dancinghorse | Enough with the Holidays Already

I decided yesterday that that was it, I was done, I'd had enough Christmas. Could we please get life back to normal again?

The tree is still up. I'll take it down this weekend. Besides, I like it, and it still smells lovely. Otherwise, well, let's get it over with already.

Yesterday had relatively little redeeming social value. The huge storms that did fascinating things like take down part of Oak Creek Canyon and flood out Flagstaff (I do hope connerybeagle and his family are OK) hit the wall of the Catalinas (with nice floods off Mt. Lemmon), 20 miles north of here, and fizzled fairly conclusively. We got a few showers and that was it. Said showers only happened while I was feeding horses. Otherwise, we even had sun, and temps hit 70F in the afternoon.

In the evening we went out to dinner--smoemeth left this morning so it was a goodbye dinner for her. We went to the Agave, and had another lovely meal. I had buttery-tender pork chops with apple-rhubarb-bourbon sauce over saffron rice, a very good mesclun salad, and a monstrous dessert: fried ice cream in a chocolate tortilla. It took three of us to kill that thing. I brought a pork chop and most of the rice home and had it for lunch today.

Today was much cooler and drier. I vegged a bit, spent time organizing Lipp stuff and next week's clinic, and spent some quality time with keed--nice trail ride in the evening. A couple of cowboys whom we met on the road admired him lavishly, which made him very cheerful indeed. They were riding nice bay QH's themselves.

I am deliberately ignoring New Year's. Got invited to a party but I don't want to be on the roads, and next week is a zoo. I'll be at home with the aminals, and Saturday will be about cleaning the house and taking down all the decorations and getting guest pens ready for horseguests. Sunday is lesson day. Monday the two horseguests and two of the houseguests arrive--with another storm predicted, which I hope is also a fizzle. If we do get socked, I can arrange it so the guests have shelter (since the guest pens don't have a roof), so that's one worry out of the way. Weather is supposed to clear up by Wednesday, so we'll be OK for the various lesson days and rides we have planned. We have lessons here Wednesday, in Marana Thursday, and here again over the weekend. whitezinnia will be arriving on Thursday and staying through Monday, and there will be people at the clinic on Saturday for sure--Lippfolk from various parts of Arizona.

Then after that, Pandora (Ephiny's much older sister) may arrive from Goldendale, WA as early as the 12th, to board here while her new human moves from Ohio and finds a house somewhere between Benson and Willcox. And there will be a new canine arrival in there somewhere--sometime after the 10th, depending on schedules and shipping.

January, in short, is shaping up to be Really Busy.

So you can see why I want to ignore New Year's, which is my least favorite holiday anyway. All it seems to add up to is a lot of drunk drivers. I'll take it as a real holiday--a couple of quiet days before the next round of Wild Social Whirl.