This past weekend, my husband reminded me, was the 25th anniversary of our first date. According to my rough calculations, that makes it the official "I have been with you for half of my life" moment. This means that I can stop blaming my mother for all of my problems and can now start blaming my husband.
Kidding.
Hubby tromped into the house Friday afternoon with a bouquet of roses and half a dozen cupcakes. What was my gift to him? Uh, well, hmmmm. I didn't buy him anything. We had agreed some time ago that we weren't going to buy gifts for birthdays and anniversaries. We're at the stage in our lives where purchased gifts don't hold the significance that they did in our youth.
Truthfully, at this point, I get less excited about "things" but more and more excited about "time." Translation: the best gift you can give me is your time. And attention. Yes, that's it. The best gift you can give is your attention. This holds true not just on birthdays and anniversaries, but also on bad days and good days.
So does this mean I tossed the bouquet and the cupcakes? Heck, no! My husband spent time in his way, too: he took the time to go to a florist and request some flowers and then he went to the bakery and made the difficult decision to limit his purchase to only 6 cupcakes. He's a man of steel.
And so the weekend played out as it usually does, with me eating five cupcakes to his one.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Legend of the Falls
A girl never forgets her first fall. Actually, mine was only a half fall, because it was preceded by the strong upward trajectory produced by a bucking horse. The smooth arc of descent was abruptly altered when my left calf "plonked" on the top rail of the board fence and then I dipped and skidded into the earth, filling my shirt, breeches, and underwear with fresh, cold arena sand. Too late, I realized I had committed the cardinal sin of falling from a horse when I tensed every muscle in my body (no kidding...even my eyelids) before impact.
I got up, brushed the sand off my arms and legs, limped to the barn and grabbed a martingale, adjusted my tack, remounted, and finished my riding lesson. At this point the worst thing was all of the sand settling in my underpants, and every time I posted the trot I couldn't help but think "This must be what hemorrhoids feel like." The deep nausea-inducing pain began to sink in while driving home. Needless to say, I had pulled every muscle from my chin to my navel, and the simple things -- like, oh, rolling over in bed and showering -- had become excruciating and impossible. Alas, there are many inherent risks when riding sport horses, and falling is but one of them.
So it should come as no surprise that I incurred a debilitating shoulder injury on a...dog walk. One minute I'm walking happily along a fencerow in a westerly direction, and the next I'm facing southeast with a bit of grass obscuring my view. Apparently one of my dogs attempted to chase something behind us and she pulled me clean off my feet and onto my left shoulder. It is a disconcerting feeling to try to rise but find yourself unable to. I laid on the ground for a minute or so, and while my body was immobile my paranoid mind nimbly raced off on a wild journey and diagnosed a broken collarbone.
Finally, I got to my knees while the earth whizzed around me in a disorienting fashion. "Are you all right?" a man's voice shouted in my direction. (Oh perfect. A witness.) The collision with mother earth had knocked my glasses askew (but to my credit, I never dropped the dog leads) and as I righted them and attempted to rise, I suffered the injustice of a beetle flying into my mouth. I spat him out on the third try. Sadly, I'm not making any of this up.
With my hair falling out of it's clip, my white shirt grass stained and re-buttoned to form a sling for my left arm, I gathered my dogs and headed for home. Cue drum and fife music. Of course I had no broken bones, and I walked away from the crash with nothing more than a lingering soreness and stiffness. Other than being unable to get in and out of bed or pull a shirt on over my head to cover my puffy shoulder, everything seems normal.
Spinning my falls as "legendary" may be a bit over the top. They're probably only just epic.
I got up, brushed the sand off my arms and legs, limped to the barn and grabbed a martingale, adjusted my tack, remounted, and finished my riding lesson. At this point the worst thing was all of the sand settling in my underpants, and every time I posted the trot I couldn't help but think "This must be what hemorrhoids feel like." The deep nausea-inducing pain began to sink in while driving home. Needless to say, I had pulled every muscle from my chin to my navel, and the simple things -- like, oh, rolling over in bed and showering -- had become excruciating and impossible. Alas, there are many inherent risks when riding sport horses, and falling is but one of them.
