Plugging Along

The last two weeks have been an absolute roller coaster of emotions. I cannot even begin to think about the possibilities that may have occurred had we not taken our son to the hospital when we did. My world came to a screeching halt when we walked through the doors of the ER. Luckily Mike was thinking ahead to chores for the rest of the week. He and our good friend J loaded up hay on Sunday and with the help of others, were able to put a few round bales in with the horses so that we wouldn't have to worry about feeding the horses or doing other chores. I cannot thank all those that helped (and volunteered to help) take care of the horses while we were in the hospital. I couldn't even begin to think about the horses when our son was so sick.

It amazes me how one's world can change in an instant. Perhaps that will be my lesson learned from this ordeal. The doctors did release our son from the hospital exactly one week (and two hours) later. I refused to leave the hospital and in fact refused to leave his room for the most part. Of the week that we were there, I left his room four times and only briefly to appease Mike.

While we were in the hospital, my world came to a screeching halt. I know that there were so many activities going on while we were "on the inside" but I couldn't focus. I am struggling to get my mind back into the Sanctuary life.

I am still not so patiently waiting to release the horses into the pasture. I have yet to walk out there to check out the new grass. I'm not sure why I won't walk out there other than the mosquitoes and the fear that maybe the grass hasn't grown (which I know isn't true). From the road the pasture looks great. I am planning on letting the horses out on pasture finally the first week in July. By then the new grass should be established well enough. The grass will have been planted for six weeks. Hopefully that's enough time to become established. We've had enough  moisture and now heat that the grass should have taken off. Because we didn't know how long we were going to be in the hospital, we bought round bales. We'll use those round bales to finish out the rest of this month and then kick the horses out to pasture. I was starting to get the horses used to grass in May but stopped when the lawn wasn't good enough any more. Now hopefully I can get the horses back out to different parts of the lawn to get them adjusted. The mosquitoes are terrible so it would be nice if the horses ate down the tall grass so the mosquitoes don't have any place to hide.

I am also planning on taking Brego and Ivan up to Mom and Dad's for the summer. Brego constantly loses weight until he's on pasture and he's looking really bad. I'm struggling to find the time to haul them up but will have to figure it out soon. I plan on leaving them in Madison for a month or more and then hauling them back home.  Now that we have extensive hospital bills, I won't be sending Ivan to the trainer so he'll have to wait another season for his education. I swear these hospital bills keep getting in the way of the horses' education.

I am seeing people haying and I wish that we could be out there doing the same thing. Oh what I would give for more land so that we could hay it instead of having to go in search of hay. The new neighbor's cut all the pasture and are going to bale it soon. I'm a little envious but I guess I should be blessed that we were able to use the pasture last year when we desperately needed it.

There really isn't too much going on right now. I'm trying to get back into the swing of general life. It's hard to adjust from the "sit and wait" mentality at the hospital to the "go go go" mentality of the outside world. I'm struggling with it. Hopefully once I'm back on track, I can return my focus to fundraising and then you'll be sick of me plugging whatever hair brained idea I've devised.  But until then, I'll just keep plugging along.