What's Up Wednesday

We're riding some kind of crazy weather roller coast here in the northeast. One minute it's raining, the next it's snowing, and very rarely, the sun might pop out. This weekend was pretty much all of the above.
But before we get into the weekend, enjoy these photos from my braiding job Thursday night. I hadn't done any braiding in quite awhile, so was really happy these turned out so nicely. Helps to have a great horse with a nice mane to work on.

 Also, check out this crazy piece of wonderful I found at the craft store this weekend:

It's a folding seam ripper! No more losing the cap and stabbing myself! Any of you that have to take out braids should definitely consider getting one of these. So smart!
Ok, now on to the weekend...
Saturday morning I got all the errands run early so I could do something with the horses and clean out the trailer. The ring was a sloppy mess, so riding wasn't really likely. But the one corner that gets the most sun was usable for lunging. It was still pretty wet, but it wasn't frozen at all, and the footing wasn't slippery or sticky. I think the horses were channeling their inner four year old splashing around in the puddles.

Flying Jampy!

Rio... definitely not flying.

They were WILD. Like bronco wild. Glad I opted to lunge and didn't decide to do a tack walk instead. Spring fever has arrived... in February. Maybe by April they'll be civilized?!

After lunging ponies, it was time to tackle the trailer tack room project. I already bored you all with those details yesterday so we'll just gloss over that... I did find this gem though:

This was my junior hunter's cooler. It has an interesting story. I saved up my money for a long while to buy this custom cooler (well not this exact one... you'll see why keep reading) when I got to Harrisburg for the first time. Back then these cost around $200. Well, I got this beauty at Harrisburg and sent it along with my horse and trainer to Washington while I went back home to go to school for a few days. Bud showed in the pro divisions as well as in my junior classes, so he always got to go ahead of me. Anyway, trainer was flatting Bud in the ring one night and someone grabbed the cooler from the rail. We never saw it again. I owned it for a grand total of a week and a half. All that hard saved money for nothing! (Listen, when you're 14 with no job, that's a lot of money!) I saved all year to get a new one at Harrisburg the next year. Only they had gone up in price to $350. I only had $200. I was telling the story to the nice owner at Personalized Products (where I'd bought it) and she felt so badly, she offered to sell me the new cooler at the old price. I thought that was really nice of her. Years later, this cooler got caught by the tractor and dragged through the mud. Thankfully it didn't rip or anything, but I had to have it dry cleaned. It shrunk from a size 80 to a 76. Womp womp. I keep it around because it's fit some of the little horses like Ducky and even Romey. I mean, this cooler and I have so much history, I could never get rid of it! Plus I lost Bud in college so his stuff is all pretty special to me. (Such a sap.)
Sorry for the tangent... back to the weekend! I was pretty pooped by the time I finished the trailer stuff. So I spent the rest of the evening hanging with the Pugs and watching the Olympics.

They were clearly excited about the games!

And then Sunday looked like this:

Gross. Fortunately it was pretty warm during the day, so the melting started immediately. Not fast enough to be able to do fun horsey things in the ring, but I'll take what I can get. Plus that actually left me the entire day to finish up the great closet purge of 2018. I tried on so many pairs of pants, I actually got chaffed. (Maybe they're all a little snug. shut up.) So many pants. It took the whole day. But it's DONE! I still have a dresser to go through, but the closet part is over at least. Thank goodness! I have the Veterans coming Tuesday to take all of the old stuff away. It feels so good to get stuff out of the house and support a great charity.
Monday it rained. Which was gross, but it helps get rid of the snow, so that part is nice. Of course it leaves mud. So much mud. Thankfully? It was super windy over night which helped dry things up. And yesterday? We had this:

Yep. 62 degrees! It took everything in me to go back to work after lunch. I wanted to stay home and work ponies. The ring was still pretty gross though, so I decided to adult responsibly and go back to work. When I got home it was still really sloppy, but I lunged them each a little in the one corner. Jampy was great, and not overly nuts. Rio looked pretty lame but I kind of think he was trying to avoid the puddles. He's so awkward that it's hard to tell when he's actually lame and when he's just confused as to where his feet should land. He also may still be a bit sore from his weekend antics. At 21, that stuff takes a toll!
Know what else happened last night? My Fama boots arrived! I wasn't expecting them because the tracking hasn't worked. I was in touch with them about it, and she was working on tracking them down. And then they just arrived! Woohoo!

The fit is a lot better this time. They're a bit snug, but they'll stretch, so I'm not worried about that. I think they could have been a smidge taller, but they're just fine. My only real complaint is that they did the toe wrong. I realized when they sent me pics that they hadn't put the tan crocodile leather on them, but I overlooked it because they're gorgeous. What I couldn't tell from the photos was that they made the toe pointy instead of square. I don't really like the pointy toe.

But seeing as to how they made these half price after the not fitting debacle, I'm not going to complain about it. They're gorgeous despite the toe, and the fit is so much better than last time. Plus, that green! Ah! SO PRETTY! They even started to soften up just in the few minutes I wore them around the house. I think they'll break in pretty quickly.

That's about it from here. What's up with  you this week? Did you get to ride? Show? Something else? Did you get new boots?! (I can't be the only one, can I?)