No shavings!, part two

My husband made it home fine last night. In an uncharacteristically domestic move, I had dinner waiting for him.

I can make two things well: salad and breakfast.

Wisely deciding my man probably wouldn’t be in the mood for lettuce after being stuck in his car for 6.5 hours, I scrambled three eggs with a dollop of butter, toasted two slices of wheat bread (and added another dollop of butter, as well as some strawberry jam), and cut up a banana and mixed it with some blueberries. He loved it!

The lack of shavings at the barn has lit a fire beneath my desire to move to Kentucky. For financial reasons, we can’t do it now. But we have set a semi-concrete date—June 2012. I hope to have my debt paid off in July 2010, so that will give me two years to save like a madwoman. Also, hopefully by then the IRA we were going to use as a down payment will have recovered. Last I checked, it had gone from $12k to $9k. Through savings, I want to pad the IRA when the economy is better. The rest of the savings will go towards the actual move, necessities for the new property (including a horse trailer!), and other odds and ends. We may get another horse a month or so before the move so Limerick has an equine friend to be with during the move and on the new property. Either way, it being Kentucky, I’m sure it won’t be hard to arrange for a new horse to meet Limerick when she arrives!

In the meantime, I have a Plan B in case the situation at my current barn goes way downhill. But Plan B is a half-hour away without traffic. It is a good barn, and the board is a bit cheaper, but it won’t be cheaper overall if Limerick is so far away (I estimate I save $100-200 a month on gas with her being only a mile down the road), and I know my anxious brain will always worry whether she is getting fed her third meal in the evening, whether she has equine buddies, whether I should remove her blanket or add another layer. Right now she is so close that not only can I visit her without a thought towards time, traffic, or road conditions, but also I do not need to worry about these things. You can’t put a price on peace of mind.

And so, I want to move onto horse property because the only perfect barn is the one in your backyard, after all.