Horses & Other Interests
Awareness of the outside world. A time gap in the official log? Now the showrunners are just messing with us.
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Spring. Last year’s coastal has been eaten. This year’s coastal has not been cut. We fill in the hay gaps with shredded money, um, I mean alfalfa. [Annoying Shortages 2020]
Border color from US Currency Education Program: Denominations, $1
Onwards!
Katherine
Awareness of the outside world. Speaking of ears, a commenter on the Contact page (waves hi!) talked about the donkeys of SoCal. I had no idea. KCET: The Wild Donkeys of the Inland Empire, Clarke 2015.
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Wednesday, Bingo at Stepping Stone Farm.
Bingo is the beginner up-down horse who does double duty for in-the-saddle exercise sessions. As I posted without stirrups, I noticed that I kept pitching up and to the right. I had gotten the habit of being crooked to match my crooked horse.
Note to self. Watch right hip sliding forward on Rodney. I know he is hollow on the right front quadrant, see yesterday. I thought I had addressed this. Apparently not. Apparently, it will be a on-going, constant, every stride issue. And that is why one does leg lessons.
Friday, Frankie at Stepping Stone Farm.
New horse. Go me!
Two lessons last week because camp this week and I intend to stay far, far away.
This is what happens when you put your ears up & arch your neck. Tip of left year just visible.
Onwards!
Katherine
Awareness of the outside world. A day of running errands, e.g. hay, cat food, bank, and so on. I assume the world was able to spin without me.
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You may have noticed a pattern.
Milton goes to Stepping Stone Farm to practice with other horses in a group lesson. [Hooves, Lesson]
Rodney goes to Falcon Hill Farm to practice over tiny jumps. [Ears, Ring]
Now that Spring is springing, clinic choices and schooling options are popping up.
We have decided to decline most of the new adventures. We will stay with the current set up for now.
Both horses are in routines that kinda, sorta work for them.
Neither horse handles novelty well.
Neither horse needs variety in their schedule at the moment.
We will use routine to our advantage. Same bat time; same bat channel. They will be reassured by knowing where they are and what they will be doing.
So, for the time being,
Milton goes to SSF
Rodney goes to …
HA!
Milton went on his trip last weekend, above.
Rodney did NOT go on his trip last weekend.
Not sooner had I drafted this than Rodney threw a monkey wrench into our plans. (The draft even contained the words, ‘as soon as I say this something will go sideways’. Again, I say HA!)
The Crystal Cupcake has tweaked his neck.
He’s fine. Okay at liberty. Okay to hand walk. Okay to the to left on the lunge line. He only shows discomfort lunging to the right and under saddle. That’s how I found out about it. He was fine until I got on. Then, he couldn’t reach around to get his mounting cookie. Got off. Flexed just fine. Got back on. Carried himself weird through the neck. Sigh.
(Yes, I’ve been swept up by the cookie train, but that’s another post.)
Another 0.5 lameness. Well, technically it’s level 2. Symptoms are consistent under certain conditions. However, it is so mild, I’m calling it a 0.5. [Tires]
Does it seem as if Rodney has an ever-evolving series of minor mystery ailments? Yeah, it does to me too.
Why? A few reasons.
Baseline. In blog and in life, one tends to highlight the drama.
One. Rodney is a horse. It’s always something.
Two. Rodney is a big horse. Or, more accurately, he is a tall horse. He is a 17+ hand horse on 16-hand feet. Structural stress. Cold-blooded draft horses are built to be that big. Hot-blooded Thoroughbreds are not. I bought him in spite of his height, not because of it.
Three. Rodney is a crooked horse. Foalhood injury has left an small atrophied section behind his right shoulder. This causes compensating imbalances elsewhere. More structural stress. [Fix]
or, possibly
Four. The universe hates me. (While I know this not to be the case, I have moments.)
We will resume the plan as soon as Rodney gets on board.
Onwards!
