Ahh yes

  Well, the relatives left this morning! Jubilant cries rang out through the house. I do love my family, swear I do... I just love them more when they aren't within 10 feet of me 24/7.
   Anyways, it was a nice visit. And the grandparents took me out to see "War Horse"- positively amazing. They anthropomorphized the horses a bit, but all in all it was a fantastic, well made movie. The war scenes were by far some of the best I've seen, and the riding wasn't bad, either. I'll write a critique of it later...
   Sugar's Moon Blindness is getting better- her eye has returned to brown. The abrasion's still rather nasty though. I plan on taking daily pictures of it to make sure she is improving- it's sometimes difficult to see change when you're popping ointment in her eye 3-4 times a day. Thank heavens we have ointment now. Before we had these drops. Know how hard it is to get drops into a horses eye? Seeing as how water falls down, and not sideways, and she was doing everything in her power (which is quite a lot) to duck out from under it? Blasted liquid. The ointment is far better, though it results in me being swung around rather like a rag doll as I cling onto her halter and try to get it in. Good times.
  Just started reading "Treason" by Ann Coulter, which will help me write my essay on McCarthyism, I'm sure. Wish I could go riding... It's a beautiful day out there. Well, to me it is, anyways. The sun's peeking out from behind some clouds, it's windy, and we had a good rain last night. Great conditions for a hack out with the greenie, eh? On second thought, no. It would be rather difficult to dance at the party in a full body cast.
  "Yes, Commander didn't really appreciate that deer jumping in front of him, so he decided to practice his aires above ground. I knew he'd be a great Dressage horse! Too bad I despise him. So yes. That's how I broke my arm. And neck. And tailbone. The fence is rather hard, I found. Quite. Carry on. Wait, can you pour me some punch? I don't want to stain my pretty white cast trying to pour it."
   Oh yes.
-EQ and Spirit signing off

Merry Christmas!

  Hello, all! Merry Christmas, even to those who don't celebrate it! Had a very nice day today with the family. All the members of our clan got along without drowning each other in their cider, even though the mellowing agents of wine were outlawed (my grandparents would have had a fit, had they seen our wine stash!). So we just had to use the tripdophane (spelling?) in the turkey to settle down (interesting study on that- did you know that turkey is actually quite low in tripdophane? Eh. Oh well.) Anyways, it was very enjoyable.
  Best. Haul. Ever. I know that sounds terribly immature, but it's true. I got -dun dun dun dun!- a pair of Dublin Pinnacles! I adore them. I have been wearing them all around the house today, and think I may sleep in them. They are terribly comfortable. Also got: show belt (with my last name engraved on the back), a sweater, and a nice new hat. I feel rather like I should be posing for Smartpak at the moment, decked out in my Cranberry beret, dark wash skinny jeans (I detest them, but they fit) tucked into Dublins, a loose sweater belted with a brown show belt. Oh yes, dahling, I'll be on set to pose on the sleigh in a minute, just let me finish my makeup while drinking a pomegranate juice sparkling water.
  That sounded horribly conceited, but it is Christmas, after all, and I'm rather high off of truffles.
  Also pitched in and helped dad get mom a camera. I think her facial expression was the best gift we could have gotten. She has wanted a nice camera for ages, she was a photographer in college and did a bit after she graduated. So anyways, after stalking her computer's search history and seeing what cameras she liked and what features she needed, we made the choice to get a Cannon something-or-other. Anyways, it's one of those really cool looking ones with the super long lenses and all that fun stuff. She was shocked when she got it, and the only thing she could say was  "Oh my gosh. You didn't. This is amazing. Oh my goodness." at a whisper as her mouth hit the floor. It was neat, haha.
  Well, computer's about to die, and my new copy of "All Creatures Great and Small" is calling to me! A new copy! That still has it's cover!
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
-EQ and Spirit

Cookies.

