New Meditation Dates!

Happy Saturday friends!

It’s that time of year where I should be racing outside to garden in the cooler weather but instead I’m giving it the side eye as I walk by the windows. I think the issue is, after a North Carolina summer, it feels like I’m in shell shock. It's hard to imagine going outside again after that. Maybe too, it's knowing that whatever work I put in right now, will look dead in another month. I'll have to wait for the spring before I can enjoy all that beauty again.

Gardening is often playing the long game isn’t it? Sometimes you get instant gratification but often times you have to wait to see the fruits of your labor until months later.

But! Last Saturday I found somebody on Facebook who was selling Cat's Pajamas Nepeta (a shorter variety of catmint) and I immediately contacted him and was able to get eight 5 inch plants! That kind of renewed my energy a bit for the whole process. It is, after all, only early October. Things are still growing for a little longer. I’m going to put this new Nepeta on the outside of my pink muhly grass. The area I'm growing as an experiment is right outside my office windows. Curious to see if I can plant enough of a buffer that the deer won't both my "someday" roses.

•••

Meditation with the Herd–2 New Dates!

The October 10th session had to be cancelled because of the hurricane remnants that are headed this way this weekend. I do have a covered space for normal rain but rain with 35mph gusts wasn't going to work. Poop. Here are the new dates:

Saturday, October 24th, 6:30-8:00pm, just two days before the full moon, $15

Saturday, November 7th, 3:30-5:00pm, $15

Plan on being here 30 minutes early so you have time to park, sign a form, bathroom break, and listen to my 3 minute safety demo. The actual time with the herd is 90 minutes! 

These are for adult women (21+). 

Both dates are about half full. Check out the rest of the details here!

•••

It seems lots of people have been asking me essential oil questions lately so I thought I'd give some of my favorites and what I use them for.

I started off with Young Living because that's what my massage therapist in Colorado used. She was the one who introduced me to them via a broken toe pinky toe. A few drops of oil and the pain lessened, by a lot. What was this magic?

Young Living is a MLM (Multi Level Marketing) and for a long time you had to be a member to buy. I became a member under my massage therapist and would buy for friends but always gave them the same discount I had because MLMs give me the ick.

I was never a fan of the fact that they liked to say they were organic but didn't want to spend the money for the organic label. I started searching around and found Revive Essential Oils. Much more transparent, organic options. For those of us who "grew up" in Young Living or doTerra, Revive has an awesome "compare" button on their home page that will show you the Young Living or doTERRA blend's name and the Revive equivalent. It's super helpful!

Recently I found Plant Therapy Essential Oils, also organic options. When I couldn't find organic Frankincense at Revive, I tried Plant Therapy and they had it. There are probably a million therapeutic essential oil companies out there now.

Here is my favorites list:

• Colds, sinus congestion, or sinus headaches, Young Living RC or Revive Breathe Easy: Put a drop in your hand, add some of your favorite lotion and rub it into your face above sinus cavities, around your ears, at the openings of your ears (never into your ear canal). Best if you can catch that sinus headache early!

• Cough that goes along with a cold or flu, Young Living Raven or Revive Breeze: It's a chest thing for the most part. Same deal, a drop or two mixed with your lotion, apply to chest, neck

• Killer period cramps, Young Living Dragon Time (not joking lol) or Revive Cycle Calm: A couple of drops in your hand, mixed with lotion, on your lower belly and lower back. This was a GODSEND for me back in the day. I used to take 4 Advil around the clock for days every month. When I started using this, I was done with Advil for cramps. A miracle!

• Fight off colds/flu, best if you catch early! Single oils Geranium, Tea Tree, Lavender, mixed in equal parts. I keep my old empty oil bottles to reuse but you can buy them too. A drop in your palm, mixed with lotion, put above your eyebrows, on cheekbones, under jaw, around ears, in openings of ears, down neck

• Ear ache, lavender, drop in your hand, mix with lotion, put in the openings of your ears, around your ears.

• Pink eye/conjuctivitis, if you've ever had it, you might know the feeling of itchy eyes before it really gets going. A drop of lavender in palm, mix with a bit of lotion and over the bridge of nose.

