Oh, What a Beautiful Morning

Oh, what a beautiful day. Oh, what a beautiful morning. Everything is going... okay.

Yes, I know that's not the proper words to the song but the proper words do not fit. But at least I'm feeling better today.

If you've been following my tweets, you know that I was down much of yesterday with a really bad migraine. DH had been up overnight because he couldn't sleep. He had gone out to the computer to check on the status of an auction on eBay. We were bidding on a new headstall for Quintas, because the pretty one that supposed to be hers I've been using on Ria because it has the bosal on. But that bosal and headstall match each other. The bosal is red and headstall has red details. They should, after all, both were bought for the same horse. What we didn't realize was that Ria would need one because she has stallion teeth.

To get back to the point, DH came back to bed after winning the auction. He woke me up because apparently I was whining, moaning, screaming, something like that in my sleep. So he asked me what was wrong, which was a migraine. Sweetheart that he is, he brought me a headache pill.

He brought me another one along with my regular painkiller before he left for work in the morning. When I first got up, my head wasn't too bad, but my hands were killing me. Sometime in the afternoon, my headache came back with a vengeance.

I took a pill and went to bed a little before three. Around quarter after, I had to run to the bathroom. I was sick. After a little while I went back to bed with my favorite bucket.

The noise was also bothering me of the traffic on the road. That I could fix with earplugs. I couldn't do anything about the blinking lights in my eyes because they were there when my eyes were closed and covered.

I guess I finally fell asleep because I don't remember anything else until DH got home. Even that I didn't hear at first because of earplugs.

When I told him about the squash situation he was mad. The first half of the squash situation is good. I put out 4 squash in the morning and by mid day two of those have been replaced by 10 kroner. When I went out to check later in the afternoon, the third was missing, but no money. I am still little bit optimistic that the person just didn't have change, so after making sure I had one in the garden for dinner tonight, I put the last one back out this morning.

Ria eats too much. She is the horse of our herd that needs the least to eat. Unfortunately, Daisy is still on the thin side. Because of an extreme lack of grass, we had to give the horses a big bale of hay. Since she's a bit of a pig, Ria stands there eating all day. Last time we were in a horse supply place, we bought her a grazing muzzle. So when DH got home last night I helped her put that on her. She handled it quite well.

So, getting back to the point of this morning, I woke up pretty much okay. My head's not too bad, but it's not great. I let the girls out right away and got a load of laundry started. After I had my glass of juice, I put my steel-toed boots on to go outside. I needed to put grazing muzzle back on Ria.

I did that without problem. However, Tracy was rubbing her head quite insistently on my rear end. I decided her fly mask was bothering her. I pulled off to find that there was a lot of hay under it and it was pretty dirty. The flies didn't seem bad, because there's a nice breeze outside. So I decided to take all the fly masks off to wash them. I took hers and Ria's and both seem relieved. Not long after I took Daisy's, she asked for it back. So Daisy is back in her fly mask.

Then I went to the garden to check on the squash. We had a new zucchini, which I need for making an omelet for dinner tonight. Oddly enough, I can't find the yellow roundish one that I had taken a picture of before. I hope it's just hiding in the leaves somewhere. The pumpkin on the giant pumpkin plant is now larger than a cantaloupe. There are also pumpkins on the other giant pumpkin plant. I'm very happy about that.

Since I have squash I need for dinner, I put the basket back out the road side. But if another one gets stolen I may have to give up this idea. I'm still hoping the person will come and leave money. Maybe they just didn't have change on them. If I knew it was someone that was starving and couldn't afford vegetables I be quite happy to give them my squash. DH thinks it's just the way people are -- that they suck.

So after that I came in with the fly masks, I got out the old dishpan and got them soak in the sink. Then I put Molly to work getting my boots off. I tried clicking and treating more often in the hopes that she would be quieter. It did seem to help a little bit, but it also annoyed her that I kept interrupting her work. However, she did her move my socks almost silently, and I clicked three times in the process.

I'm not sure how many times now change the water on the fly masks, but it seems to be getting cleaned out.

And while writing this my tea steeped (keemun with ginger). So now I'm going to have breakfast.

Rain and Water Cups, Flies and Fly Masks

We've been having a lot of intermittent rain this week. Unfortunately, this makes the flies very hungry and aggressive. Although Tracy and Quintas have a good bit of hair over their faces, the other two do not. Daisy is hit worst by them and has had some problems with her eyes looking like they were getting infected.

A long time ago we bought a fly mask that was supposed to be a very large one for Daisy. We hadn't tried it at the time, but it looked huge. A few weeks ago, we went out to put it on Daisy and it nowhere near fit. We figured it would fit Quintas. So I got on eBay and started searching for a draft horse sized fly mask for Daisy. We found one and the seller also had a single cob sized so we bought that for Ria. Much to our relief, it fit Daisy although the ears are quite large--probably made for mule or donkey ears.

