I’d be lonely, if I weren’t so busy.
I have at least three blog post drafts that start off with this line, which I feel is a really excellent way to sum up how the past few months of my life have gone.
The problem is that I start writing to catch everyone up on what I’ve been doing, and the next thing you know it has turned into a maudlin LiveJournal post, circa early 2000s. It’s not that I mind that type of writing. It’s more…. it’s not really how I wanted my post to be.
Besides, it’s not like anything complain-worthy as even happened to me. I think the only hard thing is that back in December the Bean and I took a look at our finances and how much his job was charging us for insurance for our family of 6 and realized that the time had finally come. I needed to get a full-time job.
I’m not gonna lie – it wasn’t an easy decision. The twins weren’t even two years old yet, and to be honest, I’ve really been enjoying parenting them. They’re so laid back and easy to get along with….either I’m getting more relaxed at this parenting gig. Maybe third and fourth time is the charm?
Also, in order to get a full-time job it meant I had to leave my dream job: the library. If you don’t know why that was so hard for me, then you haven’t been reading this blog very long. I’m pretty sure if you cut me open, fiction books and pictures of pretty horses is all that would fall out.
Suffice it to say, I just really, really, really liked working at the library.
Before you feel too sorry for me, let me jump ahead to the punchline: I got the exact job I wanted (pretty much the only one I wanted, aside from a job getting paid to read books while hanging out in a barn): Front desk person at City Hall. The hours are great, the benefits are wonderful, my coworkers are fantastic, and I’m still part of the library family, so to speak.
I mean, there’s just no way to feel properly sad about something like that.
Unfortunately, even if it went as smoothly as possible, it has still been difficult. I started my job right at the beginning of The Bean’s busy season, which means that while his paycheck is around, I only glimpse him occasionally (usually after most of the kids have gone to bed). It also didn’t help that this has been an absolutely rotten flu season. Trying to juggle a new job with four kids who seem determined to pass around the same illness, over and over, has been demanding.
Oh, what the heck am I saying?
Trying to juggle a full-time job with four kids, forget adding any of the rest of it, has been demanding. Sometimes it feels like every single hour has already ben scheduled. I’m turning into one of those people. I have a calendar now, and I schedule things on it.
I know. Gross.
Anyways, with this new schedule, although my weekends are free, I tend to spend those catching up with the kids. It really doesn’t leave a lot of time for socializing, All the children’s meetups that people schedule are during the day. There’s no time to meet up during the week. Weekends seem to be about playing catch up.
I used to rely on social media to fill my friend gap, but lately….
I’m sorry, but there’s just only so much screaming I can take. More often than not, it feels like all Facebook can do is either scream about its opinions, or drag out whatever roadkill of a travesty has happened in the news the past week and obsess over it an unhealthy amount until a new piece of roadkill is found.
Rumor has it that there are happier, less angry social media places to be, but I can’t bring myself to look into it. I like Facebook. I’m comfortable there.
Besides, while I can be awkward with people…
…the idea of researching new social media apps just to have friends is kind of depressing in and of itself.
I still keep up with a few people, but for the most part I’ve been reading, caring for my giant brood of children and animals, and daydreaming about horses.
Speaking of horses:
Did you know I have three of them in my backyard?
I know, I know.
Caspian is doing well – fat, happy, and enjoying living the life of a horse who gets to hang out with horse friends and rarely be ridden.
Honestly, it looks relaxing. I’m kind of jealous.
Back in early summer of last year I picked up a friend for Caspian, who desperately needed one. He spent all day pacing, stall weaving-nervously in a 100×50 paddock, nervously scanning the horizon as he fretted.
He was one set of opposable thumbs and an axe from turning into Jack Nicholson.
via GIPHY
It was unhealthy for him and depressing for me to look out my window and see that, so I began visiting auctions and looking on Craigslist. I stumbled onto Jupiter, a scrawny, wormy, too-thin yearling with some of the worst hooves my farrier had ever seen. Watching her trim him that first time was so gratifying – old abscesses oozing out, curled up toes getting straightened as she trimmed him back.
To be honest, I was really concerned that it might leave some kind of lasting damage, they looked so bad. (SPOILER: he has the best hooves of all of my herd, and hasn’t been lame yet, KNOCK ON WOOD.)
