Mustang Saga

This morning I loaded, unloaded, and stacked hay. 33 bales all by myself, with just the bed of the pickup to haul. That pickup is too tall. We need a hay trailer that's lower to the ground. When I came in I was beet red from the heat and had to take a long cold shower and medicate all the pinpricks on my arms from the hay. I'm allergic, and it makes it that much more irritating. And we have 246 more bales to move... But I'll have John's help, and we're renting a trailer.

My daughter was very helpful. She drove the truck, lurching at the stop and the start, and sometimes passing me up by a good 30 feet while I waited by a bale. It made more sense later when she told me she had forgotten which pedal was the brake. I thought she was just not paying attention. But overall she did great and the only bale that fell off the truck was when I was driving. She even moved a couple bales for me, but she's really not strong enough for that yet.

Here I was, drenched in sweat and with hay chaff stuck to me all over, but mostly inside my shirt, very itchy, hot and irritated, barely able to breathe in my mask, and she says, "I'm, like, sweaty all over. It's kinda gross." Obviously this kid has not had to do much hard labor in her life. It cracked me up in a kind of, "Oooh, poor baby," sort of way. Then I pointed out a daddy longlegs to her and told her she might want to avoid that bale. How exactly did I give birth to this child? I think she's going to end up a city girl, for sure. But seriously though, she's been a huge help lately.

I almost forgot about the contest! Okay, so nobody got the right answer. There were 22 quills. The two closest were Lady of Chaos and Jessie. So I'll send you both a prize. My prizes I had in mind were a horse size rope halter and a tube of sparkly mane and tail gel. It's got silver and blue glitter so it would probably look best on a black based horse. Or very nice on white. If both of you could email me (andreav at turbonet dot com) with whether you'd prefer a halter or the glitter, and include your mailing addresses, I'll get the prizes sent out. I totally understand if you're not into the glitter thing, and I do have 2 halters already made, so if you both want those that's fine.

Good guesses, everyone. They were all pretty close.

Oh, and Kara, I am so sorry you had to get quills out of a horse's leg! I was thinking about that while I pulled Scout's. I don't know if I could have safely pulled them all out without some kind of sedation. Maybe. But it wouldn't have been fun!

My sister was telling me tonight about her porcupine encounters. They must have a lot of them by her house. She had to pick up a baby in a poop fork and carry it back down to the creek. Her husband told her to kill it but she couldn't. It was super cute, she said, holding on to the fork tines with its itty bitty hands. But the adult she had to battle wasn't as much fun. It was slamming into her fork, trying to get at her. Scary! But still super cute. I've never met one up close. Not sure I'd want to!

(Did you know a group of porcupines is called a "prickle?")