I’ve received reports on Brig and he is doing great. He has an OTTB gelding roommate who has kicked his butt into submission so they get along great! Which is good, even though I’m quite sure Brig is already attached to the other horse.
I haven’t had the chance to miss having a horse because I’ve been so incredibly busy. I’m putting in 50+ hour weeks at work and when I’m not at work, I’m working on the house. J finished landscaping and planting the side yard and has moved on to our front porch. The kids and I scraped paint off the detached garaged and E scraped the moss from the roof. We just have to replace a few pieces of siding and we’re ready to repaint. I bought some cedar boards to make window boxes for the garage and am planting flowers around it. One side of the house is scraped clean of paint and we’re finding rotten siding there, too (sigh). We’re slowly but surely getting rid of stuff on the inside and polishing things up there. But, there is work to be done, which J will have to do.
Even though I’m irritated with J that he let the house go since he bought it in 2002, I’m proud of him for lighting a fire under his own butt so we can put it on the market. He has a bad habit of being lazy when he’s not working (it’s a physical job, so I can’t blame him there, but if he’s too tired to work, he should have rented) and starting projects before finishing the last project. The front yard took him about four years to complete. Seriously. And that’s just the beginning. He does bitch about doing all this work on the house, but he knows . . .
We are still looking at houses here and there, but not seriously until our house is on the market. Some of the homes we looked at last month have dropped down in price even further. For instance, we looked at a place on ten acres for $320k. Overnight it went down to $285k. Crazy! We also checked out a place on five acres with a 4,500 sf house and barns that is for sale at $332k. In 2006 it sold for $665k. It’s just insane. It’s a little sad that a lot of these homes are foreclosures. We’re finding that a lot of these foreclosures are sitting vacant for years and are being vandalized or have been vandalized by the owners who thrash, take and sell stuff before they go. Some will even bust through walls, take the piping and recyle it for cash.
Our world is in a sad state, which is why I’m really not bitching about the long hours at work. My job is to get the firm jobs so we can all stay employed. We haven’t been getting 100% of the work we’ve applied for and we’re on a losing streak right now which is not great for morale, but some projects have started up after being on hold, so that is good.
In my downtime or when I just need a break from work, I’ve been looking at horses for E and am finding some great ones in the $1,500 range. I sold my jumping saddle and plan to use that money toward her horse, if I can. She has saved about $500 so far. I decided we’ll get her an older horse, up to 17 years old. She’ll be in college in four years and I can pretty much guarantee that once she is in college, the horse will just stay with us and she’ll visit when she can. Who knows . . . but either way, it will be a horse that anyone can ride so will be useful. I’m gearing toward stock-horse types for her, something that doesn’t require shoes or food, not much of it anyway. I’m going to be spoiled after Brig the eating machine!
