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?

Endings and Beginnings

Didn't want to post this online before everything was all settled and done, but I've stopped teaching lessons at the rescue. Today was my last (windy, blustery, slipping-on-ice-with-my-bad-choice-of-footwear-y) day teaching. It actually worked out great because the original instructor wanted to come back from her maternity leave for the new year.

I haven't really posted much about the lessons (aside from the crashes) since I thought it would be kind of weird to talk about how they were going when my students could easily look it up and read it. And I did enjoy teaching--but it's definitely not all fun. It was a job, which I think I took a little too lightly going into it, especially since I was getting flipped around between different groups so much at my "real" (and also fairly new) job, which basically meant a lot of change and learning and transitions every couple weeks. And I am not a person who thrives on change.

Anyway, it just amounted to that working 6 days a week just wasn't working for me. I was exhausted on Mondays. I stopped wanting to go to the rescue and exercise the schoolies. I stopped even wanting to ride at all, which you may have picked up on with my sporadic posting this fall and my reports of "meh" rides. All I really wanted to do was stay inside and read. So I guess that settles a question I was debating months ago--at least at this juncture of my life, having a horsey job actually made riding into work.

Another issue was just interpersonal stuff. Now, I'm not really talking about barn drama per se--more that dealing with people is just hard, and I'd prefer not to do it at the barn. Sure, I can be polite and professional, but the idea that I wasn't qualified, I didn't know what I was doing, and that other people knew it and were judging me for it kept picking away at my confidence, whether it was a reasonable assumption or not.When things went wrong, I would obsess and worry over them for days. I just do not have the personality for it, I think.

Also...the more I ride and deal with draft horses...the more I realize I don't really like them unless they are very athletic and don't act like draft horses. Blasphemy, I know.

Anyway, those aspects of teaching sucked. Here's what I did enjoy:

• helping a student bring Remy back from a rough period where he was freaking out anytime he felt rein contact to being consistently balanced and relaxed at the walk, and much more adjustable and relaxed in the trot. "Supertrot" is not the automatic pace anymore; it kind of depends if he's feeling up or not. Cantering and jumping are still works in progress, but the every week they're making great strides forward (pun intended). That has been very gratifying to see. Can you tell I like having a project horse, especially when I don't have to ride it?
• planning out interesting jump exercises for my students who jumped
• the learning aspect: Possibly because I was afraid I was doing things terribly wrong, I read a lot over these past few months, listened to webinars, absorbed everything my own instructors told me, and tried to turn it around and pass useful tricks along to my students. Teaching really is the best way to learn.
• nerding out with other horse-crazed people. Don't get me wrong, bloggers, I love you too, but it was good to develop some real-life horsey friendships.
• bringing along students who had not been on a horse in years to the point where they were comfortable and happy learning to post the trot.
• our FAUX-SHOW! Which it appears that I neglected to post about. Oops. Well, remember the show I was planning on this fall? We were all set to go...and then got rained out since the host farm has only outdoor arenas. So we had our own show, with WT, WTC, command classes, and switching of horses. Everyone got ribbons, too, since GG has done some fundraiser shows in the past. I surprised myself since I didn't think Command would be my thing, but it was actually my favorite part. 
• riding outside with the students
• watching students new to riding creating some really sweet memories. When I would see them snuggling the horses or just quietly walking them back to the field, I was reminded of why we ride in the first place.

Here's a picture from our faux-show (couldn't get it to go in the bulleted list). Levi is the blurry gray on the left flinging his head up and down.

from the GGDHR Facebook page

So--all told, I think the transition is going through smoothly. Teaching just wasn't right for me, and now I can focus on my "real" job and on my goal of horse ownership.

And playing Braid on Byron's Xbox.

One week down, 50 years to go.

So since I know many of my readers are people I know in real life, I figured my blog is as good a place as any to update everyone on my first week of work. Total strangers, don't worry, I have horsey news too.

