Jump over January

I’ll just get this out there.  I hate January. Bad stuff always happens in January and I’ve come to dread it wondering what expensive and frustrating dilemma we’ll face each January.

Starting in 2015 is when I noticed January really kind of sucks.  Following is a list of the stupid that has happened in January.

January 2015  – We had just bought our place and moved in in November of 2014 so I was still part of the crowd that thought “yay, a new year full of promise”.  My mare Boody was pregnant with what was supposed to be the last horse of my show career.  Boody had suffered career ending injuries in 2012 at the Appaloosa World Championship Show and I’d been really disappointed for her and me.  In 2014 I’d decided to breed Boody in the hopes for my next show and all around horse.   All went smoothly and Boody was confirmed in foal in June of 2014.  I was so excited.  I have had Boody her entire life, I had her mom and her grandma.  Skip to January, we’re getting all settled into the new place and I’m happy for the future.  That morning we discovered Boody had aborted the fetus at 6 months along.  It was so sad.  What was going to my attempt at a world title and the excitement, fun and promise of a new foal was gone.  I won’t go into the rest of the long story but suffice it to say that many thousand dollars and 3 years later we realized Boody is just not meant to have a foal.  I’m still dealing with the disappointment of what could have been with that baby but that won’t get me anywhere.  Picked up those pieces and moved along.

January 2016 – We dealt with a stupid expensive plumbing/water/well issue.  When you live in a rural area and are on a well things don’t always go smoothly.  I’ll just say after a week with no running water and a few thousand dollars later, we had water.  I’m starting to think January is a big jokester.

January 2017 –  In the middle of one the snowiest winters in decades under 3 feet of snow and temps of below zero our shop burned down.  Again, we live in a rural area so fire response is a small volunteer department.  While the fire department was excited for a “real” structure fire I was fairly upset.  We had to scramble to save our tractor and my husbands work van that is our livelihood.  Luckily there were no injuries and we saved the two biggest pieces of equipment that make our lives much easier.  However, we lost a lot of irreplaceable stuff with sentimental value that is just gone.  We were lucky that we some insurance and were able to rebuild a much a better shop.  Dealing with a fire and all the water the fire department used in minus zero weather made for quite the messy ice rink and made clean up a real pain.  Again, no injuries human or animal wise so I’ll count it as lucky but still it was a very stressful start to the year and again I’m thinking January just sucks.

Here’s a pic of the shop on fire.

January 2018 –  Ok I think let’s see what this January can provide us.  Low and behold another water problem in freezing temps!  This time we discover rats and mice have gotten into our cistern and it needs drained, cleaned, sanitized, etc on top of having to find and repair another clog in a water line.  Of course we had a real plumber out to help find the clog but they swore it was frozen pipes when we knew it wasn’t.  After a $500 bill to useless plumbers we got to cut up our deck and dig down to the waterlines underground and fix the clog ourselves.  Yay us.

While none of these things are devastating in the scheme of life, they sure are frustrating.  With January fast approaching I wonder what will go wrong to cause us to file bankruptcy or something.

I’ll be grateful for the new year in February.  I hope everyone has a safe,  happy holiday season,  and a prosperous, healthy new year.