Lazy, Lazy Sunday

Is it wrong that I am super thrilled to have a no-horse Sunday? Well, not so much no-horse as nothing whatsoever. I didn't get dressed till one, and so far the one productive thing I've done is bathe the cat. Which was surprisingly drama-free aside from a couple "Why meeeee?" meows.

That's right...Beckett is back. For good.

Post-bath today on the heated blanket: Going...

Going...

Gone.

 The reason we were pet-sitting him originally was so that Byron's dad's fiancee could confirm whether or not she was allergic to him or if it was something else...and yup, it was him. Sad for her, but very very happy for Byron and me. He really is the perfect cat. His schedule matches up perfectly with ours--he sleeps the whole night, wants to play a little in the morning before work, then he's quiet and sleepy till about 6pm, when he turns back into a hyper kitty maniac and needs us to tire him out. Then around 10 he's ready to sleep again. And I don't know if it is brain damage from his 9-story fall or what, but you can cut this cat's nails, give him a bath, whatever, and then he loves you again in 30 minutes. Never seen that before. After the tantrum he had the first time I put his fake nails on, I fully expected to be shunned for 2-3 days.

Anyway, on to horse stuff.

Item 1: I have been second-guessing the whole buying a horse thing. Saving up for the cost of the horse isn't a problem, and I could handle routine monthly expenses if I did field board--but if something terrible and unexpected in the over-$1000 range happened to him, I couldn't handle that plus his regular expenses. And, you know, paying my student loans and feeding myself. Even though I really really want a horse of my own that I can attach to, I know that leasing is really the more responsible, financially comfortable option for me right now when I think of the worst-case scenario. And we all know that horses are suicidal. Ugh, being a grown up sucks.

So I'm thinking...keep saving as if I were going to buy a horse, but just let that money grow to become a horse fund/horse emergency fund for the future. Then I'll start looking for a lease come springtime. And figure out a way to keep working with my trainer without having to trailer in. The farm I'm at is close to a lot of boarding facilities and it's way in the boonies, so depending on where I found a lease, maybe even hacking to lessons could be an option if she didn't want to travel to me.

All of this is up in the air though, considering I haven't done anything about anything or talked to my trainer about it aside from a vague, "Hey, I want to get a horse in the next year or two."

Item 2: Now that I have more free time on the weekends, I'd like to devote more time to writing and blogging. So I have two ideas:

--Make my weekly own blog hop like Living a Dream has (had? She hasn't done one since November, looks like). I used to participate in those but kind of lost interest once she sold her horses and the blog hop questions weren't horse-themed anymore. So that's in the works. Hopefully some of my readers will join in the hop!

--Start writing for Horse Nation. My dream job would be if my Practical Horseman internship last spring (dang, I still need to write about that for you all!) had materialized into a full-time gig, but alas, with the state of magazine publishing, it wasn't to be. BUT that doesn't mean I shouldn't keep up my horsey writing (just in case, one day?).   I just need to come up with an idea for a column that I wouldn't run out of ideas to write about. And since "riding on the cheap" is a very loose focus at best for this blog, I don't know if I want to make that the focus of a column. Maybe just the adventures of a horse-crazed 20-something? Is that interesting? Or profiling horse jobs you could have? Not sure if that would be interesting for me. Maybe horse blog recommendations? Or useful weird tips? Prac used to have a short column about that, but it would definitely involve some research for me. But then again, what's a couple more hours on Chronicle of the Horse?

For now, I have an idea for my first submission, but in any case, I'm crowdsourcing it: does anyone out there have a better idea?