Day 16

Oooooh... I've been a bad girl.  Up WAY too late and opted to have more of a fun day than a working day.  Woopsies.  All that was really accomplished:

Dinner and game at the table (I won Guess Who? AGAIN!)
I got a good workout in, but it totally kickedmy butt.
I finished reading my Podhajsky book, and decided that the airs above ground kind of freak me out a little bit.
This current half of a month failed to get a completed DIY/home improvement project completed, mainly due to the weather (for the fencing), my complete and utter confusion and lack of knowledge (for the weather stripping) and lack of funds (for the laundry room floor getting redone).  I solemnly swear that in the month of August, not one, but all three of these DIYs will get done, and odds are good that I'm going to throw some bulbs in the ground around the arena.  I'd like to get the arena weeded, too, so that I can legitimately begin to try to figure out how on earth I'm going to remove two feet deep worth of sand from it so I don't have to worry about tendon injuries when I want to ride in there.  Bold declaration, for one month, but I'm game!
The laundry and floors and dishes and tidiness are all top-notch today, and I took my daily picture (album for all of these still pending).
I also got the requirements to achieve a 100% on the PT test - For a woman of my age, I need a 29" or smaller waist, to do at least 47 push ups in one minute, at least 54 sit ups in one minute and to run a mile and a half in 10:23.  I've got the waist and sit ups down pat already, *might* have the push ups, but have never really tried that hard because, well, I hate doing push ups.  I've got a ways to go on the run, though.  At least now I have a set guideline to aim for!

I had a brilliant idea while I was folding laundry, though.  In high school, we only had four classes a day, but we rotated between "A days" and "B days". This allowed us about an hour and a half or something for each class, meaning we were actually able to get things done during class hours.  I think that I'm going to make a similar schedule for myself, allowing an hour in the morning for me time, a school-length day, broken into "classes" to get things done, and then around 3, when "school" is out, I can have more free time.  I was super, duper productive in school, so hopefully this will kick my rear in gear.  My biggest dilemma is whether or not writing and riding count as fun/extra-curricular activities for me or if they would be actual "classes."  Wondering about this is probably what's going to keep me up (even later) tonight :-/

My 5 Things:

1. I got ice cream today <3  I love ice cream and haven't had any in two whole weeks! <3
2. Both of the horses AND their hay survived the very loud, very impromptu thunderstorm we had last night with no complaints (and I'm extra thankful that we got rain at all!)
3. "Not Our Fish" went home today, effectively freeing up about two square feet of counter space and allowing me to plug my toaster in again (and I even got paid for taking care of a fish!  How cool is that?!)
4. I finally got around to cleaning out the barn after about a week of not doing so and it feels great :)  The horses haven't been spending a lot of time in there lately, and so I'd been pretty lazy about blowing out the aisle and sweeping up loose hay.
5. I got SmartPak's new catalog/magazine today with "26 Easy Ways to take your horse's health from good to great," and discovered that I'm either actively doing all of them or had in the past and am waiting to start up again.  Yippee!

Day 15

So, all in one day, I've officially made it past two weeks and just shy of finishing my first calendar month.  I think I've been doing well so far - not quite as well as I dreamed I'd do, but better than what I think a lot of people would have done.  I can already tell that sweeping and vaccuuming daily, as well as taking care of the dishes and laundry as soon as they're done are becoming habits.  Now that I have the laundry room decluttered, I even have a little work station to fold and hang the clothes as they come out of the dryer, which has helped a TON with my motivation to stick to that.  Kiga's allergies are continuing to show improvement with the increased attention to cleanliness, and it just feels *good* to not have hair and bits of hay sticking to my bare feet when I walk across the house at night :)

2 I've officially reached the boring part of the book - the very end, and where Podhajsky is explaining the Spanish Riding School.  Now, don't get me wrong; I would absolutely love to visit there (and ride there, in my dreams!), but I can only take so much of "We do this exercise here, and this is the part of the arena we do it in."  I guess I should have expected this part to be less exciting than the actual training sections, but it's been dragging out at a terrible degree.  Add to that, my computer ate the last two pages worth of notes that I took over the second phase of training, and I've decided that I'm about ready to be done with Podhajsky for now.  I love what I've learned, but I need to take a break from this particular work to keep from getting frustrated.  I think I'll slog my way through the last few pages and leave finishing my outlining for later.

14 I haven't actually put any words on paper yet for my fic today, but I've been brainstorming up how part is going to be written and am going to try to hammer it out before bed.  I guess that means I'm staying up late tonight... oops.

21 Finish my towel quilt
My towel quilt is something that my mom and I started the summer before I went to college.  It is quite literally a few towels, cut into squares, and patched together, backed by a flat sheet.  We got it about half of the way done and then just quit. After I got married, my mom told me to take it, because she didn't want to hang on to it anymore.  Well, my husband figured out why I had the idea to make it in the first place - it is *super* snuggly.  The only problem is that one of the ends isn't quite finished shut, so washing it makes it turn inside out and around itself, and sometimes it will nab you in your sleep because of it.  I'm currently using contrasting colors of yarn to outline each of the squares to keep the flat sheet behaving in a proper manner.  I finished most of the edges like that a year or two ago, but once I discovered that it's pretty hard to stitch along the middle of a big quilt, I decided to quit.  Well, now I'm back to finish it.  I got about 2/3 of the way through Zoolander and finished stitching through three squares of it.  This is gonna suck until it's done...

38 I began decluttering my office, which is going to be an absolute trip because I had been using it as my storage area for the stuff that was labeled "get rid of" from the other rooms so far.  It's also been holding a bunch of Christmas and Halloween decorations that missed getting put in their boxes and moving out to the shed.  I think I got a good 1/3 of the way through everything in there today, but the problem with "A place for everything" was that my piles of "get rid of", "trash", and "goes out to storage" that leaked into the hall had to get put back in a way that would make getting it back out easy again.  This room is going to take some time, that's for sure!  However, once it's done, I'll be good to start 43 (organizing my file cabinet) and 85 (inventorying my MLP collection).

51 My DIY project of fixing the electric fencing has been getting derailed by our horrendous heat indexes, and it's been super hard motivating myself to get out there and do it, since we're not currently using the pasture that is being fixed.  I might push this project off for a future month and concentrate tomorrow instead on putting up the weather stripping around the doors.  That's probably more important in the long run, anyway. 

87 I can't tell you the name of the antique shop that I found in Lee's Summit this month, but it was mostly full of stuff that was way too fancy for me.  You know, like the stuff that breaks when you look at it.  I was kind of disappointed with how fancy it was, as I kind of like finding junky booths (and the things I collect very seldom are in the nicer shops).  However, finding that place led me to a super neat home decor place that had some amazing art and very neat things to decorate with.  Not sure if I would ever need any of the stuff there, but it was a lot of fun to look at!

Today's 5 things

1. It was overcast today and we even got a tiny bit of rain.  We really needed a day with minimal sun.
2. I made a batch of super awesome oatmeal chocolate chip cookies <3
3. I get to work out tomorrow!
4. The critters in my life give me untold amount of joy :)
5. All five of my aquariums got cleaned today - yay!

