I am siting here in my house today finally with the windows open.  The past week and a half has been unbearable outside.  I am sorry to say but I am not a fan of summer even if the heat is dry heat.  Hot, is hot.

I am thankful to the Lord for lowering the temperature today.  But, disappointment that we have had no significant rainfall in over a month.  My horse is a little bit better, but not perfect yet.  I still don't have a job for during the week, and many other things.  I ask God to answer these prayers many times during the day.  I cry out to him and I even got mad.  Before you thoughts go any farther, yes I thank him for every little and large thing he answers and provides.  I ask for forgiveness each day and ask what am I doing wrong.  I pray for other peoples needs and what does God want here on earth.  I wonder why do these needs go unmet?  How much longer?  Does God not know that if there are not soon, the basic needs of food and shelter will no longer be there?  How much more can a person go through?

My oldest daughter's boyfriend graduated from college two years ago.  The degree with which he earned was not his passion.  He decided to pursue his passion.  He still does not have a paying job in it.  He was still working his college part-time job but they let him go.  Everyday he is on the computer looking at job postings for what he was doing and his passion.  I honestly don't know how much longer he can take this.

My son wants to be accepted, included and be successful.  All during school he didn't get invited to many parties.  He had a very small group of friends.  A also struggled with grades.  He would start the term out great and then it went down hill.  A's desire has always been to be a A student.  But every report and teacher has crushed him.  It also was difficult for him to get a part-time job.  Once he got it, he always struggled with the restaurant manager.

K has had social anxiety all her school life.  It carries over into her personal life.  K has learned how to overcome her fears most of the time.  Yet, there are new situations where she still needs help.  We could never find a treating professional in our area with our insurance company.  I researched online and found a group that had literature about it.  They also held seminars with a licensed professional speaking.  After attending a few of them, I transferred those techniques to K.  When she needs guidance, I am there to help her.  I have been both mom and a treating professional to her.

The weather.  It is either too wet, or to dry.  It is too hot.  It affects our yard, my health, my horse (her health, her food).  It affects our food and the cost.

My husband who is a diabetic and always needs to exercise.  In addition, he wants either a different position in his company or a promotion.  A raise is needed also since I am working only weekends.  He also takes care of his mom's money and is there when the nursing home has questions.  Oh, I answer those calls also.

Then there is me.  My health and that I am not working.

All my life I have had struggles.  I have had health issues, dealing with being adopted, watching many family members die, my own struggles with grades and college, etc.  I grow weary waiting for God to answer all.  I have been told he is a strong God and can do everything.  Why then are so many of these still waiting?  Sometimes I wish the world would end and all this suffering would end.  Yes, there are other that are in more desperate situations and struggling far worse than me.  I still can't help but feel discouraged.  Am I alone?  Does anyone else feel like this?

My son is in his fourth full day by himself down at college.  This is his second day of classes.  He has no a/c and is on the third floor.  We have been have heat warnings since his second day there.  I have been praying that the weather cools down and we get some relief to wash out the pollen from the air.

From the pictures on Facebook, it looks like he is getting involved in activities there.  We are happy to see that as he has been more of a shy kid in school and not having a lot of friends.  A was never in sports or other school activities.  He did however participate in children outings with our church.  It didn't help either that my husband's family has anxiety and has problems with social gatherings.  Nor that my husband and A have never gotten along.  My husband's expectations and standards have always been higher for him than our oldest.  Sometimes higher than for our youngest.  A is the middle and the only boy in our family.  I believe many times he has felt out of place.  I had one brother who was older.  My husband was the middle with a brother on both ends.  To me, my husband should have understood what it was like to be in the middle, but didn't.  W (my husband) is a high achiever when it came to school.  He knew that that would get him a higher paying job than what his dad had.  W wanted a better life for himself as an adult then he had growing up.  My son is not book smart but street smart.  M is book smart and K is both.  I am street smart.  W is a black and white person.  He doesn't understand why people aren't a certain way.  He struggles to accept them the way they are and not how he things they should be.  I am seeing my husband softening with A and missing him.

I hope A is giving this college a real hard go a getting better grades.  I hope he really tries to apply himself more.  He always has and has always wanted to get the A's and B's like his older sister.  The grading period starts out like that, but then by the end his final grades came down.

