The Best Laid Plans

I really wanted to blog more this year and here we are, nearly two weeks since my last post. I'm partly blaming the weather. A series of storms hit the Bay Area last weekend and we were without power from 5:30 am Friday to 10:30 pm Sunday. We do have a generator but you can't run it constantly and it doesn't run everything. Our homes and lives need electricity to function, its just how things are set up in our modern world.

I'm also partly blaming work. When you work in the financial world, the first two months of any calendar year are the busiest, and when you have 20 active clients like I do, you can do the math and figure out I don't have much free time.

The weather also prevented me from riding all week but I do have a lesson on Miss tomorrow morning. I lunged her yesterday and today and she is looking sound and fit. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the hard pads the farrier has been using are going to continue to keep her sound. Even though we're coming up on one year since I took ownership of this horse and about 8 months since I rode her for the first time, I don't think I've ridden her 10 times yet. Between the weather, her health and mine, it's been a difficult first year. But, I am commited to making this relationship work and the past few months have been more productive.

Here are the last group of pictures from our trip to St. Lucia, if you are considering a trip to the Caribbean I would highly recommend it. If you've seen the Pirates of the Caribbean movies you'll recognize the Pitons.

Seahorses

I'm very glad the holidays are over. You may have noticed my absolute silence on the entire matter...this is always a difficult time of year. With neither religion nor children, both sides of the celebration are lost to me. I miss my family but I'm constantly disappointed by them. I'm coming out of my rabbit hole and allowing myself to feel again, finally. I rode Miss yesterday and will again today, I had a little chat with my trainer and we're both committed to having me on her back as much as possible.

To start the year off right, here are some more (horse-related) pictures from St. Lucia and a couple new ones of me and Miss at the bottom (notice her new sign?).


This young boy and his yearling creole came down to play in the surf almost every evening at sunset.





















































D and I on our creole-thoroughbred cross horses on the beach.














Coming back out after a swim.

Blogging St. Lucia

Hard to believe we've already been home for almost a week, I guess that's a good thing, the vacation seemed to go slow and the workweek went quickly. Here is the long-overdue post about our vacation in the West Indies.

The island of St. Lucia sits almost at the bottom of the chain of islands we think of as the Caribbean, third island north of Venezuela, some 1,500 miles south of Miami. It has been independent since 1979, before that it was a British protectorate, but it changed hands 14 times between the British and the French for 150 years. The French named almost everything on the island but it definitely has a British flavor to it. You drive on the left, the British Queen is on the money, all the school children wear uniforms, our resort even served high tea every afternoon. School is taught in English but everyone also speaks Patois, a Creole language. At least 85% of the people at our resort were British, it is heavily marketed to them and Virgin flies direct from London. Surprisingly for a couples-only resort, there were many older couples there, some with their adult children. It was a little strange having an all-white guestlist and an all-black staff, but the staff were amazing, they even put on two variety shows. Between three bars on the property you could get a free drink from 9AM until the "last couple retired". Food was excellent, we ate at our resort exclusively other than the day we drove down to the other end of the island to one of their sister resorts to go snorkeling.

The people are beautiful, especially the young men - dark-skinned, small-waisted, broad-shouldered, washboard abs, either bald or with dreadlocks - you either work in the tourism industry or you do manual labor. As with any third-world country, there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor, with very few in between. Most people live in tin or wooden shacks on small parcels of land, but we never saw any evidence that they weren't making a living and weren't reasonably happy.

As far as the island itself, you run out of superlatives. The water begins at the shore with pure white foam, moving backwards from clear to cerulean to teal to royal to cobalt to navy to indigo at the horizon, the perfect temperature above soft white sand. There are lush jungles and mountains, the roads windy, narrow and for the most part, without lines. I've posted a sample of the over 300 pictures we took, these were all taken at our resort. More to come.