He fit the slot perfectly – someone to keep Caspian from spiraling further into horsey insanity by himself on my property, young enough to give me a chance to work with a young horse and teach them ground manners, lunging, etc, and pretty enough that when the time came, I might not have too hard of a time finding him a new home.
Ten Month Before/After
All was doing well, until February, when I stumbled on a pony: Carrots. I found her on while doing my weekly Craigslist scrolling (surely I’m not the only one that drools over horses I never plan on buying?) Something about her face just called to me, even if she lived an hour away. I called up the owner and asked if I could go meet her, drawn to her on a strange impulse….
But, unfortunately, someone else got there first.
I shrugged, and decided it wasn’t meant to be, and went back to work the following Monday….
Where one of my new coworkers came up to me. As it turns out, she lives only a mile from me. had seen that I had posted on Facebook about Carrots, and was willing to sell her to me for the original price.
A week later I had the pony in my backyard.
One month Before/After (before on bottom)
She was thin and wormy, but so friendly, and a much prettier mover than I expected.
To be honest, three horses was always my goal, so impulse the buying wasn’t a problem in terms of that. I have the space for them, I have the funds to care for them right and by the end of next summer I will have finished fencing in most of the lower pasture.
Three horses is not the problem. It’s four horses that’s a problem.
Yeah. Four horses.
Rewind your clocks more than a year…. all the way back to February 2017. We had lived in the house less than a month. Caspian was still being boarded at a barn, the twins were just under a year old, the walls of the new house were lined with boxes, and DragonMonkey and Squid were watching TV in the living room.
I was washing dishes, staring out the window and daydreaming about how amazing it was going to be to finally have the paddock finished and Caspian out there, grazing, in my own backyard…….. when the Bean approached. .
He stood there staring at me, holding Finn on his hip, a silent, waiting presence.
I looked up.
He opened his mouth, closed it, and then smiled jovially. “So…. so, before you get mad….”
I turned off the water, grabbing a dish towel to dry my hands and turned to give him my full attention. “Oh, Lord.”
“No, no, it’s not… it’s not a bad thing, per se. I just… I just wanted to let you know, ahead of time, because that way we could always communicate with each other effectively, and I –”
“Bean, just spit it out.”
“There’s a motorcycle.”
He stood there, almost vibrating with excitement, and I couldn’t figure out how to respond. He was obviously, so, so, so excited. If you’ve ever met the Bean, you know he doesn’t get to that point very often. He also doesn’t do things on a whim, like I do. His daydreams consist of researching. If he was standing there in front of me with excitement oozing off of him so palpably, that meant he’d not only found a motorcycle, but he’d done price-comparisons, and probably dealership visits, and test rides, and….
And he was a CPA. If he knew we could fold it into our budget, then we could probably make it happen. So I had two choices:
I could put the kabosh on the whole thing, and feel like I was ripping the wings off a butterfly…..
Or I could say yes.
It was just…. He already had a motorcycle that he rode to work, every day, and I found myself getting jealous on the inside. I knew whatever motorcycle he wanted to bring home was not a practical one – it was going to be loud, and fast, and the kind of thing that served no practical purpose other than making his heart happy.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to be happy, it was just that I was envious. I know. I know, that’s shallow of me, and not a good trait to have. Even though the twins were so much more amazing than I had imagined, I still felt like I had lost a piece of myself during their pregnancy and that first year of round-the-clock nursing. I didn’t have anything to look forward to – no goals, beyond maybe one day sleeping through the night again.
I looked the Bean in the eye, paused, opened my mouth, paused again, and then blurted out, “Fine. If you’re getting a motorcycle then I’m getting a baby Morgan horse. From that Scandia Morgan place.”
I don’t know how I expected him to respond. I was throwing it out there, almost like a giant, verbal litmus test. How much did he really want this motorcycle?
“Deal! Deal. Yes. No problem.” He nodded his head two, three times in a row, and shifted Finn higher on his hip. “That’s fair.” He nodded again, paused, and then said with a grin creeping across his face. “Want to hear about the motorcycle?”
And now you know why I’m sitting here, more than a year later, checking my Facebook messenger frequently for updates, waiting to see if Sparkle (real name: Marvelous by Design) has finally foaled yet.
