The funny thing is others in my life respect the fact that I’m right most of the time and come to me for advice. I give everyone advice about everything. It’s a lot of work to be counselor to everyone and as I find myself crawling on the ground trying to get back on my feet, people still come to me for advice. I’m turning into my father and just like him , I can’t take my own advice. I can't see myself. It's crazy really to spend so much time worrying about everyone else’s problems. It keeps you from seeing your own i guess, until life brings you face to face with yourself.

I am a product of my raising there is no doubt. Not knowing how to read or write until I was 12 put a fire under my ass. “I wasn’t retarded! I just didn’t talk to adult and I didn’t want too learn to read or write so leave me a lone.” This was me then and still me today some what. When I’m trying to prove how smart I am, I’m always made the fool, by excepting my foolishness I gain wisdom that was meant to be shared. If I could listen to my own advice I would be golden but I’m a retard and I listen to that other voice in my head instead my pride.

Some might wonder why I am so open about my life and all I can say is I am facing fears. Not on purpose it’s just showing up on my door, so what the heck, at each new situation I find myself entangled in I realize It’s really not as bad as I had imagine and I am learning how to laugh at myself. Something I have not been able to do before. I was right and that is what is important, at least to me anyways. Being wrong wasn’t something I did very often. When I knew I was wrong I would except it gracefully but I work very hard to be right. I don’t know why I’m this way it’s the way I have always been and the way my father was. Well there comes a point in one life where you are truly aware that you have no control over life. It’s spiraling out of control down roads you only imagined not going. Is imagining not going the same as going? Anyhow this last year I have been on my knees crawling but I’m still moving forward with purpose. I’m here to say, I have been wrong! More so lately and its not so bad really. So what? I’m a dork like everyone else and I have a lot of great friends to laugh about it with. I am looking for my brighter side of life. I have seen the dark side of fear and now I’m looking for the brighter side of hope.

The strangest year ever Part Two:

I woke up to find more whasps in my house this morning another cluster..I have spray this time. suckers

As I go to make my morning coffee, amazingly enough I found my little friend the fog back in the sink again.

Why was a fog in my sink again?

I figure this must be a sign. I did tell him to clean up and try again so this time I gave him a little kiss but nothing he is still a frog! so I let him go outside.

flying by the seat of my panties

There are thing in life I said I would not do or I would not do again.
My last minute weekend started off when my friend Ashley went to my Wed. Night Reining Clinics and started chatting with my other friend Kelly about this Paint Horse Show Kelly was going to this Friday and that we all needed to go. Because the numbers of entries are down, the show is waving all late fees. They convinced me I have been working to hard and need some time away from the ranch and with my paint horse sale coming up, this paint show was the place to be. I needed to go to promote my sale and this seemed a good opportunity for that very thing. I decide to go, the only thing is we are Reiner’s and wanted to show in Reining but Ashley’s horse is a breeding stock paint and they don’t allow Breeding Stock Paints to show in Reining for some reason? The only Classes offered for breeding stock paints is pleasure and trail witch are early in the morning and reining after. We decide to try the trail class just for fun. We had one day to get ready to show in a class I haven’t shown in in almost 20 years. We set up the course and practiced backing and side passing through the course several times until we could do it clean.
Fixing up my ranch and halter braking all these adult horses has taken all my energy lately and my own horses have been on a break from training. I now realize I have to perform a freestyle reining pattern on Sat. with my quarter horse stallion Cody I had agreed to do before deciding to take on this paint horse sale. I would need to take Cody along for he is only ridden once a week at my clinic lately and really needs some of my time before the Freestyle Performance in two days. Horses have to be bathed trailer packed. We have to figure out what we should wear for a pleasure trail class. I still had some of my old pleasure show cloths? After deciding not to wear the twenty year old show cloth;0) sticking to our Reiner look was the best decision we made thus far..
Friday 5:00am and still dark out, time to feed and load up the horses. Cody new pen is wet from the drip line I broke while weed whacking and haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet, his feet have been caked with mud lately and now I realize his feet have taken a turn for the worst and are sliding off his shoes and cracking. His feet look terrible but I will have to deal with this when I get back, and take him anyway, hoping his shoes holds on until then, and off we go too the Horse Show.
We left a little late as usual and Ashley gives me the lecture, fortunately Kelly is running a little late as well so Ashley gives up on me for now. We are going to meet at Saddle Creek Ranch and haul down with Kelly so we need to move all the stuff and horses over to her trailer. OK now Off we go too the Horse Show.

