NOW February 4, 2019

Rain! We had real rain last night for the first time in nearly two months! So grateful for it we needed it desperately.

I know - I'm obsessing about it.

There is a certain roundness to the shape of my life. Last year I was fencing new pastures tor our horses and to make room for Sprocket, This year I'm fencing new pastures at the new ranch for our horses and for the possibility of four new new horses.

Marie moved her horses - Sprocket and Zip - out of our ranch. I could speculate as to why but it would be just that - speculation. She hasn't told us. In fact she didn't tell us she was planning to move them, except for some passing comments. She didn't tell us of she was actually making plans, actively negotiating for a new place, actively fencing her own pastures until last Saturday. Saturday she almost offhandedly announced she was moving the horses on Monday morning.

This has been very hard for me. Not the move itself; that's totally up to her. The way she did it - not talking to us at all, not telling us of her plans, not sharing anything, totally closing down and staying away from us - brought flashbacks of the mess with Courtney and Christine when they left  Ola Lola's. It just hurts. I thought we were closer than that.

So the four new horses - the Puerto Rico police disbanded their two mounted groups. We learned about it in October, 2018. We put in our request. Elaine and Marie went to Bayamon to evaluate horses.  They said they would be in touch. After that, we heard nothing. Elaine tried repeatedly to contact our sources but got no response. Then, late on January 3, we got an email with instructions for submitting an application for the horses. The deadline to submit the application - Thursday, January 10. One week. Sunday, January 6 was Three Kings Day, for many the biggest holiday in the Christmas season. Many people, including the people we had to submit the application to, took Friday off. Monday, the 7th, was the official holiday. Banks, government offices, everything was closed. That meant we (actually Elaine) had two business days to get any questions answered and get more than 70 pages of documentation to San Juan.

She did it! It was a pretty insane, intense week, but she got everything they asked for in .

Of course, after that hurry-up, rushed jammed-up deadline, they can give us no timeline, no clue when we might hear back from them. So now we wait. Again.