Virtual Brush Box

Awareness of the outside world. Happy March 32nd! “By the way, April Fools is cancelled tomorrow. Keep your jokes to yourself because this whole year has been one already. We tired. Tomorrow is March 32nd.” Chris J. Suggs @chrisjsuggs. As far as I can discover, this was originally posted on the old Twitter. It is reposted various elsewheres. While I try to cite items that are available in open spaces, this was too on point to pass up. Note, this was posted in 2020, as far as I can tell. Yet, it is still relevant for 2026.

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Edible book made a tortilla cover, muenster cheese slice pages, and muenster cheese trimming lettering. The blue box is a platform to keep the light brown-colored book from disappearing into the hay.

As I have said before, this is the only point I have ever seen to April Fool’s. I remain steadfast in my dislike of this day. Archive [Why I Hate April Fool’s 2012 – 2025]

Previous Edible Books

[Putting the Edible in Book for 2025]

[Edible Book 2024, Food Art]

[Edible Book] 2023

Devour a good book today!

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. Trans Day of Visibility. Particularly in light of the IOC setting the calendar back 100 years.

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Rodney has now decided he does our morning pasture walks at liberty, thank you very much. A few weeks ago we had one of those warm evening/cold nights that often result in morning shenanigans. [Predicting Mission Success]

Other barn minion brought out a leadrope to use on the walk back for the first few laps. Just to be sure. When approached, Rodney blew right past. Nope. Not me. Don’t do leadropes anymore.

Milton continues to hum along. Most of the time. Yesterday, he marched past the turnaround on the first lap. I had done my monthly 5K yesterday and was moving slowly. Did he ignore the cookie stop because I was not in front, the way I usually am? Did he think there were hay scraps to be had back at the barn? Dunno. I called his name. He stopped. Bravo.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. Billboard: Bruce Springsteen Lends ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ to ACLU For Birthright Citizenship Video Ahead of Supreme Court Case, Kaufman 3/23/2026.

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Tractor Supply Company has opened another store near to me. There are now three Tractor Supply stores within 10 miles of my house. That seems excessive.

I’m sure there is a VP of Customer Alignment who has an algorithm that optimizes store location per population density per expected retail engagement per cost. Or words to that effect. Some calculation told them this was a good idea.

I don’t get it. If I buy horse treats from here, I won’t buy them from there. They don’t get any more money from us with another store.

(Given the rate the Cookie Meister doles out cookies, we want small and low calorie. We used to buy larger, fancy treats for trailering, but Milton didn’t care and Rodney didn’t always eat them. But I digress.)

I went to the new store. Looks like every other Tractor Supply.

Onwards!
Katherine

Cats of the outside world. “Faron is a minor animal character in the Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz who first appeared on May 23, 1961.” Peanuts Wiki: Faron.

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Quad Cat. Quad Dog.

Quad Clowder. Quad Pack.

Quad Cat scratches a tree. Quad Cat in a box.

Quad Basset Hound

Process Notes

For day two of The Center for Cartoon Studies: One-Week Cartooning Workout! “Doodle out two different characters” & use an eight-panel format. I took these two ideas and ignored the rest of the directions.

There are six more days in the workshop, but this will be my last post. The rest is prep of a specific comic, e.g. layout, printing, distribution, and so on. Not sure what I was thinking when I decide this would be a project. Oh well, at least I got two blog posts out of it. VT #1 [Sunrise Sunset]

Cartoon or Comic?

Cartoon is a single panel. Comic is multi-panel.

Or

Comic is print. Cartoon is animation.

Either way, this would be a comic. However, the workshop uses the term cartoon, so I went with that.

Onwards!
Katherine

Fiction of the outside world. A meme that has stuck in my head. Are you just trying to order a milkshake from a Home Depot? “I feel like some people need to relearn Genre Expectations… “Man, this tragedy sucks!!! Why didn’t they just do XYZ, then everything could have ended happily!!” well, then it wouldn’t be a tragedy, would it. “Man, this lighthearted teen romcom is terrible, it’s so sappy and unrealistic!!” Well, yeah. If it had been gritty and dark, it wouldn’t have been a lighthearted romcom, would it. Is the writing actually bad or are you just trying to order a milkshake from a Home Depot” tumblr: bumblebeebats, Sep 29, 2023.

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🔨🏬🔨

Alice watched the couple drive away with pvc pipes lashed to the side of the truck and the ditch digger tagging along behind on its dedicated trailer. She wondered, as she always did, how the job was going to go. The couple seemed pleasant enough. Would they continue to be nice to each other as the day worn on and the job took longer than they had expected? House repair always took longer than people thought it was going to. Or would that pleasant couple be shouting and kicking dirt at each other by lunchtime?