Despite getting off to a late start we are on the road now and excited about going when we blow out a tire on the trailer. We creep to the nearest tire place and seeing we have to wait, Ashley and I decide to get something to eat in the little doughnut shop across the street. I chugged my milk without smelling it and yes you guessed it, it was bad. Sick to my stomach now and really late to the show we decide to get some Mikes Hard Lemonade to settle our nerves and run across the street to the store. I’m not one to drink and ride. Training horses to me, is serious business but this trip is about fun and I’m not driving so what the heck.
We finally arrive at the Paint Horse Show and sign up for the trail breeding stock class witch they tell us we have an hour before the next class starts and so we go saddle. As we walk our horse over to the trail course, they are calling her number only thirty minute later and Ashley's mare is snorting at everything and not ready to relax at all so we have scratch the class. We ride our horse around for a bit and I try to get though the trail course now that they are done. I realize we would have made complete fool of ourselves if we had not scratched, for the trail course are way tighter than back in my day and now you need a pleasure horse not a Reiner lope to get though it. We were there just for fun but looking like idiots was not the plan unfortunately we pulled it off anyways.
We decide to watch the pleasure classes instead and wait for the reining for Kelly to show. The show office told us if we got there by 11:00am we would be good for the reining classes. With all the things that happened this morning we still got there with plenty of time for the reining and so we waited. Normally I try to be respectful of other but the few mikes and the heat of the day had made me run off at the mouth about how we didn’t understand the need for horses to practically lope in place. I hadn't realized but this was the paint horse year end futurity show and a big deal and here we are making fun. Sorry
We finally get our horse ready and warm them up and wait and wait some more. At about 4:00pm we ask the show office again how the classes are moving along and when they thought the reining would begin, come to find out now they thought the reining would not start until about 9:00pm and probably wouldn’t get over until midnight. Kelly is heading to Reno at 7:00am so we decide to go home, for we will get home after dark as is. The hole day was a bust. I did get some flyers up but I was pretty sure I didn’t impress anyone there with my fresh Reining horses, but we did have fun. More fun than I have had at a horse show in some time now.
The next morning Ashley and I are off to the Free Style Reining demo I am performing in Chico park arena with the three horse we took to the show the day before. We have two stallions and one mare in heat. We take the stallions and ride them first leaving the mare tied to the trailer. The mare was not happy about this and was throwing a little tantrum at the trailer as we left her. As we are chatting we hear someone call out “loose horse“, we turn around to see the mare galloping towards us, she had slip her halter off her head and was running free. I quickly headed to the trailer for her halter while someone slips something on her from the tack booth. The mare stood quietly now that she had found her buddy. As I rode up with the halter they where asking who’s horse this was, as her own Ashley didn’t say a word to claim her, she was sitting on the stallion big boy and thought it best to wait for me. Our vet recognized Ashley’s horse and we all had a good laugh at her not claiming her horse running free at the show.
It was a long two days and now it’s Saturday night and we decide we are going to paint the town red tonight. We haven’t went out in forever and tonight is the night to dance, girls night. We are all single and nursing a heart ache so men are off limits but we want to dress to impress. With my new toned body from working so hard I decide to show it off a bit and wear a shirt that shows every curve. Normally I have the underwear for this but recently my dog had puppies and was in the house and my dumb dog eat the crotch’s out of the majority of my underwear and all I had left where granny panties that just wouldn’t do so I decide to go without. The skirt was down to my knees, it did have a small slit up the sides but I should not have a problem for I am aware I have no panties on.
I wake up the next day recalling the night before, remembering a big group of collage student who were laughing at me at the Bear. My feet hurt so I sat on the steps waiting for my friends and to my horror I realize now I was flashing them all. Well here is another thing I never thought I would do, how embarrassing. I remember when Brittney Spears did that and I thought why would anyone do that? That's retarded, Especially when you know people are going to photograph you.
I’m not much of a drinker because I tend to get sick before I have any fun and so I don’t drink really, even my closest friends rarely see me drunk. Well last night I partied like a rock star apparently! I even showed my private place to twenty or so collage students and now I feel like crawling in a hole.

