Category Archives: My Life

Fresh Starts

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Life isn’t all maudlin and sadness over here, despite how my last post sounded. I have found a new rhythm, and it suits me.

Reverie is four years old now, and away at training.

Can you believe that?

I know, I know.

She was born, and then life got busy and crazy, and now she’s four.

Reverie is probably as tall as she’s ever going to be (14.3), but she only recently began to fill out.  She’s shaped just like her mother so I know she will fill out, but I almost waited until she was 5 to start her. It’s not that she needed time to mentally mature, just physically, since I’m not exactly a tiny dewdrop fairy of a woman. On the other hand, that filly has been aching for a job since she was two. In the absence of me giving her something to do, she assigned herself her own job, which is to gently and lovingly dismantle every. single. gutter. on. the. farm.

It’s like that old saying goes – nature abhors a vacuum, luck favors the prepared, and Reveries abhors proper building drainage.

Anyways, she’s away at training at Silver Mesa Morgans in Monmouth, Oregon, and she’s doing great. When they picked her up they asked me what my goals were, and like any prepared owner, I told them my detailed plans: “Uh…. don’t make her hate being ridden?  And make her sorta rideable?”

It’s good to have goals.

I went out to visit her this past week, and they’re doing an amazing job. Every horse pricked up its ears and came to say hello with a friendly expression when I walked past their stall (a fantastic sign!). Reverie heard my voice and somehow managed to get the top of her chin over the 7 or 8 foot wall on the back of her stall and strained to catch a glimpse of me, which made me feel really, really good about myself.

 

I haven’t been away from her for more than a day or so since 2018, and I was surprised how much I have missed her while she was gone.

They tacked her up, which brought me joy, because she was clearly delighted to be chosen to work.

She’s right where she needs to be – no rush, no pushing her unnecessarily, giving her space to learn and actually enjoy the process of learning, and it was fantastic to realize that by next month, I could actually be up on her.

In the meantime, I’m far from horseless. Scandias Mademoiselle, otherwise known as Madam, is currently in the barn.

Madam is intelligent, sweet, and kind.

Madam is… gorgeous.

Madam is smooth as silk to ride.

Madam is a lady.

Madam is claaaaaaasssssy, and probably way too good to be in my barn, but I am not complaining. Besides, Madam is relaxed and happy, and seems pretty darn content with her new life.

DragonMonkey likes to crawl up on her back and play games on his phone while she wanders around grazing. I’m not gonna lie – it looks soothing, and I’m distinctly jealous I’m no longer an agile, bounceable teen.

Magpie loves her and is always begging to ride her. She’s currently asking for horseback riding lessons, because her current dream is to be a pickup man at a rodeo.

Since she’s probably gonna end up around 5’3 and maybe 100 pounds sopping wet I don’t know if that’s in her future, but maybe she could take over my own childhood dream of being a jockey?

Anyways, life is quiet, and that’s good. I have a barn full of goats, mostly because it turns out that once you’re an adult with your own disposable income, the only thing telling you that you can’t get another goat is your own pocketbook.

I don’t have a problem. I can stop accruing goats any time I want…

I figure I’ll probably give them their own intro post soon.

Artemis is getting old, which feels weird, but also somehow peaceful. It seems strange to think of life before her.  On some days it feels like she has always been here, and like I have always lived in Oregon.

Other times my brain stutters and stops and struggles with the fact she’s been in my life for a decade.  How in the world? Wasn’t I just blogging about getting her?

And yet.  She’s covered in benign cysts (according to the xrays) and her muzzle is greying, and she has definitely turned the corner this year from older lab to just plain old 🙁

Also, if you ever get the chance to own an old lab, do it.  Old labs are absolutely, the 100% pinnacle best of dogdom. She has all the sweet, loving devotion of her youth, but she’s twice as peaceful, and BONUS, she’s too clunky to get up on the counters anymore.  10/10 recommend this experience.

I’m not really sure how to end this post. I’ve been out of the habit of writing for so long, but I recently switched from dayshift to graveyards, and realized that the only way to start back writing again is to, well, start back.  I’m not quite ready to plunge back into the world of trying to write for money.  Besides, there’s something therapeutic about this.  I started this blog way back when I was 25, trying to figure myself out  I’m 41 now, and in the same odd position, albeit with a lot more responsibility. and oddly, a lot less stress.

Still, I’m out of practice at it, so instead of coming up with something catchy, I’ll just end it with some gratuitous photos that make me happy.

Life Really Does Go On

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It’s a strange thing, learning to be alone again.

For so many years, loneliness was a commodity to lust after. No matter how much love there is in a home, at the end of the day, four is a lot of kids.  I have always equated being a mother of young children to receiving a back massage.  Even if you desperately want a back massage, no matter how nice it feels at first, if someone touches you for 15 hours straight, your skin is going to be raw, and you’re going to need a break.

For so many years I dreamed of a break, drinking in tiny sips of freedom through late night trips to the grocery store, or stolen hours at the barn. Those brief moments of quiet fed my parched, raw soul.

And now?

Now I have a whole river of solitude, dark and unending, every other week. I stand at its silent banks and long for noise.

The end of a marriage is so very, very sad. That part was never a shock.  The hurt feelings, the deep emotions, the feeling of loss…. none of that was a surprise.

What I wasn’t emotionally prepared for was how logical it was, or how very much it reminded me of playing the world’s most depressing game of Monopoly.

Trying to boil down 14 years of love, heartache, work, laughter and tears into a series of financial transactions… To be honest, it felt dirty.

I’ll trade you a share of the retirement for a share of equity in the home, and switching the kids on Mondays.  Do not pass go.  Do not collect $200.

 

All I can say is that I’m glad it’s behind me.

The truth is, the divorce isn’t new. I’m nearly a year and a half into this not-married life. I keep running into people who haven’t heard about it, which I suppose is my fault. It’s a hard thing to discuss. Do you post on Facebook? Do you let the information drip out of you, leak by leak, one friend at a time? Do you elaborate everything, in hopes the rumor mill does the job for you?

Or do you just sit there, hurting, and silently wish it would all go away?

2020 was…well, 2020.  I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried to simultaneously homeschool a bunch of kids while struggling in the death throes of a marriage, while working the front lines of social worker through a global pandemic…. but you know, I honestly just can’t recommend it.

At all.

2020 culminated in the wonderful December fanfare of getting a 4 am phone call from my uncle, his voice heavy with tears, letting me know my dad had passed. It was completely and totally unexpected, and I spent the next month just sort of swimming through a blur of post-death paperwork. One bad year just kind of drifted into the next, which drifted into the separation, which drifted into long Covid, which drifted into one altering catastrophe after another.

At some point life just stopped being hard, and life-numbing blows became… well, just life. There’s something very humbling about being at the end of your rope, about having nothing left to give… and then just getting up and continuing to trudge along. It’s not depressing. Analyzing something as depressing requires energy, and energy is something that doesn’t exist when you’re that low. What it is, is bleak.  And what do you do with bleak?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I hunkered down, quarantine style, and kept to myself. And then I just slowly lived out what may very well be the most meaningful Disney song ever to be written:

I won’t look too far ahead
It’s too much for me to take
But break it down to this next breath
This next step
This next choice is one that I can make

For the most part it was easy to do. I switched positions at work. I got Covid, and experienced months of low heart rate and exhaustion afterwards. I threw myself into making the change as easy as possible for the kids, if there even is such a thing.  I refinanced the house into my name. I painted the walls. I redecorated the garage and turned it into a bedroom. I hired someone to put in walls down in the basement. I worked overtime to make ends meet.

My therapist is always telling me I should learn to feel my feelings, instead of eating or repressing them, but she never said anything about outworking them.

Busy hands are happy hands?

Life even conspired with me to make it easy to focus on the here and now. For a while there it felt like each week brought a fresh new horrifically life-altering event. They say that grief comes in waves, but the wires on my life kept getting crossed, so instead of waves of sadness I just got hit with waves of tragedies and mishaps.

At some point, it almost became funny.  “Wait, wait, wait… you’re never gonna believe what else happened this week,” I would tell my therapist, giggling out the story in shell-shocked laughter.  “The extra photos they needed on my mammogram turned out clear, so that’s nice, but the dog’s cancer has spread, and also the lawn mower broke again. My amazing church helped me with my broken car, but now the check engine light is on, right before I start another new position at work that requires two hours of driving a day….   and remember how last week literally every single aspect of my life simultaneously caught fire?  Well, the latest catastrophe has a new twist!  But before I get into all that, can I just brag? I rearranged the entire living room and repainted the entire downstairs according to some Feng Shui video I saw on Tiktok. Dude, you should see it. It’s legit!”

BUSY HANDS ARE HAPPY HANDS, ALRIGHT?

Eventually life settled down, or at least stopped crashing on me in waves, and I began trying to figure out who the heck I was.  That sounds cliche, but after so many years of putting everything else on hold, I had absolutely no idea what to do with myself for half the month.

Besides, it turns out that who I was in the past is not who I am today, so it didn’t quite work. That’s the problem with growth. You don’t fit into your old, discarded habits, and it leaves you too exhausted to try anything else.

Writing was the only thing that still felt good, but I found that I couldn’t. The words would blur and hammer around inside me, so I would open the laptop and stare at the blank screen.  After a bit I would quietly close the lid on the laptop, page still blank.

There are some things that are just too raw for words, especially if your kids have learned how to Google your name and regularly snoop on you.

On the weeks the kids were with me, it felt almost like it always did.  School, then work, then dinner, then homework, then showers, then bed. No, you can’t play video games on the weekdays.  Yes, you need to brush your teeth. Break up a squabble.  Cuddle on the couch.  Rinse, repeat.  Rinse, repeat.

It’s every other week that’s the problem.

At first it was easy, with the Covid exhaustion and the rush of getting the house together, and catching up on housework. Eventually though, I ran out of things to catch up on.  It’s mind boggling how tidy a house stays when there is only your stuff to pick up.

Busy. Hands. Are. Happy. Hands.

I started reading up on DnD. I dragged out my old guitar. I did all of my laundry, and put it all away.  I took loads of things to Goodwill. I watched a lot of SG1. I tried to teach myself to sleep in the middle of the bed, instead of just the corner edge. I let myself go back to my natural rhythm of early bedtimes and pre-dawn risings. I let the backyard grass grow wild, so the horses could graze by the kitchen. I took long, long walks.