Bob wandered the rental section of the hardware, amazed at what was available to a person who could produce a driver’s license and credit card. The amount of whirring, spinning, heavy cutting blades on the various equipment could do fearsome damage to a person. Either to one’s self or to another. Either unintentionally or deliberately. Okay, maybe his friends were right. Maybe he had been watching too many horror movies lately.

Chris knew she stood out in her pink coveralls while waiting for service at the pro counter of the hardware store. It annoyed her to be confirming gender stereotypes, but the pink was useful marketing. She had always been good with her hands. While growing up, she moved from rebricking the garden wall to fixing the washing machine to refinishing a new bathroom. During her teen years, neighbors began to pay her for small jobs. As an adult, she turned this ability into a profitable home repair business. When she started, she knew she would be getting grief for being a woman in a man’s world. Might as well lean into it. She dressed butch enough to be trusted with manly tasks, but femme enough to be relatable to the women who hired her. Turns out a lot of female householders were tired of being condescended to by repair personnel.

Daddyda pushed the cart carrying his shopping and his granddaughter. There was plenty of room for the two cans of paint and a toddler. In a few years, she would be too big for the cart. T-ball and soccer will replace cart rides. Or maybe tiaras and tap dance. Or maybe both. Whatever. He was up for it. When she was grown would she remember going on errands with her grandfather?

🔨🏬🔨

Afterword
Imagination exercise courtesy of The Errant Moon, [Faces In The Crowd, Procedure]

Some of these are IRL people with made-up stories. Some are fabrications from up soup to nuts. I do remember riding in grocery store carts pushed by my grandmother.

Archives [Fiction, Faces In The Crowd]

Onwards!
Katherine

Photography of the outside world. I recently noticed that NBA courts have boxes painted on the floor of the end zones for photographers. Was not able to find a specific link to describe this.

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Last week, winter dropped in for a moment. Sunday was high of 77o, Monday had snow and a low of 32o. Back to 70s later in the week, and 80s on the weekend. Per timeanddate.com.

Snow on grass in our front lawn.

Snow on plants in our front lawn.

Snow on trees and bushes at the top of Double Oak Mountain, the high point of a local highway. Through my truck window at a stop light. The roads were clear.

Process Notes

Phone camera.

Onwards!
Katherine

Equines of the outside world. Horse Network: Random Mule Facts, Berry 2023. Bells, but not the kind you are thinking of. Hat tip to Elise Mulerider.

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Logistics

I have not had a saddle seat lesson since early November. [A Lovely Lesson That Will Have To Last A While]

First, my wrist. I wasn’t taking any lessons. [Doctor’s Appointment, Wrist Update]

Then, getting ready for show. Lesson effort was going toward hunter/jumper. Partly time & expense, partly I didn’t want to cross the streams. [The Plan, AHJA Kick Off Show 2026]

The week after my show, the Saddlebreds were away.

The week after that, I was under the weather. [The Twiddling of the Thumbs]

Which brings us to the end of March, over four months since I last sat on an ASB.

Quandry

Do I go back to saddle seat lessons?

I want to. I love the horses. It has been nice to have a barn home. The riding is fun. I think it would be a hoot to do both. [Show Report, Other Horses]

However.

The transition back to hunter/jumper was harder than I expected.

It’s comes down to the canter. The ASB canter is contained, and upward, and – ideally – slow. The h/j canter is none of those things. It is open and forward and fast.

(Neither is better or worse, just different. But I digress.)

Also, saddle seat steering is all about making straight lines during your pass, optimizing your turns, and avoiding other horses. Traffic management is a massive skill requirement. I have had to learn to place myself in relation to other moving objects. You don’t, as far as I can tell, have to place yourself in relation to a fixed spot, other than for the occasional equitation pattern.

The jumping canter relies on more precise steering. You want to be straight at the jump. You want to aim for the center of the jump. Taking a slightly wider line around a turn might mess up the striding. You want to have a feeling for exactly where the horse’s feet are so you can coordinate the feet & the fence into a compatible space. All at a big, fast canter.

This is all in hindsight. I figured a canter is a canter, right?

My saddle seat canter is excellent. I could get my leads (mostly), sit the canter, and ask for as slow and as pretty a canter as the horse was capable of. I thought I was slick. It didn’t help me at the shows, because saddle seat is all about the trot, but it was nice to be good at some part of it.

So, color me surprised when I struggled with the h/j canter. Now that I’ve gotten a better grip on the h/j canter, should I go back to the ASBs? Can my brain encompass both canters? Will saddle seat mess me up for jumping?

I have no idea.

Onwards!
Katherine