New Year New Me: Pony Progress

Today I thought I’d mix up my morning “internesting” ritual (coffee and computer time, usually comfortably nested on the couch); I brought my laptop and my coffee into the horse pen. It's one of my New Year's Resolutions: spending more time hanging out with the horsies to work on gentling them. 

Progress up to this point, I'm sorry to say, is minimal. Our winter thus far has been virtually nonexistent, but their pen has lots of shade and what little snow we've gotten takes a long time to leave, resulting in a muddy, icy, frozen poo wonderland. This environment is, shockingly, not that enticing to spend time in. 


Currently it's about 35 degrees out, and cloudy, but my travel mug “bubba”--that’s the brand name, not a weird nickname for a cup--is excellent at keeping my coffee hot. My fingers, however, are chilly as I type, and my computer won’t connect the the wifi from the house. Dangit. I need some kind of slender-fingered gloves that would still allow typing, however, a) the house is far, and b) I don’t think I have any.

The horses are staring me down so hard. I put grain buckets at my feet so they HAVE to be my friends. (LOVE ME!) Petunia promptly cleaned out the one farther away from me, but both she and Lady Mike refuse to eat from the closer one. Maybe the computer is scary. Or the typing. God, horses are jumpy. The other day I brought out my actual clicky-shutter camera out to take photos of them and it was ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING.

Of course these ladies are particularly sensitive as they are Actual. Wild. Mustangs. that I got way ahead of myself in taking on, having no experience horse training and all, and now I’m super impatient and why won’t they let me pet them for the love of God let me pet you I promise you’ll like it! I tell them all the time how much they’ll like it. Why don’t they believe me?

[Aside: we aren’t completely stupid and/or inept, F.Y.I. While we (*I*) were very impulsive in rescuing the ladies, Dooley does have a horsey background—rodeo, riding, starting colts, etc.—and I am learning all I can about natural horsemanship from other mustang trainers. Don’t fret. Also, I've been told it can take over a year to get "untouched" mustangs touchable. 😒 We're around 5 months.]

Bruce the dog is eating horse poop again. Dogs are so gross. Whenever I’m scooping manure, I sing songs to the horses about capturing rogue poop nuggets and such; one day I had a song about Bruce the shit-eating mutt. I think it was to the tune of a Christmas song, but I can’t quite remember. It was so catchy. 

Speaking of shit-eating...thank you, faketrumptweet.com

[Unrelated: the other day I realized Trumpspeak is eerily similar to a Dr. Suess book, but much less clever. If only this speech generator could rhyme.]

https://trump-speech-generator.herokuapp.com/

My computer finally found the internet! And ponies be creepin’. Lady Mike is 100% Professor Petunia’s shadow—always by her side, always behind her. She will be bummed out when we put up panels to split the pen. SUCH GOOD, BRAVE GIRLS are now eating the near grain. But I stupidly itched my nose and Lady Mike spooked. So Fat Petunia got most of it.

I don’t think Fat Petunia is pregnant after all. She’s just a Lil’ Roundy (her rapper name). Or was wormy when she got here and just looked pregnant. While I am disappointed, it’s probably for the best since we still can’t handle her. SO instead of a baby horse, I’m pulling for a miniature mule, courtesy of my sister-in-law in Georgia. They just have to plop her in the back of their Cadillac SUV and drive her to Colorado. (After I get my husband to consent. But he vetoed getting another cat so…mini mule it is!) Maybe “Dandelion”, aka “Dandy”, will help convince the mustangs to love us.

~

I am inside now. My fingers are still a little numb but now I’m using a ceramic mug and a coffee warmer and it’s the best thing in the world to hold a hot mug in your cold hands. I want to become one with this warm mug.

So. My resolution to spend more time working with the ladies is part of a bigger resolution to better manage my time. Since I quit working, my days get away from me and I am sucked into a vortex of lack: lack of motivation, lack of productivity, and lack of energy. So I've resolved to spend a certain amount of time every day on the following (in no particular order): 1. Horses, 2. Fitness, 3. Art, 4. House. Since my NYNM didn't really start until the kids finally went back to school this week, I'm still slacking in the art and fitness categories. In my defense on the latter, I am still recovering from a killer workout class my friend dragged me to on Friday.  

When I was a hardcore badass with diet and exercise three years ago (how has it been that long?!), I lost all the weight I’d gained with the surrogacy and then some, but once we moved from the prairie to the city and I started slacking it all came back…and then some. I have 30 pounds to lose and am dreading getting back to the diet and exercise routine, but NEW YEAR NEW ME, right? At least scooping manure and hiking to and from the bus stop is a bit of exercise; now if only I could quit the beer and cookies. 

I got a knockoff Fitbit for Christmas, which is fun. I got over 11k steps yesterday, mostly doing chores and wrestling the Christmas tree into submission. When I hit 10k steps my little fitness watch started buzzing up a frenzy and flashing a little trophy. WINNER! (That’s the spike on Tuesday on the far right.) Today I went on a short walk after taking the kids to the bus stop and then cleaned the horse pen and already have 4,605 at 10am. WUTTUP.