When DH got home from work a few days ago, he noticed the flies were swarming horribly on Daisy and Tracy's faces. Those two are currently going on the pony pasture because we ran out of grass on the main pasture. Because Quintas and Ria are a bit on the pudgy side we left them on the main pasture. DH will probably need to get them a bale of hay this weekend. Daisy especially is on the thin side.

So to deal with the fly problem, we went out and put Daisy's fly mask on her and the one we bought for Ria on Tracy. Despite the copious hair Tracy has down over her face, she still was covered with flies. We also wanted those to do both have them when they were going together.

DH went out to check and discovered that Ria and Quintas were also similarly infested. I immediately got on eBay but was unable to find an appropriate mask that was reasonably priced. The seller that I had gotten the others from did not seem to have any more.

As an emergency measure, we decided to make a headband strip like fly mask for Ria. I am not sure what these are called in the states. It is usually something that looks like a headband for a halter with lots of strings hanging down from it. What we did was take a piece out of an old T-shirt. We made it long enough that it could get tied into the behind the ears part of a halter and flow down over the entire face. I cut strips in it from about where it would be above the eyes. We took scissors with us to make holes for ears when we were able to figure out where they belong.

So we took both things out of the pasture with us. We thought we be putting the purchased a mask on Quintas and the homemade one on Ria. However, this is supposedly very large mask barely fits Ria, who uses a cob halter and not its largest fitting. We probably should've put it on Tracy, but we didn't feel like swapping them around again.

So we fit the T-shirt in strips on Quintas. We tied knots in the end of each strip, so they'll be little bit weighted. It seemed to be pretty good at keeping flies off her eyes. She kept puffing at it like it tickled her.

Yesterday morning I went out to check on the horses and take pictures. Only the tie pieces were left on Quintas. I brought her halter in with me planning to make one like I'd seen online. I forget the address right now, but I tweeted it a few days ago.

But then I got thinking about how much DH wants to cover the ears. So I went out and borrow Daisy's to try to copy it.

I did my best to trace after and measure the necessary parts. I planned to use veil fabric leftover from when I married DH a couple years ago.

Then I made some repairs on Daisy's mask. She hadn't had it on for a day but had already torn the tip off one ear and made several small rips. My hands hurt too much to fix all of it but I did shorten the ears to a normal height and fix the worst rip.

By the time I was done, DH was home from work. On the way in he discovered that the pump outside kept running to the had to be a water leak somewhere in the horses watering system. He turned the pump off.

He was starving so started dinner. I went out to put Daisy's mask on and see if I could locate the cause of the flood. But I didn't find any signs of flooding.

When I got back in, I started working on the mask. DH had picked up Velcro on the way home for me. I plan to pillage elastic from old pairs of underwear. DH didn't like that idea, so we went back out to the store to buy elastic.

Once back he worked on dinner while I sewed. Some things went pretty well, but it was very fiddly sewing. Every time I showed it to DH he would tell me how huge it looked.

It took me all evening, but I finally finished to eight o'clock. DH had insisted that we shorten the elastic a little bit from what I had measured with Daisy so it would not be so huge.

So DH went with me to fit on Quintas. It had a lot of problems, but it still provided some protection in the end.

The elastic is on the snug side by more than just a little bit. The piece that I cut to make the top of the head piece was definitely not large enough. I think the problem is that I should have caught a much larger piece and cut a piece out of it to sew it together so it had more space and a better fit. I also sewed the ears in wrong so they were sitting too tight to be comfortable. That was one of those places where I had had to do a lot of guessing.

Veil fabric is not strong enough for making the entire mask. It had a few holes in it already by the time we were done fitting it. Because I was too tired to make all those changes last night and would have to replace the fabric anyway, I had DH take it off and cut away at the base of the ears with a pocketknife. That disconnected that your base, a little bit from the headpiece and gave the entire thing more space. It seemed like it was going pretty well last night.

Despite copious test and searching, DH was not able to find a leak in the water system. He fears that we need to dig up probably about 75 m of hose to find the leak underground.

Luckily, Daisy and Tracy are close enough to home that we could connect a hose directly to their water cup. So they're on an automatic watering system without problem. Quintas and Ria on the other hand will have to have water delivered in jugs until we get the thing working. DH got a tub set up last night and partially filled it.

After breakfast this morning, I went over to check on the water and the fly mask. They still had probably close to as much water as he filled in, and the water cups are still full of water. Yesterday's rain probably put more in than they drank. When the grass is wet as it is right now, they don't drink very much. That at least helps in the workload. I was able to escape from having to pour jug in.

Quintas's ears are still protected by her fly mask. Her left eye is as well. But is totally torn away from her right eye.

If DH gets home early enough tonight we're going to buy fly masks tonight. While trying to fall asleep last night, I think I figured out how to make it better. We should use T-shirt material for everything except the section over the eyes. Daisy has already retorn the ear that I repaired yesterday.

I don't feel like putting the pictures in so you're going to have to live without them. My hands could not cope with sewing yesterday, and having used crutches to get over the pasture to check on the water this morning made things even worse. I can barely stand to do anything with them, including pickup cup of tea.

I am very relieved I don't have to make a new fly mask today because there's no way I could do it.