Wonder of Wonders! Miracle of Miracles!

So, the most amazing thing happened! What is it, you ask? Some of the neighbors down at the bottom of the road are cattle ranchers from outside of Durango. Quite naturally, they have a plethora of horses. After a conversation between one of said neighbors and my brilliant grandfather, they offered to leave a horse up here (it's kind of like their vacation home) so that I could ride it! How awesome is that? I have to feed him twice a day, but I can ride whenever I want. Some of the other neighbors have agreed to let me ride on their land, and there are trails all over the place! Yay!

The horse's name is Opie. He's a 3-yr old bay Quarter Horse. I rode for more than an hour this afternoon, and he was great! Since he's so young, he's still getting used to seeing weird things and not freaking out, so my job is just to get him used to life. It's a pretty sweet job!


Here's a picture of him. I'll get some better ones soon!

On a completely different note, a few days ago, while we were in town, my grandad and I purchased Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough in the pre-packaged refrigerated roll. Because it is delicious and wonderful, I proceeded to eat a big ol' slice of cookie dough a few days ago. Last night I baked all of the cookies so that we could take them with us to the Homeowner's Association Dinner. Great idea, right? People love cookies!

This morning, while watching the news, come to find out, Nestle Tollhouse cookie doughs are being recalled like some kind of automobile part that could burst into flames at any second consuming the passengers in some sort of horrifying ball of fire. What are the odds? Apparently, said cookie dough "MAY" be contaminated with E. coli!!!! OH MY GOSH!!! Luckily, if ours had been contaminated, I would probably have already been retching on the floor. Since I am not, I can only assume that we are safe from the Bacterial Menace.

Now the question becomes, "What do I bring to the HA Dinner?" I mean, you can't just bring cookies that are obviously not home-made, because then anyone who watches the news will say, "These aren't Tollhouse are they?" And I would have to say "Why yes, they are, and at any minute you could drop dead from E. coli poisoning." Not a very good way to make friends with the neighbors. Luckily for me, I compulsively buy cornbread mix, and had two Marie Callendar's cornbread mixes. I now have a tray of yummy cornbread muffins. Some are normal size and some are teeny tiny, like the one's from Jason's Deli. Perfect.

The couple with the creepy-basement-Indians has invited me over for lunch for my birthday (on Tuesday), and I got stuff to make a delicious cake!!! I'm so excited! But, since I'm so far away from all of my people in Texas, I'm just going to have to celebrate my birthday again when I get back to Texas. Darn.

I'm sure that there are many of you who are waiting for me to update you on all of my racoony adventures. Well, 4 more have joined the bunch, so that I've now adopted a total of 6. They are all on a very precise schedule. One comes by at 5, exactly. Then another about 6:30. Then the pack of four come together at 7:30. They're hysterical!


Here's a picture of five of them chowing down together.