Day 14 (and catching up with yesterday)

Yesterday, I apparently worked myself too hard and just about passed out in the evening.  I had a really good workout, and got a lot of little things done at home.  I even tried out two new recipes (Lambert's rolls and flour tortillas), but they both had me on my feet for much longer than I apparently wanted to be.  When I crashed, I crashed hard.  I did manage to almost finish reading Podhajsky (and the horse training portion is now about 2/3 of the way outlined.  I'm not sure if I'm going to finish the outline before July is over, but I figure I can do that if I have time after I finish next month's piece), and I decluttered the laundry room.  Now, to finish the laundry room, all I have to do is number  52 and have a home improvment project of putting down new flooring in there - super excited about that!  If I get real industrious, I might even paint the walls and reface the cabinets but, like I said, I'd have to get real industrious.  I finally captured a picture of Blues yesterday, so yay for that :)

Today, I did darn near nothing.  Got some more reading and outlining done and had the farrier come out to do a check-up on Crystal's wonky foot.  Go figure, we have one shoe on her and I'm not riding her for the next three weeks until she's actually due for her feet.  Horses are such work!  Other than that, I took my picture and took care of the floors.  That's pretty much it.  Yesterday was a no spend day, so I think that officially puts me at our required 5 for this half of a month.  I did also eat a new cheese today, but I have no idea what it was, so I don't think I can count that on my list.  I'm hoping that I feel a little more like myself tomorrow and actually get things noteworthy done.

Today's 5 Things

1. We got fresh dog food today, so all of the inside critters should be good to go for the next month or so.
2. The nail that Crystal sent flying out into the yard was found, so no horses are going to step on it.
3. I gave myself a mini-spa night, complete with a face mask, just for the heck of it :)
4. I should be getting 60 bales of hay delivered within a week!
5. My mom's getting ready to send me the recipe for my favorite chocolate chip cookies :)  We've discovered just how much money we can save by eating at home (we used to eat out almost all the time, no kidding), and I've decided to make a conscious effort to start making my own sweets (and am, obviously, even trying my hand at breads) so I don't have to keep buying them.  I'm also playing around with whether or not I want to make my own cheeses, but that's something I'll have to talk to my dad about.

Day 13

More thorough post about today coming tomorrow.

My 5 things:

1. Have 60 bales of hay pending for me - will make me be able to get through winter, though not as free-choice as I wanted
2. I tried out two new recipes today, and they both seemed to work (with a few tweakings, they'll be perfect)
3. It was a beautiful day, as far as the weather goes
4. I got a good night sleep last night, and am totally ready for another one tonight
5. I only have two interior rooms to finish decluttering before I'm done with the house!  I'm debating taking the decluttering of the barn off the total rooms to go list, as I think the barn is going to declutter when I start to demo the rest of the workshop.

Day 12

Jumping right in to things tonight, since it's super late and I need to get to bed.

2 I didn't get quite as much actual reading done today as I'd hoped to, but I did almost get to the end of the section on teaching riders how to ride.  I'm still entertained by the fact that half the book is spent on training the horse, while the other half is split up into five other chapters :)  I did go back and begin outlining my highlighted points for future reference, though, so I did still have some soak in Podhajsky time today. 

14 I got another 400-something words written - woo.  Most of it was in script form, though, so if it was actually fleshed out, it might have been impressive.

17 My photo today was of Kiga.  It was supposed to be of Kiga sleeping, but she woke up when I laid down on the floor next to her for the shot.

40 and 44 Got done, and I know for sure that 45 will get done tomorrow, because my kitchen floor is GROSS.

51 has officially begun for this month, and it is to successfully re-electrify my big pasture.  I think I figured out what was wrong with it to start, and it goes back to the fact that I don't think the previous homeowners knew 100% what they were doing with the horse-side of the property.  We'll see what tomorrow brings.

My 5 Things for today

1. I was able to give a great deal of encouragement to a complete stranger that may have literally changed their entire life.
2. I got a compliment on my cute nails of the week!  I even shared how I did it!
3. I took a huge leap of faith today that, while I'm still afraid it's going to bite me in the butt, I'm going to stick with.
4. My kitchen is clean (except for the floor...)
5. I discovered that I can do at least 10 "boy" push-ups in a row.  I say at least because I quit before it started to get hard because at least for today, that was how I rolled.

Day 11

Obviously, I'm a list maker.  If I wasn't, I wouldn't be doing this in the first place.  Usually, my lists have a bunch of tasks on them that aren't that appealing and then two or three things I can't wait to do, and usually only the things I want to do get checked off and the other ones get pushed to that "later, sometime" list that never gets tended to.

Well, I had a list for today and, while I couldn't cross *all* of the items *completely* off, I'm proud to say that I crossed all of them at least partially off.  Out of 8 things that I wanted to get to today, five of them got completely crossed off.  One that didn't was something I honestly didn't really want to do, one was something that frustrated me too much to finish in one sitting, and the other was one that I didn't have all of the resources necessary available at the time.  So, while I can't say anything about not getting the laundry room finished with its declutter, I can say that I was really pretty productive today.

2 I finished the section on training the horse today, and got some super good quotes.  Funny story here, though.  I literally just got so light headed that I almost passed out, so I'm not going to type out the quotes today.  I'll get to that in the morning.

14 I got 1225 words written on my 'fic today, which is almost a full NaNo's day worth.  Not to bad for half an hour before the husband woke up!  (and yes, it's *that* embarassing that I'm not even crazy about the idea of him reading it)

17 Today's photo is of Ninja curled up in her bedbox.  Pretty cute stuff.

18 Finishing Mordin's head was on the list that didn't get done, but let me tell you, Salarians are a BITCH to sculpt.  I ended up getting to frustrated with him for now and put him aside before I quit liking what I was doing.

32 and 33 went relatively well today, though with a few hickups.  I had a really hard time getting up the urge to go to the gym today (it was raining - yay!), and once I got there, I kept trying to think up excuses to not workout.  Well, I pushed myself through, even though there was a group of about 30 people getting a tour of the gym that seemed to follow where I went.  I feel good about finishing instead of giving up today.

44 got done with some help from the hubs <3

60 Today was another no-spend day.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to settle for 5 this month, which is fine by me, since I only had half the month to play with (and about four unexpected bills show up in that time).

93 During dinner (at the table), we had a very close game of Guess Who?  In the end, I won, because I am the Guess Who? master.

My 5 Things:

1. We got RAIN!
2. I made very steady progress on today's list - something I haven't done in forever.  I really should get a planner again.
3. Sucking it up and getting through my workout made me feel awesome and empowered.
4. My husband is the best support ever!
5. Our air conditioner wasn't actually borken - we had just accidentally bumped it to "on" instead of "auto."  Thank goodness!

Day 10

Today was absolutely insane.  I saved a neighbor's horse from breaking its leg today when it got hung up in the fence - he trotted off lame, but considering that he just about rolled over backwards on a front leg caught four feet high, I can't blame him.  I'd go more in-depth about the matter, except it's really not my place to talk about that kind of thing.  Not here, and not now.

Anyway.

2 Today, I think I've officially reached the stuff that is over my head because I've never experienced it first hand.  I'm very, very close to the "end" of the horse training section, and ready to move on to training the rider (which I get a kick out of, because it's literally about a tenth of the length of training the horse).  Hopefully, I'll have the book done before the weekend is over, so I can go back and take proper notes from all of my outlines.  If not, I'll get back to it when I can.