There are some things I really like about my office, such as free bagel day and the fact that their kitchen really reminds me of Veridian Dynamic's kitchen. However, I received a chilly welcome to office life--not from the people, but from the building itself. I lucked out and got a cubicle by a window (where I hung my Most Spectactular Creative Dismounts award with pride), but there is an air vent that blows right down on my head. Seriously, the only day I was warm was Casual Friday, when I wore a tank top, a polo shirt, a cardigan, and a blazer. I'm tempted to invest in a pair of these and risk the taunting of my fellow cubemates:

Toasty warm USB-powered hand warmers

 So my job is editing, fact-checking, and formatting newsletters of stocks advice. It makes me feel very journalist-y because unlike the papers I wrote for my major, they actually have to be based in reality! The downside is that I know NOTHING about stocks. It makes me feel very lucky that my coworkers are so patient about explaining things, and that Investopedia exists. One of my assignments so far is to read the back issues of the newsletters I will be editing, and although I have to look up a lot of the financial lingo, I am picking up on the differences in each stock advisor's style. There is one I particularly enjoy because he likes to go off on tangents. So far I've found out that he hates Bush, Obama, and "doing business with untrustworthy Muslim countries" almost as much as he loves investing in Swedish stuff and riding his Harley.

I've also been working on fact-checking (very time-consuming for me since investorspeak is like another language and I have to do MATH), proofreading (piece of cake), and fiddling around with Dreamweaver and InDesign. So there is a lot to learn but there are also some things I already know, so I don't feel like a total noob.

African Violet for my office from my little brother <3

This week was also the "interview" for what might become my second job two days a week. The Gentle Giants riding instructor is pregnant and does not want to keep working outside during a Maryland summer (ie. a muggy, suffocating heat wave in which riding instructors must breathe kicked-up arena dust all day), and the Barn Manager asked me if I'd be interested in being a substitute instructor.

Let's pause here for a minute. I am in no way qualified to be a riding instructor. My own riding education has had no real rhyme or reason to it (unlike a Pony Club or Equine Studies curriculum) ; I've mostly shown at low-level fun day shows; and I don't even have my own horse. But I am still SUPER excited. And when I'm excited about something, I research and make lists, or in this case, lesson plans. So I will be posting those here for your critique and suggestions as I keep teaching.

The majority of the students are re-riders at the beginner or intermediate level. There is also a handful of teenagers of varying levels, but it seems like everyone just wants to learn the basics of safety and pleasure riding, which I think I can do. The one thing I'm nervous about is that many of the GG horses are fairly green, and I'm afraid that since most of them do not get ridden much, there will be some horrible disaster and I won't think quickly enough to coach someone through it. Just today, one of the students tried to show Sailor to a potential adopter and he took off in a bucking fit (I am pretty sure they are going to send him to the trainer's now).

So...I'm going to do my best to teach people how to be safe and to improve their horse-human communication. I already have a lot of torture surprises for the students in my toolbox: no stirrups, two-point, spiral in/out, leg yields...but hey, all of those exercises have done me a lot of good so even though there will be some aching legs in the short-term, (hopefully) there will be fewer spills and thrills in the long-term.

Life post-graduation

...has been pretty sweet so far.

I rode at Gentle Giants the day after I graduated, ready to work with Sailor and Levi. I didn't get around to Sailor that first day, but more on that later. Levi was fairly nervous while grooming, but he didn't actually do anything bad. Once I put him to work in the ring, though (short longe over irregularly spaced ground poles, like before), his brain turned on so I mounted up.

He has such a wonderful, swingy, energetic walk. I think the issue he was having in lessons must have been that students were direct reining or over-relying on their reins in some other way, perhaps clinging on his mouth during his (admittedly very big) trot. Levi does get a bit forward at the trot when he's warming up, but he'll come right back to a less ground-covering stride if you give him a half-halt with each stride after he's had a chance to warm up. He can take some contact--but only AFTER he gets a good rhythm going. He also responds much better to steering with leg, then opening inside rein, and a supporting outside rein. I think most of the drafts at GG are not at that level in their training yet, so perhaps the students aren't used to riding that way. It is actually probably a plus for them to get some experience on Levi, since learning to rely on your leg and seat before using your hands is a good lesson to learn. My instructor said once, "If you think you need more rein, double your leg," which is a very easy way to remember.

The funny thing about him is that he can't seem to get the right canter lead on the circle, but he gets it every time on the straightaway (tried both ways in both directions). So weird. I think it might have something to do with the fact that he will overbend on the circle if you don't keep him straight with the outside rein--not sure. Anyone have any ideas? I might try to video it sometime to diagnose the problem.

