Changed but the same really.

Woodrow and Bruin have been at their new home a few weeks now. I’ve seen videos of them in their giant grassy pasture and of them being groomed and loved on by their new family.

It’s a hard thing… watching them move on. There’s a small selfish part of me that wanted them to not do well and need to come back. The part of me that grew up watching after-school horse girl specials. I wanted them to be unhappy with anyone but me… but not really. I trained Woodrow to be a good boy no matter who held his lead, and Bruin… well Bruin is a pony and while he has good manners, it’s always with a dash of Satan.

Woodrow and Bruin walked up on the trailer on their own, were calm as they left and were calm when they were unloaded. They both know Jesse. His family is equally kind. They know they are in a good, safe place. Having several acres of old stand grass and a tree lined pasture doesn’t hurt either. The boys know they’ve got a good thing and in return Jesse’s girls will learn many lessons from Woodrow’s enduring patience to Bruin’s pony-may-care devilishness. In all honesty, it’s an ideal outcome.

And the farm continues on.

The garden grows, the pigs get out, Dyna gets rounder with her September calf, the chickens hide in the driveway trees and Edison attacks the parked cars. Everything, while different, is very much the same.

Changes….

Way back when I first began all these blogs, it was with the thought that we would always be a farm. And there for a while it was all about the farm and the farm life. Then the adventures of childhood came along and we talked about that for a while and then somehow my blog turned into this weird obit blog as people and animals died. I really hated that, so I quit writing here at all.

Now our farm life is fading a bit. It’s been a handful or more years since I’ve ridden, my children did not take up my hobby, choosing others instead, which is great, but makes it harder for me to justify having a pasture full of horses and a whole room dedicated to a hobby I just don’t do anymore.

It’s a weird place really. My entire life I’ve been the horse girl. Entering the non-horse era is sort of weird. I mean I do still have horses, but the herd is thinning and the horses I do have are pretty much here on palliative care. Pip passed. I didn’t have the heart to do an obit for him, it still hurts from the unexpected and unbelievable nature. Thor, Guinness… they are all fading away. Lucy and Jen are getting older and more fragile, their years racing starting to show up in stiff muscles and failing joints. Fawkes’ looks like an old campaigner that’s looking forward to the fields around the Rainbow Bridge. They are happy, but their age is showing.

I was approached with an opportunity for Woodrow and Bruin to go live with our farrier. Woodrow has the onset of canker in his hindfeet and I just don’t have the ability to treat that the way I did with Pip. So I’m going to let them go. There is a lot of consideration going into such a big change and if my farrier wasn’t one of the best guys in the world I would never let it happen.

It’s a big change. One that I struggled with for a couple weeks. But I’m at peace with it now, mostly. There are days when I think… I can do this again… I can be the horse girl!! But realistically, it’s just not feasible.

I’m not saying that I will never ride again, or own horses or whatever….. It’s just that for this era, I need to focus on surviving and not playing at horse girl.

My goal for 2023 is to try to write through some of the new changes in our lives and how we are dealing with them. I’m sure there will still be farm posts, because as soon as I say there aren’t going to be farm posts that will be all I post, such is the whims of the writing muses I suppose.

For anyone that made it this far… thanks for reading!! Hopefully I’ll see you around here again soon.

Judy….

My cousin Judy used to call me and say,

“Hey, it’s me, your pest”

and I’d say

“Hey Judy!! You’re not a pest!”

And then we would have a nice little chat about whatever… sometimes something that was going on in her family and sometimes something that was going on in mine. Sometimes we talked about cooking or craft projects.

More than once she called just when I really needed to vent and after hearing the gist of my complaints she would say,

“Well help my never!”

and would then precede to agree with the injustice of everything.

A couple days ago Judy’s daughter texted me to say that Judy had passed away during the early morning hours. She had texted so that I could gently tell M as Judy and M were very close and news of that magnitude should not be shared via a text.