9 My first four dressage letters are done!  Yippee!!  Now, all I have to do is wait to find the time to go back to "the big city" to pick up the last four plaques to finish the full set.  I'm halfway there to getting to cross another item off my list!

17 I got several pretty awesome photos today, mostly because the dogs decided to pile up on the loveseat with one of those great big lounge pillows on it.  Pretty cute stuff.

27 My band of the week is Crystal Castles, another one recommended to me by my brother.  They've got a pretty different sound, but I didn't mind listening to them at all.  Worth looking into, if you're open minded about music.

40, 44 and 46 are all still going well, and I'm hoping to start up 45 next week.  We'll see how that goes, since it went so well *last* week ;-)

88 Design my dream house
This unofficially began today, as I started gathering "dream house" ideas on Pinterest.  See?  I knew it would be good for more than just wasting time!

Today's 5 Things

1. I got to help a horse in need.
2. I got my round bale delivered, and got a lead on some more square bales.
3. Tomorrow is absolutely free for me to go work out (I can't wait until I'm given the all clear to work out daily.  And would you look at that!  I never thought I'd *want* to go work out!)
4. I had enough will power to eat at home today, instead of going out (I was *thiiiiiiis* close!)
5. I have a lot of motivation to write, so hopefully I'll get a hefty chunk of my embarassing 'fic worked on tomorrow.  I can only hope :-)

Day 9

Lost track of time today, so gotta go quick!

2 Barely got any reading done today - my bad.  Have to wait for a hay delivery (thank God!) tomorrow, so I'll probably be out on the porch reading and writing for most of the morning.

9 Dressage letter stencils have now been printed for A, C, B and E.  I used Kristen ITC at 440, and I'm only posting that here because I know I'll forget otherwise.  I know it's a very non-traditional font (here's another scary thing for all of you dressage divas out there, they're going to be BLUE, too!), but my aim is for them to be fun, since I want prospective students to think dressage is fun.  It's worth a shot, at least.

17 My photo today is kind of a cheat, because it's of my nails that I just painted (see below)

32 and 33 went SO WELL today!  I feel great, and I finally see a change in my body.  I'm in week 3 of a modified "Couch to 5K", and today I did 3 sets of 2 min run/2 min walk, 3 min run/3 min walk and felt great the entire time.  Okay, that's a bit of a lie.  I did want to fall down when I stopped my last run and had to force myself to finish my cool-down.  BUT it's the first time, pretty much ever that I can think of, that I ran 15 minutes in one session!

38 I FINISHED THE MASTER FINALLY!  BOO-YA! (are we still allowed to say that these days?)

Today was another no-spend day, but I have to go back and see how many I'm at for the week.  I know I'll have to spend tomorrow for the hay, but I'm willing to ruin this goal to feed my horses.

77 I painted my nails a pretty vibrant purple with a blue glittery overcoat that I dabbed with crumbled up plastic wrap.  It gives kind of a marbley effect that I think I'd like to try out with blue and green some time to make it look globe-ish.

Getting ready to do my floors, run the first load of dishes that I've done in two days, and switch out (and put away) a load of laundry, then bed time.  Yay!

My 5 Things

1. Mom and Dad's well DIDN'T dry up.  The pump broke.  Much better alternative!
2. We have at least 4, possibly 5 round bales with our name on them.  My horses will have hay for winter!
3. For the first time, I didn't feel like my workout absolutely killed me
4. I took a long detox soak tonight and it felt great!
5. My husband cooked dinner tonight :)

Day 8

I've officially made it longer than a week!  Go me!

In other news, I'm pretty sure that I found the end of Pinterest already, which also means that I've spent waaaaay too much time on the internet today.  However, I did actually get a couple of ideas that I think will help me through my 101 things, which is a bonus.  I woke up sick this morning, anyway, and the husband wouldn't let me go work out, so I didn't really have many other options.

2 Today brought up a really, really good point about riding that I never fully applied before, and that really makes me understand why so many speed event horses (not ALL, but a LOT) are absolutely bonkers.  Those of you who are not familiar with how horses move, their faster gaits are akin to when you "galloped" as a kid - one leg lead where they go.  I'm sure that you remember that it was easier to move in certain ways only when a specific leg was leading, and the same thing goes for a horse.  That's where lead changes come in.  To do them while the horse is in rapid motion (without changing gait) is called a flying lead change.  This is more like the action of skipping to a human, where the leading leg changes easily (except horses don't always do it each stride).  With few exceptions, speed events involve lots of changes of direction at very high speeds, meaning that the horse, in order to move efficiently, has to perform flying lead changes.  Events like pole bending require it at every pole.  What Podhajsky talked about today was that these flying changes can only happen harmoniously once a horse is strong through the back and the hindquarters, able to accept contact that connects the reins through the body, and completely supple.  If those three factors are not all there, the horse will revert to faults that can escalate in pretty much any negative direction, due to the horse's inability to perform what is being asked of it.  Add crazy speed to people who only care about the clock, and the problem's obvious.
I know that dressage has the reputation for being "stuffy," and people are probably put off by it even more when the word "classical" is slapped in front of it, but this is some very important stuff for *every* horse in *every* discipline.  So far, everything that I've read in here is directly applicable to every single saddle horse I've ever known.  People need to wake up and start doing things right.

9 My dressage letters are almost completely prepped, but I ran out of white paint halfway through finishing the backs.  I can still get the letters themselves painted on in the morning, but will only be able to seal two of them until I get more paint.

17 is a picture of more gnomes (Theodore, Max, Boris, Godfrey, Claude and Sam)

38 I officially finished both the guest bathroom and the living room!  All that's really left of the living room is to wash the blankets I cover the couches with, but that's not a declutter thing, so much as a cleanliness thing.  I plan, sometime over my DIY journey, to competely pretty up each room in the house, and the furniture will get proper slip covers at that time.  Anyway, two more rooms down!  Strangely enough, I still have to finish the master, which was started before either of these two.  Oh well.

95 I get to add cream cheese (is that an actual cheese?  I don't even know...) and provolone to the list today!

Floor maintenance is still going strong, and it's exciting to me that I don't have to make the dogs move any more to get dust bunnies out from under them because the bunnies aren't there!  It is getting more difficult to sweep, though, since there's hardly anything for the broom to pick up.  Pinterest did, however, show me how to make my own reusable swiffer covers, so I might give that a go to get the floors ever closer to clean!

My 5 things for the day

1. Mom's surgery went well
2. I am *so* glad that I don't have a well on our property.  Mom and Dad's dried up last night.
3. If I truly found the end of Pinterest today, I don't have to be a slave to it tomorrow
4. I ate out for the first time in I don't know how long and, you know, it *does* taste better when you don't have it that often
5. We got groceries - and half of it was stuff that I actually am going to *make*, not just instant stuff.  I'm trying to get better!

Day 7

I don't know why I've been so exhausted at the end of the day lately, but at least I know it'll mean I can sleep real well!  I also made a big mistake today and finally broke down and got a Pinterest account.  Oopsies.

