Probably Won't Go Back

In December 2014, DH and I went to Las Vegas for roughly a week.  While we stayed at a hotel/vacation club just off the famous Strip, we didn't do anything related to the casinos, shows, gambling, etc. We used our very nice room/condo/suite as a home base and made daily excursions way out of town.  Like the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, and Death Valley.  It was a surprisingly enjoyable trip (I'd resisted Vegas for years and years) that I blogged about here and we decided that we would probably be interested in doing a similar Vegas-based trip in the future.

Well, earlier this month, we went back.  The trip planning started this way: last Spring, DH got two vacation promo phone calls pretty much back to back.  The first one sounded like a great deal, it came with 3 nights and all sorts of free goodies, tickets, etc, plus a voucher for another vacation (3 days/2 nights) in either the Caribbean or Hawaii in exchange for sitting through a 90-minute presentation. He thought it sounded so good that he signed up for it.  And then the second one, for only $99 total (and an hour presentation), we got 3 nights at the same vacation club type of place we'd stayed in 2014, so he bought that one also, planning to dovetail the two trips into a week in Vegas.

We figured that with wedding planning, DD1's living with us during her student teaching (and possibly until her wedding in May 2018), her college graduation plus the holidays, DH and I would probably be ready to run away screaming go on a short vacation right about the time January arrived.  A nice little breather before resuming winter in Michigan, more wedding details, the bridal shower, last minute wedding madness, and the Big Day in May.  So we booked our two hotel stays(second promo for the first half, then first promo to end with), bought round trip plane tickets, scheduled the time off from work, and waited for our escape from reality vacation to arrive.

It arrived right after a very frigid spell in early January.  In fact, the morning we headed for the airport, the weather was a balmy 57 degrees Fahrenheit with rain. That warm weather was only supposed to last another day or two, and then cold and snow were going to return.  We, on the other hand, would be experiencing sunshine and mid 60s in Nevada.  Not to mention the fact that we would be temporarily removed from all the drama  related to DS1s marriage that has become our daily life. We couldn't wait to get to Vegas!

But we had to wait.  In fact, we waited out a two hour delay at the airport in Lansing while our plane got refilled with hydraulic fluid and checked for any other important repairs.  Good thing our itinerary included a three hour layover in Minneapolis, or we would have been scrambling (unsuccessfully) for another flight out of Lansing, like most of the other people who had seats on our plane.  We finally got to board the plane, and flew away to Minneapolis, deplaning about twenty minutes before our flight to Las Vegas was supposed to board.  Quick bathroom stops, and then we hoofed it across the airport to our departure gate.  Where we learned that the inbound flight (that would become our outbound to Vegas) had only just landed, so there would be roughly a half hour delay while passengers deplaned, and the plane was cleaned and restocked supplies and fuel.

The weather in Minneapolis was vastly different than the weather in Lansing.  Instead of fifties and rain, there was low twenties, and driving snow.  Every plane had to be deiced before proceeding to the runway.  They were deicing about five planes at a time, and we still had to wait in line behind three other planes before ours got to the deicing area.

While most people settled in to sleep, or watch a movie, or read, I totally geeked out about being deiced.  What can I say, it was my first time going through that process, and I loved every minute of watching the equipment and the equipment operators put the plane through the deicing procedure.  I took tons of pictures through the window, using the excuse of wanting to show them to the grandkids once we got home.  In reality, I'm 46 going on 6 sometimes. . . It was just cool.  And, honestly, I think it would be pretty neat to have a shot at sitting in the little cab on the end of the boom arm working the sprayer controls way way up in the air.

waiting our turn

first, the pink spray

get the wingtips good

then, go over everything with the green spray

The flight itself was pretty uneventful.  All those delays, but a nice smooth trip through the air.  Sometimes I had a clear view to the ground below, and other times we were flying above the clouds with sunshine above us. One super science nerd part of the flight was where we had clouds below us, and sun above us, and the sun shone at just the right angle to make a rainbow on top of the clouds.  Not just the arc-type rainbows seen from the ground, but more of a full-circle bulls-eye rainbow!

