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36 Days of Type
[Project Intro]
[36 Days of Type, A to G]

Note. Had planned to post Subway II today. Thunderstorms. Here’s a short I wrote on my phone.

~~~

Go be human, they said.

It’ll be fun, they said.

Ha!

We had no idea how much work it takes to get through each day.

Eating, for example. I’m eating all the time. I barely finish one meal and this animated meat factory is starting to think about the next one.

Enough already. Can I get a break from the constant ingestion? And of course the equally constant demands that happen on the other end. That is no way to run a sentient being.

I will admit that ice cream is a nice bonus.

In other news, got a memo from HQ asking what I thought about bungee jumping.

Again, ha!

They have no idea how fragile human bodies are. I am not leaping off of or out of any objects in a creation with such an abmysmal level of self-repair. Human societies require entire buildings and a staff of trained experts to fix the slightest structural damage.

No, thank you.

Really, the hardest part is the lying. People do it all. the. time. They lie outright. The say polite fictions that the don’t believe. They say words that are absolutely true yet in the aggregate are misleading to the point of untruth. They have entire professions wherein they stand up in front each other, lie their heads off, and then get applause for how well they lie.

This is what happens when you can’t see emotions.

Took me so long to figure this out. I would feel happy/sad/frustrated and assume others would see the emanations. No. They would stand there looking at me until I physically said, ‘I am happy/sad/frustrated.’

How do people function under these conditions?

~~~

Fit To Ride

Awareness of the outside world. “The funds raised at this event will allow the Heritage Hall to continue providing support for enlisted education programs and the development of museum-quality displays and exhibits that chronicle the contributions of enlisted men and women throughout aviation history.” Enlisted Heritage 5K.
~~~

Enlisted Heritage 5K
with the Montgomery Half
Montgomery AL, USA
Saturday, March 12, 2022
IRL

Time – 55:06.02, official
Pace – 17:46
Place – full roster results not listed
Gender/Age Group – 10 out of 14
Results

Full name of the half marathon is The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama Montgomery Half Marathon presented by Montgomery Multisport and the Enlisted Heritage 5K. That’s some good sponsorship acquisition.

The definition of last to start. Those Montgomery folks were fast. I passed way fewer people than I was expecting. I guess Sunday Strollers don’t come out at 35o.

Not flat. Up a long, gently sloping hill to the Alabama State Capitol, around the building, & back down the main drag. So, 55 minutes is a good time, considering. More sore than usual the next day, probably from being tight in the cold.

For someone who grew up in Federalist DC, the Ye Olde Roman architecture on the government and State Association buildings looked familiar. Did you know that Roman columns were painted? This upsets some people.

Color in the Ancient World, Brandon Locke MSU 2017

The New Yorker: The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture 2018

Finished in Montgomery Riverwalk Stadium, home of the Montgomery Biscuits. Hence the seating in the background of the medal pic at top. The grass footing was glorious.

Lower left, brown jacket is me taking a photo of 15 seconds of fame on the jumbo screen,

Onwards!
Katherine

Riding

Awareness of the outside world. Is it right to worry about animals when members of our own species are in such dire need? Isn’t it our responsibility to help those we have made dependent on us? Equine Ink: How to Help Ukranian Horses.
~~~

~~~

Two horses. Two riders. Efficient, right?

Not so much.

Right now we are working the two horses consecutively, with the other rider being groundperson as needed. For schooling, horses get shipped to different barns by themselves. [Milton at SSF, Rodney at FHF]

Not a tenable arrangement.

Rodney doesn’t feel strongly about the presence of other horses. He doesn’t like to be strafed, but who does? He’s a bit better at home with company. Doesn’t care if he’s alone at FHF. Mainly, his issues lie elsewhere. [Getting Our Hunter On person space]

Milton cares. Deeply. He either makes a beeline to Rodney and refuses to be separated, or he gets upset and thinks he needs to race.

One of the specific aims for February was to give Milton time to work alone in order to lay a baseline. We wanted to know what was Milton and what was Milton in company. That was one reason he went to the Moseley lesson alone. [Milton Has A Lesson]

The first time Rodney and I showed up at the mounting block after the February solo month, Milton got his knickers all in a twist. Pinned ears. Sneering snoot. Waving paws. ‘What’s he doing here!?!?’

Gotta work on this togetherness thing.

Onwards!
Katherine

Horsekeeping

Awareness of the outside world. The True Size Of … A fraught topic. Big Think: You can now drag and drop whole countries to compare their size.