I am missing him myself.  He was the one I could talk to.  Though I can talk to K very easily also.  Sometimes it feels like he won't be back.  I think it is like this because he was home for two years after high school.  I thought at first he would be home sick, and now it seems like he doesn't even want to communicate with us.  He was excited to go but also very nervous.  I hope he still wants to come back home and visit and communicate with us.  In the past three years, I have had three surgeries.  Out of all three children, he helped me the most.  K was next.  A did so much around the house.  He even wanted to be in the choosing of picking out another horse whenever we were going to do that.  I just sat there with a smile on my face watching A and K looking at the internet.

I know he is happy but will also grow up and mature there.  In the mean time, I will be focusing on K and her senior of high school.

My son packing to go off to finish his four-year degree away from home

My son leaves for college in a few days.  He started off at a community college because of his test score.  As he went to school there he was also working part-time.  He finished all of his general classes with a respectable GPA, but not as high as his older sister or his dad.  My son would drive his dad's car to school and work.  He put gas in it, oil, oil changes and helped where he could with repairs.  He bought his own clothes and food.  That is more than his sister did.  My belief on grades and school is that it doesn't matter how well your grades are if you can't manage your money, time, know how to take care of things, put other people first, etc.  In other words, common sense.  My son has alot of that.  During this time at the college he did change his career choice a few times.  He finally found a path that is his passion and there is a career for it.

My son had a daily list of things to do.  I went through things in his room.  He decided what did he want to keep and what did he want to give away.  He did this because he saw how his older sister never did any of this and still has things at home because there is no room in her apartment.  Whenever she would start to go through things, she would wind up remembering about those items and then thinking maybe she should keep it.  Uh, oh, her time is up and she didn't get anything done, and needs to be somewhere.  I feel sorry for the man she is going to marry.  My son A (I will call him that, my oldest will be M and my youngest will be K) just starting throwing things out and hardly saving anything.  One of those days happen to be when I was at work and my husband said to him while we were on the phone "you are not moving out yet, just going off to college; you will be home on breaks".  Not sure if that change my sons mind.  There were times A wanted us around but we weren't and he was sad.  We found other times and I hope that made up for it.  He then had to decide what he wanted to bring and put in his room.  At this point, he had no roommate yet.  We had most of the things the college had said he needed on his check list.  I was so excited to help him.  His younger sister was helping also.  A and K have always been close, they have similar interests.

I see the excitement in my son, the desire to leave home and be his own person, the nervousness, the fear, the hope of making new friends and doing better in his studies.  A has been the one to do most of the chores around the house.  He is the only grandson on my side of the family.  His grandfather passed away five months before he graduated from high school. With A being gone, there is a lot more for K to do and my husband and I.  I am excited right now but will be sad once we are back home and the routine of him gone is here.  I know for my husband it is different.  They have always butted heads on many things.  The past two years they have grown closer but still are at odds.  I believe for K there will be days that it will be lonely since she is the last child at home.  My family says that A is my favorite, at times maybe.  But I know M says I pamper K also.  My husband M have gotten along better because they view things more similarly.

Move in day is here soon.  We will make it through, God always helps us.

The frustrations of a horse that has continuous pain and is not ridable

My youngest child, daughter, and I own a horse,  She is a 17 year old horse named Dinah.  We have had her for five years.  My daughter brings her to shows where she competes in game events.  Dinah just loves to go fast but my daughter loves to do barrels, poles, keys and four in a line.  When we first got this horse, she had been competed in Pleasure.  That is riding where the horse goes slow and looks like it is fun.  It also looks fun for the rider.  There is a judge that decides which horse looks the best and which rider looks the best.  After a couple of years of this, both my daughter, me (show mom), and the horse decided this was no fun.  My daughter and I hated washing the horse and braiding it's mane and tail the night before when it is hot, humid out with a million bugs around you.  The horse hated standing still instead of getting rid of the bugs and then having a sheet put over it's body to keep it pretty while feeling like it is in a sauna then all night.  We would arrive to the stables at about six the next morning to find the horse won with getting itself dirty and everything undone.  We tried to fix what we could do until it was time to load her in the trailer and drive up to the location the show was at.  I, as show mom, would always forget something that my daughter needed for her clothes, and she would fight wearing those fancy clothes.  At the end of each ride, if she didn't place, my daughter would cry.  How do you explain to a pre-teen that the judge's decision is subjective.  There is no comfort in that to them.  All of the other girls had winning horses that had cost a lot of money, with high buck trainers and the girls taking lessons every week.  My daughter needed to volunteer at the shows to win awards for this club and started studying the riders in the game shows.  During the off-season she starting trying those patterns back at the stable with our horse.  She loved it and so did the horse.  The next season she decided to give it a try.  They dd okay.  There was no judge, no fancy clothes, no getting the horse ready the night before.  We all were hooked.  Since then that is what my daughter has been doing with the horse.  I ride just regular type  of things.  My daughter does still do pleasure things, some trail riding, and has introduced her to cows.  This show season has been nonexistent due to weather this year.  Except for now, the horse pulled a muscle in her shoulder pretty deeply and is taking a long time to heal.   It is so hard to see your horse in pain, not be able to walk or trot and not ride her.  This has been hard on her since she loves to go.  At times when there is no pain, Dinah starts to run and then oops, the pain is there.  There is stall rest, then just walking, then hand trotting and hopefully riding.  The connection you feel when you ride a horse or can ply with them is something you can't put into words.