This is Storey's first ride under saddle. First I lunge her until she will stop and turn .direction and leave at a walk. Her new owner wants to be the first to ride her so I will get her ready as much as I can. She have went through her training with flying colors thus far and I'm confident to let Stef take the first ride.

I flap the stirrup hard and get her a little nervous so I can work through it and get her back trusting. It's important to push a little to see what is laying under the surface of her laid back attitude, I then step up and down an both sides to get her familiar with me above her head. She is great!















Storey is ready for Stef to climb aboard. We sit for a while letting Storey get used to this new weight on her back. She get a little nervous when Stef tries to get her off foot in the stirrup and so I let her look and settle. I then lead her around until she was relaxed again. She was funny and a little clumsy at first. Very Sweet Filly!

Day Forty Two: I ride Happy in the round pen again and this time he will keep going when I cluck and kick only having to whack him a few times at the lope today. I decide to work Happy on a sheep again. This time he follows the sheep right from the start. I start to push the sheep a little more today and ask Happy to sharpen up his turns, we are still working at a walk but now when the sheep stops I stop Happy and ask him for a step back before the turn. He gets a little lazy towards the end and I realize I have stayed working the sheep a bit to long today, it’s important to keep it short and simple. We want him to like his job so I find a good spot to stop and back him off the sheep. I had to kick him through a few turns before he decided to get himself through the turn with a little more energy and when he tried for me I quit.

The story about a filly called Story

Story is a two year old filly by Chinas Fancy Boy (Big Boy) one of the two stallions offspring I am selling on Oct. 10th.
I sold this filly before the sale and now she is in training to be started under saddle.
I have already halter broke her, and tought her to lunge and then tie. I have trimed her front feet, she was great, I just got tired and the back feet looked good enough. She has been bathed and had her first photo shoot.





Story is ready for her first saddling. I start by putting her in the round pen and then I get the saddle and put it in the center of the round pen. She leaves nervously when I enter the pen with the saddle. She doesn't seem to mind the saddle it's self, it's just me with the saddle that make her nervous and I have to run her around the pen until she is ready to stay with me again.










For the first saddling I like to have them on a line so I will halter her again for the saddling part. If she gets nervous about being chinched up for the first time I can sometimes convince them to stay long enough to get it tight enough to stay on. I feel this filly will stay but I want the line just in case.






I throw the pad on and lead her around the pen with it, she really didn't care so I put the saddle on and she didn't care about that either. This is way to easy. I sent her out on the line and she walked off easy. I pushed to a trot and she didn't seem to care so I let her free and pushed her around the pen, first at a trot and then the lope.






Istarted both of her Dam and Sire and both horses were easy, good minded horses and she is just the same. She is good with everything I did today and so I decide to stop on a good note.

Day Forty One: It is really hot today, right from the start cause it never cooled off from the night before. It’s 9:00am and Happy is lazy, lazy today. I have to whack him with the end of the rein to keep him loping, and I mean I had to whack him hard. Frustrating as this faze is I know that what he learns in his relaxed state he will retain better so I push on, and keep cluck, kick and whack until he will stay at a lope with a light fanning of my legs. It’s important to note that you what to urge him to keep going with what is comfortable pressure to you , not what the horse thinks. It is really easy to get sucked into this cycle of kicking to just keep him going, this numbs his sides and leg losses it’s meaning. I have found that whacking works well for this lesson. Start out with a tap with the end of the rein on his rump and increase pressure as needed. He may get a little herky jerky at this point just keep loping until he starts listening to the cluck and settles down to lope more freely. I leave their face alone at this point to get the freedom of movement back:0)

