The Best Laid Plans

In our last post I was all excited about avoiding any participation in some marriage building exercises around the farm. As always our best laid plans pretty well got blown out of the water. This is how I ended that post: “there will be no marriage building exercises, funny stories, or pictures to memorialize the things that went wrong . . . at least that is my fervent hope.” Well, I got 2 of the 3 things I was not hoping for. I am sorry to report there are no pictures to memorialize the things that went wrong. Alas there were marriage building exercises and funny stories. Mind you these things were not funny to me or Jason, but one of them at least was probably funny to any innocent bystanders.

The day started off innocently enough. Jason was working away with one of our employees pulling out the gate posts that needed to be replaced while I was feeding horses and getting ready for the farrier to arrive. Things were going a little too well. Jason magically had all of the supplies and tools he needed on hand, the horses were being cooperative, and I was leading horses into the barn right as the farrier pulled into our driveway. We were operating like a well oiled machine. However the wheels fell off the well oiled machine at that point. All of the wheels fell off.

I will share with you the first incident that sent our day on a steep downhill slide. Since all of the horses seeing the farrier were being trimmed, the farrier arrives in her car with trimming tools in the hatchback. She gets out of her car, and our employee’s super friendly and exuberant dog jumps into her car. No big deal, she and the dog exchange greetings, the dog bounds around all over the car for a couple of minutes (that is an important detail), then she calls the dog to get out of the car. The dog jumps out and she shuts the door to keep the dog from immediately jumping back in. A half second too late she realizes the dog had stepped on the button to lock the doors. You could literally see the dirty paw print on the button. The car was now locked with the keys and all of the farrier tools locked in.

I will spare you the boring details of all of us attempting, and failing, to break into the car, of smashing my finger in one of said attempts to break into the car, of the fact that the cement for the new gate posts was quickly setting up while we were all distracted with the locked car . . . no, I won’t bore you with all of those stories. You can use your imagination and fill in the blanks easily enough.

The locked car with farrier tools in it was about the best thing that happened from that point on. Like I said, once the downhill slide started it was steep and long. As I reviewed my day with my sister last night her comment was “OMG, after about 10am you should have just gone back to bed and skipped today.” Hindsight is always 20/20 isn’t it? I hope everyone had a better day than we did yesterday!

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Johnny and Africa having some play time (Lighty moved in to graze below)

Norman and Cuff Links

Hemi and Thomas on the move

Baby and Trigger

Slinky and Snappy

What is wrong with this picture? The fact that the horses have blankets on. In late March. I thought it was officially spring?? It felt like spring until the first day of spring. What’s up with that?? This is Kennedy hanging out while Oskar prepared to roll; everyone seemed to think rolling was a great idea after they had their blanket put on.