Tomorrow is another day of letting Dinah be.  Last year I had two surgeries in six months and couldn't ride her.  That was a very long and difficult year for me.  We just hope and pray that this injury will not require surgery or anything more.  Since she is not our land and at a boarding stable, you go to bed each night putting your trust in the owner of that place and the people that work there.  We do give her something for the pain, but like with humans you don't want to give it to them for an extended period of time.  Well, time for me to try and fall asleep as my Dinah is in her stall trying to relax and sleep also.  I pray that God puts her in his healing hands.  Sleep my precious horse and heal your shoulder

My first time at trying this new technology.

What is blogging?  Why do people blog?

I am a 48 year old mom.  I decided to give this a try because people suggested it as something to entertain me.  Here is a short history about me.  I have three children.  The oldest has a full-time job after graduating from college.  She just moved out now into an apartment.  My middle child just finished two years at a community college and is leaving soon for a four-year college three hours away.  My youngest is a senior in high school.  My husband works full-time and does travel.  When I was eight months pregnant with my oldest, I was laid off from work at at large food company.  With the advice of my dad, I stayed home and finished my college education.  This allowed my husband to work long hours and travel to get a income that kept us surviving on his income.  I did little jobs to help out when needed.  We had two more children after that and he went through a few employers.  When my youngest was a year and a half, I went to work at a retail store during the holidays.  When that was over, they offered me a permanent position.  Since I could work only on the weekends and avoid daycare, I took it.  I did many different positions at that store until the recession hit.  I needed to find work somewhere else.  I found it at another retail store for during the week and stayed at the first one on the weekends.  Back to the present, I left my week job because a doctor told my mom that she needed a MRI to see if she had bone cancer and if she needed hip replacement surgery.  My mom is 87 years old, is a widow and lives alone in her house.  I have one brother and we both live near her but I am the closest to her.  My mom had cancer twenty years ago and they told her then that if she developed cancer again, she didn't have any treatment options because of what they were going to use this time to kill all of the cancer.  So, I left that job, took my mom to the follow-up appointment to hear that there is no cancer and no surgery.  She tore a muscle near her hip.  The following week is summer break and two of my children are home.  One has a part-time job and the other doesn't.  Summer's are usually busy trying to keep them entertained, doing household chores and having enough food in the house.  I knew this summer would be a little bit busier then others.  My oldest moved out.  That was a two week process with her.  My niece got married and that was the first for my family.  My youngest was getting to take her driver's test and my mother-in-law was very ill.  In addition, my youngest and I own a horse.  That in itself takes a lot of time.  Our horse is boarded at a stable so there is extra time in driving over there and back home.  Then if the horse is sick you are there every day.  We are members of two saddle clubs and my daughter shows.

It is now the end of summer and the school year is here.  I have applied at a few places and no phone calls.  I am going to try to do temporary agencies but with my only experience for the past fifteen years being retail I am not confident I will get anything for office work.  It is said that I spend five years in college to get a degree that I can't use because it is more than twenty years old.  At least I have my job on the weekends and the volunteer work I do for the saddle clubs.  I am hoping this blogging will keep my mind engaged and I will not become bored.  In addition, I hope with what I write about, others will either enjoy reading or learn from it.  Ta ta, for now.