I'm pretty sure they meant...

NaBloPoMo couldn't have meant EVERY day, right? I need to go back and edit the blog where I said it would be a piece of cake. Pride goes before ... what?

Anyway I don't feel like writing a letter today. I'm just not that clever, it seems, to find a way to do that for 30 days in a row. I just want to write in the cracks of time about whatever's on my mind.
What's on my mind today, you ask?

Negotiation. I wish I could say that it's the chicks (getting their feathers!) or the garden (going in this weekend!) or a new frog pond (still in the dreaming/pre-planning phase) or the girls' horseback riding clinic (Sunday!). But alas, it is negotation that occupies my farmgirl brain.

People skills, all the rage in the '90s. Thinking outside of the proverbial box, again, from my early career days -- I'd have to say I am pretty good at that. But my skills and my box are both stretched pretty darn thin these days. Real estate put the first stretch mark in, followed quickly by parenthood, horse people barn drama (you know who you are and what you did), neighboring Bed & Breakfast owners who ought to "move back to the state they came from" (the County planner's words, not mine, I swear).

Lately, it's Ryan's business pushing my overstuffed envelope. Note: I have a whole collection of cliches, and I may pull them all out today. I also have an unlimited supply of em dashes and parentheses, evidently.

Today I have even more negotiating to do. We are trying to trade in our failing Suburban for one with half the miles. I have to shovel it out first though. I write from my desk at the office, the one the crew uses when they come in from the field. I finished my employee relations duties and am now watching Laura sleep in her carseat while Grace plays puzzles on the other computer. Not super farmchicky at all. The big girls are at school.

Yesterday KL and I had an almost kid-free M0mmy Time Out. We did a quick Dutch Brothers run (where else?) and then followed a hot tip to find Fire King and Pyrex at a location I shall not disclose on the wide open Internet. KL found some, hurray, and I found FOUR pairs of Mary Jane shoes. Holy footwear. We planned our trip to The Farmchicks Sale in June. Caro's going too. We are saving our quarters in jars and bowls.

Then we drove like the wind back to the Grove to fetch KL's children from school.

I wish time were unlimited. I wish I could blog all day. But the knee-deep Suburban will not wait. I hope to post some new pics tomorrow of our garden spot, the chicks, the horses, Ryan's new tree, etc.