• Prone to weird gum or tooth things? Young Living Thieves or Revive Immunity Boost. Drip a drop onto a qtip and swab your gums after brushing, let sit for a few moments, rinse and spit. You could floss while it's sitting in your mouth too! I have a friend who has to see a periodontist every few months. When she started using Thieves, even the periodontist saw a difference. I had a dentist in Colorado who had to give me an implant. He handed me the doTERRA version in a little bottle with a pipette and told me to drip it around the gum line to keep it healthy. Crazy stuff. Tastes like cinnamon for the most part.

• Tummy ache, nausea, weird twangs? Young Living DiGize or Revive Digest Aid. A drop or two of oil in hand, lotion, put it on your belly wherever it hurts

• Mosquito magnet? A bug bite? A boo boo? A pimple? Young Living Purification or Revive Purify. I often use straight but you do you. This stuff lives in my pocket in the summer. If something bites me, it's my first go-to.

• Broken toes/fingers (this was that magic stuff for my broken pinky toe), bruises. I use this straight on broken things, mixed with lotion if I need to go over a bigger area.

• Sun Baby? Are you old enough to never have used sunscreen when you were a kid because the only option was straight zinc? Yeah, me too. I went to the dermatologist in 2019 and they told me that a spot I had been watching on the top of my cheekbone was almost certainly melanoma. DEAR GOD. I had been using Frankincense on it for at least 6 months, since it had first appeared. I went in for what I thought was a Moh's surgery but they instead decided to just go for it cut it out, that's how certain they were that it was melanoma.

This was the before, on my 50th birthday with my brother. See the tiny dot on my right cheekbone? Right below the center of my right eye, top of my cheekbone, barely there:

13 stitches (inside and outside) and a week or so later, I looked like this:

They dug around in there and found..."atypical cells". Whew! I still wonder if it was the Frankincense and I just caught it so early. I don't know. I still use it in my morning face lotion though! Not even a full drop, just tip it over with my finger on the end and use what's on my finger. Also! I didn't bruise because of the PanAway I used!

• Need help going to sleep? Racing mind? Young Living Valor or Revive Courage. I want to roll around in this stuff like a cat with catnip. The smell is heavenly! A few drops mixed with lotion and put on the bottoms of your feet and back of neck. Yes please!

That's enough for now right? I could go on and on. Haha, and did. ;-)

•••

Monday Online Art Class has an easy way to pay, yay! Click here to read details or sign up!

This week we played around with what we've learned over the last few weeks, everyone's saying was different, here's mine lol. Not sure what the second one will be:

Hustle culture creeps up on me quite often and then I remind myself what three years of long covid taught me—I can't do that. I promised that if I ever got better from long covid, that I would take care of myself and not get caught up in what everyone else thinks is the way to run a business. I'm "tested" all the time! But I'm sticking to my promise to myself and my business is thriving! YAY!

THE RANCH:

 

Sweetness says, "Put the camera down and FEED ME!"

 

"Hurry up!"

"Oh my gawwwwwwd...I'm starving!"

HOW TO WORK WITH ME

Equine Partnered Coaching! With horses (early morning appointments in the summer), without horses, or online, your choice. 

Neurofeedback Train your brain to calm and ease. The most common response I hear about
neurofeedback is, "I'm so much less reactive in my life!" It really doessmooth out the sharp spikes. Super helpful if your world feels harsh and spiky right now. These appointments are in my climate controlled office.

Reiki Another way to facilitate relaxation, calm, healing. If the weather is nice, you can choose outside in the herd and of course in my office is always available :-)

And Women's Circles! I've updated my website yet again so read up and then contact me if you want to talk about joining a Women's Circle!

Wednesday Women's Circle has a waiting list, I will add you to it if you'd like. Newer people do
indeed get in occasionally, as sometimes the people higher on the list end up with upcoming vacations, too busy at work, or just life is life-ing. 

Tuesday Women's Circle, runs 11am—2pm,  contact  me if you're interested in the next group, it starts October 26th.

Monday online art class via Zoom. Ongoing, every Monday, 7:30-9pmET. $35
I teach you something fun in watercolor or mixed media. It's a low key, jammies kind of class. Right now it's still small so you get more one on one instruction if you want it. 

Details or to pay with a credit card, click here!

Also, as we slowly creep up on Christmas, go check out my Etsy store, lots of fun art over there! 

 

All of my art and writing is made with human intelligence!

If a friend forwarded you this post, you can subscribe to my full version
of the Saturday morning newsletter by clicking here.

