Do you take crazy in your tea?

"One lump or two?" asks the Voice Inside My Head.
"Ooh you know me, I'll take all the crazy you've got!" says Brain. "And I know I really shouldn't, but I think I can squeeze in one more slice of loony pie."

 Heaven's to Betsy, it's been a long time! I shan't bore you with the usual rot: 'I apologize for leaving you without notice! I've been so[insert a thousand more o's] busy!'
 First of all, I am quite sure you all can cope a week or two without hearing from yours truly {it might even be good for your health}. If you've found that you can't, however, and that you find yourself wondering why you even bother to go on in my absence, all unkempt hair and yesterday's tea cups; here is what I say: Get a life.
All that being said, we shall move on.

Oh what things have happened while Eldest Sister is here! So many things. Like shopping...
 Summer clothes for me. I cannot believe how hard it is to find decent jeans anymore. They're either all mangled with holes or they make your legs feel like Polish sausage. Thinking of this analogy I start to snicker at myself in that tiny little dressing room. Then I catch the reflection in the mirror of myself not-laughing while struggling to extricate myself from the ridiculous things and suddenly Getting Out of These Jeans Alive has gone to level Two. Feeling fit to burst {not helping my escape any}, I give up trying to hold the chuckles in and try and focus on getting out of these...dratted...pants! By this time I'm laughing pretty hard and not all that silently when my fingers decide they think this is funny too so they'll just take the day off and go all wobbly and useless. I imagine what my neighbors must be thinking which doesn't help my situation at all. Just when I'm beginning to think I'm going to die in this little corner of Kohl's; that they'll one day find me, my body wasted away but the skinny jeans a-size-too-small remaining, when there's a sinister knock on the door. "Are you alright, ma'am?"
 That sobers me up, right quick.
After assuring the kindly matron of the store that I am just trying to kick these wretched pants off and not in fact having a seizure, {aaaand declining her offer to help}, the pants, as though feeling they've had me suffer enough, release their hold.
 It is with triumph that I march out of the dressing rooms and fling the too-smalls on the To Put Back {aka Everyone Hated Themselves In These Things} counter.
 "There you are!" calls Mum. "Did those not work?" No, Mum, no they did not. "Well then, try these," She hands me a stack several feet high of blue. And it is in this moment that I realized something profound: I hate shopping.

We also did other things. Big things. Like planting all our gardens. This is the first year I finally got to use my kitchen garden boxes -- or raised beds might be a better term. They're 4'x12'. So that's a lot of dirt to shift to fill them, too. With a shovel. Just so you know, my arms and back survived. In fact they did more than that -- they conquered! *tribal whoop*
 I planted my boxes with cherry tomatoes, lots strawberries, peas, carrots, radishes, lettuce and other leafy roughage.
 The big garden on the hill got much of the same treatment with tomatoes, a huge patch of squashes {squashi?}, cucumbers, beans, and four rows of corn. We also got herbs and things for pots, and a lovely flower arrangement for the new barrel-halves planter things for our deck.
 Little Brother got his pumpkin patch again this year, and is already making plans for a giant pumpkin fest this Fall.

{This is LB robing up to acolyte {light the candles} at church, by the way.}

So those are some of the highlights of this month. Not so glam is that Double Stuff {the little black & white pony} foundered last week. On a scale of one to ten I'm not sure how bad he rated, but the poor little bugger could barely stump around the first few days, and his feet were on fire. Because Da was leaving for a few days...aaaand because I wanted to play vet, Stuffy became my patient. We put him on Bute right away. Bute is a NSAID, a pain killer/blood thinner. Basically Ibuprofen for horses. And that's all I really have to do: Once a day give him a bit of mash of apples and karo syrup to hide the taste of the Bute powder. And make sure he doesn't get any worse, which, as of yesterday he's doing great. He even ran around for a while.

 I did learn more about founder, though, thanks to my awesome book The Horse Doctor Is In by Brent Kelly [DVM], I highly recommend it to all you horse peoples. I love it to pieces.

 For example, geldings are much more likely to founder than mares or stallions, and ponies more than horses. So if you have a gelding pony {like ol' Stuffy} they have a saying, "There are two kinds: those that have foundered, and those that will."

 Founder is an ailment of the feet caused by too much rich pasture or feed. In fact, if your horses get into the grain barn and gorge themselves, vets say you should be more worried about founder than colic. In any case, call your vet as both can be and often are serious.

You've probably noticed by now that none of these photos follow any sort of theme either with each other or the post itself. Well, let me say this: I love my camera. I love my Jack. And we have been snapping pictures and just having the best times. I take my little Rebel everywhere.
 I've been looking for projects to do {A Day In the World: check} but so far haven't found any to my liking. Most are competitions, which are okay, but I take better pictures when I know they aren't going to be judged. So I've been turning over in my mind to just have weekly project on this blog. A theme. Something to give me direction. Anyone want to join me? I suppose I could add a link tool and it could be like a blog hop for all us camera-crazies. Si? Well, comment if you're interested and we'll see where it goes from there.

-Gwyn