I developed insomnia and crept around the house, listening to the way the walls echoed and the floorboards creaked under my feet. You wouldn’t think the presence of other people sleeping could have a weight, but it does. Without them the house felt eerie, like it could float away at any second.

It was easiest just to put my head down,and keep trudging through. Summer faded into fall, fall faded into winter, winter faded into… well, less wintery winter?  The Pacific Northwest decided to skip this last spring. Winter Part Two faded into summer, or so they said. It was a bit hard to tell.

Fourth of July was always more of the Bean’s holiday than mine, so it was an easy one to give up… in theory.

The reality of it was a lot rougher than I imagined. I volunteered to work On Call at my job.  Busy hands are happy hands, after all? I called my kids and enthused with them about their plans. I locked up the horses to keep them from panicking, as there’s a neighbor nearby who occasionally likes to set off tannerite.

Eventually there was nothing more to be done inside the house. Have I mentioned how mind boggling it is how clean a house can stay without kids?  I thought about accepting my friend’s offer to join their family’s celebration, but something about borrowed family seemed worse than nobody at all. The on call phone refused to ring. Eventually the silence of the home got to me, so I crept out into the backyard.

The thing with being alone is that silence can be almost louder than noise. After so many years of shrieking laughter and sibling squabbles, the dull roar of silence sinks into my bones, overwhelming me with its weight.

There’s a large swing under the giant maple tree in my backyard, so I wrapped myself up into a blanket and climbed on it, pulling the rope to set it swinging.  I wrapped myself up in a blanket to watch the crescent moon while I listened to the sound of fireworks all around me.  That’s one of my favorite things about living in the country – the sounds float over the hillsides, and if you are still enough, you can hear them all. Muted booms from distant city-led fireworks, nearby scratchy explosions from someone’s driveway., someone’s loud laughter… if you close your eyes, it can sound almost like a song.

The neighbors beyond the big hay field were setting off those rat-a-tat-tat fireworks, punctuated by the sound of a too-tired child starting to cry. Their dog was barking, either out of excitement or because he was locked away.  I’m not quite fluent in my Twilight Bark anymore, but whatever he was saying, he was definitely repeating himself. Three sharp barks, a pause, and then four slower barks.  Three sharp barks, then four.  He didn’t sound upset, just insistent.

In the distance, the muted booms of distant cities and their professional fireworks, all competing.

Up the hill, the neighbors were gathered together and using the long stretch of pavement for what I think must be an annual party. They were setting off something shrill, and possibly large.  It whistled up into the air, ending in a loud crack. I heard a woman’s “oooh” of appreciation float over on the evening air.

All around me, the clamor of a rural Fourth of July pounded, and screeched, and shrilled through the air.

I closed my eyes, and slept.

A Rose By Any Other Name…

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The door slammed open, and there she stood, highlighted in the doorway by the setting sun behind her. For a moment, everything was still.

 

Ravenna DarkEye, they whispered. Assassin. Lone Wolf. No one to trifle with.

 

The slight breeze blew at The DarkEye’s hair, lifting it slightly, but beyond that she could have been a statue. Hers was a cold, dangerous stillness, and everyone knew it.

She moved inside, the door shutting slowly behind her. Her weight balanced easily over the balls of her feet, and her step was silent. Her stride was long, and loose-limbed – hunter’s grace and quiet athleticism in her lean, rangy build.

 

All eyes were on her as the crowd gathered there held their breath. They were motionless, an instinctive freezing- the hare before the hunting fox. This was a formidable, capable woman.

 

Ravenna reached the front, leaning one-elbowed on the counter. The shopkeep behind it swallowed, the sound eerily loud in the unnatural silence.

 

“Can I…. can I help you?”

 

“Coffee.” Ravenna paused, staring hard, and then added, “Black. Strong.”

 

Everyone nodded. Of course. Of course a woman like this would take her coffee black. None of that sissy stuff, not for a warrior such as she—

“Ma’am? Ma’am? Excuse me, ma’am?”

“What? Oh. Oh, sorry, I was daydreaming. Hi.”

“Welcome to Starbucks! What can I get you?”

“I’ll take a grande salted caramel latte, but can I substitute white mocha instead of the regular mocha?”

“Of course.”

“And only half sweet please – just 2 pumps of toffee nut, and two pumps of white mocha….and instead of regular milk, can you make it breve, – with the half and half?”

“Certainly! That will be –“

“Oh! I almost forgot. Can I get it in a venti cup instead of a grande cup, so I can extra, extra whipped cream?”

“Of course.”

“Name on the cup?”

“Becky Bean.”

“Oh my gosh, what an absolutely adorable name! I love it! Becky Bean! It sounds like a character from a book.”

“Thanks. I always thought it sounded like the comedic sidekick, or something. But it suits me. You got the extra, extra whipped cream part, right?”

“Yup!”

“Thanks.”

On Writing and Horse Bootcamp

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This blog has been oddly silent.

I mean, I’ve never been the most dedicated poster, but lately I’ve been even quieter than usual.

This is because I’m writing.

I know. “Sorry I haven’t been writing, but I’ve been writing” is a weird excuse, but it’s the truth. In a perfect world I could manage to write and do regular blog posts at the same time, but the truth is I’m not very good at typing on phones anymore. I miss phones with real keyboards – I can’t write effortlessly on these new-fangled contraptions like I used to. It ends up being 90% typos, and fixing it is more trouble than it’s worth. I try voice to text, but it usually ends up gibberish…. so I find myself waiting to write until I’m sitting down by a real keyboard.

Of course, once I’m sitting in front of a real keyboard, I always ask myself: do I want to write a blog post, or do I want to write something that will eventually earn me money?

I know, I know. Some people want to publish because of lofty dreams and aspirations. That’s not me.

I’m not saying that I’m entirely mercenary. I write because the words bubble up inside me and explode out in unhealthy ways unless I let them spill out like lifeblood on paper.

That’s why I write.

Publishing, on the other hand, is a whole different ballgame. I want to publish because

I’m not dumb – I know I won’t make a ton of money. Still, it’d be nice if I could make enough to do little projects around the farm. Maybe I’ll name my books after my hopes and aspirations?

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

Anyways, I’m writing. And for once, I actually have a pretty good feeling that it’s going to be done sooner rather than later. This is all because of a Facebook ad that I stumbled across a couple of months ago. I can’t remember exactly which book it was trying to sell me, but even if I did I probably wouldn’t say… and that’s because I want to be honest about it without hurting anyone’s feelings. And here’s the honest truth:

Holy crap, the writing was AWFUL. It was some kind of dragon story, and the excerpt was so horrible I downloaded a sample. People would shout things wincingly (<– I’m not making that up. “…he shouted, wincingly” was honestly part of the book.) The plot was confusing and cliche, all at once.  The grammar was all over the place, and the whole thing was just… just WOW. It was bad. It was really, really bad.

It also had 4 star reviews from several hundred people, which meant that it was selling pretty well.

If you’re curious how that is even possible, it’s because there’s a science behind independent publishing, and if you churn out a book every 30 days you can beat the Amazon algorithm, and then if you give some of your books away for free, people will respond favorably.  Once you  get the 50 review minimum Amazon will start recommending the book to people, and…..

And if you’re really interested in learning more, there are better blogs than mine to explain about it.

I sent a screenshot of the book (even the cover had problems!) over to Melinda over at Dr. Mel Newton. “Look at this! This is awful! We could write ten times the book, without even proofreading it once.”

We laughed, and then went on with our day.

The reason I shared it with her is that she’s kind of an awful human being.

I mean, she’s really the best kind of human being, but she’s just awful in that she actually follows through on stuff.

She’s like that kid in high school who does all their homework before they watch TV… only they’re not actually going to ever sit down and watch TV, because they’re off learning how to play classical piano, and eating only salads and lean grilled chicken.  You kind of like them, because they’re the best people ever, but also you don’t’ want to hang out with them too much because you can’t relax on the sofa with three ice cream sandwiches and binge watch Grey’s Anatomy.

Although, now that I think about it, I never binge watched TV in high school. What did I do? I guess I binge read Dragonrider of Pern books? It’s getting to the point I don’t even remember what life was like without chasing after a pack of kids.

Anyways, in case you think I’m making this up, here’s proof:

Back in 2015 I went to a writing conference. I attended a couple of “how to write magazine articles and make money” classes and came away with some great notes. I’ve shared those notes with a couple of people. We all agreed it was really good advice.

I’m not sure any of us ever did anything with them, but seriously – it was super advice! It was just the best advice.

When I found out that Mel was looking to do more nonfiction writing, I shared the notes with her.

“Oh, that’s great!” she said. “Thank you!”

And then she did something really weird.

She actually went and DID all the stupid advice I sent her.  Like, immediately.

Ick.  Who does that?

As a result started getting picked up by Equus (a very big name horse magazine) and having people regularly buy her columns, and just… I bet she went out and ate a big bowl of salad and went for a run in celebration. Oh, that’s right, she probably did do that, because she regularly runs 100 mile ultras.

Sigh.  She’s not even human, I swear.

Still, she’d enjoyed the advice so much I sent her some fiction tips. Once again, she expressed a ton of gratitude, and went off and PLOTTED AN ENTIRE BOOK.

Everyone who knows anything about writing knows that you’re just supposed to dabble, and endlessly revise the first 30%, and never actually finish anything. I mean, duh.

Anyways, one evening as I was having trouble falling asleep, I started thinking about this wish list, and how much I wished that I actually could do Tinder For Writers and find someone to collaborate with.

And then I remembered the crappy dragon book, and I got an idea.

The next morning I got up, and started writing an email to Mel. In the subject line I typed “A Really Good Bad Idea”. In the body of the email, I basically said “Do you remember that crappy dragon book? Dude. We could do that. And I’m not just saying it… I mean, we could literally do it.”

And she took me up on it.

And you know what? It’s kind of perfect. We’re both good at what the other person is not-so-good at. We made a list of ideas, and we chose to start off with…

Wait for it…..

Crappy Dragon Book.

