Hi Sweetie
What a day! Had a pretty good night sleep, got my chores, breakfast and some computer work done, then started hunting down the tiny o-ring I suspected I needed to fix the 3-point hitch on the tractor. Unfortunately the marina in Indiantown didn’t have one, but a place in Stuart did, so I drove all the way there, with stops at Glenn’s house to pick up some juice I left over there yesterday, and Allapattah just to see their campsites, which I’ve been meaning to do, over 25 miles to the store, and sure enough, he had the part. Unfortunately, despite being the exact number that’s in the parts manual, it was WAY too big! He hunted around for another one, with no luck, then suggested the NAPA store, so I went down there, and the guy there searched through half a dozen boxes before he came up with a couple we thought might work. When I asked him what I owed him, he said, a smile (which is the usual expression on my face anyway), then said, no charge! See, most people ARE good! Stopped at a lawn mower store, too, just in case, since the same part is used on Cub Cadets, but they had nothing. Made a trip to Walmart to do some intermediate shopping, got back to camp around 3:30. Once I got everything put away, I went out and installed that little bugger, which took less than a minute, I started up the tractor and the 3-point hitch arms moved up and down, just like they’re supposed to, even when I moved the loader bucket up and down. Then I hooked up the bush hog, and even with the weight, it worked exactly like it’s supposed to, but never has. We should have done this YEARS ago! Who would have thought that for the lack of one tiny o-ring, that tractor would have been that crippled for so long and is now fully functional. Crazy! I think they must have missed that when they first serviced it in the U.S. after bringing them over from Japan. So tomorrow, I’m going to go pick up my post hole digger from Jeff’s to see if I can get that working the way it’s supposed to, and then I’ll be ready to REALLY get some trail work done! Whoo hoo! Not to mention how much easier it will be to do the mowing as well. What can I say, it doesn’t take much to make this girl happy! A good horse, a working tractor, a paintbrush, I’m in 7th heaven! Another bit of good news, the stalling problem on the truck has been resolved, I tightened the nylon bolt on the fuel filter the other day, and that seems to have done the trick! With all the stops in the heat today, not a single problem. So a good, productive day. Finally relaxed after my rounds today, a little TV, time for shower and bed. Good night, babe! Love you!

Hi Babe,
A good night sleep, though I woke up early, read, fell asleep and woke up a bit later again, though got up this time before 7:30. After chores and breakfast, I did a few outdoor jobs. Despite putting in a new fuel filter in the truck last month, I’m still getting the same symptoms occasionally, where the truck won’t start when it’s hot without pumping the fuel canister. It looked like maybe the nylon bolt at the top of the canister might not be tight enough so some air is getting into the system, so I tightened that up a bit. Not sure why the bolt is nylon, it wears out faster, but I supposed there’s a reason for it. Next I printed up the diagnostic sheet for the tractor, disconnected the bush hog and tested some of the things it suggested. As soon as I took out the shutoff valve, the hitch arms dropped like they’re supposed to, but unlike what the sheet said, there was no little valve that I was supposed to make sure didn’t fall out. Makes me think that part disappeared when they did the first U.S. service on it all those years ago, and that’s the cause of my problem. Emailed a guy at a Tractor place in Texas that specialized in Yanmar, but didn’t get an answer back from him, though he sent me a parts blowup of the whole control valve, which is the next thing it might be. Still thinking horses, not zebras though, pretty sure I just need that little plunger that seems to be missing. Got on a forum, hoping to get some guidance there. Anyway, I couldn’t do any more on that yet, so I painted a few more posts. After riding the green trail last week, there were a few spots that needed some more markers, so I did those. The rest of the day was pretty much a bust, binge-watched Supernatural most of the afternoon. We had a couple of horse campers come in for the weekend, but that was about it! Only one woman left in the non-equestrian camp tonight, and she’s leaving tomorrow. I did do a few things on my computer, some business stuff mostly, and arranged for the return of the phone, which my camper has agreed to drop off in a UPS box for me. So a quiet evening, ready for shower and bed! Good night, my darlin’! Love you!

