More summer vacation adventures!

Enjoying

the winery!

As I left off, I celebrated my birthday with family in Kelowna, and took my dad trail riding in the Westbank, and we picked a ton of sour cherries.

The small red dots? Swimmer’s itch…picture it EVERYWHERE.

We also went to Peachland and went swimming- it is such a gorgeous spot, and excellent for visiting and swimming. There are bathrooms aplenty, free parking, a dive tower, a swing rope over the lake, and lifeguards.

The only thing I didn’t realize they also had? SWIMMERS ITCH! 😦

Swimming- in the pool this time, phew! 

Dude we got it so bad. Hah. I was scratching like crazy out of the water and at lunch (outdoor patio at the big German place. It was good!). But damn we got it bad. We were soooooo itchy. And the next morning, we realized that everyone had tonnes of red welts all over. Hah. Lesson learned!

Great margaritas on the patio in Penticton!

I stuck to swimming in the pool after that 🙂 And at Skaha Lake, where we went for a quick dip after visiting Penticton, such a lovely little town with quaint shops and a great and very reasonably priced Mexican restaurant, where again, we chose safety and sat outdoors at a patio with no patrons nearby.

Ian and I also spent a day going to two different wineries and checked out BNA Brewery. It was really cool (literally…it was about 35 degrees out) and they offered you still or sparkling water for FREE! Bonus points in my books!! Plus they had some giant model horses that I was sooo envious of!

Next up in our adventures…Going to Nelson!

 

Love at low speed

Back from a week of holidays and wishing it was more like…THREE weeks. MAN.

Safety first! 

I went to the Interior (Kelowna) to visit my parents who moved there this winter. It was super hot, gorgeous weather, and I can’t complain! 🙂 I also celebrated a birthday, which was nice. We had black forest cake with sour cherries that we picked ourselves!! Can you believe it?

I flew, which is an experience on it’s own these days. All people in terminals and on the air plane must wear a mask, and there are no drink services. Instead, the air line gave out little baggies with a tiny water bottle, gloves, hand sanitizer, sanitation wipes, and a mask. I thought that was a pretty good touch, though I had my own water because I get super thirsty.

It was eerie, for sure though. I have not been close to people in months, and now we were crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder, all wearing masks. There was a temperature check at the gate, where they hold a little heat sensor to your forehead and then mark on your ticket.

Flying itself was fine, though I had approximately 4 screaming babies per airplane and no headphones, mine died the minute I got on the plane and I was trying to charge them up unsuccessfully the week before…:(

But anyways, it was about 34 deg in Kelowna! I took my dad trail riding to a place we used to go for years…Probably for about 20 years! It was called Mandy and Me, and it went under about 5 years or more ago. Now, a lovely young couple runs it as ‘Broken Rail Ranch’ and we enjoyed the same trails as before. Awesome eh?

The trails also run alongside a defunct sour cherry orchard, and the owner of the trail business said nobody picks it, so if we wanted, we could come and pick from it. And we did! The next day in the evening, we went to pick about… 50lbs of sour cherries.

And there were even more than this! So many cherries. 

They were great! I did realize the next day when we were pitting them that there were a ton of maggots in them too, hahaha. Whoops! No chemical sprays here! Good thing a little maggot eating isn’t bad for you.

Cherry picking with my family.

Our next adventures to be continued…

Argh!! Life!!

Things have actually settled a bit, but for some reason the horse ‘issues’ just seem to keep freaking rolling! In the past month, every single damned week, I am getting texts or phone calls that something has gone wrong. Fortunately most of them are pretty minor or resolved within a week or so (abscess) but DAMN can this stop happening?

Oats drugged out of his mind last Friday for an ‘extra special cleaning’ courtesy of my friend 😉

Ha, my husband said that’s life- you get major issues every week. You are just waiting for a new thing to go wrong this week. I guess it’s true…

This week, it was Oaty’s bridle that was the victim! He has a 1 day a week leasor who takes lessons with my trainer. I got a phone call from his leasor that Oats had charged out of the cross ties when she was bridling him, and ran through his damned bridle AND was hard to catch, to boot.

