Friday bullets - Oct. 16, 2020

The week has felt full and I'm glad it's Friday night.
  • The biggest news is that P. will be heading to Aiken, South Carolina in a few weeks. She has been looking for a working student job at a horse stable for the past several months. Last weekend she flew down to Aiken to interview with someone about a position. Now, if you are wondering what a working student job is, it's pretty much what it sounds like. Usually a working student gets a place to live and a small stipend in return for a lot of work (doing stalls, feeding horses, turning out and in, etc.). The plus is that there is a lot of learning and training that happens as well. P. actually ended up with two job offers, and chose the one she visited last weekend. I think it't going to be an amazing experience for her, plus she'll be in Aiken, SC, which is the epicenter of the hunting/eventing world. Our trainer here said she may never come back. Sending her to another state seems a lot easier then sending her around the world on a 3-masted ship.
  • A. is off with a friend this weekend as they figure out if there are other places they want to live after graduation.
  • D. continues to look at various colleges to apply to.
  • TM continues to do monthly drills in anticipation of boot camp in June.
  • M. is counting down the months until graduation from vet tech school in the spring.
  • Can you tell that the next 12 months could see a significantly big change in who is actually living in the house here? I have very mixed feelings about all of it. I am so proud of them all for having goals and making plans, but I'm also going to miss all of them as they go off and work on those plans and goals.
  • In my own riding news, after several months of doing some intensive flat work, I am back to jumping. Boy, did the flat work make a huge difference! 
  • K. is building a Minotaur costume out of cardboard.
  • I had to wear gloves out to the barn this morning. I'm not sure I'm ready for really cold weather to come back.
  • I finally got those pie pumpkins I bought in Michigan cooked. I ended up with 9 cups of pureed pumpkin. I then got to use my new toy... a vacuum sealer. It removes air and seals bags of food so that there is no freezer burn or wasted space. It worked really well. The 9 cups of pureed pumpkin take up very little room. This is good because I'm supposed to be making room in my freezer not putting things into it.
  • I found room in the pantry for the beef broth and caramel apple pie filling. I'm pretty sure there is absolutely no extra room anywhere now.
  • Apollo had his second vet appointment yesterday. He is growing well and the entire vet staff were smitten with him. He does have a round of antibiotics now, though, because he has a minor upper respiratory infection that they want to nip in the bud.
  • L. informs me that the dozens of frogs who lived near the pond all summer have already left and gone to hibernate somewhere.
  • Everyone has memorized up to silicon (Si14) on the periodic table now. 
  • The laundry is finally caught up from us being gone to Michigan a few weeks ago. Yes, it took that long to accomplish. I can stay caught up with just one load a day if the laundry is not out of control. It takes weeks to get caught up again if it gets out of control. In case any senators were really curious. (And that's with quite a few children doing their own laundry.)
  • H. is really, really liking her new cookbook and had been marking the pages of recipes she wants to try.
  • We did not do school yesterday. Instead we cleaned the house. Sometimes, when so many people live in a space 24/7, things just get messy. And if you are busy doing things other than cleaning, then the mess just piles up. We keep at bay as best we can but every so often drastic measures need to be taken, mainly because my head will explode otherwise. Yesterday was one of those days. The house is much better now and my head feels less as though it will be explode. This is good for everyone. I have catch-up weeks planned into the school schedule, so we'll make it up then.
And that's about it. I keep nodding off while trying to write this, so that's my signal that I'm done for the evening.

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