So it should come as no surprise that I incurred a debilitating shoulder injury on a...dog walk. One minute I'm walking happily along a fencerow in a westerly direction, and the next I'm facing southeast with a bit of grass obscuring my view. Apparently one of my dogs attempted to chase something behind us and she pulled me clean off my feet and onto my left shoulder. It is a disconcerting feeling to try to rise but find yourself unable to. I laid on the ground for a minute or so, and while my body was immobile my paranoid mind nimbly raced off on a wild journey and diagnosed a broken collarbone.
Finally, I got to my knees while the earth whizzed around me in a disorienting fashion. "Are you all right?" a man's voice shouted in my direction. (Oh perfect. A witness.) The collision with mother earth had knocked my glasses askew (but to my credit, I never dropped the dog leads) and as I righted them and attempted to rise, I suffered the injustice of a beetle flying into my mouth. I spat him out on the third try. Sadly, I'm not making any of this up.
With my hair falling out of it's clip, my white shirt grass stained and re-buttoned to form a sling for my left arm, I gathered my dogs and headed for home. Cue drum and fife music. Of course I had no broken bones, and I walked away from the crash with nothing more than a lingering soreness and stiffness. Other than being unable to get in and out of bed or pull a shirt on over my head to cover my puffy shoulder, everything seems normal.
Spinning my falls as "legendary" may be a bit over the top. They're probably only just epic.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Field Trials
Were I to blame someone (and who among us can resist doing just that?) it would be JS. It is JS who harvests the giant 30+ acre hay field that adjoins our property. JS was out mowing the field early in the morning, so once he left, the dogs and I took advantage of the newly-shortened hay and went for a walk. There were, sadly, several carcasses -- mowing casualties -- in the field and this proved too enticing for my dog, Annabelle. She rolled on some hapless, flattened rodent and instantly squiggled out of her collar. She took off running like a bolt of lightning as I stood holding her limp collar and lead.
Annie went flying up the cut field, then did a sharp jag to the right and then went boing-boing-boing-ing through the tall uncut hay. I scrambled after her with Ollie the beagle, and we ran (pant, pant) all the way up (pant, pant) to the edge (pant, HEAVE, pant) of the woods (GASP! WHEEZE! RETCH!). By this time, Annie was doing fly-bys about every 90 seconds, so Ollie and I kept to our normal route around the perimeter of the field, then we jumped a fence, skittered down the lane, and bolted (pant, pant, WHEEZE) across the riding field and up to my barn.
Annie squeezed under an overhead barn door and, more amazingly, Ollie and I had enough lung and leg capacity to run up to the barn before Annie came back out. I let Ollie slip under the same door, and then closed both dogs behind it, went around to another barn entrance, climbed the locked (@#$%&!!!) gate, and captured Annie in front of the feed room. The dogs looked at me, and I back at them, as all three of us stood panting and bleary-eyed after our cross country run.
This scenario has played out similarly before. One time Annie was popping in and out of snow drifts and managed to hook her collar on a briar. Hooking a briar generally means being held up by ripped clothing or a jagged bloody streak or both, but not for Annie. For her, hooking a briar meant freedom, and she bounded off across the snowy field while her collar stayed twinkling in the bramble. Ollie the beagle was lunging in hot pursuit as she pulled me along, but we were no match for the fleet-footed Annie. Clearly beaten, we started angling towards home but not before we took a short cut in front of an old tobacco barn, only to be buzzed again by Annie, and there were moments when I was literally skiing down the snowy hill being pulled by a heaving, baying, frenzied beagle.
Whenever a dog breaks free they inevitably head for the barn. Even though they are not ever allowed in the barn, they know who lives there: barn cats. And if you're one of my dogs, you're chosen method of expressing delinquency is to chase a barn cat. Annie is not fazed by having to climb a small mountain of hay bales to get to a cat, and it would appear that getting hissed at and slashed on the nose is one of the perks. I don't understand this thing they have with barn cats, but it is where we always find ourselves once someone has breached protocol and gone rogue.
I guess I should have named one of my dogs "Sarah."
But we always have a happy ending, the three of us trudging up the lane towards home, where the dogs will be asleep within minutes.
