Welcoming in the (Icy) New Year

 First Post of the Day

This meme fits us perfectly. We really did experience all these things across the state of Indiana two days ago.

(Apparently Illinois experienced them, too.)

The day was warm and humid and then a storm front came through.

With a cold front following it, high winds were screaming and soon tornado warnings were popping up, 

including one for us (the bottom red box on the map.) Nothing was confirmed; apparently it was a quick spin up that did not last. Grateful! (Unfortunately Illinois suffered some heavy tornado damage in a few towns.)

When the cold front blasted through, the temperatures dropped quickly causing wind gusts up to 50 mph. It howled around the house, and we kept the dogs on leashes when we took them out. (Although they declined several offers to leave the house - a rarity for Pepper and Tammo.)

When I got up at 5:00 the next morning, we had had an inch of snow and the wind chill was below zero.

That's Pepper you can barely see on the driveway - she came back inside quickly.

The snow was crunchy - we had had sleet before the precipitation turned to snow. (That's why the snow is shiny.)

As the morning progressed, the winds died down but the temperature remained low with even lower wind chills for another day before it finally warmed up to the mid twenties.

I hibernated. With the ice that was under the snow coupled with the cold, I did not want to risk going outside. Craig didn't either, and neither dog complained about missing frisbee in the park. In fact, like us, they were reluctant to go out all day!

This morning isn't much better. After snow yesterday, then rain and sleet, I checked my weather app when I awoke and saw this:

They weren't kidding. When I stepped out onto the patio to let the dogs out, it was covered in ice. 

It's only January 1 and already I am so ready for winter to be over.

Having said all that, Happy New Year, ice and all! 

It's the Year of the Horse (beginning February 17) and I hope there is a horse for everyone in it, including me.

So, How'd I Do, 2021?

While preparing to write the series of "look back" posts on 2021, I came across an early January blog entry that included my hobby plans for 2021. Curious, I read through them, wondering how I'd done.

My Old Timer with his New Year hat by Lisa Haley. 

~ finish the Mares' Tales project 

~ create a web site for Horsiemama's Haversacks & Mercantile

~ enter and complete NaMoPaiMo

~ and finally, depending on the status of the pandemic and the vaccine, hold Happy Trails and The FAMulous Collectibility Show.

My plans were good and (I'd thought) attainable, but in reality, I only accomplished a couple of them.

 ~ I didn't finish the Mares' Tale project, although I did complete the section about Nancy Falzone. Simone Smiljanic and I had been discussing getting together for an interview since before the pandemic began in 2020, and we again had plans for that interview in 2021. 

Sadly, Simone passed away in October and the interview never happened. (Photo by Nancy Kelly and in the collection of Liz Cory.)

~ I did set up a web site for my haversack business but I never made it live. 

As I worked on the web site, I remembered that selling from the Horsiemama Facebook page was keeping me busy, sometimes busier than I wanted to be. 

I'd already decided against selling on Etsy due to concerns about being unable to keep up with orders and realized that a web site would only add to the pressure of having to keep up with orders. I never finished the site. 

~ I entered and completed NaMoPaiMo.

I chose to do a portrait model of Hokey and really struggled to find the right shades of pink for nostrils and hooves.

Pony Pal Mila completed her first NaMoPaiMo, too!

~ Allison Pareis and I decided that The FAMulous Collectibility Show would take a break due to pandemic concerns.

But in October I held Happy Trails with a very limited group of friends.

All of us were vaccinated and we wore masks during the show.

My final words on that January, 2021 blog entry are interesting and maybe even a little poignant.

In all likelihood we will be dealing with the pandemic during much of this year, but I remain hopeful that it will be a better one than last.

Yes, we have been dealing with the pandemic all of 2021, but while the omicron variant is rising, we are in a better place to fight the virus than we were a year ago. Now we have vaccinations and boosters both for adults and for children.

No doubt the coming year will see the world continuing to fight the pandemic, but I choose to remain hopeful for 2022 and that things will improve and be better for us all.

Happy New Year!

Welcome, 2021!

 A new year - at last! I don't know about you, but I am READY for a fresh start! I'm making plans for things I'd like to accomplish during 2021, both hobby as well as personal. The hobby plans include:

~ finish the Mares' Tales project (my 50th hobby anniversary took precedence; now it's time to get back to researching and writing)

~ create a web site for Horsiemama's Haversacks & Mercantile

~ enter and complete NaMoPaiMo

~ and finally, depending on the status of the pandemic and the vaccine, hold Happy Trails and The FAMulous Collectibility Show.

In all likelihood we will be dealing with the pandemic during much of this year, but I remain hopeful that it will be a better one than last.

Best wishes for a much better and happy, horsey, New Year!

2019 Year in Review - January through June

2019 will go down in my memory as a mix of ups and downs. Sadly, it ended on a very sad note for me as my very dearest friend lost her battle with cancer and died the day after Christmas. But there were good times, too, with visits to all six of our kids, a new dog, and lots of fun hobby events including a trip to BreyerFest. Here's a look back at the first six months of the year.

January, 2019
How thrilled I was to discover that the family of Sam Savitt, the illustrator of so many of the horse books I'd read as a child, was selling his original artwork and that I could actually afford to buy a piece.