topography

cool circle rainbow on clouds below (and snowflakes on the window)

Our time in Nevada alternated between enjoyable and can-I-go-home-now? On the good side, I actually felt like braving the crowds and craziness of the Strip in order to go see the fountain at the Bellagio.  So the second evening there, we parked, walked to the fountain, waited for the next scheduled 'show' of water, lights and music, watched that, and walked back to where we'd left our rental truck.  Less than an hour, total, of nighttime escapades on the Vegas Strip.  I felt quite accomplished, LOL.  (I hate, hate, hate, crowds, and I am vehemently opposed to gambling, so the Strip doesn't quite appeal to me).  I'd set my mission: see the fountain, and I'd successfully achieved that with no extra bullshit from weirdos on the Strip  unplanned events.

Feeling buoyed by that excursion, I decided that I would like to go back in the day time, preferably early in the morning to avoid crowds, to see some of the statuary at Caesar's Palace up close.  So DH and I did that on another day (one of the ones we had to attend a presentation, so didn't have time to be gone from the city all day).

I texted this picture to DD2, who replied that Caesar was missing some stab marks.

I responded that they were probably behind him, an angle you can't get to from the sidewalk.

Hippocampus, but of course I prefer the anatomy of the horsey end rather than the fishy one

I also loved the many trumpet playing angels on top of the walls.

Other aspects of our in-Vegas time weren't nearly so enjoyable. The Can-I-Go-Home-Now parts. There were those presentations to attend, at which they try to talk you into buying what they are selling (which we didn't, with the dead honest excuse that we are totally tied up financially with DD1s upcoming wedding).Those enticing free gifts they'd promised turned out to be not that usable (like a handful of free show tickets, with not a single matching pair of shows, and rather than a $100 dinner voucher for a Vegas steakhouse they substituted a $100 gift card to restaurants.com which is rather limited in where and how you can use it--and only good for about half off your bill where ever you do manage to dine with it). 

Another big negative was the second place we stayed, which was off Strip and therefore you'd think quieter.  It ended up being kind of a dump (especially compared to the very nice condo/apartment--with full kitchen--that we first stayed at) and was also impossible to sleep at due to the live bands playing on the street till all hours of the morning. Our room was six floors up and the music was still so loud that not only did the windows rattle, the beds shook!  Seriously. I lay awake long after one a.m. being able to recognize 80's rock songs easily because the music was that loud.  Concrete walls, six stories height (so, 60 feet?), and windows shut, and you could still clearly hear the music from the street below. Not that the 80's music was bad, it's my favorite genre.  But it changed along about quarter to two to some other music that I really can't stand.  So not a good night at all.

Word to the wise: If you don't love being kept awake all night, stay away from accommodations on Fremont Street.

We stayed there exactly one night before going somewhere else--unfortunately on our own dime because the company the trip was booked through refused to move us to one of their other properties on the original list of choices they'd emailed DH.  Really, that experience soured the trip for DH & I, and we both agree that most likely we won't choose to vacation in Vegas ever again. Not even as a home base for outdoorsy excursions.


(Stay tuned for a post about the non-city portion of our trip.)

Acquiring Expensive Tastes

After I had my unplanned dismount (aka, a crash) off of a horse last month, I went shopping for a new riding helmet--as you should do after smacking your helmet into the ground with your head still in it.  The old one sports an interesting sunburst pattern on the lower right side of the back of the helmet now, and if you push on it, it yields a bit, displaying its new squishy spot.

I had actually been toying with the idea of a new helmet for several months before having that unfortunate ride that ended badly.  So when I went to purchase a new helmet, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to get.  Not, as my previous two helmets had been, a cheapy schooling helmet.  It wasn't just that I'd sustained a nasty concussion in my schooling helmet (although, honestly, that fact did come to mind being as I'd had other crashes, in my younger years, wearing my sturdy black velveteen helmet from my 4-H days without every being concussed).  No, I have been thinking, more than once or twice, about the possibility of getting back into showing in the next few years, and if I was going to buy a new helmet, I wanted one that was show worthy.  That way, if I did decide to dip my riding boots back into a show arena, I wouldn't have to get another new helmet first.

