Stop, drop, & quiver

Jul 05, 2025

Happy Saturday friends!

I don’t know why WE have had to endure TWO defective (and new) smoke alarms this week, especially after having just (well, January 2nd of this year) had a house fire but here we are. The first was during the day, when we were all just hanging out. Scary but we could see and smell that there was no smoke. That alarm was in ManChild’s room and was one that was wired into the house, so all the alarms went off. It was replaced with another new one.

But now as I write this, it’s 2:30am on Friday morning and I’m wide awake, having just been through it again. This time in my room. B-Rad forgot to put a wired box in the open ceiling of my new room (back when it was a bonus room and he was tearing out the dropped ceiling) and so just put a one-off smoke alarm in.

I woke up to a smoke alarm beeping (not realizing it was mine), threw off the covers, grabbed my phone and jammie pants (because I know what it’s like to sit in an ambulance in a tank top and undies in front of firemen-luckily I had my farm jacket on top) tore across the bridge to the loft and down the stairs. I didn’t smell anything. Flung ManChild’s door open, he was awake with earbuds in watching a movie on his iPad, he never heard the alarm. Raced down the hall to B-Rad’s room where he was fast asleep, no earbuds as an excuse. Woke him up and then, as I realized it was another false alarm, it was his turn to race around the house, find a stool to reach it, and get that thing to stop. I had to sit down to calm my heart which was beating out of my chest.

Good God and WTF!?

So, here’s the thing. I’m finally sleeping in my room (after outgassing hideous VOCs for the last month) and the door is closed because I have a mini split air conditioner/heater in there and since cold air falls, if the door isn’t closed, the cold air flows right out of the room and down into the living room. That’s all fine. Except the one little window that opens is pretty small, three stories up, and we aren’t sure if I can get out of it in the event of a fire. My chest hurts thinking about it. We’ve talked about installing a new window and now that these false alarms have happened twice this week, we will be doing that asap. But jeez, what were we thinking? Why didn’t we do this back when we weren’t living here yet and all that work was being done on the house? It’s not like we didn’t have time, we were out for 5 months! Also, I need to give us a break, we had a lot on our minds during all that!

So, this is our wake up call I guess. So, I’m passing along this message to you:

One: Did you order your fire blankets yet? Remember, that’s what I used on ManChild’s bed when it caught on fire in the middle of the night and what the fire investigators said saved the rest of the house from going up in flames. Here is the link: Prepared Hero Emergency Fire Suppression Blanket

Two: Do you have working smoke alarms in your house? Do you KNOW they work? Do you check them every month? Remember ours never went off during our fire and we had never tested them to see if they worked.

Three: Do you have two exits out of your bedrooms? Get a hanging fire ladder for each upstairs bedroom if you’re on a second floor (I’ve just ordered mine along with grippy gloves and a big fire extinguisher for my bedroom). Are your windows big enough to get out of? That’s a pretty important detail. And what happens when you get through that window? What’s your plan from that point? Where are you meeting your family? What about pets?

Four: We had a retired firefighter tell us this important detail that we had never heard about bedroom doors staying opened or closed while you sleep. We had always heard that you’re supposed to leave your bedroom doors closed when you sleep. There is a little caveat though: close your bedroom doors when you sleep IF you have a smoke alarm in each bedroom. Leave them open if you don’t. So, tonight, I will be leaving my bedroom door open because I don’t have a smoke alarm in my room now. We’ll replace it with a new one in the morning.

Well, it's been an hour and I think my heart rate is back to normal now. Climbing the stairs to get back up to my room, wow, my leg muscles were like jello. Adrenalin does funny things to our bodies! I will give myself a neurofeedback session tomorrow for a reset.

THINGS TO DO AT THE RANCH THIS SUMMER:

August/September Women's Circle is 6 weeks: Aug 20 and 27, Sept 3, 10, 17, 24. Call, email, or text me if you'd like to join!

Art Classes! I'm envisioning this as a fun thing to do with your coffee group, friend/family group, female work friends, book club, bible study, etc. I can take a group of 9 women. Fun and easy watercolor that I walk you through step by step, and we can snuggle the mini ponies, mini donkeys, and goats after, or even take the ponies or donkeys for a walk in the woods if the group is interested :-) Call, email, or text me, and I'll cater it to your group!

Equine Gestalt Coaching Sessions (these are private emotional wellness sessions for YOU not your horse ;-))

NeurOptimal Neurofeedback (keeping your mental and physical self healthy without having to dig deep like in a coaching session—as a matter of fact, you can read, write, or even nap during the session!)

If you'd like to talk about some of these, please email, text, or call me!

THE RANCH:

These last few weeks we've hit a lot of important dates: ManChild's 18th birthday, the anniversary of when we moved here to the farm 4 years ago, and the anniversary of buying our first farm in Colorado back in 2016. This was taken the day before we became farm owners 9 years ago:

We can't forget the anniversary of this either:

That was the day that I learned that there is a screw at the bottom of the umbrella that attaches it to the base lol! I miss the beachy wind we had in Colorado!

