bayhorsedesigns.com blog

I had a terrific time at my sisters place in Washington state visiting mom.  I am grateful to God that mom is doing as well as she is.  It has been a hard few months for her recovering from several strokes and illness.  I am proud of her for her stubbornness!  She does not give up and for that I am thankful.  We spent wonderful quality time together shopping, eating, crafting, eating more, talking and driving around looking at the scenery.  Here are a few pictures from our time together. 

Mom in front of our favorite bakery in Poulsbo WA. For those of you that don't know Lefse is a potato tortilla that is scumptious when warmed up and slathered in butter!

Eating along the harbor at a family owned Italian cafe. Yummy!

mom showing off the two Christmas ornaments she made.

Have you ever had one of those items on the “honey-do” list that has been there for awhile and keeps managing to make it to the bottom of the list because others seem more important?  (or easier!)  Well I had one of those… organize the closet in my studio.  Now it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Yeah, you should see my closet!  It quickly became the dumping grounds for all the stuff you pick up and say “now where do I put this?”  Plus, there are MANY blank projects in there just waiting for my creative side to show.  It is a fairly good size closet, double doors, about 7 feet wide across and 3 or 4 feet deep.  It is a normal bedroom type closet with a shelf up high and a bar to hang clothes. I have a cabinet in there with my drawing papers, markers, reference photos, etc… and three of those plastic organizer towers… with who knows what in every drawer! That’s how the closet started, it soon filled to the top, but soon I could no longer stack things on top of each other because the dang ceiling was too low.  I of course I then started piling it on the floor.  Lately it has been so full that when I needed to put something in there it was done as a well planned out event.  1. Have the item in hand and ready, 2. make sure the area in front of the doors is clear, 3. turn on light before opening the door, 4. take a deep breath, 5. open door in one quick motion, 6. throw item in and slam the door, 7. turn off light, 8. rest against the door to make sure it stays closed…  Yeah, pretty much that bad.

I decided today was the day.  John was home, we had no other plans for the weekend, and I needed something from the dreaded over-filled closet.  I started pulling stuff out, wow! Who knew how much you could get in a closet! After several trips carrying stuff to the other room, which is always fun as two Jack Russells think that every time you leave the room you are going somewhere totally exciting and they have to be there, right under your feet so they don’t miss anything.  (and one is completely blind so he can’t see where your feet are anyway!) Add a crazy cat trying to dodge the Jacks and a big Lab trying to nap in the sunray in the middle of the living room floor, which is covered with stuffed animals and tennis balls.  All this comotion makes an interesting time carrying things back and forth.  That took about an hour or two to complete in itself.  With John popping in from time to time to see if I was ready for him to measure, mark,  etc for shelves.  I of course got the steady stream of comments… ”Gee, bet you forgot you had that.”  “Oh, that is pretty cool, what did you plan to do with that?”  “wow, did you even know you had those?”   ”Um… I think the 80′s called and they want their ”be-dazzler”  back…”  (ok not quite that bad but you get the idea!) 

Once I got everything out, then there was the “planning” stage… how did I want the shelves? Were the organizers going back in? the cabinet?  Then there was the removing of the exsisting hardware, which if you have ever lived in an old farmhouse you know how that goes… there was a peg board in one corner, it was put up with one regular screw and three phillips screws, so there is an extra trip to the shop for another screw-bit for the drill.  Then there is the old shelf around the top, it was put in with three separate boards, different widths and thicknesses of course. At least they all measured the same from the floor up. The long one against the back wall was sagging so we had to add a support to level it back out.  Then there was the clothes bar, it too was put up with at least 3 different types of screws with wood blocks to hold the bar in place.  And so another hour ticks by.

Then we decide on how many shelves I want and therefore how many brackets.  Now we put the job on hold and make a “quick” trip to Lowes for supplies… $121.72 later… (well I had to go down some of the other aisles, and you just wouldn’t beleive how much they charge for shelf board now!) another two hours gone.

Back at home we start back on the closet, after a much deserved lunch break (half hour).  At first we start measuring for the center shelves, against the big back wall.  Then we realize it would be better to put in the side shelves first so the long shelves can rest on the short ones. (think of a squared “U” shape of shelves going around the three walls of the closet. Uses less brackets that way!) I do the measuring and marking because I am a level freak apparently. (news to me).  I find it very inconvenient to try and get those darn 90 degree angle metal shelf brackets to match with the line on the wall.  Does anyone else have this issue?  They always end up below the line.. weird.  Anyway, we finally get two short shelves up on the one wall.  The top one is un-level by 1/16 of an inch.. I tried to live with it, honest! But I just couldn’t do it… we had to move it.  another hour gone.

Next we moved to the other short wall, this went a little faster.  Either we were getting faster, or the mid-afternoon drink helped a bit with the level-ing.  We are pretty proud of ourselves by now and get a bit cocky when John asks me to hand him one of the long shelves to put along the back wall… Have you ever watched anyone try to put a round peg in a square hole?  HE & I both tried numerous time to get the 7 foot shelf to go in… here is the problem, remember I told you there was an exsisting TOP shelf?  Well, I didn’t empty the top shelf, why would I? We were putting shelves in below the top one…  Needless to say another hour goes by, I emptied the top shelf, we had to remove the top pre-existing side shelves too, and the first new side shelf on each side that we had just put in and had already screwed to the brackets so they would not flip, just so we could angle the 7 foot board in to the  5 foot door opening and slant it just right to get it in on top of the new lower shelves! 