Yes, that’s it’s current working title. No, that’s probably not the title we’ll eventually publish it under. There’s still a lot of behind the scenes work to do between now and a finished book, but it’s actually really, really working. I stay up in the evening and vomit a bunch of ideas and scene suggestions onto a document, and then she shows up in the early morning and basically turns into the annoyed robot from Wall-E and sweeps it all up into some kind of format and works on it… and then we go back and forth and back and forth.

And now we’ve got the thing, like, 80% plotted and have about 20k words in it. I kid you not, I’ll be very surprised if we don’t have a finished product by January.

So, yeah. I’ve been writing. I just haven’t been writing here.

Anyways, now that you know what I’ve been doing with all of my “free time”. As for what else I’ve been doing, I’ve been pretty busy. Last week Carrots had some laminitis, so I sat there and imagined the worst.

By Friday she was visibly limping, horribly uncomfortable while standing, refused to do more than nibble at her meds, and I steeled myself for the worst.

When the vet showed up on Saturday morning, she walked right up to the fence, no trace of a soreness, no heat in her legs, barely registerable digital pulse, all bright eyed and bushy tailed. She nickered happily.

I glared in relief, which I didn’t even know was possible to do until that moment.

That pony is just…. She’s kind of too perfect.

So she’s on a diet now and on an exercise regimen. Last night we moved the goats in with her, and it’s been very entertaining to watch. I figured she could use the company, because Reverie went off to boot camp yesterday.

Here’s the thing with Reverie – if she’s not the smartest horse I’ve ever worked with, she’s in close running. I don’t say that as a compliment – I kind of like dumb, happy-go-lucky horses.

Reverie is not lazy and dumb and happy-go-lucky. Reverie is sweet, and loving…..and eerily intelligent and easily bored.

She’s also alpha – very, very alpha. The good news is that she’s a nice alpha, not one of those bitchy mares that takes joy in ordering others around. She just stands her ground and doesn’t like to give in when another horse heckles her. She’s also sweet natured at heart.  She’ll trot away from a giant pile of food to meet me at the gate to let me scratch on her (IT’S SO NICE HAVING A HORSE THAT ENJOYS BEING SCRATCHED ON!!!).  She’s also happy to accept my leadership – I’m sure we’ll have battles in the future, but for the most part she doesn’t challenge me too much.

PHEW.

The bad news is that she’s alpha enough that she’s been ordering Carrots around for several months now. I think the passing of the baton happened some time right after her first birthday, and I just can’t help but think that it’s an absolutely horrible thing for a yearling to grow up thinking she runs the entire world, and that everyone 4-legged needs to get out of her way.

So, I contacted my farrier – Rose. Rose is amazing, and runs a happy, healthy herd. She has a bunch of Appaloosas she’s owned almost since birth, and a tiny herd of rescue minis that were all foundered and lame enough to put down, that she nursed back to health. She came with a trailer and I walked Reverie over and loaded her in.

By “loaded her in” I mean I made a complete hash of the job, and I’m too embarrassed to talk about it, but Reverie doesn’t phased at all by my ineptness (I swear, I used to know how to handle horses.) and I resolve to do much better in the future. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that for today.

Anyways, when we arrived at her place and unloaded Reveri, she looked around alertly, paused at the entrance, and hopped neatly down.

One of Rose’s appaloosas whinnied hello – a high, bright tenor.

Reverie raised her head and answered back in her deep, almost stallion-like baritone.

I walked her over and let her sniff through the fence – there was no squealing or striking – just a lot of intense interest.

Aside from a rare glimpse of a neighbor’s horse when I walk her in the lower pasture, she hasn’t seen another horse since January, when Caspian was put to sleep. (One of these days I’ll get around to owning a trailer.)

I was surprised that she didn’t seem as short as I thought she would – I guess she really is growing up. She was still literally less than half as wide as Rose’s foundation bred Appaloosas (who are all GORGEOUS), so she’s not that big yet.

Eventually, once the excitement had calmed down, we turned her loose. Ears pricked, she floated out in a graceful, delicate trot straight at the big horses, neck arched, eyes bright. She moves like poetry.

She made a beeline straight for the alpha mare, reached her neck out as if to sniff at her, then suddenly pinned her ears, planted her front hooves, and double barrelled the alpha mare straight in the chest.

C-RACK, went Reverie’s hooves, as they made impact with the much larger mare’s chest.  I couldn’t believe my eyes. To be honest, I’m pretty sure the only reason it made contact was because Rose’s big mare couldn’t believe her eyes either. Did she just….. Did she really just…..?!?!?!?!

It was a little bit like taking your 11 year old scrawny pre-teen out for a nice dinner and as soon as you turn your back, your kid strides right up to some giant thug on the corner – the one with the tattoos and the hard eyes – and ineffectually shoves at their chest, telling them to “Get off my corner. This is my neighborhood now.”

Luckily, Rose’s mare and I were on the exact same page.

And thus began Reverie’s schooling.

The neat thing was, none of the horses were particularly mean about it. When I worked up at the ranch we had a large herd of 40-50, all divided up in different paddocks (or sometimes running altogether). Horses can be downright cruel sometimes. Rose’s herd could have been much, much meaner with their discipline. They didn’t corner her or kick unnecessarily. They just decided to push her all over the property, whether she wanted to go or not.

We’re trotting….

We’re trotting…..

We’re trotting in total unison….

Oh, crap! I didn’t see you there. My bad. I’ll just….I’ll just go around you.

Ack! With emphasis! I’ll go around you with emphasis! Sorry!

If she refused to move out in a submissive enough way, she got a double barrel kick in her direction.

Oh, are you over there? Well. I want to be over there now. SO MOVE, little snotty red horse.

I would feel sorry for her, but honestly, these were foundation appaloosas, and while powerful, they weren’t exactly moving at the speed of sound. Reverie only got kicked once, and that was because she tried to stand her ground and let it happen.

Even when she was trotting off, she didn’t look very repentant. In fact, she looked like she was enjoying the heck out of herself.

Okay, maybe she is looking at me for a little backup in this pic.

I mean, look up at that last pic. That is not a horse who is having a bad time, despite the fact that in that pic she has 8 horses trotting after her.

Despite the action shots, the whole thing was pretty low key, and by the time I left, everyone had settled down.

Reverie was exploring the place with an unbelievable enthusiasm. I did feel a bit guilty about that – I know she has been bored, but I didn’t realize she was that bored. The look on her face as she navigated the hills and explored the different terrain made me feel a bit sad for her.

We are in the process of fencing in the lower pasture – it will be done by next spring, and I will probably even have the upper part fenced off for light grazing by the middle of September. Still, up till now, Reverie has been 100% bored stiff. She’s in a dirt paddock with a stodgy old pony who has no sense of playing. I gave her things to play with, but she’s not mouthy and doesn’t really enjoy that. I did consider letting her play with the goats, but I am not entirely convinced playing with the goats would result in happy, not-hurt goats. The few times she’s been able to herd cats in the paddock, she’s enjoyed herself a little too intensely. I could see her happily herding goats to death, or trying to engage in a fun little kicking fight. Maybe when she’s older? We’ll see.

I was pretty impressed at how brave she was with terrain. At one point she was exploring a lower area that was blocked with a bunch of scrub brush. She walked up to it, and picked her head up high to see if she could see over.

She couldn’t, so she busted right through it.

CRASH CRACKLE SNAP, went all the brush as she disappeared.

Rose’s herd stared at her, horsey eyebrows raised.

“That’s mostly stinging nettle”, commented Rose.

CRASH CRACKLE SNAP, went all the brush, and Reverie came out the other side, tail flicking in annoyance at the welts rising on her skin…. and with a giant, tomboy grin on her face. Well, alrighty then. I guess she’ll be okay on trail?

Anyways, that’s where Reverie is right now – learning how to play nicely with the other horses, and take orders, and share her toys on the playground.

Draft Dump: 3 of Something

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In case you can’t remember what this title means, I’m going through 10+ years of unfinished draft blog posts that have accumulated, and releasing them unfinished into the wild. It’s, like, spring cleaning for blogs.

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NaNoWriMo
Last Modified: 11/3/11

I am attempting NaNoWriMo again.

The Squid has learned to crawl. Boo for mobility.

I’m doing pretty good on my wordcount.

The DragonMonkey poured an entire box of Rice Krispies down the bathroom sink right about the time I hit word 1500.

I made it to 1700 words last night.

The DragonMonkey learned how to eat the little paper pieces from his Elefun game. He just came to stand in front of me, standing eerily still and quiet.

“DM?”

Eyes wide, he gave one of those creepy, deep, weird gag of a burps that preceed vomiting. The papery piece flew into my lap, strangely dry. He picked it up, smiled broadly, and went back into the living room.

I made a little headway today. The book’s not taking the direction I had originally planned, but it seems to be going nonetheless.

In other news, the Squid has decided to go from two teeth to six, simultaneously. Sleep has not been abundance in in this household. And if he doesn’t learn how to OPEN HIS FRIGGIN MOUTH BEFORE HE DECIDES TO TWIST HIS HEAD AROUND TO LOOK AT SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE OF A NURSING SESSION, I’m not going to have anything left to nurse him with.

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Club Dirt:
Last Modified: 1/6/12

He was exceptionally calm in the arena.

Three years old, 15.3 hands, and probably 1150 pounds, Willie was anything but small. His name was “WillieBeACutter”, and the answer turned out to be a resounding “no”. Cutting horses need to be agile, quick, and graceful.

Willie was strong, sturdy, a little slow on his turns, and, well, kind of clumsy. Well, to be honest, it was less clumsy and more awkward. He was growing fast, and when you rode him it felt like riding piggyback on a junior high boy – he was strong enough, but he just wasn’t all that coordinated.

I hopped on him

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I’ve Got Mom Butt
Last Modified: 2/14/12

The title says it all.

Squidgelet is now officially a year old. According to all the manuals, all the chub you have left on you when your baby hits a year is YOUR fat, not baby fat.

Well, crap.

I mean, there are some good things about being fat.

I never get cold any more.

When I go see a movie, I don’t have to worry about the seat cushion being too hard – I’ve brought my own squishy seat cushion with me.

When I’m out for a walk I don’t have to worry about anybody whistling at me like they used to.

I float great in water. Between that and the never getting cold, I imagine I could be a pretty serious competitor at long-distance cold water swimming.

I do know I’d kick some serious heiny at a game of “Who Can Survive the Longest Without Food on a Desert Island”. Anyone want to play with me? Winner gets to eat all the losers! Anyone? You there, in the back— is that a hand? No?