So, what I was shopping for was a matte black riding helmet, in the $150 range.  Quite a bit more cash than the colorful, shiny schooling helmets available for about $50 at the nearby farm supply and feed stores.  And, since I was changing style and most likely brand, I needed to go try on a  helmet before buying one (because each brand and style all fit slightly differently).  I wanted something 1. matte black and show worthy, 2. comfy and well fitting, 3. that was within my predetermined budget (ironically, I had received $$ from my kids for Christmas with the instructions that I was to put it toward the new riding helmet I'd mentioned wanting to buy back in November.)

On January 2nd, I traveled 45 minutes away to the reputable English riding tack shop to make my purchase.  There, I explained to the clerk what I was looking for, and after asking me a couple of questions, he took me to the helmet display and handed me one to try on.  Just as soon as that helmet settled on my head, I was in love.  With the helmet, not the good looking young clerk, LOL.  It felt so natural, like a part of my head, rather than how I was used to helmets feeling (a little heavy, a little awkward, and perhaps a little confining if they weren't too big).  I tried on a couple of others, as the first one was a bit more than I had planned to spend, but kept coming back to that first one.  It just felt so right.

I ended up buying it.  Since I'd been paid for working that horse over Christmas, I justified the slight extra cost by using some of my pay to make up the difference between what I'd planned to spend, and what the helmet cost.  The first time I rode in my new helmet, I knew I'd made the right decision. It's hard to explain, but having a helmet that I didn't really feel, that wasn't subconsciously taking up some of my thinking, just made the ride all that much better, easier.

I also knew that I'd just acquired another expensive taste.  Just like wearing a pair of full seat breeches for the first time after knowing nothing but knee patch breeches, after wearing my new helmet I knew I could never go back to the cheaper option.

(For those who are curious, what I bought was the One K Defender.)

A Month of Grandkids

Actually, its been nearly five weeks.  With the exception of weekends, a couple of days over New Year's, and a much needed week's vacation for DH and I, the grandkids have been living with us for over a month now.  Some of that time, they were dropped off on a Sunday night and not picked up again until DS1 got off work on Friday afternoon.  But then DH and I objected to this schedule, pointing out that in families where both parents work, children only see their parents from after work until bedtime most weekdays, so why couldn't they go home from the time DS1 got off work until bedtime each night. So, for the past few weeks the kids got several hours a day at home with their parents before returning to our house for bedtime. 

This afternoon, they went home, presumably to stay. 

I have mixed feelings about that.  I'm whupped, and am glad for a break. To say its been tough caring for children and doing the multiple times a day school run (3-day-a-week 1/2-day preschool and 5-day all-day Kindergarten) on top of trying to do my own job (and shuffling my work hours mornings some days,  late afternoon others) is an understatement. I'm also glad that the kids can sleep in their own beds at night and play with their own toys.  On the other hand, this returning home is a disruption to the predictable schedule that DH and I had developed for them, and I'm hoping the change wont be too traumatic.  I hope the progress K3 made in school during her time with us won't come to a stop, putting her behind again in Kindergarten. Also, on that other hand, I'm not sure how long this will last.  After all, it was roughly a month between when they went home the last time and when events transpired to make it necessary for them to return to our care.  All that up and down, back and forth is hard on young ones.  They were convinced, when they first came back in December, that they had done something to make their parents send them away.  And you can't exactly tell small children that a parent has problems which is the real reason they couldn't be at home when Daddy isn't there.

This is so, so hard.  I wouldn't wish mental health and substance issues on any family.  It's emotionally draining. It hurts so bad to see your loved ones go through it.  It is also physically exhausting being the helper and the refuge for the little ones.  Spiritually I go back and forth between praying for Gods Will to be done, and telling Him how I think the situation should be resolved.  I also find it impossible, as time goes on, not to take a side.  I am on the side of the grandchildren.


