Be Still, My Heart

This arrived in the mail today ~

And this happened over the weekend ~

I dream about the horses almost every night. I wake up filled with the sense of horseflesh close by. I wonder if those two can feel my attention beaming at them all the way in Texas?

You Give Me Fever

I don't know why it moves me so, but watching big, fit horses gallop by and negotiate massive jumps makes my heart catch in my throat. I don't care how many times I see it, it never fails to move me close to tears.

Did you know that, at the gallop, all four of a horse's hooves are off the ground at the same time? Unlike a racetrack, you can get very close to the horses at a cross country event. You can watch them fly, literally, right past you. They devour the ground with huge strides and fly for a moment, all four hooves tucked as they sail through thin air before hitting ground and pushing off for the next stride. The riders are a talented bunch too, but it's the horses that catch your eye and steal your heart. They are athletes at the peak of fitness, putting heart and soul into their effort. Watch their faces as they gallop towards the next set of obstacles--ears are perked, eyes are bright--they soak in the cheers and applause after they've leaped an embankment and sailed over a fence with only one stride in-between. Amazing creatures with the biggest hearts...where did they come from? How did we get so lucky, we humans?

Aunt Lainey told me, "there is nothing like coming up on a fence with some trepidation about whether you can make it, and your horse just takes the bit in his mouth and tells you, essentially, 'I've got this'."

Needless to say, I had a blast at the Rolex horse show. I riddled Mindy and Aunt Lainey with a million questions about my (very near) future horsey set-up, enjoyed steeping in equine culture, and managed to purchase some cute things at the trade show.

A pretty ceramic pendant:

Some fun wellies (for Alice's sake!)

And some guy gave all three of us free pocket knives with our names engraved on them...

This item cracks me up, because it is, to me, the epitome of what I call cowgirl style--useful things that you will definitely use--all prettied up with, say, your name engraved in a scrolly font. Love it.

I finally made it back home, after finishing up a long weekend in Columbus, and everything has popped! The lilacs are blooming, the redbuds are profuse, dogwoods are coming on, and the woods are filling in with green. A light rain is falling now and will likely continue all week. The door to the study where I'm sitting is open and a cool breeze comes in here and there. It feels very good to be alive right now.

Delayed Re-entry

My sister Kathy and her husband Rick came to visit over the weekend. We had a marvelous time working and playing. Those two were great sports and helped us move not one, but TWO piles of wood to the drying shed. John has stacks of old barn siding and smaller barn beams scattered about. Tom and the boys used them while building the house and John will use a lot of it to do finish work and build cabinets and such. However, they were real view-killers sitting in front of the house and on the walk to the cabin, all piled up and covered in their blue tarps, not to mention the fact that they were getting wet and moldy. It was amazing what a difference four sets of hands made in getting those things moved. Thank you Kathy and Rick! John was able to get more grass seed scattered and Kathy even helped him scatter more straw. (She felt bad sitting at the kitchen table watching John work, whereas I am quite practiced at it : )

They left at lunchtime on Monday. I threw myself onto the yoga mat after they left, and that evening, John and I drowned our sorrows in gyros and chocolate peanut butter pie at Theo's Restaurant in Cambridge. I'm always a little blue after family and friends leave, so when John left me the next morning to head to Columbus for work, I threw myself into painting furniture. Here it is Wednesday, and I simply must get back to some semblance of a responsible life-style even if the weather is grey and depressing. So, I'm paying bills, blog posting, and...making plans to travel again this weekend! Yes, country mouse is on a roll this month. This time, I'm heading to Kentucky with my other sister, Mindy, to meet up with the other horse-crazed member of the family, Aunt Lainey at the Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event . For those who don't know, it's like an equine version of a triathlon. Horse and rider compete in dressage, cross country, and stadium jumping over three days. We'll be watching the cross country event on Saturday. I can't wait. It stops my heart and brings a big lump to my throat to watch those gorgeous horses leaping fences at a pounding gallop. You can stand close enough to the course to feel the ground rumble as a horse approaches. It's awesome. Plus, there's shopping. Vendors upon vendors of all things horsey.

And tomorrow, the county extension agent comes out to advise on my own little bit of horse heaven. Updates forthcoming. If I don't make it back here before next week, have a great weekend everyone!

Mementos from the weekend and the ensuing fallout:

This view used to be "mud with woodpile" Now look at it!

Kathy and I squeezed in some antiquing and she bought me the cutest little blue vase you ever did done saw...

Here is the chair I painted and plan to fix with perhaps an old feed sack for upholstery a la this cool one in Country Living magazine:

Detail of the bed table painted in the same antique white:

I Believe in The Way Things Work

Everyone has their lessons in life--the ones they seem to have to learn over and over again. Goodness, there is patience somewhere in the Universe. Huge stores of it that guardian angels have to go take hits of on a regular basis. I am sure of it. I had to learn one of my lessons again this past weekend.

Here's what happened: John and I got all busy. And when we get busy, sometimes we bite off more than we could possibly chew in a hundred years, much less a weekend. Around here, there is so much possibility, so many things to fix up, so much that we want to do. And John and I are doers. That's how we got here. We don't usually sit around talking about what we want to do and then just go have a cup of coffee and a smoke...