2 I got to the end of the Campaign School and am getting ready to enter the training of a High School horse!  Totally way out from doing that with either of my guys (though Star has some High School in him, I know, thanks to his marvelous piaffe and levade!), but I'm excited to learn more about it.  My first-hand experience with seeing people train these kinds of movements in person has been far from artistic and in some cases border-line inhumane.  I can't wait to hear how it *should* be done.

9 I started working on my dressage letters - finally!  I only have 4 plaques for them right now, so I think I'll do A, C, E and B first.  They need one more coat of white, then I get to start stenciling the letters on!

17 Today's photo's pretty cute.  It's Ninja sleeping on hot pads next to Lucious and Norbert.

38 My goal to finish one of the rooms that I had already started failed me miserably, and I went straight on to the guest bathroom.  The worst part is that I got it pretty much 98% done and quit.  *sigh...*  I've got some catching up to do!

40's still chugging along real nice, which makes me feel great!  44's going well, too, and I'm loving how much cleaner the house feels.

49 We sat down for a meal at the table again today without me even realizing that it was the beginning of a new week - go me!  In truth, this is the third or fourth time that we have done this, so I think it's going to be a sticking habit :)

60 Today was another no spend day - yay!  I know for a fact that tomorrow won't be, because we're pretty much down to dry pastas and rice in the pantry, and the cars need gas.  My husband keeps claiming I only have to do 5 days this month, but I'm still aiming for all 10.

My 5 things of the day

1. I slept goooooood last night!
2. The horses did not protest their grazing muzzles in the slightest (we have one pasture left with any kind of grass in it, so they're muzzled 1. to try to keep them from eating it too fast and 2. to keep them from gorging themselves sick on "real" grass after what they've been eating.  Those of you that don't know how horse diets work will NOT understand how delicate this kind of thing is, and trying to convince me that "wild horses are fine" without being muzzled in these kinds of cases will only make me think you're a moron.)
3. I can tell I'm going to sleep really good tonight!
4. Pinterest is fun!!
5. I get to resume my normal schedule starting tomorrow morning, because the neighbors came home.

Day 6 (yesterday)

I didn't get around to updating the blog yesterday (oops), but that didn't mean that I didn't get *something* accomplished.  I've been pretty preoccupied with real life stuff - the drought causing a hay crisis, my mom having surgery, my mare going lame, the air conditioner in the house I'm house sitting going out, taking care of 3 extra animals for said house - that kind of stuff.  After yesterday's stellar workout, however, I just felt off for the rest of the day.  It took me until right before bed to realize that the house sitting part of things was screwing up my morning routine and I had forgotten to take my vitamins two days in a row.  Not sure if they're related or not, but long story short, I went to bed at probably 9:30 last night, not really caring what did and didn't get done.

2 Thankfully, I didn't read much yesterday.  I'm saying thankfully, because I know that nothing would have stuck or even floated around in my head to think about.  Since the topic of the day was making halt-canter transitions (something that Crystal is pretty far from getting to still, and that Star already knows - even if he tries to be a speed horse about it sometimes), I think it's okay for me to revist that at a more appropriate time, anyway.

17 My photo of the day (STILL waiting on the FB album for that... yeah, I'm bad) was of three of my gnomes in their new "home" in the house (Joe, Oliver and Andy, from left to right when I finally get the picture up).  I want to keep introducing the critters, but I keep forgetting to take my pictures until after dark, and Blues squints into the flash every single time.

32 and 33 went super well yesterday!  I decided since the last two times I tried to run were total flops (last time, my calves seized up, the time before that, I could only make it 25 minutes instead of my 35 minute goal), I decided to mix things up a bit. According to "Couch to 5k", which I am pretty much following, I'm in the week where I should be running for 90 seconds, recovering for 2 minutes and repeating for 20 (or in my case, 30) minutes.  My husband had me pacing at 4 mph walking, 6 mph running, but forgot to tell me that my 5 minute warm up should be 3-3.5 mph, not the 4.  Anyway, yesterday I was more concerned about distance than speed, so I did 4/5.5 sets instead and felt great afterwards.  I went on to strength train my shoulders, biceps, thighs and abs.  It was a productive day at the gym (that consequently left me fried for the rest of the day.  Oh well).

38 was supposed to be wrapped up in the master bedroom yesterday, but due to my husband's work schedule having him sleep most of the day yesterday, I couldn't get in there to finish my work while I was still "with it" for the day.  Instead, I began work on the living room, which is going to be a massive project, since it's somehow our hard-core catch-all for the house.  I had the computer desk (including the ancient and huge borken computer that somehow has moved with us two times in that state) absolutely beautiful yesterday, and it's already cluttered up again.  Good thing I don't start the "place for everything" goal until everything officially has a place, huh?  Either way, the living room really doesn't have *that* much work (I don't think).  I might try to finish it during the day today, move on to the guest bathroom (which is more of an organizational thing than a decluttering thing), and then finish the master tonight.  That will let me have half the house absolutely clean!  Then, all I'll have is the laundry room, and the two back "offices" which are going to be multi-day beasts, for sure, since they're where we cram the stuff we don't know where else to keep. 

44 has uncovered yet another really interesting side-effect.  Not only does taking care of the floors every day give me fewer "puppies and kittens" (which is what we call hair balls in this house, since our animals shed probably the equivalent of another small animal worth of hair every day) floating around, but it also gives me a really good reason to put the shoes away and pick up the dog toys every night and things like that.  My house *is* staying cleaner, and it's super exciting!  We have one of those bagless vaccuums that you just dump the container out, and I'm not even joking when I say that even vaccuuming daily, we still pick up half the container of dust, dander and dog hair every single day.  No wonder the carpets always looked like hell when I'd maybe get to them once every week or so.  Also, Kiga's allergies seem to be doing a little bit better, which confirms my suspicion that she might be allergic either to herself or other animals.

45 I have failed this attempt at waxing the floors (though I did get the windows washed!), so I will start my 2 months of doing that next week.  I'm not sure what happened here, as I actually kind of like waxing the floors, but that's okay.  Fortunately, I was smart enough to put a time frame on this one, so I don't have to go through the next three years thinking that I failed.

60 Yesterday was another no-spend day (which is super easy to manage, since we have no "spending money" to spend with at the moment).  We're aiming for another one today, but I'm not going to count on it until we reach the end. 

And this leaves me with my 5 things for the day:

1. I found my zip ties and was thus able to put the crate that the enthusiastic lab across the street destroyed back together
2. My workout made me feel crazy good
3. My husband cooked for me <3
4. I managed to create an empty box for Ninja to play in (which, funny I should mention that, is today's - Day 7's - picture of the day)
5. I got the DVD shelf fixed so that the shelves actually stay up - and all of my DVDs look so pretty in it!

Day 5

I'm so excited!  Today, I got to officially cross the first item off my list!  I keep a hard copy of it near the computer, and I got to physically draw a red line through it!

86. Officially name all of my gnomes - Is officially completed!  A very intense game of Guess Who helped me find the motivation to finish naming them (Yesterday's dinner and game at the kitchen table really seemed to work for my husband and I, so we did it again, even though we weren't due for another week!  See?  I just knew that good habits would start to form from this!).  I plan on doing a photo shoot with all of them sometime soon, and will introduce them properly, with their names, to the world.

