Too rushed

Today was all messed up. I tried to do too much and got a freaking speeding ticket.

I absolutely had to clean my house and do laundry, but I wanted to make us a nice 1st day of Christmas break breakfast of bacon and an omelette. Then I realized the fridge was both empty of food and dirty so I cleaned it (easy when you have no food). Then three loads of laundry and the whole time I felt this incredible pressure to go to the grocery store and get food before the stores close for the next three days. Imagine being stuck with no food on Christmas day.

J wanted to go to the toiletry store (we have to go to separate stores for our soap and shampoo and scented candles) so that was a drive to town, and he wanted to find Woolworths, and we walked and walked around downtown Wermelskirchen trying to find it and I had no jacket and a bitter wind was making me miserable. Finally we found it and it wasn't the fancy department store I thought it would be, it was closer to a dollar store.

It was getting late so we hurried home and I drove off again, to this new feed store Christina showed me so I could get her a bag of that grain-free grain. I also wanted more mineral snacks. Those two bags came to 61Euros! Holy crap. I know my mineral snacks are 34E, but that grain-free grain, that's just a bag of GRASS for almost 30Euros! I looked at the label, it's just different types of grasses and herbs and dried fruit. In contrast, the feed pellets I bought yesterday for Mag cost 11Euros for 25 kilos. At least her grass was easier to carry to her house. (I also bought 25 kilos of beet pulp for 11Euros, and had a big huge steaming bucket of it in my car.)

She was pretty surprised and invited me in to play with her cat.

I had to get to the barn so I hurried away, after playing with her beautiful calico cat for a while.

 This car in front of me was going 25kph in a school zone (that I didn't really notice) and finally he dwindled to a stop and turned on his blinker like, just pass me. So, frustrated, I zoomed around him. And got blitzed. NO! The speed camera got me exactly as I swerved around him, and I was going 46, in a 30. NO. I'm such a slow driver it's pathetic. I have not been blitzed in 7 years! I'm so mad! I told J that in America, you can blubber and whine and the cop will let you go with a warning. But not a camera. And why is today considered a school day when the kids are not in school!? J said if it had happened tomorrow, I'd have been safe to drive 50.

Finally I made it to the barn and it was getting dark! Oh no, how am I gonna clean up or do trailer loading....

with beet pulp! I got to Mag's paddock and couldn't see the ground to clean so I just didn't, and he was nickering urgently that his trough was empty of hay. First time. I was pissed. He should not run out of hay ever. He was a little pushy and needed reminders to walk behind me to the trailer, where I placed the steaming bucket. The entire trailer smelled wonderful and he jumped right in and ate and ate and ate....even when two people came to visit with me for a while, Mag was not gonna leave that trailer.  This girl who leases a horse there is a student at my husband's school, and will be one of his math students next year, so that was cool. The world in Wuppertal is very small.

She went to get her horse ready and I said I'd join her in the arena but I changed my mind when I saw all the horses come in for the first time, and how Mag was attacking his hay nets.

My first time! First all the mares came down the hill in the pitch blackness, you could only hear their hooves until they filed into their separate barn areas and each mare went calmly into her own stall.

The geldings were totally different - loud and rowdy and in a hurry. I don't understand why - aren't mares usually more food motivated? I suppose it's the whole herd movement thing that gets them excited. Again, they all filed into their own stalls with no one to guide them. How wonderful to see!

I noticed Mag gave Maja a long dirty look as she walked by his stall into hers. At that moment I knew I was not going to take him away from his food and work him in the arena. He needed to just eat.

Claudia and Gaby were chatting by Mag's stall and I said, "I don't like the feel at night here, it's so different and pitch black!" (On the way to shutting the trailer doors and windows, I had to use sonar, there was no way to see the way up there!)

Claudia said, "I love it here at night! Listen to all the horses eating!" I looked around and said, "You're right - I've never seen them all in their stalls before!" I'll have to adapt to it. I just wish they had a light between the stables and the arena. It feels like you'll walk off the edge of the earth on the way.

When I got home I didn't even set my purse down, I asked J to go get groceries with me on what he called "the busiest shopping day of the year". Scared of that.

Well my paddock is not clean, but my horse is eating two overstuffed hay nets, and we have groceries. And Bellis has hay that J helped me bring down from the loft tonight in the freezing cold.

Time to get warm. My house smells like a peppermint candle and my clothes are actually in a machine that is DRYING THEM. (I had no dryer for the last 8 years.) So the house smells like peppermint and the dryer sheets my mom sent me from home.