Balancing Act

We all juggle far too much in our modern lives, trying to keep our work, our social lives, our relationships, our responsibilities and our minds and bodies running at optimum speed and productivity. I haven't been doing a very good job managing all the segments lately. We leave for St. Lucia this coming Friday and all I can think about is how stressed I am about the cross-country flight and how much work I'll have to catch up on once we get back -- how sad is that? I know once I get there I will relax but I suspect I have a very tense week ahead of me.

My trainer Willow was still very nervous about me riding Miss last weekend, every time she lunged her she'd been crazy, so before my lesson she gave her a weak dose of tranquilizer. This turned out to be a mistake. She was so dead it took all we had to make her canter on the lunge line and I spent the entire time having to push her forward and pick up her head.

I rode her again today without the drugs and she was fine, although her right front was obviously a bit sore. She's due for new shoes tomorrow and it's possible the pad has worn down and is causing the soreness. Let's hope that's all it is anyway. It was such a pleasure to ride a horse that needs hardly any leg to stay at a nice big trot. She's so comfortable at the trot, it's like riding a giant sofa. I hope that I've proven to Willow that I can ride her without being a liability.

I was chatting with another horse owner at the farm about my frustrations and she said she'd gone through the same issues with her young mare and that the farm has to protect itself, plus nobody wants anybody to get hurt. She told me I shouldn't think of myself as a green rider anymore, that she's seen me ride and thinks I'm great, that I have balance. You can't teach balance, she says, you either have it or you don't.

Strange how on my horse, perhaps the most precarious place I could be, is the one place right now where I do feel balanced.

Tucker Time

I've mostly pulled myself out of the funk I descended into last week. I suspect that no matter how much time passes, every once in a while that grief will surface and I'll need to deal with it.

Kathy commented on my post about reconnecting with my old friends that she's never been able to explain how big a part her horses play in her life to non-horsey people. That's been true for me in all facets of my life, not just with this group. Not one single person asked me about riding or even said anything about all the pictures I posted. When I asked A what he thought about it when we met for lunch all he said was that he was surprised. One of the ladies has a 12 year-old daughter who rides; I guess it either seems like something a young girl would do or its looked at as an elitist sport or activity, not something they would ever come into contact with.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to finally ride Miss again. Yes, that's right, I still haven't ridden her since she got sick in mid-September. After a month off my trainer started doing ground work again and then eventually started riding her, but she wanted to get in a good half-dozen rides before I got on her again. Due to schedules and the weather, that took longer than expected. I'm more than a little frustrated. I realize I am still considered a novice, but I am beginning to resent the fact that I have to have permission from my trainer before I can ride my own horse. I would be happy just to get on her and walk around, but Willow doesn't seem to think Miss would allow that, even after lunging. To rub salt in that wound, I got a notice from the farm owner that they are increasing my board roughly 12% starting next month, and I am now paying one of the farm hands $40 a month to blanket her. They do comp me a lot of things, including lessons for almost a year, so I can't and won't complain, but I would feel better if I knew I could ride her when I wanted to. She's had no issues with her feet since the farrier put pads on her the last time she was shod, so I'm crossing my fingers that will continue.

Tomorrow is the day we picked as Tucker's birthday, since we don't know the exact date. We adopted him through Northern California Golden Retriever Rescue in November 2000 when he was approximately 1 year old. Happy 8th birthday, our sweet and silly red dog. (Check out Bailey's birthday post from May if you missed it.)

Definitions

When someone says the word "family" to me I think of my nuclear family: my parents and siblings. To anyone who has children, "my family" means themselves: their spouse and their child or children. I think of me and D as a couple, a unit, a pair, a partnership...but not a family. Maybe I would feel differently if we never wanted children and never tried to have a baby, but since we did and failed, it doesn't seem to fit.

Yesterday I had lunch with A, my old boyfriend that I've recently reconnected with. He drove down here for some personal business and we spent a few hours together. He has two sons, 17 and 12, and has been married for almost 20 years. I mentioned in my last post that I'm finding it hard to wrap my brain around the fact that all my contemporaries have teenage kids, but that's because I've spent the last 5 years surrounded (somewhat virtually) by women who are infertile. Normal people get married in their 20s and have kids, there's no question, no drama, no tears.