Hi Darlin’,
Woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep for a long time, so I ended up not getting out of bed until almost 8:30, don’t know what was up with that! The good news is, the dog bitch was gone this morning, evidently one of the other campers persuaded her that it would be cheaper and easier to just take an Uber home (to the tune of $350) than to waste another day waiting for a tow truck, when the dealer said it would be $600 just to make her two new key fobs, with towing extra, so that what she did. She managed to get packed up on her own after all, though I think she might have had her son or someone with her, and they departed camp at 1:00 in the morning. So that made it a much happier morning for me! After chores and breakfast, I hooked up the little horse trailer, loaded up Lola and all my phone stuff, and went into Verizon to return the A42 that I hated, and got some good advice about not sending in the Nokia return until it’s confirmed they’ll refund my money when they get it. Then I did some shopping at the Walmart next door, and timed it perfectly to get to Lola’s vet appointment at 2:00 for her annual exam and shots. I have lots of leftover heartworm tablets that Jeff had, expired but I figure they’re air tight so they’re probably still good, no sense wasting them considering how much they cost! All clear for worms, though, so she’s as healthy as she can be! Headed from there out to the other vet for the horses, got their annuals and blood taken for their Coggins, a bit overdue, but since I haven’t been traveling, I haven’t worried about it. Rain built up all around us but we missed most of it. One last stop at the IGA for a few frozen items, then back to camp around 5:00, got the horses put away, the trailer unhooked, the tractor turned around so I can unhook the bush hog for some further 3-point hitch diagnostics tomorrow, if I’m up for it. Grilled a hot dog and settled down after rounds, the camp is empty now except for one woman in a tent who’s been perfectly charming and very patient with the dog bitch, actually counseled her for a while yesterday, but I expect she’s too old to change her ways. Anyway, time for ice cream, then shower, then bed! Good night, sweetheart! Love you!

Hey Sweetie,
Changed my mind about going to Okeechobee, figured if I picked up the phone from the post office, I’d be able to activate it and start working on it, which is exactly what I did. I also stopped at Tractor Supply for feed and hydraulic oil before getting back to camp. The crazy dog lady was still here, and so was her truck, even though she’d been borrowing phones and making calls again to get a wrecker out here to take it to the dealer. Apparently, several people came out several times and for some reason, they couldn’t get in (I’m guessing she gave them the wrong combination, and they didn’t bother to climb the fence), but she should have waited at the gate for them and never did. Anyway, I spent the afternoon getting my new phone in order, though I’m embarrassed to say that, in fact, the first phone did have a battery, hidden in a little cardboard compartment that I never saw, but found with the second phone. I’ll be sending that phone back anyway, hopefully I’ll get the full refund. This new phone fits perfectly in a nice little wallet case I bought, and once I got it up and running, it’s working perfectly. Spent a lot of time talking to the other campers, they’re all pretty tired of the dog lady using them. One camper is a psychologist and took the time to counsel her a bit, though I doubt it will do much good. At the end of the day, someone came and got her, but her truck is still blocking half the road. James came by to check it out, but there wasn’t anything to be done at that point. Later the Law Enforcement guy called, I told him we’d have a trespassing problem after noon tomorrow, since her permit expires tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll be around for the fireworks, though, I have two vet appointments near Okeechobee, and I have to return these two phones tomorrow to the Verizon store, so I’ll probably be gone before he gets here. Probably for the best, since I’m public enemy #1 in her eyes. Settled down for the evening, very happy with how my new phone is working, texting, phoning, all that good stuff. Time for shower and bed now, though! Good night, babe! Love you!

Hey Babe,
Got up at what’s become my usual 7:30, did chores and breakfast, then essentially waited around for my Fedex package to be delivered to the post office. I was hoping it would come early enough to make a trip to the Verizon store to get it working, but it didn’t, so I ended up doing literally nothing all day except reading and watching TV. The guy from the dog couple came by and gave me an earful about his problems with his girlfriend, and I guess he took some things from the trailer, then disappeared, then in the late afternoon, the woman came back, and immediately made problems, stopping her truck on the road for some unknown reason, then couldn’t start it again because she left her key fob and home and it wouldn’t start again (she blamed the truck for ‘letting her drive away without the fob’), but one of the other campers helped her call a wrecker to tow the truck to the dealer where they are apparently going to reprogram it or something. Some people just put out such negative vibes they surround themselves with a bubble of negativity, just like the dust boy in the Peanuts cartoons, and she’s a great example of that. She’s apparently staying here overnight and pulling the trailer out tomorrow when she gets her truck back, hopefully. I haven’t been receiving text messages for five days, and I made the mistake of trying to call Verizon to fix it, and in the end, once again, I ended up being told to do a factory reset, now I can’t get into my Google account so my phone has nothing on it. If I can’t fix it in the morning, I’ll go to Okeechobee tomorrow and spend the day in the Verizon store straightening all this mess out, though I was hoping to wait until Thursday, since I have appointments at two vets for the horses at one, for Lola at the other. I may just postpone those until my next necessary trip, trying to cut down on as much travel as possible, what with diesel at nearly $6/gal. We’ll see what happens in the morning. Anyway, I spent most of the day sitting in my recliner, and if it’s true that sitting is the new smoking when it comes to heart disease, I smoked a pack today! Heading off to shower and bed, though I don’t have a book to read because I can’t download Kindle on my phone because now I can’t get into my Google account because I tried too many times and it shut me out. Verizon……Grrrrrrrrrrrrr! Good night, my darlin’! Love you!