Anyway, I had such a great time with Levi that I completely forgot about my joblessness anxiety. Dapple grays just make my heart go pitter-patter, leaving no room for the insecurity that comes with being yet another jobless English major. I gave him a bath and let him graze while I pulled his mane to a respectable length, and generally fussed over what a good boy he was. When I put him back in his field, I saw that my phone had a missed call and a voicemail asking me to call back one of the companies I applied to.

Keep in mind--I had been checking my phone OBSESSIVELY for an email or call from this company for the entire weekend. I interviewed with them the Thursday before I graduated, and they said, "If we don't get back to you before you graduate on Monday, have a wonderful graduation!" I was both thrilled that they might get back to me so soon and terrified that I might have to face bad news on my big day. I called them back, and got voicemail since it was around lunchtime. I left a message, stuck my phone in the waistband of my breeches (First-world problem: iPhones don't fit in any pockets), and set myself to work putting away the ground poles and sweeping the aisleway.

About 30 minutes after I received an unrelated call (which scared the pants off me, I was so anxious) I received a call. THE call. That's right...the call offering me, the English major, a job as an Editorial Assistant one day after graduation. We chit-chatted about the particulars, I told them I was interested, and after I hung up, I shared the good news with the barn manager and then went back to sweeping clods of dirt and the shavings soaking up where Levi peed. My cheeks were burning with excitement. I'm actually glad I had to finish up sweeping (a relatively low-brainpower task) because if I had left the barn then, I probably would have gotten in an accident. There was no way I could think straight enough to ride Sailor--I left that for another day.

It was such a relief to know that I was on the road to independence. My dad took me out for crabs yesterday (parents are divorced--hence, separate graduation celebrations) and he said that me getting a job so soon after graduation made the whole English major thing seem worth it to him. In the past year or two I have grown more and more skeptical of the major since I let the tedious literature course requirements pile up on me all at once. I much preferred classes that had a clear benefit, like Copyediting, Concepts of Grammar, and Visual Rhetoric to classes where I simply repeated the read-analyze-discuss-read-analyze-discuss formula again and again. My most painful class was one where I had to read all 3 versions of Hamlet and both versions of King Lear (bet you didn't know that there are multiple Quarto and Folio versions of most of Shakespeare's works floating around out there) and compare them line-by-line, trying to create some significance out of one-word differences in versions of Shakespeare that most people will never read or see performed. Close reading is definitely useful to improve your detail-orientedness, but once you can do it, I don't really see the point in using it to meticulously obscure the meaning of passages that the author probably didn't give a second thought to. I guess what I'm saying is that maybe I should have studied journalism.

But, no matter. I have a job, and in the real world I have a feeling that results are more important than grades or majors. I've cleared the first obstacle, and now it's on to the next challenge...moving out. Eek.

An Illustrated, Video-ified Day in the Life of a Collegiate Equestrian

1. Go to unpaid internship where you get to read and write about horse stuff all day! And file things. (It's OK, they're horse-related things.)

So dreamy, especially in B/W. I was sad to file him away.

2. Go to barn!

We make circles! (I am imagining that in the voice of this video. (You're welcome.))

3. Breeze through traffic! Traffic cannot stop you from...
4. Homework. Well, actually, homework isn't so important. Replace homework with eating a garlic bagel with cheese for now. Mmm. Now no one will kiss you except your horse!

Wait, how did a horse's butt end up on my homework?!

5. Be sad that you're not at Rolex this weekend because you have to do homework and and other non-horsey stuff. And because you're poor.

6. Console yourself with Horse Nation's Rolex coverage.
7. And all the horse blogs that updated today.
8. Okay, now it's really time to do your annotated bibliography.

No more horse butts. :(

9. Wait, maybe you should rummage through your closet for something to wear to that silly family event this weekend that's cutting into your barn time.

Is it wrong that after 4 years of college, I still find the fact that my bedsheets have crabs on them to be a hilarious visual joke?

10. Seriously, write up one of your sources. Run it through EasyBib because you're hip and with it and you don't waste time.
11. Brag to the world about it on your blog as a reward.