Annie went flying up the cut field, then did a sharp jag to the right and then went boing-boing-boing-ing through the tall uncut hay. I scrambled after her with Ollie the beagle, and we ran (pant, pant) all the way up (pant, pant) to the edge (pant, HEAVE, pant) of the woods (GASP! WHEEZE! RETCH!). By this time, Annie was doing fly-bys about every 90 seconds, so Ollie and I kept to our normal route around the perimeter of the field, then we jumped a fence, skittered down the lane, and bolted (pant, pant, WHEEZE) across the riding field and up to my barn.
Annie squeezed under an overhead barn door and, more amazingly, Ollie and I had enough lung and leg capacity to run up to the barn before Annie came back out. I let Ollie slip under the same door, and then closed both dogs behind it, went around to another barn entrance, climbed the locked (@#$%&!!!) gate, and captured Annie in front of the feed room. The dogs looked at me, and I back at them, as all three of us stood panting and bleary-eyed after our cross country run.
This scenario has played out similarly before. One time Annie was popping in and out of snow drifts and managed to hook her collar on a briar. Hooking a briar generally means being held up by ripped clothing or a jagged bloody streak or both, but not for Annie. For her, hooking a briar meant freedom, and she bounded off across the snowy field while her collar stayed twinkling in the bramble. Ollie the beagle was lunging in hot pursuit as she pulled me along, but we were no match for the fleet-footed Annie. Clearly beaten, we started angling towards home but not before we took a short cut in front of an old tobacco barn, only to be buzzed again by Annie, and there were moments when I was literally skiing down the snowy hill being pulled by a heaving, baying, frenzied beagle.
Whenever a dog breaks free they inevitably head for the barn. Even though they are not ever allowed in the barn, they know who lives there: barn cats. And if you're one of my dogs, you're chosen method of expressing delinquency is to chase a barn cat. Annie is not fazed by having to climb a small mountain of hay bales to get to a cat, and it would appear that getting hissed at and slashed on the nose is one of the perks. I don't understand this thing they have with barn cats, but it is where we always find ourselves once someone has breached protocol and gone rogue.
I guess I should have named one of my dogs "Sarah."
But we always have a happy ending, the three of us trudging up the lane towards home, where the dogs will be asleep within minutes.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Ready. Set. Stop.
Having spent most of the weekend posting, troubleshooting, and fine-tuning my new blog, I am now thoroughly exhausted and need to take a break from it.
An exaggeration, but only a little. Think about how much time you spend with facebook, twitter, blogger... The truth is social media is a colossal time waster. Somewhere, at some time, I lost some energy and I'd really like to get it back.
The cats are part of the conspiracy. They began clamouring at 4:40am and I woke from my dream travels to find myself in the great state of Everything Hurts. This journey begins when I slump off the couch with a stride-altering bunion and heads straight down the drive to the bruised fascia of my heel. From there it's a quick route to the audible clicking of my knee, and we pick up speed as we cruise into the stiff and unyielding lower left sacrum and hit the gas pedal to the sore, puffy, aching left shoulder (the reason I'm sleeping on the couch in the first place and, truly, the nature of this injury deserves it's very own post). A quick tap on the brakes and we hit the pounding sinus headache and I find myself at my destination: shuffling around in the dark, fumbling cat food into tiny little dishes.
And I confront exhaustion, yet again. One thing I completely underestimated when I brought horses home to live here is that they -- and every other animal -- require the devotion most people reserve for toddlers. And unless you're pumping out toddlers by the dozen, you get through this phase after a few years at which time, I surmise, your energy begins to rebound.
My 1000+ pound toddlers show no signs of growing into more independence so that I can get some rest. And truthfully -- here's the paradox -- I don't want them to. I love this rural life and obviously no one held a gun to my head and shouted "BLOG OR DIE!" So, like everyone else, I will make the needed adjustments and find the balance. Mostly, I will stop making laundry lists of things that hurt.
An exaggeration, but only a little. Think about how much time you spend with facebook, twitter, blogger... The truth is social media is a colossal time waster. Somewhere, at some time, I lost some energy and I'd really like to get it back.