Katherine
Awareness of the outside world. ” ‘The supply chain network is so complicated that if somebody sneezes in one place, somebody else gets the cold in another place,’ says Husain.” NPR: Russia’s war on Ukraine is dire for world hunger. But there are solutions, Aizenman, March 6, 2022.
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Recently, a friend needed help (waves hi!), so I went grocery shopping.
I know. I’m as shocked as you are.
The adventure here is that my husband does all the grocery shopping. In the days when I went into the store, I was good for $20-$30 of expensive, packaged treats. Now the dog & I wait in the car.
Back to me in foreign territory.
Text friend: What want? PB&J?
Answer: Sure.
What do you mean sure? What PB? What J?
Same for soup and coffee additives. They were fine with whatever I got. Either they were being polite since I was getting the food, or they are broad-minded about what they eat.
Me, not so much.
PB? Creamy.
Soda? Coke in 7-oz mini cans. Not big cans. Not plastic bottles. Definitely not big, one-liter plastic bottles.
Ice cream? Baskin-Robbins mint chocolate chip or don’t bother.
The problem is that if I don’t see what I like, I don’t eat.
Seriously. I wander off, get involved in something else, and forget to eat.
Those of you who watched me attempt to feed myself in my single, pre-chef husband days are now nodding your heads or rolling your eyes. Or both.
I bring this up here because it explains why I get along with Thoroughbreds.
Don’t like this batch of hay, even though it looks identical to that other batch of hay? Okay, I’ll go to the third feed store & see what they have.
Don’t want to stay in your stall and eat, even though you like this hay and you need weight? Okay, we’ll try again later.
High-strung? High maintenance? Moi?
Onwards!
Katherine
Photo source, Muppet Wiki: Fork in the Road
During college, I spent a semester in the south of France. For my spring break, I went up to Vienna to see the Spanish Riding School. This meant two days on trains going over and two days going back. Who wouldn’t want to spend most of a vacation week on trains?
Totally worth it.
Needless to say, none of my classmates were of like mind. I went alone.
On the way back, on a train platform somewhere between Austria and France, I met a charming young man. We hit it off immediately. Chatted for five or ten minutes as if we had been friends for years. Plus, he was cute. When his train arrived, he invited me to come with him. I declined. I had to get back to class.
Doh!
I smack myself. Not that I didn’t go. I smack myself that it never occurred to me to go. That I never even considered an alternate path. My college program was expecting me in class on Monday. Class is what one did. Back I would go. What’s the opposite of teen rebellion? That would have been me.
So, of course, I wonder.
Hopping on a train with a random stranger was not as flaky as it sounds. Early 80s Europe was awash in students with Eurail Passes clutched in their grubby paws. In Vienna, I shared a hotel room with two women from Kalamazoo College who I had met on the train on the way. We met. We got along. We shared a destination. We shared a room. Made sense. Changing the gender changed the dynamic, but the underlying idea remained.
I’m interested in the incident as much from a narrative point of view as anything else. Given the same starting characteristics, how would the story have ended differently?
Forks In The Road
It might have changed everything.
He might have been a horrible person and I would have ended up as a statistic.
He might have been a wonderful person and our meetcute in a train station is the story we tell our grandchildren.
He might have been a mix of both and the experience prompted me to change my major, take up the cello, insert abrupt life/career offshoot.
The fork in the road is story-telling staple. A small change launches the protagonist down a different life path. For example, “Spell My Name with an S” by Isaac Asimov, wherein a major global realignment results from shifting a Z to an S.
The fork in the road idea is often combined with time travel, wherein the protagonist makes a small change that has enormous repercussions. For example, “Sound of Thunder” by Raymond Bradbury, which gives new meaning to the term Butterfly Effect.
Or the protagonist goes back in time with the specific intention of making the small change to affect the grand design. I recall a story that hinged on going into the past to a specific hospital closet in order to move a box of drugs from one shelf to the next. (Memory does not record what happened or which story this was. Too vague for surfing success. Ring any bells?)
