…and Blue Sky

 

Happy Friday from my finally un-frozen house! It’s been in the 50s the past couple of days, and I am SO here for it! Can we just keep these temps the rest of winter, please?

Here’s what I’ve been loving this week!

 

1) A guy that I work with was able to fix my most recent broken pipe for me, and only asked for $25 (Compared to the $80/hr the first plumber charged.) Can we nominate him as Best Human Ever? I’m planning to sneak a gift card onto his desk at work since he wouldn’t take more money and he’s helping me replace the breaker that’s causing the scary fuse box noise next week. But you guys – having water again is so nice! Immediately after he left I took a nice hot shower, did laundry and dishes, and generally marveled at the glory of running water.

Around two months of winter left – should we take bets on if I can make it without another broken pipe?

 

2) Yesterday was GORGEOUS – almost 60 degrees, so of course I spent it with my favorite guy:

 

There are only like three blades of green grass left, but he found them. #boomerang

A post shared by Crystal Ward (@crystalward11) on Jan 25, 2018 at 2:42pm PST

He was in such a sweet mood yesterday, picking up his feet for me to clean before I even asked and generally just being an awesome horse, so I let him graze for quite a while after our lesson. I should put “graze” in sarcastic quote marks because the snow killed most of the green grass, but he still had fun rooting around for something edible!

We also made serious progress on the crazy trot he was doing last week.

So he’s doing less of this:

And more of this:

He got many peppermints.

 

3. I’m realizing while writing this post that I was actually pretty boring this week and don’t have that much to share, so here is a picture of the most important Bear in the world out enjoying the weather:

 

4. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like no matter which grocery store I go to, they only have like half of what I want in stock. I had one of those magical trips to Target this week, though, where they had EVERYTHING I like, and I somehow ended up spending almost my entire month’s grocery budget in that one trip. Now I just have to avoid the temptation to eat all of the delicious things so that they actually last all month!

A few favorites that never seem to be in stock but magically were this time:

Indian food that requires little to no effort on my part is one of my favorite categories of cuisine, but this one has been out of stock the last billion times I’ve been to Target, so I got really excited and bought three.

I’ll save a little bit of my dignity and not tell you how many of these burritos I bought. But they’re so good! And organic and vegan and blah blah blah. And now I want to go make one for lunch.

 

I bought the limited edition Oreos because they basically sound Nutella flavored. (I did not buy the limited edition cinnamon ones because that’s just weird.) Haven’t tried them yet, but I’ll report back!

 

5. Speaking of Target, I didn’t go back to the V-Day section but then sorely regretted it when a friend tagged me in an Instagram pic that showed the new holiday birds!!

The pink one is basically just the winter blue bird in a different color (Gettin’ lazy there, Target!), but they’re all super cute! How many Target birds is TOO MANY to own??

 

Today is payday which mostly means ordering a bunch of cat food from Amazon. (If you buy Friskies, CHECK AMAZON. I’ve been finding it WAY cheaper there than even at Target or Walmart. My cats’ favorite flavor is currently $10.06 for a 24-pack vs $11.78 for 24 at Walmart! And I’ve recently found 24-packs of some flavors for less than $9!)  I’m working at the thrift shop tomorrow (and possibly picking up Fridays for awhile, too), which means I’ll probably come home with a million new things. Otherwise, the week ahead is basically just working and attempting to catch up on things around the house, with (hopefully) a riding lesson thrown in on whichever day is the warmest!

I also REALLY need to decide if I’m going to Kansas for Equifest the end of next month! On one hand it’s 3 days of horse stuff, but on the other it’s a 5 hour drive each way and having to arrange hotels and someone to feed the cats and not knowing if it’s going to be 50 degrees or 5 inches of snow… Arrgh! Winter travel planning is hard!

 

Have an awesome weekend! Hope winter is being kind to you this week!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Friday, friends! It’s hard to believe we’re already three Fridays into 2018! You know how I keep posting “Oh, I didn’t get a chance to do my Friday Favs post last week because something crazy happened!” or “This post is late because something weird happened again!”? Well… this post is late because something weird happened again! 😂

I went into the kitchen to feed the cats last night and heard the sound of water in the laundry room… but the washer wasn’t running. ANOTHER FREAKING PIPE BROKE. And while I was cleaning it up, I noticed the fuse box making a really weird noise, so I panicked and shut the power to the whole house off for awhile. (I’m rational!) After cleaning up the flooded laundry room by candlelight for like 90 minutes, I was freezing enough (and freaked out by my phone being almost dead) to give the electricity thing another go.