 Sam Savitt was (and is) my favorite illustrator. To have a signed original was huge for me.

In other news, on January 16 I began a new weight loss journey. 

Tired of being heavy and in pain much of the time, I decided that I had to do something now as I did not have the quality of life that I wanted.

February, 2019
Much of this month was spent writing. I wrote the elementary curriculum for Purdue University's Pollinator Protection Project.

Me with a draft of the curriculum at at the annual convention of HASTI (the Hoosier Association of Science Teachers, Inc.) in Indianapolis.

Barn owner, Tim, is an entomology professor at Purdue and got a large grant from The National Science Foundation for the project. The high school curriculum is done and was released to Indiana teachers in June. The elementary curriculum that I wrote is now in review and will hopefully be released this coming summer.

I also worked on writing the thirty-five year history of Great Lakes Congress during February and got some preliminary work done on a book I am writing about the history of those who helped the model horse hobby get up and running. I shared some snippets from that here on Horsiemama in a series called Four Pillars and a Pair of Wings.


March, 2019

Show season began! I attended Silver Star Classic in Carmel, Indiana.

And I was finding success in my weight loss.

 I was now thirty pounds lighter at the end of March!

April, 2019

April brought me not only my most-sought after piece, the Metlox Poppytrail Medium Circus Pony in grey,

 but it also brought the same piece in palomino!

I was over the moon at adding these two models to my circus pony collection.

In April I also came out of retirement and took over SOAR, a program run by my school district designed to help deeply troubled kids who have been expelled from their schools continue their education. The teacher had had to suddenly leave due to health issues, and so I stepped in for the last seven weeks of the school year.

I am an experienced, veteran teacher, and this was absolutely the most difficult group of kids I have ever taught. Many days I drove home in tears, not only for their behavior during the day or the ugly things they said to me (and to each other), but more so for the heartbreaking situations and homes they came from. 

April, 2019

Model horse showing season was now in full swing. 

I attended the April Great Lakes Congress show and was surprised to be named Most Valued Member 2019 as a result of having written the history of the club. (I'm with Jamie Rott and Liz Cory.)

There was wild weather as I drove home from that show. I started back to Indiana from Illinois in a heavy snowstorm

and wrapped the trip up with no snow and encountering a cold air funnel about ten miles from home.

Weight loss continued - I had lost forty-eight pounds by the end of April! I'd had this tee shirt since the late 1980s and had kept it due to its Star Wars reference ("May the horse be with you") To my delight, I discovered that I could wear it once again.

May, 2019
Finally, finally, finally in May, I finished replacing my old, assorted brown shelves in my office. 

Now they are all beautiful matching white Billy shelves from Ikea. It was quite a project, but so worth it!

I spent time at the barn with Pony Pal Mila and her brothers, Ian and Lukas.

 Lukie gives Tim's pony saddle a try in the tack room.

Craig and I traveled west to visit Denver Daughter Sarah and her family in Colorado, and then up to Santaquin, Utah to see Mountain Mama Jessica and her family.

I also visited two of my favorite hobby people, Cristine Holt and her daughter, Tara Oliver. (From left: Chris, Tara, Tara's son, Jessica, and me.)

While in Utah, I met Riggs, an 18.3 hand black Percheron and the biggest horse I have ever been around.

May is a time for bad weather, especially when you are driving through tornado alley like we were.

 While passing through Junction City, Kansas we encountered not one

but three tornadoes! This photo is of one on the ground while a second one to the left of it is forming. It came down and touched the ground and then they both dissipated.

Sadly, there were tornadoes back home in Indiana and the blue barn and property took a hit. Tim sent me this text.

That's twice that tornadoes have been close to the barn since I began boarding with Tim, but this is the first time that we actually sustained damage.

By the end of May, I had lost sixty pounds and my clothes were starting to hang on me. But I wasn't complaining!


June, 2019
Preparing for Happy Trails II, the fun show and pony party that I hold in my home, took up much of my time in June. I spent nearly two weeks deep cleaning in preparation.

Back row: me, Yvonne Rott, Jamie Rott, Michelle Evans, Liz Cory, and Sande Schneider. Front row: Pat Reed, Steff Bodamer, Allison Pareis, and Stan Sollars.

 The stick pony competition during lunch was a blast.

Allison and Stan did a hilarious "free reining" exhibition to the song, "It's Not Unusual" by Tom Jones.

Sande shared the joys of having Buddy with her wherever she goes and her motto to always, "Speak softly and carry a big stick."

Liz directed a herd of liberty horses who obeyed all her commands and even knew their leads. Oh, how we laughed at all three entries!

But during Happy Trails, something was overshadowing the fun for me and was very much on my mind. I'd just had a routine CT scan of a tiny mass on my pancreas (it had been discovered three years prior during a CT scan for something else). Since past checks had confirmed that the mass was stable and not growing, I hadn't given this scan a second thought. Until I got a phone call just a day or two before Happy Trails telling me that the tumor was growing (the size of a baseball) and that I was being sent for further tests and to see a pancreatic specialist in Indianapolis.

That information would derail most of my summer plans and impact the next six months.