Of all the married couples we know, only one doesn't have any children, and they are the parents of a stillborn son. Many of those infertile women I've met persevered and now have children as well, by some means.

On the long drive home I was unprepared for how sad I got. We'd had some laughs and it had not been a serious afternoon by any stretch. I was so happy that he was so happy, and we'd talked about how my life turned out just fine, but in all that history there was so much wasted time, so much heartache. After spending 5 years getting up the courage to get out of a horrible marriage, while D waited for me, we were so damned happy just to be together we didn't think of anything but ourselves for the next 5 years. Finally at 36 I decided it made sense to marry this wonderful man and, for the first time in my life, I felt safe enough to want to have a baby. You know the rest. As I cried in his arms last night, D whispered, you have a wonderful life, and I whispered back, I know. I wish I had never wanted a child, so I didn't have to carry this grief.

I'll get back to the horsey posts soon, I promise, I've just needed to process some of this by writing it down.

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Right after I finished writing this I found out that the wife of one of my old drum corps friends was killed in a car accident a couple of weeks ago. The funeral was today; I suspect they waited until their daughter (who was driving but not at fault) was out of the hospital so she could be there. I've spent the day in a teary daze. I just can't imagine losing my husband. They have three children in their teens, she was only 41. I hope noone reading this takes this the wrong way, but when I heard this news I was happy for my friend that he had children. Please tell someone you love that you love them today.

A Life Condensed

If you met up with someone you hadn't seen in XX years, more than 10, and they wanted you to tell them about your life, what would you say? I've had the opportunity to do this more than a few times in the last few weeks, getting caught up with the folks from my old group at home. Everyone says pretty much the same thing -- I got married in (year) to (so-and-so) and we have (more than 1) kids named (thankfully nothing too silly so far). Without exception, everyone I have reconnected with who is married or has been married has kids. It isn't even a question of whether you have them or not, just how many. Their kids range in age from 2 to 18. Remember I haven't seen some of these people in 30 years, so that shouldn't be that difficult to wrap my brain around, but it is. I'm sure its weird for them when they find out I don't have any kids, and so far nobody has been too much of an asshat. Many of them live without spitting distance of where they lived as kids, so again, I am the odd one who lives not only far away, but in another country. Especially now, Canadians are nationalistic and protective of their non-war status, which I totally respect.

But, knowing when and who you married, how many kids you have and maybe even what you do for a living doesn't tell much about who we are, does it? Perhaps I'm in a space right now where I am craving a deeper connection. I'm sure they would all think I was nuts if I started telling them how the smell of the ocean makes me cry, or the touch of a dog's paw in the middle of the night reassures me, or how my husband's voice can still make me giggle like a schoolgirl.

In other news, my usually mostly-well-behaved lesson horse Angel bit me on Saturday. HARD. I tacked her up and got on her, then decided I needed to tighten the girth one more notch, so I jumped off next to the mounting block. She didn't think the girth needed tightening, thank you, and reached around and sunk her teeth into my left outer thigh. The bruise is the size and shape of a decent sized egg, and at first you could see two half moons with a white line down the middle, the demarkation of her upper and lower teeth. Now that it's a few days' old the line is muddled and its starting to get that sickly green color under the purple. I hope it fades before we leave for the Caribbean in a month.

Finally, I called my sister the other day to wish her daughter and her husband happy birthdays and she told me she is having a partial hysterectomy next month. Needless to say this was a surprise, given that she's only 15 months older than me and I had no idea she was having any gynecological problems. Apparently she's been bleeding since January and her GP just last month finally decided to send her to see a "specialist". She lives in a very small, rural town in the interior of BC, but still -- holy shit -- this really pissed me off. She also told me that when she saw the gynecologist he didn't even do an ultrasound, just a pelvic exam and told her she has massive fibroids and recommended they take them out along with her uterus. Is it even possible to detect fibroids from a pelvic exam? There's nothing I can do about this but for once I was happy to have my US health insurance.