Ordinary Time

I'm not sure how much I'm going to have this week, so we'll see. We did our first full week back at school. All things considered, it didn't go too badly. We are beginning to catch up from having missed the entire month of December. I haven't started back to school with R. yet. I figure she needs a month to recover as much as anyone. She is happy to sit and play with her favorite toys. My bar is so low at the moment that I'm happy with that as well. After we both have recovered a bitore, I'll start to add in more purposeful activities for her. Bristol seems to be doing well. Her leg when I change her bandage still looks fairly horrific, but she is using that legs. I think that's about as good as we can hope for at the moment. After her twenty (!) days of antibiotics are done, I'm going to have to really wash my barn coat. Maybe twice... or three times. After just a couple of days the arms are covered with antibiotics that have come back out of her mo...

So with R. doing significantly better, it seems that the horses were feeling a little neglected and made a play for attention. Well, one horse. When I was grocery shopping earlier this week, I got a text from our neighbor saying my chestnut horse was bleeding from her leg. Thankfully P. was at home so I texted her to go check. Yes, Bristol had a huge gash on one of her lower back legs. P. wrapped it and took pictures so we could text the vet. This is not the first time this has happened, but it is definitely the worst. We have been baffled as to what she gets into because none of the other horses ever have this happen. After talking with the vet, we decided it wasn't an emergency emergency, since we had already cleaned and wrapped it and had antibiotics here that we could start her on. So the vet came out and clipped around it. It's deep, but it didn't need stitches. Keeping it wrapped, using honey as an antibiotic, and changing the wrappings every day is what we'll be ...

At least the calendar said winter, it felt like a beautiful day in early April. A good friend of mine organized a trip to Brookfield Zoo with another friend. So off we all went with our children in tow to take advantage of the weather. An added bonus was it was a free day and the zoo was virtually empty. Much of the time we had the place to ourselves. Some photos from our day.  We ate lunch outside. A capybara! I love them!! There was some discussion at dinner whether capybaras or wombats are cuter. No definitive decision was reached. K. Peacocks were every where. They are so beautiful. It did make me wonder if we should add peacocks to our collection of birds. (Don't worry, we won't.) The vast majority of photos on my phone are of reptiles and amphibians. L. had my phone most of the day. I won't share them all with you, even though L. insists they are all So Cute! L. G. It was truly a lovely and relaxing day.

It's been a couple of weeks since I've shared fiber-y stuff, so there's a bit to look at. I guess I'll go in chronological order.  First, I was able to do a bit of spinning in December. Some days R. was able to sit with me and the whole thing was a brief respite from the disregulation. I know I showed you some of this yarn, but I was able to finish spinning the whole batt. I think I ended up with close to 200 yards of some pretty consistent DK weight yarn. I thought it might be fun to show the three different forms of the wool. On the left is the batt, center is the bobbin with the singles yarn, on the right is the chain plied yarn.  I have yet to wash the three skeins despite the fact I put it on my bathroom counter to remind me to do so. Next, I have decided that I am going to be better about repairing things when they need it instead of throwing it out and going to the thrift store. First up was a blanket that has already been repaired once. At some point it might be...

The weekend was completely uneventful. We did some things around the house and yard. J. and I worked some more on getting my loom working. Christmas got put away, though the boxes still need to be carried upstairs. I finished two books, one that I had been working on for a couple of weeks and another piece of fluff that I started a couple of days ago. We made it to church as well as our church's monthly dinner tonight. J. and I are one episode away from finally finishing the most recent season of The Amazing Race. Y. made bread as well as a lemon pound cake. The laundry is caught up. Etc., Etc. A perfectly ordinary weekend with very little of note to write about. How incredibly blissful!  I love not having anything of note to write about. It's not terribly compelling reading but it's a lot more relaxing to actually live through.

I'm still having a little bit of trouble wrapping my head around the fact it's January. It could have something to do with the fact that I feel a bit as though I completely missed December. I've paid the bills and have yet to write the wrong year. I must really want to say good-bye to 2022. Life continues on a positive trajectory. Each day is still a little bit better than the last. Sleeping is still a bit of a challenge, but her primary care doctor agrees that after so much disregulation for so long that it could take a bit to get the sleeping back in order. We are back to below freezing temperatures and I couldn't be happier, even if it does mean I need to carry water out to the barn. The mud was so disgusting. The horses pretty much stayed in their stalls and dry lot for days because while the pasture does not look great, I really don't want to wreck it completely. I've decided that if winter would stay at 30 degrees or so, it would be just about perfect. The...

Well, there are actually a lot of difficulties that come with a big move. Many of these I feel as though we have weathered and are finally at a place where we are rebuilding our social network. This struck me forcibly from our little month of seizures in December with R. I had (new) friends who checked in on me, sent me surprise Amazon gift certificates, and (tonight) brought us dinner. We also had our visit with our regular doctor today which seems to be a requirement. But I've now seen this doctor enough that I didn't dread the appointment. Instead, he listened to my take if woe, especially in regards to the psychiatrist, and told me I was right. (And we all know how much I like to be right.) He even apologized that a fellow doctor had done that. It was... healing. So things here are actually pretty good. What's hard about moving is not only the leaving of good friends (which is terrible, actually), but what's really foremost in my thoughts tonight is how difficult it...