Urgh. I didn't realise I hadn't been here since The Last Roswell Day. Where does the time go? I guess that one hit me harder than I had thought, because OF COURSE, I started crying again when I read it.

Welp. Not too much going on here - I've been sick since well before then anyway. Lyme disease (or whatever this is) is a real b*****. Fortunately, it's winter and not much going on anyway with Life in General. I can still manage to stagger in and out with the horses, but that's about it. Lots of knitting, thank goodness.
I had intended to do some writing, but I can't seem to muster up the energy to do that, even though I know I have stories to be told still. I haven't even been reading much fanfic (the horror!)

I hope eventually, we'll get a diagnosis and figure out what's wrong with me, but so far, no dice. And so it goes.
Not even x-posting this one, it's mostly just for myself.

How are all you poor remnants of garden flowers that are left in LJ-land?

If there are any of you who haven't heard, Yahoo is doing away with their Groups. I guess it was inevitable, because Groups hadn't functioned well for years anyway. I had a YH account since - forever - and I had an awful time last year trying to get my login to work. I finally managed it, but I couldn't see the messages from some groups, etc, etc.

Anyhoo, Holmesslash has managed to start up on Dreamwidth and AO3 is going to save the content. A tip of the ol' hat to LyricalSoul our hard working mod for spearheading the migration. I'm not sure of the details yet, but if anyone here has content on Holmesslash on Yahoo that you want to save, you have until December to do it at which point Yahoo will make the Groups go poof forever. If you want to join us on DW, come on over, we'd love to have you.

I know there were a lot of Buffy groups over there also, so if you're a mod and didn't know about all this, that's what's going on. If you want to save your content, best start talking to AO3 ASAP. The clock is ticking.

As some of you may know, my "young horse" (not so young anymore, but nevermind) Ricky has been fighting a mysterious back problem for the last couple of years. He has had acupuncture, chiropractic, and steroid injections multiple times, none of which seemed to make him better. However, slowly, he seems to have healed up. He used to hitch visibly with his left hind when stepping over a pole, even at the walk and it was quite apparent at the trot. But I watched him gallop up to the gate and swap leads along the way the other day and thought "by cracky he looks OK". So I started cautiously riding him, just walking around, which is about all I'm good for anyway right now. Then some friends came out and we watched him go and Lo! he is OK. My vet gave me a go-ahead also.

So I decided to ride this morning, put him on the cross-ties, and noticed that he kept kind of looking behind him at the open door, but didn't think much of it, tacked him up, led him out, and...the barn cats have evidently decided to turn into a pair of panthers. They had caught and killed a full grown rabbit almost as large as themselves and dragged it up to the barn door and were trying to decide how best to eat it. Of course, they had a full bowl of cat food, but it's not the same as fresh caught, I guess.

So I led Ricky out, eyeing the rabbit fur scattered on the grass, and got on. By this time, the cats' antics had attracted the attention of a buzzard, who proceeded to circle above my head for a while, then perched on the fence. Pip spotted the buzzard, and decided that some stalking was in order and started slinking s-l-o-w-l-y across the grass to sneak up on the buzzard (who was sitting on top of a 5' fence, so good luck) Eventually, she got too close for comfort and the buzzard took off, flapping heavily across the ring just over my head and Pip returned to her kill.

Luckily Ricky is a very quiet horse, but he's till pretty green and this huge bird overhead was a bit too much ("those things eat horses, Ma!"). He started getting nervous, I know when I'm beat, so I rode for a few more minutes and got off, took him back, cleaned him up, put him away, and found that the cats had dragged their rabbit into the barn and were lying next to it, like some kind of illustration of lionesses with a kill. Too bad I didn't have my phone, but it was a bit grisly, anyway.

Why me?

I found that lovely old clunker Boy on A Dolphin on Youtube the other day and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It has a wonderfully lush score and was shot on location, so there was beautiful scenery with 1957 cars and tourists, plus Greece!.  Nice underwater camera work also. 

Clifton Webb was waspish, it was Sophia Loren's American movie debut and they gave her plenty of time to show off her...um...talents.  She obviously could do Greek dancing and for once, she as the heroine had something to do besides scream and be rescued the the hero, so that was refreshing. 

Poor Alan Ladd spent most of his time standing on boxes.  It was fun to see how hard they had to work around the part where he was about 6' shorter than Sophia Loren, too. And of course, in the end, good triumphed over evil and the hero got the girl - it was, after all 1957.

The only problem was that I kept hearing the voice-over from Guns of Navarrone in my head (Grrreece and the islands of the Aegean Sea...) 

Anyway, definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it, or haven't seen it for a while.

and here is a link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOsUf9e-_Xg

If anyone still out there is interested, the July Watson's Woes daily ficathon has just started. You get a prompt every day and write a fic using, however loosely, the prompt. It's great fun and if you haven't done it before, c'mon over and >consider joining us https://watsons-woes.dreamwidth.org/.

Some dyer has made a yarn that looks exactly like my new cat, Miss Ember.


Ember



Yarn
Pity it wouldn't knit up that way. 

I'm still struggling with this $%^&&** Lyme disease.  I finally tested positive (yay - I guess) so I've been on Doxycycline for the last month, but I can tell it's not quite enough.  The crushing fatigue is a little better, but I still have migraines and random joint pains.  I have an appointment with an Infectious Disease Specialist in a week or so and then we'll see if he wants me on I.V. antibiotics (fun) or just to stay on the oral for several more months.  It's frustrating, because the weather is nice and I want to do more, but with Evan's death I don't have a horse I can totally trust to get on by myself, plus I still get so tired anytime I do anything much.  Thank goodness for knitting anyway. 

Also thank goodness I said i would take those little rescue cats last Fall.  The love their new life as barn cats.  They scurry in to their nice safe office at 5 pm every day and scurry back out every morning to spend the whole day doing cat-type things (which unfortunately, do not involve catching mice)   but that's OK
























They are so sweet and cute and such good company that it doesn't matter.

I know I posted a few weeks ago about adopting a new kitty. She has fit in amazingly well with the two boys. There was a certain amount of hissing at first, but now they are all pals together. She's younger than they told me - my guess is she's not much more than a year old now, because she's grown so much since she came. She's mostly Maine Coon, I guess and pretty laid back, but she is blindingly fast when she wants to move.

It's been such fun to watch her learn about toys and how to play with the various cat tunnels, caves, and other stuff around here. I'm very glad we adopted her. Plus, I'm going to be totally shallow and point out that she's drop-dead gorgeous!