Why am I soooooo tired.

I have to go into town to buy food stuffs and totally lack the motivation, would just like to nap instead. I know if I go up town I can get a movie from the library and more of that amazing raspberry sorbetto from VGs and spend the rest of the day in bed. Oh that sounds nice, if only they delivered and I could stay in the house.

I did trim all the boy bunnies, got some nice fiber too :)

Mr. Cadbury goes from  poof

to nekky!

Yesterday we went to Cabala's and didn't buy anything, well Joe bought some ammo but that's not interesting. I'm also having food issues where I am rocking the heartburn and all food is kinda gross, which is why I need raspberry sorbetto and a bath. But that is also not interesting.

This is me at 29 weeks and four days pregnant.

don't I look cute!

alright, enough fuckin off.
I bravely go to town but I'm not gonna brush my hair or anything.

snow day with bunz

I never really thought I would be enthusiastically reading up on cloth diapering.

Anyway, was all social yesterday and today am all sleepy, it is snowing and I am thinking of drinking lots of tea and tidying up the house a bit. Was planning on trimming a couple bunnies today as well, several are due and a couple are overdue (uh oh I got some matting, bad bunny mom) Plus, Sadie needs a bath since she is stinky, just wish she wouldn't view it as a punishment since she seems to spend the rest of the day worrying about what she did to deserve the bath. The house will be invaded by smelly teenage boys who want to play poker tonight so I often have loads of time to myself on Friday nights.

Going to try and get Frost (grey) and Cadbury (light brown) done since they have the nicest fur right now, and do a damage control clip on Willow (grey), Fritz(white) and Ritz(white). The girls needs some evaluating, I need to decide who has fuzz worth keeping. Violet(white) is a really large bodied rabbit but her fur tends to be more English and tangle easier, since I don't have huge amounts of time to brush (and like to feed free choice hay) I tend to lose part of every clip to mats. Flora and Fauna have a neat colour (black and grey) but I haven't gotten much length out of either one and Fancy(white with grey points) is just so freaking cute.

Sadie and Fancy (when she was teensy)

Joy is such a princess, all three are wet and munching hay but she is the only one shivering, I would think since Poppy has less body fat or Baby horse since she is little would shiver but nope, it is always Joy. So she is wearing a blanket, spoiled beastie.

Going to stop writing about it and do it! but first eat a snack.

Today is a sad day.

Warning, whining ahead.

 The past couple of day I have been really over emotional, depressed and somewhat neurotic.I talked about it today with Joe when he called at his lunch break and told me he loved me which promptly made me burst into tears. Not really a normal response unless I am really Pms-y, which I am not. I realized I don't feel good (I'm apparently a little slow) and I think that's why I have been depressed the past couple of days, literally you can count the number of things I have done lately on one hand and I don't even want to ride. The weather has been shite, just cold and rainy. I am crying at the drop of a hat, every joint aches, especially my hands, my head hurts and I could literally sleep all day. I keep putting off going tot the doctor because it is expensive and I don't think about it when I am feeling good but then I have a couple bad days where I feel awful and am reminded to do it, then I feel better again and put it off. Joe said he is just going to fill out the insurance paper work and take care of me.

I got into a huge disagreement with my FiL last night, who is convinced because I put down bedding that the chicks were going to eat it and all die, I have raised a lot of chicks, my mom does a couple hundred every year and we always used bedding. But my FiL's dad told him never to use bedding and just use newspaper with feed sprinkled on top because it would encourage the chicks to eat and it you put any type of foreign matter in the chicks would eat it and die. I disagree since if you put food down of course the chicks will pick at it, and they aren't so stupid to eat bedding that is to big to fit in their mouths when they have free choice food. Well last night when FiL came over he put newspaper on top of the bedding and my husband couldn't understand why I was so upset, I set the brooder up the way I wanted it, I had a reason for it and I resent being told I am wrong when my way was perfectly fine. I understand FiL was just trying to help but I didn't want help and I wasn't mean about it I just said I disagreed and then ignored him when he was trying to explain why his way was so much better and my way was going to kill all the chicks. Then Joe and I got into an argument because he thought I was being irrational and mean.

Chicks are doing fine, no losses so far despite bedding for the first part of their lives, bunnies all got nails trimmed yesterday and I'm going to put up an ad (even though I would rather not deal with it right now) because they are ready for new homes. I'm going to miss the sweet little things, although I am keeping the grey and white female...

Today is Joe's birthday so I am going to town to pickup tasty noms, and make a cake :) Probably take a bath and read, I'm so fucking exciting.

oh, Hai?

