I am one week away from being free from school til fall. I got a graduate assistantship, so I can actually pay for next year's schooling. I'm so excited! It seems like things are finally coming around for me.

I realized that I kind of set myself up...one of the profs I did a web page for hit me up for doing another one. I told him I wouldn't be free until next week, but I asked him if there was any money in it for me. He said he'd ask. The worst they could say is no, and I would still do the page. I just wouldn't do as MUCH of a page for them.

Over the weekend, I bought chicks. I have 18 adolescents that still have down on their heads, but feathers on their bodies and 12 little puffballs with the slightest bit of wing feather on them. I have them caged out in the garage with lamps. They stink to high heavens, but I think the adolescents are just about old enough to be moved to a chicken coop and roost which I don't have built yet. I'll have to finish all my schoolwork, but then I will be painting and cooping.

We had a thing with one of our neighbors. The guy renting the house across the street approached Mike about using our corral space to put his horse in. I guess originally he wanted to "borrow" our corral fencing. I told Mike no. That stuff is $50 a panel and there'd be no guarantee that we'd get it back, much less in one piece, and if he's just renting, he can rent panels cheaply. Then he wanted to know if he could board his horses here for "at least a month." I checked around and was told that $50/month per horse was more than reasonable. At first, we were considering it, but then the guy wanted to put them in the front area where my garden will be going in next week and the only way to the back corral is through the garden or over a step that I don't think would be good for a horse to attempt. And while at first I was willing, when he said "at least a month" I was afraid it would drag on. I guess he wants to corral them in an area that is near the owner's big shed and that area is currently full of big heavy construction piping and structural and that combined with his commentary and the total inconvenience just made it less palatable. It was inconvenient because we wouldn't be able to let Genny into the corral to play in the dirt because she'd be tempted to check out the horses. We wouldn't be able to put the kids' brand new swing set out in the corral either because it would be in the path of where the horse would be going back and forth. We talked and we both felt that if we had put the money together to own our own place that we ought to be able to do with it whatever we wanted.

So Mike and I went and told them that we really didn't want to do it. We explained that this was our first house and that we had plans for several of the places that he would have to use, if we were to board his horse. We offered to care for the horses in the summer when they were gone, which is something else he had asked about. His wife had a hissy and stammered something about how she didn't understand the problem because were were going charge them. Before I had gone and checked around to see if there were places listed on various community bulletin board for boarding horses and the lowest charge I found was $150/month per horse for what we were offering. All I could think is "yeah, and we weren't going to charge you MUCH!" I held my tongue, however. Then she rather abruptly shooed us out of the house.

WhatEver. It is our land, we should be able to do with it whatever we want. It's not like we're putting up a brothel in lieu of stables. I was pretty disgusted with her attitude because she was definitely of the opinion that we owed them something. In light of her attitude, I'm really happy we didn't because I think we would have been "owing" them a lot over time.

I feel like God showed me what I needed to see in this situation, certainly.