Crazy Weather Makes Me Crazy

Today was one of those crazy weather days that is so typical of winter in middle Tennessee. The day started off with rain. Although I am not a fan of getting wet it did not start off too bad. The rain was light and the temperature was very reasonable.  It was almost 60 degrees at 8am this morning and it seemed overkill to have sheets on the horses.  

I was in the middle of soaking feed as part of breakfast preparations when the light rain changed almost instantly to a thunderstorm and heavy rain. This did not make me very happy. I had on my GoreTex raincoat and rubber boots, but did not bother putting rain pants over my jeans since the rain had been so light. In about 30 seconds I was regretting that choice as my jeans got soaked. I don't know anyone who enjoys traipsing around in wet pants.  There wasn't much to do except complain, and I covered that base thoroughly although no one was around to hear me, and carry on with feeding. The heavy rain lasted just long enough to make sure my pants were soaked and then stopped. How irritating is that?!

At first I was thinking it had been a mistake to have sheets on everyone.  However the weather forecasters actually got the forecast right and the temperature dropped like a rock, down to the mid 40's, after peaking in the morning. The horses were quite happy to be dry under their sheets once the cold front began moving through.  

When the temperature dropped the rain tapered off and the wind moved in. Oh my gosh did the wind move in. It was making the horses wild, which made them oh so much fun to feed in the afternoon.  The wind gusts were quite impressive.  At one point I was simply walking down the driveway from one pasture to the next, and a gust of wind hit me so hard I was suddenly two feet over to the right from where I had been. Thankfully I remained upright.  A few minutes later I wasn't so lucky. Another big wind gust came along and the gate I happened to be closing got away from me despite my valiant effort to hold on, and proceeded to slam into me with such force that I fell over. I said some really ugly things, again to no one in particular (maybe the universe in general?), since Jason was about 60 acres away in a different pasture.  The best part was I fell on my butt on the wet ground. The only thing worse than wet jeans is having the seat of your pants be wet. 

There were other weather related incidents today in which I screamed to no one. Such as when the leadrope flew back and hit me in the face, or when I was dumping a hay cube mash bucket for one of the horses and smashed my finger when I lost my grip on the wet bucket (I gotta say smashed fingers hurt).  At the end of the day I don't know who had more marks in the crazy column, me or the weather. All I do know is that crazy weather seems to lead to me ranting and raving repeatedly to no one all day long. If someone were videoing me with a hidden camera I have no doubt that I would be mortified watching myself. "Look at that crazy girl with the wet, dirty pants screaming profusely at no one!  Oh look, she's doing it again!"

The good news is our cold snap is moving out quickly and we will be back in the mid 60's by Friday. This schizophrenic weather is standard winter weather for middle Tennessee. However as far as I am concerned spring has arrived now that it is March. Our forecast agrees and after tomorrow we are 60's and higher with lots of sunshine mixed in for the rest of our forecast. That sounds good to me! 

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windy days always bring out the horses' wild sides; Romeo, Bus, Asterik and George charging around

Lotus and Romeo went for another lap

 Lotus, Gus, Romeo, Asterik and George were still going and going, like the Energizer Bunny

Homer

Faune

Chance was exhausted, no doubt from being a wild thing most of the day

Levendi and Leo

Merlin, Snappy and O'Reilly

Sam and Murphy

Tiny

Renny and Dutch

A Day In the Life

(post by Jason) Many of you will remember a series of coffee table books entitled "A Day in the Life of [Insert Country here]" . The premise of the books was that a number....quite a number.....of photographers set out to capture one day in the life of communities all over the country. The best of their pictures made it to the book and each book sold many, many copies. Those books were full of competent, happy people doing whatever it is that they were doing at various points in their day.

I think it's safe to say I will never appear in any book like that, operating as I do in the mode of absent minded professor most of the time. Often this shows up when I can't find either my keys or my wallet after trying to multi-task for a period of time. Melissa is so used to me getting an alarmed look on my face while vigorously patting all my pockets like I would if a small fire had spontaneously erupted that it doesn't even register with her any more. She just asks "Wallet or keys ?"

Others seem to find my alarmed pat downs quite alarming, then quite amusing. Melissa used to think I was kidding but I can only competently focus on and accomplish one task at a time (Melissa here to say that Melissa definitely does not think you are kidding anymore.) . If I have more than one task put on my plate something is going to get misplaced. Seriously misplaced. The other morning I managed to misplace the tractor keys while trying to do two things at once and as a result I spent nearly two hours tearing apart our vehicle and the farm office looking for them only to discover them in my left front pocket. It sure manages keeps me busy! (Melissa again - another thing I've learned is that the Jason's pat downs are not very effective. I insist he empty his pockets completely before we move on to searching elsewhere.)

If there's a positive to this mental "handicap" it's that I'm extremely focused on the one task that that I happen to be working on competently at the time. Cannon fire won't distract me from it, in fact there is a good chance I won't hear the cannon firing at all. Many times Melissa has stood less than fifty feet from where I'm working yelling at the top of her lungs to get my attention and having no success whatsoever. (Melissa again. I've even resorted to throwing things that at him. If nothing else it elicits an ... interesting ... response.)

I daresay this wouldn't play well for a photographer operating on a tight time schedule or for me either. Attempting to focus on what he was doing as well as what I was supposed to be doing would lead to some colossal blunders involving either my wallet or my keys and I would have to spend the next several hours grunting around on my knees looking for them. I can see the photo captions now.

10:45 am - Jason Webb, Lynnville, TN searches under his tractor for his keys and wallet.

11:47 am - Jason Webb, Lynville, TN pats himself down as if he were on fire searching for his keys and wallet. Sorry, I had to contribute my own photo caption.