 

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

 Happy Saturday friends!

A few months ago ManChild and I were out running an errand and we got onto 540 (outer loop around Raleigh, NC etc). When you're on an entrance ramp to a highway where the speed limit is 70mph, you speed up. He was picking up appropriate speed quickly and as we came around the curve to the highway, there were suddenly a line of tall thin "cones" (they aren't actual cones, they are 4' tall skinny orange tubes with a big rubber base, what are those called?) cutting the entrance ramp off and pushing us straight toward the highway itself with no on ramp at all. You know how everything in your brain accelerates to Mach 1 as you calculate your next step: No space. Big line of cars on the highway in the right lane going 70-80mph. No where to go. Slam into cones? Slam on breaks hard. Keep control of the car. Stop two feet from nose getting hit. 

All in a 19 year old brain that is not used to driving yet. No one was behind us so we sat for a moment and caught our breath before continuing on. Holy hell man, WTF. Whose bright idea was that? No signs, no flashing lights, no warning in any way. Idiots. 

We spent the rest of the drive talking about how he did everything right. 

Fast forward to earlier this week when ManChild mentioned that story and how he totally freaked out. 

Huh. Isn't it interesting the stories we tell ourselves? He absolutely did not freak out. So, I told him, 

"Actually that's not true."

He stopped and looked at me.

"You did absolutely everything right in that situation. You kept control of the car, you stopped in time. There wasn't anything that could have been done that would have been better than what you did. You were exactly right. I was really proud of you, I still am!"

He continued to look at me, I suppose making those same quick decisions, and said, "Thank you for saying that." 

Somehow he took what I was saying as truth, adjusted his belief about the situation and reframed his story. Shocking in a full grown adult, let alone a teenager. 

I hate those stories that we tell ourselves about how we freaked out, we weren't good enough, we aren't capable, when the sheer fact that we are still standing here, proves otherwise.

THE RANCH 

I did the thing, whoohoo! For a long time, I've been this little business and have just done payments using Venmo, Zelle, cash/check. Now I have this Monday night online art class on Zoom, every Monday from 7:30-9pmET. I want this part to grow so I made it easy for women to sign up, you can pay right from my webpage and use Apple Pay, Google Pay, and credit cards, yay! So much easier! So, if you've thought about it but payment was fussy, please consider again! And if you know someone who might want to join, please forward this email or this site to them.

••• 

The Portal to Another Dimension Chandelier is up for grabs! This is the chandelier that was very pretty in this house when the previous owners lived here but not pretty with my stuff :-) In the early days of us being here and sitting under this chandelier, my brother looked up and said, "It's like a portal to another dimension."

Yes! Can you hear it? As soon as you sit down you hear whoom, whoom, whoom and if you lean forward to grab the butter, the sound gets faster and louder and pretty soon you're sucked into it, butter in hand, to who knows where. 

Here are a few pics of it from the day that we looked at the house back in March of 2021. If you've been here before you'll recognize the floors pre-2025 fire. They are the same floors but after the fire we had them stained to look like white oak instead of the red oak they are. You can see the chandelier off to the left in their dining room:

 

I loved the previous owner's style, that baby grand at the entry was beautiful! I love rugs too but lost all mine in the fire. They "cleaned" them for me and they came back smelling like sweet smelling chemicals. That was not going to work for this sensitive girl. Sigh. Back to square one.

So, the chandelier is yours if you want it, free! I hope it goes to someone who loves it :-) Send me an email if you'd like it. You have to be local-ish (I'm in Apex, NC), it's heavy and I'm not going to be shipping it.

Here's what I know about it:

Dimensions:
 • Outer ring: 30” diameter
 • Inner ring: 20” diameter
 • Drop: 29” from ceiling (adjustable longer – extra cable inside ceiling mount)

Features:
 • Heavy, dual floating rings with glass crystals
 • Crystals on both inside and outside of each ring
 • Bright, white integrated LED lighting 
 • Chrome finish with mirrored inner surface for extra sparkle
 • Sleek cable suspension – no bulky rods

Condition:
 • Excellent gently-used condition
 • Fully functional, uninstalled and ready to take home
 • Includes ceiling mount and hanging wires
 • Clean and carefully stored