2. I had a super good time reading today.  Podhajsky and I had some very interesting discussions, and there's SO much information on properly halting (and how to do it, and why we need to do it, and what it does for the horse's body, etc) that was actually very intriguing today.  My gems for the day:
"An exaggerated position of the head, as is so often seen, would hinder the free and elastic movement of the horse's legs, thus taking away the brilliancy of the half pass."  Yes, this quote is directly referring to the half pass, but in modern dressage, you see the position of the head robbing the horse from its movement ALL of the time.  I thought this was a very nice reminder.  Another quote about where modern dressage has taken horsemanship:
"Unfortunately halts are not practised with sufficient care nowadays, as most riders prefer the more spectacular movements to the simple basic training - an alarming sign of the general decline in equestrian art."
Podhajsky has a couple more books out there, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be reading them sometime in the next 30-whatever months.

60 Today was my second no-spend day of July!  This month is going to be tricky, since I started so close to the end of it.  My husband says it would be fair to only have 5 no spend days, since I only had half the month, but I'm going to give all 10 my all, just to see if it can be done.

38 Resulted in the master bedroom/bathroom being 95% decluttered, so there should be maybe half an hour more work tomorrow and it will be done (then, I think I'm going to tackle the laundry room).  I've discovered two draw backs of getting my house in order, though.  First, my desire to keep my nails painted is currently being thwarted by the repetitve action of scrubbing things that haven't been scrubbed since we moved in clean.  And second, my home office has become my "catch all" for the things that are going to end up in storage (seasonal and the like) and the things that are going to end up being garage-saled or Goodwilled.  I'm pretty sure that my office is going to be the last place to get worked over for this reason, but it's pretty nice to see how much stuff I'm willing and able to live without.  I've also managed to accumulate two whole bags of trash just from the kitchen and master suite.  I can't believe I've had this much *junk* in my house and not noticed it until now!

67 Made some progress today, though having two or three days from the last time I tried to play Halo and now proved difficult.  We were on the little shooty car thing for most of our session tonight, and I couldn't figure out why it was so much harder today than it was the first day.  Half an hour later, I realized I was watching my husband's half of the screen.  I *told* you that I had a lot of learning to do!

I got my sweeping and vaccuuming done today, and meant to wax the floors, but didn't get around to it.  That leaves me tomorrow before the week is over to accomplish the "windows and wax" objective, or else I'll have to start over again.  Ugh.  I also successfully avoided doing most physical activity today, so hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to get my run in with little problem.  My picture of the day (that I STILL have to make an album for) is another one of Boo Boo Boy, since Blues is incredibly not photogenic after dark.

Today's 5 things:

1. My husband passed his PT test!  Not that we weren't expecting him to, but he'd been trying to test for about three weeks now and always had weather or some kind of administrative issue cancelling the test.  But it's done and over with now :)
2. As I gushed about at the beginning of this post, I got to cross my first objective off the list!
3. Somehow, despite the projected 106-degree high we have for Sunday, the temperature didn't break 92 today.  It was LOVELY.
4. Star was 100% enthusiastic about his work today, and Crystal tried hard, even though she had ouchy feet.
5. 3 of my 5 aquariums got new filters cartridges put in, which has made those aquariums stop leaking if the hoods are all the way on now. 

Day 4

What a rollercoaster today was!  I'm trying to keep things positive, so I'll refrain from harping about all of the ways that the day tried to start out wrong, and just move on to my list.  One interesting (and convenient) thing about me is that typically, the more stressed I get, the more productive I am.  So, I even accomplished a couple of things that I didn't think would get done this soon!  Go me!

2. Podhajsky's lesson today was over lateral movements.  I kept going back and forth from being "bored" with the whole instructive part of it, but then getting super excited over some new exercises to help develop the hindlegs.  (I'm going to put right now that I'm pretty doped up on Benadryl right now, and I'm having a hard time coming up with words.  Sorry if some of this seems incoherent, because I feel like it is)

17 Today's photo (which will be put on FB with Ninja's pic from yesterday) is of one of my bettas, Lucious.  Fishes are super hard to photograph.

32 (33 wasn't even going to happen, as you'll see in just a sec) was thwarted by my calves seizing up about seven minutes in to my run.  Like, literally I only had two inches of range of motion from my knees because of it.  My cardio ended with as much of a brisk walk as I could manage.  We decided that it was likely an electrolyte balance, and that I shouldn't strength train tonight.  My husband has no declared that I have to have a day off between each work out day until I actually get in shape. Boo.

38 Get rid of everythign that I don't love or don't need
This began HARD CORE in the kitchen today.  Let me tell you, I had dishes and utensils and appliances that I didn't even know I had!  So, they went into the garage sale pile.  If I didn't know I had them, I won't miss them when they're gone!  It feels wonderful to have a tidy kitchen!

46 Impliment "A place for everything and everything in its place"
This officially gets to start in the kitchen, as I thought it was silly to try to keep things tidy before I had them as empty as they're going to be long-term. 

44 got done.

49 got done, and was followed by 93.

Today's 5 things:

1. My husband's office has some amazing people in it.  Really, truly, amazing
2. My kitchen's clean!
3. I feel super sleepy, thanks to Benadryl
4. I have the support of my husband, even when I do stupid things like try to run when I shouldn't be
5. Kiga has the best smile and waggle tail EVER!

Day 3

This morning, I did not think I'd be productive at ALL.  I'll admit that I stayed up waaaay too late last night, and then I was woken at 5 by Kurz puking up chunks of hoof trimmings (remember how the farrier came yesterday?) and then Kiga started her allergy coughing.  I took care of all of my morning chores and then was talked in to going back to bed, sans-alarm and despite what my doctor told me, by my husband.  I woke up at 10.

I took care of the day's 32 and 33 almost as soon as I got up.  I got a decent 30 minutes of cardio in (was aiming for 35, but it huuuuurt today!  Going back tomorrow to reach that goal, after all!), worked my arms four different ways, and my thighs.  Yay for getting in shape!  I also discovered that my blood pressure drops ridiculous amounts after I work out - it was 87/65 as I was getting ready to leave.  Low blood pressure isn't something abnormal for me, but I do think that was a rather decent drop.  Might want to look in to that.

2. I really enjoyed my reading today and had a lot of those wonderful "a HA!" moments.  Most of the day's "lesson" was about riding volte, and it makes so much more sense from a classical standpoint than any traditional/natural/any other kind of training standpoint.  I'm going to add here that next month's reading is going to be Thomas Ritter's book on equine biomechanics, which I've read parts of already, and I'm already making some pretty exciting (for me) connections between the hows and whys, just from these two pieces alone.  Very fun stuff.

38. Get rid of everything that I don't love or don't need
This officially began in my dresser and closet.  I've been long over-due with getting rid of socks with holes in them and shirts I haven't worn since I've been married, and that was good.  I did discover, however, that I am strangely sentimental about some articles that I haven't worn in quite some time.  I am pleased to say that there was only one shirt that I kept simply because I loved it (I don't ever plan on wearing it again), and two pairs of "skinny" pants that I'm using as motivation along with Warrior Dash to get in shape.  I even got my husband in on the fun and he got rid of a decent amount of his old clothes, too!  Tomorrow, I'm going to aim for the rest of the junk in the closet, which leads me to a question.  Is there a market for mirrors that mount behind dressers? 

