Fasten Your Seatbelt

What do they say about the best laid plan?  
They go Kablooie in your face, that's what.

Stayed up late/got up early making multitudes of tourtieres (French Canadian meat pies) and watching over an ancient horse who was mildly colicking.  Horses are as stupid as we are.  When it gets cold, they don't feel thirsty.  Guess what happens when they ingest 17 pounds of feed with little water?  Water is Nature's Drano.  And the saying is true:  you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.  However, you can make warm concoctions with molasses and Gatorade and you can make him find his mash buried under 2 gallons of water!
Note to self, the Weather Channel lies. Mercury plummeted enough down here to freeze the faucets in the barn Friday night. This is Alabama, nothing is designed for cold weather.  By George, I turned the water off to the barn for tonight and drained the lines... won't catch me twice.
All this fun and games today set me back so far that I had to miss driving to a Christmas party out of town.  I'd even converted a horse trailer into a doggie duplex...don't leave home without them!

Comfy on a sofa in the trailer.  Note the tacky battery powered Christmas lights.
What do you do when your car can't hold 3 large dogs?  Get creative.

Lamps, heater, 5 rolls of extension cord, all the comforts of home.
All for not.
To add insult to injury, a buck tackled my truck 1 mile from my house and remolded everything from the front fender to the rear door.  Cole and I attempted to find him, all he left was a few hundred in damage, much blood and my mirror. I was going 25 mph, he must have hit me going 35.  Where's the justice?

Not even the decency to die where I could bag him for my freezer.
Some days, it doesn't pay to get out of bed!  Cole is like my personal Pauxatawny Phil.

If he emerges from his den and sees his shadow, we should stay in bed.

Outdoors or indoors!  I rigged up a bed between trees to watch my cattle.  Can't see squat with a 70 pound ground hog sitting on your chest.
Tonight, we stay in and try to power through all the party food. 

Two dozen deviled eggs divided four ways.  No one light a match around here tonight!