And here you can see why it didn't fit my house :-) Our eat in kitchen is more than big enough for a good sized dinner party and I don't have a completely separate work space like I did on the Colorado farm. So our formal dining room is no longer and is used for my weekly Women's Circles. Weather permitting, we head out to the lower pasture to have our meditation and circle with the ponies and mini donkeys and then back inside for art and laughter:

 •••

Yep, yep, teeth showing a bit, a few frown lines that life gave, maybe clutching a little bouquet of weedy wildflowers but it's okay, the ones who actually receive it and say, "Oh look! Positivity! Let's go this way!" also look a lot like this. So basically we are a bunch of happy, feral raccoons over here in the Women's Circles and we pretty much like it that way :-) 

And speaking of Women's Circles and what we offer each other, I saw this great quote from Awakening Body that said: "Every woman needs at least one friend she can have the most inappropriate, absolutely unhinged conversations with and never once worry about being judged. I'm pretty sure it's essential for our mental health."

THE RANCH:

Sweet little Blu, having a rester in the sun because you know, it's not one million degrees anymore (his foot is all better!): 

Brad was working on the bubbler in the pond (helps to keep the pond from getting gross) and was digging down into our sandy soil on the other side of the dam. He accidentally uncovered a turtle nest! There were 10 baby turtles inside, the size of silver dollars (or an Oreo to you youngins who have never seen a silver dollar :-))

And now we can see first hand why our neighbor (the one with the larger pond) had to have her dam fixed! Ugh.

•••

I started the Great Plant Migration back into the house about a month ago and brought in all the big ones. I kept getting the feeling that there was a green anole in the house. Every time I would feel that, my brain did that "that's not true" thing that makes us doubt our intuition. 

Heehee. 

Never discount your intuition:

We opened the window to see if it would hop out but it was very happy sunning itself, thank you very much:

Brad got a cup and paper, cup on the left of the anole, paper around the lamp on the right. It jumped right onto his arm. He said he could just barely feel it's little tiny nails:

He tipped his arm out the window and it hopped out. Success! While I really wouldn't mind a cute little green anole in the house, I was worried about it not having enough to eat!

•••

Have you seen a mane braid like this? If you can French braid, you can do this one too. It's like a half a French braid. Next time I'll change it a bit so I can gather all his wither (shoulder) hairs in too. He was so good during our Tuesday circle this week. After our check in we were just chatting and enjoying the horses before we went in for art and Blu stayed very still and let me pretend I was five years old again. Now he needs some mane chalk for some pretty streaks and maybe some hoof glitter ;-)

HOW TO WORK WITH ME

Equine Partnered Coaching! With horses, without horses, phone, or online, your choice. 

Neurofeedback Train your brain to calm and ease. The most common response I hear about neurofeedback is, "I'm so much less reactive in my life!" It really does smooth out the sharp spikes. Super helpful if your world feels harsh and spiky right now. These appointments are in my climate controlled office.

Reiki Another way to facilitate relaxation, calm, healing. If the weather is nice, you can choose outside in the herd or of course, in my office is always available :-)

And Women's Circles! I've updated my website yet again so read up and then contact me if you want to talk about joining a Women's Circle!

Wednesday Women's Circle has a waiting list, I will add you to it if you'd like. Newer people do indeed get in occasionally, as sometimes the people higher on the list end up with upcoming vacations, too busy at work, or just life is life-ing. 

Tuesday Women's Circle, runs 11am-2pm,  contact  me if you're interested in the next group, it starts October 26th.

Monday online art class via Zoom. Ongoing, every Monday, 7:30-9pmET. $35
I teach you something fun in watercolor or mixed media. It's a low key, jammies kind of class. Right now it's still small so you get more one on one instruction if you want it. 

 

All of my art and writing is made with human intelligence!

If a friend forwarded you this post, you can subscribe to my full version
of the Saturday morning newsletter that will be emailed to you by clicking here.

 

Me, my oils, and my access to AI

 Happy Saturday friends!

I had a funny thing happen this week, well it was funny to me anyway! I was at the dermatologist for a follow up to my freezy spots I had done a few months ago. A young assistant man came in to check if anything had changed for my file. Nope. 

He asked, "Who do you use for your primary care doctor?" 

I paused, "...uhhhh...well I suppose my hormone doc might see me...can we say it's me? Me, my intuition, my oils, and my access to AI?"

