Productive Kind of Day

I hopped out of bed at 4 am and made pancakes for us then packed them up with the fixings and got ready to leave with Anna and Faith at 5:30. While I waited for the cakes to cook, I watched the Weather Channel. It made me feel like home--it was the first weather channel watching I had done since being here in Colorado. Even the coverage was on the east coast hurricane Irene, it was comforting.

Faith and I ate our pancakes in the lodge--they were delicious and super thick. I like mine with Nutella spread on them. We got to talking about auditions and ran over to the computer room to watch Sarah and Woody in their liberty audition. She is so inspiring with her soft phases and such responsiveness from her horse.

When it got light out, we went up to the pens and spent the next several hours cleaning out pens. Unfortunately, a lot of the students that left on Friday and Saturday did not clean their pens out. I talked to my gramma and mom while I cleaned. It felt good to work like that. So good in fact, after the pens were done, we retreated to the tack room and deep cleaned it. I swept under all the saddle racks and Faith made the porch look clean enough to eat off of. I wouldn't do that, but I think it is an effective visual.

Faith and I caught a ride back to our condo with Jewel Cousins, a fast tracker/1-star course student who was staying in town with her hubby for a few days. It was cool to hear about her experience in the 1-star course and we really appreciated her taking us home since there weren't any other students to do it. Fortunately, we saw Jae as we drove out and she agreed to pick us up in 4 hours at the cafe by our condo.

At the condo, we got to packing up our stuff so it could be loaded into the truck the next morning and moved in to the cabins on Monday. We watched the weather channel while we worked. I dumped everything in the living room and packed it up. I also did all my laundry. Faith unpacked all the decorations that I had put in a closet when we arrived. I had taken photos of the original placement of everything and Faith did an awesome job putting it all back. Once all our stuff was packed and ready to load, including our food, we plopped down and watched several episodes of McLeod's Daughters. We most certainly earned it!

The two of us ended up chatting for a while at the cafe because we did not realize that poor Jae had recruited Chris Corbridge to pick us up. It was a good chat and the air was nice and cool, so neither of us minded. We arrived in plenty of time to enjoy volley ball. I got better this week, I think. Ash brought a different puppy she was a big star.

It started thunderstorming and lightning struck the ranch--it was so loud! Anna commented later about hearing someone ask so-and-so if so-and-so's dog heard that thunderbolt. Anna got a real kick out of "thunderbolt" but I didn't tell her it's really a word. Of course, that got me to thinking about whether it is a valid word. Interesting, thinking of something you can only here being a bolt. What is a bolt, anyways?

At home, I made spaghetti noodles and sauce. I used Morning Star crumbles for the meat. It was a good dinner. Afterward, I took a bubble bath and a shower. I needed a good soak before shower and bed. This was one productive day. After today, I think I want to get up this early every day.

Natural Horsewoman Out.