The noise started up again shortly after I turned the power back on, so I tried turning off one fuse at a time until the sound went away. The one marked Hot Water Heater finally did the trick – A HA! I could *not* figure out how a pipe broke AGAIN when I’ve been religiously letting faucets drip during this crazy cold weather, but it looks like my hot water heater doing something funky is to blame. I left that fuse off and flipped off the power to the entire basement just for good measure, but I’ve gotta admit, y’all, I was *terrified*. I can deal with exploding pipes, but electric problems are SCARY. I seriously packed a bag of essentials in case of an emergency. Thankfully just leaving the power to it cut (and my water off AGAIN)  is working well until I can get a plumber out here. (AGAIN.)

 

Which brings us to…

1) My riding instructor just let me come over to her house and shower this afternoon. I was SO GROSS from cleaning up the flooded laundry room (which is where the litter boxes are…) and I work at the thrift shop early tomorrow, so I was desperate to de-funk. Is there anything better than a shower when you REALLY need one? Fav forever.

2) The UPS saved me this week! We were supposed to maybe get some flurries on Monday, but instead we got 5-6″ of snow on Sunday morning,  and then more on Monday! My road was a mess so I had no way to get out, and I ran out of dry cat food early Sunday. The forecast showed temps wouldn’t be up above freezing until Thurs, so I knew I’d be stuck until at least then. But BLESS UPS’S SWEET HEART, they managed to get here on Tuesday to deliver the dry food and litter I’d ordered from Target back on Friday. I think schools were even closed on Tuesday – it was nasty out there – so I had no hope they’d get there that day. I almost kissed the box when I saw it sitting out front! SAVED!

 

This is my road. HOW, UPS?

 

3) Speaking of cat food, thank goodness I still had a 12-pack that Chewy.com sent me to review on hand to help us get through the snowed in days! The Weruva brand always has cute packaging and fun flavor names, so I was excited to try out their “Cats in the Kitchen” variety pack.

 

I think these have the highest cat approval rating of the various Weruva foods I’ve tried (They also make the Tiki Cat and BFF brands). They have the perfect level of moisture (a little wetter than regular canned food, but not watery) and texture (not pate, but not big chunks). TBH, I’d never usually buy lamb food because the idea of it makes me sad (I’m sorry, lambs are cuter than fish, I know that’s unfair, but…) but my tiny carnivores were totally into it.

Weruva’s foods seem to be super rich – some of the past ones I’ve tried have caused some of the cats to have upset stomachs, but only my mom’s cat Pepper seemed to feel a little icky and that was after eating a whole can herself. (She seems to be the most prone to not adapting well to new foods, so I should’ve known, but when you’re snowed in you don’t have a lot of choices!)

Big thumbs-up on these unless you have a kitty with a sensitive stomach.

 

4. As much as I dislike snow (And cold weather, and winter in general), seeing my little boys all curious about all of the white stuff was the one high point of the icky weather this week. I brought in a bowl of snow for them to examine, and Lin-Meow Purranda went right to work digging in it. The tiny snowball I made for them to play with was also a big hit – that thing really slid across the kitchen floor, so they had a blast chasing after it!

 

5. I’ve been enjoying the @FacesWithinPlaces Instagram account lately! The artist sees faces in everyday objects on a daily basis, and posts photos of the object plus a drawing of how he sees it.

 

 

SWIPE ➡️ to see face. I’m Ellie D, the amphibious illuminator. The frog that toggles on during a power failure. I’m not green like Kermit, and I don’t tell jokes But, keep me in mind next time the electric croaks.

A post shared by Keith Larsen (@thefaceswithinplaces) on Jul 5, 2017 at 6:59pm PDT

 

Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend! It’s supposed to be in the 50s here, which is SUPER welcome after the week we just went through! Will this upcoming week finally be the boring week I’ve been craving? Stay tuned!

 

 

 

 

Happy 2018, friends! I missed posting last week because I had a water pipe burst on Friday afternoon, which threw my whole day out of whack! Pro tip: When temps have been super cold for a week and you suddenly get a 45 degree day, don’t randomly test your outside water tap to see if it works. All I did was turn it on and back off, and WHOOSH! Flooding everywhere. And I’d been SO CAREFUL all week to leave sinks dripping so nothing would freeze. Expensive lesson learned!