39. One day a month, try a new recipe
To those that know me, it's no real surprise that I feel like I need to learn how to cook more things.  I've been consciously trying to get better at this lately, but I tend to get stuck in the rut of getting really good at one thing then not wanting to try others.  This month's experimental kitchen adventure was cinnamon rolls made with cake mix.

Obviously, I ate some.

They turned out super-duper sweet, and honestly it's getting to the point that the smell of them is a little bit sickening.  Sometime in the next few months, I plan on trying this again, only completely from scratch.  They are good, but the sweetness is hard to tolerate in large amounts.



 44 has been (partially) joined by 45 which is to wax the floors and wash the windows every week.  The windows got done, despite the best effort that dog noses made to keep that from happening, but the floors are going to wait until I can have my husband's help keeping the dogs entertained.  Freshly waxed wood floors and dogs playing chase through the house don't go very well together.

60. Have 10 no spend days a month
I'm a little daunted by this one, since we had so little of the month left, but we did it today!  Yay!  In fact, I keep trying to tell myself that we actually got money today, but that's a lie.  My husband accidentally paid our electric bill three times this month (long story, there...) and we got it reimursed today.  We didn't really *make* money, but we got some back!

70 and 40 are still going as planned, and it's only taken me three days to figure out how much easier it is to take care of the laundry if I literally fold everything and match socks as they come out of the dryer and keep a stash of hangers in the laundry room with me.  She can be taught!  I'm on the road to being a regular domestic goddess!

62's things today:

1. I had a delicious runner's high after my workout <3
2. I'm lucky enough to have a barn with fans for my horses to go in to when we have hot days like today (104, don't even know what the heat index gave us)
3. I got to sleep in
4. I got the first "year" of my embarassing fanfic outlined, so writing that should go super quick now
5. I found a new website called Bad Vegetarian full of healthy but super easy and fun recipes that have "normal" ingredients so I can't say I'm too scared to try to make them :)

17 For whatever reason, I've tried to load today's photo of the day three times on here and it doesn't want to comply.  It was of my "husband's cat", Ninja.  She's the only critter that he came with when we got married, and it took her about two years to decide she liked me at all.  I think that I'm just going to start a Picture a Day album on Facebook and upload there, as it's easier for me to figure out (computer illiterate, remember?).  Onward to tomorrow!

Day 2

Wow!  I barely got *anything* on my list done today.  The farrier came out to trim my horses' hooves, and since she's one of only about three people around where I live that I consider a close friend, our "quick trims" always turn in to three hour conversations about the local horse industry.  I love our talks, but it really fills the day up quick!

Besides that, I didn't get very much sleep last night, so my motivation was pretty much nothing for the whole day.  I'm probably going to talk quite a bit about not sleeping well, and that's because I have a weird insomnia issue that the doctor's trying to help me work out without medication.  My current prescription is blackout curtains, a set time to wake up (no snooze - boooo!), and absolutely nothing to entertain myself with before bed.  That means no writing or reading in the bedroom which TOTALLY doesn't work for me.  My best stuff comes out at night, so I've been feeling deprived of a creative outlet for about the past week.  The only other place that I can't quit writing at is on our front porch, but with the heat advisories we've been under, outdoor activities are down right unpleasant.

My day ended with two hours at the neighbors' house while we were going over what flowers I needed to water and what to do to take care of their dogs and turtle while they leave for a mini vacation.  That adds up to five hours that I spent chattering and otherwise unproductive today, along with dragging from a lack of energy.  I had so many plans for today - I was going to tackle starting 45 (windows and waxing floors), continue working on Mordin Pony, play a little more Halo and make more progress through decluttering my office than I got around to.  Chin up, though.  Tomorrow's a new day, and if the way I'm feeling right now is any sign of how well I'm going to sleep as soon as I'm done with my shower, I should be full of energy then.

Today's list work is piddly-poor (did I just make that up?).

2. I read a little more from Podhajsky, but I don't know how much I actually was able to soak in.  Nothing stands out to me as quote-worthy right now, which probably means that I need to go back and read it again when I'm better rested so I can actually absorb what he said. 

14. Finish my super-embarassing Fanfic
Haha!  I did get some progress done here - only about 300 words, but at least it was *something*.  I'm not sure if it's every actually going to form its way into a coherent story or not, but I might sit down (on the couch, grrr...) and outline all of the "important" chapters that need to get told so I can just spit things out rapid-fire in the future.  I already know everything that's going to happen, and know it well.  It's just getting myself to sit down and write it down.  I think that knowing it so well is what makes that so hard - I try to rush myself when I write.  Maybe I should go against my comfort zone and type it instead of longhand it.  I'll give it a go in the morning.

70. Do the splits
This is going to sound really dumb, but ever since I was like 12 or something, I've made the New Year's resolution to be able to do the splits.  As a kid I was always too scared to try, because I thought my legs would pop off like my Barbie dolls' did when I tried to make them do the splits.  As I got older, I realized that it was just a matter of stretching.  Still haven't made it to that point yet, but I'm actively working on becoming more flexible. 

77. (cont'd from yesterday)  As promised, here's the pic of my fingernail painting.  Not anything too spectacular, but I couldn't find my tape, so was a little limited on what I could do.  My husband says they look like watermelons, which is a pretty good observation.  I actually intended for them to be a nerd-reference, but that failed when I had to use the pink as the main color instead of the accent.  Maybe next week...

 17. Today's photo is of both the doggers.  Kiga is my 9 year old Belgian Malinois/Husky that I'm pretty comfortable declaring as the best dog in the whole wide world.  I even composed a song that says so.  Kurz snuck in because he was trying to creep up on the air conditioner vent that is right where their paws are.  AND you get to see how fabulous my couches are.  I totally "stole" them from my parents - I don't remember a time without these couches :-)

62's daily grattitude

1. My farrier came out - yay! 
2. When Blues (one of my cats) tried to springboard off my shoulder onto the kitty tower, she didn't tear up my arm
3. I now have a sixth betta fish in the house.  Granted, he's just being "fish sat," but I still love fishies!
4. I'm actually tired at bed time
5. I found a way to rig my husband's LAN cable so it's not all over the floor.  We're going to actually run it across the ceiling one of these days, but now I don't feel like I'm going to hit it when I throw dog toys

Oh! 40 went as planned today, as well, and I got yesterday's leftover glasses washed.  No laundry today, though.  I'm saving my sweeping and vaccuuming for right before bed again, and 95 now has parm, romano, grana padano, ricotta, fontina and colby added to it.  I never once said that I wasn't a cheese fiend.  

