Better Days

I think every time I post a new post, it's sort of sickeningly happier than the previous one. Well, too bad, because I'm still happy.

I was talking to a friend the other day and we were talking about how the decade of your twenties is sort of this weird purgatory where you sometimes feel like a man without a home. You are out of college, off on your own, and hopefully finally out of your parents' house, but you haven't yet quite established your own home and your own set of tradtitions etc. The holidays, for example are still typically spent at your parent's house and even if you are married etc. , your house/apt/whatever is still new and full of hand me down furniture and crap from Ikea. You might not have children yet or even know if you want them, but those ideas dance around in your head uncertainly. Finding a job and establishing yourself and your life and your habits is key to making a home- it's not just the dwelling, but the lifestyle around it. At the end of our conversation, we were both saying that even though we aren't married/in serious relationships with anyone, we finally feel like we are "home" in Virginia. He is from up north, and I am from Georgia, but we were both discussing how blissfully awesome this state is and how much we love where we are in our lives right now. Of course, having someone to cuddle up with at night and talk about that with would be fun, but it was clear to both of us that it's not just the dwelling that makes you "home"- it's so much more than that. I haven't felt at home in a LONG time. Not in Atlanta, and not anywhere else really, but here, I feel home, and I love it.

Virginia is/has everything that makes me feel like me. Today I spent the morning taking the dogs on a walk through the woods- no leashes required. Then I walked back to my house- where I feel safe leaving my doors unlocked (i know i know) and gave them baths, then did some laundry and hung out and read a few magazines in my quietly sun soaked living room, got myself dressed and drove down back roads to a lunch date at a little restaurant off the beaten path, then hopped in the truck- checked out a few gorgeous trout streams and mountain views, picked up some apples at a local orchard, then hiked up to a waterfall, came back to the farm to feed the horses and say hey to Jazz, and then home to cook some dinner. Just a blissfully simple and absolutely beautiful day. No stress, no traffic and no drama. It's so refreshing to have a day like that- and the cool thing about it is, every day can be like that here. It's just where I am supposed to be and I am soooo thankful that I listened when all signs pointed to here.

It's so cliche to tell people to "do what makes you happy"- but I am a believer and as silly as I feel saying this- I hope maybe that someone reading this will just take that step that they are afraid to take and make their happiness happen. It's worth all the hardship in between. SO worth it to do what makes you "you". That's my sermon for this beautiful Sunday- find your home and enjoy it. :)

it's fall ya'll

it seems like forever since i have sat down and written an actual post, although the little mini ones float around in my head sometimes and i wish i had my computer handy, but then i get distracted by something else, as usual and what could have been short and coherent becomes a mega marathon post- like this one will probably be!

anyway, let's start with the children. doodle is thoroughly transitioned to farm dog and watching her chase deer to the woods with her hackles raised and barking her big ole scary bark delights me. she is so happy and she loves being outside. the funniest thing she has had to learn and still doesn't quite get is how to get in/out of pasture fences. she's a little tall to go under the lowest board sometimes and watching her try to scoot her rather large black behind underneath is hilarious. once or twice she has slipped between the first and second boards but she can't seem to master this consistently. one day on one of our walks, she got "stuck" in a pasture after taking off to chase the guinea hens and all the coaxing in the world by me just couldn't get her out. i refused to walk alllll the way back to the other side and open the gate for her. those of you that know doodle, know that she is quite vocal and demanding and makes her feelings apparent. she was absolutely beside herself that she was stuck in this four board "jail" as rylie and i made our way down the road back to the trail. finally i stopped giggling at her chorus of sad dog songs and went back, got down on my knees and showed her how to crawl on her belly under neath the fence. you would have thought she had won the lottery when she got up on the other side. i laughed so hard and thought to myself, "damn, you wouldn't survive a day in the wild" and took her back home to feed her dinner.

rylie boo loves the farm as well, but can't really be trusted out of my site. she is overzealous about most things in life, so the same goes for greeting EVERYONE who passes in front of us, checking out allllll the animals, smelling all the smells, eating numerous types of feces and rolling in unimaginably smelly substances. she prefers to be a biohazard most times, and is currently getting over a three day vomit/diarrhea spree of unknown origin. she is one high maintenance poodle!! but after i have cleaned all of the nasty stank off of her every single day, she is quite the cuddler- so it's worth it.

jazz has been doing very well and has put on a good bit of weight and muscle. she looks like an actual competition horse most days. she has given me a good scare lately though when she suddenly became really unbalanced feeling, decided to buck me off (from a walk- in one buck) and then exhibit a variety of neuro looking symptoms which of course sent me into a tailspin of worry thinking she had EPM or lymes or something worse. i finally mustered up the courage to call the vet, well actually text him (thank God he texts because he would have heard the tears in my voice if i had to call) and he came out the next morning to give her a full phsyical and neuro exam. of course, like when your car is making a funny noise and you take it into to the shop where it immediately stops making the noise, she was an absolute model of perfection in soundess and passed her neuro exam with flying colors. the final outcome was lumbrosacral back soreness with an Rx of methocarbamol and horners symdrome, which is a temporary disruption of the vestibular system in horses (and also dogs and cats sometimes) which can be caused my a variety of things and explains her two day ear droop and nostril weirdness and unbalanced feeling and look on the longe. i absolutely LOVE our vet at plain dealing, and his calm approach and lack of histrionics about anything- it kept me calm and his methodical exam made me feel like we really were getting to the bottom of things. before he came out, i told almost no one that she wasn't herself  because i couldn't handle the sadness and thoughts about what i would have to deal with if i lost her, or she had any sort of debilitating illness. i LOVE that horse, i love her unaffectionate naughty personality and i love the bond we have between us. as i read on facebook the night before about a friend who got the "your best option is euthanasia" diagnoses on her own mare, i could feel my heart breaking for her and for her lovely young mare. sometimes i feel so lucky to love an animal so deeply, and sometimes i have to sit back and realize what a risk it is, but anything worth loving, is worth the risk of losing, and i feel like i know that better than almost anyone sometimes. i am glad i have the capacity to love like i do, so many people go through life without truly loving anything or anyone and i'm glad i'm not one of them!

speaking of "love", my friends and family have almost forced totally encouraged me to start dating again. it has been fun and interesting to say the least. i have been on four dates in about three weeks. two of which were awesome, one of which was nice, but nothing special, and one of which was a second date with my first date. i sat down the other day and did the math on how long its been since i have been on a date. umm, my last "first date" was 2005. scary? yes. i'm quite sure my level of awkwardness on first dates perhaps exceeds any measure, but i do have to say that there are some really nice guys out there. which is refreshing. i have also lost a good bit of weight lately and am feeling more self confident than usual- which is nice when you are about to embark on a blind date! two of the four guys i have dated are definitely worth a second date, so thats 50% success? one i really like, and the other i really really like, but my rusty "he might be a player" alarm is sort of sounding on him. i mean, i 'm not seeing how my first name looks with their last names anytime soon, (yes, ALL girls do that) but it is nice to have a connection with and attraction to someone. i realized that, in my old age, (28) and perhaps through the process of having a marriage fail, i have learned a lot about myself and what i find to be important in a relationship. also i found out that i have good legs, lol- because all four of the guys have commented on that (thank you horseback riding!) anyway, after being out of the "game" for six years, i had to make a sort of mental priority list of what i found to be important in a potential date/relationship. here are the things i realized that i find to be important: (feel free to laugh hysterically at my weirdness and fondness for list making)
1. kind, sparkly eyes attract me first
2. i insist on straight and clean teeth- shallow i know, but i can't handle it.
3. proper grammar. don't get me wrong, i don't mind someone who drops the f-bomb or uses slang terms when being funny or texting, but if you "want to know where i live at"- youre done. done.
4. the ability to converse about topics other than yourself, although i am interested in you, there are other things in this world. bonus points for knowing about trees, cooking, gardens, animals (especially birds and dogs), music, environmental issues and energy efficiency, firearms, movies, and sports.
5. dressing yourself appropriately and attractively and in a manner consistent with current weather conditions. extra points for having additional outerwear on hand and offering it to me when im cold.
6. liking my dogs and interacting with them. bonus points for letting the poodle give you kisses.
7. taking the 10 minutes it would take to actually google "three day eventing" so that you can understand what i'm talking about when i describe my life/job. extra gold stars for actually being interested in my passion.
8. doing something that you enjoy for a living, or making an attempt at it. i do not require a huge bank account at all, but i don't want to hear about how miserable you are every day.
9. laughing and making me laugh- this one is HUGE
10. giving good hugs
11. being tall

that is all. not really that picky i don't think!

so here i am, i think probably happier than i've ever been, watching the leaves change on the trees, and realizing that i am probably very unprepared for winters in VA, but enjoying the fall and wishing someone would call and ask me out on a date to go find a good pumpkin. it's fun to be a single girl in this town, with a job i love, a great place to live, and wonderful new friends and old ones who will laugh with me and sometimes chastise me for my awkwardness when i call them to tell them the details of a date. there's so much more to tell concerning my job and my new found love and respect for MOST of the eventing community, but this post is getting too long.  i will sit down sometime this week and post about that! until then, go get yourself a pumpkin and take a drive in the country listening to your favorite song- it's the best feeling ever. :)

a simple little kind of free

i was driving down the road to charlottesville the other day and this john mayer song came on, and i haven't really listened to ole john much since college, but this sung rung true with me and my favorite part said:
Nothing to do
Nowhere to be
A simple little kind of free
Nothing to do
No one but me
And that's all I need...