On the positive side, it has been nice to spend extra time with the grandkids.  Its been really nice to do things with them that get overlooked at home, given the turmoil in that house.  And, most times, the kids were able to go outside and play if they wanted to, even in the most 'rotten' cold weather.

a single digit high temperature day

If you don't mind a huge mess, you should try two small kids, a box large enough to sit in, and a shopping bag full of packing peanuts.  It was hours of fun (and double the hours to clean up!).

Is It Over Yet?

The last quarter of this year has been something else.  Something else beside relaxing, productive, or fulfilling from where I stand.  I wish I could say that tomorrow everything will be better, but really, that isn't up to me and that one point--that it isn't up to me--is what  has been the hardest for me through the past several months.  2018 is bringing, for me anyway, maybe more uncertainty than it is promise.  Mainly uncertainty pertaining to where my grandkids will reside on a regular basis (which affects my schedule, working, and riding to varying degrees).

This past week we had the grandkids from about bedtime on Christmas Day until roughly 3:00 Friday afternoon (Dec. 29).  Thank goodness that DD1 was also here for a good portion of that, DH had the entire week off (although he did have prior commitments taking up most of Tuesday and Wednesday), and DD2 also was home the entire week.  Because I could not possibly have taken care of the kids without their help as I had previously committed to not only my regular hours at the dressage barn when I work, but also filling in for morning feeding and stall cleaning at the eventing barn where I used to work. And, to top it off, I had agreed to ride someone else's horse daily while that person was out of state for a week.

The extra riding was nice, until it wasn't.  On Wednesday, the last day of that particular commitment, I suffered a rather large crash.  The kind where one minute you are trotting around nicely, then suddenly you feel the horse start to scoot while your brain registers that the horses back feels like an enormous buck is eminent and you think Oh shit, I'm going off and the next thing you know, you are lying flat on your back staring up at the rafters of the indoor arena while someone is kneeling over you calling your name.  It was the kind of spectacular crash where you get knocked out and no one allows you to move, they just cover you with layers of horse blankets and pack rolled up polo wraps around your neck while calling 911 for an ambulance.

Thankfully I am hard headed enough that my brain didn't seem to sustain any more trauma than a concussion and I was able to (repeatedly) tell the paramedics not only what day it was, but my name, home address, birth date, etc, etc that they ask you in order to judge how loopy you might be. palpation of my skull, neck, spine, ribs and hip didn't indicate anything broken, so they allowed me to make the choice whether I wanted to ride in the ambulance to the hospital for more examination or just go home and take it easy.  Being that I felt pretty much normal, not counting the growing headache and the feeling in my right hip and lower rib cage that clued me in to exactly which body part I hit the ground with first, I declined an ambulance ride.  I did promise them that I would let someone else drive me home in my vehicle, and that if I were to start vomiting, I would go to the emergency room immediately.

I spent most of the rest of Wednesday and a good portion of Thursday taking large doses of anti-inflammatories and laying on the couch as much as possible with young kids in the house.  I never did throw up, which is good because I couldn't see how the grandkids would get taken care of (they currently cannot be at home unless their father is there) if I ended up needing DH to take me to the hospital.  My body felt like I'd been in a car wreck: all stiff and achey when I moved the wrong way--which was pretty much any direction requiring reaching, twisting, or bending. Needless to say, I was unable to do any barn work on Thursday and Friday.

By Saturday morning I felt normal enough to attempt driving and grocery shopping.  I took DD2 with me, just in case.  Other than the fluorescent lights of the grocery store messing with my head (what a strange spacey feeling they induced), that went fine. Today I feel good enough that I am contemplating getting back in the saddle (need to dig up a helmet to wear, mine should probably be retired after that crash), and plan to resume my regular work schedule.

Needless to say, with the family turmoil of the last few months, and my bordering on famous unplanned dismount from the horse on Wednesday, I'm not sad to bid goodbye to 2017.