Snort giggle. Well, it's true! I can't even begin to tell you the amount of stuff I have fixed with intuition and essential oils! Oils work wonders if you catch things early enough. You know how you wake up with a scratchy throat or ears that feel weird? Oils. Or stub a toe hard enough to turn it black and blue? Oils. Or the weather changes and gives you a sinus headache? Oils! And intuition, that's really the precursor to oils. She just pops up with all kinds of info if you get quiet enough to hear it. Years ago I was having occasional bouts of vertigo and couldn't figure it out. What in the world? Yuck. One morning I woke up with the world swirling and the thought popped into my head, "Drink more water." 

Huh. Really. Okay, let's try that! I chugged water, laid back down and within the hour, the vertigo was gone. Fast foward a decade or more and I can feel it coming on much sooner and start drinking more water right away so don't wake up with the world spinning anymore (knock on wood!) This year I discovered electrolyte tablets and I feel even better!

My body is a finely tuned machine ;-) and if my levels aren't topped off, I'm wonky. Like a car without enough oil lol. 

And now I have Claude AI as this new team member that helps me spot patterns! 

BTW, the dermatologist said, "Come back in a year." Whooohoooo! 

THE RANCH

Whew, yeah baby, this was a big one! About 5 feet long and bigger around than a quarter. Happy it's here eating mice and critters we don't want around! 

 

Aren't the shed skins fascinating? Back when we had a couple of snakes, we got to see them shed their skins and how they use rocks and sticks to help them. Look at the right side of the shed, did you know that's what a snake's belly looks like? When they move, those long scales lift just a bit to catch on the ground and move them forward.  

And then on Friday afternoon I was out driving the golf cart to go get the mail when I spotted this harmless black snake sunning itself on the driveway. I was on the phone with my brother and was very happy he wasn't with me, he might have driven off the road in a panic ;-) Not a big fan of the creepy crawlies. Doesn't it look like it has two heads? Don't worry, it's just a shadow. I got out to take a photo and talk to it and it slithered under the tree to the left. When I drove by, it had raised its head to watch me, looking like it was going to strike! Goodness!:

The guineas are settling in nicely and as I write this, Brad is out back creating a bigger enclosure for them. Nearly there, just needs the roof and the perches and they will be transferred over this evening!

This will be a much better spot and should enable them to safely navigate the horse pasture if they need to. Plus it's much easier for us to deal with cleaning their pen, giving food and water. Another week or so and they will be able to be loose. The guy we bought them from said to let half out at a time, it keeps the loose ones knowing where to go back home to. Smart.

Waiting for their new home (and yes, their heads really do look this way, they aren't ill, just kinda prehistoric):

Everyone else was a little weirded out at first. Not the 3 original goats or Sweetness the mini donkey as we had guineas in Colorado so they are familiar. But everyone else was like this:

Parsley said, "What in God's name ARE those things?!?"

Tori was just as concerned: 

A couple of the goats even refused to eat in their nighttime pen for a few days, they didn't even want to go out there! 

"Absolutely NOT. You can put our food in here thanks." Denali is on the right, she was in our batch of first babies we bought. She's 9 and has been around the block. She tried telling Dancer (in back) and Dancer's baby Parsley that it was fine but they weren't having any of it:

•••

Blu is slowly getting better, thank you for your prayers. On Thursday I was out chatting with Bonnie and the herd. I had already cleaned out Blu's feet so he knew that I had treats in my pocket. He would NOT leave me alone. I had just finished cleaning out the goat barn and the wagon was in the coaching barn. I walked around to the other side of the wagon to keep Blu at arm's length. He tried following me around but I just kept him on the other side. He'd stop and look at me like, "Hey!" I'd laugh and not let him get me. He started to figure out the game and would take a step and I would counter step and he'd stop and take a step to the other side. Ha! Smarty. We fooled around like that awhile and then he stopped over by Bonnie. 

I said, "Did you think that was as funny as I did?"

And he shook his head and then his whole body! Was that a yes or a no? 😂 Here he is debating his next move:

HOW TO WORK WITH ME

Equine Partnered Coaching! With horses, without horses, phone, or online, your choice. 

Neurofeedback Train your brain to calm and ease. The most common response I hear about
neurofeedback is, "I'm so much less reactive in my life!" It really does smooth out the sharp spikes. Super helpful if your world feels harsh and spiky right now. These appointments are in my climate controlled office.

