There's nothing quite like the feeling of falling into cold wetness on the ground.

Welcome to the Only Child Diaries podcast. I'm your host, tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life, that you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting, while doing so with humor and light.

Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries podcast. Today I'm going to talk to you about rain and a few other things. But yes, rain. It started raining here today and it was kind of a different experience here today. And it was kind of a different experience. It signals the change in seasons. Perhaps it's the first day it's really rained in a while. It's chilly after a long hot summer. They said it might rain and I didn't believe them, but it's raining.

Rain for the last 25 years of my life has meant something different. Sure, when I was a child, rain was well, I guess. In a way it was comforting. My mom would always say, oh, it's so wonderful to fall asleep to the sound of rain on the roof. Now, I never necessarily agreed with that. It just sounded like noise to me, but I understood where she was going with it. Sometimes there was thunder and lightning and that wasn't very comforting. But yeah, rain when you're safe. But then we got a horse, or well, first I started riding again. That was in 1999.

And when you are in the equestrian lifestyle, rain means something completely different. Rain is a hardship, rain is challenging, and then once we bought Dallas, well, it just got even more difficult. Sure, we were inside a barn where there were barn aisles and so, mostly in theory, those spaces should stay dry. Right, they didn't always, given wind and other factors. A horse, being a large animal, needs to get out and stretch its legs and exercise. Being cooped up doesn't really work for a horse, but a horse has delicate legs and so it needs to have sure footing, dry ground. These are important aspects of exercise areas for a horse.

When it would rain, people would say, oh, isn't it great we need the rain? Or oh, I love the rain, and I just wouldn't say anything. I'd kind of grumble to myself and then the next day or so, when it would stop raining, everything would be good in their world, but alas, not in the barn world, because all that rain and all that water would have to go somewhere and it would create mud, and mud takes a long time to dry, sometimes a week at least for the arenas. Now you'd think, like I did, that when you have arenas where a horse would need to run, that you would get big tarps, especially in the rainy season, right, a big facility would get tarps and they'd cover the rings, or at least some of the smaller rings, so that when the rain stopped the rings, the dirt, rain stopped the rings, the dirt, the footing would be dry. This isn't how it worked. What they would do is they would seal the rings and I put that in quote, my fingers are going up in the air seal the rings. So what that meant was that a tractor would go in and basically smooth out the ring so that it was all flat. So, theoretically, the water would run off. It wouldn't pool, it was still dirt, it was still absorbent. I don't really understand this theory that well, but the water would still absorb into the dirt. It's dirt and water. It still wouldn't be usable. They weren't sealing the rings like they were covering them or putting plastic on them or anything like that. I never really understood that.

Then there were the days when it really, really rained and you'd have to slog through mud and you'd come home or you'd get in your car and you'd be covered in mud. Then there'd be the wonderful times. Then there were a couple of these occasions when I actually slipped and I fell into mud. There's nothing quite like the feeling of falling into cold wetness on the ground. There's really not, because then your clothes are not only muddy, they're wet and you're cold Good times.

Now I had the extra added advantage of having my husband work at the barn, and so the nights that he worked, he worked a full shift. He had to be out in the elements. It's got to be a big challenge for us, for me, especially because he had to, especially because he had to stay dry, right, I mean, otherwise he was going to get really sick. So I was always looking for rain gear that wouldn't tear, that would actually work, keep him dry, something that was warm. We found fleece-lined jeans, which was pretty good, except that they would absorb water and sometimes they would get wet, especially on the bottom, and they'd get muddy. And his shoes, because he has special shoes that are built every year for him because he's diabetic and he only gets one pair a year. It's not like he can go out and buy extra shoes. That got to be a real challenge. I tried galoshes, which are hard to find, believe it or not. We tried a lot of different things.

Often he would come home and this is when we lived in the apartment. I mean thank God, because he would come home and he'd park down in the garage. He'd come up the elevator, he'd stand in the hallway the interior hallway, outside of our door, and he'd be completely drenched with water and mud. And he'd be completely drenched with water and mud and somehow I'd have to take his clothes, his jacket, his hat which would usually be sopping wet his gloves, his interior jacket, maybe a sweatshirt. Underneath that he was usually soaked to the skin. I mean, let's face it, everything was always really heavy and the only thing that I could really do was to go and put it over the shower door or in the shower or something and hope that it would dry off in time for tomorrow, or I could run it down to the laundry room downstairs, but I always had more than one day's worth of clothes for him. So rain was really a challenge.

And then there was me getting through the rainstorm at night, trying to stay dry and trying to figure out something to do with my horse, something to do with my horse. Now, as he got older, it got to be more challenging because he wanted to go out of his stall. A lot of the horses just stayed in their stalls at night, but he was used to me coming and he was used to going outside with me. And so in the last, I guess, year or two, what I would do is I would take him out of his stall and we would go and sit in front of my friend's stall so we could talk to her and I would hold his mixture which was a wet soppy mixture of grain, and his supplements and whatnot, mixed with warm water, on my lap and he would eat it. He wasn't always the neatest eater. He'd get it all over me and I started taking a big towel with me so I could wipe myself down and wipe him down and we'd sit there and then he'd be calm enough to go back to his stall and eat his hay and his carrots and whatnot.

