Current Events with a Side of Humble Pie

Thank you all for your kind and thoughtful comments on my last post. I too think about what will happen when my mother dies. Honestly, I have no idea how I will feel, probably seventeen different emotions at once. My aunt said of her (and my mother's) father: I went to his funeral to make sure the bastard was dead. At this point I don't keep that kind of anger inside anymore, but there are things that she's done and said that are unforgiveable and therefore, I cannot hand her a Get Out of Jail Free Card. The wonderful Helen over at Everyday Stranger is pregnant with twins. In a recent post she confessed that she's worried the babies will turn out just like her. I was always worried that if I ever became a mother I would end up just like my mother, a thought that sent me back into therapy after we started trying to have a baby.

*sigh* There are many more posts about her to come, I'm sure. Moving on.

I check out the celebrity news now and then, I enjoy pictures of red carpet gowns as much as the next gal and I faithfully read People every time I go to the hairdresser (every 5 weeks). But, I have to say, lately there's been a dearth of sponge-worthy celebrity/entertainment news.

Call me crazy, but I couldn't care less about:

1. Britney


2. Lindsay


3. Paris


4. Nicole


5. Posh & Becs

and finally...*ducking to avoid the flying objects*...Harry Potter. I think I read the first 100 pages of the first book and put it down. I've watched the first two movies as they were playing at someone's house I was visiting and I thought it would be rude to leave in the middle. I know many of you and many people IRL who are as crazy about Master Potter as their kids. Even if I had kids, I wouldn't like the books, although I would be happy to see my youngster reading them. I think it's very cool for the kids that started reading the HP books when they were about the same age as the kids in the story, and that they've sort of grown up together. I also think it's wonderful that the first billionaire author is a woman who started from nothing.

And finally...for those of you who ride, you are painfully aware that it is a very humbling experience. No matter what level you're at, the minute you begin to think you've got something down pat, your horse will remind you that personality trumps technique every time, and humble pie is a dish best served cold.

Miss seems to have gotten through her dental adventure fine, but she's still fighting something. Whatever is going on in her system is moving through her legs in turn, one day she'll be off on the left front, the next day on the right rear. I'm not used to dealing with a creature who seems perfectly fine one day and the next can't be ridden for a week. It scares me to death when they throw around words like "crippled", but I guess in horsespeak that's a transitory state.

Last week I came down to lounge her before our ride and worked her pretty hard. At the very end Willow come over and asks, "Is she limping?" Immediately my heart is in my throat -- obviously she wouldn't have said that if she didn't think she was. Willow got on her for a few minutes, then let me walk around on her, but declared she was "pretty lame" on the front left. She looked perfectly fine to me. I felt so bad I was almost in tears.

So, she's been off for 5 days and Willow tells me its OK to give her a light lounge today and leaves to get lunch. I'm just about done with a light workout with her when the owner of the farm comes over to stop me, saying that she looks quite a bit worse than she did the other day, finding a pulse in 3 of four legs. Again, she looked perfectly fine to me, maybe a little lazy, but I was purposefully not pushing her. I feel like I can't be trusted to take my own horse out without someone else looking at her first to make sure she is fit to work. Ugh. Pie anyone?