  Help! I am being held against my will in this place! Wait. This is the house. And all these people are relatives. And all these cookie things must be sugar. Okay. This is making sense now. That's right. It's Christmas Eve.
  Which means...
   One more week until New Years Eve! (Picture me jumping up and down with joy)
  Short post for today. Merry Christmas to all!

Today.

 Yellow Belt testing today! Ack! Oh well. It shan't be that bad, I'm sure. I hope. Good luck, Savannah and Devin! And me! :-)
  Also will be going to the dentist later this morning-joy. Pray I make it out alive. I may not. I could be impaled by one of those wicked wire poker thingys that they just adore jabbing into my gums. "Does this hurt? You need to brush more!" "Duh, it hurts, and it wouldn't hurt if you would quit jabbing it!". Sigh. They love that wire poker thingy. I can tell their faces just light up when they get to jam it into my mouth, and the delicate gum tissue. Dentists are evil and morbid.
  I'll update later how the yellow belt testing went!
  Update:
    I am alive!
  First with the dentist appointment:
   Well. That was painful. It was actually an orthodontist appointment (yes, yes, I have braces. Yes, yes, most people have finished with braces by this time, but my teeth were late bloomers, okay?). Ouch. Well, they decided that my front teeth were finally straight enough that they could move the band-anchor-things to the very back molars. Well, those molars are bizarrely short (my mouth is convinced it has to be special and not cooperate), so, due to the fact the bands are about half an inch thick (exaggerated, but not by much), I got the privilege of having them pounded into my gums! Wasn't that fun! The joyous feeling of having unrelenting cold steel being shoved between your teeth and poor, innocent gums by a dentist who obviously doesn't understand personal space as she pries your mouth open and peers into the deep expanse of (in my case) blood that is your bleeding gums. The tray where she laid the torture instruments looked like something out of a horror movie- splattered with scarlet blood, with rusty looking instruments (or maybe that was just more of my precious blood that was making them look rusty). Sigh.
   Karate was... slightly less painful. After being commanded to do 15 minutes straight of jumping jacks (and saying "I can't feel my legs, Sensei" didn't get you out of it, either), we were requested to do 300 pushups, 300 V-Ups, and 300 squat-kicks. Utter joy. I think I got up to 200 (pathetic) pushups, 80 (horrific) V-Ups, and about 20 (tear-your-hair-out-and-cry awful) squat kicks. About half ways through, me and the other girls were summoned up to the front to do... Heian Shodan? Not sure on the spelling. Karate people, feel free to correct me. Anyways, that one kata that I'm not very good at! Well, after dying a little inside after they said it, I pushed through, throwing in obscenely poorly executed punches, sloppy high blocks, and a back-stance that I'm sure caused cringes. It was pitiful. I went back to the line of sweaty, ruddy faced kids doing pushups and V-Ups and squat-kicks looking forward to them asking us to return for Takiyoku Shodan (again, correct me) in hopes that I would be able to redeem myself. Guess what. They didn't have us to Takiyoku Shodan. Typical.
  Oh well, I still passed, to my surprise and delight. I was so relieved. I mean really, how humiliating would it be to be the only person who didn't pass and had to do it again with the 3 people who didn't test that day? That's a punishment worse than push-ups!
-EQ and Spirit saying goodbye

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmaaaass!

   Well, not really. We have a total of .5 inches of snow on the ground. Of course, we had a lovely frost this morning, leaving what looked to be little spears of ice skewering the western side (or what I presume to be the west) of everything- weeds, trees, fences, etc. It was very pretty, I must say.
   It's sad, I think we have reached the point of "too cold to snow". We went from warm, warm, hey, 40 degrees today!, warm, warm, what the heck?! It's 7 degrees out there! Oh the joys of winter.
   In other news... one week until Christmas, and 2 until New Years Eve! Is it absolutely horrible of me to be looking forward more to the party than gifts and family members and joy and good will towards men and all that jazz? "Oh, hello grandparent I haven't seen in a year- PARTY TIME, BYE!", and then I go dashing off to rock the night away with sugar-drunk friends? Ah well. It's just one night, right?
  Plus the fact that there's gonna be fudge there.
  Hand over the chocolate, and no one gets whacked upside the head with a newspaper.
  Aaaaanywho, not much has been going on. Administering Sugar's eyedrops 4 times a day is not getting any easier. There is something to be said about short horses when you're 5'2. Why is it that only the tall horses get injured about the head and upper neck, while the short ones only get hurt at the knees or below?
-EQ and Spirit bidding you farewell

Oh, joy.