 

Here’s what I’ve loved over the past two weeks!

 

1. You know that feeling of relief and gratitude when something bad happens but you realize just HOW much worse it could have been? That was me last week.

I was out feeding the horses and realized we needed more grain ASAP. Google said there was a feed store less than 2 miles away but they were closing in half an hour, so I hopped in the car to make a quick trip over. I’d just turned from the rural road onto the highway and had gotten up to 65-ish with the flow of traffic when I saw there was a car stopped to turn JUST ahead. I braked pretty hard and I guess my wheel must have been slightly turned because my car fishtailed and I lost control and ended up in a small ditch facing the wrong way.

Somehow, my car was fine other than some kind of scuffed up tires. I was able to just pull out of the ditch and head back to the barn (I was fine but pretty shaken up by the whole thing, so I decided we could do without grain today). I actually stopped by the Walmart garage on my way home to have them take a quick look at my car and make sure I wasn’t missing something and they seemed to think it looked fine, too.

The last time I lost control like that it was on black ice just outside of St Louis and instead of ending up in a ditch, I spiraled into a big concrete wall dividing the interstate lanes and totaled my convertible, so I know how badly these things can go. I’m still blown away that I was able to just drive off without even a flat tire or scratched up car.

How crazy is it that during a super cold week with icy temps, I lose control on the first day we actually get back up to 32?

 

2.  I’ve scored some awesome post-Christmas clearance deals this month! I got a light-up Christmas cat sweatshirt for $7, a fleece cat-eared hoodie for $3.75 (it’s not even Christmas-y, so I have no idea why it was marked down from like $15), black leggings for $1 (also not Christmas so ??), a cake pop for EIGHTEEN CENTS, and this masterpiece for $1.75 (Yes, it also lights up):

 

3. I’ve finally found a way to keep the cats from breaking into the bags of deliciousness that Chewy.com sends us to review each month as part of their Chewy Influencer program. You know the coat hangers with clips for pants? I use one of those to hang the bag of treats or food over the top of a door so it’s totally unreachable! Even my little evil geniuses haven’t managed to get up there. (Yet.) But it did work with the Stella & Chewy Freeze Dried cat food that Chewy sent my meowers this last month!

We got the Grain-Free Salmon & Cod variety, which is made from sustainable, wild-caught fish and can be served right out of the bag or re-hydrated. I love the convenience of something that the cats consider as exciting as wet food without the mess! The re-sealable bag is especially convenient.

 

4. WORK. I’ve had almost NO writing work since before Thanksgiving, which has left my bank account very, very sad. Finally, things picked back up this week and I’ve been pretty busy! Not quite “full time income” level again yet, but “Hey, cool, I probably won’t die of starvation!”, which is a major step up. YAY WORK. (The $ I made horse-sitting while my riding instructor was out of town SAVED me when it comes to paying bills this month!)

 

5. Speaking of horses, I took advantage of the mid-50s temps on Wednesday and managed to fit in a riding lesson! I hadn’t ridden Folklore in like 3 weeks and he’d only been ridden once in that time span, so we were both a little stiff and achy from the cold. Once we got warmed up, though, things were good! He’s such a great horse for me to learn Hunter/Jumper skills on because he’s pretty well behaved overall, but enough of a challenge that I do have to think and stay engaged and actually work.

Actual rays of sunshine!!

My current challenge is that he’s a BIG horse and when I ask him to trot, he wants to default to this HUGE, powerful, extended trot that’s on par with an average horse running.  (Trotting is supposed to be on par with jogging for humans, speed-wise.)

So basically, I’m asking for this…

And getting this:

 

I need to see if I can get an actual video of it because I’m super curious what it actually looks like! I’d probably be way too embarrassed by my crappy equitation to actually post it here, though.

 

In non-fav news, my mom’s kitty Pepper (who I take care of) got in a fight last week and managed to take a claw to the eyeball. It’s exactly as gross as you’re imagining, but as long as we can avoid infection there’s a chance of it healing up well. She’s doing really well so far, but I don’t think I’ll stop worrying until it’s totally healed!

The weekend and most of the week ahead is supposed to be Cold AF again, so hopefully I’ll have enough writing work to justify spending a lot of time snuggled under my electric blanket! After how crazy the past few weeks have been, I’m actually hoping for a super-chill, almost boring week!