Hi Darlin’,
Never a dull moment around here! After chores, I did my rounds, and as I was passing the “dog trailer” on my way back home, the couple were having a very loud and violent argument. He was throwing stuff into the back of his truck and she was screaming at him, and I saw they had four dogs with them. They paused their argument enough for me to say that I noticed they had four dogs, and she answered back that they had two permits, which I explained was for two campsites and they were only occupying one, and intimated they were related, or at least together. She quickly refuted that they weren’t family, so the two permits were valid, which was ridiculous. Then with all their ranting, the dogs got loose and started wandering off, and they chased after them trying to round them up, and they actually started following me! The woman caught one, the other three were following me, the guy managed to grab two and I grabbed the other, and the guy was saying something about, the way she treated me yesterday was the same way she was treating him all day, and evidently he was sick of it. He returned the dogs, then came back to tell me he was leaving, and that he was taking his generator and the rest of his stuff with him. Then she showed up all fake crying and claiming that he had pushed her, he said she was lying, I asked if she wanted me to call law enforcement, she said yes, then I said that they would be citing her for having four dogs, which shut her down instantly. He left and she was forced to grovel a bit, asking to use my phone so she could call her son to come help here. The guy drove off, I let her use my phone, she said she’d be back to pick up her trailer “later”, and I informed her that in accordance with the rules she had 24 hours to either stay in it or remove it, though I know there’s now way anyone could stay in it without a generator running the AC, and the guy took that with him. She finished her call and went to pack up, though she didn’t do much before she drove off with her dogs, well puppies, actually, humongous 6 or 7 month old puppies that already had 20 lbs. on Lola. Needless to say, things got a lot quieter after that! James called and we chatted about it, but I told him it was pretty much resolved at that point, just a matter of getting the trailer moved, though I mentioned I had a trailer hitch and could tow it wherever they wanted were it not claimed :-). I did few chores, swept out the porch, fixed one of the snaps for the screen skirting that came off a while back, made Lola her satin balls, then figured out how many more posts I needed for the green trail after my reconnaissance the other day, finally settled down for a quiet afternoon and evening of TV binge-watching. Ready for shower and bed, so good night, sweetie! Love you!

Hi Honey,
Woke up even earlier at first this morning, 5:30, but I read and fell back to sleep and it was after 7:30 by the time I woke the next time. After chores, starting some laundry, and some more research on the tractor, I decided to take the plunge, so I drained the hydraulic fluid and found the strainer just above the drain plug, managed to get that out and clean it. Not as dirty as I thought it was going to be, so it remains to be seen if that’s the actual problem with my 3PH. I don’t have hydraulic fluid yet, so I just let it drain, cleaned the strainer as best I could and put it back in, just need to fill it back up, then I can check it. I did find a good website that gives me a step-by-step diagnostic procedure to determine the problem, so if cleaning the strainer doesn’t work, I have a process for narrowing down the problem. A thunderstorm came in just as I finished the job, and it rained on and off all afternoon, so I spent the rainy Sunday binge-watching Supernatural, all quiet for awhile. Then that woman with the dogs, who didn’t come back yesterday, finally arrived here late in the afternoon. After I fed my horses I went to do rounds, chatting with everyone, but when I passed her, I simply tried to let her know another big storm was coming, but she immediately started picking a fight with me, and had her tablet up recording the whole thing. Ridiculous. She started ranting about how she was going to demand reimbursement for her gas because she had to take her dogs to a sitter, and show she was going to sue, and get me fired, and all sorts of crazy threats and lies. I almost laughed out loud when she accused Lola of “taunting” her dogs, while Lola was on her cable in the screen room and her seven dogs were running around free in a paddock! She was crazy rabid! She ignored the fact that I let her stay overnight the first night even when she had all those dogs that weren’t allowed, and the fact that it clearly stated on the website that only two dogs are allowed, and that all I was doing was enforcing the rules. I don’t understand people that get that miserable, and try to make everyone around them as miserable as they are. Sigh… So another tense week here, evidently, since their permit goes until Thursday. I’ve already told James to expect a complaint, I’m sure I’m not hearing the last of this. It’s too bad they allow regular campers here, if it was exclusively a horse camp like it used to be, I’d be on my own, which suits me just fine! Well, after that whole mess, I’m just about ready for another shower and bed! Good night, babe! Love you!