I never used to have to worry about what I ate, or working out. I’m active by nature, and horses gave me all the exercise I needed. Maybe I didn’t look like a supermodel, but I was healthy.

Surprisingly, sitting at a computer for 10 hours a day, followed by going home to do laundry isn’t quit as effective at keeping a person in fighting trim shape.

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Up On My Soapbox
Last Modified: 7/14/2012

Seriously people… spay and neuter your pets. Also, and this may not make me a lot of friends, but here you go nonetheless:

There is nothing wrong with putting a pet to sleep if it’s not adoptable. Sick, old, too shy to cope…. there are a lot of healthy, happy, young pets dying in shelters right now. Don’t foist the job off on someone else.

Death, when done humanely, isn’t a bad thing. There are a lot worse ways to go than euthanasia, and those ways usually take a lot longer, and involve quite a bit of suffering. If you can’t afford a vet, an animal shelter will generally do it for a small donation (although you won’t be allowed in the room with your pet.) I’m not one of those ONE OWNER FOR LIFE!!!!! activists. I’m not saying we don’t have a responsibility to the pets we take on, but bad things happen to good people, and in this economy, you just never know. There is no shortage of pets in this world – there is a HUGE shortage of people doing the right thing.

Fat Cat was one day away from being dropped at the pound. Coyote was the kitten of a starving, stray pregnant cat that a kind hearted lady started feeding. Xerox you just read about. Even Comet (The Bean’s cat who finally got fed up and ran away after I brought home Coyote) was a stray – a starving, mangy, completely feral kitten that The Bean lured out of an engine block with the balogna from his sandwich.

I guess I’m just thinking about this because I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with Xerox. If I had the balls (ovaries?) I would wait for her to have her kittens, if she is pregnant, then take her in to get spayed and quietly euthanize them. It’s horrible to say out loud, but this town is crawling with stray cats, there are “free kittens!” signs everywhere, and I don’t have the funds to spay/neuter all the kittens before find them homes.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, I know I don’t have it in me. Besides, when

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No Title
Last Modified: 7/11/12

The DragonMonkey wanted to go to “Portwand”. The last time we went to Portland we met up with Jamethiel and her Squidgelet, and he had an awesome time in the park with them. He’s been begging to go back ever since.

When The Bean and I told him we were taking a trip, and then informed him it was not “Portwand”, much crying, and drama, and temper-tantrums immediately ensued.

He wanted to go to Portwand.

Portwand is where he wanted to go.

Why weren’t we going to Portwand?

“Portwand! Portwand! PORTWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND!” he moaned at full-volume, writhing on the ground, flinging his hands about in desperation. All he needed was a loincloth and a volleyball floating away from him, and he could have been reenacting the “Wilsoooooon!” scene from CastAway.

I really needed to discipline him.

But it was only twenty minutes to his bedtime, and I was exhausted. Parenting is not for the faint of heart.

As I stood there, contemplating which corner I should send him to, the Squidgelet wandered up beside me. He stood there, looking down at his purple-faced brother quietly for a moment, then looked back at me with a strangely adult, amused look. If he knew how to roll his eyes, he would have. Instead, he settled for leaving the silliness behind him and wandered off to go play with a toy train.

Laid-back babies are really fun. Sometimes they have really good ideas, too.

Leaving the DragonMonkey to howl on his own, I followed Squidgelet over to the toy pile and started playing with him.

The DragonMonkey flopped about for a few moments, but it’s just not as fulfilling without an audience, so he dragged himself over to us, flopped down on the ground, and began his fit again.

“Pooooortwaaaaaaand….”

In desperation, I snapped out, “Well, fine. We’ll go to Portland, but then you won’t get to see the chickens.”

Nineteen more minutes to bedtime. Nineteen more minutes to bedtime. Nineteen more minutes…

He’d already been in time out several times that morning, and

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I gotta admit, this draft dump has been a lot of fun. I can’t wait until the day I log in and the only drafts in my inbox are current drafts I’m actively working on.

Also, if we’re admitting things, while it’s nice to have the lights back on here on the blog, the timing of getting them turned off was kind of fortuitous.

I could say I spent the entire time fretting over all the blogs I never got to write….

But the truth is I spent the last month nursing my busy lifestyle and a broken arm.

On April 14th my stepdad and I were unloading a corral panel from a trailer, when I realized how slippery the trailer ramp was. Maybe it was a combo of the light misting rain, maybe it was the slippery soles of my tennis shoes, but whatever it was, I realized that the trailer ramp was slick as snot.

I turned around to tell him, “Be careful! Don’t slip!” when both my legs shot out from underneath me.

My arms reached back to brace myself, and I had just enough time to think, “That’s not how you fall, Becky, not if you want to avoid breaking bones. For heaven’s sakes, unlock your elbows,” before my locked arms caught all of my weight. I think I hit even harder than normal because my arms were higher up on the ramp than my lower half, so it was a very jarring, sudden shock.

At first they thought I’d broken my right wrist and my left elbow, but it turned outo just be a radial head comminuted fracture. PHEW.

I’ve gotta tell you, I am NOT a fan of slowly typing one letter at a time with one hand. I was almost I was almost glad the blog was down, because it provided me a respite from feeling like I had to type.

Having a broken arm, and a husband working till crazy late each night at work, and two horses, and four baby goats and a full time job and four human kids and and and….

And I probably would have had a nervous breakdown, but it was one of those moments in life where people just….. It was like they rose up from hiding places in the bushes, all around me, just to help me.

People who had never been to my house before were dropping off dinners. Good friends came over and straightened the house and did ALL OF MY FRIGGIN LAUNDRY. People helped with the goats, and helped with the kids, and just…

It was almost too much helping. I felt guilty accepting it, knowing I couldn’t pay everyone back. It was humbling, even though I needed it desperately. My mom is in Mexico at the moment with sick family members, and the Bean’s busy season has extended well beyond its normal time period, and we also had the stomach flu rip through here, and the goats got into poisonous stuff and tried to kill themselves… and, and, and, and…

Nothing was bad in and of itself, but when it all added up, I was definitely overwhelmed.

People are so good, for the most part. It’s just that the bad stories are so much juicier to tell.

I stay off of Facebook a lot, nowadays. It has become such a… shouty place. I have friends from all the way on the left side of the equation to all the way on the right…. and I even have them in that same spectrum from other countries.

One of my favorite FB “friends” I picked up is some dude from Russia who posts pictures of cool dogs and angry political rant memes that I don’t understand a word of. I also have someone from the middle east who posts a lot of political rants.

I mean, I’m pretty sure they’re political rants take, just because they look exactly like the kind of rants and memes that fill my FB feed, only in a different language. I could be wrong. Maybe they’re really impassioned cookie recipes?

Anyways, I like to see the political memes in English sandwiched between one in Russian and one in Arabic, because it helps keep me from taking anything too seriously. I still keep trying to use social media for the human connection, as I have for the past decade.

Unfortunately, lately every time I log in, I start to feel a little bit like this fence:

Of course, I don’t know why I’m complaining. There’s a very simple cure, and it works every time (although I always seem to come creeping back): I delete the app of my cell phone and just start interacting with people around me.

I gave a ride to some skinny kid toting a bunch of big ol’ bags the other day. I didn’t have any kids in the car, and I was driving the “flip” car (The Bean likes to fix vehicles up and flip them, one at a time), so I felt safe… or at the very least, safeish.

Intellectually I thought it was a horrible idea, but that still, small voice inside me told me to do it, so I did.

I can’t say why I did it, except that the three times I’ve picked someone up on the side of the road, it’s been because I was pretty sure God told me to, so I did.

The kid was thankful, not that I needed gratitude. It just felt… nice. It was nice to connect with a total stranger, to reach out and give an warm ride in the cold. He said it was nice on his end, too, just to be seen. So many cars drove past him without stopping to see if he was okay.

And that was it.

We chatted about recent rains, and a couple of other things, and then he was out of my car and I doubt I’ll ever see him again. We didn’t have any giant, Chicken Soup for the Soul moment. It wasn’t this grand gesture that changed his life – he had actually just gotten out of rehab, and while I hope he is able to successfully turn his life around, it’s not really any of my business. It was just a five minute car ride to make his day easier, because I could.

I find that the more I am off of shouty Facebook, and the more I have these small interactions with people all around me, the better I am on the inside. I feel hope, and that hope fills me up and allows me to pour out more into others.

The angrier I get, the more I find myself outraged by whatever travesty is going on nationally…. the more I get mired in the muck of obsessing about how I feel about things, the less I am able to do for humanity.

Maybe I am part of the problem, as so many people seem to say, by not standing beside them and shouting my anger into the wind and raising awareness.

Maybe I am complicit. Maybe I am the problem.

Maybe it’s the coward’s way out, beneath a cloak of privilege, but I just. Don’t. Want. To. Be. Angry. All. The. Time.

I don’t feel like I *can* be angry all the time, not and stay healthy, and there just doesn’t seem to be a space to take a calming breath between waves of fury on social media. Everything seems to flow from one inflammatory topic to the next, on all sides of the political spectrum, and, well,

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So I work during the day, and play with my kids on the evenings and weekends.

Carrots was a rockstar at her first mock showmanship class.

I raise my goats, and cut the grass, stare in my backyard at the horses and feel grateful.

I read good books and bad books and berate myself for not getting up early enough to go jogging.

I fight with The Bean, and then we make up, and we lay beside each other on the couch after the kids go to bed, shoulders touching as I read my book and he watches videos about motorcycle engines.

It’s quiet, and good, and it gives me enough peace on the inside that I feel like I can at least help out others, in small ways.

I want to do more, but there are literally only so many hours in the day. So I give rides when I can, and I finally got my computer situation fixed so I can start back working on social media support for foster kids when I can, and I serve on the library board, and offer to babysit other people’s kids when my nerves aren’t too frayed from chasing after my own.

It’s not much, not in the grand scheme of things, but I think that’s okay. I think it’s okay not to be a world leader, or a political money and shaker, but just to help out in small ways where you can, when you can.