In the next hour we starting putting the brackets in under the long shelves now supported by the new short shelves along the sides of the closet.  Yes, I had the level sitting on top of the shelf so we could make sure the brackets went in the right spot.  We were adding two long shelves so we had to put in four brackets, two each shelf, with three screws in each of the bottoms of the brackets to hold it to the wall and three in the top of the bracket to hold the shelf to the bracket…. We were down to the third bracket when the battery in the drill died.  12 SCREWS TO GO!!! Mark off another hour.

We put in the old top shelves back in, which was a puzzle in itself as the house is old and definitely not “square” by any means so whoever put in the old shelves cut them with notches and angles so they would fit just right.   Yeesh…  I started bringing stuff back in to stock the shelves… Another afternoon drink while we waited for the other battery to charge, and another hour.

Finally the drill was ready. We finished the brackets.  John stepped back said how nice it looked and was glad we finally got the project done.  “Done?” I said, “I would like another short shelf on that side, please honey, it won’t take that long…”

Here is quick pencil sketch I did last night just for fun, it seems to have a Halloween feel to it so I thought I would share it with you.  Hope you get lots of “Treats” and not many “Tricks!”

Monty, our blind Jack Russell loves to patrol in front of the barn.  He keeps those four horses in line! And he believes it is his job to clean all the grain buckets when the horses are done eating.

Can you believe we had our first frost last night?  It was one heck of a windy day then temperature dropped like a rock come evening.  We watched the 10 o’clock news and the weatherman did say there was a freeze warning for the Albuquerque and surrounding areas but, seriously?  You are kidding right? We have been in the 70′s.  Plus, it was still waaaaay windy and not to mention already waaaaay dark. 

My sweet husband asked if we should go out and cover the gardens… I said “I was not ready for frost already! I don’t know where all my frost blankets or tarps are and it is so windy out there I think we would blow away with the tarps in our hands like parachutes!” 

 Luckily, I had plucked a yellow squash, a red, a green and a yellow bell pepper, a few tomatoes and some fresh basil that I used in our pasta sauce for dinner.  Yep, you guessed it… the weatherman was actually right.  There was frost this morning.  My poor bell pepper plants, tomatoes, zucchini, squash, jalapeno bush, green beans, potatoes and the basil plant are all wilted and looking awful.  A few of my flowers didn’t fair well either. 

Today we were back up to 62 degrees and tonight? A low of 33 (which means more like 30 or so for us along the river).

Moral: What the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away too!

As some of you know my mom has been battling some major medical issues since August 17th.  It has been a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs, the ride started with a Sub-arachnoid Hemorrhage(a bleed in her brain) she was in ICU for 4 weeks with many complications and plenty of scary moments.  She was finally moved to a Rehab Facility and did not seem to do very well, her physical functions were improving but her mental state was way down in the pits.  She was very depressed and frustrated, it was hard to get her motivated to do much in the way of therapy or even want to get better.  I felt as if we were going thru the 5 stages of grieving.  There were other set backs during her stay there.  A bed sore, a concern of lack of timely care from staff, plus medical issues such as major headaches, dizziness and memory loss.  My sister Mary is an amazing caring woman that gave so much of her time and energy to make sure mom was getting everything she needed.  (In other words she went all “red-head” on them, kicked some butt and took down names!)  This also included many doctor visits and tests.  After some changes in meds, mom started feeling better mentally which started her working harder to improve so she could go home someday soon.  And work hard she did!  It was a complete turn around!  We were actually thinking mom might be home for possibly Thanksgiving!  Which was a really big accomplishment as Mary and I had discussed that mom might never be able to come home as she would not be able to be alone during the day while Mary had to be at work.  Then I got a call from Mary, mom had been rushed to the ER, they thought she was having another stroke.  Sure enough after many more tests showed she had had another brain bleed.  Her speech was gone but physically she was okay.  We were all devastated by the news.  But my mom persevered once more and worked hard with a speech therapist and just would not quit. Her speech is now pretty much back to normal!  After 5 days at the hospital we lost the room at the original Rehab Facility, so Mary was on the hunt again for a good Facility.  And she found a good one.  Mom says it looks like a fancy hotel!  She is there now and is doing great! In fact seems she is quite the social butterfly now. She goes down to the dinning hall for her meals and chats… and even got a bag of popcorn from some handsome man that shares her table!  She has played bingo several times and has won a few books and candy bars.  She seems in terrific spirits and is getting around wonderfully with the help of a walker.  She still has a few blanks in the memory but she is working on that. 

Which brings me to last night… I received a text from Mary that she just found out they are releasing mom to go home this coming Saturday!  I called her back to get filled in.  Apparently mom is doing so well they feel she is ready to go home.  Mary has made a few changes at her house to help mom get around better.  And we discussed new “House Rules” that mom will have to follow. Such as no going outside to mow the yard, shovel snow, scrape ice, trim tree branches, run heavy equipment etc… unless Mary or Ron is there with her!  (trust me my mom is VERY stubborn and thinks she can still do all the things she used to do on the farm when she was 30 something!) 

I plan on heading up there soon to spend a week or so with her to help enforce those rules and hopefully spend some quality time with her… like getting my butt beat in cards!

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away.” 

—George Carlin

What a beautiful sight when I went out to feed the horses this past Wednesday morning.  The ol’ saying held true by the way… “Red sky at night, sailors delight, Red sky in morning, sailors take warning!”  It rained from about 11 am until late night.  We had 2.25 inches of rain in the rain gauge by the next morning!

Sunrise Sept 22 2010