2025 highlight reel, part two

On the second day of June, a four year old mustang called Ruby loaded onto a trailer in Guffey. 

A couple hours later, a horse named Sage arrived in Aurora.

She immediately made herself right at home.

It took me... a little longer.

Fortunately, life presented me with a lot of distractions in the form of a visit with my best friend, Carol...

for her weeklong retirement extravaganza.

After she left, Piper and I joined Angelo and Tang for a trip to the Denver Dog Fair.

Our dogs finished one-two in the Small Dog Derby and drank pawgaritas in the bar.

I can not overstate how much I enjoyed that day.

Moving on to July! 

Seth, Piper and I spent a day in Breckenridge,

I bonded with my parrot-in-law...

and took Sage on a millions walks.

August started strong with Emma's fourteenth birthday,

a new horse for Karen,

another fabulous dog outing with Angelo and Tang...

and still more Sage walks.

Despite this, I was struggling. James got promoted at work and moved into an apartment in Loveland. I'm very proud of him, of course, but I was sad to see him go.

Also, we had an entire month of car trouble. Seth was able to fix it himself, saving up a lot of money. Still, it was a long, hard, grind for both of us.

On a particularly bad, Carol booked me onto a flight to New Orleans. 

I spent almost a week in the Gulf Coast region, visiting family, petting capybaras, playing with wolves, feeding alligators and touring a swamp, walking on the beach, going on a pony ride, riding on a car ferry and touring the French Quarter in a mule carriage.

Best idea ever!

When I got home, I threw myself into two very different contests/challenges.

Those pretty much filled the month of September and took me right into October.

October is the best month.

Its highlights included a fun barn party, with a horse who actually likes to party...

and a three week Tang visit.

That was exhausting, but also, so fun. It was really nice having three dogs again.

Tang left in early November, and almost immediately, Piper and I hit the road with Karen and her best dog, Chelsea.

This was so much fun. I love road trips, especially with dogs.

Also in November, Kaffi went to Littleton - I learned so much about equine ulcers! - ...

and I decided it was finally time to sit on Sage.

With a little help from my friend, Trisha, I did exactly that. It was completely uneventful.

So much so, I let my seventeen year old niece, Gray, who was in Denver for Thanksgiving, "ride" her a few days later.

That was a most excellent holiday.

That brings us to December, which has been perhaps, the most difficult chaotic month of an extremely difficult chaotic year.

The month started with another semi-emergent trip to see my mom in California.

The mom part was easier that expected. The rest was... good sister bonding.

After I got home, it was straight to court to testify in a neighbor's attempted murder trial.

I'm sure he did it, but sad to say, the jury saw it differently.

The rest of the month was mostly about Christmas Eve, Christmas and all the related holiday events and photo shoots.

Carol was there for some of it.

She came for our friend, Chris's funeral, but still, it was nice seeing her again.

That's the same friend, Chris, who inspired this aggressively positive yearly recap with her hatred of social media's fakeness.

Nothing about this post is fake. All these things happened in 2025, and all of them were good.

I left out a lot of things - of course, I did - but that wasn't to make my life look better. I want my life to be better.

2026 is the Year of the Horse. It has to be better.

P.S. Thank you to Ryan for the Covid/not-Covid, without which I'd have never had time to type this all up!