Reiki Another way to facilitate relaxation, calm, healing. If the weather is nice, you can choose outside in the herd and of course in my office is always available :-)

And Women's Circles! I've updated my website yet again so read up and then contact me if you want to talk about joining a Women's Circle!

Wednesday Women's Circle has a waiting list, I will add you to it if you'd like. Newer people do indeed get in occasionally, as sometimes the people higher on the list end up with upcoming vacations, too busy at work, or just life is life-ing. 

Tuesday Women's Circle, runs 11am-2pm,  contact  me if you're interested in the next group, it starts October 26th.

Monday online art class via Zoom. Ongoing, every Monday, 7:30-9pmET. $35 
There isn't a public link for this one but you can contact me for the short supply list and link here. I teach you something fun in watercolor or mixed media. It's a low key, jammies kind of class. Right now it's still small so you get more one on one instruction if you want it. 

Hope you all have a great week!

Thank you for reading :-)

All of my art and writing is made with human intelligence!

If a friend forwarded you this post, you can subscribe to my full version
of the Saturday morning newsletter that will be emailed to you by clicking here.

"Forboding Joy" (Brene Brown)

Happy Saturday friends!

On Thursday afternoon, I sat down at my desk to figure out my first Meditation with the Herd event of the year, yay! As I was debating on dates and weather, I found myself kind of anxious.

Huh. Weird. What was that about? Mulled that over a bit and found memories. Times in the past where I would pull out a paper calendar, and start planning the year. "Oooo, it would be fun to do x in the spring!" or "I really want to hold x next fall!" It was all fun and games and dreaming in the flow state until 2020. Boy did I have big plans for that year, business wise. Then covid, Mom's cancer diagnosis, the beginning stages of moving across the country back to North Carolina. Life went tumbling in a lot of directions and things haven't been quite the same since. 

Ok, great, I found the waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop fear. Fine. I can do this. It's fine. I'm fine. Onward.

I created it all:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meditation with the Herd
Saturday, October 10th, 2026
5:00-6:30pm
$15
Space is limited to 20 people.
And made the website page to go with it for details. 

Yay! I did it and survived just fine.

Then I went downstairs and took Lucy out for a little walk. We were halfway down the driveway when that shoe drop thought popped up in a new way:

I'm happy therefore something bad will happen to me.

 

I was still walking along with Lucy and looked over at the upper pasture fence. The dark slats with the sunset dusk sky caught my eye. Pretty.

But the visual afterimage of the fence stayed in my upper peripheral vision. I blinked a few times and it didn't go away. Well that freaked me out and you know what that means. My mind went haywire.

"Am I having a stroke??"

Again I say, ew: 

 

I turned around, trying to ignore the disorienting things my brain was doing and started TFT tapping: above one eye, cheekbone, collarbone. Got inside and had a smidgen of Ativan. As soon as I was in indoor lighting, the visual afterimage stopped and the anxiety calmed down. 

I started doing some research and found the waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop phenomenon is what Brene Brown calls "Foreboding Joy" and here's what her research found: Foreboding joy is what we use as a preemptive strike against vulnerability. Whaaat? What do joy and vulnerability have to do with each other? 

Well, sometimes we get to a certain age—might be younger or older, depending on life experiences—where our nervous system has learned that when good things happen, bad things follow. There is an ebb and flow in our human lives. We all know that both good and bad things happen to us all. But somewhere in our brains, we begin to equate the good and the bad. If this, then that. 

Brene says that humans think that if we catastrophize first, we are protecting ourselves from being blindsided by loss. 

Yes, exactly. 

What we're actually doing though is robbing ourselves of joy in real time. Suffering in advance for something that may never happen.

Brene says that joy is the most vulnerable human emotion. More than grief and more than fear. If we are in grief, we are already in pain. Joy requires us to be fully open, present, trusting that good things are allowed to last, and that terrifies the nervous system that has learned otherwise.

The fix? A practice of in-the-moment gratitude. This is real, right now, and I am grateful—staying in the joy rather than fleeing it.

Ooooooooo, yes! I love this.

So, instead of letting a catastrophic thought spiral, we can pause and name what we're grateful for in that exact moment to anchor ourselves in what's actually happening. 

So good. I will be doing this and will report back. I'll also be doing some extra neurofeedback! 

