I had big plans for today. I was going to ride all my horses, rain or shine. My plans did not materialize. I understand now why this was. You cannot work 5, 6, 7 days in a row then expect, on a day off, to do something fun. This goes against the law of averages.

I ended up, as I should have, finishing up my week’s work, then taking care of my co-dependents’ environs. My week’s work: I drove to Sutton and mailed out two boxes of books and stocked the Bright Lights Book Project kiosk. It rained hard, going there and coming home. I still had it in mind to go horseback riding.

Got home, ate lunch, told Pete that I’d shovel the gravel on the trailer into buckets. I didn’t say that perhaps this will speed up our getting rid of the old, moldy hay. Our hay dealer will feed this, cow hay, to his animals. I then emptied the bucketed manure into the compost station. I had hoped Pete would do this, but he had other priorities, like putting oil in my car engine.

Sutton Post Offce books

I then cleaned the goat pen. I should clean it as often as I clean the horse enclosures. If I was as lax cleaning the horse pen, I’d be up to my eyeballs in shit. I was only up to my ankles in goat shit today.

I cleaned the shed – the hay, urine, and manure layers and is impossible to get up with a shovel, so as is now the habit, I pull the sheets of crap up with my hands. My nose is close to the ground, what I smell is ammonia.

Outside, same crap, same situation as inside their pen except for the fact that I was now dealing with moldy hay. There has been considerable erosion on the backside of the shed, so there is a lot of mud. The back area is sloping so the mud was slick. I fell down several times. Sassy watched me clean up: she was obviously intrigued. I did hear her say that what I was doing didn’t look like it was fun. Sassy, you got it right.

As I was doing all this, I thought that, yes, I’d much rather have been out on a ride.

If it wasn’t the final day of hunting season, I would have felt far worse about not heading out on a woods ride. The first and the last few days are the most dangerous, at the beginning of the season everyone is out hoping to bag the big one. At the end of the season, those who haven’t bagged the big one are still out there. These are the real amateurs, that is those who on foot or on hoof have to watch out for. They’ll take their chances and shoot at anything. Anything includes chestnut horses.

I have to be inside tomorrow, pedaling books. Bet the sun shines. Hope that I lose.

Next: 262. 9/24/22: Up and Down