Blog
December 2008
The renovation of an old horse property
I went to a Christmas party last night at a house that had been a horse property until they bought and renovated everything. Apparently it had all be pretty run down, but the husband works in construction and knew what had to be done to fix everything.
The house is absolutely gorgeous now. The outside is a pretty stone, and the inside is all stone and wood. It’s not a very large house, but they opened up some rooms and the main area has very high ceilings, so it feels much larger than it is. One thing I noticed is that they replaced the plain white doors you usually have for bedrooms/bathrooms/etc. with some lovely honey-colored wood doors, and that made a huge difference in the way the house looked. I’m thinking the first “unnecessary” renovation I’m going to do when I buy a place will be to put some pretty doors in.
Then, I did say this had been a horse property, right? The house is on the front part of the property and you drive through to the back part. You can see where the arena used to be because the lights are still there, but they took down the arena and put in a garden. There’s a huge round pen that I think he actually renovated and reroofed, so that will be staying up although not used for round penning, obviously.
And then the barn. Oh, the barn. It was converted into a garage. All the stalls were taken out and the barn now houses some classic cars and the tools to work on said cars. But it’s wonderfully decorated; the owner said it has everything he’s been collecting but had no place to put. This barn is clearly a man’s paradise, and although he can work on his cars here, he can also entertain his friends. There’s a bar, what looked like an entertainment center, some seating, etc. There’s even a little apartment in what probably used to be the tack and feed rooms, complete with a tiny kitchen. It doesn’t look like what you’d think of as a garage, in other words.
And now for the cool part. These people aren’t horsey at all, which is why everything got renovated and the barn is now a classic car garage. However, when you walk in you can immediately see where all the stalls used to be. Apparently, the only concrete in the barn was under the stall walls. He left that concrete intact and poured new concrete everywhere else. Since the old concrete is a different color due to age, you can still see where the stalls used to be. There’s even a little space between the old and new concrete filled with some sort of filler stuff (that’s the technical term for it) so it’s really obvious where the stalls where, and it’ll always be obvious. He could have ripped it all out and poured in new concrete everywhere, so I think it’s awesome that he left in the concrete that marked off the stalls.
The walls, from what I gathered, used to be just the metal barn walls, but he went out and bought the wood from an old barn and has paneled his barn’s inside walls with it. So you walk in and see this great weathered wood. You can even see where some of the wood must have been painted that ubiquitous red-barn color in the past, although it’s all well faded now.
So even though the barn is a garage now, he hasn’t tried to erase the fact that it used to be a barn. It’s sad that what must have been a great little horse property is not a horse property any longer, but on the other hand—he’s updated and worked with the structures to retain something of what they used to be while making them into something he can use for his own interests. If someone absolutely has to renovate, this is the way to go.
Half Baked Rambling
I mentioned baking at work today, and one of my coworkers stared at me in disbelief. I guess I don’t come across as a baking kind of person.
That’s ok. I’m not a baking kind of person. There are only two recipes in life I need to be able to bake: the Funny Cake recipe from my dad’s side of the family and the birthday cake recipe from my mom’s side of the family. I can bake the Funny Cakes. I do them very well.
I have been trying for ten years to bake the birthday cake, and it has not come out right yet. I’ve been told I will be a “true” [mother’s maiden name] when I can bake the birthday cake, but if that’s what it takes, I hope no one is holding their breath waiting for me to join the ranks of the few, the proud, the Masters of the Chocolate Cake. I am the Master of the Brown Lump That Tastes Like Tin. Except last year. Last year I was the Master of the Runny Goop That Would Not Set Until It Burned And Set Off The Smoke Alarm.
However, it is Christmas, which means it is time for me to bake the Funny Cakes. These are, if you haven’t heard of them, something like a heavy vanilla cake in a pie shell with chocolate sauce that soaks through and makes a lining between the pie shell and cake. And there are nuts involved. Well, edible nuts, not just me.
It makes a great dessert and an even better breakfast.
I always make it for Christmas. It’s the one tradition I have. I also make it for my birthday, to console myself for once again failing to achieve chocolate cake. I swear my relatives have left out a secret ingredient in the chocolate cake recipe. I think it’s some kind of test. I am never going to pass that test.
Never mind. Tomorrow I bake. I know all the secrets to the Funny Cake recipe. And that means it’s officially the holiday season. Just in case you missed all the other clues, like the bad music clogging the airways and the antlers on peoples’ cars (I find the sheer number of antlered cars disturbing, for the record), and the million ads telling you that if you don’t buy your loved ones something sparkly for Christmas, they’ll never forgive you.
You know what I bought myself for Christmas? A tire rod for my car.
Not my first choice of gifts, but it’s sort of hard to drive a car when the steering wheel is canted a quarter turn to the right and the tires are squealing even on a straight road. I didn’t have much choice, really. At least the shop was able to get me in quickly and had it repaired in a day.
Hm. Good mechanics are hard to find. I wonder if they would like a Funny Cake. Do people overwhelm their mechanics with food for the holidays, the way vet and doctor offices get overwhelmed?
Blog Carnival Reminder
The Blog Carnival is back! Lynda at Hoofbeats has us all organized for the new year. I’ll be hosting in January; you can see the full list here. Blog carnivals are a great way for readers to learn about new blogs, and if you have a blog, you should submit an entry here—they are fantastic for getting new readers!
Also, if you are interested in hosting one on your blog (again, great exposure, as well as lots of fun—you get to read the entries first!), contact Lynda. It’s very easy to do!