Man, this post ended up a lot more maudlin than I was intending, and I’m sure that if I looked at a calendar and added up days I would see why (would it even be a Becky post if there wasn’t a moment of TMI?), and honest-to-goodness this is not the tone I was hoping for in this blog post. I was hoping to pass along more of a “Hey, this is what has been making me feel better when I get depressed after going on social media- feel free to try it, if you’re feeling down by all the shouting, too.”

Anyways, to awkwardly change the subject from the soapboxy, slightly depressed writing hole I just dug myself into….

Can you believe Reverie is already a year old?!

I think I’ll end this post, and maybe start work on a new one that’s a belated happy birthday post to her.

Conversations With The Goats

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“Good morning. We’re baby goats. Come snuggle us.”

“I wish I could, guys, but I have to go to work.”

“What is work?”

“It’s where I go sit for 9-10 hours a day and move around pieces of paper, and -”

“And eat them?”

“What? No? I don’t eat them, I just push them around my desk, or from department to department, and make sure people scribble the right words on them.”

“That sounds boring.”

“It’s actually not too bad. Although, sometimes people who are mad about government or something that happened to them try to take out their grumpiness on me.That’s not really fun.”

“Is it because you chewed on the wiring on their BBQs?”

“No, no, I don’t do that. That’s just you guys. I’ve never acquired a taste for BBQ wiring.”

“Oh, it’s the best! I mean, nothing really beats whole cows milk mixed with buttermilk and evaporated milk, heated up and served in an old soda bottle….

Mmmmmmm…. It makes our tails wag just thinking about it! But seriously, BBQ wiring is a close second. Maybe you should offer some BBQ wires to the grumpy people to appease them.”

“I don’t think that will help.”

“Have you tried?”

“…. No. No, I have not.”

“Well, then how would you know? Besides, you should definitely stay home from this “work” and hang with us instead.”

“I can’t. I really can’t.”

“We could snuggle, and then later we’ll go outside and run around aimlessly, darting about and then randomly stopping, over and over. The goal is to dash around as erratically as possible.  It’s best if you pretend the floor is lava and that it’s burning your hooves, so you need to sproing in the air as high as possible. You get extra points if you twist around at the apex of the sproing.”

“I don’t think I’d look as cute as you, if I sproinged around the yard. Moms in their late 30s definitely don’t sproing as well as baby goats.”

“Sproinging is the best. You’ll love it. When we get bored with sproinging and running around we can climb up things and jump off of them. That’s always good for an hour or two of fun.  When you get hungry, since you don’t like BBQ wires, you could enjoy some of the weird moss that grows on the muddy hillside by the house. That will make you happy.”

“Eww. No thanks. I’ve been meaning to ask you – why don’t you eat the goat food and Timothy hay I left out for you?”

“That stuff is boring. Moss is much better, although we’re seriously beginning to question your taste.  You really don’t like eating old moss OR BBQ wires?”

“Nope.”

“Shoelace strings?”

“Nope.”

“That dangly sleeve on the sweatshirt your kids keep forgetting to put away?”

“Nope.”

“One of our neck wattles? Chewing is no good, but you could suck on it for awhile? We find it very soothing, almost as soothing as laying on your lap and getting scritched.”

“I’m NOT sucking on your neck wattles. That sounds….. uncomfortably gross, like something that should only happen between two consenting adults.”

“Oh, no, it’s very soothing. Try it! Patches has the best wattles, but Gazelle’s can do in a pinch.”

“No. That’s gross. And frankly, I wish you guys would quit doing it. It weirds me out.”

“It’s not gross, it’s wonderful!”

“We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Look, I really need to get to work. You guys have a great day doing all your…. your goat things. Sorry I can’t stay with you.”

“We don’t think you’re making good decisions. Work is silly. Hanging out with us is obviously the better choice.”

“On that we can agree.”

What I Want

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It’s International Women’s Day.

According to what Google said about this year’s theme, I’m supposed to be wishing for empowerment via social protection and sustainable infrastructure, or something like that…..

But I’m not.

I know that sounds kind of mean and unsupportive, and I really don’t mean it that way.  It’s just….sustainable infrastructure is not very much fun to daydream about, no matter how hard I try.

Here is a list of stuff I actually want instead:

  1. A pause/erase/do-over on all voicemails – Yes, I know some voicemails offer that option, but why the heck is this not a standard thing? There is nothing worse than being halfway through a voicemail and realizing you said the wrong thing and sound like an idiot, or you gave them your cell phone number instead of your work number, or, or, or…..

    … but it’s too late, you can’t fix it because you’ve already started talking and now you’re being recorded, LIVE, and every single thing you say could conceivably be saved forever, or be turned into a viral video, and maybe if you get lucky you can figure out a way to talk into the judgy silence of the voicemail recorder and save this situation….but no. 

    No, you’re not that lucky, and now it’s too late. 


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    Now you’re sounding weird and rambly, and you don’t sound professional or coherent at all.  In fact, you passed the line from too-talkative into “hey listen to this weird voicemail I got” about five or six sentences ago, and oh geez, you just keep hoping that you’ll find the right combo of sentences to make you seem like a functioning, intelligent adult who represents your company with pride, but you can’t, you just sound like a freak,  and it’s 2019 and technology is nearly limitless and WHY CAN’T I DELETE THIS VOICEMAIL AND START OVER?!

  2. Sarcasm font- How hard can this be?! It’s such a simple fix. You could use italics for emphasis, and then you could use backwards italics (slanting to the left instead of the right) for sarcasm.

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    Do you know how many arguments and hurt feelings could be avoided by letting people text as sarcastically as they speak?

  3. A giant plastic/wooden model of a horse that I could use to practice mounting, posting, dismounting, and maybe even trick riding – You could set it up in your backyard, and not only could the kids could play on it, but it would be a great workout, too. Forget squats, or Pilates, or CrossFit – just practice mounting without cinching up the saddle very tight, ten times in a row. Could you imagine the workout you could get, and how much happier a horse would be if you could practice this sort of stuff without having to flop around on their backs? I could practice trotting without stirrups and build my leg muscles without worrying about whether my crookedness is going to make a horse chiropractor necessary. Plus, I could slowly but surely teach myself to swing up bareback onto a horse, or how to do that “run at them from behind and vault over their butt” without worrying about getting kicked.  I’d get so much use out of one

  4. Wireless/Bluetooth Video Game Edition Of The Giant Fake Horse – Once someone invents the fake horse from the last daydream, I want to have an indoor, electronic version that pairs with my TV/Video game console.  It would be like Wii Dance, or Wii Sports, but with horses.

    Kind of like this, but full size and a bajillion times awesomer.


    You could “compete” against friends in a cross-country jumping edition, or practice “riding the fence” in a reined cowhorse competition, or just practice your two-point on a virtual ride in Mongolia… ALSO,  DUDE, JUST THINK HOW COOL THE NEW RED DEAD REDEMPTION WOULD BE IF YOU COULD ACTUALLY RIDE INSTEAD OF JUST USING A CONTROLLER!



    I think I remember seeing somewhere that this technically exists in some “just for Olympics level” riders, but I want one in my living room.

    Also, I want my giant fake horse to have hinges so it can fold down small enough to slip under the couch when I am not actually using it.


  5. 19 Acres for dirt cheap: I would like my two next door neighbors to grow irritated with owning land, and decide to sell all their horse/hay pasture to me for a ridiculously low price.

    “Are you sure?  That’s so…. So cheap!” I would exclaim. “I would feel bad buying it from you for so little.”

    “Oh, seriously, don’t feel guilty.  We just don’t want the hassle of all this land ownership. Owning all this land is such a drag.  If you can just take all this rolling, treeless pasture off our hands, you’d be doing us a real favor.  We’ll even sweeten the deal by fencing all of it with brand new horse fencing before we sell it to you for .30 cents an acre.”

    “Well…. If you insist……”

  6. A Robotic Perpetual Puppy – Sometimes you want snuggle a puppy, but you don’t actually want another dog and all the care that goes with it.  The Robotic Perpetual Puppy would have all the cuteness and fluffiness of a 7-week-old puppy, but when you don’t want to deal with it you could just turn it off and stuff it in the closet.

    Image result for basket of puppiesI admit I daydream less of this now that I have the goats, because honestly, they’re kind of like puppies that I can legally lock away whenever I’m tired of playing with them. I cannot recommend baby goats highly enough. 

  7. An Indoor/Covered Arena: 200 x 100, please.  Also, if it could have a raised, covered area with a couch for the kids to hang out in, that’d be great, too.

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    I would never leave. Ever. I would happily live on that couch the rest of my life. The Bean could take over the entire house as his man cave.



  8. Jeans with shapewear sewn on the top, like maternity pants – I know some people hate pregnancy wear, but at the risk of sounding stuck up, dude, I rock maternity jeans. They’re the only jeans that I can wear down low around my hips, where the back pockets sit low enough to make my butt look good. I mean, I suppose I could wear all jeans like that, but maternity jeans are the only ones I can wear like that without worrying about bending over the wrong way and flashing the mom version of plumbers crack.

    With my imaginary shapewear jeans, the jeans portion would be completely normal, but then there would be a bit of shapewear sewn to the waistband. To keep it from rolling down you could make the shapewear kind of like a tank top (the shoulder straps would keep it in place). Not only would you never have to worry about plumber’s crack, but you’d also never have to worry about muffin top or sucking in your belly or wearing a belt to keep your pants from slipping down. Control top jeans. Why don’t these already exist?  I’d buy the heck out of them.

  9. Stitch-Fix, but for broke people – It’d be exactly the same as Stitch-Fix, but they’d fill your monthly box with stuff from Goodwill so you could actually afford it. Who spends $40 on a single shirt?!  Are you high, Stitch-Fix?!

  10. A minivan capable of hauling a horse trailer –  Wouldn’t that be amazing?  Then I wouldn’t have to choose between fitting all the kids in one vehicle and being able to haul horses places. Also, I’d really like it if it could get decent gas mileage. Also, also, it would be affordable, unlike those big SUVs that are still going for 30k when they have 100,000 miles on them.

  11. Facial Recognition Glasses  – The glasses would have facial recognition software, and then you could program them to show you important information about the people you run into (only you could see what you programmed into it.) It could be something as simple as the person’s name, or as complex as where you met them and why you sort-of-but-not-quite remember them. I know this is verging into Black Mirror territory, but there’s nothing more frustrating than recognizing someone, starting to say hello, and then remembering too late that the reason I recognize them is that they were a total jerk to me (nobody goes to City Hall to be nice to the person behind the counter) and I don’t actually want to talk to them but now it’s too late to back out of the conversation because I was the one that waved at them, and Hiiiiii, how are youuuuuuuu?

