A Happy, Hellacious Holiday!

Well, survived Christmas Eve with the family. GADS I spent all day cooking, wrapping, packing, toting, decorating, cleaning...made horse-shaped sugar cookies, got those decorated Tuesday night. Weds. morning I made not one but TWO pumpkin pies (crust from scratch as well, move over Martha!). Toted a carload of stuff over to the barn...punch fixin's, decorations, table cloths, candles, radio, pies, sweet potatoes, dishes/plasticware (can't call it silverware, ha), etc, etc etc. Cleaned what I could, dragged the heavy wooden tables around into position, they'd moved the wet stinky horse blankets out of the way.

Eventually I got Quzqo in, he was soaked through from the heavy snow...even soaked through his winter blanket, poor guy, he looked like a drowned rat! Rode him for a little bit, found him to be near comatose...good! At least he'll have time to dry off before having to perform his Christmas Eve performance!

My brother showed up around 4 & helped move some benches, set up his "robot" Christmas Teddy Bears (cute HUGE animated things), made some snarky disparaging remarks about the facility (windows are dirty, you can't see out the front window because it's covered in snow, the driveway needs plowing, the wiring for the furnace blower looks funny, family will be late as usual, etc etc), and then went back home. Fine...you don't like the place, we'll hold Christmas at YOUR house next year, hah???? It's certainly big enough!

I did go home and fed the dogs, had a cuppa coffee, then back to the barn to get things started...officially the party started at 7, since when I sent out the invites, I was assuming I had to work that day, not knowing we'd all get the day off (glad I did, can't imagine how I could have gotten all that done otherwise!!). My niece showed up around 5 to help how she could, and to bring in her food (she had to work 'til 3)...her husband was coming later with presents and some of the kids... the rest of her kids were with her brother's wife for the day, helping her out (new baby & all).

We went out to bring in Roly Poly Oly the Shetland Pony...and discovered that for the past weeks, Bob had been content to just toss hay over the fence, never bothering to open the gate to the Pony Pasture...so there was about 10 feet of knee-high SNOW blocking the gate!!! The gate itself was ICED into the ground! ARRRGH!!!! Between the two of us we kicked the snow out of the way (keep in mind it's 22 degrees with 15 mph sustained winds and heavy system snow), wrenched the gate from the ice, got the hotwire unhooked, then had to trudge through knee-deep snow into the paddock to catch Roly! One good thing, the deep snow kept the ponies from coming near the gate, ha (Bob's got around 6 ponies in there, cuteness overload!!). Luckily they were all involved in their evening hay to care.

Roly is a typical snotty pony, and was GLAZED with ice, LOL...he looked like a glazed donut (fat enough too). We just turned him loose in the indoor arena where he trotted around a little bit before settling down to clean up the hay scraps here and there.

We were relaxing up in the viewing room when my brother came back with the ham and presents, and as we were yakking, we heard a thudding crash in the distance.... since there were 3 horses in the barn, I figured it was just somebody kicking the wall or something.

A couple of teen girls showed up and went to ride their horses...soon the younger one came up and informed us that Roly had squeezed through the arena rails and was running loose in the aisles!!! She'd caught him and put him in a stall, LOL! That little shit! Guess that's what the thudding crash was!! (the "rails" are PVC pipe, so easily pushed aside or back into place)

Well, eventually everyone else showed up... We managed to get through the food...same stuff they all bring every year...overcooked green bean casserole; COLD potato casserole; overcooked unsalted potatoes and beans, my sweet potatoes were disgusting as well (pineapple sounded like a good addition...it isn't). The ham was good, the pie was good at least, though they only ate half of one pie, so I'm living on pumpkin pie this week!

After that we went down to the barn to harass equines. We got Roly saddled up and the pony rides commenced for the little kids. They LOVE Roly, and he IS a good kid pony, despite being a little shit that bites whoever's leading him, ha ha! One of my niece's middle kids was on him, being led by her older brother, when she started CRYING because Mom had left the scene (c'mon, she's 7...it's a little OLD to be acting that way)...I mean SCREAMING crying, and Roly just stood there like "Oy veh, what-EVER, kid." He shook himself, and that got the girl SCREAMING in terror...poor big brother, was totally befuddled...of course Mom came tearing back, ready to lay into the older boy for tormenting his sister... I defended him, because he wasn't doing anything at all! The girl wanted OFF and she wanted OFF NOW! but Mom wouldn't have any of it, and made her stay on the pony, ha ha! She led her around until she stopped crying, then made him trot, which got her crying again, lol! They did end on a good note, which is what's important. I still can't figure out what was so terrifying about Roly... she'll ride Quzqo with no problem!