It is sunny today but might only be nice for ten minutes, apparently I am using that ten minutes to update my bloggy. I was looking at my blog stats and I got 150 views last month, don't seem like a lot but I am pretty sure that there is more then just me reading this and that's cool, especially since I am interwebz challenged and am not entirely sure how to work this thing. Also apparently someone googled "slave duties" and found my blog, I think that is very very very funny, especially since I would make a bad slave since I chafe at authority and get bored easily.

I am horse and chicken sitting for a neighbor right now and it made me think a lot about set up, I have visited old farmsteads and historical sites and was always impressed with the amount of planning that went into where everything was. Even at more recent farms most will have an excellent and easy to use layout. That is super important especially when you have a limited amount of time and lots of things to do, you don't want to be fighting with distance and giving yourself extra work.

We have it pretty easy right now, bunnies food is next to cages and I always have a water bucket there to fill up water bottles, I store the food in big plastic bins to keep the coon out. Horses are mostly on pasture but I have their "grain" next to where I keep the supplements and buckets, so that just takes a minute, in the winter I had round bales stored in front of the barn so I could fix their "grain" and toss a section of hay into a wheelbarrow and just make one trip. Even if you are working with a less then optimum situation, you can still do things to save time such as having several buckets at proper locations so you don't have to wander around looking for one so you can fill the chicken's water or make two trips all the way across the farm with the horse's grain (can you tell what I did this morning?) as far as I can figure neighbor doesn't actually own any buckets, I think that is really weird, I have like ten of different sizes and colours.

I am setting up the chicken coop and am trying to figure out the easiest way to put it together, actually right now I am eating frozen berries, drinking coffee and fucking off on the internet but I am thinking about setting up a chicken coop, yup thats is how that works, thinking.

Any who, I bleached all the feeders yesterday and just need to set the lamp up. I also got some pelleted horse bedding which I basically use for everything because I love it's super absorbancy and happy pine scent. Equine Fresh makes a superior kitty litter (at a fraction of the cost of other pelleted litters!) a wonderful place for baby bunnies to poo and if I can figure out how to put it in the12 year old's room my house will smell even fresher!

I am kind of regretting getting chickens now that the coop is cleaned out, now it is clean I realize it would make an amazing bunny house! I don't know why I didn't realize before I ordered 87 chicks and now they are on their way I can't evict them, who would do that to innocent baby peepers? But it would have made a sweet bunny room. and I could have kept all my babies.....

babies

Yet another picture of Joy grazing, she does this a lot.

Today's exciting adventures include trimming bunny nails and painting sheds. Absolutely riding Joy, sorta want to ride to the river and I wish I could con more fun people into riding with me, I think I should try blackmail and/or paying someone to be my trail friend. I just found out that event I wanted Joy to debut at is on the same weekend as our big family and friends who are driving ten hours to see us day, I am actually really depressed about it since the next closest event is going to be like two hours away or the one I helped at last week with the monster big cross country course. I don't know what to do but maybe build a time machine or clone myself. I plan on still riding and conditioning Joy like I am going to it though because we both need the work.

hothothot.

Wah it is hot, like 80 degrees and muggy, I know I was just whining about it being to freaking cold, but this warm in May seems excessive, I may have to start getting up early to ride (haha) Although today
I had to get up extra early because male offspring missed his bus, then later needed a pickup because he was dying of some mystery illness. I had to do lots of errands today so am feeling kinda burnout on doing stuff, still going to ride tonight though and need to get on it before Joe comes home.

Computers being screwy and not letting us access amazon or ebay without this weird phishing website that wants our credit info (and pin number!) to verify the account, not gonna happen. Unfortunately weird stuff seems to be happening with other sites like gmail as well, I'm considering performing a exorcism.

Babies are growing well, I ran out of goat's milk this morning and had to dilute it and they were not impressed. I think they took it personally. They will be ready for new homes after the 22nd, I will miss them but not miss having to feed them all the time. I can't believe how quickly they have grown or how sassy they are getting. I took teensy grey boy and two of the whites into town with me today to visit my friend Melissa (she is going to be taking home teensy grey boy) didn't take into account how hot it was and the poor things got to hot on the way over so I sprinkled them with water, they were not impressed but it helped cool them down a little, I love how mellow they are with people handling them though.

Had a really productive ride on Joy on Tuesday, good conditioning trail ride with lots of canter up hills and working on keeping connection at the walk. Also started some in hand work on Wednesday and then rode bareback, She took to the in hand stuff fairly quickly, it's not much different then regular leading just changing the angle and keeping her body alined with mine. She is quite fun to ride bareback, really working on transitions and relaxation, which I think is hard for both of us. I tried the exercise that the dressage lady from Eventing University gave us, the basic ten steps walk to ten steps trot and back again, Joy got kind of bored (and so did I) but it seems to be helping with the rush into trot whenever I shorten the reins thing. It works best if I add some circles and halts, Also got a couple really excellent trot rein backs (trot to halt then back a couple steps and into trot) Need to work on cantering bareback,she gets quick behind and I get tight and bouncy, no fun!