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Almost Christmas! (Or Happy post-Hanukkah, or Congrats on almost surviving 2017! or insert whatever greeting floats your boat here!)

I really only have two things to write about this week – I usually just skip the week and put those items on the next list when that happens, but my first one involves a lot of photos and text, so let’s just go with it!

BTW, we’re possibly getting our first snow of the season tonight and I DO NOT APPROVE. That is all.

 

1. I really thought my trip to Eureka Springs back in October would be the last one of the year – the drive down there is all narrow, super-twisty Arkansas roads and you just don’t even want to consider it in icky winter weather. (Most businesses even close from after Christmas until Mardi Gras.) However, Thursday was somehow like 70 degrees despite being the official first day of winter, so I took advantage of the rare sunshine and hopped in the car to head down for a little bit of wandering around town (and to pick up another bottle of my favorite olive oil.)

I love just wandering downtown, surrounded by historic buildings that now host quirky boutique shops. This time I read a historic marker that proclaimed a gift shop the former law office of F.O. Butt. Apparently Festivus Orestus Butt started practicing law at 18 or 19 after Arakansas decided to overlook his “disability of minority” (I guess you had to be at least 21?) and later served in the state senate and became Eureka Springs mayor for three terms, then practiced law until he died at 97. This is why I love this weirdo town – its history is full of this kind of colorful character! (I still haven’t posted about my visit to the Eureka Springs Historical Museum several months ago! Oops.) I really can’t put into words how quirky this little artist/historic/hippie town in Northwest Arkansas truly is.   ut here are a few photos from this week’s visit:

 

There are several carved gnomes around town. I think someone at the Art Colony makes them? Side note- I got SO many comments on my “Coffee is my BFF” shirt. It’s from the Target sleepwear section but I wear it as a regular top fairly often, but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten more than one or two comments on it before. Apparently everyone in Eureka is a caffeine addict?

 

“Yeah, this seems like a good enough place to build a house,” said someone in 1879.

You might remember the creepy silhouette guy from previous Eureka posts…

 

To be honest, now that it’s happened I’m shocked it didn’t happen sooner, but someone finally decided to “upgrade” him. 😂

 

 

Sorry that this photo of the 1886 Crescent Hotel is kinda crooked, but Eureka Springs is known as the “Alps of the Ozarks” for a reason. It’s amazing that 90% of my photos around town aren’t tilted at a crazy angle TBH.

Anyway, the point of this pic is that THE CRESCENT IS BUILDING AN ICE SKATING RINK. As my favorite hotel that is a former girls school and faux cancer hospital (see my post about the Crescent Hotel Ghost Tour here…), the Crescent is a place I feel compelled to visit almost every time I’m in town, but after seeing the ice rink under construction on Instagram and hearing about the garden full of Christmas trees decorated to raise money for charity, I knew I had to stop by on this trip.

The most important part of the historic hotel is the resident cat, Jasper, and I make a point to pet him every time I’m there if possible. He wasn’t in any of his usual spots, so I was worried that I was going to miss him this time (although the staff is always awesome about helping me find him!) but then I looked under one of the trees in the lobby…

He’s pretty much the best.

Apparently I JUST missed a huge car accident on my way home. Traffic was held up for over 20 minutes, there were tons of police and a fire truck and ambulance, and I guess the person/people involve got airlifted out by helicopter. There was still debris all over the road when we were finally allowed to pass in one lane, but thankfully I didn’t end up with (another) flat tire this time! It’s always creepy to think that wow, if I’d spent five fewer minutes down on the lobby floor looking like a dork and taking cat photos, I could have been the car smashed into pieces across the narrow two-lane road.

 

2. I was sent a variety of nail polishes from Surya Brasil recently… well, apparently they actually sent them back in October but I just found them near my back door a couple of weeks ago. (The package was in a weird spot that I never look. UPS guy did a little TOO good of a job of hiding it!) I was excited to try these out because they’re vegan and cruelty-free, and made without the scary ingredients that a lot of nail polishes contain like parabens and formaldehyde.

Another thing I love is that the colors look just like they do on the website. There can always be a little variance depending on what kind of screen you’re using, but the colors are exactly what I expected based on how they appear online. I decided to do some Christmas-y nails using the Eclectus Parrot and Chameleon colors.

 

How it appears online…

and IRL

Please ignore that my nails look like a five year old painted them. 

