It was overcast this evening. Nevertheless, the daylight is disappearing. I wish that it would last longer than it is going to last.

Tonight I took Hrimfara for a ride. I decided that I’ll do road rides for a while. She is grass obsessed on the trail, and because I don’t know what to do about this, I have been flailing on her with a crop. I figured that there has to be a better way to treat my beloved horse, and I have found it.

I decided to ride her in the center of the road where she’s not distracted by the greenery. The other day I did this and also took her out on the trail. Didn’t work. But today, our going for a road ride went very well. We came to the turn towards home, after doing the loop, and she refused to move. So I got off of her and we walked a ways down the road.

I suspect that tonight, Hrimmi was relieved to be spared having to literally feed her addiction. And I enjoyed taking in the always changing scenery. The dandelions are in full bloom and the wild geraniums and wild roses are out. And the lilacs that we planted two years ago are flowering.

I want to get the cart out and hook Hrimmi up and see how she does. Maybe Sunday. I do not think that she’ll pull over to the side of the road.

I’d also like to resume teaching her to paint.

Time is not on my side these days. This morning we drove to Anchorage and I spent five minutes with the audiologist who, on the computer, adjusted the levels of my hearing aids. It was very fast. She explained that she changed the levels because this has to be done incrementally – that it takes time to adjust to new frequencies. I think this is it. I didn’t listen as carefully as I might have last week because I couldn’t hear all that well.

I am again becoming more attentive to what others are saying. It takes a lot of energy to feign interest when you can’t hear what someone is saying. I think now that I can say that I’m all ears.

On the drive home we talked about stopping at Jitters in Eagle River and checking to see if we’d won the silent auction on two pallets of books that were put up for bid a few days ago. We hurried to get there. We discovered that someone was at their computer, bidding against us. Well, we upped the ante from $1.00 to $25.00 for each pallet. Quite obviously, we did not need these books. It was just that in the past we’d gotten books from the Mat-Su School District, and now the books are on the auction block.

Upon coming out of Jitters, I went next door, to the second hand book store – the large space is packed floor to ceiling, wall to wall with books. I got to thinking, what if we somehow came into possession of these books? A mind-numbing thought because I think deep down that we are dealing with a finite number of books. Keeping them in circulation, this is the trick.

Next: June 28, 2025: Another Idea