A Series of Unfortunate Events

Things have been (and probably will continue to be) a little quiet around here due to a... well, probably more than a trifecta of unfortunate events? I've honestly stopped counting at this point. Let me catch you up on a few of the "life on our funny farm" happenings lately. And by lately I mean going back to mid-June, since apparently that was the last time I posted anything, and even that was belated posts from the end of May... lol. SO BAD. So this is basically just a dump of photos off my phone with captions, sorry I am too fried to be more cohesive. 

Ruby had really gooey eyes for a few days in June - we were really dry at the time and I think she just kept irritating them with dust outside, and then the flies exacerbated the problems. A few days of saline flushes and wearing the pirate hood of shame sorted it right out, although I was ready to call the vet if the discharge looked eye-ulcery (cause BTDT). 

Cinna absolutely WRECKED her pretty teal Cashel. I am super disappointed in the longevity of the Cashels for the price. But of course, they're one of the few brands that actually offers a forelock hole (which I need for Spanish horse hair). 

She obviously lost a lot of sleep over it..... lol. 

I bought myself THE PRETTIEST saddle pad for my birthday... #treatyoself lol

Cinna got a replacement. Yes, another freakin' Cashel, since I could get it via Prime and I know they fit, sigh. This one seems to be faring a little better, knock on wood. Probably because I hate the pattern lol. 

My mom's dog came to stay with us for a week, and his hair broke our robot vacuum cleaner. My mom felt guilty and it just so happened to be Prime Day a few days after it broke, so she replaced it. Then DH managed to get the old one working again after taking it apart 4x, so we're back to running dual robot vacuums lol. 

Cici had another good checkup with her acu vet in mid-June (after the emergency visit in early June). Then 24 hours after it, she got excited about something and SUPERMANNED off the couch, immediately yelping in pain again. So then we had another week of recovery from that. Dammit dog. Peep my cute octopus mask, more on that a little further down haha. 

She HATES the sunglasses and they fucking make me laugh so hard. 

We had a really, really, really hot spell. With no rain for about 10 days. Cruce melted. 

And then we got ALLLLL the rain in 40 minutes one Saturday night (made it to 2" I just didn't keep taking photos). The storm came in from a really weird not-normal direction and it was raining SO HARD/so windy that rain blew UP THE ROOF, under our shingles, and started leaking into the fucking living room around the chimney box and then starting dripping in through the air return a foot away. So that was fun. DH got up on the roof the next morning and everything around the chimney was done correctly (since roofing was one of the few things we did contract out), so he just got some roofing sealant and went over everything again, just in case. I think it was just one of those freak things with the volume/direction of the rain, and since the water was able to find a way through instead of pooling in the attic, it didn't even discolor the ceiling, but we've obviously been super on edge with every storm since then! Thankfully nothing else has happened. 

DH bought the big dogs a pool. It went about as well as you'd expect, haha. 

I got more mail. 

Another anonymous octopus item - a glass waterer for my plants! A few photos back you can see the octopus mask that also arrived anonymously earlier in June. I'm up to 4 #anonymousoctopus gifts from... someone. I hope they're enjoying my confusion, lol. 

Sparkly saddle pad! Ignore my short-flap Schleese, my Jorge Canavas is at an Amish leatherworker's shop having it's billets replaced. 

My flowers have been baller this year. Including this orchid, which is now well into it's 13th straight month in bloom!

I've eaten my feelings a lot this summer. 

Also enjoyed a lot of lazy Saturday coffee mornings on the back porch with DH and the doggos. 

Eyeballed these at the grocery store a few times before Liz convinced me to pull the trigger #worthit

A pretty sunrise

And then leaving for work an hour later

I feel this in my bones. Particularly since we were mandated to come back to the office mid-May and less than 2 months later there are a massive amount of positives in my building. A coworker has a friend living in GREECE and she saw our building on the news. So. That's great. 

After the 2" of rain in 40 minutes, Missouri decided we needed ALL THE RAIN. AT ONCE. We ended up getting more than 12" over the course of a week or so. Cinna's stall flooded (which has never happened in the... 9 years we've had stalls in the barn?). SIGH. We tweaked the gutter situation on the front of the lean-to which seems so have solved the problem, but it was just another in a long list of stupid annoying things. 

Lotta water. 

Cici finally recovered from the Superman incident and got really sassy again. So sassy that she was bouncing down the stairs to the couch, missed a stair, and straight up biffed it and slid on her neck across the floor. Cue another week of extra meds. I swear to god this dog will be the death of me. 

To console myself, I bought this really fun teal Kastel from Amanda and then realized it pretty closely matches some breeches I already had, so at some point I'm gonna go all out with the teal outfits hahahaha. 

Also consoled myself with this. 

Ha. No but really. 

Then about 1.5 weeks ago, my elbow was really randomly painful and swollen and hot. In typical horse girl fashion, I was like "huh, if this was my horse's leg, I'd poultice it. Let's try that!" 
Also when I was trying to explain to my mom what was going on I may or may not have referred to it as a capped hock, lol. 