1:52 pm - Jason Webb, Lynville, TN searches under his tractor for the thirteenth time today looking for his keys and wallet.

3:19 pm - Jason Webb, Lynnville, TN emerges victorious from the washroom where he went to wash off some of the grease he collected on his hands while under the tractor looking for his keys and wallet. Unbelievably he found BOTH keys and wallet on the edge of the sink. He has absolutely no idea how they got there.

That said, a day in my life would often be ridiculously easy to photograph. You'll find me under the tractor. If it's not broken you now have a head's up as to what I'm doing down there - searching for my keys and/or wallet. Just don't tell the man with the camera.

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Alex and Darby

B-Rad and Lighty playting

Traveller and Lily

Cuff Links and Cinnamon

Walden napping in the hay with Fabrizzio, Lucky and Snappy

Bergie

Slinky (or, as Jason says, Slink in pink!) and Snappy

Moe and Homer

Lucky and Thor

Homer and Tony

Search Me

(post by Jason) You may agree or disagree but in my mind perhaps the scariest sentence in the English language is, "Hello, I'm from the government and I'm here to help." My immediate thought is always,"Oh God help me, what now?!"

Last week Melissa and I got a letter from the IRS outlining what we had paid in taxes and when we had paid it for 2012. Of course all the payments were made on time which was reflected in the IRS summary. Today we got another letter from them penalizing us for late payment regarding this same series of tax payments. Of course this is a simple, straight forward mistake on their part. It's something that ought to be easy to sort out and it's frankly so dumb that I laughed out loud when Melissa showed me the two competing letters. We've all dealt with this sort of "buck stops nowhere" mistake and we can choose to find them frustrating, let them make us angry, or find them humorous depending on the situation and our mood at the time. It is certainly no way to run a business or a tax collection service, yet it is ridiculously common to run across this sort of mistake when dealing with big business or big government. If I ran my business that way I promise I'd expect to be OUT of business pretty darn quickly. Apparently a lot of people must have a lot more tolerance for this sort of nonsense than I do.

I think our clients would agree that this is the antithesis of how we run our business here at Paradigm Farms. It is our belief that our business and our reputation are built on trust.  The first tenet of building trust is doing exactly what we say we are going to do and then communicating that in clear, concise terms. When someone has concerns about what is going on the buck stops in front of Melissa or in front of me. We do the lion's share of horse care around here and I never want to get so big that I don't have my finger on exactly what's going on with every horse all the time.

Melissa deserves a lot of credit for giving "good service" to our clients and this is one area where I genuinely feel we beat the pants off our competition. Or maybe since she does most of the communicating I should say she beats the pants off our competition. Unlike the lion's share of our competitors, caring for our retirees is not a sideline or a hobby. This is our business and our living. We take what we do very, very seriously. On top of that we like each other AND we like what we do most of the time. In addition to communicating with you we also communicate frequently with one another. I feel confidant saying our competence level is high enough that the likelihood of getting two letters from us in the same week telling you two entirely different things is nil. And that has to be a good thing !

Hope everyone has a great weekend !

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Apollo leading the Big Boys on a charge across the field

Apollo, Hemi, Grand, Homer and Moe leading the way in

Apollo had thundered past me when I took this picture; Levendi, Hemi, Baby, Grand and Homer are leading the way, with Thomas, Trigger, Elfin and Moe bringing up the rear behind the trees

getting closer

Baby and Elfin did an extra lap around part of the pasture just for fun

Leo

Walden, Fabrizzio, Lightening, Merlin, Snappy, Noble and O'Reilly

Calimba

MyLight on a leisurely stroll through the pasture; Lily is peeking around the run-in shed

Kennedy and Oskar

Lightening and Thor

Fiscal Cliff

Like everyone else I am tired of hearing about our impending fiscal cliff. I am also sick to death of listening to all of our politicians, from the President all the way through every member of Congress, pointing fingers at each other and claiming the sequester is the other guy's fault. Personally I think we need some term limits for Congress and no special healthcare and retirement plans for them either.  Sorry guys, you gotta live under the laws you pass just like the rest of us. 

What does this have to do with horses?  I told Jason a few weeks ago that after hearing the term fiscal cliff for the billionth time it struck me that Fiscal Cliff was the perfect name for a horse. My dad always said buying me my first pony was the worst financial decision of his life. I am sure I am the typical horse person that decides not to download a song from iTunes for $0.99 because I don't need to spend the money, yet I thought nothing of buying a couple of new pairs of breeches and new half chaps recently. I would never spend $150-$200 every six weeks on shoes for myself but will do that for the horse.  There is no logic in any of this.  Yep, Fiscal Cliff is an extremely appropriate name.

In that spirit I had to share this picture that has been floating around on Facebook. Pardon the bad language but it is SO perfect:

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Faune and Silver having an early morning play session

Romeo, Asterik and Lotus trotting across the pasture . . . 

.... they caught up with Winston, Silver, George and Gus (you can see Gus' ears at the very back!)...

... then they all fell into single file

Norman and Cuff Links were having a grooming session

Darby and Alex

Miracle, Sparky, Sky and Griselle

Levendi

Toledo, Largo and Bergie hanging out after a rainy night

Oskar was happy it rained, he clearly found the perfect place to roll and get himself thoroughly coated in mud

Wiz and Sam napping in the shed

Pictures

We hope everyone had a nice weekend and is looking forward to a wonderful week. Enjoy the pictures!

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Lucky with a big mouthful of hay

Romeo and Lotus

MyLight and Calimba hanging out

Bergie and Stormy

Lighty, Sam and Sebastian

Homer and Moe

Chance and Leo

Thomas and Apollo

Slinky and Snappy

Thor