i haven't updated the blog in a while because there was so much to say and i just couldn't put all the words down in front of me. finally, i have wrapped my head around the last few months and gotten life all sorted out and am finding a new happiness, and wow, it's light and free and graceful and welcomed.

when i last updated i was sort of realizing that my marriage was not one that was headed for the 50 year mark, or even the 5 year one, and though i like to keep this blog generally related to the "children", it does act as a personal diary of sorts, and this huge life makeover definitely affects me and the four legged kids!

basically, all in the matter of a week, ryan and i decided to end our marriage amicably and respectfully. we are fine and we are nice and we are fun, but being married just wasn't working. it was totally mutual and i think and hope we will both go on to find a kind of happiness that we both deserve. so the day after our three year wedding anniversary, we decided to split. the day after that, i decided that finishing up my second degree and living in atlanta just didn't really do it for me anymore. i have never really done anything "risky" with my life, but i dove in head first and started searching for jobs in the horse industry. as made obvious in this blog, i am a horse girl to my soul and the older i get, the more i realize that doing what makes you truly happy is in fact, important. i value less and less the things that we are told to think are important and more and more i find myself satisfied by a life lived outdoors, surrounded by horses and dogs and great gardens and good people and the idea of an hour long commute in atlanta traffic every morning just to get to work at a job that i took because i "should" just seems to me to be a life lived untruthfully. i am just not cut out for city/suburb living and that's become more and more ok with me! i found a few job prospects on the internet and went to sleep and slept like a baby for the first time in months. the weight of who i was as the married girl in school living in atlanta was just too heavy for me and the dreams of who i could be as the girl living on a farm somewhere doing what i loved every day flashed through my head and i woke up just knowing that it was time for a change.

i spent a few days weighing options and  praying and praying and praying some more about following HIS plan rather than my own and as usual, in my running joke with Jesus, i asked for my burning bush since i am often too dense to listen to what He is trying to tell me. i wanted to make sure that these ideas about changing my career and lifestyle permanently were no just mine and that they were right for me- i knew everyone would probably think i was running from something, and even though what others think doesn't often bear much weight with my decision making process, i wanted to convince myself that i was running TO something better- and better because God wanted it for me. for the first or maybe second time ever, i got a burning bush. no sooner did i say amen than my phone rang and on the other end was a friendly voice wanting to talk to me about a position at an eventing barn in Virginia called Plain Dealing Farm. as chillbumps rose up on my skin, i thought to myself, "I have heard of this farm before..."

after that phone call i got invited up for an interview, and i scrambled to send my very best horse related references notice that all this was happening so fast and could they please answer the phone if a 434 number called! the job was my dream job, on a dream of a farm, in a dream of a place, with a dream of a benefits package, but it was real, and i wanted it.  i could take my horse, i could bring my dogs, riding would be part of the work day, and traveling to horse trials all over the country and possibly internationally was all int eh job description. my excitement grew for the interview and i filled my family and close friends in on what was going on. i drove up with mom, promising myself and her that i wouldn't accept the position just because it had to do with horses, it had to be perfect, and it had to fit my life and there were just a lot of "ifs" that had to fall into place. i have seen many a beautiful farm, and many a beautiful horse and many a tree lined drive, but i got out of the car, and i just knew i was home. literally, i knew. i worked a day at the farm and did the riding part of my interview and they offered me the job in the tack room just after that. i accepted. and here we are...

as im writing this i am sitting in a holiday inn in maryland. we are up at the loch moy horse trials this weekend and we brought four of the six competition horses. in the last two weeks i have had to say goodbye to all of my family and friends in georgia, the state i have called home my entire life, move an entire house full of furniture, two dogs, and a horse and a barn full of stuff 11 hours north to virginia, move in my new house "pine cottage", on the edge of the farm, start a new job, make friends, learn a whole new farm full of horses, dogs, guinea hens, peacocks, chickens, and proliferate skunk population (thats another story), learn every detail for the care of six upper level event horses, how to drive a stick shift mini truck, how to feel comfortable driving a 3 horse, 4 horse, or 6 horse gooseneck trailer and dually down curvy mountain roads carrying horses worth more than my life and everything in it, the feed and care for all the other farm horses (including one very special retired silver medalist we call the danimal, aka winsome adante), relearn how to put studs in, give IM and IV shots, set jumps, get the skunk smell off of a 2* horse and his flymask, coax a snake from the indoor arena, get fresh black petroleum based fence paint off of a 3* horse for the THIRD day in a row, clip and braid all the competition horses, weed and plant a garden, try to design an obstacle course difficult enough to keep a large black dog named doodle OUT of my bed (i haven't won yet), learn my way around scottsville and charlottesville, learn how to NOT make a face when Dave Matthews walks in to have pizza at the obscure little lunch place where you are eating and then you subsequently find out he is your neighbor, also not make a face when olympic/rolex event riders waltz in the barn and say "that horse in the second pasture is running around like crazy" (oh yes, that would be mine), make food to take to 4th of july parties to hopefully make more friends and not feel homesick for the ones i left in atl. and don't get to see, ride my horse in the evenings as the sun sets over the hills and the buzz of the daily farm activities is replaced by chirping crickets and then go home at the end of the day every day and get to watch the dogs run around in a huge yard, fence and leash free, and enjoy themselves and refuse to come inside until they are covered in mud and some currently unnamed smell that i can't figure out, give them baths in the hose outside, and then beat the thunderstorms inside to crash in the bed and listen to the rain on my metal roof. that's just a sampling of the last two weeks, and i've never been so tired and so happy all at once. as soon as my head hits the pillow i am asleep, but as soon as my alarm goes off, i am ready for another day and thankful for it.

i miss my friends, i miss my family and i miss the familiarity of everything in GA, but i can't imagine a better place to be right now, and a cooler town to be in, or a better farm to live on. thank God for my burning bush that day, and that i had sense enough to see it.

tomorrow is an early morning- up at five, so more to come later. :)

She's back!

I had a dressage lesson Sunday night, after the infamous Saturday night ride full of the previously described capriole-crowhop combination. I was steeling myself for the mare to pull out her bag of tricks for the lesson, since when we ended the ride on Saturday (on a good note), she still had plenty of energy left to offer, despite the 97 degree heat at 7pm! Being the show-off that she is sometimes however, she put her dressage panties on and we had a great lesson, given that this was only my third ride since her three week vacay to get over the beginnings of ulcers (that we originally thought was back/hip pain) and her allergy season. Since this is only my second spring with her, I have now learned my lesson the hard way that she is very sensitive to the weather changes between winter and spring- hindsight is 20/20, but next year I will be watching her like a hawk for the first sign of any discomfort! It's hard to explain how she can be stoic and dramatic all at once- but now I know what to look for with her body language and attitude so that we never have to have a May like this again!

Sometimes it's really hard to explain to people that don't ride, or that don't ride your horse, how good it feels to feel them moving freely and swinging underneath you. The way YOU know they move when they are feeling good and working correctly. Mare has a fabo walk, big and swinging, we even got an 8 on it in our very first dressage test ever, so I am not messing with that gait at all, besides to make her slightly more adjustable in it. Her trot has gone from "track trot" to much more correct, with the steps being larger and more rythmic, but the last time I rode her before her weeks off, I could feel it was NQR! I could feel a shortness in her hind end and she was trying, but didn't want to accept consistent contact, she was just defensive to my aids. It scared me that she was hurting somewhere, and I almost dreaded getting back on her this week and finding that all the work we had done in the trot was going to be gone. But Voila, Jazz had not forgotten how to use her body, even though she lost a ton of weight so quickly and her topline disappeared faster than a plate of bacon left unattended with Doodle! There was a week or so where she looked absolutely ghastly to me- like a rescue horse. It's amazing how these elegant, athletic and seemingly strong animals are at the same time so incredibly sensitive physically. For about three days, I would pull her out of her stall or the pasture and groom her and she would just hang her head and stand there with a leg propped, accentuating her thinness with a hip bone sticking out. This was NOT my horse, she didn't even take the chance to make mean faces at me while I brushed her, or try nudge me off balance with her nose while I picked her feet, or turn around and stare at me waiting expectantly for a cookie, and she just stood there- still- not something she has ever been guilty of doing. After a year and a half of trying to teach her the command "stand", I wanted my dancing in the crossties, lip-pursing, face making horse back. I spent about three days that week just leaking tears and little prayers for her to feel better and start gaining weight back.

