Always Be Prepared, Young Grasshopper
I still have no news on the Houston front, but I tell you what: I’ve come up with a program to prepare myself just in case:
- Visualize the horse population in Houston by driving around the city, which has about as many people as Houston has horses. Mumble to self, “You’re a horse. And you’re a horse. And you. You’re [a donkey]. You’re a horse…”
- Pile thirty six blankets on the bed at night and sleep under them. It’s important to begin acclimating for the heat early.
- Simulate humidity by taking all clothes into the bathroom and taking a hot shower with the fan off. Practice dressing in the fogged-up, steamy bathroom.
- Store a bridle in the bathroom. Figure out how to keep it from growing mold what with all the hot, steamy showers going on.
- Set up a lawn chair in the snow on the front yard. Spend time every day laying out on the chair and building
sandsnow castles. - Buy packages of plastic bugs and ask roommate to hide them creatively throughout the house. Periodically find one in an unexpected place. Continue the hiding/finding procedure until the initial bloodcurdling scream becomes a yelp and eventually a whimper. Note to self: adopt a cat who will kill the bugs instead of racing across the room and climbing up the highest piece of furniture to get away form them.
- Approximate the transition from air conditioning to the hot outdoors by standing outside in the snow and then running inside and standing by the fire.
- Spend as much time driving around town during and after a snowfall as possible. It is not possible to prepare for Houston’s traffic, but the general stupidity of even resident northerners during a snowstorm is probably close to the general stupidity of rush hour traffic in a large city.
- If any of the other riders’ horses get hot and sweaty during the lesson, offer to untack and put the horse away for them. Might as well get used to cooling out the horses now…
- Buy a bikini and hang it on the wall, like in that yogurt commercial. Throw darts at it because, really, how useless is a bikini? You can’t do serious swimming in a bikini.
A couple months of this, and I’ll be all set for Houston. Or the loony bin.
HoofBeats says 16 November 2007
Ha! You forgot to mention automatically losing 10 pounds from “sweat therapy”. You forgot to mention the many ways of quenching your thirst in the hot climates - such as margaritas. You’re right about the bikini (no go). I solved the traffic problem by going to work at 6:30 and leaving at 3:30 (I never asked if that was ok, I TOLD them that was how it would be). I’ve answered your challenge on Hoofbeats. Thanks for giving a Southern Girl some northern insight.