I like how smoothly the polish glides on, and while the big brush makes it easy to cover a lot of the nail in one swoop, it can also result in a little sloppiness if you’re not careful. I only needed one coat to get vibrant color, which is nice. They did chip on the tips after just a couple of days, but for me the animal/eco-friendly aspects outweigh that.

They also sent me their non-acetone nail polish remover, plus blue, coral, and brown nail polishes, so I’ll share feedback on those once I get a chance to try them! (I like doing wintery blue nails for New Year’s, and I’m really excited to try the sparkly Peacock blue polish!) You can find their full array of nail products here, and they also offer a wide array of products for hair and skin care.

 

Stay warm if you’re somewhere cold and dreary, and may your holiday weekend be a great one!

 

 

Yikes, how long has it even been since I last posted? These last few weeks have been so busy! I seem to have a cold for the first time in years, so I almost missed posting today, too (I basically face planted in bed after running errands earlier), but I’ve rallied long enough to put a post together!

Here’s what I’ve been loving recently!

 

1. Even though it’s been pretty cold lately, there’s been at least one decent 60-ish day each week, and those are giving me life! I try to plan my riding lessons around them to avoid getting frostbite. 😂 This week the warm day maxed out around the mid-5os, but it was still sunny enough to take Folklore for a leisurely graze after our ride.

 

BTW, people seem to think I’m exaggerating when I say his back is as tall as I am. (I’m 5’10 1/2″, so that’s pretty far up off the ground to be hanging out!) But, behold:

 

He stumbled when we were trotting over poles this week, and I was like “Well, this is how I die.” 😂

I am super excited to horse-sit while my trainer goes out of town later this month. I get to cuddle the boy every day! It’s been like 15 years since I’ve owned a horse, so daily cuddles are a big deal. I’m also a little nervous about keeping 6 horses alive for a week,  but mostly excited!

 

2. Chewy sent my meows these cute Holiday Dinner Temptations Treats. I wanted to snap a pic for the blog before we started using them, but Lin-Meow Purranda thought he should definitely be included in that process:

 

The XL container is awesome if you’re a cat lady with multiple cats, and it’s designed to keep them fresh since even with a bunch of kitties, it takes a while to go through 16 oz! (Of course, I assumed it was safe since it clicked closed, but they still managed to knock it off the counter, get the lid off, and eat like 1/4 of the container while I was out working one day. Cats, yo.)

 

3. Finally got my Christmas season Target bird today!

Honorable mention:  I almost bought this little guy, but ultimately decided not to.

 

4. The furnace/AC in my house doesn’t work, so I just have a space heater, which suuuuuucks when the temperatures get as cold as they’ve been. I finally got an electric blanket at Walmart for like $20 today, and it’s already my new BFF. The fact that the warmth stays right around my body instead of floating off to to the rest of the room makes it 100x better than my little heater (which was, at least, better than nothing, but still!). Heated blankets seem to be so much harder to find than they used to be! The $20 one I got is almost $40 on Amazon, and shows up as “only in stores” on Walmart.com. I know that there are safety issues, but gheez, internet stores, freezing to death is also a safety issue. Let the people order their warm blankets!

Semi-related: This is how we’ve been chilling lately:

 

5.Way back in March, I had one of those “omg I am so sick of writing and just want to like, put things on shelves” days and put in some applications for part time retail work. I *just* heard back from a local thrift shop that raises $ for charity last month, and I’ve picked up working there on the weekends. The pay is basically next to nothing, but it’s  a fun break from writing 24/7, and it’s nice to at least have the income as back-up for those random weeks when  writing work is scarce. I haven’t worked a “normal person job” since 2010, so I wasn’t even sure I’d survive an 8-hour work day, but so far so good. Plus, if I ever want to apply for merchandise at Disney World again, I now have retail experience.

I get to bounce around a lot, which I like – stocking Christmas stuff, sorting through clothing donations (the pile of those looks like Everest), covering the cashier’s breaks. I’ve brought home WAY too much stuff, but that’s part of the fun. I really need to post some of the fun/weird stuff I’ve found – you really never know what people are going to drop off! While sorting clothing donations last week, I went from a bag of old, stained t-shirts (eww) to a bag of brand new looking J Crew and other nice brand clothes.  It’s an adventure!

 

I’m heading to bed early in hopes of knocking this cold down a peg or two since I’m supposed to work all weekend! Fingers crossed!