~~~

Milton & Me. (Stunt photo from last weekend. Too rainy to get pasture foot photo. [Milton at SSF])

Have added Milton to the daily hand-walk rotation. He gets exercise. I get exercise. Everybody gets exercise. He has enough creaks and groans from the track that 20 (I can dream, more like 30) minutes of long, slow walking is good for his joints.

Horses are on their feet 24/7, minus a small amount of nap time. You’d think they wouldn’t need to walk. However, their walking is not continuous. They walk from here to the next bite of grass and then stop. Hand-walking did Mathilda a world of good in her retirement. [My Two Horses]

There has been the suggestion that Milton & I might use the time to bond. Color me dubious.

Onwards!
Katherine

Horsekeeping

Awareness of the outside world. Because the world wasn’t done messing with us. Case numbers going back up. “Throughout the pandemic, the U.S. has lagged Europe trends by a few weeks.” YLE: State of Affairs: March 14 (Europe, Asia, U.S., and Deltacron).

~~~

Last week. Clean hoof. Put on first stroke of hoof goo. Horse freaks out. Backs up. Runs out of barn. Go fetch. Horse trots off lame.

Huh.

Turns out Rodney had an abscess in his frog. Do you get cracks on the your fingertips when it gets cold? I get them all the time. Right on the corner of the nail. Hurts mildly, except when I hit it just so. Then, yow!!!!!

That must have been what I had done. Touched the frog just wrong. It stung. In a few more steps, he probably would have trotted out of it. It was a typical 0.5/5 lameness that Rodney is so good at accumulating.

AAEP LAMENESS SCALE
1 – inconsistent, can cannot be reliably replicated
2 – consistent under certain conditions
3 – lame at trot
4 – lame at walk
5 – non-weight bearing

Rodney excels at sub-1 lamenesses that get him out of work with as little inconvenience to himself as possible.

Mild as it was, something was wrong. The minions needed to fix it.

Fortunately, we have a surgeon on staff. One who is bold enough to cut what needs to be cut, yet wise enough to know when to stop.

Opened abscess. Packed area with hoof cushion. Tiny. Healed in a few days.

Sigh. This horse makes tissue paper and gold leaf look sturdy.

Onwards!
Katherine

Horsekeeping

Awareness of the outside world. Pi Day. [To Celebrate Pi Day, 10 Examples of Numbers and 10 Examples of Math Involved with Horses, March 2020. It was coming. We knew it would be bad. Did we have any idea how bad? Would we have wanted to know?]

~~~

Still loving pine tar for hooves. This brand in particular. [Feet Change]

Both horses easily went six weeks between blacksmith appointments. That’s a record for Rodney.

Rodney is much less of a drama queen after getting shod. Haven’t had to use booties in months. [Shoeing Dilemma August 2021, Booties Bonanza, March 2021, Back In Booties Feb 2021]

Continuing to get raves from blacksmith. Well, for a blacksmith definition of rave.

The goo is easy to work with. It does not run everywhere the way, say, Kopertox does. [Text Art: K is for Kopertox(R)]

However.

Where pine tar goes, it stays. Barn towels fresh out of the laundry look like dirty shop rags. Sleeves. Pant legs. Horse hair. Seriously, we used it for a scratch on Milton. Worked great. Then long after the boo-boo was no longer an issue, we had to scrub out the last of the pine tar.

Which leads to our new barn rule.

One does NOT pine tar while wearing britches.

Onwards!
Katherine