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Traffic circles

Or roundabouts could also have been the other title. New Hampshire has a lot of traffic circles that I drive on to get to the barn I'm working at. You know what's really wonderful? People here know how to navigate these things smoothly and easily. I have experienced a little bit of joy at each one.  To understand why, you need to know that the powers that be have been installing traffic circles in our area at home, so it is a near daily occurrence to drive on them. But while there are an ever growing number of traffic circles, it seems the general population is slow to figure them out. I find it frustrating. My children will confirm this because I am often loudly saying that they are not 4-way stops. Too often I get stuck behind a car that is stopped at a traffic circle entrance waiting for there to be no cars in the circle. Even worse are the drivers who stop in the circle to let another car in. This is so not helpful and is just begging to create an accident. And every so oft...
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It's a tough life

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Here's my workplace for the next three days. And it's doubly nice to be staying with my brother-in-law and his family. Tonight this meant a lovely dinner out and a walk around downtown Concord.  
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Getting ready to travel

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I leave a little too bright and early to fly to New Hampshire for the Equine Assisted Learning training I am leading. I've spent all day either driving children around or trying to get everything I need together. This means you get bugs. Well, to be more precise, you get two insect pictures that K. took recently. Thank goodness for children who provide blog fodder. I return next Wednesday. Will I blog while I'm gone? I have no idea. I suggest you keep your expectations low. Since I am now packed, I'm going to curl up with a book in the hopes it will cause my whirling brain to stop whirling. I really am prepared and just have a few things left to pack that have to wait until tomorrow morning. 
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Take two - Baseball in the land of extreme weather

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The land of extreme weather would be Illinois if you were curious. The Internet has decided to play nice again, so here is the story I was going to share last night. Over the weekend we decided to go to a Cougar's game on Monday. (That would be the AAA club, Kane County Cougars.) On Sunday when we were ordering tickets, we checked the weather. There was a storm with potential extreme weather (who are we kidding... all storms seem to have extreme weather these days) due to roll through overnight and be gone by mid-morning. We decided to trust the weather report and bought the tickets.  The anticipated storm did not come through. Instead, we woke up to a house whose windows couldn't be seen through due to the amount of condensation from the very warm and extremely humid weather. L. went out to take care of the birds and came back in saying, "I might as well grow gills." Yes, that humid. Not exactly ideal baseball weather. Some rain came through midday (there were tornad...
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Bad Internet

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You'll have to wait until tomorrow for what I was going to write this evening, but because of the storms passing through, I have only been able to upload one photo.  At the Kane County Cougars game before the storm. 
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Craving nature

"The solution to the craving for possessions is not to stifle it, but to transfer it to nature and art, there to be embraced. Instead of going to a big box store to buy an object that has stimulated your craving, go into a forest or park, hungry for the natural world displaying itself. You will not be surprised at the store, but nature will startle you and offer you new discoveries. The gift of nature will satisfy more than the expected thrill of a new possession, which may succumb quickly to buyer's remorse and soon fade away. You bring things into your house and hold onto them, but in nature you encounter potent displays of layered richness." (p. 19) from The Cure at Walden Pond by Thomas Moore I find this to be so accurate, both from an experiential point of view as well as a brain science one. We want what we focus on. Having worked in a department store I can tell you that exposure is everything. A dress would come in and we would all think it was so ugly no one woul...
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Because horses...

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Owning horses often feels as though it is an endless procession of repairs, both to the infrastructure and to the horses themselves. This was the state of one of the stalls this morning.  My money is on Major as the perpetrator because he does like to lean and has quite a bit of body mass to put behind that leaning. J. did some temporary repairs this afternoon and will reinforce everything tomorrow. He keeps wood on hand because he's always needing to repair something, but the supply is dwindling.  That's the infrastructure piece, now into the horses. The ponies are now sporting five poultices on their feet between the two of them. When the farrier was out a few days ago, she found the beginnings of an abscess in one of Buddy's hooves. That's one poultice. Moving on to Vienna, she has them on all four feet. The good news is that the farrier didn't see any damage from her insulin spike which means we caught it and acted in time. But she still has some soreness becaus...
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