First day at the barn=first real day of spring break

I don't know how I can be so tired after only two days of break--oh wait, yes I do. I crepe-d it up with a friend at Crepes-a-Go-Go, went to a horse birthday party, and finally made it to my parents' so I could do some copyediting work for Stylus and other computery stuff. Keep in mind that all of these stops are 30-60 minutes apart from each other...whine! Driving and sitting in front of a computer for too long are both things I really dislike but am also really bad at managing. I just feel like a blob when I sit all day.

On the bright side...here are some cute pictures of the birthday boy (turned 11) and girl (turned 8) to boost my pageviews, which have been pathetically low of late:

Princess Patty in her light-up tiara

That's me riding her on her adoption page :) It's nice to see that my super-annoying, back-of-the-knee-pinching Ariat boots actually make my legs look fancy and dressagey with their Spanish tops. Not so nice to see that I'm hunching my shoulders in all the pictures.

Chancey Pants's birthday hat was definitely going to eat him so he settled for some Mardi Gras bling. Sacre bleu!

If you're wondering why Chance's fur looks weird--he just had a bath.

Hum...one more thing to do before I go to bed. Then it's waking up early(ish) to help feed and potentially move horses over to the brand-spankin'-new Gentle Giants facility. Exciting!


Moral: The older you get, the more you appreciate the single-digit times of day.

...just realized that after midnight that actually says the opposite of what I meant. Blech. Tired!

Temptation

So of course, when I posted my "be a responsible student!" blog entry before work,  it was cold and windy....but now that I've emerged from my cubicle, it's absolutely beautiful, and a perfect day to ride... but I have homework, dinner with my roommates, and then a club meeting.

WHINE!!!!

Going to go running instead since that will only take 20 minutes or so. Hopefully I'll feel so loopy from jamming to Girl Talk and lapping all of the pedestrians on campus (yes, I still feel a sense of accomplishment from passing people who are just going to class and not actually racing me) that I won't be so mad at Mother Nature. Why, why, why does she have to torture me with 50 degrees in February?!?!

I have a story already written (just have to edit it) about my dad's obsession with running, my obsession with riding, and our mutual misunderstanding that I'll post later this week. Stay tuned for that and some other post ideas I've come up with from browsing COTH.

POST-RUN UPDATE:
Ok, embarrassing confession time. When I run, I try to get a good tempo going by imagining that I'm actually doing a nice, floaty, extended trot. Does anyone else do this, or am I just weird?

I also like to practice keeping my shoulders down and hands quiet while I run, but I'm not embarrassed about that because it's actually been really good for my muscle memory.

Balancing riding and school

This post was inspired by a high school student's cry for help on the COTH forums :

"I'm homeschooled, which is both a blessing and a curse in this matter. I only began homeschooling very recently, a couple of months ago. I'd gone to three different high schools, had to repeat my freshman year and still none of them were working. I'm way behind the schedule for graduating - I'm sixteen and only have my freshman credits! My hope is to graduate when I'm 19 and to work through the summers to achieve that. The only courses I'm taking at the moment are AP World History and Nutrition and Wellness, but the AP is terribly time consuming and I'm not sure how to fit more riding into my schedule because of that.

I'm going to take a break from my weekly art lessons for a while, so that should free up some time.

This all just seems kind of impossible! I have no idea how other juniors manage to ride and show while maintaining a full course schedule and get good grades" -baudelist

I was somewhat shocked that her parents didn't punish her for choosing to ride over going to school and I wonder if homeschool is really the best option for her. I think that is what allows other young riders to balance it all--school isn't optional. However, I'm not privy to whatever her life circumstances are so even though my first instinct is to blame, it's certainly possible that she has had some challenges out of her control, what with switching between 3 high schools.

Balancing riding and school, or riding and work, or riding and school and part-time work (That's me! So glad I quit my second job.) is not easy, and riding is usually the weak link in the chain. There have been some semesters where I rode once a month or less--school was just too time consuming, and I didn't have a car on campus until this year so I'd have to go home on the weekends to ride. And I think that's OK. I've never wanted a career with horses because I don't want the thing I do for fun to become work, so my top priority has always been school. Well, okay, my parents had some influence on that priority too, especially when I couldn't drive myself to the barn. Horses have always been the reward, not the end goal.

