Life Can Be Crazy!

How can going back to work, even for only five weeks, change life so much? Suddenly there are not enough hours in the day, even though I am only working for six and a half hours a day.

I leave home at 6:30 every morning as students begin arriving at 7:15. That means that I have had to change the time that I go out to the barn. It has worked well to swing around there as I am coming home from work (I finish at 2:45 and am usually packed and ready to go by 3:00.)

Tim is back from Europe and has begun rotating through the pastures again. The growth of the grass is still not enough to sustain the herd so we will be feeding hay a bit longer. But the horses are happy with the change in scenery anyway!

They are all in various stages of the shedding process; Sultanna still has a beard!

All the horses are glad to have the warmer, dryer weather and are in good spirits. (This is Guppy, a gelding belonging to Tim's other boarder.)

Going back to work has derailed my progress in putting together the IKEA shelves and then switching them into the places of my old shelves.

I came home from work one day to discover that Craig had put several of them together for me in one of the spare bedrooms. What a huge help that was to me!

He moved one into my office only to realize that I had not yet cleared a shelf of model horses and that he could not install them until I did.

I am also in the throes of preparing for a Great Lakes Congress show this Saturday (fortunately I had made my list of entries and prepared my documentation before going back to work!) While show packing adds to the list of things that need to be done, the show is going to be a much needed break from school for me.

My five week assignment is with thirteen middle schoolers, all of whom have been expelled. They come from four different middle schools in the area, and they are pretty rough kids. But... they're still kids, and my goal is to remember that as I work with them instead of reacting to their rudeness, disrespect, and insolence. This is my second week in the class and their behavior and language is already much better. They have begun to accept me and are getting their school work done (for the most part) now.

Still, I come home every day with my ears ringing and very ready for about thirty minutes of quietness before I feel recovered enough to resume my activities at home. Going to a model show this weekend is just the thing I need to clear my mind.