Hi Sweetie,
Another 6:30 morning, really starting to get to be a habit! Fed the horses, then I had to go over to those campers that have seven dogs, yeah seven, I missed one yesterday, and told them they couldn’t stay here with that many. At first they seemed fine with it, but then the woman got all belligerent with me about it, saying the information wasn’t on the permit or anywhere else except the sign on the front gate, and that after driving three hours to be here, what was wrong and she was going to sue and all kinds of over the top threats. Well, I found that information on the first paragraph on the first page of the Dupuis website, printed it out and gave it to her, so that should have ended that discussion. I thought they were going to pack up and leave, but eventually they just left with their dogs, saying they were going to take them to a dog sitter and come back, but I didn’t see them for the rest of the day. I had to take down the tent that this woman and her two kids left behind, apparently having car trouble (so she told the office) and didn’t know when she’d be back, so I packed everything up and stored it for her, though I’m not holding my breath that she’ll ever come back for it. Then I spent several hours on the computer researching the problems with my 3 point hitch on the Yanmar, and think I’ve got it figured out how to fix it, but it was too late in the day to start, so I just took the rest of the day off for a change. Of course, I’m still pulling out ragweed galore whenever I come over to the barn, and it seems like I pull scores of them every time, hoping that makes enough of a dent where I can stay ahead of them when they start to flower again. Read for awhile, then binge-watched some more Supernaturals, I’m nearing the end of Season 12, not quite as good as some of the earlier seasons, but still keeping my interest. Gave Lola a bath, she’s been scratching a lot, and vacuumed her bed and chair hoping to keep the fleas down. She’s a lot more comfortable now. So just need to do my Spanish lesson and I’ll be ready for shower and bed! I can hear some thunder coming, so it looks like we’ll get some more much needed rain. Good night, my darlin’! Love you!

Hey Darlin’,
Body clocks getting adjusted, up at 6:30 again this morning, which was good because it turned out to be a very hot day. After chores and breakfast I spent time on the phone again with Verizon, their Indian chapter of customer support, because they didn’t call yesterday like they promised. I went through the whole story again, and again was promised that I would get a call back within four hours. So to kill time, I made some final touches to the post with some adjustments that needed to be done, then pulled out the blue paint and painted all the tops of the post where the water spigots are, a job I promised James I would do. That took me to nearly noon, so I killed some more time trying to find a vet where I can get the horses’ Coggins done, as they’re overdue. Another problem there! In the past, all of my certificates from the past have been in my account, now all of them are gone except for my EECVI which expired in March, while my Coggins, which expired in April, weren’t there. They tried to convince me it was always like that, that they purge files once they’re expired, but I know that’s not true because last time I looked I had documents from YEARS ago in there. Well, since I’m not traveling out of state this year, or at least this summer, I don’t need a Health Certificate, but I do need a Coggins so I can get that anywhere. Just didn’t really need to have yet another argument with someone! Finally, by 1:00, four and a half hours later, I again didn’t receive a call. So I called again, and spent another two hours on the phone with their Indian chapter, and in the end, they once again promised to call me within three hours, which, unfortunately, would once again put it past the time when they could overnight me a new phone. I did some more chores, and by 4:30 hadn’t heard anything, so I tried to call again and got another bunch of runarounds like you wouldn’t believe! It wouldn’t even connect me to a person for a long time! Then I finally got another woman to promise she’d call back in five minutes, never happened. Obviously, Verizon has hired a bunch of liars who specialize in hanging up on people. So I started to research getting a phone from elsewhere, and ended up just ordering another phone from Verizon, starting from scratch, since that seems to be the only way to get it in a reasonable amount of time, at least by Tuesday. I’ll sort out the return and cancellation of the other order later, but meanwhile I’m so peeved at being lied to over and over and over again, I wish there were some alternatives! Finally settled in for the evening, though it got a late start with all this phone nonsense. I just barely finished my rounds before we had a downpour, lots of thunder and lightening which scared poor Lola. We needed the rain, though! I had several new campers show up, one came with six dogs! There’s a limit of 2 per permit, I don’t know what these people were thinking. They said they came last year and had three, so I guess they got away with that, put SIX! And they look like pit pulls to boot! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it, I told them they’re only allowed two, but am I supposed to kick them out? I guess I’ll talk to them tomorrow, the rain was just starting by the time I got their permit in, figure something out. Took my shower early, so I’ll be ready for bed soon, so good night, babe! Love you!