  12. Affordable Kids’ Summer Camps: The camps would be local, and affordable, and educational…. And the kids would think it was really, really, really fun.  I would send the kids to it for a week while I went on a catch-up-on-all-our-lost-sleep vacation with The Bean, and then when I came back I’d discover that my children had not only had a great time, but they had also they learned how to cook healthy meals, build a fire from scratch, how to change the oil in a car, and also maybe they accidentally learned how to do pre-algebra while playing nerf wars with the camp counselors.

    “Did you have a good time, boys?”

    “It was wonderful! We learned so much, thank you for sending us, Mom!”

    “I’m so glad you guys enjoyed it.  What was your favorite part?”

    “I think it was when they taught us how to be kind to others, and how to always be polite and well-spoken with adults so that other people think you’re an amazing parent!”

    “No, no, my favorite part was how they read to us every evening and now we are magically voracious readers completely in love with books, and they taught us the secret of how to persevere even when it’s difficult, and always be grateful for the small things, and make our beds, and eat salads even when offered a candy bar. Can we pretty please go again?”

    “Well, I dunno boys, it’s $25 a week with all your room and board included…. but okay, I suppose we could afford another week!”


    Image result for kids summer camps

    Look, we’re learning how to divide fractions and having a great time doing it!



    Shhhh. It could happen.

  13. Human Kibble. I’m serious about this one.  If they can make a dog kibble that my dog gets excited about, and if they can make canned cat food that my cat will sprint across an entire field for, then they can come up with some kind of cereal that has all the protein and vitamins and whatever a human body needs, but also tastes like Reese’s Pieces or something.

    Dude, I’m so tired of cooking. Cooking all the time for four kids is exhausting, even if you liked cooking (which I never have.)

    Human kibble. We needs some.

  14. Tinder For Writers: It’d be like an online dating service, except instead of swiping right and having to deal with STDs or marriage or whatever it is all those single people do with Tinder nowadays, you would find someone to coauthor a book with you. I used to play an online Pern-based RPG that was text based – it was called Dragonsfire Moo, I think? I always had a good time, but every once in a while I’d stumble across someone whose writing style just absolutely meshed with mine, and writing scenes with them was pure magic.

    I have absolutely no idea how this would work, and I’m sure in real life the paperwork involved would be a giant headache, and now that I’m really thinking about the practical aspects of it I imagine most people who used it would end up with more lawsuits than actual money, but I don’t care. This is my wish list, and I want a Tinder Writing Service to help me find a coauthor. In this scenario I could come up with the big picture ideas and the zany female characters and funny situations, and they would come up with the boring middle section of the book and the witty male dialogue, and we’d churn out, like, five books a year and live like royalty on the proceeds. We could totally be the next Ilona Andrews team, and end up with a bunch of giant movie deals, and then I could afford most of the stuff on my daydream list just by the money we brought in.

  15. Alfalfa Candle: I want a candle I can burn in my house that makes the whole house smell like fresh cut alfalfa warming up in the summer sun.

  16. The Forever Outfit: I’d like the ability to hire someone to come up with the perfect, wear-every-day-for-the-rest-of-my-entire-life outfit for me. This person would look at my skin tone, and coloring, and body type, and then they’d design the perfect outfit.  The jeans would fit me just perfectly and never need a belt to keep from sliding down my hips as they stretched out throughout the day… the shirt would be long enough that I would never have to worry about it riding up when I reached for something above my head.  It would be tailored at the waist so that I didn’t look like I was wearing a box with sleeves, but not so tight I felt uncomfortable. It would be layered, so that I could wear the outfit in both summer and winter…..

    And then I could just order that same exact outfit, forever and ever, and nobody would ever think it was weird.

  17. The Everyday Cloak: Okay, so if nobody actually ever invents The Forever Outfit then I want to be able to wear whatever I want, whenever I want, and not have it be weird. I know I live in America so nobody really judges me on my clothes, and more specifically I live near Portland, so I really could wear whatever I wanted and short of it being a MAGA hat or literally  being on fire, nobody would judge me….  but I want to wear weird stuff and not have people stare at me, even if they’re just staring out of curiosity.

    Okay, if I’m actually being specific…. I want to be able to wear cloaks again. I just have a thing for cloaks, okay?




    I want to have an array of cloaks hanging up in my closet, and some kind of, I dunno, basic adventurers outfit beneath it, like a black tank top and a pair of jeans. It’d be like the Forever Outfit, only it’d be Awesome Cloak edition.

    She must be overwhelmed with the awesomeness of her cloak. That’s the only reason I can figure for her weird, blank expression. I don’t blame her. It’s a COMPLETELY awesome cloak.

    Every day I’d put on a pair of jeans, a tank top, my Ariat Fatbaby boots, and then I would just pick out my cloak depending on my mood that day, and stride down the street looking totally magnificent. I could swirl through the aisles of the grocery store, with my cloak flaring out in whirling, colorful splendor behind me.  I could use it to sit down on the grass at the park without worrying if my butt was gonna get wet.  I could pull up the hood whenever I was cold, or just didn’t want to talk to anyone.



    I know I could wear cloaks and maybe I’d be the person to help them make a comeback… but I don’t’ want to be a fashion trendsetter.  I want cloaks to be normal, the same as wearing a hoodie.



    Also, I want them to be easy to wash and dry and be wrinkle and stain-resistant.  If I’m going to daydream, I might as well daydream in a practical fashion.


  18. Book On Demand Coffee Shop – I want a coffee shop that can print a book on demand. Like, you go into Starbucks and you sit down with your coffee, and enjoy it, and then you order your book on demand with an app, and 2-3 minutes later a kiosk spits it out, all warm and freshly printed and smelling deliciously of paper so you can sit with your coffee and read your new book.  It’s 2019.  Why is this not a thing?

 

So, there you have it.  That’s what I want. 


What do you want? 

 

The Perfect Woman (Hint: Not Me)

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Somewhere out there, in some magical corner of the planet, there is some woman who has a clean kitchen.

Her dishes are done, the counters are wiped, and the fridge doesn’t smell weird. Her kids are doing great.  Oh, sure, they squabble some, but they all feel loved, and because she does such a good job meeting all their little emotional needs they are secure enough to show that love to each other. She’s firm but not so hard on them that they become anxious, and she challenges them just enough while also nurturing them just enough. She checked all their homework, they have clean school clothes for tomorrow, their lunches are probably packed ahead of time.  I bet she even puts a little note in each lunchbox, so they know they’re loved.

She probably even wrote this post, because her kids never bring four bags of chips and a sandwich to school because she forgot to go to the store and that’s literally all she had to fill their lunch box with.

All of her kids take their bath, every night, and smell deliciously clean and have shiny hair.  They dress in matching pajamas, because they actually have clothes in their drawers instead of piled on a bed in the spare bedroom. She spent time tonight with each of them. She hugged and taught and sang with the little ones, focused on the middle one and made him feel noticed and appreciated all his accomplishments, and worked with the oldest on his math until he understood it and felt empowered and intelligent.

She had to take away their books to force them to get a good night’s sleep, because those little scoundrels love reading so much they’ll read all night under the covers with a flashlight.  They definitely aren’t addicted to YouTube or video games – not her kids! None of them are having any emotional crises this week, and they definitely don’t feel left out or ignored, because she gives exactly the same amount of time, attention, and love to each one of them. She definitely didn’t realize, just this exact moment, that one of them has a birthday in less than a week and she still hasn’t done a single thing to prepare for it.

The dinner she cooked tonight had a vegetable, and everybody ate it.

I bet she’s all caught up at work, too.  I bet every email is answered, and every file is alphabetized, and she totally doesn’t have a bazillion post-it notes all around the edges of the computer to remind her of stuff she’s been putting off.  Nobody is waiting on a callback from her.  She’s caught up on processing every single permit, and she has updated every single form. She’s dependable like that.

Her house is tidy.  It’s not spotless, because that would be creepy, but the entire thing is somewhat tidy all at once, instead of some rooms being super clean while other rooms look like a bomb went off. 

I bet it smells really good in her house, too.  I bet it smells like something lemony fresh, or maybe baked apples, and definitely not like dog, boy feet, the poop diaper she just changed, and cheap Wal-Mart scent wax that she’s burning in an attempt to cover the smell. 

You just know her floor is clean.  I bet you could sit down on it in white pants, and then get back up, and those pants would be the exact same color. You know there aren’t any piles of dog hair lining the walls, or giant mounds of clean laundry stacked next to the giant mounds of dirty laundry. She probably made time to exercise, and drink all her water, take a shower, pray, and read her Bible, and reach out to someone hurting and help them.

Her dog probably got walked, or brushed, or… or… or something.  I don’t know.  At this point I don’t even know what you’re supposed to be doing with a dog beyond letting it out to go potty, telling it to get off the couch for the millionth time in a row and feeling vaguely guilty and hoping the kids are petting it enough.  Whatever it is you’re supposed to do with a dog, I bet she’s doing it.  I bet that dog is totally fulfilled with its doggy life, and just having a grand ol’ time.

She probably brushed her horses, and picked their hooves, too.  She definitely didn’t try to sneak in a few minutes with her horses after literally locking her children in the backyard and tuning out the sounds of their sad wails at being unable to accompany her.  She would never do that.  She’s a super good mom. She treasures every moment.

Did you hear me?

SHE. TREASURES. EVERY. SINGLE. MOMENT. OF. SINGLE. DAY.  She knows how much she’ll miss them once they’re gone, so even when they’re screaming at her from the backyard, or arguing with their brother, or toddling their way into the bathroom while she’s pooping and then getting angry when she won’t let them crouch down to watch it come out, SHE TREASURES IT.

And so she does. She’s never once told her kids “JUST GO AWAY AND LET ME BE BY MYSELF FOR A SECOND. SERIOUSLY. SCAT!” That would be so hurtful to their poor little psyches. Only a mean mom would do that.

I bet her hair is brushed, and her toenails painted, and her eyebrows plucked.  She probably flosses twice a day, too.  I bet her husband feels loved and appreciated and she never snaps at him because she’s taking her feelings of failure out on him. They definitely have a totally banging sex life that any teenager would envy because they’re both bursting with energy and in great shape and super flexible and never feel too tired or too fat or just too exhausted.