EFFFFFFFF

This is NOT the first time that has happened- though it’s not really a normal thing for Oats to do, at all. This happened last summer, coincidentally while I was out on a TEAMS deployment for 8 days in Lillooet. So, two bridles busted to hell in the span of a year.

Not enough to think it’s a pattern, but still. I can’t really afford to replace bridles that much…This is number 3. I was pretty steamed. Accidents do happen, and this is random enough but..ya know?

Sheesh.

Luckily for them I have a spare bridle, so I told them to take the bit off the broken bridle, replace it in the new bridle, and use that one. Which is fine.

A palate cleanser- cupcakes with gummy unicorns I made last week when I had a few friends visit (within our appropriate bubbles, safely!)

But damn. I’m just SO OVER IT. Maybe leasing…Isn’t Oats’ thing.

I also had a dressage lesson (after two weeks!!) and it was pretty good, not as ‘fun’ or as ‘flashy’ as my past few, but after two weeks off, I knew I was going to have to take a big step back, ha.

So, I texted the leasor’s mother to pay for my new bridle, see what her schedule is like next week (I offered a few extra practice ride days, and obviously I offered this BEFORE they broke my second bridle….So i’m not thrilled but I also don’t want to renege on this..).

We shall see!

 

 

Mr. Oats abscess journey

So as I mentioned, I was in a real tizzy…A panic spiral the past month or so. It just felt like EVERY SINGLE WEEK there was some new drama with my horse. You name it, I had it. And I felt like I was on a hair-trigger, since my good friend’s horse has had some terrible health issues recently (two colic episodes, and he came up dead lame a day after Oats did, but it was more serious than Oats and continues to be…) 😦 Just awful.

So, in light of my friends miserable horse journey, every single week I get a panic text or call or message from the barn, I rush out and find some new disaster. Fortunately they were not serious but still. I am on a real hair trigger…And Oats came up dead lame on Canada Day, so we had to rush back from our little ‘stay-cation’ out of town but first our car died, so we had to get a jump, to get a new battery, THEN to the barn. Jesus.

So Oaty went lame, dragging a leg, very lame. No heat, no swelling. I called my vet and he suggested we check for an abscess, since it came up so suddenly with no obvious trauma or swelling. I got the farrier out that day and BINGO! She dug in and was like yep, big abscess.

So this is his foot journey for the week he was lame (THANK GOD!!!) it was only that long. Thanking my lucky stars!

Saturday- some progress, you can see puncture spots and 1 bruise-like area I circled that was the big one!

And this was on Sunday- I poked at the bruise spot and it was bleeding/puss a bit.

Wed/Thur- All healed! I was able to check him on Wednesday and it healed over, and then ride on Thursday and lesson on Saturday and then BEACH on Monday! 🙂

So easy to root for

So I know I grouched mightily about how miserable my ‘summer’ has been but you know what, I finally have something fun to talk about!!

My dear pony is sound again, so I took Monday off work to join a few friends for a beach ride!! I had this idea last week, when I was moping around because Oats was lame with an abscess…I just was DYING to do something fun with him, you know??

Fortunately it resolved by Wednesday, I rode on Tuesday and I was able to have my jump lesson on Saturday even! And then on Monday it was the big ride 🙂 Even better, the weather finally cooperated and it was sunny for once. We actually had a pretty lousy weekend for sun- 16 deg and raining for pretty much all of Saturday, which was great (NOT) because I had invited friends over for a small patio party…That turned out to be indoors wearing jeans and sweaters because it is so cold here now!

Oats trying to exit stage left… 

And then finally Monday was nice! So we did it!

And the horses were pretty well behaved too, considering how busy the beach was. Boats, trucks, RV’s tents, beach umbrellas, kids, babies, toys, dogs, bikes, kites, beach blankets…You name it, it was there and flapping around!

Luckily the horses were very well behaved about all of it and we had a nice time 🙂

It just felt SO GOOD to be able to go and DO something with my horse since it’s been such a lame and boring summer, with the occasional absolute disaster.

