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!