4 Jul 2010 4 comments
As I was cleaning the apartment today (isn’t that what holidays are for?), I realized my shower curtain was starting to grow mold. I pulled it down, intending to throw it away, and then thought better of it and threw it in the washer. I figured that the worst that would happen is the agitator would tear it apart, and then I’d have to throw it away anyway. At best, maybe it would clean the mold off.
And it did. I’m sure it also washed off whatever mold inhibitor was on the plastic, so I went and bought a new curtain, but now I have a big, clean sheet of plastic that I can reuse for purposes unknown. In my experience, you can never go wrong with big sheets of plastic. They always come in handy
for moving bodies eventually.
Score one for me.
But while I was at the store picking up my new shower curtain liner, I took the time to pick up a few other things.
While I was checking out, the clerk kept looking at my weirdly, but I assumed it was because I bought the last, dusty case of non-Piss Poor Beer that the store had. This was Big Box Store, after all, with a decidedly Piss Poor Beer drinking clientele. Look, I’m not a complete beer snob. I will drink Corona or Sam Adams if I have to. And I’ll drink Piss Poor Beer if someone else buys it. But I won’t buy Piss Poor Beer for myself, not even (memorably) if I’ve been sent out to get beer for the beer batter halibut. In theory, Piss Poor Beer would work for that as well as anything else, but I came home with an imported British beer, because you don’t need six bottles for beer batter. As I pointed out to my family, you might as well enjoy drinking the rest. They rolled their eyes at me and have never let me live it down.
*ahem*
Anyway. I assumed the Big Box Store clerk was confused by a case of beer that was not a crappy major brand and thought nothing more of his strange looks, until I got home and looked at the receipt more carefully. In order:
A couple cans of shaving cream.
Several packs of razors.
Two bottles of Liquid Plumber.
Thank god I have my beer. The retrospective embarrassment would kill me otherwise.
Filed: General Topics
4 comments
1 Jul 2010 7 comments
It’s taken me several days to pull myself together enough to write this post, but I thought you, lovely readers (and spambots, and the odd person whose unwise search results stranded them here) would understand my grief.
I broke my Kindle.
Apparently, it doesn’t like being knocked off a table and then slammed against a table leg in an effort to keep it from hitting the ground. In retrospect, I might have been better off letting it fall.
But then a small ray of light: Amazon slashed the price of the Kindle, putting it under the $200 range. I was tempted, but I waited. Plastic Logic’s Que is… somewhere in production. I figured when the grief was less keen, I’d find out where “somewhere” is and see if I could buy a Que instead. Would I have to mortgage my soul to afford it? Sure, but it’s the Que.
Not that waiting changed the fact that my Kindle was broken. Deep down, I don’t think I believed it. Maybe, just maybe, the battery would run out, I could charge it, and this would all be a bad dream. (Denial: the first stage of grief. It’s nice here. It’s quiet, peaceful, serene with my fingers in my ears and my eyes closed.)
Then today, an entire sun’s worth of light: Woot had Kindles for $149. What is Woot? I don’t know. Some sort of Tack of the Day thing for non-horse items. I saw it mentioned on a tech blog I trust, and I hurried over to buy a replacement Kindle.
Sold Out.
My grief continues.
I’m still not entirely sure if I’ll buy a new Kindle or wait until Que’s production line gets rolling. The under $200 price on the Kindle is hard to ignore. Que is pretty awesome.
If nothing else, let this be a lesson to you. Expensive electronic toys do not like being body checked against hard surfaces. Take note. Be smarter than I was.
Filed: General Topics, Books & Literature
7 comments
30 Jun 2010 3 comments
Recently, I went out to dinner with someone and she gave me some news that left my jaw dropping on the floor. I still have to periodically pick it back up. It just boggles my mind.
And it was only the latest in several months’ worth of drama events (not all, I assure you, from the same source).
At one point, I had to write my non-horsey friends with some of the details, to find out if my perspective was slipping and I was becoming part of the problem and not part of the solution. They have not written back yet. About anything. Erm. Granted, every so often we do these six week silences, but—drama alert!—I found the timing of this silence a suspicious confirmation that they are afraid to touch my drama with a ten foot pole, in case it’s contagious.
The fact that I found the timing suspicious made me decide I have, indeed, slipped. Not off the deep end. Off the continental shelf, perhaps. Chatting with Jacques Cousteau. 20,000 leagues deep, hanging with Jules Verne. Journeying to the center of the bloody earth.
Since then, not really through anything I did, the drama has dissipated. Thank god.
Although I kind of get where the drama comes from—horses are expensive, and we all get a lot of time and money invested into doing things a particular way. We don’t want to know that others disagree with our way, because that would imply that we wasted all that time and money. Therefor we are ferociously protective of Our Way. Interestingly, people seem to be able to tolerate people who do things Not Like Us At All a whole lot better than we tolerate People Who Do Things Almost Like Us But Pick Out the Left Hind Foot Before the Left Front Foot (or whatever minor, inconsequential thing is feeding today’s drama).