Flying high!

So instead of going out for a fancy dinner for our anniversary, I decided on a different surprise for the two of us- going to a trampoline gym! The one that opened up in our city is called Flying Squirrel. It’s still pretty new, and they closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, but they opened back up recently and we gave it a go!

It is pretty reasonably priced – I paid $35/pp for 90 minute visit, and they had a 2-hour special of 1 hour jumping on trampolines and 1 hour on the new ropes course, but I kind of am afraid of heights and have bailed out on these things before, so I just went with the jumping. You do have to buy & wear trampoline socks- they have little grippers on the bottom. They were only $3/ea, so not bad and I get why you need them- it’s slippery!

It was fun!! Man, it felt different from when I was a kid on my own trampoline. I was pretty reckless back then, and now I feel like I could really hurt myself…Ha. But I enjoyed the heck out of it, and we played basketball, jumped from the high tower to the inflatable floor, did cartwheels, jumped from trampoline to trampoline!

We didn’t last the full 90 minutes, after about an hour I had a feeling I was going to get careless and overconfident and hurt myself doing something stupid. HA! At least I can recognize this?? So we packed it in. It’s really fun, felt pretty safe during COVID-19 since the gym was pretty empty, and it was nice to try something new during this boring, miserable time of ‘everything is exactly the same all the time’.

I would go back!

My reviews: Fill that FOMO in your heart with food! I humbly suggest Cheeze-Its!

Times are tough around here, in our never ending April.

This might lend itself well to some well-placed emotional eating, which I personally define as when I eat the entire box of something and then …Feel better? Nah that can’t be right. But I guess it it’s wrong then I don’t want to be right! Also I think it staves off some of the ‘Michael Shannon-esque rage seething just under the surface’ that I fear might bubble up.

So on that note, understanding that food is kind of what I have going for me these days, I recently grabbed a box of Cheez-Its, which both confusingly had the term ‘new’ and also ‘original’ on the box. So which is it, Cheeze-Its? Are you new or original? I have never had them before so I figured that now is a good time to absolutely crush half a box before freaking out at my farrier about why my horse is lame again… (he is fine, thank god!!)

And I am here to say that unlike our American friend Nutter-Butter Fudge-Covered Disappointments, Cheeze-Its are the real deal! They smell pretty fake, like Hawkins Cheezies (no shame on those, they do a great job), but the taste is alllll sharp cheddar. No mean feat for food scientists I think! It’s very satisfying, and you get a lot of the cheese-flavour per cracker. I was like yeah these are fine…And then realized I’d eaten most of the box. More than fine then! And I am not really a cracker-eater, other than the occasional Triscuit. I did find out they had a bunch of different varieties, like spicy, later so I feel a bit cheated right now, hah.

One note of warning: If you are a total glutton, like me, and like to tilt the remainder of crumbs from the plastic bag straight into your mouth- DON’T. It’s basically big chunks of salt with orange powder. Yowza. And I like salty things!

Oh and one more note on this, might only apply to me though- I don’t recommend eating that many crackers and then running. Yikes. Cheeze-Its fueled heartburn for milessss…

But if you are experiencing a Summer of Constant Disappointments, like I am, then I give Cheeze-Its two thumbs up! Join me in our journey through food and alcohol… substituting itself for enjoyment and pleasure everyday!

Next review up- A plethora of seltzer waters with alcohol and some without! And I really didn’t like some of them!

Living with endometriosis

During a flare-up. Bloating for weeks and it’s terrible.

Me normally, no flare-up.

So yeah, I inadvertently got diagnosed (unofficially) last summer. The extreme pain got too great for me to handle and I was desperate. The fun thing about endometriosis is that you can get it at anytime, at any age apparently. Mine got triggered by having the Mirena IUD for some reason, and then it was a full-on ride to pain town for years. 😦 It does not respond to painkillers, at all. I have burned a hole in my stomach from trying to use ibuprofen with Tylenol to try to function, and it never worked.

