The Prickly Pear Chronicles

 

2-1-2021: Happy Birthday Month and Muck Buckets

February 1^st – the beginning of birthday month! What better way to celebrate than buying yourself a muck bucket. Heck, why not go all out and treat yourself to a muck bucket on wheels!

Poop of all sorts consumes a great deal of a snowbird's life – with horses taking the trophy for the most quantity. The official poop pile here on The Prickly Paw Ranch is a short wheel-barrow haul from the main penning area. With the addition of Drifter to my herd and Dan and Teri's 3 horses – We are penning on the opposite side of the arena from Mount Manure. In the beginning – we tossed the poop over the fence into the end of the arena. That's where all of it ends up eventually. Dave spreads it in the arena and works it in with the groomer. It wasn't long before four horses produced more poop than could be worked in. Poop holds the moisture well and that end of the arena was getting a tad bit spongy. Enter – the muck bucket on wheels.

I settled on a collapsible muck bucked that would easily store in my trailer. Practically everywhere you go with horses, moving poop from point A to point B is a given. I purchased the collapsible frame and separate red muck tub from NRS. The nice kid from the feed room carried the box it came in out to the truck for me. I thought: “How nice...it folds up small enough to fit in this sturdy little box.” It didn't occur to me the thing was in a gazillion pieces and required assembly.

I also didn't realize it required a degree in astrophysics to put the damn thing together. The instructions were no help. They seemed to be in broken English. A few pictures with arrows pointing here and there didn't help no matter which way I flipped or rotated the tri-fold manual. It made more sense upside down. I swapped back and forth between English, German and Japanese hoping to piece together the missing parts.

The tiny wrenches provided seemed more fitting for a mid-evil torture chamber. I left more skin on “part A and part B” than I have remaining on knuckles “C, D and E.” After shucking the sadistic devices for my own tools and tossing the manual in the burn pile, I finally got the thing screwed together. It only took three bloody knuckles and a half dozen F-bombs to get 'er done.

2-6-2021: The Great Birthday Scam

Cindy might be pulling off the scam of a lifetime. She claims to be celebrating her 60^th birthday. I'm not buying it. She could easily pass as 40-45. I'm pretty sure she's packing around a fake ID for senior incentive shoots and the cheap menu at Denny's. Regardless, a milestone birthday, even a fake one, must be celebrated.

The original plan was to have dinner and drinks at Kirkland's bar and steakhouse. A mom and pop establishment that was once a stage stop and hotel. The place is reported to have great food – awesome hosts and a few ghosts.

Unfortunately, The Kirkland Bar and Steakhouse was closed. I suppose even ghosts need a holiday now and then. Perhaps that explains the disappearance of Casper the last 30 years or so. He's been vacationing in Transylvania with the rest of the washed out spirits.

An alternate plan was in order. While Cindy worked on plan B, Dave schemed on his own plan C – unbeknownst to Cindy. Our part in Dave's plan C was no matter what Cindy's plan B comprised of...we were to pretend as if we could not participate in said plan B. Dave wasn't all that clear what plan C would entail – other than to have Cindy back at home by 4:30 PM....no questions asked.

Jamie Z. came up with a plan D that would incorporated Cindy's plan B and Dave's plan C. Jamie, Mark, Teri and I would take Cindy on a trail ride above Jamie and Mark's house in Congress. Then we would ride on over to Nichols West for drinks and something to eat. Now, we were fairly confident that Dave's plan C would involve dinner. It's not that I'm a bad liar – I'm just not comfortable lying to somebody I like! We would have to come up with excuses why we didn't want to eat at Nichols and why we needed to get home by 4:30.

Teri came up with the excuse of needing to get to an ATM before the clean shooter jackpot the next morning. That one was at least based in truth. At 85lbs soaking wet, Jamie appears to never eat anyway. Totally believable. The best I could come up with was: “Yeah...I need to run on over there (pointing randomly) somewhere this evening and pick up some stuff...” I don't think I was fooling anyone – least of all Cindy.

With instructions from Dave to have Cindy home by 4:30 PM no matter what...and to meet up at The Palomino in Wickenburg by 6:00 PM (and not tell Cindy) – Cindy, Teri and myself loaded our horses in Teri's stock trailer and headed for Congress.

After some finagling with an uncooperative automatic gate and an AWOL cat (long story) four of us girls and Mark headed out the gate onto State land for a quick 4 mile trail ride. I think all were more interested in riding on over to Nichols West for margaritas.

The ride over from Jamie and Marks to Nichols crossed the main highway and a RR track. Other than the ride into Old Tombstone over Thanksgiving – it was the closest thing to being in a parade as Jack or I care to achieve. The absence of anything horse drawn made it an uneventful ride. Thank you God – perhaps I wasn't going to be punished for telling lies to a friend...and on her birthday even! Pretty sure that qualifies for a pass straight to hell – do not pass go. 

We tied the horses to hitching posts in front of Nichols. Why every restaurant, bar and ice-cream parlor doesn't have a hitching post is beyond my comprehension. Probably has something to do with city ordinance and copious amounts of poop. Even so – I think it is a smashing idea and plan to frequent as many establishments providing such equine accommodations as possible.

To hell with Dave's plan C. We were hungry. We ordered several appetizer's, or Hors d'oeuvres if your feeling hoity toity and can spell it without Google. I couldn't. Whore-durbs is the best I can come up with without it.

They didn't serve Prickly Pear Margarita's but the regular and the Cadillac margarita's were more than adequate – and effective. Holy Cow were they effective. By the time we staggered out the door, I'd forgotten where I parked my buckskin. It's a good thing that horse nickers when he sees me or I might have ridden off on a Honda...or worse...an Arabian!!

Horses seem to take care of fools, children and old lady's who've had a few too many and God bless them for it. We managed to claw our way back into the saddles and head for the Zueger ranch. Cindy shot a video of us singing or talking or giggling or maybe all three. It's hard to tell from the video. She may have been wiser to turn on her phone's GPS. As she was shooting the video – she missed the turn going back to Zueger's and might have ended up in Parma Idaho had we not called her back.

The automatic gate was slightly more cooperative with Mark running the remote. We had time to load the horses and get back to Aguila and Dave's plan C with a little time to spare. I abandoned my birthday lie and hitched a ride on Dan and Teri's ruse to go in search for an ATM. In what likely appeared to be the rudest birthday ploy ever – we drove away from Crandall's without saying a word to Cindy.

I don't think we fooled Cindy. She's pretty savvy. Even so, she looked as tickled as Dave when she walked into the Palomino to find more than a dozen of her friends sitting around several rectangular tables shoved together. I'm guessing the party favors she carried in her hand, because we'd forgotten them in Dan and Teri's trailer, gave at least part of it away. Even so – it was a great end to a fun day celebrating a fabulous woman and friend. Happy Birthday Month, Cindy Crandall. You are truly blessed and loved by all who know you...except for that crazy neighbor lady that swore at us that day over the dog. That woman was bat-shit-crazy. She don't love nobody.