I’m really trying to find the humor in all of this. We are going on our third week of jail/quarantine, and spring is dancing in with its happy face.
Something blue and Little Dog pack helping with quarantine. Sort of. Photo by Holly Covey
That happy face also has with it a lovely yellow pollen along with the lovely yellow daffodils and dandelions, making us all sneeze, our eyes water, and occasionally (gasp) cough. Well, as you can imagine, right now when someone coughs, it’s like The Black Death is among us. All panicked hell breaks loose in the household.
We frantically search for the people thermometer to see if there is a fever present. Well, if you are a horse person, you know the difference between the barn thermometer and the people thermometer. The problem is, when you can’t find the barn one, you need one, you use the people one. Right? So if you can’t find the people one … well, we ended up using the heat gun, that is used for welding and tendon hot spots … not sure that was a really good reading, though. All good so far. Just allergies.
Being home is like a wonderful vacation. Sort of. The house is getting really clean a little cleaning, I’ve caught up on the laundry, the kitchen floor is really clean pretty good, and I’ve thought about polishing the silver. Major accomplishment: nobody has killed anyone yet, so it’s all good. Although it’s crossed my mind. And I do have lots of Lysol and bleach to clean up any bloodstains. Just sayin’.
Then you look out the door and because you aren’t working, there’s not only a load of time to do all sorts of stuff around the house, there is also a project in the barn to start, and another project over there, and big plans for that paddock, and work to be done on the … and I say, well, this is getting complicated, I need to start a list.
You do not want to see the list. It’s out of control. I can’t remember the first thing and I can’t remember the last thing, but in there somewhere I can remember two of the things on it: getting my hair trimmed, and fix the fence charger box. I started writing it in a notebook and one of the items — truth — is make list of things to do, use new notebook and date it. So … it’s in a used notebook and I stopped dating it Wednesday. Or Thursday. Whatever day. They’re all running together.
Made the grievous error of posting a political thing on Facebook, took two days to get over that. Sticking now to funny horse/people memes. The latest thing was posting something in your camera roll in a certain color. Well, I paint a lot of jumps and I have jumps in every color in the rainbow in my camera roll, so next to the cute kids in the pumpkin patch I’ve got my orange jump; next to the beautiful blue sky at the beach, I’ve got my sun and moon jump fillers with the blue background; and underneath the nice red rose arrangement on someone’s dining table, I have my red and white striped planks. I think some of my Facebook friends have unfriended me.
The horses love coronavirus. They are enjoying hanging out without much real work at this point although I am hacking a bit. I did drop their feed to avoid Severe Airs Above The Ground syndrome. Fortunately, spring is bringing grass, and that is occupying a lot of their outdoors time at the moment. Event Horse is having his time in the proximity of that green stuff limited a bit at this point.
Event Horse took a bit of exception to that last change, and busted out of his stall, with a little help from another horse who is retired here and has nothing better to do than cause trouble. So in the middle of the night, they got into the shavings pile and pooped in it and spread it all around. They knocked over some stuff. But Event Horse proved he actually knows something very interesting — if not a bit spooky.
I have a bag of horse treats, in a container, with the grooming equipment near the crossties.
So the grooming tools were scattered, the bag was EMPTY. He ate ALL of them. I’m not sure he didn’t share them with the retired horse who was also enjoying Freedom, but I know he knows where they are. Every last one of them. Not even the dust at the bottom of the bag was left. And the empty bag was dropped ON PURPOSE in front of a horse who was not loose, almost like a horsey “up yours.” So not only do I know he knows, I’m afraid of where this might lead. If he can do that, what else is he keeping tabs on and what more can he do when I am not there to shut the gate and lock it properly?
So he’s been doing more than just standing on the cross ties at grooming time. Speaking of grooming, the hair is on full spring shed-out mode. I found a curry comb with teeth left in it, and got to work shedding out Event Horse. I grabbed a broom and was sweeping the hair into a nice medium sized pile, when one of the Little Dogs sees the broom, which is a fun toy to him, and runs in for a grab. I was just about to get the pile nice and small — and the broom gets dragged gleefully down the aisle. The hair goes flying. All over. In my mouth. On the horse it just came off. In my socks and down my neck. And down other items of underwear which I am sure you can relate to. So fun.
To pass the time, I am taking stock of my jumps and painting them. My little dog is helping. He digs holes while I paint. Keeps him busy and I don’t have to drag him out of the neighbor’s garage when he chases their cat down the driveway. So, I’m painting away, and moving down the rail striping as I go. He’s digging away. You know where this is going. Yeah, I stepped slowly, carefully, deliberately, concentrating on getting the stripe just right … and … fell. The paint goes down. I go down. In that order so the paint got on me and all over a freshly painted rail, and a little tiny bit on the digger. Lots of swearing.
No more digging allowed! This was disappointing to the Little Dog, who then was forced to chew up a good pair of barn boots while in Time-Out.
So, realizing the outdoors was not really a fine place to be getting The List checked off today, I went back inside and decided to bake something. Except there are no ingredients in the cabinet. Somehow, essentials needed for survival are not available at the local grocery store right now. So that goal was dashed. I don’t think olive oil and pepper will work for oatmeal cookies.
The last refuge of scoundrels is now the internet, so I got on the computer and tried to start an argument and even that failed. At this point, the television is the last thing left of civilization, but in my household, Mr. Eventer holds the coveted remote, and without control of that precious weapon, I’m dead in the water. Can’t even see that Tiger thingie. (Do I need to?)
So here I am trying to make the most of this and make myself laugh. I signed up for a daily joke on my phone. “Due to the Covid-19 restriction, we are no longer sending the Daily Joke” was the message I got this morning. I can’t believe it. There just isn’t anything funny about it, I guess.
But the worst of all was the toilet paper problem. I was forced, almost by gunpoint, to the horse trailer tack room, to obtain a last final stash of secret toilet paper. This made me cry. It really is the end of the season when you take the toilet paper out of the horse trailer, isn’t it?