Yoga would be too much – with as awesome as she is in other areas, it’d push her over into pretentiousness.  I think she probably just runs in the mornings before her kids are up  does pilates from an old DVD at home, or something, and it must work because she is still really athletic and never grunts when getting up from a chair.

I bet she smells good, and I bet she’s not sitting on her sofa in really old plus size overalls that she put on to muck stalls and then got too lazy to take off.  She would never sit on the sofa in overalls that smelled vaguely of horse pee.  I mean…. ew, right?

She’s probably on her laptop, but she’s probably not writing a book.  See, she’s taking a break from writing right now, because she just turned in the a finished draft of her latest book to her publisher and is enjoying her well-deserved break.  She’s good like that – she sets writing goals and absolutely finishes them on time, and enjoys people paying for her books and the joy of knowing she’s a published author.

She probably has the best time on the weekends, too.  I bet she does cool things like going to community events with her family, or impromptu road trips, or paint nights with friends that she still has because she’s great at reaching out to people and hanging out on a regular basis.  She’s probably going hiking – wait, no, I bet she’s going backpacking with her kids this next weekend.  She and her family definitely don’t spend too much time watching Netflix.  I mean, what a waste of precious time that would be, amiright?

Pfffft, that woman doesn’t need Summer Sanders to tell her this, cuz she’s already out there doing it…. EVERY NIGHT.

She probably makes time to go camping with her family, and calls her parents regularly, and takes her kids to museums so they turn out well-rounded.

She didn’t volunteer anywhere today – she does that on Thursdays.  She does that on Thursdays because she has a calendar, and plans ahead, and definitely doesn’t decide what she’s doing 45 seconds before she actually has to leave the house.

That planning probably comes in handy when it comes to budgeting.  I bet she has a nice tidy little savings account, and knows when and where all her money goes,  definitely doesn’t waste money she doesn’t have on expensive coffees she chugs to get through the day, doing her best to ignore the fact that while the money is there in the bank, it’s not actually there, you know?  I mean, that would be really fiscally irresponsible.  If she did that, she wouldn’t be able to afford her kids music lessons or the entry fees to sports, and they’d probably just hang out in her backyard all the time and grow up weird and socially awkward.

I bet she’s out there, being amazing, and just genuinely rocking at life.

I hope she stays out there, too, because if I have to see her in real life I’m going to feel really grumpy end up doing something I’d regret, like let my ill-behaved, too-friendly dog jump on her with muddy paws, or maybe sic my socially awkward, semi-feral children on her well-rounded kids, or maybe just leap on her and let my extra weight pin her to my filthy floor and demand to know where she’s finding all the hours in the day.

Lies! This image is pure lies!…. Okay, maybe not pure lies. There is only one person in that image, and that is kind of how I remember my early 20’s. being.

 

 

More realistic:

First Day of School Nostalgia

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Tuesday was the first day of school.

It was more than a little bittersweet to me. This was the first summer in Oregon I didn’t spend home with the boys, and I feel almost like the whole season almost passed me by. When you don’t get home until 5:30 and jump straight into frantically cooking dinner for hangry children, bedtime and nighttime and getting up to get ready for work the next morning is on you before you know it.

On the other hand, Oregon did her best to make it feel as summery as possible to try to make up for it, so maybe fall isn’t such a bad thing. We had almost no rain from May on, and the whole state seems dry and crackly. Local parks lost quite a few older trees due to the overly dry summers, and the ground feels hard-baked beneath my feet.

I may not be ready for the return of the rain, but the land certainly is, and I can’t begrudge it the moisture.

Anyways, as I was saying, Tuesday was the first day of school which always makes me feel more than a little nostalgic. I remember lining up in front of my mom’s camera with its shutterclick sound, bright flash, and the roll of film that would wind itself up at the end of every spool. First day of school pictures are a yearly tradition.

As I dragged everyone outside into the nicer light to take my own pictures, DragonMonkey dutifully dropped his backpack on the ground and walked over to the designated picture-taking area. “Why do we have to do this every year?”

“Because….. because it makes a nice collage when you’re all done. I can see how you looked at the beginning of each year. I have first day pics of me, all the way up until my first day of college.

He lined up in front of the wall in front of our house, and reached for his yellow piece of construction paper with the hastily-written words in cheap marker. “If we’re… if we’re still doing this in college, do you think that maybe…. I mean, not to hurt your feelings, but maybe we could get nicer signs instead of paper?”

Present Becky is always willing to make promises on Future Becky’s behalf, so I was quick to agree. Future Becky would totally make one of those awesome, color-coordinated, sturdy Pinterest-style signs.

Future Becky is a chump.

I raised my cell phone, and DragonMonkey threw on his customary closed-mouth smirk smile that he always does for pictures, the one that makes him look disturbingly teenagerish.

After that it was Squid’s turn – I say Squid because that’s what I’ve called him on this blog since the beginning (when he was a Squidgelet), but he’s recently informed us that we are not to refer to him by that nickname anymore. In fact, we are not to refer to him by any nicknames. He will only respond to his full name.

I raised my cell phone, and he tilted his head back, looking at me with the heavy-lidded cool-dude expression he always likes to don for pictures.

“Squid, can’t you open your eyes a little bit more? I can barely see your eyes. You don’t have to smile if you don’t want to, but just open your eyes a little mo—“

“Bus,” intoned the Bean. “BUS!”

I snapped another picture in desperation:

And then kissed them as they dashed down the street, their backpacks rising and falling with each stride.

Like I said, first days of school always makes me feel nostalgic, and as I drove to work my brain rattled down familiar roads. Am I doing enough, as a mom? Am I being there enough, helping enough, loving enough, challenging and pushing enough, educating enough? Am I screwing any of them up? Have I already screwed them up beyond repair? Will they turn into adults I actually like, ones I am proud of? What can I improve on?

It was that last thought that trapped my brain. If you have multiple children, it’s not an easy answer. Every kid is unique. Even if I could wave a magic wand and change myself, each of my kids would want something different from me.

If DragonMonkey could reshape me, I think he’d turn me into the quintessential Pinterest mom. I’d rise before dawn in a wrinkle-free, coordinated outfit, and cook a couple of pounds of bacon and pancakes. I’d wake him with a hug and a tickle and invite him to feast while I washed all the breakfast dishes myself, and then he would get dressed and I’d spend the rest of the day chauffeuring him around to new experiences. Our days would be scheduled, right down to the minute, and there would be few surprises. Everything would be planned out (well in advance) with professional-looking calendars and well-packed gym bags for soccer games and playdates (are they still called playdates at his age? Probably not.) Upon returning home I’d miraculously produce a hearty, healthy, meat-and-vegetable dinner within minutes. After dinner we would play a light round of video games.

It sounds exhausting, but he would be so, so content.

Also, he would want me to have super long, super straight hair. I dunno. It’s just a thing with him.

What would Squid want?

Squid would want me to be Elsa:

only I’d be Elsa with a machine gun.

It be only me and him, no other siblings around, and we would have amazing adventures where we would shoot guns and rappel down walls and help people. At the end of each adventure he would heroically save us all, and most likely I would present him with a nightly medal he could hang on his wall. We’d feast all day on ice cream and sodas and candy.

My hair would also be long, and I would never cut it, because cutting hair is pretty much the same as ruining everything about yourself forever and ever. I’d be a crack shot with a rifle, and always have on fresh lipstick.

I’m not gonna lie, aside from the whole makeup thing and wearing a dress, I think I’d have a lot of fun in Squid’s World.

If I’m being honest, the twins would probably love to change me too. Finn’s imaginary mom is the easiest to understand – I didn’t even have to think very hard to know what he would want.

Finn would very much like it if I could stop being me, and just figure out a way to be The Bean, except with boobies.

Seriously.

He would be SO content if I could just figure out a way to make this happen. Also, my/ Bean’s boobies would still be producing copious amounts of milk that never ran out, and Finn would still be able to nurse all day. The two of them would live on a tractor, alternating all day between nursing and doing tractor-type stuff.

I’m pretty sure if Finn was in charge of heaven, that’s all it would be: Heavily-lactating, giant-boobed men on a variety of different tractors.

You can see why I’d rather be stuck in Squid’s world, right?

Magpie is a harder nut to crack, because she’s so quiet with her wants. I know she would like to have Mommy/daughter time without any pesky brothers around. In her imaginary mom world I would be a fashion diva, and we would both dress up constantly.

Please understand that by dress up I don’t mean we would wearing tasteful evening gowns with sensible heels – oh no. Magpie’s version of dressing up consists of layering accessories upon accessories… and also, do you know what makes an accessory really pop? Another accessory.

The two of us would adorn ourselves like real-life Fancy Nancies:

and then we would spend quite a bit of time just sitting around pointing out each other’s amazing outfits. Earrings. Yes, earrings. I am wearing earrings. You have sparkly shoes. Yes, yes you do. I do, too.

We would admire each other’s glasses, frequently.

Wherever we went each day, it would not be in a car pointed in the direction of home, because oh lawsie, “NOT DAT WAY. NOT DAT WAY. NO HOME… NOT DAT WAY.” She’s an adventuring sort at heart.

She’s not very particular about what we would do, provided we do it together, but if I had to come up with something I think we would spend the entire day swinging on swings at the park, trying on different pairs of shoes, and maybe riding a pony. We’d have a collection of items we dragged around, from Purple Bow Dog to Rattle Elephant, and we would very systematically rearrange them around ourselves wherever we went.

We would hold hands, a lot. We’d practice number facts, and sing the ABC’s and “Tinka Tinka Widdah Stah” over, and over, and over. And over.

And over, and over, and over, and over.

Also, we would feast on .99 cent bagged salad from Safeway, because she’s kind of weird that way.

Maybe it’s for the best that the kids can’t rearrange me to suit their desires… It’s exhausting just imagining it.

In other news: Reverie isn’t coming home until closer to the end of the month, which I’m thrilled about. I can definitely use another week or so to get things ready for her.

Getting ready for Reverie

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I introduced the twins to Reverie yesterday.