Later on I read moving tributes to Judy, written on Facebook by her children. Each one encompassing the love they had for their mother and the heartache they felt on her passing.

I’ve been trying for the past few days to write about Judy and I keep finding more and more to say and yet… trying to write it all down turns into a jumbled mess of stories that don’t mean anything to anyone but me.

In the kitchen I searched for direction and my eyes fell on the wall of cross-stitch. All expertly stitched, colors modified to perfection, nearly popping off their canvases. All stitched by Judy. Tears came and both M and I sat and recounted story after story after story of all the good times with Judy.

We moved one of the wardrobes from upstairs down to our bedroom and there tucked in the back of the top shelf, a knitted baby’s cardigan… complete with a ridiculous puffball on the peak of the hood. More tears as Judy had knitted it for Sophie nearly 20 years ago.

I searched through a box of photos, looking for pictures of the horses to add to my hall of horses… and there are pictures of M cutting Judy’s hair and Judy dipping ice cream for Sophie before the fireworks during the Fourth.

Back in the kitchen, my eye this time falls on the bookcase of cook books and the volumes of Cooks Illustrated that Judy found at a yard sale and bought for a few dollars.

Judy… you are everywhere in my house.

Everywhere.

The day before you died M and I talked about you all day. We didn’t know you were so unwell. We had seen the post about the twins and I assumed that is what caused the trip down memory lane, but now I wonder if it wasn’t that ‘thing we do’… you know the one.

So… what are we going to do now? Who do we call to join us on random “I heard about a pony at Devil’s Fork… wanna go with me to get him?” or “SAFF is in the morning, you wanna go?” Who’s going to randomly (and perfectly) show up in the driveway in the midst of M on a tirade of cleaning?

Who’s going to be there when something big happens in our life?

When I screw up and M needs to vent? When we decide to fly halfway around the world and back with 2 new lives to add to our insanity… who’s going to stay up until we get home? Whose kitchen can I borrow when the oven breaks and I NEED to make cookies? Whose house am I going to ride my horse to so I can knock on the door and ask for breakfast? Who is M going to call when she can’t remember who’s related to who and how and where and when and all that?

Somehow I think you thought we didn’t rely on you… but we did.

Somehow I think you thought that you were the pest… but you weren’t.

Kawaii Box January 2019

So it’s pretty much common knowledge that I am a big fan of subscription boxes, or blind boxes or fukubukuro bags. I think it is because if feels very much like receiving a gift from somebody that knows you like a genre and sent you a care package based around that idea.

I absolutely love pretty much anything kawaii. This probably comes as a shock to anyone who knows me in the real world as I’m the most down to earth, house-wren plain person you will literally ever meet. Brown is my go-to color, even with a brief foray into unicorn and mermaid hair I still read as practical and sensible, not whimsical and cute. Never cute (except that one time when I was about 6 when this kid at the pizza restaurant told my dad I was cute because I had a dimple then proceeded to try to flirt with me which was completely a waste of his time because I was totally dating Spring, my horse).

ANYWAY!

So my January 2019 Kawaii Box came today and as expected it is absolutely adorable…. I mean look at the cute faces on the little stars! SQUEEEE!

And the tissue paper! Look how cute! I can tell you, there have been many bad farm days that have been brightened just from this entirely adorable packaging!!

Kawaii Box ships from Singapore and is filled to the brim with Kawaii goodness! Usually there is some sort of squishy, some sort of plushie, some sort of pen, some sort of stationery and sometimes some sort of snack.

pardon Momo photobomb… he was after the tofu charm!!

This time we have a Moomin plushie, DIY candy kit, a little tofu squishy charm, a whale shaped snowflake paper punch, candy shaped highlighters, washi tape set, a dessert sticker set, a rubber stamp set featuring what I think is a chubby cheeked cat, a Card-captor Sakura pen, and a spray bottle with a what I believe is a panda face, tho it’s tan and that’s throwing me a bit as I want that to be a raccoon but the shape of the eye patches aren’t right for that either so I think it must be a panda. Personally I think that’s a lot of super cute items for less than $20 shipped!