How not to be a popsicle
I have decided that after years of enduring cold weather in the Frozen Northlands I am entitled to be as much of a wimp about the cold as I want to be. Oh, sure, I could scoff at the weather Texans call “cold” and tell you stories about real cold. Oh, all those school mornings when the first thing we did was go out and start up the car so that by the time we were ready to leave the window would be defrosted and we could grab the steering wheel without risking frostbite. Of course, we didn’t really drive cars to school. We walked uphill, both ways, through blinding blizzards, and stopped on the way home to kill wolves for dinner. With our bare hands.
Point is: I know what cold is like. And I have no desire to be cold ever again, thank you very much.
Which is why, when I realized the temperatures were unlikely to get over 45 degrees today, I went and bought a cooler for the horse on my lunch break. Actually, it wasn’t for the horse. It was for me. And according to the tack store lady, it wasn’t a cooler, it was a dress sheet. Whatever. She says dress sheet, I say cooler. She has my money, I have a fleecy thing that is going to keep me warm. Everyone’s happy.
And out to the barn, where I tacked up and headed out to the arena, cooler tossed over the horse and the saddle.
There were a couple riders in big puffy jackets who all looked much colder than I felt, so even though I was being a wimp about it being 45 degrees, apparently I haven’t wholly acclimated to Texas weather yet. I had the cooler tossed over the saddle when I lead Rogue in, and they were all watching me. No idea what they were thinking, but they were certainly intrigued.
I mounted and wrapped the cooler over my legs to keep my lower body warm as well as Rogue’s back. And then, I think, the other riders figured out what I was doing. They thought this whole riding-with-a-cooler thing was a great idea.
I am somewhat bemused that what is a common-place event from my Northern days is apparently a unique phenomenon here.
You know what this means?
It doesn’t stay cold long enough for people to have to think about ways to keep warm while riding.
Yeah, yeah. It’s Texas. It’s not supposed to stay cold. “Not staying cold” is the reason I moved here. That doesn’t mean I believed it.
I had no idea riding with a cooler was so novel.
Incidentally, I have been telling people since I moved here that it would snow this winter. My coworkers scoffed at me. I insisted. They dismissed me. Yeah? It snowed.
And thus my record continues: every time I move, it snows that first winter. It’s a special talent I have, this bringing-of-the-snow. Even in Houston.
This is how I know the gods have a sense of humor. It’s sick, but they have one.
I came, I saw, I showed
I went to a show this weekend. It was a little unrated show, very low key, no pressure. I thought it would be a good test to see if I had gained any perspective since I was a teenager.
See, my behavior as a teen at shows is legendary in my barn in the Frozen Northlands. Well, it’s legendary in the shape of a sponge necklace that gets handed out to any rider who is, ah, overcome with show nerves and bursts into tears. All the current riders know is that there is such a thing as a sponge necklace. They don’t know that it started with me.
I don’t have any idea what my problem was. If someone wants to hire a sports psychologist to figure it out, go for it. I think the answer is probably something like “high strung.”
At any rate, my junior career ended, and I didn’t show much at college what with one thing and another. The few shows I tried only reaffirmed that showing wasn’t much fun, unless I was riding the Project Pony, in which case showing was a blast.
Then some more time off, and when I started riding again back at my old barn in the Frozen Northlands a couple years ago, I casually deflected any questions about showing again. I was conflicted about the whole thing; I’d like my bronze medal, but I didn’t really want to find out if my show nerves were as bad as they had been.
Had I, or had I not, gained perspective in the years since I last showed seriously?
Now that I’m riding regularly again, I’m thinking seriously about that bronze medal. Oh, I know—I’m a training level rider right now. I’m not expecting to be doing anything towards the medal soon, but if I want that medal, I have to get back into the ring.
Hence the low key, no pressure schooling show.
The part that cracks me up about the show is how unequipped I am to deal with a schooling show.
When I showed as a teen, the barn would go to 3-4 day shows. My mom and I did the barn manager work to help cut costs, which meant the “show” actually started several days early for me, we worked the whole way through it, and it went on a day or two after as we unpacked and sorted everything out again at home. There was also a general rule that if you were showing a horse, you were wholly responsible for it. You wrapped it and loaded it for shipping, you met the trailer at the show grounds to unload and settle the horse in. You cleaned the stall, you fed hay, you took care of everything about the horse until it was time to load up to go home—and then you met the trailer at home again and unloaded the horse and put him away again.
Shows were, in other words, An Event. And since my mom and I were doing barn manager type stuff, they were An Event And Then Some.
So I felt like a fish out of water at this barn show, since I didn’t have to help trailer the horse out or home, and the host barn handled stall cleaning and feeding. Just show up and ride? My brain wanted to explode. A show that only lasts a couple hours? My brain did explode a little. I went to a couple two-day dressage shows as a teen, but we always trailered in a day early, so they were effectively three-day shows.
See, what was so amusing about this schooling show was the complete and total lack of pressure. And my inability to deal with that.
Now I’ve learned something important about showing: I go looking for the pressure. And when it isn’t there, my brain explodes and I wonder around in a bemused fog, trying to figure out why there’s no stress.
The good news is that it was a fun, enjoyable afternoon. The horse and I had some great moments, and I was very happy with how things went since it’s been a while since I rode him last.
More importantly, I didn’t have a total meltdown if things were less than perfect.
It appears I have gained perspective since I was a teen. Thank god.