Day 1

I didn't start off *quite* as strong as I imagine that I would in my mind, but I have a pretty impressive chunk of things that I made progress towards checking off :)  Hopefully, this enthusiasm will stick!  What I accomplished today:

2. Study a new piece of equestrian literature each month
This challenge is really exciting to me, because I absolutely love learning, and in the horse world, there is *always* something new to learn.  I kind of cheated this month, though.  Since I started halfway through the month, I decided that it was only fair that I study a book that I was already about halfway through.  This month's reading is Alois Podhajsky's "The Complete Training of Horse and Rider In the Principles of Classical Horsemanship".  So far, it's proving very readable with a lot of good information on a systematic, correct way to start a horse under saddle.  My favorite quote from the day:
"The principles of the classical art of riding cannot be undermined by a singular phenomenon.  On the contrary, such a display merely proves that personal vanity and the desire to show off will in no way contribute to the development of the art.  If the time of training is ruthlessly reduced it will lead only to general lowering of the standard, to a caricature of the various movements, and to premature wearing out of the horse.  Nature cannot be violated."
This isn't something new to me, at all, but I've seen a lot of horses pushed and rushed, and thought it wouldn't hurt to pass this nugget along.

17. Complete a Photo-A-Day challenge
Obviously, I'm not going to finish this before a year is up, and from now on, I'll put my daily photo at the bottom of my posts.  Since I know that my critters are going to creep up more often than not in what I blog about, I figured I'd start introducing them.  Today's photo is of Kurz Weber, my 7 month old (today, even!) German Shephard/lab/Mastiff puppy.  You can see Kiga's back behind him.

Boo Boo Boy!

18. Finish my Mass Effect Pony cast

When I declared that I collect My Little Ponies, I wasn't kidding.  I also customize them.  Around the time that Mass Effect 3 came out, my husband semi-jokingly suggested I make a custom pony of Garrus, probably assuming I'd make a blue pony with a gun symbol and some face paint or something.  Naturally, I assumed he meant turn a pony into Garrus.  Well, my first attempt at everyone's favorite sniper failed me pretty bad, so I moved on to Wrex, who I finished last month:

I got a pretty positive response about him from my friends that are in to ME, so I decided to keep on going with more ponies.  I've got three in progress right now and I'm *hoping* to get at least two of them done by the end of the month.  Joker shouldn't take much longer and I'd probably be finsihed with him by now if I didn't get hung up on his beard.  His 85% finished body is pictured below.  Mordin's head is about 50% sculpted, not baked yet.  Garrus's head, one that I'm actually happy with, is completely baked, but I'm waiting on sculpting his body before I paint him. 

27. Listen to a new (to me) band every week

Kinda cheated on this one, too.  It was an artist, not a band.  Also, since my brother knows more music than anyone I know, he's agreed to help me find new things to listen to.  I chose this goal in the first place, because my musical taste is pretty much limited to 80's pop, video game music, and European metal/rock, and I'd really like to be exposed to things out of my comfort zone.

This week's artist was a country singer named Jon Pardi.  I'm not a very good authority on what makes country music good or bad, but it wasn't something that I hated.  I, personally, don't care for country, but I didn't find it offensive to listen to.

32 and 33. Cardio and strength three days a week

I've actually been doing this one for about a week now, and it's going well.  The back story here is that a few years ago, I had a doctor tell me that I was the skinniest fat girl he'd ever seen.  I was terribly out of shape, and I knew it was bad for me.  I'm lucky enough to have a stellar metabolism, so I've never really been fat, but that didn't mean I was healthy.  The past couple months, I noticed that I just didn't feel right, and when I actually started feeling mild chest pains, it was a real wake up call for me.  I decided to start training for Warrior Dash this September, and while I still whine and carry on while I'm running, I feel great doing it (running, not whining ;) ).

Today, I was on a light workout, and rowed about 5000 meters, and worked out on two arm machines, one free weight set for my arms, and one machine for my hamstrings.  One of these days, I'll actually learn what the machines are called.

40. Put away laundry and dishes as they're finished

I am one of those lazy chicks that is TOTALLY guilty of having a "clean clothes pile" and occassionally using clean dishes straight from the dishwasher.  Ideally, I want to turn into my mom, where I have the laundry folded as it's coming out of the machine, and have an empty dishwasher all the time so dirty things can go straight in and not sit in the sink.  Today was a success on both of those, except for the fact that not all of my glasses would fit in the current load of the dishwasher.

44. Sweep and vaccuum daily for a month

Kinda cheating on this one, too.  That's what I'm going to get done as soon as I publish this post.  Girl Scout honor, or whatever.  To most people, daily floor maintenance might sound extreme. but I have two dogs, one that is a Belgian Malinois/Husky that sheds like it's her job, two indoor cats and two horses that have me in and out of the house several times a day.  My floors get dirty in a hurry, and I'd really like to be able to not get hair stuck all over everything all of the time.

62. Be grateful for 5 things every day

I did this when I was in college, and it really helped with my outlook on life.  So, I've started it up again!

1. Whichever horse rubbed the cap off one of the T-posts didn't lacerate themselves while most likely scratching on it
2. It's been terribly hot and dry here, BUT that means no horseflies in the evening!
3. My laptop has decided to start charging again
4. Crystal, my mare, absolutely cracks me up
5. I am very lucky to have people in my life that are supportive of the crazy things that I do, such as this challenge

67. Learn to play a shooter
As I said before, I like video games, but I've never been able to figure out shooters.  I always end up staring at the floor or ceiling and running around aimlessly until someone kills me.  As a result, I never really liked shooters, but my husband does.  Today, I logged a solid hour playing Halo... uh... one of the Halos, and I *didn't suck*!

77.  Paint my nails a new, fun wasy weekly for a year
I'll post a picture tomorrow, since this post is already crazy long, but I did get them painted tonight!

86. Officially name all of my gnomes
My first three gnomes had names pretty much before I got them.  My first gnome, Jimmy, was named before I even had an idea of what he looked like.  Herb was shipped to me from online, and I named him from seeing his picture.  Rodney was pretty much Rodney as soon as I saw him.  A few of my other gnomes (like Angelo) just had obvious names that came with them, but a lot of the other guys I'd name and then forget who they were and then make something else up.  So, this had to change.  As of tonight, 14 out of 46 of my gnomes have official names!  I should be able to have them all finished by tomorrow evening, and hopefully pictures, too!

95. Eat 100 different cheeses
True story, my dad is one of the most renowned cheese judges in America.  I can't make that stuff up.  As a result, I was pretty much raised on cheese.  Well, not quite, but I think you get what I'm after.  Today, I got a couple of the common ones out of the way, as well as two not quite as common ones.  Cheeses I ate today: Montery jack, cheddar, queso quesadilla, asadero and American.  This challenge is gonna suck once I'm done eating the readily avaialbe ones...

Phew!  So, that's what was accomplished today!  Now that I've explained quite a few of my reoccuring goals, hopefully my following posts won't be so wordy!  It was a good day for me :)

My List

It took me about a week to come up with 101 things that seemed interesting or simply have to get done.  I've broken them down into categories, and they are listed in no particular order.  My biggest challenge that I foresee is needing to let some of these items go (in my eyes: Failing) if the military gives us orders, as some are quite location-specific.  Should that happen, I reserve the right to come up with replacement goals in those spots.  Also, I have several goals that are along the lines of "do this, that, or the other for a month."  My hopes for those are that they become habits and I stick with them, but I was a little daunted to get too ambitious about them from the get-go.  I have a few that are on-going tasks with no time limit that I'm going to cross off the list after a solid year of keeping up with them, solely so I can see "progress" on my list and not get discouraged. 