Go Roly Go!

Maybe she saw Roly BUCK when Mom put the two 5-yr old boys on him...lol, then we figured one kid at a time is what Roly prefers!

We got Quzqo harnessed up and hitched to his cart, and I drove him around a few times to just make sure he was all right, then gave the reins to my oldest grand-niece...she's driven him before. So she got to drive the kids around, and I HOPE her dad was suitably impressed!!! LOL, she sure got Quz trotting a LOT...needless to say the cart had less weight without ME in it, so he was able to easily pull it through the deep, soft footing.

Pretty soon my younger-older brother was standing in the window of the viewing room, pointing at his watch. Okay, so it WAS around 9:30 at night, but still, c'mon, what, you got someplace to be??? The kids were having FUN, who cares if he was bored? He could have come down to the barn and led the pony around or HELPED OUT.

The guys were getting impatient, so the kids dashed on upstairs to open presents, leaving my niece and me holding horses, literally! She got Roly untacked and tried to get him back into a stall, but Roly wanted NOTHING to do with that, and smashed his way OUT, almost dragged her down the aisle, and stepped on her toe! She didn't know what to do, I couldn't help her because I was trying to unhitch Quzqo and couldn't leave him unattended! She just gave Roly a flake of hay right there in the aisle and held the lead. Meanwhile we could see my brother in the window, staring down with disapproval (well, his body language in his silhouette sent that message) Gee, maybe come down and HELP???

Got Quzqo back in his stall, I literally threw the harness back into my tack cupboard, then my niece and I led Roly back out into the stormy night. Our previous footsteps were obliterated by the new snow, the gate was drifted over AGAIN, again we had to dig it out with our feet and wrestle the gate wide enough to fit Roly's considerable width through. I got him back in (he was the perfect gentleman, I was afraid he'd barge through and knock me down), he trudged through the belly-high snow back to his hay!

We finally get back to the barn (it was 30 minutes from the expiration of our Winter Storm Warning), & everyone was seated around the Christmas Tree (my 4' aluminum one on a table, lol). I made a grumbly comment about gee how nice everyone thanked me for the pony rides and all (i.e. NObody did), as I was cold and tired and headachey and had snow down my socks. My older older brother made a loud comment to the room in general about whose horses did they all just ride? There was a silence, like duuuuh? Then I got a rousing "THANK YOU AUNT SUE". U-huh.

So, they disemboweled the gifts...I copped out and gave Breyers to the kids, snrk...from my body box that I couldn't sell. Hey, they don't know! I gave my niece this old old Japan china horse, and when I told her that it had belonged to her mother who gave me her small horse collection back before she was born, she started tearing up and got real quiet... I'm thinking maybe I made a mistake, but I think she was touched by that. She said she didn't even realize her mother HAD a horse collection. Well, if you want to call 6 ceramic horses a "collection".

They were all busy packing up their booty, so I went back down to the barn to continue cleaning up...had to blanket the horse, give him water, turn off lights, put the cart back, close doors, sweep up, *sigh*. By the time I got back upstairs, they had the tables stripped & were toting stuff out to my car. It was nice they took the initiative, but as I found out yesterday, they'd also toted stuff that belonged to the barn, and instead of placing items IN the boxes and bags I had, they took individual things out and put them on the floor of the car!! Candles, holders, plates, bottles...erm...wouldn't it be better to put them in BAGS and tote the BAGS out????

O, I was ranting and raving yesterday when I went back to the barn to clean up!! Tsk, no Christmas Spirit for me, ha! Returned the stuff taken from the barn, pulled the tables back to where they belonged, yanked down the decorations, swept up, put my harness away properly, put the tack from Roly back in the barn's tack room. No wonder I only wanted to lay around like a lump, sheesh!!!

I dunno, there was an undertone I felt of disapproval and snarkiness...I'm sick of it. I don't think I'll host it next year...if I have to listen to complaints about the barn, bitching about the horses, little if any HELP...what's the point??? I bust my ass and I'm still the only one walking around in the cold and dark, turning out the lights. Personally, I wouldn't mind spending a quiet evening alone, watching a good movie and relaxing.

But, as I like to remind myself, at least nobody was rushed to the Emergency Room, and nobody wet their pants!