Weekly update - January 31, 2025

It has been a very long time since I've done one of these. 

• We've had rain and rain and rain today. I would have been happier if it had been snow instead. The problem with rain after such a long Arctic cold snap is that the ground is still very frozen. Frozen ground does not absorb water. There is standing water everywhere. To make it worse, our pastures slope slightly from north to south. The ponies' stall is on the north side of the barn which means all the water fills their stall. They are currently living in the aisle because this morning their stall was fetlock deep in water. 
• Either all my usual or somewhat usual readers have hunkered down and are avoiding the computer for personal sanity reasons or I have finally hit the end of the public's interest in the blog. The stats are (low)  numbers I think I haven't seen since the first few years. It's very odd. Or is it context and no one wants to be confronted with reality? Clearly I'm still writing, but I find it curious.
• We've become a bit lax in the make your own bread and bread related items department the past couple of years. But I think we're going to go back to it. I have a lead on a new bulk food source, which is good because we are nearly out of oats and wheat berries and I like to buy fifty pounds at a time.
• The decorations finally went up for Lunar New Year today. Better late than never, right?
• Y. and I went to see a friend in a high school production of J. K. Rowling's The Cursed Child. The cast and crew did a good job, but I'm thinking among the many things I could write about Rowling, I'm not sure I would attribute 'gifted playwright' to her. 
• L. received a set of leather tooling tools and a large piece of leather for Christmas. Since then she has been busily teaching herself to tool leather. A week ago I pulled a funny package with Cyrillic writing on it and was baffled. It turns out she had ordered herself a leather knife, so she could do things like this.

• From a December and January where I had little to no business activity, February is looking to be almost overly full. Along with individual clients, I have at least three sets of Sheep and Fiber classes, a presentation to an area Kiwanis group, and I'll be in San Antonio presenting on behalf of the Athena Herd Foundation at the Horses and Humans Research Foundation conference. And I still have the written part of my Action Research Project to finish. This is where I kick myself and wonder why I didn't work on any of this during January.
• We've decided to wait until summer to begin seriously thinking about finding another horse. This gives the horses here time to process, I'll save on hay costs through the cold weather, and my pastures will be back to being functional. Of course the little ten year old girl inside my head doesn't want to wait until summer, but really thinks we need another horse now. The ten year old doesn't pay the bills. 
• You can tell it's been a stressful month by the fact I've finished almost nine books this month. (Almost because I've finished eight and have three that I'm close to being done with.) This is a high number even for me. Life just feels it needs to be escaped from by the end of the day.
• We still reading A Suitable Boy at teatime. Our progress has slowed a bit because my last two weeks have been full. We're almost at the halfway point. 
• We still don't have a dishwasher and it is growing a bit old doing all the dishes by hand. 

That's really all I can think of at the moment. Hang in there, everyone!