Back in the Saddle

For various reasons I haven't been on a horse since November 8. Today's lesson started out pretty shaky. It's frustrating and embarrassing, but I have trouble remembering all the steps and the correct order to tack up. I think part of this is because I am on different horses all the time and they all have their own tack. Some of them wear bell boots (protective covers over their hooves), some of them don't. Some of them wear a martingale, some don't. My trainer has started letting me tack up by myself, she says she forgets that I've only been riding a short while, and today that was definitely not a good idea.

First I put the pads on in the wrong order. It was supposed to be navajo blanket then saddle pad, I did them the other way. Then, while I put the girth on the correct side (with the elastic buckle on the left), I didn't cinch it enough, so when I had to get off so my trainer could fix the pads, the saddle slid off Angel's back and ended up on her side. If a horse could roll her eyes I'm sure she would have. I must have said, "I'm an idiot" about ten times today. Once I got on and started riding things got better. Willow told me not to worry, that at least I hadn't forgotten how to ride. And, I did tie the knot correctly in the halter rope while I was at the washing station. Seriously, there are so many things to learn. That'll teach me to go three weeks between lessons.

Somewhere in Time

D’s now been gone three weeks. Surprisingly, the time has gone quickly, but I think that’s more a function of my life in general. I can barely believe that we are almost to December already, but that’s what the calendar tells me.

I can’t speak for him, but remaining apart after going through emotional turmoil and discord helped me to process what happened in a pure sense, without having him here to add to the layers.

In a big picture sense, it’s very clear to me that we fell into one of many cliché crevices of a long-term relationship: we took each other for granted. We simultaneously underestimated the value of what we had while making the assumption that no matter what happened, the other would always be there. While this episode in no way threatened our marriage, it was a hard lesson learned.

We have a very complicated history. When we met I hadn’t even been married a year but was already miserable. Within six months he was in love with me and told me so, but it took me a long time to fall in love with him, instead of the idea of him. He was my knight in shining armor, the man who was going to save me from my circumstances; he was perfect. So perfect that I didn’t deserve him. We created a dynamic that was so intense that others were uncomfortable around us – it was as if we were giving off sparks. Every hour, every minute, every second that I could steal away to spend with him was magical. The highs were dizzying and the lows were debilitating. It was a classic forbidden love story.

We spoke of the depths of our feelings in grandiose ways; we had known each other forever, literally, we had been lovers in past lives, we wrote poetry. Our sexual connection was mythical. He would nearly cry as he gazed in wonder at my body, the sheer beauty almost too much for him to bear.

Then, after five long years – FIVE YEARS – I made it through to the other side and we could be together without restraint. After a year I moved in with him, to a city far from my comfort zone (and from our places of work), but I hardly noticed the five hours we spent commuting every day, I was beside him so I didn’t care where we were. Of course, the intensity could not and should not have been maintained, but there were still moments of “Somewhere in Time” now and again.

Now here we are, creeping up on 18 years since that fateful day we met.

Holy. 18 years.

We’ve been a legitimate couple for almost 13 years.

We’ve been married for 6½ years.

And I can count on one hand the number of times that we’ve spoken harshly to one another. I have a lot to be thankful for. If I could have bottled what we had back then, I would add just a drop now.

I can’t wait to see the new movie, The Fountain. The idea that love can survive through time and lifetimes is an old theme for us, and I think it will help us to hold each other’s hands just a little tighter.

Jim Croce -- Time In A Bottle mp3
(right click, Save Target As)

Note to Self

Dear Donna:

Unless you want to suffer like you did last night and then again this morning, this is your official notice that you can no longer drink beer. Especially wheat beer. Dumbass.

Love,
Your Gastro Group
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I had dinner with the lovely and getting-bigger-by-the-minute Statia last night. She is funny. Damn funny. So damn funny it's a bit of a struggle just to keep up and even be in the same ballpark when it comes to funny. If you ever talk to her, ask her to do her dogs' voices. The Chihuahua routine is fucking hilarious.

