another reason to dislike farm animals

I know I’ve mentioned before that our realtor and her husband have been helping us out with a lot of our home improvements. Mostly the yardwork – Renee and I made a couple of trips to our local hardware store together and bought all sorts of plants, and she made a very pretty little flower bed in front of our house. (For those of you who’ve seen my house: you know the place where the weeds used to be? There are actual, real plants there now! They’re going to have pretty little flowers on them and everything! I know!) Anyway, it’s been a tremendous help and they’ve just been awesome.

Last week, Renee and I emailed each other a couple of times, and she said they were going to come over on Saturday to work on the yard. Then Friday night, Scott (Renee’s husband) called and said that Renee was in the hospital. She works with horses a lot, and while she was at the stables on Friday afternoon, her friend’s horse kicked her. So she has a few broken ribs, a punctured lung, and her spleen was bleeding. Um, holy crap?!

Scott wanted to let me know that he’d still be over to work on the yard on Saturday, but it’d just be him, not Renee. Which, dude! Priorities! I told him that if he needed to hang out with his wife in the hospital, of course that was fine, but Renee is pretty hardcore and I’m guessing she told him to get his butt over here and get some yardwork done. (Scott is a bit… hmm, how to say it nicely? He sometimes tends to be a little unmotivated.)

Yesterday, I left Cate with Dave at home and I went to visit Renee in the hospital. She seemed to be doing pretty well, and they’re probably going to let her go home in a couple of days. She was really lucky, because the horse could’ve gotten her in the spine or the kidneys, and things would’ve been much worse. Still, it just kind of reinforced why we only have cats. There’s only so much damage a 12-pound animal can do, you know?

And not that it’s a huge issue when your friend is hurt, but obviously this is going to put another crimp in our moving plans. Renee is going to be immobile for a while, so I don’t think she’s going to be able to do any more yardwork for us. Looks like we’re going to have to call in an actual landscaper, which is fine. I kind of figured we’d have to do that at some point anyway. (The blackberry bushes around the perimeter of our house are going to need some professionals to cut them back; those thorns will slice you to ribbons if you’re not careful.) I just hope Renee will be up for her basic realtor stuff soon, because I really want her to get the commission for our house, rather than a stranger.

5 thoughts on “another reason to dislike farm animals

  1. Blackberry brambles appear formidable but they’re quite easy to annihilate. I can appreciate not wanting to deal with them — their thorns can poke right through leather gloves (painfully) — but they’re easy to handle with a combination of snipping the stalks and yanking out the roots. If you have a weedwhacker you can get a special blade for it that will allow you to blaze right through them VERY QUICKLY. And if you’re moving you might as well leave the roots behind for the next owners.

  2. Nice thought, but I?
    (a) am lazy
    (b) am a klutz
    (c) suck at yardwork

    The correct answer is D, all of the above. So I think I’d rather just stay safely inside and pay my hard-earned money to someone else to take care of it for me.

  3. I agree with you. I’d rather stay inside with a cup of tea than worry about cutting off my foot.

    One of our friends rides horses a lot and in just riding the horse she has managed to wear down her hip cartilage and now needs surgery. Quite the dangerous, expensive hobby/pasttime.

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