Of course I'm not saying that I am the queen of the horse-job-work balancing act. I don't have my own horse, so I don't have the responsibility to keep him exercised. When I did have my own horse in high school via a free lease, I was lucky that he was old and quiet--I got the same ride out of him every time, whether he had worked five days or zero that week. Also (to further list my disqualifications) I often end up not juggling everything so well, and I spend a lot more time at the barn than I mean to...my boyfriend knows that if I say I'll be back by six, it means seven, and that I'll be prattling on about horsey stuff for another hour. Thankfully he just scolds me with a "Bad baby!," keeps on being loving, and then we make fish tacos with pink pickled onions. Yum!! I smell a food post coming up because there are definitely some dishes that really hit the spot after I ride.

Regardless of tangents... here are some tips to balance life responsibilities and riding:

• Sacrifice riding time: That's right, #1 on the list. School (or work) is what will give you the cash to continue riding in the long run, so that has to be the priority. It might feel like it, but you won't die from not riding every day or even every week. Personally, not being able to ride as much as I want just makes me value the time I have at the barn even more.
• Time management: Know how long you'll be at the barn and how long your homework will take you. This, of course, is easier said than done. There have been so many times when I intended to finish my ride by a certain time and then my horse decided to act up...or times when I thought it would take me ten minutes to read for my Spanish lit class and it ended up taking forty...These things happen, but they shouldn't happen every day.
• Plan, plan, plan: I am completely obsessive about my to-do lists, reminders on my phone, and Google Calendar so that there are not so many balls in the air--they're all on paper. I like to put homework assignments from my syllabus on my calendar right at the beginning of the semester, and then I plan out when I need to start working on big projects. I print out my Google Calendar each week and write extra notes on it as I'm working on stuff.
• Choosing a horse: Do you really have time for a youngster who needs consistent training every day? Even if you have the funds and the riding ability for a horse that requires a lot, it might not be a good idea if you already have the full-time responsibility of school or a job. If you already have such a horse, half-leasing him so he has some consistency is a a good idea.
• IHSA: I have zero experience with IHSA. The idea of showing a horse I don't know just goes against what I like most about showing--it's a test of how far you and your horse have come in your training together. However, IHSA does seem like a good way to keep riding without a time commitment every day  if you can handle the significant time commitment (thanks commenters). If anyone has ever done IHSA I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
• Combine horses and school: I have an internship at a horse publication, and this blog  was actually started for a blogging class. That means my time at the barn is research, right? If you can find some way to combine your interest in horses with school assignments, you might be able to sneak in some extra barn time as part of your project. If not, it's still fun to write essays about things like the steeplechase scene in Anna Karenina... well, if not fun, at least not horrible.
• Look ahead: One day I will have my own horse and no homework. One day I will have my own horse and no homework. That's what gets me through the readings in Spanish that take a zillion years to read and the essays on differences in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the quartos and folio of Hamlet...ugh, who cares??? Not me! Why did I ever pick that topic?

I'm opening it up to you guys--any other tips on the balancing act of horses, school, and work?

Great ride, clean boots, and now...

...sitting down to homework after a day of doing things that were much more fun. I worked at the farm twice this week, which apparently meant that I was allowed to join in a group lesson today! Score! We worked on straightness at the trot and canter, and I almost got a gallop out of lazy-pants Manly Stanley on the long sides of the ring.

I'm feeling much more confident at speed now that I'm riding three times a week--there was a period last fall where I was very nervous and unsure of myself. I think part of the problem was that I was working so much on top of school to pay for the lessons, and I was so overloaded that the stress was manifesting in my riding. Frustration and disappointment were exactly the opposite of what I hoped to get out of lessons...so I'm glad that I've found ways to ride without working myself to the point where I can't enjoy it.

Another bonus of today was that I got some zen time to clean my boots in the sunshine. They were looking rather disgusting after the rainy, muddy weather we've had over the past few months. Thankfully there was no mildew--although I hate my Ariat field boots (they don't fit right, but they were the only ones without zippers, and I have a weird aversion to zippers on my tall boots), I don't have the money to replace them.

Clean, clean, gloriously clean!
Well, not the breeches...

Is it wrong to love doing boring chores? Cleaning tack allows me to get in that same relaxed state of mind that mucking does. Maybe my attitude will change once I get a horse of my own, but for now I'll take it.