After talking to a friend about my ride on Saturday, she laughed and said, well it sounds like she far more well behaved WITH ulcers than without. That may be true, but for some well-behaved = boring and there's nothing less fun to me than a boring horse! I love that mare for her personality, even her uncanny ability to find new ways to launch herself into the air. So Sunday's short lesson was such a relief, it felt like the first time I had breathed out in a few weeks. She felt great and I know the fitness and her topline will come back with regular work. As we cooled out, I whispered a "thank you" prayer in the wind and gave her a quick grooming. I painted on her hoof dressing and she knocked me in the back of the head with her nose; I just smiled. She's back.

my mare behaves much better WITH ulcers

                 clearly she's feeling much better and took her three weeks off to perfect this move:

         

this, immediately followed by crowhop = Jazz

yay?

monsters under the bed

[first of all: diet update- i've lost 6.8 pounds in 9 days, even with the popcorn and one bowl of cereal eaten when jazz was colicking. shes fine now but im treating her for ulcers.]


now for the monsters and ultimately, a life lesson...

yesterday i was making the bed and i spotted this creepy little creature that had a bunch of legs and a split tail- about .5 inches long and like a scary combination of a centipede and a scorpion. i kilt it- ded.

this morning i was sort of in that half asleep/half awake state because invariably i wake up about 6 minutes before my alarm goes off wondering what time it is and how much longer i can sleep and it was THEN, that i felt something crawling on my arm. i brushed it away and tried to see what it was but it was still kind of dark and i am SO blind without my glasses/contacts. ryan turned the light on and i looked for it, couldn't find it, and decided to change the sheets today. later when i was changing the sheets i found its little carcass- same offender as yesterday- creepy leggy split tailed thing. ewww. after changing the sheets i e-mailed ryan about pest control and he emailed our pest control guy who described the monsters under and in my bed as "silverfish" and said they feed on paper and sometimes fabric. well GREAT. do you know whats under my bed? i keep boxes of old cards and letters and important newspaper and magazine clippings in a big ole Coach purse box under my bed called the 'special box'- i mean, dating all the way back to early high school. all PAPER.

i immediately began to have a little panic attack about opening the box and visions of tons of those bugs crawling everywhere. i shot off up the stairs armed with OFF (it was all i could find in the way of bug killing weapons), a dust rag and "the cone"- the little handheld vacuum. i tucked the dust ruffle up and began pulling out the various boxes full of memories. the first one i came to was a crane stationary box with all of the proofs of our wedding pics- looked through those and didn't find any bugs. opened the BIG 'special box' and began to dig through all that stuff. tons of memories there- mostly fond ones and some hard to think about. some of those cards and notes seemed like they were simply from a different lifetime. i didn't find any bugs, thank goodness, but man did i begin to remember some things i had totally forgotten about. people that used to be such integral parts of my life, some still are, some i've lost touch with, some i grew apart from, and some i just don't even know anymore at all. its strange to think though, that at one time, they were important enough to me that i kept little notes or relics to remember how our lives were intertwined. sad, in a way, that so many of those little memories are so distant now. but also peaceful, because i love to see how the people that are/were important to me are happy and have great lives with people that they love. i mean, facebook really does have benefits! i felt sort of honored that i got to be a part of their lives too and i hope whatever small part i played in it was a good one.

the last box i came across was a small shoe box, it originally held the shoes i wore on my wedding day,  and inside was every single card or note that we got from the guests at our showers and wedding. so many of them held great advice, or funny sayings, or were just simple expressions of love. i wish i had thought to read these every year on our anniversary or something- the words in those cards were/are important and wise, and i wish i had listened more to what they had to say.

the monsters under the bed didn't turn out to be monsters at all, but a poignant reminder of what is really important in life, the love of family and friends and memories of those that leave an indelible mark on your heart, one way or another.

Day 5

Woke up feeling much better this morning! Yesterday was sort of a bust. I never gave in to the cereal, but I did eat popcorn at the movies with friends, no butter or anything, but it's def. NOT on the list of approved foods. Sometimes though, I think if you deprive yourself of everything you enjoy, you will just go nuts. So even though i felt guilty for eating it, I now feel even more motivated today to do well and I started off the day with Kefir and green tea. I decided to add two days to the diet to make up for my popcorn trangressions- so now its the 19 day diet!

I have celery sticks and salmon on stand-by for lunch and oranges for a snack and I'm not sure about dinner yet, but we will see! I'm a little worried about this weekend since I will be at a horse show and staying in a hotel, but I am planning on taking some groceries with me and stocking up the mini fridge and cooler with plenty of choices so I don't end up not eating all day and then destroying my diet at night when we are finished up at the show. I am working the show as the chief XC fence judge and we usually relax after a long day with lots of beer- but I think beer will be easy to resist. I might look a little weird sipping my green tea while everyone else is chugging beers and chatting about which ULR's acted totally pretentious, but it's a small price to pay in exchange for being healthier and thinner!

Days 3 and 4

Day 4- I woke up on the wrong side of the bed I think. I didn't drink the warm water with lemon because the thought of it just seemed disgusting and I was running late for work and sleepy- even though I went to bed at 11:00- which is pretty early for me. When I got to work, I made some green tea and it was good, then I had some yogurt and strawberries- the texture of the yogurt seemed slimy and it bothered me- but I chalked it up to being in a "mood". I've realized that food choices for me are primarily texture based.  All I want today is cereal. That box of multi-grain cheerios has never looked so delicious. I decided to distract myself from cereal by pretending to shop on the internet- that worked for a while and I am not giving in to my cereal obsession! I'm not really all that hungry today- just nothing really looks good and I don't want to fall into my old habit of not eating all day because nothing looks good and then at like 4:45pm I am ravenous and dizzy and all of the sudden Zaxby's sounds like the most delicious and convenient choice on the planet! I am breaking habits slowly and forever hopefully- so I am making myself eat little meals but often- I just had some turkey- and it was gross and slimy. Everything is yucky today.

Day 3- this was a great day. i felt great and drank lots of water. I even found this handy website called eateggs.org that has tons of 17 day diet recipes for all cycles! Last night for dinner I made baked cauliflower with some spicy garlic seasoning and it was super yummy, along with cajun marinated tilapia and then.....
I made ZUCCHINI, which was delicious, and as I ate it, I sat there thinking to myself how yummy and healthy this dinner was, and how zucchini is my favorite food, second only to okra, and sometimes oreos. BUT THEN... I was reading in my book and found out that you can't have zucchini until the 3rd cycle!!! I SO messed up- and I was doing great! The only other slip-up I had was eating a peppermint by accident when Ryan handed it to me. So now I am all worried that the zucchini will have destroyed my two days of only certain carbs progress- and i LOVE zucchini- can I really go without it for 17 whole days? I'm not so sure- but I will try!

please pardon the 16 day interruption

yesterday i started the "seventeen day diet", which at first i assumed was just another fad diet that will come and go, but then, i started hearing that literally everyone that did it lost a good bit of weight in the first 17 days. so i was interested, however still assuming i would have to exist off of carrot broth and orange peels, or something terrifying like that, but when i talked ryan into buying me the book at barnes and noble the other night, it actually seems really reasonable and workable for my habits and lifestyle. and, i can do anything for 17 days- right?

the diet has three 17 day cycles, and the first cycle is much more strict about what you can and can't eat than the others, but the overall premise is to shock your metabolism a little bit, and destroy your addictions to sugar and "white, refined" carbs- while increasing your veggie and fruit intake along with lean poultry. this works great for my eating "style" because i love veggies and fruits, and after the first 17 days, i can add some starches back in, but hopefully will have broken my bread addiction. i also cannot handle diets that make you eat tons of meat- it disgusts me to eat meat/eggs every meal, so if i want to just have broccoli and brussels sprouts for dinner- i can. and....i can have as much as i want and i don't have to measure anything or count anything., yee haw for that!

so it's day two and i am actually feeling really good and energized, and i don't even want to murder anyone yet for a piece of bread, so lets hope this keeps up. the fructose is keeping my blood sugar steady which is great because i am not at all dizzy or headache-y like i was when i did atkins once, and the taste of something sweet really keeps the cravings for sugar at bay. i have had eggs for breakfast for the last two days and am already sick of them, but i can do yogurt and fruit or something tomorrow instead. those dang chickens just keep laying them, and i hate to let them go to waste!

you drink two glasses of green tea a day on this diet and they suggested truvia as a sweetener so i got some. i have to say i am very impressed by it. i am usually a splenda girl, but the truvia doesnt have the cloying sweetness or the bitter aftertaste that splenda does. yay.

most people lose about 20 pounds in the first 17 days, which is a lot! my body REALLY holds onto the pounds thanks to my less than healthy relationship with food for part of high school and college, so i am hoping for about a 12 pound loss to jump start myself on the way to my overall goal of losing about 50 pounds. i am hoping to be surprised by the scale, but am not going to be disappointed if its less than 20 pounds, since my body really enjoys disappointing me usually. even though some say a "fad" diet isn't really the best way to go long term, i know myself and my impatience. i need to see some results to have the motivation to stay with it, and 12 pounds would def. motivate me. i am going to check back in often and will weigh myself after the first seven days and report back.  

day 2 overall feeling: excited

while mom is away- we will play...