So, here is my list.  Once an item is complete, I will change its font to blue (this is, of course, assuming that I figure out how to go back and edit old posts.  Like I said, I really don't know much about computers).  Items in progress will be in red.  I fully plan to explain the reasons behind why I chose each of these goals as I blog about the individual challenge, so if you're trying to figure out why I wanted to learn how to yodel, give it time :)

Equine Goals
1. Earn my USDF Bronze medal
2. Study a new piece of equestrian literature each month (1/33)
3. Start up my riding program
4. Get ARIA and/or CHA certified
5. Pick paddocks every day for a month
6. Work both horses six days a week for a month
7. Learn to age horses by their teeth
8. Fix the arena footing
9. Finish painting my dressage letters
10. Choreograph and ride a muscial freestyle

Writing Goals
11. Finish editing my first two novels
12. Get Devotion available to the public
13. Complete NaNoWriMo each year (0/3)
14. Finish my super-embarassing fanfic
15. Begin my "Novel Project"
16. Design/conceptualize a zine

Arts and Crafty Goals
17. Complete a Photo-A-Day challenge (41/365)
18. Finish my Mass Effect Pony cast (3/20)
19. Get my custom dream painting done!
20. Make a no/low budget film at least 30 minutes long
21. Finish my towel quilt
22. Make a documentary (different from number 20's film)
23. Paint a penguin

Musical Goals
24. Finish my song parody
25. Learn to play one song on the harmonica
26. Learn to yodel
27. Listen to a new (to me) band every week (6/143)
28. Start practicing my flute again

Health and Fitness Goals
29. Complete at least one mud run each year (0/4)
30. Eat only home-prepared food for one month
31. Complete a SELF Challenge
32. Strength train 3 times per week for a month
33. Do cardio 3 times per week for a month
34. Weather permitting, walk the dogs daily for a month
35. Try a new sport
36. Get a perfect score on the USAF women's PT test
37. Hike in a national park

Domestic Goals
38. Get rid of everything that I don't love or don't need (4/9 locations)
39. One day a month, try a new recipe (2/33)
40. Put away laundry and dishes as they're finished
41. Turn master suite into a relaxing sanctuary
42. Frame and hang my accumulated art
43. Organize my file cabinet
44. Sweep and vaccuum daily for a month
45. Clean windows and floors weekly for two months
46. Impliment "A place for everything and everything in its place"
47. Fill up my photo albums
48. Back up my home videos off my camera
49. Sit down at the kitchen table once a week for dinner (6/143)

Home Improvement Goals
50. Detail Donovan and Clunky (and keep them clean)
51. Do 1 DIY project a month (1/33)
52. Fix, move and hook up good washer and dryer
53. Organize the storage shed
54. Make a string garden
55. Plant an herb garden
56. Create a bonsai garden
57. Fix the hot tub
58. Get a fountain!!
59. Get a storm shelter

Personal Goals
60. Have 10 no-spend days each month (1/33)
61. Take quarterly mini vacations (0/11)
62. Be grateful for 5 things every day
63. Attend church more regularly
64. Leave a 100% tip some time (for good service, only, of course)
65. Pay off all non-mortgage debt
66. Visit a psychic/palm reader just for the heck of it

Nerdy Goals
67. Learn to play a shooter
68. Try out 10 new animes per Ray's suggestions (0/10)

Athletic Goals
69. Learn to skateboard
70. Do the splits
71. Take up archery
72. Go canoeing
73. Learn to shoot a firearm
74. Get a hole in one (in putt putt)
75. Go go-kart racing
76. Take a pole dancing lesson

Style Goals
77. Paint my nails a new, fun way weekly for a year (6/52)
78. Try something new with my hair

Cultural Goals
79. Take more Latin Dance lessons
80. Brush up on my Italian
81. Brush up on my Spanish
82. Learn minimum of tourist German
83. Learn minimum of tourist Japanese
84. Learn to say one word (taking suggestions on that word, btw) in 50 different languages (0/50)

Just For Fun Goals
85. Inventory and display my My Little Pony collection
86. Officially name all of my gnomes
87. Find and shop in a new antique store/flea market each month (1/33)
88. Design my dream house and barn
89. Meet a famous person
90. Eat a bag of chips one at a time (as in, one chip per sitting, to prove it can be done)
91. Learn to juggle
92. Count how many times Adrian Monk says "wipe" in the series of Monk
93. Play a game at the table weekly (6/143)
94. Photobomb 10 times! (0/10)
95. Eat 100 different cheeses (16/100)
96. Watch the American Film Institutes 100 funniest movies of all time (0/100)
97. Build a snowman
98. Learn to make three different forms of bubble art (0/3)
99. Go over-board, ribbon-happy one Christmas
100. Get my Billers ring fixed
101. Buy something off of Craigslist

Whew! I know that some of those are pretty laughable to a lot of you (especially if you look at what I consider "athletic" - that's almost laughable to *me*!), but you have to keep two things in mind. 1. It was really freaking hard to come up with 101 things to do! and 2. I am a terrible procrastinator. I'm counting on all of you to keep me on track over the next three years to get this stuff done!

A little (or maybe a lot) about me

First of all, I haven't blogged since I was in high school (which has been pretty much forever), and I really only know probably three things about computers, so please forgive me for any hickups that might come along.

In my own mind, I don't consider myself a terribly interesting person, but then again, I am already quite familiar with who I am as a person.  I'm the youngest and only daughter in a family of four, have my Bachelor's in Animal Science, and am a military wife.  My husband and I live on a small horse farm and have a pretty full house (of pretty much everything but human kids), which I'm sure will become evident over the next 1001 days worth of blog posts.

I collect garden gnomes, fortune cookie fortunes, and My Little Ponies.  I swear to you, I am not making any of that up.  I'm an uncontrollable writer of questionable talent, though I've never been formally published.  I'm what I consider a novice dressage rider and love mowing my lawn.  I really enjoy the idea of playing video games, but am really only any good at Dynasty Warriors, Guitar Hero and Plants vs Zombies.  I am, however, a great, big nerd.  I am an absolutely terrible speller (would you believe that the school district I attended didn't have spelling tests when I was in elementary school because they were afraid teaching the kids how to spell would dampen their creativity?).

So, why am I doing this 101 Things in 1001 Days challenge?  First of all, as I mentioned up in my first real paragraph, I know myself quite well.  Too well, maybe, and that has taken a lot of the fun out of my daily adventures.  Hopefully, giving myself a set of challenges will help me learn some new things.  That leads me to my second motivation - I love challenges.  I don't take direct orders very well (it's why my husband's in the military, not the other way around), but if someone challenges me (or I boldly make it known that I'm going to accomplish something), I'm all over it.  Only a small portion of the items on my list were ever real, solid desires of mine, but I'm going to walk away three years from now with so many new experiences!

Well, that's me in a nutshell.  I'm sure other random bits of information will pop up about me through the blog posts that will follow, and I'm going to do my best to be dilligent with the upkeep of this blog.  Even if no one really reads it, it'll be a great way for me to chart my progress, and hopefully serve as an inspiration of sorts to other people that want to go on a 101 Things journey.