The world is ending
I am such a hypocrite.
Today I ordered engraved, blingy stirrup irons. With blue sparkly things.
I was going to buy just the engraved version, because I do not have a deep-seated aversion to engraving like I do to sparkly things, but I couldn’t resist the blue sparkly things. I don’t know what came over me.
I am no longer allowed to mock anyone’s choice of bling ever again.
Meanwhile, I had a good lesson this weekend. We made a couple adjustments to my position, although it turns out I can only maintain one of them at a time right now. But the good news is that my sitting trot is definitely improving; I saw some of the video on the camera right after the lesson, and it’s all coming along nicely. If I can get the other position adjustment to stick, lateral movements should really start popping.
I’m sure the blingy stirrup irons are going to make that happen much, much faster. If not, I can always strategically twist my ankle and blind the onlookers: No, really, it was awesome! You couldn’t see past my magnificent sparkling stirrups? What a shame…
Someone has to keep the cashiers from dying of boredom
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.
What is wrong with me?
I went to a tack shop this weekend and almost had to be physically dragged away from the bridle section.
And what caught my eye? A lovely dressage bridle blinged out to the nines?
Of course not—I prefer brown tack to black and gleaming leather to sparkling stones.
So it must have been a rich, raised hunter bridle, right?
Mmmm… there were some of those. But no, the item that had me drooling were rainbow web reins. Like these.
But it’s worse now—the store had the patriotic ones (meh) and the regular rainbow ones (drool) and I see that SmartPak has pastel ones. Pastel. I’m sure I need them. I just need to figure out why I need them.
While in my web-rein-love-haze, I also fell for:
- A gorgeous pale (cream-colored) Butet saddle. It was wrapped in plastic and had gloves nearby that apparently had to be worn to handle it. How you’d ride in it if you can’t handle it without gloves I’ll never know, but it was beautiful.
- A lovely Navajo pad. We used to use them for schooling. Why’d they go out of style? They were awesome.
- A fly bonnet for the Princess. Not that the Princess would deign to wear such a thing, but it could have gone on display with the Butet, far away from the barn, and existed simply to be admired.
I also think, after looking at some Western silver-encrusted halters for a while, that I could be converted on the bling thing. Provided the bling is copper. I have always loved copper. I don’t expect I’ll see copper-encrusted halters showing up in the catalogs any time soon, though, what with its broad market of… one.
Ah well. I’ll have to console myself. I wonder if the web reins are on sale anywhere…
On the plus side, the item is exactly as described. Exactly.
On my local Craig’s List, there is an ad for a bumper pull trailer that proudly describes the trailer as: “2 - 3500lbs axles, Bulldog hitch, pulls good, tires and floor is in fair condition.”
Axles, hitch, tires, floor—what more could you want?
Walls and roof are not included, evidently (but hey—the item is exactly as described!)—
The Importance of Clarification
In literary circles, you have to have a theoretical approach to literature. You can’t just say you like a book. You have to interpret it according to _____.
My personal theory can be boiled down to one statement: Communication is impossible, but we do it anyway.
Consider: I say I saw an animal and it scared me.
You think: A tiger? They have claws and fangs. That’s reasonable. Maybe a giraffe. Giraffes are kind of stoned, chilled-out creatures, but you never know. I wonder if I left the gas on at home. I need to remember to pick up my dry cleaning.
And because I can see your eyes glazing over and your attention wandering from the astounding revelation that I was scared, I add: It was a horse.
And you think: Freak.
Actually, you are probably more charitable than I am, and you imagine a Shetland Pony or a giant draft or something plausibly frightening.
There’s a complete lack of communication here. You have no idea what sort of horse scared me, or what the situation was, or why I’m telling you this.
On the other hand, it probably doesn’t matter if you’re picturing a Shetland Pony and I’m referring to a rabid Mustang that attempted to cull my car from the herd. The general idea is there: general type of animal, general emotion.
For the PETA and legal types out there, now would be a good time to mention that this situation is entirely hypothetical and my car was not savaged by a feral horse. A bug did have a particularly violent encounter with my windshield recently, but I have managed to put aside my grief at the world’s loss of such a fine insect and moved on with my life.
The point is that even though we’re imagining two separate scenes that really have very little to do with each other, something has still been communicated. For normal day-to-day stuff, that’s probably ok. If it weren’t, the English vocabulary wouldn’t be full of terms as elucidating as “stuff.”
But sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes, we need to be very, very precise. Otherwise, there can be misunderstandings.
Consider today. I was talking to someone who doesn’t know my history with jumping, and mentioned that my goals were 2nd/3rd level dressage and maybe some low-level eventing.
When I say “low-level eventing,” I mean “a twig on the ground, and you wave at the water as you pass by.”
Later in the conversation, he said something about 3’ jumps.
There is a big difference between a twig on the ground and a 3’ jump. Three feet of height, for one thing.
But while I was contemplating the suicidal nature that would compel someone to jump over a 3’ solid object in a field, the moment to correct the misunderstanding passed.
Fortunately, there was a positive side effect: he didn’t laugh when he said 3’. That sort of confidence is empowering. I can almost envision myself going beyond my definition of low-level eventing and up to the next level: branches, and the horse’s hooves get muddy when you gallop along the edge of the water.