Home is on the boat, Heaven is on a farm

I'm home! As our readers know, I had to go north to upstate NY for a family matter and left poor David here in balmy Georgia to take care of the critters and fend for himself. I don't know about other husbands, but for David, he isn't very good at picking leftovers out of the fridge and knowing whether or not they are edible. I tried to make sure he had only edible leftovers plus plenty of frozen things like french bread pizzas and Hungry Man dinners. We also had some sandwich meats and fruits(which I peeled, cut up and had "ready to eat" for him) so I could go north and have peace of mind that he wouldn't live on scotch and pretzels. Well he's still alive, but he apparently almost ate rancid sandwich meat, didn't eat all the melon before it was past its prime yet tried to eat it anyway and we still have strawberries in the fridge that he had on his cereal this morning.... I also made sure he knew he had clean clothes in the laundry basket that I didn't have time to put away before I left. Lets just say he was wearing dirty shorts when I got home and the clean ones were still in the basket.

For me, it was not balmy upstate NY. No, I left Georgia and landed in Albany, New York to 40* and temps dropping. I woke up to snow on Saturday!  Brrrr.... but I had things to think about other than I'm freezing my tush off. My goal was to bring my 25 year old daughter home to the boat to stay with us and help her get back on her feet. That took about four of my days back home running all over to square things and make it so she was able to come with me. To my great joy and relief, she will be joining us in about a week and a half!  Happy, happy, joy, joy!!!!

So what did I do with my other days you ask? Well let me tell you. I got to spend some quality time with my brothers, my grandparents who just celebrated their 69th anniversary, a couple of old friends that I have not seen in quite a while yet are following our adventures via the blog ( Hi Coop!, Hi Eileen!) and my aunt that I used to work for. Plus... drum roll here.... I stayed with my best friend who has a farm. Now it isn't a plush, rolling hills, wood fences for miles style farm. No this farm is acres of pasture filled with beef cattle, calves, horses, a donkey, goats and few ducks and chickens wandering about. My friend is a horse dealer so you can find any number of horses in the fields at any given time. Sometimes they have only the three or four horses they own,  to as many as twenty head out in the fields all for sale.  To me, this is a little slice of heaven on earth.

One thing I would like to note. Kim gives riding lessons and she has one young teen who has been getting lessons for a little while. The special thing about this young girl is she has a disability. I'm not sure if it's autism or some other similar disability but she is a remarkable kid. Being around the horses makes her very happy and she seems to be in tune with them. While there, Kim and I took her out for her very first trail ride. She did fantastic. The horse she is riding is her very own. Her dad bought it for her and justified the cost (which was about equivalent to what we paid to have our tanks cleaned in LI) because he will never be able to buy his little girl a car, send her to college, etc... but he can give her a horse who actually helps take care of her. Watching her work with him was an amazing thing. This horse was so calm and seemed as though he knows she's different. Plus, she will have him for a very long time. The horse is only 8 and they can live as old as late twenties.

My best friend on her boyfriends big buckskin horse.

                                     

Me on my best friend's horse Chet. (I pretend he's mine)

I have grown up with all these kind of critters on a much smaller scale. Going to my best friend Kim's house is like going home for me. We went horseback riding, I snuggled with all her herding dogs, I played with guinea pigs and bunnies. It was great. The only thing missing was David.

These are blue heeler puppies

The plane flights back were short hops from Albany to Washington DC, DC to Charlotte, Charlotte to Savannah. It was so good to touch down in Savannah and even better to see David. I was hoping he would have the dogs with him but no, he said they were waiting from me in the pavillion. When we pulled in the marina parking lot, not only were the dogs waiting for me, so were all of our "C Dock Crew". It was a great welcome home. The dogs were so excited, they nearly knocked me over in their haste to kiss me! Then a funny thing happened. They both went running back to David and jumped all over him, then raced back to me. It was like they were thanking him for finding momma.... silly dogs. I love them.