Just Breathe

That's kind of been my mantra for most of November.  Just breathe.  Inhale.  Exhale.  One foot in front of the other. 

November has been an incredibly challenging month.  Its always a little tough, trying to deal with firearm deer season (and DHs resultant live-in company), doing all my normal daily work plus trying to fit in time of my own out in the tree stands.  This year, however, even more shit  other peoples bad decisions craptastic challenges have made November a month that was predominantly depressing, suffocating, overwhelming, and very busy overall.  I cant really go into detail on the major cause of such a titanically difficult month, but suffice it to say that for approximately one third of November K3 and Toad were with me day and night.  They are back in their own home now, but our lives aren't quite back to normal and probably wont be for months to come.  When a train wreck happens, the recovery period is long, and the time it takes to rebuild trust can be indefinite.

Anyway,  I have really missed posting on this blog.  Kind of ironic that my last post, so early in the month, was about five good things that had happened.  Quickly after that post, so many many bad things occurred, or came to light, and as much as I wanted to just get on the computer and blog another five nice things, I couldn't. 

No time.  No nice things.  No breathing space.  No creative brain.  Anger, quite a bit of anger, actually.  A blog isn't the place to get out anger. At least, not this blog.  I want this little place here to be a refreshing place, a relaxing and inspiring place.  For me and for my readers.

On top of all the time, mental, and emotional challenges of November, our laptop seems to be sending DH and I increasing signals that it would like to be replaced with a newer model.  primarily the letter p hardly ever works any more. Every p you see in this post I put in using copy and paste from a spell checked word that had the p automatically added in! Which is also why none are capitalized.  The grammar nazi in me is having fits over that and the missing apostrophes on certain words. 

As the days go by, additional letter keys seem to be joining in the strike.  There are other issues too, but when the computer is actually on, its the lack of certain keys/letters that are the biggest challenge to typing anything.  Just try logging into an account where the name or password contains a p.  So hard to make an online payment on time in that case!

perhaps its time for me to breakdown and put the blogger app on my phone so I can finally write posts and blog from there.  I've been resistant to that for a few reasons, mostly because I hate using the itty bitty touchpad keyboard on the phone.  I can type super fast in person, on a normal size keyboard.  plus I haven't figured out how to watermark my photos on my phone before adding them to the blog.

Hopefully soon I can get back to all the long list of posts I wanted to write, and actually get some new content put on here on a regular basis.

Friday Five

I am going to implement a new weekly themed post at this little place here.  Might just be for the month of November, or I might (if I'm successful at regular posting) keep it going for an undetermined length of time.

It will be the Friday Five, in which I will give five highlights for the past seven days in my life around this little place here.

For this week, here's my five:

1. Finding out about, and meeting DS2's girlfriend!  He is such a private person, and doesn't feel the need for a lot of social interaction, that DH and I have long joked that we will only find out if he's dating someone when we receive an invitation to their wedding.  So it was kind of a surprise to have him come home for dinner last weekend and bring a young woman we've never seen (nor heard of) before!  Even more of a surprise to learn that they met nearly three years ago, and have been carrying on a long distance relationship (she lives on the East Coast).  And yet more of a surprise to hear that he will be bringing her with him for Thanksgiving, and that she plans to move to Michigan next year and transferring to college here!  So many surprises that I'm leaning toward making her official blog name Surprise, as it seems like she will most likely be joining the family and becoming a regular here.

2. Carving pumpkins with K3 and Toad.  Not just carving the pumpkins, but walking through our garden and letting them each choose exactly the perfect pumpkin for themself.  Also being visited by them on Halloween before they made their trick-or-treating rounds in the nearby village.

3. Our first snow of the season.  Nothing that actually stuck, but it was a real snow, nonetheless.  And Mayhem's first snow; it was quite entertaining to watch her try to figure out what the white fuzzy things flying around were, and try to leap and catch them.

4. Good rides on the California Horse this week.  Definitely a week where I feel like we are making progress.  Lateral work is getting more natural for me; we even managed 3-5 consecutive strides of good leg yield at trot in both directions.