From reading her blog I knew that we felt the same way about a lot of things, but talking to her last night about her pregnancy and assvice on parenting made me realize how much we had in common. It was really cool to hear someone who is actually pregnant and is going to have a kid (in March!) spout off about the very same things I would have spouted off about if I had won the baby lottery. At least I know there will be a Mom on the planet yelling, "What the FUCK?" at the same things as I would have. And that's very comforting.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I'm thankful for all of you internets.

The Fifth Horseman

Google is trading at over $500 per share today.

I don't even know what to say about that. Except: dammit, why wouldn't they hire me??

More Bad News

There’s nothing like a loved one’s medical crisis to throw some cold water on a self-deprecating party.

D’s 86 year-old Mom is in the hospital again, this time she went into kidney failure. What’s even more upsetting is the way things were handled (or not) by the staff at the assisted living facility we moved her to earlier this year.

D’s sister was on the phone with her and asked her to find her doctor’s phone number. Mom put the phone down and never picked it up again, so his sister called the front desk and asked them to go check on Mom. When they went up to her room they found her sitting in her own waste in her chair, semi-conscious. They didn't even call D’s sister back, they just cleaned her up and left her there!!

After a couple of hours his sister called them back and heard the story so she drove to the facility. When she arrived she tried to get Mom to the bathroom but she was so sleepy she could barely stand, so she called a non-emergency ambulance to get her to the hospital. The EMTs were very concerned because her pulse and blood pressure were very low, so they ended up turning on the lights and getting her to the ER. They had her in the ICU overnight but moved her to a regular room this morning. Today she had a blood transfusion and her counts are normal enough that they aren’t going to do dialysis.

Later it came out that the staff did notice that she was a little sleepy the past few days and didn’t want to go to the dining room to eat, but noone alerted family or her doctors. I understand that when you work in a place like she lives you see a lot and probably nothing phases you, but the staff should know enough about each resident to know when something is out of the ordinary for them. What’s the point of living in an assisted living facility if all they do is bring you pills twice a day and make sure you take a shower?

Before all of this happened I had planned to go to a classical choral music concert to hear the lovely and talented Coloratura sing. It was glorious, and I was glad to be lifted by the beauty of the music, if only for a short time. She seemed genuinely touched that I came, and it was also good for me to make someone else’s day.

Dark & Twisty

Just like Meredith, I can’t pull off bright and shiny for long, but I’m very good at dark and twisty. (Incidentally, I don’t think she’s all that dark, but she is twisty.)

I think I’m quite easy to like, but I also think I’m very difficult to love. The more layers I let you see, you see how many more layers there are, and hardly any of them are pretty. Pretty on the outside only makes up for so much – more than it should, frankly.

I always have been and always will be a glass half-empty kind of gal; I have plenty of precedent for this position. Cut flowers and pets always die. I fully and completely expect the worst. I’m a fatalist, a catastrophist, a worse-case scenario proponent. The child’s shoe lying by the side of the freeway can only mean one thing. I’m depressed and anxious. I’m jealous and suspicious. My fragile self-esteem can be vaporized with the smallest slight, real or imagined. I care too much about what others think of me.

And yet, I have wonderful friends, a husband who adores me and the respect of my colleagues. How the hell did this happen?

The painting above is by Regina Lafay, part of a collection of art at the Survivor of Abuse and Trauma Art Gallery; this one is called Anxiety.

The Unnerving

There have been a few Big Issues gathering steam in the background here in the Cage. I don’t do well when my stability is threatened; in fact, it takes very little to make me stumble and fall, especially when I’m compromised by stress.

The other day something happened with D that toppled me. I’m not going to go into specifics here, but it involved trust and secrets. A dynamic was created that was unnervingly similar to one that happened a lot in my first marriage. Not.a.good.thing.

Last night we talked through it as best we could, although the telephone and the 3 hour time difference made it exceedingly difficult. The wine made it a little less difficult (for me, at least). We both apologized for the hurt we’d caused each other and made compromises on a couple of battleground issues.

I’m deeply grateful that we have the kind of relationship that can bear this level of emotional turmoil, and while I’m not naïve enough to think that our marriage would be totally immune to difficulty, it still sucks.