But it got to be really difficult every time it rained. Plus it was cold. I mean, you're in a barn and it's windy and breezy and it's cold. Anyway, those are my rain stories. Of course I still miss my horse desperately stories. Of course I still miss my horse desperately. I would wade through waist-high mud every day to see him again. But I realized that this year I don't have to worry about the rain so much. Of course there's the driving in it and going out and trying not to slip and slide. But anyway, those are my rain stories. We don't have to deal with snow here, so I wouldn't know what to do with that. I guess I'd get used to it. Somebody would tell me what to do, but I know we do need the rain and all the plants are happier when it rains.

We had Halloween. We had some trick-or-treaters. They were very cute. I had about 85 trick-or-treaters. I always kind of keep a loose count. The kids are really cute. There's one boy that came. I guess he was probably about I want to say he was somewhere maybe around 11. And he took his mask off when he came to the door and he said trick or treat. And he said I've been waiting to come to this house all day and I gave him some extra candy. He was by himself, but a lot of the parents and the kids said they really liked the decorations. I was disappointed because we didn't have more kids come by. It seemed a little quiet here, but it was a lot of fun. It really was.

It was kind of a challenging week. I was kind of tired, but it's a lot of fun. And there's somebody in our neighborhood that's already taken down. They took down their Halloween decorations the next day and they've already put up their Christmas decorations, which I think is well. I call them the overachievers anyway, which I think is well. I call them the overachievers anyway, that's my nickname for them. I don't know them personally, but I think that's an overach. Love Christmas too.

I'm just going to be a little bit slower taking down the Halloween stuff because, honestly, this is a lot of work and I was going to start on it today but it was a little chilly outside and I wasn't very motivated. So I probably won't get a lot done this week. But the big stuff I have to take the boxes out of the garage and bring them to the front and then you know, oh my gosh. So yeah, I'm not looking forward to that. But I admit I am a little tired of looking at them too, because it's really hard. I can't turn on the sprinklers so I have to go around and water everything with the hose so it doesn't die, because it has been really hot and I guess, well, it didn't rain enough today. I don't think to really soak anything. We'll see what the weather is the rest of the week.

I also want to give a shout out to Anderson Cooper's podcast All there Is. If you're a regular listener, you know that I've talked about this before. He started his third season. He calls it a season. I think he does maybe eight or ten episodes in a row, row and then he'll stop. But he just started his third season and he's done, I think, three or four episodes, but this week's episode.

If you know me, you know that I'm familiar with grief obviously with my own grief. Familiar with grief, obviously with my own grief, and I always kind of, I guess, studying it in a way and trying to learn from others' grief. I mean, I guess that's the right way to say it. I guess I thought in my own mind that I was trying to learn I was. How can I say this? I guess I thought in my own mind that I was very well-spoken and very precise and thoughtful about communicating my own grief, right.

But I listened to the people that he's had as guests on his podcast and you know almost all of us have experienced loss and almost all of us have experienced great loss, something that really cuts us to the core. Some of these guests I'm in awe of what they've gone through and the way that they are able to communicate their feelings and communicate what they've learned and how they put it together, how they have learned to live with it, how they've learned to live with it is so inspiring to me and there's so much richness in these episodes, even though sometimes they're hard to actually listen to. But the episode this week is with a woman who is a Holocaust survivor. She was at Auschwitz and she's 93 years old. I think, first of all, it's really it's going to be really sad when we don't have anybody still alive in this world who um experienced that firsthand, because I think there's a lot of benefit to people hearing about that experience directly, hearing about that experience directly, and sure there'll be history books and books written and movies and stories and poems and recordings and stuff.

But I don't know if it's the same thing and I think about my own grief and sometimes the loss that I've experienced. I knew that this episode with Anderson was going to be with this woman. I started listening to it and she lost her parents. She lost her parents, she lost her brothers, she lost her sister. How do you even deal with that kind of loss, on top of seeing the rest of the human destruction?

And I told myself I don't think I can listen to this episode. I think this is too much. I mean, sometimes you have to protect yourself and you have to protect your heart. I'll say, look, I can't put myself through this. There's no valid reason for me to put myself through this. But and I don't think it's for everyone, I really don't. But I think she explains things, obviously that happened to her and that's hard to listen to. But I think she also talks about how she's gone on to live her life and I don't think it's been easy for her in any way at all. But I think that there's value in the episode and value to the conversation in the episode and value to the conversation.

Maybe that's not a beginner episode, maybe that's something you work up towards, but I still encourage people that I know, people that feel grief, people that have experienced loss and people that have a hard time. I mean, let's face it, we all have a hard time with loss, but I think Anderson's really done a great job with the topic of Reef. I also think that if you've listened to his episodes the first and second season and listening to this third season I feel really, you know, I feel I just want to give him a hug because I can see how hard he's struggling still with the loss of his father and then his brother and then his mother, and how that's really stymied him. But it all helps put into perspective my loss and my grief and sometimes I feel like my grief is too much to really deal with. And then I hear about people like this woman who survived at Auschwitz, and I don't think that you can compare and you can't discount your own experiences in any way, but it does put it into perspective for me and that's what I've learned from that this week.

So, on that happy note, yeah, let's go back to rain. Anyway, it's been a week, it's been a busy week for me and it's been obviously a week of reflection, and there's nothing wrong with reflection, but you have to also add in some fun time. So I'm going to try to go do something fun now, and I hope that you all had a good Halloween and you're looking forward to the holidays now why say that it's? Oh my gosh, it's going to be here before we know it. Anyway, next week we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me. If you like this episode, please follow the Only Child Diaries podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on and consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page Only Child Diaries or Facebook Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallace and these are the Only Child Diaries Only Child Diaries, thank you.