Despite DH's misgivings, it actually did help a lot. Unfortunately, it didn't cure the RAGING CASE OF CELLUTIS that was the underlying cause of the heat/swelling/pain, so I did end up having to go to Urgent Care over 4th of July weekend. The doctor was less than impressed with my solution (pretty sure I heard him mumbling "horse girls" on the way out of the room to get me a shot of antibiotics). He did say he was glad I didn't just take horse antibiotics and I told him I considered it but the only thing available was SMZs and I'm deathly allergic to sulfa drugs, so I figured if the cellulitis didn't kill me, the anaphylaxis would. HIS FACE oh my god. My punishment was a HUGE shot of antibiotics that burned like fire, and then a week of 4x a day giant drugs (that I refer to as horse pills, which is less funny now than it used to be lol). Another fun moment was when the nurse was taking my vitals and she asked me if I had experienced any depression in the prior two weeks. I deadpanned "not more than anyone else living through a global pandemic, why?"... she stopped, laughed, and was like "okay I'll give you that one".  

I guess I should also backtrack, 48 hours before going to Urgent Care (about 24 hours after applying the first poultice to my elbow), I was throwing alfalfa to the boys when I STUCK MY HAND IN A HORNET'S NEST and got stung repeatedly. I was like welp, its here anyway, might as well, and just poulticed my entire hand at that point. 

Cici was irrationally terrified of my hand, I wish the video would embed correctly of her running over for pets, seeing my hand, and tucking tail to run away. Such a weird little dog haha. 

At least my arena still drains and drags up perfectly after 10 straight days of rain and one sunny day!

More eating my feelings. 

Also retail therapy. My barn fans were due for replacing anyway and these ARE AMAZING. See more photos further down. 

After my hornet encounter on Saturday of the long weekend, on Sunday, DH got stung pulling bales out of the shed. By BEES. So he dressed up to do battle with the bees. 

Spraying the bale with a vinegar/water solution. Obviously can't use POISON because I need my horses to eat this. I hate stinging insects with a burning, fiery passion. 

Why yes that was him flipping me off haha. When I got to work Tuesday and reenacted this story, I had my coworkers in stitches. They think I need a reality TV show. Lord knows we'd have plenty of material! 

More sunrise pics. 

A very hot and happy noodle dog after a run around the front yard. For the first time in 5+ months she did her normal levitating Cici run, where she just flat out launches and her ears flap and she looks like a little hoverboard just springing through the grass. I honestly wasn't ever sure I would see her do it again after the marathon of drugs and treatments and infinite setbacks, and I just sat in the gravel driveway and cried tears of happiness. I am so excited to show the vet the video today at her appointment. 

One night last week DH had to work late, so I was responsible for locking up the chickens. AND FOUND THIS. DH hasn't been picking eggs up off the floor and this broody bitch hen hatched out two chicks. Our coop isn't set up for wee babies (there is a very tall ramp to go outside and if they misjudge it and fall off they will probably die) so I had to beg a chick brooder off the neighbors (who just got done raising a set) and move them to the garage. We had gotten rid of all of our chick stuff because DH swore we were done raising chicks. 

Hard to see the one on the right because he blends in with the shavings, but there ya go. I was bitching about it in a chat with my friends and Jen told me that I have the weirdest marital problems of anyone she knows. She's not wrong haha. 

SASSY

To compound the "weirdest marital problems" saga, I asked DH to pick up chick feed on his way home the next day. Somehow that turned into FOUR MORE BABY CHICKENS. I guess my dream of letting the existing chickens all die of old age/be snatched by foxes so we could have a chicken-free farm were silly.... So now we have 4 sapphire olive eggers to go with the 2 chicks of indiscriminate breeding. 

That's okay, I'll still keep him I guess. Here he is installing those new fans from a few photos up. 

Holy shit do they  move a lot of air!

Cinna was so alarmed when we first turned hers on haha. 

She got over it quickly though. One setting 1 those fans move more air than my previous ones on 3, and those were decent fans they replaced!

They definitely appreciated them during the heat wave though!

Cinna struggles every summer with bites on her legs that she chews on and turns into giant bleeding wounds, so I decided to mix things up this year. I'd been using some other fly boots but they just sort of got wet and saggy around her pasterns which only made the issues worse. After 48 hours in Shoofly boots and using some silver honey, the sores are way further along than we get in a normal year, so I guess I am reluctantly a convert and will eventually get some for everybody. 

More eating my feelings this weekend. 

I made Snickerdoodles, but for half of them I subbed out pumpkin pie spice instead of cinnamon in the sugar mixture. They turned out super well!

Cinna lost her new fly mask and normally I can find it by taking a few laps in the golf cart, but that didn't work last weekend, so Ruby got to hack out bareback in a halter (while I wore shorts, after mounting from a bale of hay in the barn, #safetythird lol). 

Cici had been doing so well we cautiously tried to reintegrate her into the bed - it went about as well as the photo haha. She doesn't make any noise or audibly growl, so Cooper had no idea he was annoying her so much until I moved him. 

Better photo of the chicks, who are growing like little weeds!

So there you have it! All caught up on my weirdness over the last 6 weeks. Hopefully the next 6 weeks brings less weirdness and more riding :) (assuming I get my saddle back soon, haha).