And yet, I kind of don’t get it. I went to a women’s college and lived in dorms for four years with hundreds of hormonal women surrounding me, and we never had drama like horse people have drama. I am pretty sure that if someone could figure out how to harness the elemental stable drama element, we could solve the world’s energy problem six times over. Controlling surges would probably be an issue for a while, but I think my experiment with my friends shows that running especially hot currents through an outside current will effectively kill things. Friendships, perhaps, but also some of the drama.
Ah. I have just found my solution. I will start patenting that idea, and then I will be too busy for drama. Horse drama isn’t going anywhere—I know better than to ask for ideas to minimize it, because I know how to minimize it. And even I can’t avoid it—so if I’m going to have to deal with it, I might as well profit from it.
I wonder if I need to know anything about electricity when I submit the patent? Is a drawing with an arrows labeled “drama in” and “electricity out” pointing to opposite ends of a pipe sufficient, do you think? Must go research…
Filed: General Topics, Probably Horse Related
3 comments
27 Jun 2010 6 comments
We went to a schooling show this weekend—low key, no pressure, no worries. Right?
Yeah, right.
This is me we’re talking about.
Warmup? Fabulous. We’re riding on clouds. We head out to the show ring when I’m two horses out. I watch the current horse in the ring, mumble an excuse, and retreat back to warmup.
Ah. My brain. I knew I left it somewhere. I put it back in, and suddenly I can remember how to breathe again. Ok. No worries.
Back out to the ring we go, as the competitor before me starts their test. I stare fixedly into the distance. A friend comes over to distract me. Apparently, I look a little tense. That’s a nice way of saying I look like someone has just delivered a note that says North Korea is training missiles on my home, and would I like to prepare a suitable response? It may just be a Training level test to you, but it’s a war zone to me.
In reality, I’m trying to remember if breathing is one of those autonomous body functions and, if so, why I appear to have stopped. The other rider finishes her test, and I wander to A. The photographer starts talking to me. I suspect this was an act of kindness on her part: make the rider talk, before she faints from lack of oxygen.
The ride was not fantastic. The score was not fantastic. I got a blue ribbon, but that’s what happens when you’re the only one in the class.
However—I remembered the test. I almost went off course once, but caught myself in time. There were moments when I was able to bring myself together and ride a bit, instead of steering the horse with the reins and hoping we made it from letter to letter.
And that, frankly, I count as a huge success.
I knew and expected that show nerves would kill me, so even moments of regrouping is a positive sign. All I wanted from the show was a low key non disaster, and I got that. I mean: the ride itself was kind of a disaster, but I only left my brain in the warmup ring. I didn’t lose it entirely. I think there’s something to be said for that.
People were commiserating with me about the score, but this weekend was emphatically not about the score. I needed to get back in the show ring, and I needed to know that it was not a big deal. I accomplished that much, and the warmup really was fantastic.
What I need now is more of the same, until I stop worrying about the judge at C and start carrying over the relaxation from the warmup to the show ring. I’m sure that will come with time. And, perhaps, with a properly timed beer before my classes…
Filed: Progress of Sorts, Training the Rider
6 comments
22 Jun 2010 5 comments
Today was Chiropractor Trip #2. Trip #1 did not go so well, which is to say it didn’t go at all.
Trailer loading this time went much smoother, and we made it to the chiropractor’s without incident. The mare’s owner warned them ahead of time that the mare had been acting out and they discussed options in case the mare objected to any adjustments that might need to be made.
After getting some history and doing a visual look-over, the vet went over to the mare and started massaging her head, talking quietly to her all the while.
I have seen college students high on pot and holding a full plate of brownies on their laps who looked more tense than the mare did. The vet could have asked her to jump through flaming hoops of fire and she would have, as long as she could have a face massage at the end of it.
For the rest of the session, she stayed relaxed, with big, soft eyes. Even when she got a little worried, she looked to the vet for reassurance. Beyond that initial conversation with the owner, sedation never came up. The vet was the mare’s new BFF forever after that head massage. Every once in a while, she’d steal a glance at her owner and I: See this? See what she’s doing? THIS is the life I deserve. I am staying Right. Here. Forever.
Owner and I called a timeout and huddled in a corner. She has a new BFF. She’s stubborn enough that she might not come home with us. What if we learn the jedi facial massage thing? Would that be enough? How much will we have to bribe the vet to teach us that?
Fortunately we didn’t have to resort to bribery and the vet showed us the secret to the head massage at the end. After due consideration, the mare decided that we knew the most important bit and that she would come home with us after all; she hopped on the trailer like a pro.
I looked around online to see if I could find a diagram that shows where the pressure points are, but I can’t. I am heartily afraid of being sued—although I have no idea why anyone would bother; the only thing I own are massive student loans—so I’m not going to try to describe it. However, even for people who are skeptical of massage/chiropractic care for horses, I’d recommend getting someone who knows what they are doing to show you some basic things you can do at home. Apparently not all horses adore the head massage the way this mare does, but if you can find The One True Thing your horse likes… like I said, I think this mare would jump through fire to get this particular massage done.
Heck, she’d probably load on any trailer you pointed her at, if she thought it’d get her this head rub.
It’s like a tailor-made reward for her, and that alone made the appointment worthwhile (says the person who wasn’t paying for the appointment and was just along for the ride).
Filed: Progress of Sorts, Training the Rider
5 comments
Page 4 of 10 « First < 2 3 4 5 6 > Last »