It’s been a strange year for me, a clients horse got it’s fool head stuck in the gate and broke it’s neck and died. I had just started working as a real estate agent and had rented a room to a college student for some help around the ranch. I was having trouble with this new horse in training. He had gotten out of three pens already braking two and untying himseft to freedom, all in just twelve days and now he was tied in the stall and the gate was locked. I couldn't keep him tied forever so I asked my roommate to put him back in his stall when she feed that night. I woke up to find, my clients horse with his head stuck in the gate dead. That is not a phone call you ever want to have to make.
I had my heart broken by someone who I should have known better, but did it anyways kind of thing. Foolish!
I lost my father to a stroke and felt the most pain of my life.
I rented a room out to a person who seamed cool kinda earthy by day, wanted to kill people by night. To make matters worst he thought I was his Bonnie and he my Clyde. I kicked him out after a week. I couldn't figure out why he moved in in the first place, knowing I had been married 14 years to a sheriff. He truely was two entirely different poeple, it really freaked me out. I asked him to move out and he put dirt in my trucks gas tank. nice!
I was fired from my Real estate office cause I spread myself to thin and couldn’t keep up.
OH yes, I almost forgot, I rented out a room to a crazy person that thought if you didn’t like someone eating your food you should poison them. I through out all my food the day that person moved out. Lord help me.
I finally learned why I need a shot gun around here. All in one year and thats just the high lights, and Yes, I’m hanging on to my sanity by a thread.


Getting fired from my real estate job was the kicker. I decided, I would put the time I spent on real estate into my ranch instead seeing how it was the only thing making money. I never made a penny in real estate only paid my due and went further into the hole. IT was a learning curve, I learned how to run my business better with the education the real estate offered.
My Ranch had always taken care of me in the past and even if it‘s falling down around me it‘s my home and I was letting it fall apart. I started off with some more rock fences, if I’m going to get this place working for me I need more pens. Then Flowers, I love flowers so I asked my friends to give me a Lowes gift card for my B day. And just as soon as my place was looking better we have a grasshopper out brake, they were everywhere, climbing up my walls, in my house, in every room, they even got in the refrigerator! My flowers, I had to save my flowers so I bought some chickens and ducks. They went to town eating and they got the grasshoppers under control. The neighbors dog killed all my duck and half my chickens:0(
Some of my flowers started to come back, and I was feeling I was through the worst and brighter days are a head.
Now that the grasshoppers are down to a manageable amount the wasp have been at unbelievably high level this year and in the last few week have been swarming my house. I opened my back door on my way to work and wasps flue into my house, about five until I slammed the door. I decided to wait until they are in the windows and are easier to catch. I opened the door to go to work and a few more flue in. I slammed the door again and I picked up a magazine and opened the door, swatting wasp after wasp until I slammed the door again. This has never happened before but something in the tree outside was attracting hundreds of wasps. This is freaky!
I grow up living with wasps, mostly mud dabbers, who are not aggressive, they leave you alone if you leave them alone. I only got stung when I would sit on one or if one would accidentally fly into me. They are not very good flyers when they are weighed down with mud but they would never attack. These wasps where a different kind, look like yellow jackets just longer.
I still remember the summer my son Matthew and his friends, thought it would be a good idea to throw rocks at the nest and then run, aggravating the hive to the point where, when I open the door to the pump house, I was attacked and got stung several times on the upper lip. My daughter, Amanda said I looked like a platypus and she couldn’t even talk to me without laughing. Every morning I would wake up to another giant lip, the swelling would kind of go down during the day and then every morning baam, it would look like it just happened hug! I really didn't want to go through that again.
In the darkness of the house the wasps go into hibernation mod and are easier to catch so I will deal with this problem latter and I opened the door and started to yell! I’m really not sure why, I’m normally a really quite person but I felt like yelling and so I did. About the time I noticed how ridiculous I was acting the wasps backed away from the door. It worked yelling at them pushed them back and I was able to walk outside throw the wasps, I put my head down and walked. My mistake last time was I looked at the hive and made eye contact with the wrong wasps that day so head down and go through.
Later that night I had forgotten about the wasps in my house for they had settle down to sleep as I did. The next morning when I went to the ladies room I saw one on the floor, just sitting there looking at me. I picked up a pare of seizers and copped his head off. It was easy cause he was still in hibernation mod and slow moving. I had decide this was as good of a solution as any, for the rest of my unwanted gests. Seizers in hand, off I went. The wasps out in the living room are awake now and harder to sneak up on so I gave up on the idea. I will have to wait until night again.
That night I got in after dark again and went to bed without thinking about the wasps until the next morning. I awoke to buzzing. I mean a lot of buzzing, following the sound I see that I have a blackish blob on my air conditioner, it was wasps crawling on each other. Not a hive just the bees. I got a big glass and a piece of mail, thinking I could put the glass over the wasps and slip the mail in between knocking the wasps into the class. This worked well and I captured 12 wasps the other half got away and where now flying all over my house. Tomorrow I will get some spray! And I headed out my door to work.