Bumps In The Road
It might have changed nothing
I run off. Have grand – or not so grand – adventures. Eventually return to class. Get yelled at for my absence. Resume studies. Life returns to status quo ante, with the addition of a few fond – or not so fond – memories.
Convergent fate appears less often in fiction. Less interesting. Less plot potential. If it shows up, it is usually as a reason that time travel cannot make changes to the past. One of Jodi Taylor’s St. Mary’s books has a moment where a character almost intervenes only to have a heavy statue almost land on them. The message is Don’t Mess With History. (Or so my memory tells me. It would have been one of the early books. Any Taylor fans out there want to confirm?)
Here’s speculative example from another area of my life. Let’s say I had taken a different part-time job in high school. My friend would not have been on hand to wear me down about filling out a college application with seven (7!) essays. Since I met my husband in college, and since we live were we do because of his job, a different college would have meant a different life for me. Maybe not. Maybe I would have taken a different job than the one I did, met my future husband on a work trip, and ultimately ended up right where I am now.
Forky Bumps In The Road
It might have changed everything and nothing.
As part of an undergraduate history class at the University of Chicago, Professor Ada Palmer does a participatory reenactment of the papal election of 1490. While the characters are all historically accurate, she jiggers the plot just enough that there is no “right” answer. UC: A Papal Election Here on Campus
As a result of the election, nothing changes. A bad Pope is elected. War comes. Historical forces will not be denied.
As a result of the elections, everything changes. Which man? What families rise as a result? Which families fall? Where does the war break out? Which towns burn?
In my case, I might have ended up as a freelance writer (no change) living in the Deep South (no change, sigh), with a completely different husband (big change).
Questions For The Audience
For everyone. What think you? History/fate/life is an exploding array of diverging choices? History etc is inevitable? A mix of both?
For three people. Did you attended Kalamazoo college and visit Vienna in early 1982? Did you chat up a stranger at a train station, probably somewhere in France, also in early 1982? If you did either of these, drop a me line. Let me know how your life turned out.
Onwards!
Katherine
Awareness of the outside world. “Our aim help spread awareness of sports for everyone, regardless of physical shape, age and personal goals. In addition to organizing sports- and cultural events, our purpose is to contribute and provide financial support to sporting and humanitarian matters, as well as promoting Tromsø and our region as an attractive destination.” MSM.no: The purpose of our events.
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The pasture by moonlight.
Virtual PolarNight Marathon
Sats Mørketidstrim (5k)
Official Location- Tromoso, Norway
IRL Location – pasture
January 19, 2021
Time – 1:25:02
Placing overall – 31, last
Placing gender – 22, also last. Would have to be.
Placing age – 1, solo. They prematurely bumped me up to 60-64 category. Would have been 10 out of 11 in Kvinner 55-59 år.
Results
The Walk
As with last year, I wanted to do a walk in the spirit of an arctic night.
Yup. I did a 5K by moonlight.
No GPS because light. No flashlight. Although, my eyes never got completely dark adapted because I kept taking pictures. SA: Why does it take so long for our vision to adjust to a darkened theater after we come in from bright sunlight?, 2007.
Time includes a trip back to the house. There are some things ya just don’t want to do in a stall.
Horses. What is the crazy lady doing now? Oh well. Later. Nap time. Both lying down at the same time. So much for setting guard.
[Pottering Around the Pasture In The Dimness, Polar Night Virtual 5K] 2021
The Walk That Almost Wasn’t
Too cold. Too dark. Waaaaay past my bedtime. No. Woke up in the middle of the night. Still no. Gonna stay in bed, thank you very much. Unfortunately/fortunately digestive system did not agree. Had get up to visit the smallest room. Hmm. Moon still up. Doesn’t look that bad. I’ll start and see how far it get. Glad I did.
Onwards!
Katherine
Virtual Brush Box 