If I didn't know now what I didn't know then.

Sometimes I wonder if ignorance really is bliss. I have pondered this before, and may have even posted about it, but it came to mind again recently and so I got to pondering it all over again.

The thing that made me think of it was when a friend (you know who you are!) made a comment on a forum about the "safety police". Hehe. These are the helpful folks who creep out of the internet woodwork to tell you why the fun thing you are doing is horribly dangerous. Yes, they have your best interest at heart, usually, but they still manage to suck all the fun out of a good time. And sometimes it really isn't something worth sticking their nose in to.


The more I think about it the more I miss "the good old days"... the days when I didn't have visions of starved horses and inbred dogs in my head. The days when I didn't feel like ripping in to people who let their cats pop out random kittens left and right, etc. But by the same token I am glad I know these things.

On the other hand, there are things I miss about pre-internet days. I miss showing off a picture of my horse and not feeling obligated to explain it was two days before my trimmer was out, that is why their feet look a little long... or that I had their halters on just for the pictures and I don't turn them put in them. I miss being able to tell someone a silly story and not have the tell me how dangerous it is to ride on a sled pulled by my horse. I miss days when people didn't automatically assume the worst and immediately respond to you as if you must be moron who doesn't know better.

I get sick of hearing people ignore the point someone was trying to make because they are so busy telling them to wear a helmet or cut their horses grain or replace their fence.

Yes, I think I am a better person for the knowledge I have now that I did not have then... but sometimes I do miss that blissful ignorance.

Now I am going to go hand feed my overweight horses some sweet feed whilst wearing my Crocs. And I might even feed my dog an M&M.

May i have this dance?

Life is a dance. One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four....

Some days the dance is a massive sweeping ball room full of nattily dressed gents and full hooped skirts swishing and sweeping about the floor... some days it is a mosh pit with leather boots, studded belts and 4 foot long wallet chains set to music so driving and loud it disrupts your heart beat. Some days you dance this life with grace and beauty and some days you not only step on the other dancer's toes but you step on you own and end up, gasping, on the floor, wondering whether to laugh or cry. And sometimes, if you are very lucky, the dance is a sweet shuffling slow dance to music so gentle and warm that it allows two souls to sway together gently while the rest of the world disappears.

Sometimes we wish we hadn't danced, don't we? But think of the steps we have learned and the songs we have allowed to inspire us to sway. Every dance, no matter how triumphant or how tragic, teaches us new moves.

Dance like no one is watching, let your heart and soul move you. No regrets. Life is too short to miss a single step.

Movin' on up...

Leo has been a part of our family for, oh... 4 years or so now. He was a birthday gift for the kid the year we moved back here. She has been really good about taking care of him right up until this last few months when she has got to be a little scatter brained about it. Leo has a nice big cage outside by the barn with an enclosed house on one side and a cage on the other and a shingled roof over the top. In the summer I give him frozen 2 liter bottles to lay against to stay cool, and in the winter I pack his house with hay and water him twice a day (I water him mornings, kid waters him evenings).

Such has been the life of Leo the Lop until last week.

See, I was dreading the effort of caring for him through the winter, and I have never liked the idea of him being out there, alone. And we had bought that cage for the kittens earlier this year so it was just sitting there empty taking up room on the porch.... last week Leo the Lop moved on up.... and moved inside.

yeah.


Just what we need, another animal in the house. (Don't let me fool you, I'd have the horses in here as well if I could do it without it being dangerous or gross).

It's been nice having him inside. The cats like to lay on top of his cage and reach in to pat him on the face. he comes up to the side of the cage and sniffs them and nibbles at their toes. Sure, every other day I have to strip out his cage completely but I use the loose chaff from the horse's hay as bedding so his cage smells of grassy hay. It takes 5 minutes to pull out the yucky chaff, wipe down the cage with disinfectant, put in fresh hay and be done with it.

The nice thing is that Tiff has been taking him out of his cage and letting him hang out with her while she watches TV or plays on her computer.



The other nice thing is that i no longer have creepy nightmares about forgetting he is out there and finding him dead because i forgot to water him on the weekends... because now if his water gets low he raises a ruckus to remind me. And I think he likes it.