A trip to the Living Desert and FINALLY, some horse time!

My Saturdays seem to be full of either family obligations or errands these days.  I'm finding that I usually go up to visit the horses on a Sunday, although I hadn't gone for... 3 weekends!  I was either too tired, too sick, or too SICK AND TIRED to even THINK about driving up that winding road.  But, up I went yesterday and it was a perfect day for a visit.  Cool, but breezy.  I didn't take any of the horses out, but had a nice, two-hour long visit.  I trimmed a couple of tails (Sunni and Lucille) and everybody got a nice lunch of shredded beet pulp and chia seeds!  Yum, yum!  And, good for the tummy!

On Saturday we joined our daughter and her family at the Living Desert Reserve here in Palm Desert and walked around for two hours.  Grandpa and I were WORN OUT!  That was IT for us for the day!

Blogging???

I see that another blogger is going PRIVATE.  I've considered that for a while now.  I just don't have as much to blog about anymore.

I haven't been up to see the herd in... 3 WEEKS! I'm either too tired on the weekend, or too lazy to make the 45 minute drive each way.  Or, to fight that darn twisty road...Plus, it had been just TOO. DARN. HOT.

Last Saturday our daughter had a do TERRA essential oils party.  NO WAY was I going to miss that!  I enjoyed it and ordered a couple more essential oils.  I now have OnGuard, Breathe, and their Citrus Blend.  I also have a diffuser.  I'm NOT getting a flu shot this year, but instead I'll rely on essential oils to get me through the cold/flu season.

Anyway, I did enjoy the arrival of autumn yesterday.  There was a nice breeze, temps were in the 90's, so I took the kids out for morning PE and we played 4 square for 45 minutes.

We WERE going on a trip to the eastern Sierra in October, but hubby cancelled it as I've already taken 2 days off school for sickness and I can't afford to take another 2 off in October for "personal time".  Oh, well...maybe we'll just drive up to Idyllwild instead, or go out to Whitewater Canyon.

Here is a photo of Bishop creek, eastern Sierra, last week:

Catching up

I'm getting to know this year's class and they are getting to know me.  After last year, this group is EASY PEASY!  (Except for one...)...there's always ONE, right?  He's fine if I sit next to him ALL morning or ALL afternoon, but the minute I get up to help someone else, he's all over the room!  (...pulling out hair...) Yesterday the kids told me they felt an earthquake and there went my math lesson!  I never could get them back focusing on math.

No vacation days until November 12th.  That's a LONG haul from August 21 - November 12th.  I've already had to take two sick days and some kind of stomach bug is making the rounds at school.

It's been so danged HOT and HUMID here I haven't been able to get in a morning walk, either.  Temps will be down to 99 over the weekend, so maybe I can do it then...sigh...

Some photos from a couple of weeks ago.  I didn't make it up to the horses last weekend...too humid and I was too tired.

We had RAIN yesterday! And flooding, too...

We knew we were going to get the edges of hurricane Norbert out in the Pacific Ocean, but nobody could forecast exactly how much rain we'd get.  I could smell it yesterday morning.  I also spotted a nearly-flat tire on my car, so I phoned a colleague and asked for a ride.  GOOD THING! Our daughter called to warn me that traffic on Interstate 10 near the Washington exit was crawling along at 30 mph because of low visibility.  There was a downpour out there. We nearly pulled off the freeway.  However, once we got to Indio, the rain completely stopped.  When we got to school, we heard thunder very nearby and, of course, morning recess was cancelled.

Anyway, here are some photos from the local news showing the flooding.

Got RID of a blog on my blog roll and how to do this

I had 184 blogs on my blog roll this morning and, unfortunately, one was...er... "X" rated.  I have NO idea how it snuck in there.  Something about Bluffa Daily Movie.  There used to be a blog "Bluff Area Daily", which was closed (I believe), and for weeks now I've reported it, I've reported it as SPAM, I've reported it as UNWANTED, I reported its adult content...nothing happened from Google Blogger.  There it was AGAIN this morning (DAMN IT!)  I really DO NOT want to see its content or have it appear on my blog roll list.

So, I found an article which said to go through EVERY blog and check them and delete the one that it is attaching to.  Apparently it was embedded in a blog (somewhere).  I don't know...I deleted over 25 blogs this morning.  And, suddenly, POOF, it wasn't showing up in my blog feed any more!  YIPPIE!

So, like I said, I deleted 25 blogs.  No, I didn't look at every single one of them.  I deleted ones that I didn't recognize by their name.  I still have a LOT of blogs that I follow and I'm going to go through them again later and delete more of them.  I hope I didn't accidently delete yours...If I did, please let me know.

Here's the link to the advice I got (in case you need it, too):
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/blogger/bqiw-QDCDPk


It DOES appear that the problem is solved (for now).

I sure hope you don't have this problem.  It was a real pain...

P.S.  Okay...after dumping about 30 blogs, this one HAS disappeared.  I don't know which blog it had attached itself to, as I didn't check each and every blog.  These were blogs that hadn't been updated in over a year (or more).  Phew.  I see now that a couple of other bloggers have had this same problem...

The end of summer...

It seems this MAY be our last blast of summer.  It was 114 here Friday, 110 Saturday, and maybe down to 109 today.  After today, the temps will fall a degree or two.  I'm hoping that this weekend's blast of heat was the LAST of the summer, which really wasn't that bad.  We didn't have any days at 120 (that I recall), and only a few at 118.  So, it was a relatively MILD summer here.

I went for a walk at the city park this morning and was surprised to see so many people out and about.  A lot of them were out walking their dogs.  One gal was feeding the turtles.  Somebody else was collecting the recycle cans and bottles.  It was good to get out and do a 45 minute walk!  I may TRY to squeeze in a morning walk now that my school starts 20 minutes later this year.

Not much going on here today.  I visited the horses yesterday, AND, for the first time that I can remember, I got all 5 of them out for some exercise!  I haven't been able to do that in over... 2 years?  3 YEARS?  Last year I had bronchial asthma...the year before, I had bronchitis pretty much the entire school year, so maybe 3 years?  I did take Friday off from school as I had some kind of virus that led me to have dizziness, a headache, and body aches.  Fortunately, it only lasted 24 hours (hubby had it, too).  We think we got it from our daughter and granddaughter (oh, joy!)  But, by Saturday, I had bounced back (fortunately).

All the horses, including Quad, seem to be doing well.  He and Sunni are now on Bermuda/alfalfa pellets.  GOOD.  I'm glad they won't be scarfing up alfalfa from the ground, even though both of them have rubber mats.  Frankly, I wish all of them would be fed pellets.  I just can't see the need for them to have alfalfa.  Every time I visit, they get a snack of Bermuda and Timothy pellets, along with Integrity Senior (which has probiotics, yeast, and beet pulp).  It is the most expensive pellet mixture, at $22.00 a bag.  Bermuda/alfalfa pellets are at the local feed store for $11.00 a bag, but the ranch owner bought me 8 bags at $8.00 each from her supplier.  That will help cut down my board bill.  The Timothy pellets are, I believe, about $18.00 a bag.

I'm pleased that each horse got some grooming time, some SWAT (the flies are HORRIBLE right now), and some R&R.  I hope I can keep up my energy level.

Here are some pics from yesterday:

 Quad in the arena.  I spotted him running a few minutes later, but I didn't have my camera on me at the time.  He IS feeling better!

 Lucille ~ I took her up to the round pen.

Sunni has always been good at self-exercising!