Desert Horses

Welcome to my horse blog, Desert Horses. We live in the desert southwest, near Palm Springs, CA, but board our horses up in our local mountains where it is cooler in the summer. I have 3 horses, all rescues. Here is the ranch up the mountains where the horses stay.

Friday, May 15, 2026

Project Hail Mary and some random thoughts 051526

 

Project Hail Mail novel started and some random thoughts

May 15, 2026

Yesterday I blogged about a 5 star book that I read, “A Thousand Splendid Suns” and I also started to read “Project Hail Mary”.   All 476 pages of it.

I’m not sure that I have the reading stamina for this book, but I’m going to try.   It is highly recommended and rated. It has a 4.51 rating on Goodreads and 4.7 stars on Amazon.   Both are extremely high ratings, so I might be missing something if I don’t read it, right?

It’s written in…shudder…FIRST PERSON!   I usually don’t read books in first person, but I picked it up yesterday and read 12 pages straight without it bothering me, so I’m okay with that.  However, the length…OY! But, hey, I have nothing but time these days.   I’m ONLY picking up the grandson 3 times a week probably for another week while his father is on jury duty (he would be picking him up the other two days).  

So, here goes.

I seem to be wasting a lot of time these days on Instagram listening to child prodigies either sing or play the violin or piano.   I can spend hours just listening to them.   For me, coming from a musical family, it’s fascinating!

My garden is sadly neglected and I’m letting it go for the summer.   Last year I had to run out and hand pollinate my squash and I just don’t have the energy to do that this year and I mean, how many yellow squash can one family eat?   I did enjoy the 3 beautiful, round pumpkins which matured in mid-October.   I planted them May 5th and the squash shaded them and they survived a medium-hot summer here.   This summer we are being warned about a very strong El Nino coming, which means more rain, humidity, and tropical storms.  So, I’m not planting a summer crop AT ALL.

There’s a word in Spanish:   la ganas…it means “the desire”.   A deep desire.  I just don’t have it this year AT ALL.  I’ve done something to my left wrist or it could be more arthritis, but I’m having trouble grasping items with it and it hurts ALL THE TIME.   If I move it a certain way, it’s a 10/10 on the pain scale.  I iced it this morning and that really helped, so I’ll be doing that again as needed.

I honestly need rest.   I get up in the morning, early, feed the birds out front, put food out for the visiting duck pair, check the hummingbird feeders, all 7 of them, come inside, feed the dog, feed our nearly one year old kitten, fix the coffee, then head out back to feed the birds and cats out there.  I always check on my wild sunflowers and the hollyhocks that are growing there and water them as necessary.   And, I check the hummingbird feeders out back, too.   We seem to have about 4-5 hummers who stay with us all year and the yard is divided into front and back territories for them. While the coffee is percolating (we use a stove top stainless steel 12 cup percolator), I usually come in and waste time on my laptop.

When I finish “Project Hail Mary”, I’ll post my thoughts on it.   In the meantime, I’ll be running errands and doing chores and picking up the grandson. By the way, I put in $30 worth of gas in my car yesterday and only got ¼ tank of gas. I think it was 4.65 gallons, so it would cost me over $100 to fill it up completely. AND, it only takes premium unleaded, so no cheap gasoline! It IS a hybrid and it gets about 30 mpg in the city, so that is a benefit, BUT STILL!

Any thoughts or comments?   What are you reading?   What’s a book you really enjoyed?

653 words

May 15, 2026

/cd

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