5. DH got a decent six-point (4 on one side, two on the other) buck with his crossbow, so now we have red meat for the freezer!

One Step Forward. . .

. . . Two steps back.

That is how my riding has been feeling for the past month or so.  Somehow I've gotten myself into another uncoordinated phase.  Things were progressing so well, with better contact, better sitting trot, nice transitions from trot to canter, unkinking myself to do more accurate lateral work. And then. . .

--lateral work that is stuck in place.  Either no forward/sideways at all, as if the horse's legs are twisted up too like my body used to be, or lateral work that is very steep and rushed, but mostly the non-moving version.  Kinda like a halt and a half-sideways step combined.

--twisting my torso.  WHAT?!?  Sometimes I can see it in the mirrors, it's that obvious. Like my right shoulder being higher than my left. But most of the time it's slight, like I somehow only breathed with one lung and the other isn't inflated and neither are my ribs on that side.  However, the horse feels it and reacts to it.  Hence the shitty lack of true lateral work.

--an inability to get the canter strike off.  Or, strike off on the wrong lead.

It has felt like I've totally forgotten how to ride.  Like somehow I went from decent First Level quality work, eyeballing Second Level, to rank beginner-can't-make-the-horse-go.

Well, not quite can't make the horse go, just can't make the horse use it's body properly, with impulsion from behind, contact in the bit, and flexibility in the middle.

GAH!

My trainer and I have had a few discussions about my frustration with my regression as of late.  Part of it is a sticky hip (mine) that needs to be more supple and able to be used (or removed) with the proper timing.  So. . . I need to get back to doing yoga at least once a week like I used to do several years ago.  Aging bodies don't stay limber without a little encouragement.

Another part of my issues is that, as my dear trainer reminded me, she has upped the bar for me and we have been working on refining my aids.  Which means more slight corrections that are applied in quicker succession.  Timing is a big part of this.  Timing is kind of a nemesis for me, as I've always struggled with moving gracefully.  I can do the slow one-two-three-four of a waltz, and I can ride very well in the same sort of slow dance of the Training and early First Level of dressage.  But I can't mambo, and that's kind of what I need to be able to do--the increased number of movements in the right timing and fluidity--to be able to make the jump to the next level.  Not only the increased movement and effort from me, but also draw that out of my horse at the same time.

Which means that even though right now I feel awkward and uncoordinated, and am having some trouble performing some movements (like lateral work and canter transitions) as well as I was in August, it's not because I've forgotten how to ride. It's because now I'm being asked to do them with lighter, politer, more invisible aids, while keeping my horse balanced, in contact and with more impulsion from the hindquarters.  Which is a challenge for him, too. He's got to pay more attention to 'hear' my quieter requests. He's got to work a little harder to carry himself (and me) with a rounder frame.

Yesterday, for the first time in a couple of weeks, I actually felt like maybe we made two steps forward in our riding session and only one step back. There were some things we could have done better, I could have done with better timing, but overall, it was a ride that I'd classify as positive. For one, we didn't get stuck in the lateral work.  It wasn't as fluid or technically correct as it could have been, but it moved in the right direction without losing much impulsion.  We had decent canter departs in both directions on the correct lead.  The trot is getting bigger as well rounder, and I can sit that fairly well.

Best of all, one of our downward transitions was the absolute best I've ever felt.  Even though we were changing gears from trot to walk, the change actually felt like we were going up.  Not one iota of impulsion lost.  Not any of the energy leaking out the forehand and flattening the horse's body.  Not any tension in my hands or arms blocking the energy flow. Instead, I merely sat a little deeper while keeping my arms elastic and yet not giving away the contact, asking for the downward gear shift and when he changed, I felt the forehand unmistakably lift .  Hard to describe, but an awesome and hugely rewarding feeling.  Definitely a step in the right direction.  A step up to the next level.

His body might be pointed toward the arena,

 but he'd rather be out back with his friends lazing in the pasture.