My favorite part is the line graph on the days after Christmas, although it was by far my least favorite in real life. So Christmas was Monday, hence the no steps. The day after it, the looming cold finally hit me, and I sat around most of the day blowing my relentlessly productive nose (3,206 steps—surprisingly more than I’d expect for such a lazy sick day). That night, howeverrrrr, I got hit with the *stomach flu*, and spent the ENTIRE next day in bed. Literally. The 831 steps are apparently what it takes to get up and go to the bathroom and get water a few times.

Anyway, it’s kind of neat to track. Looking forward to wearing it on some hikes. 

It also has a *sedentary alert*, which, coincidentally, is going off right now, reminding me that I've been sitting too long and need to get my too-big-for-my-old-pants butt up and moving. 

Until next time (when I hope to have actual pony--and self--progress to report). 

Mountain Mama / Dirty Hermit

Revisiting and updating the ol' blog today, naturally as a mode of procrastination, when I should be working on some art. Sound familiar? Exactly like this post from 2012. And here we are in 2017. I have officially circled back to being a procrastinaty, pajama-wearing SAHM, aka Stay at Home Mom, otherwise known as  "saaaaaahhhhm".
I mean, what I tell people is that I'm a self-employed freelance professional legit artist and all that jazz, and I truly do have several projects I should be working on. I just have very little to show for it since moving.

Now my kids are in 2nd and 3rd grade. (How the bleep did that happen?) Since they both started being in school full-time I've been working, but now that we moved and I quit, I am "free".
Little did I know time flies when you're free. Like...the seven hours between the time I put them on the bus and the time I pick them up from the bus feels like two hours and I'm all whattheactualeffjusthappened.
The past couple weeks I've been unpacking and getting settled in the house, but now that is mostly done and I have no more excuses to put off working on artwork...except, oh wait, I need to spray paint this patio set and hang these solar-powered twinkle lights on the deck...and now I need to blog. My sister says so.
I've also been Instagramming the crap out of everything because everything up here is so IG-worthy:

My writing brain is broken, you know. All I have is this colloquial conversational text speak now. No artful articulate literature for you! I also fear that now that my kids are potty trained I am going to be desperately lacking in subject matter. "No poo stories??" you cry. Sadly not.

OH BUT WAIT! BUT WAIT! YOU'RE IN LUCK! It just so happens that today we are having the septic tank replaced at our new house. Apparently the old tank had a crack in it and failed inspection, but there wasn't time to replace it before closing so the sellers just cut us a check. Boo-yah. Anyway, we are between tanks--tankless, as it were--and aren't supposed to flush.
This morning, my 7-year-old girl had to go #2, right as we had to be leaving the house (OF COURSE), and she flushed.
I apologized to the tractor fella that one of us *might* have forgotten about the not flushing and he goes, "I noticed."
OOOHHH SHIT.
Literally.

On a related note, we have horses again. From a mustang rescue though, so they are wild and we can't pet them yet and it's killing me. But they poop SO MUCH OMG SO MUCH POOP so maybe I can blog about that. Luckily horse poo isn't nearly as gross as kid poo, and far less gross than dog poo, so I don't mind having to pick up an entire wheel barrow full of it every other day.
The kids named them Professor Petunia and Lady Mike. They are both mares. The Professor might be pregnant. The Lady is a jerk to the Professor, but I don't totally blame her because Petunia eats all the treats. The end.

We live in the mountains now. Not the prairie, not the burbs. The actual mountains. We have views (unfortunately obscured at the moment because of all the horrific wildfires in the North and West). We have trees: mostly the piney variety but also a few aspens, which I love. We have tree houses (yes, plural). We have a mother-forking zip line. We have weird grey stripey mountain squirrels with pointy ears. We have mule deer. We have elk...poop, anyway...haven't seen the elk themselves yet. (See how I worked the poop in? Look what I do for you.)

The mountains feel more like home than the prairie or the city ever did.

Living in the mountains works well with my old saaaaaahhhhm wardrobe of athleisure-pajama-wear. I've pretty much quit wearing makeup (except Wunderbrow because you only have to do your eyebrows like once every three days, so, duh), and only wear sports bras and flip flops--in addition to a t-shirt and yoga pants, of course. Don't make this weird.
I miss wearing my cute clothes, and I miss seeing people more regularly, but...BUT...not really. I am quite the happy hermit to be honest. I love having company, but only if they don't care that I'm a dirty mountain pajama hermit.

I already acquired the necessary mountain home accessories: a hummingbird feeder, a wind chime, a hammock. My husband already acquired the "necessary" tractor--I mean, skid loader. My bad. He's going to use it to build his "necessary" shop, which I am actually in full support of so he can move all his tools and stuff out of my studio. YES, I have studio. It's attached to the barn. It has heat and electricity and windows and it's MINE. For now I will continue my tradition of using the dining room studio.

Which reminds me...I have 7 weeks to do 18 illustrations and then 2 months after that to do 4 more paintings before Christmas. Perhaps I've adequately procrastinated for today?

If I had to walk out to the barn/studio it would be much harder to be distracted by things. Just sayin'.

In conclusion, we are all spoiled brats now.