rolex recap and horse shopping details soon, but on to more pressing matters. i came home from kentucky and it seems like each of the four legged children had a surprise for me. doodle, the big black dog, broke a pottery vase with her weapon of mass destruction tail, rylie boo decided not to eat for three days and instead, just throw up on the couch intermittently, hannah, of hannah and montana the goldfish pair, passed away after 2.5 years, and then when i went to ride jazz, she was off in her back end. it looks and feels like her back, although we originally thought stifle. i looked at the video my trainer took, which is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pezbvSWq2k

i can see myself riding her much differently, trying to keep her in front of my leg and driving her with my seat- which is not usually a problem we have. she was also "diving" into transitions and not wanting to keep the contact- like she was protecting herself a bit. poor boo boo.

so we will have the chiroporactor/vet assess. she must have played hard while i was gone! grrr/sigh.

before i left for kentucky, we were preparing for our first real outing of the season, a beginner novice event with a novice derby round after. i still went to the show this weekend to watch a few rides, and was so bummed that i had to scratch her, because she would have LOVED that course! just her style! most of all, i want her to feel better- so she gets this week off and i will try to find a few other rides so that i don't get even more out of shape!

in order to start the week off on a good note however, i was reading something online that really hit home and it's going to be my thought for the week. the background is that this person has just gone through a rough time and decided to persue her dreams even when everyone in her life told her "you can't"- which we all know is one of my LEAST favorite phrases. she had this to say about it, and hopefully she won't mind me borrowing her wisdom to remind us all what is really important:

"Despite this, I am so happy. I have my life back. I have freedom, I have friends, and I've found who I am. I'm positive again, I've abandoned my anger and anxiety, and I'm content. I've figured out what's really important, and it's not things money can buy. It's how we live, the choices we make, the people, places, and animals we surround ourselves with."

the official itenerary

Barring any more catastrophic weather events, (there was already a tornado warning in Lexington today and all the horses had to be evacuated to the indoor arena at KHP) in Lexington or Atlanta, we will be on the road by 10:00am tomorrow. I am admittedly a weather wimp, and when the weather is scary like it has been all day, I spend a lot of time with the dogs in the closet under the stairs in our house- thank goodness for WiFi, or I would have had a very boring few hours lately. The weather this spring has been nothing to joke about though, with deaths all over the US and a reining barn in the Carolina's that lost several horses- I just can't imagine the devastation that I saw in those pictures, so don't make fun of me for my closet dwelling every time the storm sirens go off!

My friend Mck and I have a very busy few days ahead of us, but for anyone who is staying home this year, we promise to report about the trip and the horse shopping for Mck. We are staying with a dear friend named Shelly, who is in dental school at UK and has graciously allowed us to camp out in her one bedroom apartment in Lexington for the duration of our trip. Her husband, who still lives and works here while she is in school, has a birthday this weekend, and has decided to celebrate it with his own trip to Lexington, so he is coming up on Friday night, accompanied by a stowaway, my husband, who at the last minute decided to come to help him celebrate his birthday, and probably make sure that I don't bring another horse home since we are visiting many OTTB's for sale, which for me, is sort of like releasing all of the Kardashians into a 'free revealing dress' store! Wow, that might be the longest run-on sentence I have ever written! Whew!

Anyway, I am really glad that Ryan gets to experience Lexington for the first time and maybe he will understand why every year on the way home I call him and say things like, put a "for sale" sign in front of our house because we are moving! Experiencing one bathroom with 5 people for a weekend might be slightly less enjoyable, but I will probably not have a nervous breakdown because there will be enough "horse time" to counteract my fear about sharing bathrooms.

So here's the plan!
Thursday:
10:00 am- get on the road!
5:00 ish- arrive in Lexington, breathe in the KY air and smile!
evening- two sale horse appointments: Jay and bay mare
dinner eventually

Friday:
5:30 am- rise and shine!!
6:00 am- leave to watch morning workouts at Keeneland
breakfast at the track kitchen
8:00 am- go see sale horses at the Thoroughbred Training Center
10:00 am- Rolex dressage starts at KHP
1:00 pm- back to Keeneland for closing day of races
afternoon/evening- go see cute mare called "demanding"
COTH get together dinner at the campground! drink wine and meet fun people!
husband arrives in Lexington, and surely falls in love and starts shopping for farms ;)

Saturday:
possible early morning visit back to training center if we haven't found a horse for McK yet!
XC day at Rolex! hang out at KHP and shop the trade fair!
Jep's birthday dinner and royal wedding watching!!

Sunday:
more shopping at trade fair at KHP for the good deals!
Stadium jumping day at Rolex!! my favorite! it's funnel cake time today!
two more horse appointments in afternoon if needed!
Home to ATL

48 hours until....

my favorite six hour drive in the whole wide world! It only takes one road, 75 N, to get me to my favorite city on the eastern side of the US. The lovely Lexington, Kentucky, is sort of like a horse filled heaven for me. Pretty much all of my requirement are met: horses, sushi, wide open spaces, pretty farms, funnel cakes, men in breeches... and we're set.

My birthday is in April, and I like to celebrate with a few close friends, and am not really into parties or heavy drinking, however, I am into waiting a few weeks and giving myself the best little vacay ever, a trip to Rolex. For the non-horsey readers, Rolex is a huge horse event at the 4* level, 4* means WAY better and bigger than I ever will be or even have a desire to be. While I love watching these talented horses and riders and am pretty much constantly in awe of the athleticism that is the horse, I would have to say that half the fun for me is just being surrounded by people that speak horse and live horse for four whole days.

Sometimes in my "real" life, I feel a bit like a fish out of water because my passion and obsession for horses and equine sport is probably not something that translates well into plain English. I probably spend a good part of my days trying to not let my close friends and family realize the true nature of my addiction. I don't usually bring up horses in general conversations unless someone asks me about them, and I even still have the capability to dress cute and chat about things like spray tans, and Tory Burch bags, and people's cute babies. While secretly, I think baby horses are far more attractive than baby humans, and I would much rather set out shopping to find a good saddle than anything to wear. Nonetheless, I do currently live in a world that is rather numb to my own personal equine affair. I have to go to school and I have a job not in the equine industry and a husband who glazes over a little bit when I come home from the barn squealing in a supersonic pitch about how the mare really relaxed her back today in the trot/canter transitions...

So, Rolex, for me is like an energy shot and a breath of fresh air and a place to relax all at once. I can be me, the horsey me, and I love it. Everyone around me is there because they enjoy horses and they understand and probably share my obsession, and they couldn't care less if my toenails are freshly pedicured. They totally enjoy discussing topics like; cures for summer fungus, and Le Chameau boots being the only ones that will make it through a whole mud season, and worrying about hay quality this summer, and using lateral work to eat up your horses extra energy in the warm up before a show etc.  As much as I would like to live and work within the horse culture full-time, my life right now doesn't allow it, so every April, my excitement builds to my own little fever pitch. I can't let it be known just quite how excited I get, lest my husband worry that I might never return from the land of blue grass and frolicking foals, but here is the best representation I could find:

I have decided to try and blog a little bit about every day in KY- we have a long list of things to do and see, which I will cover tomorrow!

regularly scheduled programming...

we are now interrupting your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this...

in case you thought your life was unglamorous, or that weird things only happen to you, let me just give you a list of the weirdness that has been this week! most of my weird experiences have to do with money or poop- i am cursed in that area- literally.  is it friday yet?

1. i went to make a deposit at the ATM and during the process, the ATM froze, of course with my card in it. i called the 800 number on the ATM and after pressing 1, then 4, then 8, then 0, then screaming an obscenity into the phone, an actual person picked up, put me on hold for 11 minutes, and then the ATM magically unfroze and spit my card out. seriously, this kind of thing only happens to me. oh, and my deposit still hasn't posted, of course. oh Bank of America, one day, i am going to devote an entire blog post just to you....

2. rylie boo pooped out an intact $10 bill on monday. i went to pick up her poop off the rug and it was strangely light and not dense. then i saw writing....
 no idea how the poodle had access to stray cash, but i'm hoping she will continue to defecate currency on a daily basis. and yes, i washed it off and kept it.

3. i threw away $40 that i was hiding from myself as "emergency money". since gas costs $98,000 a week, i was looking for it and realized that when i cleaned out my office, i threw away the container it was in. awesome- i'm such a responsible adult. it made me wonder how much money gets thrown away each year on average.

4. the twins that i nanny for are growing up so fast, and the boy twin has entered a lovely new developmental phase that i like to call "poop on the nanny". i often joke that i should change my facebook work info to "feces manager", between the twins, the chickens, the horses and the dogs, my days are generally spent arranging for the disposal of one type of feces or another, but boy twin has taken it to a whole new level. his poop is NOT baby sized, it is huge, and sticky, and it leaks out the sides and top of his diapers and often into his pants. his favorite move is to 'death roll' crocodile style while simultaneously kicking his feet as soon as i remove the diaper so that he spreads the poop all over himself and usually onto me. i have had to change my clothes twice and shower once after these magnanimous poop fests. it's excellent birth control and i suggest all moms make their teenage daughters babysit infants. i won't even comment on the smells. God bless the creator of the diaper genie!

5. after the ATM tried to freeze with my debit card inside, now I can't find it. and yes, mom, i did re-trace my steps. cool. if someone did steal it, they are going to become very familiar with the word "declined", so i'm sure my identity is not one they would want to steal.

6. babies really like to play with toys that aren't for babies. i think the twins stay awake at night and think of elaborate ways to get access to my cell phone. boy twin dropped it today, (no idea how he got it), and now it wont turn on. yay!

that's all for now, i smell another dirty diaper! maybe boy twin will poop out my debit card.

i would like to thank my sponsors...

and i totally would, if i had any.
lately i have been thinking about the upper eschalons of equestrian sport, and how it really does take a village of people to make a sucessful upper level show/event/dressage/race horse. also, i spent a few days working in the Atlanta Steeplechase office and noticed how big of a difference the generosity of a sponsor can make for a large scale event like that.
So, being the efficient problem solver that i am (sometimes, when i'm not just whining), i decided i just needed to find sponsors for my life and equestrian pursuits, and pretty much all of my financial shortcomings would be taken care of. There are of course, more than a few openings to fill, so I spent some time today in traffic thinking about which sponsor relationships would work the best. I mean, who can I get to fill those important niches in exchange for free advertising and a lifetime of loyalty from a rampant blabberer and low level horse show-er with big dreams and and even bigger mouth?
This is what I've got so far, listed by category, need, and of course, what I can provide in return:

Vehicles: Ford- I already drive a white Edge- a lot. So people ALL over the great state of Georgia see it zipping around everywhere, to the tune of about 400 miles a week. That is GREAT exposure. AND!! it's often covered in dirt, mud, and hay particles, which clearly showcases the full spectrum of it's utility as a zip around town car all the way to a pseudo farm truck. I could also showcase the incredible cargo capacity by opening my back doors where there exists an entire closet, tack shop, office and trash can- all in one! So all I really need from Ford is a white F-250 4x4 king ranch package with that pretty baseball glove looking interior. This way, I could also be advertising for them at the myriad of horse related events I attend on the weekend where I need off road and towing capabilities. My hair color and highlights look really pretty against the color of those leather seats, so I'm pretty sure as a "real" woman spokesmodel, I could really be effective since I really can tow a trailer, drag someone out of a mud hole, and explain the merits of using diesel fuel when hauling to all those interested parties- not to mention my dogs are total people magnets and who needs an opening line to get people interested in what you have to say when you have two totally cute furry faces drawing you in. I would also consider adding a composting system to the bed of the truck to provide a use for all of the chicken poop I have, and the horse poop from the trailer, and leftover chick-fil-a fries that get cold. So my F-250 could essentially be a traveling ranch and mobile self contained ecosystem- surely worthy of the king ranch package. Just a good ole American girl, driving a good looking American truck- spreading the word wherever I go! Thanks Ford, I am looking forward to our partnership!

Onto trailers:
This was a pretty hard decision, but the winner is...
so awesome.
Clearly, this company "gets" my overriding goal in life- efficiency and fun!


Tires/Batteries and vehicle maintenance:
This one is still up for grabs and I'm open to proposals. I really like American companies, preferably family owned, with multiple convenient locations and great customer service. I will obviously be needing lots of tires and maintenance, so you can be assured that I will plaster your logo all over the side of everything I own- much like a nascar driver, but prettier, more fluent in English and with animals in tow. I can totally learn to do a back flip off of something and mention your name every time i win a ribbon if that's what you're into. :)

Fuel:

This is a tough one. Although Racetrac and QT both have similar prices and locations, it's really fun to say, "QT"- like "cutee"..."gotta drop by the cutee on the way to the barn". And they have that mocha alert cappucino that I'm sure is no where even closely related to actual coffee but it tastes amazing and has enough caffeine to get a hippo through a marathon. And they have BIG pickles, delicious turkey sandwiches and apple fritters, and corn dogs but with crescent roll crust. Anyone who's ever been stuck at a horse show for like 43 hours with no food KNOWS how good a corn dog from QT can taste. Clearly, I'm already a loyal customer- just imagine the untapped revenue stream you guys could get from me converting every giant diesel drinking truck to convert to loving the "CUTEE" as well. SEA of potential converts (all those white specks in the background are trailers, attached to trucks!):

we horse people love horse power- in every sense of the word

Race Trac, don't worry- you are still in the running, if you can outdo the surely forthcoming sponsorship package from QT. My demands are simple, diesel fuel, delicious highly caffienated beverages, big pickles, and corn dogs.

Farm Equipment: 

I'm not really sure yet on this one. I mean, I like the color green, so clearly John Deere is a frontrunner, but I like the name "New Holland", since my middle name is Holland. So pretty much whoever can deliver one of those cool tractors with the "unicorn" attachment so I can move round bales around and my husband can drive it around an be entertained gets the job. Thanks- let me know when it will arrive so I can be sure to have a crowd gathered to see my new metal unicorn.

Feed:

The mare is VERY partial to her Seminole Gold-Chance Hi Efficiency pellets and Ultra Bloom rice bran so Seminole was the only choice for this one. They have a pretty big name in racing circles and are based out of Florida, but the big mare and I would love to make them the go-to feed for eventers as well. Seriously- I LOVE Seminole feeds and the science behind it. Also, their customer service is top notch when I have a product question. She eats four bags a month exactly and with great gusto!

Supplements:

Steadfast Equine by Arenus

info here

LOVE this supplement. It's easy, convenient, and it just shows up at my door every other month. I love the chemistry behind it's formulation and that it addresses soft AND hard tissue maintenance and repair. Plus it smells kind of good- like soup- and she eats it without hesitation! I sing it's praises to everyone who asks me questions like "how come jazz only gets one supplement?" "how come her feet are so good for a TB and shes barefoot?" "why does her coat look good in winter?", "she had 67 starts as a racehorse and gets no injections???". Yes Arenus, you have a disciple, and I even took a package of this supplement to a chemistry genius and had him break it down and ya know what? They aren't even kidding when they say it benefits joints, ligaments and bones plus coat and feet. LOVE it! Would gladly plaster your very unoffensive logo on my saddle pads and explain the science behind the magical packet of goodness to everyone that asks about it. After all, 80% of your customer base shows at lower level shows....just sayin'

Tack:

This is a tricky one. I don't want to be forced to use certain equipment because I am super picky about tack. I like older saddles. Although I do have dreams about Vespucci bridles. Jazz does too- she told me how good that nice soft leather would feel against her lovely face. She would tell all the other horses to make their mom's buy them Vespucci bridles. 

And she wants a Mattes sheepskin half pad with shims for the front right side. She is working on building her topline, but Gah, no one has a perfectly symmetrical body, and the little dip behind her right shoulder can really make her dressage and jumping saddle feel weird. She wanted to tell all those sheep thank you for their sacrifices for her benefit and that she also enjoys the breathability of their fleeces- there are very few textures that she will tolerate against her skin, but she loves the sheepskin!

Personal care items:

Shampoo- I have a two year long obsession with Suave Professionals moisturizing shampoo- it smells like coconuts and it's amazing. Jazz get's bathed with Suave as well and also enjoys smelling like a very large brown coconut. It makes our hair so soft and clean. Really, we are very easy to please and very low maintenance and we smell good. People like us.

Moisturizer, sunscreen and lip balm: AVEENO! oh AVEENO, I could not live a day without you. I order your VERY hard to find lip balm in bulk from an undisclosed online pharmacy because it is NEVER available locally and I cannot share my sources, and without your sunscreen and moisturizer and lotion, I would look like a crinkly lobster made of leather- much like the older women of the upper level eventing set- scary. No thank you, I will not sacrifice my skin for any amazing horse related lifestyle when I can just slather myself in Aveeno products every day and force them upon my often sunburned, windburned, chapped and dehydrated fellow equestriennes. If I sneak around the corner of your barn aisle at a show and spray you with sunscreen as I dart past, you will thank me later! The Aveeno kind is not sticky, and doesn't sting your eyes when the sweat from underneath your helmet drips down into your face on cross country! AVEENO- listen up, I could really use some samples to give out at shows, I ASSURE you that we in the equestrian sporting world NEED your products- and no one markets them to us- help me help you.

Boots:

Le chameau- I love you. let me just say that. I'm sure people who don't know me personally but see me around school, the grocery story, the library, etc. wonder WHY it is that that woman always has on tall olive green rubber boots? Does she work on a dairy farm? Is she a pirate? Maybe she has a lower leg deformity she is trying to cover up? Nope- I just love wearing your boots. They keep my feet dry, warm, and they are so comfy. Do they look great with yoga pants- probably not, but I don't care! Who needs tennis shoes or weird looking crocs when you can wear tall rubber boots every day?

Dress boots and field boots: 

This sponsorship opportunity will be highly competitive. I currently own 5 pair of quality tall boots, but each seems to have a fatal flaw in fit or design. Honestly, when you pay over 400$ for a pair of dress boots, its more than just disappointing when the zippers fail after a year of use and the sole falls off. Get with it people- the dang boots are just getting comfortable after a year- I don't WANT to replace them and have to wade through 48 brands and styles of boots to find decent ones. And WHO may I ask does this industry use as fit models? Weird cankle cursed tube legged people? Just from general observation, a human leg tapers down from the knee to the ankle. If you would like a diagram of the anatomy of the human lower leg, I will be glad to let you borrow a book. Lord, no wonder people finally just lose their minds and pay 900$ for custom boots- it's a constant battle! Make decent boots for people that actually ride and wear them! It's your job!

One day, when someone actually cares about my opinion, and makes good boots, I will buy you a billboard on the side of 75 to exclaim your success. I swear.

Stress relief:

I think a traveling massage therapist could make a killing at horse shows and clinics. I will gladly share you and you can probably charge like $80 a minute and people would pay it. Just kindly remember who's idea it was to take you to shows and horse events, and please remember for about 60 minutes, once a week. Thanks.

Stress eating:

Everyone has a weakness, admit it. Mine is oreos. When i have a bad day I just want about eight twelve oreos and all of the sudden my bad mood disappears. Charlie Sheen may not agree, but really, i think oreo binges are far less detrimental to my overall health than slamming 7 gram rocks. And I'm fresh out of tiger blood, so Oreos it is. Nabisco, I'm really not quite sure what I could give you in return for this sponsorship, but my horse likes them too, so maybe you could market them as horse treats too. whatever it takes, I NEED them.

Celebrations and merriement:

At the end of a long summer day of riding, I am thirsty, and nothing pleases me more on a hot Georgia afternoon, than cracking open an ice cold Miller High Life. Fortunately for our small and pretty un-judgemental horse community, driving golf carts around horse show grounds sipping beers is generally accepted unless you are an uptight weirdo who escaped from DQ prison. So miller, let me tell you what. I am like SUPER friendly and generally sociable, people talk to me, even when I don't want them to. Send me lots of beer to share with them because I don't think people know how good Miller High Life is! 

From the champagne of beers to actual champagne, Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin, I am going to need you to install a fountain of some sort in my house. Not only are you the best because a woman started your lovely champagne house, but also because you taste like the nectar of heaven. Nothing is a celebration without you. Can you also make me a giant reproduction of your label to plaster on the side of my horse trailer? I'm pretty sure no one has ever done that before and it would look awesome. My horse is very pretty and horse people generally love to drink, so the trailer would be quite the attention getter. I promise not to drink and drive, just drive and promote and then drink when I get there. K Perfect.

Other sponsorship opportunities:

- an organic farm to provide me and the chickens with veggies and tout the awesomeness of eating fresh, local and not commercial.

- sports bras- see the section on boots for explanation of my feelings...

- dog training- with all of these upcoming sponsorships, my life will be spent in the public eye, so my dogs should probably not be a giant embarrassment of spoiled and undisciplined behaviours. Help.

**disclaimer**- obviously the blog post is intended as mostly a joke and i know i am not cool enough to get my life sponsored so don't take this all seriously and get offended about things. i like to dream big.  thanks.

thought for the day:

today i am having a hard time being a grown up and accepting that "things are the way they are", and "life isn't fair", and other boring old sayings etc. i don't want to turn into one of those people that just accepts "no" as an answer and becomes unwilling to ever stand up for anything that they believe or want because it isn't easy enough.

i was considering this morning, while i was cleaning out my closet, that if given the chance to do anything i wanted, every day, for the rest of my life, i would choose to "save things". not the stuff in my closet, but i would choose to find off the track thoroughbreds new homes, and unwanted pets homes and veterinary care, and kids that no one wanted and the "system" gave up on and place where they could grow up and be loved, and have medical care and the kind of "education" they need, not the one that was mandated for them and just didn't work.

when i drive down the road and the lottery billboard states a jackpot of 287 million or some asinine number that i can't actually realistically fathom, i like to think about what i would do with that money.

i have visions of giant farms with big old farmhouses that i get to artfully restore and turn into a home for the kids that no one wants to deal with. a big barn full of thoroughbreds that have come in from the track to relax, and gain weight, and adjust to life and retraining as a riding horse. the three legged dogs and plain big black dogs that shed, and little one eye'd kitties roam the barn and farm and keep away the varmints.  the kids learn real actual skills that can get them jobs one day that they can keep by working on the farm. they learn about planting and harvesting and physical labor and driving tractors, and cleaning out stalls and chicken coops, and collecting eggs and always feeding and picking up after one thing or another. learning to ride and train horses, and learning patience with animals that are the best at teaching it, and learning most of all- to love and care for things outside of themselves. it's my utopian symbiotic relationship farm- and i want it.

but because "life isn't fair" and "things are the way they are", no endeavor like mine is ever profitable, and no one invests time or money or much of themselves into something not profitable. and that, to me, is not cool. and it makes me sad. so even though the likelihood of me winning the lotto is slim to none, (it's especially hard to win the lotto if you don't play), one day, when i am a grown-up that STILL refuses to believe all the boring people that always just say "no" and "you can't" and i do find a way to have my utopian symbiotic relationship farm (which will obviously need an easier to pronounce name), all the boring old grown-ups can come and stay for as long as they like. they can pick their dinner from the garden, and spend time remembering how to simply give away love when the horses and dogs and cats and chickens insist on their attention, and they can learn how to discern horse hay from cow hay and weld a horse trailer back together from a kid that everyone said would never be a functional member of society. so there.

the prodigal hen

oh katymay, the prodigal hen.

last friday morning, katymay disappeared. this wasn't the first time she has done this. once before, during the snowstorm in february, she was gone overnight! we searched the property high and low, but she was nowhere to be found. the next morning, she was back! waiting outside the barn, perched on the bench like nothing was amiss. meanwhile, the other 6 chickens spent the night warm and dry inside the barn. we thought it was a fluke- that she was disoriented by the snow- apparently not.

during the day, the chickens range around the property and pretty much do what they want. they wander up to the house in the morning and scratch around in the gardens for bugs and then, in the evenings around sunset, they put themselves to bed and file into the barn to find their favorite spot to perch.

and then there's katymay...
when katymay was a chick, i named her after the nickname that my dad calls my mom. i named her this because she is a golden color, but her crest has these feathers that look like she has highlights. lovingly of course, i compared them to my mom's hair, which is somewhat uncontrollable in nature and also has highlights. besides the hair/feather similarity, katymay was an adventurous chick- always the first to "check things out" and one of the first to hop out of their little enclosure and adventure into the stalls for a dust bath. my mom is adventurous as well, and not afraid to try new things, so katymay seemed like an appropriate name for her.

now that katymay is grown up, she is still a sweet little chicken, but is quite a wanderer. fearless, although she shouldn't be since she is the smallest of all the hens, she spends her days exploring on her own- waiting for no one to accompany her. she always used to end up back with the pack by the end of the day to come in the barn for an evening snack of sunflower seeds, but last friday, she was gone!

we searched EVERYWHERE. with flashlights in the trees and i even parked my car with the headlights facing the woods where she sometimes roosts to look for her in the dark. i was terrified something had "gotten" her. i was scared to look at the ground for fear of finding a pile of feathers. there was just no trace of her. i spent a few hours that weekend walking the creek lines and fence lines and there was just- nothing. come sunday morning, i was starting to accept the fact that she wasn't coming home.

monday evening, i was at the barn in the evening to feed and my barn owner was down there as well, we were chatting about the chickens and talking about katymay. she said that while looking for her, she had found a nest with 26 eggs in it in the woods at the base of a tree. we thought katymay wasn't laying yet, well she was- just not in the nest boxes! just as we were discussing why she goes off on her own to lay, our neighbor from up the road came walking down to the barn. she said she wanted to talk about the chickens. i thought immediately that we were in trouble because our rooster, einstein, REALLY likes the sound of his own crow lately, and is very loud. i thought for sure he was probably driving them crazy and she was going to ask how long it would be before he gets butchered... (which he isn't, although i have threatened his life with explanations about where those delicious chicken fingers from zaxby's come from when decides to attack people)

surprisingly, she wants chickens of her own, and came to ask us about ours. i introduced them to her, and we told her about the disappearance of katymay, and how even though people say chickens are stupid, they each have their own personalities and you do grow attached to them. mid-sentence, she said, "oh, there's a little brown chicken down by my pond and it's been there for days". i said, "WHATTTT?????!!!!!- is she dead?" and she said, "no- she's fine". she was very calm and matter of fact about it all, and although i wanted to sprint off in the direction of the pond immediately, i tried to remain composed and said, "do you mind if i walk over and get her?", they both offered to join me, and as we walked over to her property, katymay trots out of the tree line by the pond and straight to my feet, like, "hey mom!". i scooped her up in my arms and lectured her about running away from home. when we got back to the barn, i made her spend the night in the chicken condo to remind her of where she belonged! she was quite hungry and ravenously ate her sunflower seed treats and chicken food and i was reminded of the story of the hungry prodigal son in the bible. i was so glad to have her home, even though i was quite insulted that she would try to leave us. she has stayed around fairly well this week and i have been watching her like an overprotective crazy person. feeding her treats every chance i get to remind her of where her bread is buttered! hopefully, that will be her last foray into undiscovered territory. much like trying to keep up with my mother at scott's antique market, katymay needs a leash, or maybe an electric collar of some sort. 

spring spring spring has sprung!

insert whistling and sunshine and flowers and puppies and kittens and cool breezes on warm days here!
i love spring, minus the pollen wreaking havoc on my allergies, but it's a fair price to pay for the end of grey winter skies, and winter clothes and muddy pastures with no grass! i can even tolerate getting up at five for morning feedings before work better when i know i don't have to wear 34 layers of clothes and decide what blankets the mares should wear that day, and break up the ice in the water trough. instead, i get to wake up to birds chirping and watch the sun come up since the time changed and go on daily egg hunts since the hens are laying up a storm! if every morning was like this, maybe, just maybe, i could become a morning person. i still can't be one of the "cool kids" and join the coffee drinking culture, even though i have tried to like it, i just don't really and it makes my stomach hurt!

within the last week the mares have starting blowing out their winter coats, and even though Jazz tolerates me approaching her with the shedding blade about as well as i tolerate taylor swift sing-a-longs, she has started to let me groom her with it in very limited sessions and it's nice to see all that soft puffy coat coming out. i love her summer coat, when she is sleek and shiny and her musculature is apparent and i look forward to continuing to build her topline and butt muscles this season with more correct and challenging dressage work. she is beginning to show me her affinity for dressage, she's always been a thinking kind of mare, and now that she has learned to "think" about her work, she is really progressing quickly. it's like having a child that's about 18 months old- that stage where they just sponge up all the information you can give them, and they learn to communicate and their motor skills are changing almost daily- an exciting time!

i am also SO excited about the completion of the "golden nugget", which is a really nice and big hen house that my barn owners have built- and let me tell you, no detail was overlooked, and no engineering shortcuts were taken. i think if we ever have a tornado and i'm stuck at the barn, i will be safe in that thing! i can't wait for it to be finished up and moved out of the barn, even though it may take a crane to move it, so i can banish the chickens from loitering about in the barn. the chicken poop polluting up the place is driving me nuts. i miss the aisles being spot free and i really like the barn to be clean- like, cleaner than my house. or maybe i would just rather clean the barn THAN my house- that is perhaps the real truth. luckily, ryan has accepted my lack of talent  and time for house cleaning, and really, the dog hair that doodle sheds on a daily basis is more than anyone can keep up with, so he agrees that we need to bring someone in for house cleaning and now he is letting me find someone to iron as well. this is like the BEST gift ever to me. really, i would rather have a house cleaner and ironer than a 4 carat diamond, and i LOVE diamonds. some people find cleaning and ironing "therapeutic", and i wish i was like that, but i would rather poke my eyes out with a wire hanger than iron. after a day of work and school and then barn, coming home to clean and organized house and happy dogs is probably the best thing i can think of- so i'm pretty excited to find someone that is willing to do this for us. i put an ad on craigslist, and i really wish i could post some of the responses i have gotten on here, because let me tell you what, they range from hilarious to super creepy, but it would be too mean, so i won't.

whoever ultimately gets the job will have to pass the four-legged-children test, they have to love the dogs and the dogs love them. so everyone we interview is getting to meet the doggies- which has been interesting. rylie boo will tell you pretty quickly if she likes someone, doodle takes a little longer to make that decision but it's really interesting to watch them with a stranger. i could just never imagine letting someone in the house who wasn't dog approved. so we shall see who craigslist brings us, but hopefully the spring will be a cleaner one soon!

laterally and literally

jazz and i enjoyed a great dressage lesson this week, right before the monsoon hit on wednesday. it was one of those lessons where i left feeling invigorated, motivated, and proud of my mare. i even called my mom to tell her about it, even though after all these years of me riding, she still insists that you hold on and steer a horse with your knees, and once my mom has an idea in her head, it's hard to convince her otherwise. so i may as well have been talking to the one year old twins i nanny,  but it was nice to have someone to tell about it, since all my horsey friends were busy at work.

since our last lesson, we have been working on making transitions, especially the upwards transition into canter, less of a "big deal". i tend to overanalyze sometimes and the old mantra "perfect practice makes perfect" rings continuously in my head. so when our transitions into canter were jumpy, bucky, or wrong-leady, i would get all mentally frazzled about what i am doing wrong and how to better and more clearly communicate to jazz, who was probably just wondering why mom is all frazzled up there and why our canter transitions were such a "BIG.DEAL!!!". so our lovely dressage trainer brought this to my attention and said she could see my body language changing as soon as she asked for a canter, so i was busted... and thank God she busted me! So for the last two weeks, i just pick a spot, a random spot, and ask quietly. If she gets the wrong lead we just come back down to trot , put ourselves back together, and ask again- no fuss and no worry. The other thing is that i cannot ask in the same place twice, if i do, ms. smarty pants mare will literally canter at that exact spot every time we pass over that spot for the rest of the ride. maybe i should just tape our dressage tests up in her stall and she can learn them instead of me?!

anyway, the other exercise that has really helped us lately with transitions and maintaining a rythym are shoulder-ins. for the first 6 months i rode jazz, my biggest issue was keeping her attention on me, we've solved that issue now and she is quite willing to work, but now we need the consistency in our gaits and consistency in her body (and mine) so that every time i ask for a lengthening or shortening or transition or i reach up to swish my bangs out of my eyes, it doesnt go like this: lovely trot...mom, youre moving your body...hollow back, head up, tail swish, choppy steps, mom! what do you want??....oh, you were just scratching your nose....head down, back up, lengthen stride...lovely trot....
so although i LOVE that my mare is sensitive to my aids and to my body, sometimes we both have to learn to overlook eachothers mistakes (i.e. extraneous movements). i truly dont know whether she is sometimes using my subtle shifts as an excuse, or if she is truly trying really hard- but i like to think it's the latter. so the shoulder- in, although some would argue it's too early to be working these since we are still working on rythym in the training scale, has been beneficial for us in more ways that one. first, it's made me more cognizant of riding her front end and hind end differently, but in unison, and has made me much more efficient in riding BOTH sides of the horse well and simultaneuously, and also, she really looks for the contact to understand what i am asking of her and i have seen her grow much more relaxed lately. in an even more pleasantly unexpected result, it has helped me to unlock her sometimes "strong" shoulders and get her weight off of my inside leg and allow her to take larger steps, instead of quicker ones.  the mare is a pretty good faker sometimes, and will look like she's on the bit and relaxed and round through her back and neck, but secretly, her inside shoulder is pushing at my leg and her body seems "locked" to me, even though it will fool an eye on the ground. so the shoulder-in and beginnings of lateral work in general have helped us in that now it's too hard for her to "punk" me with her shoulder, because it has to be active! yay!

on to the literally part of this post- we literally actually and realistically started working on trot lengthenings and shortenings- well mostly shortenings!!! i feel like dressage is suddenly much more fun. not because we are learning "tricks", but because i can tell what a difference it's making in my horse and me- and dang it- it's fun to see work pay off!
so again, kudos to my dressage trainer for explaining the beginnings of this process in a not so esoteric way to me because, i just read "practical horseman", i still can't understand "dressage today" and it makes me fall asleep!  so this is how i thought about it after she explained it: think of the trot as a scale from 1 to 10. one being the most collected trot ever (i saw passage in my head), and ten being a super extended trot (i saw phillip dutton and connaught from rolex 2009). once i have my mare in a real working trot, she naturally falls at about a 6 on the scale for cadence and length of step, so my job was to make her a 3, without losing the cadence (the hard part!) and turning into a western pleasure looking trot. and we actually did it! jazz was soo soo good about listening to me and even though it used to seem counterproductive to "click" at her with my mouth while asking her to "stay" underneath me, all of the sudden it seem natural and the aids made sense, she really was able to do it and it was a very proud moment for me because she is strong enough to and athletic enough to- and i can't wait to work on it more! it was neat to feel the normally very forward energy underneath me change from the feeling of (trying to make this an analogy that the non horsey folks can understand) water squirting out of a hose, to water spinning in a front load washer. i wasn't losing any energy, it was just recirculating underneath me.

so for those of us on a journey with a horse where we learn together to be correct in our movements, it was a big deal! i have only ever ridden an upper level dressage horse twice, so it's hard sometimes to teach something to your horse when you've never felt it yourself! yay for the good lessons, and yay for the horses that teach us as much as we teach them.

thats all for now!

weather

dear weather,
  you have been so lovely all week, and i have been basking in your sunshine and warmth, thinking happy thoughts and frolicking around the farm patting the ponies and carrying the hens around in my arms while considering plans for my spring veggie garden. i feel like our relationship this week has been mutually fulfilling, and even when the gas prices rose out of control and rylie boo chewed a snap off of my favorite jacket, i never whined, not even a whimper, all because you made me so happy dear weather.

and now this??? i wake up this morning and the skies are back to middle grey and theres this heaviness to the air and its COLD! like 40 degrees! the weatherman calls you a "wedge" and says that you'll be here all weekend to rain on my hunt plans and pasture fence installation plans and i quote, he said this morning, that you will in fact "dump buckets" of rain starting tomorrow morning. and now that my two day thin mint binge is over and clearly my high has worn off, he may call you a "wedge" but i can think of a few other things to call you!

we better have some dang pretty hay this summer, because that is the ONLY benefit i am seeing right now of having you around, mr "wedge". i mean really, why can't you arrive during the work week when we are all trapped inside at work and school- it's always the weeeeeekend! not cool.

considering a break-up,
ellie

flying changes

there has been a lot going on around here lately! changes everywhere and big plans being made.

for starters, i changed my career path, once again, from nursing to surgical technology. i came to this conclusion after watching a few surgeries at a nearby hospital, there is one thing i have always known since i went back to school, its that i want to work in the OR. i love blood, and guts, and the vascular system and dissecting things etc. so when i watched, i noticed that the nurses in the OR milled about checking out vitals and stats etc and writing all kinds of things down, and filling out paperwork, coming in and out of the OR and in general missing all the fun! meanwhile, these other people (which i had never really heard of up until this point) were establishing the sterile field, holding retractors, suctioning blood, handing the instruments to the surgeons etc. and just in general RIGHT in the MIDDLE of all the fun. i asked a nurse, "who is that?" while pointing to the busy woman in scrubs and she said, "the surgical tech". and that was it- my life was changed. after mulling it over, and convincing my husband that i was in fact going to eventually finish school and i swear i wasn't going to change my career path again and that i would in fact still be finished on the same timeline- i did it. now happily plodding away in my classes, i realized that this is where i should have been all along. after all, we all know i love animals, with people always having been in second place- now i get to love them while they are anesthetized AND see their insides- what could be better?


as for a four legged update:
back in december, a dear friend of mine got the opportunity of a lifetime to be a working student for a very big name dressage farm for a year. although i was a bit disappointed that i could no longer bribe her with japanese food in exchange for lessons, i was excited about her year up there, getting to take her fabulous horse with her to learn, and hopefully seeing her succeed again in competitions this year and the North American Junior Young Rider competitions and Gladstone etc. they were 4th in the nation last year- which is incredible, and I even got the chance to ride her horse, which was very enlightening for me and quite an honor! she even says i rode him well, and he did in fact do everything i asked, (apparently she let another friend get on him and he would only passage) so i was sort of impressed with myself and inspired to ride Jazz the same way until she felt as "correct" as he does. this young rider has come so very far from the first time i met her about three years ago, and her horse, who was trained and made by HER, is turning out to be a very special guy- and he's only 7! although sometimes it's funny to think that you can learn so much from someone younger than you, and often just by watching, i have learned a few very important things from this pair. -
-first, dream big and expect the best of your partner. this pair exemplifies that- they have met nearly every goal they have set and when at dinner she announced to me that she plans to ride in the olympics in 2016, i don't for a minute doubt that she will. she rides every ride with high expectations of herself and her horse and that is something i have tried to emulate lately.
-second, discipline. um, the level of discipline this young lady has is surprising and a little scary. after hearing what her life is like day in and day out at her working student position, it's even more than i think i could stomach- and i'm pretty willing to be disciplined and work hard.  before she left, she got up every morning and drove an hour to the barn, rode- in a disciplined manner, cleaned her tack (daily), and was never shy about disciplining her horse if needed, or me in lessons when i was letting my mare get away with murder. for such a young person, she knows the true meaning of discipline, she loves her horse more than life, and would never be unfair to him or lose her cool, but at the same time, she is very workmanlike with him when he is creatively throwing his body into the air to avoid work, and he doesn't get away with it. this was so good for me to see, because i am admittedly a little "soft" on my mare. i love her and know every single hair, lump and bump on her body, and sometimes my emotions about "oh she raced for so long and doesn't deserve to be made to have a second career if it doesn't suit her" get in the way of the reality of "yes she raced for so long because she is extraordinarily athletic and likes to work and if you don't develop her natural talents then you are wasting a gift". so i have taken a cue from my friend, and demanded discipline of us both lately- and it's actually been very beneficial.
third- ride ride ride the horsey. along the same lines as the previous two, this young lady rides her horse like the postal service delivers the mail- rain, snow, sleet or hail. although she does have access to a fabulous indoor arena and i don't, i have stopped using weather as an excuse for inconsistent training. even if we just get on and walk for 20 minutes because its slippery, or lunge cuz i have the stomach flu, i am trying to be consistent in my training- and the mare loves it.

so after my little "emulate what is successful since she moved away and left you all alone" epiphany, i have tried to slowly put these things into practice little by little. and here is what has happened:
1. i work three days a week and by the time i get to the barn after work, its too dark to ride, so on the other four days of the week- i ride- no excuses. i consider it a standing appointment with myself and my horse. not, ride after i finish the barn chores or after i get groceries, it's get up, go ride, and then do your errands. husband may have to eat hot dogs sometimes because i forget to defrost meat for dinner in my rush to get to the barn, but he likes hot dogs. thank god.
2. when we ride, we ride for a reason. i usually set some kind of little goal for us and work towards it. i had a jumper show to attend in february and i knew we needed to actually jump before the show. with the snow melting and our field (with one jump) still muddy, i just had to get off and move the jump after every few jumps so the footing was safe. and i made an appointment with my friend to borrow her arena and schooled my mare over her fences a few days before. it REALLY made a difference. we were struggling a lot with refusals the week before the show- riding by yourself in a slippery field on a strong frisky mare who's lesbian lover is calling to her from the barn can be intimidating. when i get nervous (which is rare-honestly) my mare does not respond well. after two days of jump, buck, bolt, stop, spin... i was a little scared. that's when the refusing started. she was refusing some because she was unsure of how to use her body and mostly because i wasn't confident- and why would a green horse choose to jump when the rider's emotions are saying "this is scary?!" i was intimidated to try to train a green bean over fences who can throw a huge temper tantrum when she wants to and i was having visions of myself lying in a field alone until someone drove by and noticed a random tacked up horse munching at a round bale- and then add the refusal to that, where i am thrown up her neck and tasting ear hair, and it just doubled my trouble. THIS is when you need a jumping trainer- even when you have been riding a long time and the jump is only 2'3" and you have trained greenies before. now if only i could find a sane one, we'd be in business! so i prayed about our troubles and whispered to my mare that everything was ok and made myself change my attitude and go school with a fresh perspective in my friends arena WITH a crop (channeling the discipline here), and voila- after one refusal, she started jumping everything. i still told my friends they might want to act like they didn't know me at the show, but it all turned out well. we went to the show and the refusals we had were not dirty and they weren't coming from my insecurities, she was simply looking at the natural colored fence that was over in the shady corner of the ring- which is a perfectly acceptable move for a green horse over fences. by the end of the show she was jumping everything without a second look- and we learned so much and went home with lots to work on- which was the original goal. i was happy and proud.
3. i now ride with a crop over fences- i needed to because the dang smart mare is a master manipulator and i am a pushover. it is working well. sometimes, i even tap her with it ;)
4. we are pushing ourselves physically and mentally. the crazy GA winter weather and double snowmageddon allowed us both to get a bit out of shape- so we are pushing ourselves. when no one is around to see me, i ride in two point and try to do it with no stirrups- something i used to be able to do easily before i turned 27 and old and fat and lame. the mare, is being made to use her body correctly- taking cues from my ride on mr.4th in the nation- we are working constantly on stepping under more and using her hind end more and consistently. popping in and out of her correct frame (and i am NOT just referring to her head/neck) at the trot and canter because she is saying "but mom, it's haaarrrddd to work" is not being tolerated as much. of course, i understand it's a process and she needs breaks too, but she also needs a topline and butt muscles and it takes hard work to get them. we are also working on quiet and correct canter transitions and probably will be until the year 2099. my astute dressage trainer however, pointed out that i am over thinking the transitions and making them a big deal- then my drama queen mare gets to make them a big deal- so we are working on making them "no thang" as much as we are working on correct.
5. ummm we have lead changes?  so i know track horses do them while racing and training and i have seen her execute gorgeous ones in the field, but not undersaddle. we have tried them once before, but when i asked, she was like "oh ok, change and GALLOP" (which is the cue at the track), which wasn't lovely, so i just put them on the back burner and told myself we would revisit them after more canter work. the canter is still our stumbling block- she HAS the ability for a very nice canter and an elastic canter and an extended, working and collected canter, but our lines of communication for getting those had perhaps been cut??? like regenerating a neuron (excuse my nerdiness), the process has been slow and steady and sometimes absent. unbeknownst to me, riding over fences and in an arena with actual walls, would benefit us here. i let a friend hop on jazz and pop her over a fence because shes a good rider and she is working on riding all sorts of different horses and i like to see my mare jump, so they pop over the fence and get to the corner and boom- perfect and seamless lead change! i say "did u ask for that?" and she says no. i was impressed! next day, i am jumping her and she throws lovely changes at every corner every time and all i am doing really is shifting my weight into my stirrup. im not kidding they were seamless- like could barely feel her change seamless!  i was riding with friends, otherwise i think i might have cried with joy. it was one of those AHA moments that you don't forget in the process of training a horse. i think our canter work this winter, plus jumping and finally "getting it" at the show, and me seeing my friend get one that was so lovely and then remembering to get her balanced enough to be able to do one- just all fell together. it's not like we have tempis- but we have progress!

and with that- i am inspired to work harder and learn more and ask for more.