Big plan today is putting in my arena, got lots of t-posts and tape for it. Starting to doubt my ability to draw a straight line though, so might enlist Joe to help since I seem incapable of making things square. I am really excited to have a solid, dedicated riding space though. I plan on working Baby a little, maybe a small amount of free lunging and some ground stuff, she is almost one! and going to be huge (well huger then Joy, not that it is hard ) Also gotta figure out my chick order, if I am indeed going to have chickies.

Oh and little brown dog ate the checkbook, maybe she thinks I spend to much money.

I'm Famous! on the interweb that is.

Hurray for gorgeous weather! So going to enjoy riding today,

I just got a cool book about working horses on the ground, lunging, double lunging and advanced ground driving. So cool! It inspired me to lunge Joy last night and she was primarily good, she did hit her limit about half way through, get frustrated and take off at a mad canter around and around completely ignoring me. When she was younger I used to call it "getting her canter button stuck" since she will go around and around completely tuning you out, I used to get annoyed at her when I was free lunging her in the round pen because you could be standing there completely ignoring her and she would just whip around until she was drenched. It seems to happen when she gets frustrated or annoyed, she isn't the type of horse with huge amounts of patience and running her until she gets tired isn't a valid option since it gets her more and more wound up so it is much better to give her something else to focus on.

I guess it falls under the heading of preventing frustration before it happens, she can be wonderfully willing and obedient but if she feels overwhelmed or upset then she gets wound up, and chaos ensues. That is one of the primary reasons I try to train smarter and not harder, if I can head a temper tantrum off at the pass instead of pushing her past her point of endurance then it is a more useful and productive training session, I don't know why everyone doesn't train like that, it just makes sense. She doesn't like being off balance, I was asking her to do canter to trot transitions and she was having trouble getting her hind legs under her on the circle so she got mad and started trying to gallop and buck, I took her down to trot and then walk on a small circle until she calmed down and then we tried it again for a short distance and she was fine.

Joy has been kinda cranky lately, she is out of shape and I am slowly working on getting her fit. She has a small abscessy bump on her chin. Apparently this is the spring to get weird injuries and bumps, I would like to be done with that now, kthnxbai

So basically first I have to drive into town and buy dog food, not really excited about it, I would say on a scale of one to ten my motivation is about three, three is a nice number. I do love my dogs though and I guess I will buy them sustenance.

In other news I am famous! a posting on bunny rearing that I put on the horse forum to help people who were finding sad wild babies is now on it's own website on Angora Rabbits, how cool is that!
You can read it in all its glory here: Dangerbunnygirl's Guide to Raising Orphan Rabbits The site looks like it will be pretty awesome too and twenty people have read it, although maybe just twenty people who feel sorry for me but still twenty! I'll take what I can get, even if it's a pity read.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) most of the babies are looking to be males, so if I am going to keep more then Miss Siamese (the lone girl) Joe is going to have to make more cages since the boys will not generally live together happily. I was hoping one of the three whites would be a girl, I have one white (Violet) from the last litter and while she is nice she seems to have more of a cottony fiber then I was aiming for. I really loved Rosie's wool and was really hoping for one of the babies to be female with similar fur. I guess if one of the white boys has kickass fur then maybe I will have him neutered and keep him with Cadbury (my brown male from last litter with great fur) I am going to need to start advertising some soon, I hate selling them, I get too attached! Little grey is going to one of my favorite people and he will have a wonderful life with her. I think the rest should be house buns with people who will love them.

All of my posts lately have been about bunnies!

They are still doing super, got some more cute pictures today. I am really enjoying having them, they are so sweet and cute.

Yesterday I meant to ride but I think I was a bit hung over because I felt like crap and didn't get anything done, for example I planned on...

Riding!

Cleaning pasture!

Tidying tack room!

Planting rose bushes!

And instead all I did was lie around, take a bath and ate too much buttered toast.

Today I am feeling fine so I really should get off the internet and do something, besides if I keep posting pictures of adorable baby bunnies everywhere I will use up all our broadband time and Joe will be cross.This morning I got the special treat of Baby horse being out first thing, she was running in huge circles on the neighbors lawn because she couldn't figure out how to get back in the fence and Joy was eating all the food. I don't know how she got out but I was not impressed. I walked all the fence line and am still not sure how she escaped but a strand was down in the back on the other paddock so that could have ground the line out.

Sadie makes a new friend.

Hurray for proper Spring type days!

