The Big Chill

It’s been a chilly weekend. Well, chilly is really too nice of word. It’s more like a living hell. Temperatures have hovered around 0 with wind chills dipping to –27 degrees. Our automatic waterer has frozen up again and we spent part of the day working to make sure all corrals have water. The barn is tolerable, but depending on the hierarchy of the herd, one or more may be left out every now and then but for the most part, all should have shelter from the devil winds.

Welcome to day one of winter. Last week, when the temps were a sultry 10 degrees, I told John we were going to become snowbirds and live in Texas each winter. But desperate times call for desperate measures. To heck with seasonal Texas: let’s just move to Panama for the rest of our lives!

I sat on my lazy butt most of the weekend and started working on fixing some pages on my website, Horsetrailriders.com which link from this blog. The last I had worked on it, some of the coding didn’t publish well on all browsers. I hope I got most of that cleaned up. As I was viewing the pages, I became bored with the same old pictures, so decided to replace some to give it a fresh look.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but anytime I start looking at pictures, I lose myself in the past. Today was no exception. Hours past, literally! And some of the questions going through my head as hundreds of pictures flip across my screen are:

· Were my boys really that small when they started riding and without helmets?
· Was I crazy?
· Do I ever relax my reins?
· Are my thighs still that size?
· Is that Windy or Gunner?
· Is that Dash or Ginny?
· Is that Blue or Mikey?
· Why do I buy look-alike horses?
· Why did we sell that horse?
· Why did I cut my hair?
· What happened to that halter?
· Who is that person?
· Does that horse always make my butt look that big?

So I start emailing photos to the Horsetales Yahoo Group – which has been relatively quiet lately. (I know they aren’t riding in this mess – where the heck is everyone?) And before long, I get some return photos from other collections. And we start to reminisce about our horses and our rides and we recall how many of us moved from being cyber friends to “real ones”. The evening passes by quickly now. Less was done on my website than planned but it was more fun chatting with friends online. I even temporarily forgot about the “artic wasteland” as Tracy on Horsetales coined the Midwest today.

As I am commiserating with like minds about everything from blanketing our horses to picking frozen snot from our their noses (the horse, not the friend), I am reminded that many of us on Horsetales got to know each other online during another long winter several years ago. And it wasn’t until riding season that we actually met face to face. People have come and gone from Horsetales, but it continues to be an appreciated lifeline on days like this. And from the looks of it, there will be many days like this yet to come. Just how many miles away is Panama and do they have DSL?

What is the weather like in your neck of the woods and what do you do to get through the day?