Blog
November 2006
Finally a break
I hate to keep harping on about the weather, but… there wasn’t anything else to talk about. We’re apparently in one of the coldest winters of the past fifteen years. For the past week, we were only a few degrees off the record low temperature. Our daily high temperatures have been lower than the average low temperature. I mean: we’ve been fifteen degrees below normal. For weeks.
The only exciting thing to happen to me in the past few weeks? My gloves froze to the wheelbarrow handle. You can see why I’m not posting much, right? It’s probably a relief–the posts would have been all the same. “Cold.” “Still cold.” “What is this ‘global warming’ thing of which you speak, and when is it going to show up?”
But today it hit nineteen degrees. Nineteen! Positive! Degrees! I didn’t even put a hat on, it felt so warm.
On the downside, the barn’s pipes froze. Normally we save this sort of excitement for the Jan/Feb cold snap, but we’re either getting it over with early this year, or else the Jan/Feb cold snap is going to be absolutely brutal. Given the weeks-long cold snap we just went through? I vote “brutal.” Sigh.
But that’s weeks away yet, and for now we’re getting a warm-up period and some snow. Yay!
Barn work is so much easier when I’m not bundled up like a giant marshmellow puff.
Sew What?
I haven’t posted in a while because nothing new is going on. It’s cold, but that’s normal. Well, twenty-below with the wind chill isn’t normal, but we’re creeping back up into the teens, so I can’t complain much anymore. At least my gloves aren’t freezing to the wheelbarrow handle this week.
I’ve been spending a lot of time inside, which means I’ve been looking for ways to distract myself. I’m thinking I should sew more.
I just can’t decide what.
I think I might make a cooler. Not that I’d be saving money by doing so, but it would keep me occupied for a bit. I think I’d want to line it in nylon or some other static-resistent material. And I’d like to make it fitted, because I’ve made square coolers before.
Or I could make a baby pad or two, but that’s also not cost effective. For some reason, the cost-effectiveness bothers me more with the baby pads than it does with the cooler.
I’d like to make a stuffed horse, actually. Hmm. Guess that means I need to go buy a pattern.
Why do I always get these ideas after the stores close?
Warm Winter?
Back in August and September I remember the weatherman saying we were going to have a warmer than normal winter.
Yeah. Tell it to the single-degree temps we’re getting.
Every conversation I have lately seems to revolve around the question of how to keep warm. I even got into a serious debate about the best way to keep faces warm while working out at the barn–one girl likes ski masks, which I hate because you can’t hear as well. I wrap a scarf around my head, which looks dorky but is warm–until the scarf falls off, anyway. Someone else has this very cool tube-like thing that she just pulls over her head/around her neck and then can pull it up over her nose when she needs to. It’s elasticated, so it stays on her face–unlike my scarf. I’m not sure where she got it, but it’s genious.
Someone else asked me how I stayed warm while working, and I said layers. “Like sweaters and shirts?” she asked. Yes, I said. “And a pair of long johns, and my riding breeches, and then my jeans.” “You’re wearing three pairs of pants?” she asked. Well, yes. It’s warmer that way.
Everything at the barn is blurry now. By the time I get home I’m too cold and tired to think about it. Fortunately, it was almost 20 degrees today, which was positively warm compared to last week. Yippee! I’m thawing out! Maybe I’ll remember something more exciting than cold-weather clothes to blog about. Surely my life is not that boring?
About the budget thing: Oct-Nov
So, I haven’t really wanted to admit this, but I will anyway. Because that’s the whole point of doing this twelve-month thing: being honest with myself about the budget situation.
I didn’t make my budget plan. Not even part of it. I only paid off the interest; the principle is right where it was a month ago.
Right now, I’m just happy I managed to pay off the normal bills. Paying off the extra? I laugh… and then I cry. It’s just so frustrating: things go really well for a couple months, and then they… don’t. At all. But that’s the point of this exercise, right? Making sure I know exactly where I stand financially.
I’m not giving up, though. I’ve given myself a year to get sorted out. The first two updates haven’t gone as well as I’d hoped, so now it’s a matter of going out and making sure the next one does. After all, no one’s going to just give me a horse and the money to keep it. If I want one, I have to find a way to make it work.
And I want a horse.
December Update: I have my eye on you. You are not going to look like this one.
Sometimes, things click
I had the shortest lesson ever this week. And one of the best in a long time.
It didn’t start out so great. Things were running late, so I was warming up a bit on my own–and warm up in winter = two point. Two point for a couple minutes so the horse’s back can warm up? Not my favorite thing, but worth doing. Two point for twenty minutes? Oy!
Once the lesson started, we were doing some work with bending and quarterlines and turns–and I was in that “I sort of get it but I’m not entirely sure I get it” place that I seem to be in so much lately. So my instructor had me leg yield from the rail to the center line and then ride into the halt.
And it clicked.
The feeling, I mean. It’s so much easier to stay centered during a leg yield if the horse is on all the aids. It’s so much easier to do a leg yield when the horse is really moving forward. And the feeling when a horse is really reaching underneath himself on the cross steps is incredible.
But the halt. Oh the halt. It’s the halt we’ve been waiting for all summer. It was a truely different thing than the park-horse halts I’ve been struggling with. It was the sort of halt where the horse is so round and underneath himself that you know he’s ready to step off into any movement you want to ask of him, and he’ll step off already on the aids. A beautiful, beautiful thing.
My instructor would have continued on with the lesson, but I was close to being done anyway. It was the perfect place to stop, and it’s a great feeling to be carrying through the week.