I figured it was time, since she’s going to be coming home in less than a month (GACK!). I didn’t want the first time she saw a pair of loud, hyper two-year-olds to take place during the stress of her move.  There’s enough craziness at our place that every day is a lesson in desensitizing:  kids on trampolines waving towels over their heads, flying kites over the paddock, wagons full of shrieking children being pulled all over by a hyper Labrador….

If I can take any steps ahead of time to make her transition to Bean Acres easier, I definitely want to.

In case you were curious, the answer to “How many people actually refer to it as Bean Acres?” is still “just Becky”. Even when I do use it, it’s usually only in my head.  There’s something about naming your property and then saying it out loud that feels a teensy bit pretentious, like you’re talking about yourself in third person.

Well, I don’t care. I’m going to keep calling it Bean Acres, in hopes that one day it will catch on.

Of course if really wanted everyone to call it by a name, I could probably should have named our home FartFartPoopFart Acres.

And if you don’t understand why that is, then I congratulate you, because you aren’t living in a house filled with mostly males. Seriously. I will never understand why farts are so unbelievably funny.

Anyways, I had a few minutes in between getting off of work and showing up at the house to get started on dinner, so I decided to stop by and see if I could say hi to Reverie, and scratch on her a little bit.

There have been times when I’ve come to see her she was waaaaay out on the back side of 20 acres and all I could see was a tiny brownish speck next to a larger brownish speck, but lately Kathleen has been putting her in a shady paddock during the day, to protect her incredibly sensitive pink nose.

I foresee a lot of Destin/long-nosed fly masks in our future.

Luckily for me, Reverie and her mom (Sparkle) were hanging right by where I normally park, so it didn’t take very long to find them.

Reverie was very, VERY interested in the twins, almost to the point of spooking. It didn’t help that Finn was in a hyper mood and kept jumping rather than walking, and that Magpie had dragged along the singing puppy she takes with her everywhere.

 

His (apparently it’s a boy?) name is Doggie PurpleBow, and bless the makers that gave him an off switch that’s easy to switch off but hard for toddlers to find.

Seriously, thank you. There are only so many times you can hear “That’s my tummy!!! Tummy begins with ‘T’!!!! T…U…M…M…Y.. spells TUMMY!!!!” followed by semi-maniacal animatronic giggling before you get the urge to run away and join a cult. That off switch saves my sanity.

For being only 3 months old, I am really impressed at how laid back Reverie seems to be. I know a lot of adult horses that would not stand still with two screechy twins coming running full tilt at them, complete with creepy singing dolls in their arms.

I prepped the twins as we got near, to better direct them.

“This is Sparkle. Sparkle is a mommy horse. Sparkle is nice.”

And dude.

Sparkle is SO nice. Every horse should be a Sparkle.

Sparkle is just a gem of a mare in a very pretty package. You could tell she really liked the twins, because she just came alive when they drew near, swooping low to snuffle at them and standing patiently as they patted the sensitive tip of her nose with their inept little hands.

Magpie, who lives up to her namesake more every day with her penchant for shiny, sparkly things, was in awe of the name.

The horse was named Sparkle.

Not only was the horse named Sparkle, but she, Magpie, also had on a pair of sparkle shoes (light up Sketchers with sequins I found at a yard sale.)

She couldn’t get over it- it totally blew her little two-year-old mind.

“Yook, Spahkle. Hi, Spahkle. Spahkle shoes! My Spahkle shoes. You Spahkle. Dese my spahkle shoes!”

Sparkle is thinking, “You’ve literally been showing me your shoes five minutes straight, saying the same three sentences over and over. I get it. I see them.”

 

While the twins were VERY interested in Reverie, and she in them, I discouraged it as much as possible.

“That’s Sparkle, she’s a nice horse. And this is Reverie, Sparkle’s baby. Reverie is Mommy’s new horse. Reverie is a baby, and Reverie bites. Hard. It will hurt. No touching, or she might bite you. This horsie bites.”

Okay, maybe Reverie doesn’t actually bite…but hey man, two-year-olds and three-month-old horses don’t mix. Reverie would probably nip out of boredom given half a chance, and I’d rather terrify the twins a bit and have them keep a safe distance than try to explain the concept to them or give her a chance to learn bad manners.

After all, for all Reverie is amazingly sweet and calm, she’s still just a foal. I trust her as much as I would trust a hyper kitten near priceless lace curtains.

The twins were horrified at the concept that Reverie could bite, and proceeded to spend the rest of their time lecturing her.

“No biting. No bite. No. Ow. No biting,” they said, over and over…. and over and over…. and over and over, in a kind of squeaky tandem Gregorian chant.

It almost made me miss the whole “Dese my Spahkle shoes” litany. I wish I’d thought to take a video instead of a pic.

You can actually see Finn saying “no bite” here.

Anyways, it’s a little disconcerting that Reverie will be coming home in a few weeks. For the one thing, it means summer is almost over, and that makes me sad. With my full-time job, I feel like I barely spent any time outside.

In addition, although I’m not nearly so worried as I would have been if I hadn’t brought home Jupiter last year…. She’s only going to be four months old.  Jupiter was the youngest horse I’ve ever owned, and he was already a yearling when I got him.

The idea of her actually being here, so young and impressionable, is totally terrifying.  I know in my head that it’s actually not, but my heart disagrees and keeps insisting it really is terrifying.  Reverie represents years (decades?) worth of dreaming come true.

The most disconcerting thing about her impending arrival is the fact that she’s, you know, going to actually be mine. I’m a perpetual daydreamer. I’m used to daydreams – they’re easy, and airy, and fun to live in…. but the Bean is a realist. When I daydream, he tends to take it literally.

 

It used to cause us issues in our marriage, because I would want to daydream with him (“Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get 30 chickens and make money selling eggs? Wouldn’t it be great if we had more property, and could raise our own beef?  What if we packed it all up and headed to Montana? Look at this gorgeous chocolate Labrador, I wouldn’t mind owning a dog like this”, etc, etc.) and he would start to get stressed, trying to figure out all the complexities of turning my imaginary scenarios into a reality.

Even after ten years of marriage, it still weirds me out when the Bean manages to turn my daydreams into reality ,and I think that’s where I am at now. The sheer realness of Reverie makes me nervous.

In my head I am Alex Ramsey on a deserted island with my amazing Black Stallion who is bonded with only me. I am athletic and confident and young, galloping bareback over deserted stretches of sand, and I always know the right thing to do.

In reality…. I’m a 37-year-old mom of four who is out of shape and struggles with depression and has never really taken many riding lessons or had a foal this young, and what the heck am I doing with a horse this nice? What if I ruin her? What if I break her?  I asked for water, but someone handed me the nice china, and can I please just use one of your plastic tumblers to get a drink out of so I don’t have to worry about dropping it?

Caspian is also an amazing horse, but he wasn’t necessarily my decision so I didn’t feel as responsible for him as I do for Reverie.  That’s not to say he’s not magnificent – he’s athletic and amazing and calm and wonderful and talented and I’ve never met a horse as honest as he is.  Still, I didn’t set out to buy him. A horse trader sold him to a horse trader, who sold him to my parents, who needed to find him a quick home after they had some unexpected hospital time.

I’m sure I’d feel just as panicky if I’d bred him from scratch.

Of all the things that are not on my control, there is one thing I can actually do something about, so I’ve channeled all this:

Image result for now what do I do

 

into slowly getting back into shape. I set an initial weight loss goal for myself back in May, and I’m almost there. Once I hit that goal I will then let myself join the local CrossFit.  I know, I know, Crossfit is the devil/the best/the worst/your savior.

I’ve heard it from a lot of different people, trust me.

The thing is, I tried CrossFit before, and it suited me perfectly. The trainers were wonderful and modified all exercises for out of shape me….

But during the free trial week I found myself getting super competitive and I pushed myself too hard for where I was phsically.  I didn’t injure myself – I just ended up having to go up and down stairs on my butt for three days because I didn’t trust my quads to hold my weight.

You haven’t really lived until you’ve tried to navigate stairs on your butt with a set of 7 month old twins in your arms.

I know you’re imagining that in your mind, and let me assure you, the reality of it was even more ridiculous.

Anyways, I figure I’m almost as the point where I can try again, and hopefully by the time Reverie is rideable I’ll be in a place where I can sit a three or four-year-old green broke horse (you better believe I’m sending her away for the first 90 days!) and not feel totally off-balance from lack of core strength.

Giving myself something to do helps. It gives me something to do while I think, and as I ponder, I’m also realizing that it’s okay. It’s okay to love something this much.

In those quiet moments where I’m honest with myself, I think that loving Reverie may be my biggest fear of all.

When I was in my early 20’s I had a flame point cat named Fuego. If you’ve never had a close connection with a pet, it will sound weird to say this, but he was my best friend.  When he escaped from my house and got hit by a car, I was devastated. That’s not hyperbole either- after I received the phone call letting me know he’d died I started crying so hard I had to leave work, and for the rest of the week I barely managed to pull myself together enough to show up for my receptionist job.

Months later, still in the midst of  my private mourning, I lay curled on my side under the covers as silent tears dripped down my cheeks. I still felt aching and raw, lonely for the way he used to crawl under the covers and sleep against me. And that’s when I had a total lightbulb moment, to the point I even muttered it out loud:

“Well, this is stupid.”

Fuego would have lived, what … Fifteen years at most? Seventeen? It just didn’t make sense to give away that big of a piece of my heart to a pet only to have it destroyed every decade or so. There wouldn’t be anything left of me when it was all said and done.

And that was that. That was the last time I let myself get really close to a pet. Oh, I still love my animals, but it’s an easy-going love, more like warm affection.

With Reverie I can sense it is going to be so much more, and it makes me nervous.

Of course, maybe I’ll get lucky?  Maybe it’ll turn out that she has a nasty PMS cycle or that she likes to pee on my shoes whenever I get close to her, or barely tolerate me scratching on her neck.  Maybe she’ll be a habitual stall kicker, or like to stomp chickens, or rub her mane out, or pin her ears a lot?

It’s a weird thing to secretly hope for, but then at least I’ll feel like I can relax, because then she wouldn’t be quite so perfect, so the idea of being responsible for such a perfect daydream of a horse won’t be quite so daunting.

And in the meantime…. if you’re looking for books on training young horses over at the St. Helens Public Library, you’re outta luck.  I’ve already checked them all out. After all, when in doubt, go to the library.