Horse and House

    The nice woman vet came on Thursday and checked out the horses.  To our immense relief, Sarah's not as badly off as we thought.  She is underweight, but not alarmingly so.  We're on track with what we're feeding her, but are to add a cup of safflower oil to her Equine Senior ration to boost the calories in it.  We will also have to have some sharp points on her teeth filed down, but we can have this done with a different drug than the one that caused the convulsions last time.  She's now getting an anti-inflammatory pill  twice a day to see if that helps with her stiffness.  Finally, it turns out that the lump on her jaw is caused by wads of food getting stuck in a gap where she's missing a tooth.  Pull out the wad and - voila! - the lump magically disappears.  She also needs to be bathed twice a week with medicated shampoo to take care of a skin condition.  Although it sounds like there's a lot wrong with our old girl, everything is manageable with nothing drastically serious (other than old age, which we can do nothing about).  I'm happy.

    She also told us that Corny is fat.  Who knew?  We're supposed to be able to feel his ribs when passing our hands over his sides -- ok, so it's been so long, that I didn't even know the guy had ribs.  She then informed us that he's not supposed to have butt cheeks above his tail.  Corny begs to differ and was not pleased to learn that he still needs to lose about a hundred pounds -- the starvation diet along with the cruel exercise program is to continue (I'm actually relieved that he's not as grossly overweight as I'd feared).  He also will need to have his teeth filed down and a wolf tooth in the back looked at and maybe pulled.  Normal stuff.  Looks to be an expensive month for vets, though!

    The first morning of the Labor Day weekend.  Thank God for these three days in September that was put in place to honor workers.  This particular worker is a teacher who is relieved to have a short break from the craziness and hectic pace that mark the first few weeks of every school year.  I use the gift of this extra day to try to catch up on all the work I've let slide around Frogpond since school started.  I intersperse this with sitting at the dining room table, trying to catch up on all the work I'm already behind in with school.  The irony isn't lost on me.  That said, I'm also looking forward to some time to kick back and do a bit of absolutely nothing at all. 



    The one thing I'm over-the-moon, dancing-the-happy-dance grateful not to have to worry about this weekend is cleaning the house.  Once a month two wonderful, hard working ladies come to the house and clean it from top to bottom -- gone all the spider webs, dirt, scum, cat hair and the general yuck that marks life in the country (read: mouse poop).  Yesterday was the day Rosario and Agada came and swept, mopped, scrubbed and polished every room in the place (except for Bruce's lair...er, office.  If you know Bruce, you know why).  They even fed Bruce a lunch of homemade lamb burritos (with leftovers waiting for me in the fridge, bless their kind hearts).  I came home from a long day at school to a tidy little house that positively glowed with the care that had been lavished upon it.   Such a blessing!



Clean House (with dear Zelda already hard at work shedding hair on the floor)