It is December 18. Two weeks from the start of next year. Two weeks more of River's absolute vacation. Well, not quite absolute... at some point before the end of the year I'm hoping to stick him on a longe line at least once or twice. I really want to ride him. Two weeks. I want it now!
Warning: Ridiculously long and whiny. Feel free to tl;dr.
This may be a wee bit tricky, though. Here's a day in my life:
Wake up by 7:30 or 8, get ready for work, take care of the dog, drive half an hour to work and get there by 8:30 or 9. If I'm planning to see River before work, wake up a half hour earlier.
Go to work until.... whenever. I work at a primary care physician's office. Our official hours are until 5, but sometimes we're done sooner and sometimes later. This time of year when everyone has the sniffles, it's usually later.
After work, drive 10 minutes to the barn where the horse I lease is. Figure 15-45 minutes there... usually on the low end, I clean his stall and leave. Every once in a blue moon I ride.
From there, 5 minutes to barn number 2. Clean my stall, bring in and feed the four horses there, and feed the poor, abused, starving barn cats (*rolls eyes*).
Then half an hour to barn 3. Check on River and my mare in the pitch dark. Barn hours are only until 8pm, so I have to hustle at barns 1 and 2.
Finally, a 10 minute drive home. Take care of the dog, dinner, shower, bed.
And that is my life Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. I don't work weekends or Thursdays, but I generally go in at least one extra day a week to catch up on stuff. Oh, and somewhere in there, work on my Master's thesis proposal, arrange meetings with my advisor, and next year find time to conduct original research, analyze the results, and write up and defend the paper.
At some point, I would love to ride regularly. I really just need to get into it. I haven't really ridden in a long time now because of my injuries. It's been about 2 years. The broken leg/torn ACL I already mentioned, but before that (November 09) was a broken finger that required surgery. Before you ask, yes, it was a horse injury. Helpful hint: When long-lining a horse, if you are a clod and trip and fall over your own two feet, do not clutch the lines so your horse doesn't get away. She'll blithely keep walking and your ring finger will snap in a way the radiology tech at the hand surgeon's office has never seen before. I am nothing if not unique. Where was I? Oh yes, riding. Well, it's rather tricky to ride without a ring finger, so I basically couldn't ride for close to 2 months. By the time I could, we were well into the dead of a Western New York winter.. which means absolute bitter cold, the type of weather you avoid at all costs.
Then, in April, I managed to fall off my mare and sprain my ankle. I will kind of blame her for that. I asked her to walk over a slightly raised pole. She launched over it and I came off. Okay, yes, I probably shouldn't have been sitting back on a long rein, but come on! And of course, a month later I broke my leg and all that. (And by the way, that darned ankle wasn't healed until several months after I sprained it.)
By mid-Fall last year, I could technically ride, but it was so painful I didn't usually bother. Why go through the trouble of grooming, tacking up, and going to the indoor only to ride for 5 or 10 minutes before it hurt too much to continue?
Now, I am finally, finally well enough. As long as I remember my NSAIDs, I can ride. The problem is it's been so bloody long since I really, seriously rode that it's hard to get into it. Which is a shame... For as long as I could remember, I wanted a horse, I wanted to ride. When I was little I would go to sleep on Christmas Eve and hope there would be a horse in the morning. Silly, because I never told anyone how much I wanted to ride, even if it wasn't my own horse. When I finally did get into horses in college, I was passionate and rode as much as I could.
I want to ride. I know once I'm on, I'm happy. It's a bit like watching Jeopardy! when I was younger. I never wanted to watch it because I thought I didn't like it, but I knew once it was on I enjoyed it. If I can just motivate myself to get into the bloody saddle, I'll be grateful I did.
Part of it is sometimes I just want to go home. I'm almost always gone 10 or 12 hours a day. Sometimes, I want to go home and sit in bed with my dog and a cat and read a book and relax.
Wow, what was this? I start off whining that I want to ride River and end by whining that I do and don't want to ride at the same time. Feel free to smack me, to yell at me for being so ungrateful. I have wonderful horses I love, I have exactly what I dreamed of for so very many years, and still I can't appreciate it. Geez, I am ridiculous.
This post has been depressingly picture-less. Here's me and my mare, who has caused every one of my memorable horse injuries. More on her some other time, this post is plenty long enough.
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