I went to town only to forget about the wasps spray and so another night worrying I will step on one on my way to the ladies room. I was standing in the front of the mirror and one flue right into my hair, like in slow motion an air plane crashing into a giant building. I got to watch myself scream and swat at my on head like a crazy person, when I realized I could stop and just look to see if it was in my hair. It was gone from my hair and that’s all I cared about at the moment. This was ridiculous it’s time to take action. I got a single glass and with a piece of mail I scooped up one wasp at a time, this work well and I was able to catch 24 wasps in my house that day.

I got up the next morning feel rested and comfortable in my house again and sleepily I went to make some coffee. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move in the garbage disposal. I look again and saw nothing but I know I saw something move. Was I loosing my mind. I crepped in trying to get a better look when a frog jump up from inside the disposal and scared the crap out of me.

Once I got my heart settle down I tryed to catch him but he jumped back down into the disposal. Now I know what you are thinking and I thought about turning it on myself but I just couldn't. I have been waiting for my prince a long time, I couldn't blend him up. I ran some hot water down there and he came out in a hurry and I was able to catch him. I had to tell him how much he had scared me, when he peed in my hand. well I guess he understood now. I almost gave him a kiss but thought better of it considering where he had been hanging out so I set him free outside. if that was my prince he will have to clean up a bit and try again;0)

Horse Photos

Photo shoot day is a challenge with horse feet have to be place and stay! and ears up, tongue in mouth, eyes open mane and tail laying flat. It's like trying to get a toddler to stand still.
Kelly was cool enough to and bath and hold these newly halter broke babies for their photo shoot. It is a frustrating job to say the least and Kelly did a great job.

first the back leg as Kelly tries to get out of the picture and keep the horse from moving.









Then the front leg..











and there it is (whack) on the knose she walked right into it. Funny! She loves you Kelly;0)











I thought this was funny I went ahead and took this shot thinking I could photo shop the shadow on the barn underneath his belly out;0) I don't have that program on my new computer so I wasn't able to use it, but he finally put up his ears.lol

Day Forty: Happy’s first time working the flag. I have to admit I was a little nervous, he can really move when he wants too;0) I warm him up in the indoor and showed him the flag again. I had someone to working the flag for me so I was going to take advantage of the opportunity, we start off real slow and Happy is snorting and blowing but he is listening to my legs and staying up there with the flag. Sometimes they are so afraid of the darn thing they won’t get up there and they head for the door and it‘s all I can do to keep them facing it. After working the flag for a bit, Happy relaxes and gets the idea to follow the flag on his own. Stopping and turning with the flag at a trot with little assistance from me, so we end there. Happy was really easy to work the flag, I feel a little foolish being so nervous at first.