Today was beautiful out and Joy and I had a nice trail ride. Did some trail blazing through the brush and a lot of hill work, she was slightly sweaty but not a lot. Felt good just to out and moving, I am super tight in the back though, cantering was painful so I am gonna beg a massage tonight :) I got a vine wrapped around the back of my neck when I was ducking through so brush, damn near ripped me off Joy and I have a lovely rope burn (vine burn?) scrape on the back of my neck. Other then that went well her canter is getting much more consistent and balanced, which is exciting.

Buns are doing super, eating solid food and nursing well. My friend came over a few nights ago to help feed and that was fun, last night my stepson got in on the feeding action. You can't help but gush on how cute they are. I freaked out this morning because half of my right thumb is numb so I called my mom, According to my mom I have a numb thumb from feeding baby bunnies, apparently a nursing related stress injury. I think it is very funny.
 

Little beasts are now cute enough to take over the world.

Looking forward to a nice weekend, plans include riding, getting boys eyes checked, cleaning up the pasture (seems never ending!) celebrating Beltane and hanging out :)

Micro Buns are doing great, got 7-9 ml of goat's milk into each one this morning, the little white one is so comical, he saw me and started squeaking to be fed! I have never heard a bunny make that noise before it was so funny. He also gets really into nursing and will bounce up and down until he gets plugged in. Four out of six are good nursers, the other two have to be coerced into it. I have also seen them eating hay so that is a good sign as well. I'll try and get Joe to take some pictures of me feeding doing the evening feed, they are getting faster to feed and it only takes 45 minutes instead of over an hour.

It has been rainy here, or super windy so I haven't ridden in a bit. Planning on heading out this afternoon but I think we are in a sucker hole since it stopped raining but there are grey menacing clouds everywhere. Likely just go bareback so I don't get my tack drenched.

Since Joy got a bellyache off the fresh grass I have been limiting her exposure to it, I would hate to see some founder. So they get half an hour on the good stuff right now and we will build it up later. Sunday was the first time she ever colicked and it was very stressful, She got left on the fresh pasture to long on Saturday when Rosie died.

I applied to a riding camp instructor position, still haven't heard back which is a bummer, I would enjoy that.

Today is cold and rainy, my hands hurt and I forgot to put walnuts in the banana bread.
But here is a picture of cutest babeh rabbit in the world, so life will be ok.

The 17th is coming up awful fast.

We just got back from a nice but brief trip in the UP, it was fun and great to see my family. Returned to greener grass and six unexpected baby bunnies, Unexpected because I didn't think she held to the first mating, apparently Rosie is Super Fertile Bunny. They were born in the communal female hutch but I decided to move them inside because I didn't want someone else to step on them and one of the other girls peed in the nest, ew. So far she is settled in well and seems to be nursing, big danger is she will abandon them if she feels threatened. So far every time I walk by she is looking for more treats and babies appear to have full tummies so that is excellent.

I am really getting excited about the eventing clinic, at the same time I am nervous about how we will do but at this point I have to trust she knows her job and work on any weak points. In a perfect world we both would be more fit, her connection with the bit would be stronger and my flexibility would be greater but it is not a perfect world and I am ok with that. I still plan on doing a little more schooling but at the last minute is is stupid to over school and play catch up.

My mom had a great suggestion about work, I like training and love working with young horses. She thought I should look into learning acupuncture. I have always had an interest in alternative therapy's for horses, I believe strongly in doing what is best for the animal whether it is finding a drug that works, or holistic treatment but I don't like the "quick fix" approach and unfortunately it seems that many vets (and doctors) will prescribe a drug rather then finding out the cause, changing feed or using some type of bodywork. I would love to add in another tool to help horses be fit and happy. Might look into a vet tech program as well.

Today I have lots to do from being gone for a couple days, house needs some tidying, horses need brushing, Joy needs riding and bunny cage needs fixing. I also need to call animal control and talk to them. We had the neighbors call on our dogs because they felt their chickens were in danger, I am really upset over it since our dogs don't go out unsupervised and Emma was just running over to their fence and barking because their dog is always, always outside. Sadie is not at all aggressive toward poultry and she has been living her with us for over a year. I am really upset they didn't talk to us about it first before calling animal control. Anyway I have to get the dogs registered with the county and they have to have their Rabies shots done by a professional vet. Emma is just old enough for hers and I did Sadie's last year myself, I am disappointed the rescue didn't mention anything about getting the dogs registered, I thought you only had to do that in town and not in the country. J's family has lived here for decades and never had any dogs registered. I really dislike making those types of phone calls too, but she gave us ten days to get it sorted out and it will be done in eleven so I guess it is not going to be an argument, I just need to have a positive attitude.


Rosie says "stop looking at my babies"

The don't look like much now but will soon take over the world with their cuteness.