Flora and fauna:

Look at that sky!

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I did a quick top knot on Blu this week along with a braid of his long, heavy mane. I was surprised he stood still for it. He's come a long way. When he came to us back in October 2024, he wouldn't stand at liberty for anything! Such a dainty, pretty little face under all that hair:

•••

Brad taught me to rewire a lamp this week! My experience with men teaching me things has been my dad yelling at me while trying to help me with math. 45 years later I decided that it's been long enough LOL and I trust Brad enough so we sat down. He is a GREAT teacher! We had fun and I learned a ton. I love milk glass so I was excited to get this little lamp redone and put in my bathroom:

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I saw this idea somewhere and this week was a perfect time to try it. I used a roll of brown paper I had (a paper bag would work too, any colored paper) I traced the shapes of the things I wanted to hang and taped them to the wall with painter's tape. It helps you see the shapes before nailing things in:

I have 2 of my Grandma Hall's cast iron cornbread pans that I wanted to hang, along with her rolling pin, and aprons (some of those are Moms) that I'm hanging on a set of piggy hooks that were Mom's:

•••

In going through old boxes this week I ran across one that was full of memories that Mom had kept, here are a few things:

I was 4 in both of these 💜:

My brother and me back in...1990ish. I was about 20 and he was 16 :-)

THINGS I LOVE:

It's summer and it's time for my yearly raving about natural bug spray!

My favorite for flying critters is from Colorado Aromatics: NoSkeeto! This is the top tier stuff, even better than Young Living's Purification which is pretty darn amazing (you can get a little bottle to try on Amazon.

A couple of years ago I had Lyme from a tick bite and had to be on 6 weeks of antibiotics, ew. I searched and searched and found this stuff called Yaya Tick Ban! Before I go out to do chores, I pull up my jeans, spray on my lower legs, ankles, socks, boots. Then pull the legs of my jeans down and spray around the bottoms of my jeans. Then my hat. Every day, twice a day. I haven't had a tick crawl into my jeans since, even when the mower broke and our grass was a foot high :-) They do still fall out of trees on me (that is SO freaking horrifying) but if I'm wearing a hat, I've not had them get on my skin. If I'm not...well that's when I find one crawling on my neck! (Shudder shudder) So, super wide brimmed hats are key here in the jungle!

When B-Rad and I were first together, he got bit by a tick carrying ehrlichiosis and was out of commission for weeks until I insisted the doctor treat him for a tick borne disease (because he tested negative for Lyme and not many knew about ehrlichiosis back then.) Tick borne diseases are no joke. Protect yourself, without slowly killing yourself with DEET.

Brad made Fettuccine Alfredo for July 4th dinner. Check out this recipe, it was easy and yummy! Because I can't have a lot of cow dairy he subbed evaporated goat milk for the heavy whipping cream (it's not goaty and we use it in Chicken Marsala too) and grated Pecorino Romano sheep cheese instead of Parmesan. It was ridiculously good! Will be making this one again!

This is a weird one but these things have enabled me to finally be able to comfortably use my Apple earbuds. I must have weirdly shaped ears because everything falls out, no matter the size tips. I switched to these, they use memory foam and the things finally stay in my ears! YAY! You can get these on Amazon here!

When I wrote last week about chronic illness, I said I would be trying the online company called AgelessRX.com. You're supposed to be able to get LDN/Low-Dose Naltrexone (for chronic conditions and more) through them. So this week I signed up for it and it was a breeze! I'm in NC so they required an online visit (5 minutes) but that visit doesn't cost anything. I guess they make their money on the prescription. I'm paying $105 every 3 months which is a few dollars less than I was paying for my original prescription through my integrative doc. At least now I don't have to spend $400 for an appt with her just to get the LDN! My side effects were vivid dreams but not nightmares which was fine because I often have vivid dreams anyway. That was only a few nights. It upset my stomach so I have to take it with food, I take it in the middle of the meal. Haven't had any other issues and felt a noticeable difference the next day (although that's not particularly normal!) Happy to answer any questions! My brother just signed up too, he's in PA and didn't even need to have a short visit with a doctor!

And finally, if you like salt with your sweet, check out this salted chocolate. Spendy but worth it once in a while for a treat. There are lots of salted chocolates out there but this one is special, the salt stays crunchy in the chocolate bar:

THINGS THAT MAKE ME LAUGH ON FACEBOOK MARKETPLACE:

I've been having a ball buying antiques and stuff on Marketplace and selling things I no longer need. Sometimes I see the funniest ads... I assume some of these were just people being fat fingered on the phone? But others...😂

This was the only photo of this dresser:

Pretty bracelet but those nails skeeve me out...

I can't tell you how many people list UL/Underwriters Laboratories as the brand of the lamp!

Aka, a scale. But seriously, I get this, when words fail you, and all you can think is what it DOES not what it's CALLED lol:

I actually thought this was kinda sweet :-) I grew up in a evangelical Christian church and would occasionally go with my dad (when I was like 8 or 9 years old) to witness to people. And while that's no longer my cup of tea, I love the sweet creative gift with this one: