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