Not even Kodak could capture all of these crazy memories!

YEAH MORE Truly Intelligent People!!! Although I fear you'll think you've ended up in the wrong place after reading today's post!!! hahaha hmmmmm any chance we could get up to 20 b4 I go south?!?!?! (that'd be FRIDAY people WOOHOO!!!! :) Comeon, any lurkers left out there???

hahaha omg Kerri I was totally thinking of you and the rolling-the-roundbale-in-the-mud today! For those of you who weren't there for that (which would be everyone OTHER than Kerri :) our boss had gotten the tractor stuck in the mud while trying to put a round-bale out for the horses and was NOT happy about it. Then Kerri had the brilliant idea that she and I could ROLL the roundbale the rest of the way. Uphill. In the knee-deep-tractor-sucking mud. N somehow convinced me to go along w/ this. By the end I (who can ALWAYS stay clean - or that's the story anyways) was absolutely COVERED in mud and my sides hurt from laughing so hard. I'm sure the horses watching us thought we were insane :) It was definitely a you-had-to-be-there moment, but I have faith that those of you w/ vivid imaginations can come up w/ a pretty accurate visual.

Anyways -- fast-forward a couple years and you get today. The goal was simple -- take the XC start-box (think heavy wood portable fence) and move it to Summer Barn (Summer Barn is WAY @ the top of the mountain -- basically temporary stabling for their horse-shows etc. Cute little barn -- in the winter it's used as storage for all the stuff they don't want to leave outside).

Temp's about 5 deg and it's sunny out. Not bad for this kind of job. Now the farm truck was not easily accessible, so we took the gaiter instead. NP. Except that when we got to the XC start box we realized that the pieces are all significantly BIGGER than the gaiter’s trunk (for lack of a better word). And they're heavy and awkward w/ big feet on the bottom of them -- but the gaiter being the size it is, only ONE foot could fit in at a time. And of course they're NOT big enough to have BOTH feet out (which would've balanced it all).

Anyways -- Tory was determined that we could do this, so we set about figuring out HOW. And as we maneuvered the first (of 6) pieces of the start box around to figure out how best to do this, it started raining. Classic. Well w/ some creative stacking we managed to get 5 of them on. Ok from side to side, but precariously balanced front to back...

So we climb back into the gaiter -- she's driving. I'm sitting in the passenger seat, twisted around to hold on to the one KEY piece of our stack -- so long as it stayed in the gaiter, so should the rest *g*. And to add to this, Remy (the dog!) is trying to sit on my lap, while I'm twisted around backwards. And Remy is NOT a lap-dog size :) He doesn't outweigh me yet, but prob will by this time next year!

So we start slowly moving. And the rain changes to hail. And the wind directs it right at us. Tory's trying soooo hard to get us up the mountain w/o running into any of the XC jumps while being blinded by the hail. I'm doing everything I can to keep the stuff from sliding off the back. Remy's keeping guard and shaking like crazy cause the temp dropped like 10 deg in 5 mins or less... And then we get to the first steep part of the XC course... Still trying to get UP the mountain to Summer Barn... Now you'll recall, the instability was front-back. Which means as we start to go up, that damn gravity interferes and tries to pull our wonderful creation back DOWN. hahaha Well there were def a few moments that I wasn't convinced we were going to make it w/o losing everything. N by this point the weather was REALLY horrid so it was very much a laugh or cry moment -- there was a lot of laughing going on throughout this endeavor.

We finally get it where it should be and then have to figure out how to disassemble our wonderful stack! hahaha Well gravity actually (albeit unintentionally) helped w/ that -- fortunately we didn't break any in the process (although one, admittedly, may need a quick tune-up before it gets used next year!). Then there was the issue of the stall door wouldn't stay open so we kept getting stuck. It was really a bad comedy routine -- under the truth is stranger than fiction category; if I'd made it up it would've been rejected as unbelievable! But we did, eventually, get all the pieces safely inside. And returned all the way back for the one lone one we'd left behind... And it was almost harder to get up because it didn't have any others to counter-balance it so it was unstable side-to-side as WELL as front-to-back. But by this point at least the hail had turned to snow.

I, however, was still dressed in my 'sunny and not-to-cold' clothing. Which was def NOT waterproof. So by the end of this I was pretty freezing :( Tory made the executive decision that the next chore on the list should be the one in the only heated place on the farm :) hahaha and by the time we were done that it was sunny and warm again. The weather gods were having fun at our expense today! >;-P

And later this afternoon it was nice enough to go hacking. Seriously. And I met a deer. One deer, all by himself, who had staked out his place on the path and was NOT about to let us pass. A troll-deer I swear! hahaha and little RC who taught me all about Cow-Eggs (ummm see the other post :), wasn't the least bit phased by the troll-deer. I, otoh, was far more concerned about a prey animal that doesn't run away than I was about a rock -- but what do I know? We took another loop around, but sure enough when we got back the deer was still there. I have no idea what it was doing. It's very lucky I wasn't a hunter! It eventually meandered enough off the path that we could pass, but stood and watched us the whole way... I almost wonder if it's the same one I met at the water jump a few wks ago -- it wasn't the least bit concerned about my presence either. I do wish I'd had my camera w/ me though -- could've had lots of close-up deer pics today!

Lesson learned today -- do NOT, under any circumstances, have a pizza and a GIANT hot-chocolate right before a dressage lesson. No matter HOW friggin cold you are. Or how you THINK you have a good 3 h to digest before the lesson (time got bumped up significantly :)... Just don't do it. It's not worth the risk. N of course it *would* be the first serious dressage lesson I've had since I've been here. Only advantage to that is it was short cause RC can't DO serious dressage for very long yet!