Have I mentioned what hard work this can be here? Exhaustion. Absolute and complete exhaustion. I have never known this kind of tired before. I feel it in my bones, my muscles, my mind and my emotional tolerance threshold. I have certainly worked hard before in my life and have always been a very busy type of personality. However, now that I live in this stable of 50 plus horses as well as homeschool my daughter, this level of busy has upped it’s ante on me. I thought I had slowed down my lifestyle to come here and live in this environment. I left the world of chaos, materialism and superficiality behind to leave the city life and live here experiencing this “slower paced” way of life. I wanted myself and my family to know and live differently. In some ways, yes, life has slowed down. Slowed to remember what’s really important. Slowed to show me a brilliant neon pink sunrise while the crisp early fall air hits my face. Slowed to watch birds nest and peek back into those nests each day to see when the eggs hatch and admire the tiny baby birds. Slowed to the satisfying feeling of dirt on your face, hay in your hair and real sweat on your forehead. Slowed to the basics of life and nature. Horses show you how to slow down. Food, water, shelter. Then it’s all okay. And, when you are stressed out or hurried, they will definetly let you know and ask you to look inside yourself by acting up. The horses are constant reminders to slow down. But what full days we have here! Sunrise to sundown, and then more. I am finding it hard to keep up on the little things. Any suggestions for time management? We rise with the sun to feed, check waters, clean stalls, ride and exercise the ones that we are responsible for, homeschool somewhere in and out of there (math, reading, art…), teach a couple of riding lessons, run my daughter to her handwork (knitting) class, stop at the post office, back home, answer questions for people stopping by asking about trail rides, help a boarder fit their new saddle, casual boarder conversation about the weather, sell a few bales of alfalfa (got to run around to find change!) dinner, showers, read to my little girl, tuck her into bed, sweep out the barn, check on the horses, dump the trash, check the calendar for tomorrow. Then I find it’s 10:00 at night and I haven’t yet done the dishes, picked up the house, finished the load of laundry that sat in the washer all day and now smells too mildewy to put in the dryer and fold. Also, I do enjoy the time for myself to post a tidbit or two here on this blog. Oh, and prepare our schooling lesson for tomorrow. Off to bed about midnight. Read some, fall asleep and up again at sunrise to feed. It is an exhausting and very full life here. We are just still trying to find our rhythm. It is a satisfying exhaustion at the end of the day though and I know we will figure it all out eventually.