THE RANCH 

Remember last week when I wrote It Takes a Village, Part 3: Body Doubling? I'm pleased to report that we did household chores together and it went swimmingly. We've talked about things several times and he seems to be understanding what I'm saying and is really picking up the slack. Happy dance 🤸🏽‍♂️

••• 

Last weekend we found a little mouse jumping up and down in one of the goat's water buckets. The water was just at a low enough level that it was surviving thank God. As much as I don't want mice around, I don't want to see them suffer! 

Once it was out, it sat in the sun for the longest time, shivering and running its tiny hands along its face. I sat with it awhile and talked to it. 

•••

Saturday Sept 12 was one of those special days in my life. Would have been Mom's 80th birthday. I found a Facebook memory from 2016 that said: Called my mom this morning and sang her the birthday song really loud. Ike and Onya joined in by barking. Our windows were open and all of a sudden one of the mini donkeys started braying too! Haaaaa! 

It was the day that my mare Rayn came home in 2012. Both she and ManChild were 5 years old:

 It was the day Jaffee came home in 2023, the year after Mom died. All in all, a really happy date :-):

 

•••

 The leaves are just starting to change, thank God!

 

Speaking of fall, we painted fun little mushrooms this week during the Women's Circles:

•••

Little Boy Blu had a rock in his hoof:

And has been tender ever since.  I am watching him. If things get worse over the weekend, or if they aren't a lot better by Monday, I'll call the vet. Fingers crossed and prayers said that he'll be okay!

I gave him banamine for pain yesterday and he let me do it, barely. Today I tried sneaking it into a piece of apple:

I cut out the center, squirt the banamine in, covered it back up with a sliver of apple:

 
Smart right? I gave him a piece of regular apple, gave everyone else a piece too so he could see that they were also enjoying it. Gave him this piece, and he was happily chewing on it. Just as I was pulling out another piece for him so he could wash the taste out of his mouth, he tossed his head, flinging a few tiny apple bits around. I tried the second normal bite and he walked away, very Eeyore looking saying, "You have ruined apples for me."

Oh bother.

•••

Guess what? OMG! So excited! I found guinea birds, finally! We pick them up this weekend, happy dance! So, this week, Brad bought and installed more panels for their pen. We are getting another set on Tuesday (yay Marketplace!) and will expand their pen to 5x10' and 7' tall. They have to stay inside the pen for 2-3 weeks so their little brains will understand that it is home and then we can let them loose on tick patrol! (Yes, we'll be fixing the bottom so they can't escape.)

 
What's next...? Ducks maybe?! 

•••

And finally, some pretty, fluffy pampas. I love this time of year!

My one meme here, you'll have to sign up for the actual newsletter for more!

True story: We had a giant 4th of July party two weeks after we moved into this house. 20+ people. A bunch of kids racing around upstairs. Just an absolute zoo. I was sitting, calmly chatting with Mom, Aunt Katy, and my brother Michael when he looked over and said, "You're so laid back, are you on quaaludes???" 😂
(I knew I couldn't lean forward ;-))

HOW TO WORK WITH ME

Equine Partnered Coaching! With horses (early morning appointments in the summer), without horses, or online, your choice. 

Neurofeedback Train your brain to calm and ease. The most common response I hear about
neurofeedback is, "I'm so much less reactive in my life!" It really does smooth out the sharp spikes. Super helpful if your world feels harsh and spiky right now. These appointments are in my climate controlled office.

Reiki Another way to facilitate relaxation, calm, healing. If the weather is nice, you can choose outside in the herd (this is an early morningappointment) and of course in my office is always available :-)

And Women's Circles! I've updated my website yet again so read up and then contact me if you want to talk about joining a Women's Circle!

Wednesday Women's Circle has a waiting list, I will add you to it if you'd like. Newer people do indeed get in occasionally, as sometimes the people higher on the list end up with upcoming vacations, too busy at work, or just life is life-ing. 

Tuesday Women's Circle, runs 11am-2pm,  contact  me if you're interested in the next group, it starts October 26th.

Monday online art class via Zoom. Ongoing, every Monday, 7:30-9pmET. $35 
There isn't a public link for this one but you can contact me for the short supply list and link here. I teach you something fun in watercolor or mixed media. It's a low key, jammies kind of class. Right now it's still small so you get more one on one instruction if you want it. 

Hope you all have a great week!

Thank you for reading :-)

All of my art and writing is made with human intelligence!

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