And like everything in the world, that quality, that thing, has a light side and a dark side, or good and bad if you like. The light side is, you know, we get things done. The dark side of it is more complicated of course, and harder to put my finger on exactly. It has to do with worrying about the end product all of the time instead of enjoying the process, or realizing that the process is all there is. Because end products are all ephemeral anyway, even if some take more time to disappear than others.

We started to stake out the location of the horse barn on Sunday. The speculative nature of the task brought back a rush of feelings similar to what I felt all last year as we navigated the building of the house. "I don't know," was my response to everything. Should we put it here, or would it be better there? Should we put the hay storage here, or here? Is eight feet wide enough for a grooming aisle or not? At one point, I threw up my hands and cried, "Oh my god, let's forget this!" As much as I want horses back in my life, I felt so overwhelmed by yet another project where I'm asked to envision three-dimensional space, which I suck at. Real bad. (And then the rototiller kept stalling while we tried to till up the garden, and then I mis-measured a curtain for the bathroom and had to tear the stitching out--two times. Process? I got your process right here!)

This might not sound like a big deal. But it's my lesson and the tide was gathering, dragging all sorts of notions that I have about myself to the shore with it. Notion one: I am not actually capable of anything outside of normal, safe, suburban life. Notion two: I need to make this place perfect so that everyone will like coming here. Notion three: I'm too old to be doing all this. Who do I think I am anyway? And a few more variations on those themes.

After some gin and popcorn, we settled down. That night, I had this dream: I was fixing a large, unwieldy display of some kind. It was like a holiday display at a department store or something--I couldn't see the whole thing. I was applying a wet, sticky cement-like spackling to it, trying to seal it up, make it tight. It wasn't working too well and I realized that I had to get help. I ended up talking on the phone to an old gradeschool acquaintance who owned the Oscar Meyer company. He remembered me right away and as I talked to him, the spackling started to work.

So...I'll leave you to analyze that as you may : ), but I will say that it made me feel good, upon awakening, that I apparently have psychic access to an astute businessman who remembers who I am and can make the spackling work.

Breathing deeply the next day, I called the county extension office to ask if an agent could come out to advise us on the location of the barn. He's coming April 23. And then, the most beautiful, wonderful, blessed thing of all occurred. I received an email from my Aunt Lainey in Texas. She wanted to know, did I want two horses instead of one, and would I perhaps like for Uncle Jack to come up and help build the barn?

Wait a minute. Are you kidding me?! (you gotta know that Uncle Jack is really, really good at building barns, houses, you name it. And you might as well know that we wanted a horse for John, too, and that horses need company anyway.) Um, yeah. Yes. Two horses and Uncle Jack, we'll take it.

So, I got to learn my lesson and eat it too? I'm not sure why or how things work out the way they do around me. All I know is that I am grateful. I've learned my lesson again. For now. Even though the end product is coming into clearer focus, I'm not worried about it anymore. This is just a place to live. These are just things to do. I'm just living a regular old messy life and taking my lessons in the form that they come in around here.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Horses on the Brain

Okay, we're in the new house--now our attention can turn to what's really important, to the real reason we moved here...horses!

I got my horse nerve all agitated at Thanksgiving. My sister Mindy owns three horses and keeps them on her property north of Cincinnati. After eating our turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes, we headed out to the barn for some trips around the ring with the kids.

What is it about the smell of a horse's neck that is so intoxicating? I think that the smell is one of those things that people either LOVE or don't have an opinion about one way or another. Is it genetic? Is there a marker on some gene somewhere when, if turned on, causes people to love everything about these large animals with sensitive eyes and big, fluttery nostrils? Their smell is sweet and warm. I always want to describe it as vegetarian--it reminds me of dried grasses and oats--what they eat. It is mixed with something else, though, something particularly horsey. There is nothing else in the world that smells like a horse. I think cows stink. Pigs really stink. I've never had the opportunity to smell goats or sheep.

Mindy's horses are kind and well mannered, attributes of horses that are loved and happy. She has been working towards "natural" horse care lately and it shows. I was musing about what kind of barn to build and she said that if she had to do it all over again, she'd build a run-in for the horses and a separate tack room and grooming aisle. She gave me some books on natural horse care, which includes keeping your horses barefoot. I was so excited to hear this. After building this house for three plus years, I am not ready to embark on another huge building project. Ever. The idea of a three sided run-in (with maybe a fourth half wall so that they have a corner to get into when the weather is really bad) sounds so easy and quick and less expensive. According to the books she gave me on barefooted horses (that means unshod), maintaining good hoof care includes letting horses be horses--giving them access 24/7 to the outdoors among other things. I'm devouring the books and dreaming of my future babies.

John picked up a "Farm and Dairy" monthly at the hardware store the other day. It is quite a publication! There are several columnists sprinkled throughout and they provide some entertaining reading. John browsed the auctions and I went straight to the livestock section. I will have no trouble finding my horses when the time comes next summer. Here's one in my price range (under $1,000): 8-year old bay Thoroughbred gelding, very friendly, 16 hands. And here's another: 6-year old reg. Quarter Horse gelding, very friendly, excellent ground manners, 14.3 hands. And this one might be interesting: APHA reg. (that's an American Paint Horse), 11-year old flashy sorrel and white mare, lightly ridden in the last 3 years, needs tuned up, excellent broodmare, 15 hands. Ooh, now that's got me dreaming!

Ah, it's gonna be a long winter...