On bad days I am vomiting in pain with extreme bloating and discomfort. I have chronic fatigue with terrible back pain with flare-up days and my stomach is in a turmoil with IBS-like symptoms. It’s miserable.

On good days I can function, I am not dizzy and incredibly fatigued, my stomach looks NORMAL and sometimes even *gasp* Good??

Sadly, even with a new medication (Visanne) that I started taking about 5 months ago, I don’t have all good days. It started off terrible- horrible periods that hemorrhaged, awful cramps, bloating, back pain, exhaustion- and then for about 2 blissful months I had nothing! It felt incredible!

And then it immediately relapsed and now I have bad weeks again. 😦 the doctor I am seeing- who is a specialist- said to hang on and it should be getting better, but so far it has NOT gotten better. My bad days aren’t as bad as they were, but they still suck a 100000% worse than those good 2 months I had.

I am starting to wonder if Visanne is enough, or I should start looking at other options, like a surgical intervention. This is a life-altering disease, and causes severe, chronic pain and discomfort. I hate living with it, and it greatly affects my personal quality of life.

The pain caused by the good fortune of others

I am feeling this right now. UGH. I can’t remember what the german word for this is, but I’m sure they have a good one…

And honestly? I can’t really complain much. Oats is still lame, but his abscess is definitely progressing and day by day it’s grosser and grosser… On Saturday I peeled off his poultice and saw two bloody bruise spots on his heels. Oh good! I added a new poultice and asked the farrier when I should be replacing it, given how his abscess seemed to be moving quickly- and it looked HUGE.

She said every day now, so my husband and I decided to do our mega run on Sunday Funday a run…To the barn to treat Oats. Ha. Well ok that was my idea. 😉 His idea was to add in a detour to the barn. that accidentally added on about 7km to our regular route…It was an adventure, all right! A cool 20km journey TO the barn and 12k HOME from the barn. A 32km day! hahahha

At the barn we had our snacks and I took off Oat’s old poultice to examine and clean his foot. It looked about the same at first as Saturday- photo below:

It’s basically his entire heel. FML.

But then I started poking harder at his heel, particularly in the space between the two eruption spots- you can see a sort of dark shadow there in this photo, and WOW it is so soft and mushy, it started turning red and pussing out immediately. Yick! Also the puss was pinkish? Not yellow? Gross and weird. I wanted to keep poking it, but left it alone with a new poultice for tomorrow (today’s) gross adventure in abscess-world… OH and my rotten pony pooped on my ARM when I was treating his damned foot! ARGH.

He’s loving wearing a boot, clearly feels good with it on. That is good because it shows me that this is indeed an abscess, and NOT another type of lameness. That is the worst!! My friend who has had a very difficult spring with her horse (Oaty’s big brother Donato!) had him come up suddenly lame last week also, a mere day apart from Oats’ sudden lameness. Only Donato’s was not his hoof- it’s his check ligament that is swollen. 😦 how much bad news can 1 person get?? I feel AWFUL for her. And creepily relieved that it’s not Oats with that problem just his bad hoof.

Can we get a break over here? I miss everything.

When your life feels like a loss

Happy 11th anniversary to my husband, and 10th anniversary to my horse Mr. Oats!

11 years ago, we had summers! 

I truly wish we could just fast-forward this year. 2020 has just been one long chain of sucking. It started with a little trickle (for example, I was weirdly put out by the MEC races cancelling…and then boom! No more races at all, for the foreseeable future). How little I knew then, eh? How much I know now, sadly. 😦

I am very fortunate that Oats’ sudden lameness can be traced to an old existing abscess that lurked under the surface of his left hoof for months, apparently? All those really random, minor lamenesses he had a few months ago can be traced directly to it! Weird eh? But PHEW that is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.

So, he gets treated with his poultice, Bute and a boot until *something* happens this time! I am super relieved.

Otherwise, we don’t get summer here anymore, so it’s been absolutely freezing, rainy, windy, grey and just miserable. Yay…

I can’t muster up any real cheer or celebration, just mostly low lying, existing dread for what comes next. This is probably what situation depression feels like?