The thing that I genuinely like about Kawaii Box is that it typically contains things that I can’t find on one of my many Asian market adventures. It also contains things that I actually will use! Even the Moomin and tofu charm are happily received as they become a part of my Kawaii Christmas Tree!!

So if you need a little kawaii in your life, I’d highly recommend the Kawaii Box! Much like all subscription boxes they have a couple different ways to subscribe, either 1 month, 6 month or 12 month renewals with the 12 month version being the most economical altho it requires a bigger upfront purchase than the monthly renewal. And if you really are interested in trying out the box then click here to get $5 off your first box!

The year that is new

So it’s a new year. Again. 2019 came in like a battlefield at our little corner of the world. Heavy fog made every blast seem right on top of us while the sky turned a myriad array of colors… RED… BLUE… GREEN and GOLD GLITTER!!! All with a booming and crackling that sent all my horses, from the staid drafts to the diminutive ponies, into an abject panic. There was running! There was neighing! There was falling! There was terror!! And then thankfully there was rain (one of the few times you’ll hear a person from SC thanking the winter rains this season).

Our usual 12 days of Christmas tradition sort of fell by the wayside this year and that’s ok. Maybe we have reached saturation with the tradition or maybe I just couldn’t find a lot of awesomely cool things for J but my gifts were limited to alcohol (GoT wines!) and a telescope I found on sale at Sam’s (ok, so it’s not like a fancy telescope but you can take pics with it and that’s pretty awesome… plus it was half off so that’s super awesome). I’m not sure how J will ever top my hooded Pusheen robe… complete with cat ears!! KAWAIIII!!!

Our fascination with Japan continues. Those of you who follow our Instagram may have seen our first attempt at a Japanese style breakfast. It turned our fabulously if maybe not entirely accurate. Salted salmon is not widely available where I live so I had to make that myself. It’s one of the easiest recipes ever… and this coming from someone that doesn’t generally do the fish thing. The Japanese style breakfast adventure also yielded an unexpected discovery. I absolutely love umeboshi with rice. Is there any other way to have rice? I don’t think so.

Cycling is still a thing. After 2 years I’m fairly certain it’s not going to go away. I tolerate it better than I once did, probably owing to the fact that I met several nice cyclists that ride with the boys. There are still a poo-ton of crappy ones out there, but the handful of good ones have made a huge difference in my perception of the sport. I’m impervious to equestribitches but figuring out the cycling equivalent took me a while.

We are making plans to have more riding this year. I took Pip out after a nearly 2 year hiatus and I’m not sure who was more excited. Pip is the kind of horse that really loves a job so this long rest has not been his cup of tea at all. His hoof is fully healed and the difference is simply amazing! He is forward and eager where before he was willing but a constant push which left us both exhausted after every ride. I’m looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish this year. I have no big plans. I simply want to ride my pony… be that in the woods or on the quiet roads or at a pace… at this point I don’t care so long as I get some dedicated pony time.

I’ve been doing a few art projects that I can’t currently share nor talk about. I’m waiting to exchange Christmas gifts with a friend and then I can share the process pics on Instagram and will probably write a blog post as well. I’ve never really considered myself much of an artist… but this project has sparked so much creative happiness that I’m already working on more!

So that’s a brief and not at all comprehensive update ahead of more blogging this year. Hopefully there will be art stuff, cooking, unboxings, horses, cycling and all the other ten thousand things we find to do around here! If you’re looking for a more daily Tapsalteerie fix then I’d suggest following us on Instagram as I tend to post there often. I hope everyone is having a good new year so far and here’s hoping I actually do keep on blogging… for the first time in a long time I’ve felt my old blogging voice stirring and I’m hoping it means my years long writer’s block is breaking!