The horse in my mud room

This morning the Hubbit woke me with the news that Pal, my old horse, had pooped all over the clothes dryer. “Oh, that’s wonderful!” I exclaimed, and rushed to put in my contact lenses so I could see for myself.

A little later he (Pal, not the Hubbit) let rip with another explosion of liquid so gloriously voluminous that I think even Donald Trump would have admired it. That one hit the wall. Shortly after that, he started squealing for his buddy Vos, so I piled soft throws onto his body, added a horse blanket, and let him out into the snowy wastes of our backyard. He immediately headed to the corral, where he and Vos had a touching reunion. (Vos is also old – they’re both somewhere north of 25 years – but he didn’t succumb to hypothermia, which is why he got to spend last night in his stall as per normal.)

So I called the vet again to bring him up to speed, and we agreed that he didn’t need to come see it for himself, and then I told the Hubbit that it was no longer urgent, or even necessary, to clear the driveway, but by then he was bundled up and sufficiently pissed off with the weather that he didn’t care what I had to say. He sent the boys off down the driveway with shovels, and carried on trying to get his tractor to start – not an easy task in the kind of cold we’re experiencing.

I came back inside and fed the dogs. (They’re back on a meat diet, to their great, if flatulent, joy. Today they had lungs that were floating around two feet above our pasture just a few weeks ago. Yum!) Then I contemplated the mud room. I thought of taking a picture to share with you, but decided even the Hubbit’s fancy Canon Rebel T3 wouldn’t be able to do it justice, and anyway some sights are better left to the imagination. Instead, here is a snapshot the Hubbit took with his phone last night, after Pal warmed up enough to start showing an interest in things, but before he recovered enough to explode.

For alternative views of the mud room without a horse in it, go here.

After pondering the mud room for a while, and wincing at the kitchenly chaos next door, and contemplating the muddy footprints and furballs all over the floor in the rest of the house, and musing upon the various increasingly urgent projects piled up next to my computer, I decided that the only rational thing to do was to write my first blog post of the year.

I know it’s been a long time. Shit has been happening, and I’ve been thinking about Stuff, and also working on a new novel series, and I got sucked back into Facebook, and frankly I’d got to wondering whether there was any point in continuing with this blog. I mean, what exactly am I trying to do here? I have lots of thoughts about all sorts of things, but I’ve come to realize that most of them have already been articulated – usually more coherently – by other people. Do I really want to add to the noise in the world? Of course, most of my bloggish writing is random bits and pieces about my life, and I’d been thinking that’s not so special – why would anyone want to read about the daily musings, amusings and doings of some bint on a not-quite-farm just outside Smalltown USA?

This morning I realized that I may be the only person in the world who is happy that a horse shat on her clothes dryer. That has to count for something. So … no promises regarding content or regularity, but I’m back. Happy new year, y’all! It’s shaping up to be interesting!