small for yearling halters.  (She is six months old, help. lol)

Cannot get over how adult she looks.  Aside from the silly baby mane, that is.

Not impressed with a) being haltered and b) being dewormed.

In other news, Cessa impressed the vet.

With how much weight she'd put back on.

In a pasture that's mostly weeds.

*facepalm*

At least she comes when called...?

Things are otherwise pretty quiet here.  I go up every few weeks and poke at the ponies and my barn friends.  Then I come home and continue my regimen of "not going very many places, because plague."

At least the dog is happy we're home?  And hey, he managed not to damage his face in August, which means he's now gone... one out of three Augusts we've had him without requiring an emergency vet visit...

There is no level of melanin in another human being's skin that makes that human being less.

Donate. Protest. Do what you can.

Making it official

I finally picked a name!

Her official registered name will be Freya's Needle.

Which... I know it sounds like it has nothing to do with Dragon, but there was a long and winding mental road to get there. lol The initial suggestion from the BOs was "Dungeons and Dragonflies," and while that didn't quite work for me, I kind of ran with the dragonfly part.  (I have all kinds of suggestions related to dragonflies, if anyone needs any!)

But nothing was really sticking.  In desperation, I started googling things like "nicknames for dragonflies" and "gods associated with dragonflies."  Which is how I found two things:

• The Norse goddess Freya is sometimes associated with dragonflies. She is also a goddess associated with war, along with fertility, beauty, and witchcraft.
• Some areas of the UK refer to dragonflies as "the devil's darning needles."

Her sire is Auraxium War.  Her dam is Oubliette d'Acier - depending on translation, "steel dungeon" or "forgetfulness of steel" or "strength through forgetfulness."

And needles are steel, at least modern ones.

I was sitting there after reading that stuff and just kind of hit on "Freya's Needle" as an idea, and it just... didn't go away.  So we're keeping it, and we're keeping Dragon as a barn name.

She is, as you can see, very impressed.

In other news, Cessa has already managed to lose one of her grazing muzzles so thoroughly that three of us searching the two pastures where it could be can't find it (which was today, and I hurt, and that's all I'm saying about that).  We're basically gonna have to let the mower find it if it's in the north pasture, because if it's there, it's buried deep in the grass or in some hollow we can't see because of the grass.  It could also be in the pond in the main pasture.  Who knows...

But it's okay.  Vet's going to have us try some thyroid medication, and Cessa has to stay in the arena, getting a little hay and just enough ration balancer to take her meds until she does start losing weight.  (She's got a little bit of grass to chew on as well, since the arena has grass, but it's short and the vet said it's OK.)

...I may still have some Tile stickers coming from Amazon so that I can GPS tag the damned muzzles, though. lol

And in local health news, our dumbass governor has opened up the state "partially" and half the damned population is out acting like it's Spring Break.  Second Quarantine is gonna be even worse than First Quarantine was, but I'm pretty sure it's gonna be a Thing.  Ugh.

All's Quiet

So hi!  It's been a while!

Turns out, when it's raining every freaking weekend but two for the last three months, not much horse stuff gets done. lol I mean, I've seen Cessa?  She's fat and happy?

Not that you'd know it by photos. Silly mare.

The two weekends it didn't dump inches upon inches of rain on us... we couldn't really ride because it's breeding season, and between three stallions and a boarder whose horses can't be out in the big pasture with the rest of the herd, there's no room (and none of us are comfortable enough yet for trail riding!).

So it's been quiet.

And wet.  I mentioned wet, right?  Like, I don't want to complain too much because it's better than the decade of drought we had, but... um.  Could the rain maybe happen on Monday instead of Friday or Saturday?

At least my roses are happy.

All quiet on the stupid weather front

First week of January:

Second week of January:

Third week of January:

Fourth week of January:

Aaaaanybody want to guess how much barn time I've had this month, when it's an hour drive to the barn so I usually only go on weekends?  And when the ground is so saturated that it's taken four days for our normally dry back yard to dry out?  And when neither my BOs nor I particularly want to be outside in 30-45 degree weather, especially at the barn where there's not much to block the wind?  (Although we all have freakish husbands that like the cold and/or think that our idea of cold is far too warm because they're from points well north of Texas.)

Anybody?

Yeah.  I'm not thinking about it either.

I know we're not suffering from the godawful cold of the Midwest or the feet of snow, but this is so gross for our winters.  We're having 20 to 40 degree temperature swings in 24 hour periods - literally, 70 one day, 39 as the high the next, and 25 that night - and we usually only see that in the spring.  We haven't really had any snow or ice (and I know I'm gonna regret whining about that next month, which is usually our winter weather month), but the one day we did have snow, it was just... depressing.  It snowed during the night, and by the time we woke up... there was snow on the cars and that was about it.  Everybody is getting sick.

Just... ugh.  Ugh.

It's all adding up to quiet time for the blog.  Literally the extent of my excitement this month has been the discovery that one of the squirrels that's nested in our trees stole a dog coat from some poor Chihuahua or something somewhere, shredded it, and is discovering how terrible a nesting material it is every time the wind blows.  Although I have to say, whatever dog that was, it had to have been round when it wore the coat; I found the base of the coat first, which is how I know the size of it, and since then, I swear to god I've picked up enough fluff for a big dog coat.  I know for sure I've filled 2 plastic grocery bags, and there's more out there.  It just keeps coming.
 

Yeah, ok. I'm a little whiny and grouchy at this point. I have a cold clearing out and a spouse down with food poisoning. Doesn't help that today's the anniversary of putting Justice down - something that doesn't bother me too much day-to-day at this point, but is definitely not the happiest of memories.

Anybody else super ready for spring? lol

So tired of 2018

So I got to ride my horse... once.

And then it rained. And this weekend, it's raining.

All the rain.

And on top of that frustration, last Friday we had to put down our cat of 11 years.

It wasn't really a surprise - she had malignant breast cancer removed the year we lost our dog (I honestly thought we would lose her that year), with a prognosis of 1-3 years.  Not only that, but her dental in the spring had turned up a severe heart murmur (no lie, you could feel her heart pounding if you touched her chest) and the early stages of kidney disease; a midsummer vet visit to inspect a lump on the undercarriage suggested the cancer was back as well.  We decided not to remove it - in no small part because of the kidney disease and heart murmur.

The last couple of weeks, she was slowly declining - not eating enough, although she did still eat, and doing a lot of weird little things.  Like... this was a cat that would not stay under a blanket with you... but she spent a whole night under one with me.  She wasn't terribly interested in lying on feet anymore.  It wasn't anything I could nail down as "she's done," but it was all a bunch of weirdness that had me on high alert.  Then she stared having accidents, and she'd never had one in the entire time she lived with us.  It was time.

So hug your pets for me?  Especially the kitties.

And 2018 - you, sir, are on fucking notice.  That's three this year.  You'd better be done.

The day she came home

Judging you

Sometimes, all you can say is 'cats!'