   Well, Sugar, my 28 year old Appaloosa has gotten ANOTHER corneal abrasion (scratch on her eye). This is, what, the 4th time? Darned Appaloosa eyes. Oh well, poor girl. Corneal abrasions hurt (as I learned when I put in a contact that, unbeknownst to me, was concealing a piece of sawdust. It was a quite a sight, me hopping around the house muttering curses in German, while trying to pluck a contact out of a bloodshot, swollen eye.)
 Anyways, it looks pretty gnarly. Very swollen and is almost totally red, so the vet's coming out today. Lets just hope she doesn't have to get an injection to the eye again. Did you know that horses have a very convenient little divet out of the bone right above the eyeball, which allows you to administer an injection to the back of the eye? Well, the vet tried that last year. It ended up like:

   That illustration is actually pretty accurate. My (then 27) year old mare lifted my mother, the vet, and the vet's husband off the ground- while anesthetized. Let's just say I had a new realization of just how strong she was, and that I was glad I was just handing instruments to the vet. 
   They then decided twitching her would make their lives considerably easier, and what do you know? She was a perfect little angel then!
I'll post after the vet gets here how the patient did.
After Vet Visit:
   Well, she did better than expected, I suppose! She didn't rear, at least. We still had to anesthetize her to get the dye in her eye to see if there was, in fact, an abrasion. The dye is actually pretty interesting. It's this strip of paper that the vet gently lays against the horse's eye. When they blink, they trap the paper and the ink in their eye. She leaves it there for a moment, then pulls it out. The dye (yellow, usually) comes off of the paper and fills in any abnormal dips or scratches in the cornea. It's non-toxic and all that, so it doesn't hurt the eye at all, though I bet it's pretty uncomfortable to have in your eye! It was interesting though. Anyways, it also turns out she has a bit of Uveitis in that eye, but it's not too serious. Once we get the abrasion treated, she'll be getting a steroid shot to hopefully counteract that. However, prognosis is promising, and treatment is a few drops of some antibiotics in that eye 4 times a day until next Tuesday, then we'll get the steroid shot.

Adventures at the farm

  Had the farrier out today to do the ponies- they all did shockingly well. Spirit, Bandit, and Sugar all checked out fine. Then we came to the heathens- namely, Commander and Millicent. Commander is the greenie I'm training to sell, and Millicent is just... Millicent. We rescued both of them when they were young (Milly was 3, and Commander was 2, I think? They're siblings), and just never got around to working with them. This was actually Milly's first time having an actual farrier work with her feet... We were all shocked when he offered to do it. Seeing as how Milly is a demon spawn-of-Satan mare (not really, but she does pin her ears back at anything that moves), we were picturing something like:

Thankfully, it ended up more like:

     YAY HAPPY JOY TIME!

                                                 Don't illustrations make everything better?

     So anyways, after we got Milly done without major meltdown, the farrier must have been pretty confident, so he goes "Well now, lets see that dun gelding over there! He could use a trim!". So we go and pull Commander away from the snow he was fascinated in eating, and bring him up here. The farrier boisterously lifts the guy's front foot up, gets that done, then he comes to the back:

That one didn't go as well.

Finally, though, it all works out:

Yes, that is a rainbow, what else would it be?

-EQ and a freshly trimmed Spirit signing off

404 Error

This is why I hate computers.
I get this big long post typed up, and the 404 Monsters come out and eat it!
I'll re-attempt it later.
-EQ and Spirit