The cats are part of the conspiracy. They began clamouring at 4:40am and I woke from my dream travels to find myself in the great state of Everything Hurts. This journey begins when I slump off the couch with a stride-altering bunion and heads straight down the drive to the bruised fascia of my heel. From there it's a quick route to the audible clicking of my knee, and we pick up speed as we cruise into the stiff and unyielding lower left sacrum and hit the gas pedal to the sore, puffy, aching left shoulder (the reason I'm sleeping on the couch in the first place and, truly, the nature of this injury deserves it's very own post). A quick tap on the brakes and we hit the pounding sinus headache and I find myself at my destination: shuffling around in the dark, fumbling cat food into tiny little dishes.
And I confront exhaustion, yet again. One thing I completely underestimated when I brought horses home to live here is that they -- and every other animal -- require the devotion most people reserve for toddlers. And unless you're pumping out toddlers by the dozen, you get through this phase after a few years at which time, I surmise, your energy begins to rebound.
My 1000+ pound toddlers show no signs of growing into more independence so that I can get some rest. And truthfully -- here's the paradox -- I don't want them to. I love this rural life and obviously no one held a gun to my head and shouted "BLOG OR DIE!" So, like everyone else, I will make the needed adjustments and find the balance. Mostly, I will stop making laundry lists of things that hurt.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Why blog?
This is the question I keep asking myself. There is no shortage of bloggers on board the world wide web, so why would I add my voice to the chorus?
I blame Hamish.
Hamish Cargill is my favorite blogger. I look forward to his posts with breathless anticipation. Hamish is funny, clever, erudite (you know...smart) -- all the things that comprise an excellent blog. Also, he doesn't talk about himself too much. He writes about his experiences (he calls them "adventures", and believe me, the description is apt) and does so in a very entertaining manner. It probably helps that he is an Aussie.
(Hamish is also a rider, an eventer no less, and I got to see him go at Rolex last spring. Yes, I admit, I am a little star-struck.)
So let's get back to this business of blogging. Here is exactly why I want to write like Hamish: instead of saying "We had an awful dressage test" he says "Tiger, having cleverly worked out that a dressage test was imminent, decided that he would take control of the situation and his naughty streak came to the fore at the worst possible time." Instead of saying "My horse misbehaved in the trot-up" he says "At the trot-up he resisted the urge to behave like a mature adult and acted instead like an unbroken brumby. As the crowd clapped the previous horse and just before they called my name to present to the Ground Jury, Tiger decided that the Burghley atmosphere really did knock the years off. While rearing on the end of the reins was a new but manageable trick, what really upset me was the volley of snot bullets that he fired into my face and body as he did so."
See? Funny, funny stuff.
And so, here I go, my first foray into blogging, and I think I'm pretty clever to quote the good stuff from somebody else's blog from the get-go. But I know that you, dear reader, will expect the real stuff from me next time, and none of this borrowing from Hamish. That is my goal as well.
I blame Hamish.
Hamish Cargill is my favorite blogger. I look forward to his posts with breathless anticipation. Hamish is funny, clever, erudite (you know...smart) -- all the things that comprise an excellent blog. Also, he doesn't talk about himself too much. He writes about his experiences (he calls them "adventures", and believe me, the description is apt) and does so in a very entertaining manner. It probably helps that he is an Aussie.
(Hamish is also a rider, an eventer no less, and I got to see him go at Rolex last spring. Yes, I admit, I am a little star-struck.)
So let's get back to this business of blogging. Here is exactly why I want to write like Hamish: instead of saying "We had an awful dressage test" he says "Tiger, having cleverly worked out that a dressage test was imminent, decided that he would take control of the situation and his naughty streak came to the fore at the worst possible time." Instead of saying "My horse misbehaved in the trot-up" he says "At the trot-up he resisted the urge to behave like a mature adult and acted instead like an unbroken brumby. As the crowd clapped the previous horse and just before they called my name to present to the Ground Jury, Tiger decided that the Burghley atmosphere really did knock the years off. While rearing on the end of the reins was a new but manageable trick, what really upset me was the volley of snot bullets that he fired into my face and body as he did so."
See? Funny, funny stuff.
And so, here I go, my first foray into blogging, and I think I'm pretty clever to quote the good stuff from somebody else's blog from the get-go. But I know that you, dear reader, will expect the real stuff from me next time, and none of this borrowing from Hamish. That is my goal as well.
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