Names

I have a young friend who is getting married this week. She recently posted, "Next week at this time I'll be Stacy Van Horn!!" Well, she is so happy that you have to be happy with her. But it got my mind to thinking. First thing I thought was... I wonder if they will have their first "married" fight while still on their honeymoon? Second thought was... I wonder if she'll be ready to hit him with a stick in a week or two? Third thought was... I wonder if she will get up in the middle of the night, go into the other room of a crummy two room basement apartment and sob until the new groom comes and retrieves her? (Okay!! I only did that for three nights!)

Finally I got around to thinking about names. Thinking about how a woman doesn't own her own name. Thinking about how sad that seems. Thought about my own names... my birth name, then my adoptive name and then my married name. How they don't feel so much like names as tags for me to be filed under. Makes me wonder what I would choose for a name, if I could choose my own.

Maybe it should be done like some American Indian tribes and your birth name just got you by until you hit puberty. Then I could be "Runs with Otter" or "Biting Otter" or something else with an otter. I like otters. Oh well, who am I kidding.... my Indian name would probably be "Runs with Scissors" I'll just count my blessings that my name isn't Slartybartfast or Hommakabula.

I'll just make up for not having my own name by getting something else! And when I decide what that should be...Well! It'll be good, that's what it'll be!!!!

Louie

Humor

Unlike a lot of people these days..... I have a sense of humor. I have been told that it isn't a normal sense of humor. Actually, I have been called, sick, weird, convoluted, bizarre and ....Cornish. It's probably all true. My humor was forged amongst the neighborhood boys while on their way to boy scout meetings. This, of course, included fart humor. I remember one particular summer the fart joke of choice was the "one it". It was necessary to start off with someone "ripping one". ( Usually my brother) Then the entourage would chime in. First boy, "one it"... second boy "two it"... third boy "three it" and so on down the line to the eighth boy "eight it". When the group response was, " Oh man! you ate it! You're sick man!"

As the summer progressed it became ever more important to be the first to chime in "one it" because you didn't want to be the eighth man. So the joke morphed and when a person yelled out "one it" the response became. "you can have it!" From this very humble beginning I learned a lot of word play... and to stay away from my brother when he's farting.

I learned that when someone asks you, "What's your problem?!" The perfect response is, "Your face!!"

Being raised around a pack of boys I have to be careful to not fall into "Your momma" humor. It just doesn't work when a woman casts those kinds of accusations about weight, sexual prowess or lack thereof, at another woman. Even if you don't know her. Though I have to say I am very fond of "Your momma is so fat, that she sat on a quarter and a booger popped out of George Washington's nose!" That one has to be used with caution.... I'm getting to the age where I could be accused of being the booger popper.

Humor is my refuge. I've been known to tell jokes at funerals "Don't you think it's in poor taste to serve cold cuts after a funeral!" I tell jokes at birthdays. "It's not the years. It's the miles.... you've been speeding again haven't you?" And, in general, I live a life of socially unacceptable humor. But there are days when I listen to other people, so-called important people and I think, "Man! Somebody really needs to rip one off right now".

louie

Another P.S. today..... checked my stats again and I just want to say....GOOD MORNING, CHINA!....GOOD MORNING, LATVIA!....GOOD MORNING GERMANY!....GOOD MORNING UNKNOWN PERSON AT THE AC REPAIR PLACE IN PHOENIX, WHOSE READING THIS INSTEAD OF WORKING! I'm really very fond of you all.

I miss Pat and Linda

The Parelli method of natural horsemanship is growing. As it goes world wide, Pat and Linda are doing more and more venues over seas...... and fewer in the states. It's understandable. But I do miss my pilgrimage to see them. It has been three years since my circumstances and their geographical location lined up sufficiently for me to go see one of their tour stops. It was at the Royal down in Kansas City.

The Royal is located down where any cowboy place would have been historically located, in the bottoms. It's squeezed in close to the river and the railroad tracks, surrounded by the industrial area. The slaughter houses were probably close by at one time. Not exactly a prime real estate location.

Now the trick with the Royal is catching the right turn off. If you miss it then there is no where to go but over the river. Over the river is the neighborhood that we ALWAYS seem to get lost in. The neighborhood that my nephew told me to never stop at a stop sign in. Moving targets are harder to hit! The neighborhood that we only saw six white people in... us, the three lost cowboys and the hooker. The hooker was the only person that seemed particularly chirpy about being there.

What struck me the most was that the neighborhood felt shrouded. It felt grey. Grey houses with grey boards nailed over window voids. Grey streets with broken glass in the gutters. Grey mood. Folks just looked solemn. Then we made a turn onto a wider street thinking we had finally found a through street, a way out. Well, it wasn't a way out. But we saw a group of kids laughing... on HORSEBACK!! There WAS some happiness in this dismal place! There they were, skinny kids on skinny horses, urging them across multiple lanes of traffic. Cars stopped to let the dull coated chestnuts walk across. As the cars started moving again the kids laughter disappeared down over a hill.

Even in this frightening place, horses and humanity meshed and made lives brighter. It's funny how, despite our circumstances, some of us just need horses to be a part of our lives... to be complete and happy. I think about those kids often. I wonder if they are alright. Worry about whether or not those skinny kids have enough food and whether the skinny horses have enough hay. Is there anyone there to help them with worming and grooming and picking out hooves? I'll never know.... but I'll always wonder.

And in the meantime.... I miss Pat and Linda. Miss their expertise in a horsemanship philosophy that is also a studies in the humanities I have a lot of dvds for home study, but miss them none the less. Don't miss the Royal.

louie

Plateaus

You know how it is when you're trying to lose weight? You start off with great convictions. The weight comes off until you hit a plateau. Then you just feel stuck! Do you just give up and get fat! Lower your expectations?! What! Where do you go from here? What do you try?

Now before you suggest a colon cleanse, I want you to realize that I am using this as a metaphor on where I am at with the little farm. And where I am at is....STUCK!! I can't seem to get anything done! I go through these spells at regular intervals. Each more frustrating then the last. I beat myself up with to-do lists, the calendar and weather reports and yet I have just remained stuck. Self flagellation has not been a positive method of motivation.

I was going to try a new direction and only work on tasks that have a serious "cringe" factor. Then I realized that the jobs that were left were the jobs that made me cringe to think about doing them. Bugger! So no cajoling my way through the icky stuff and rewarding myself with the happy tasks. We're pretty much down to just "icky".

I guess the best I can hope for is to try and get one thing done per day and call that good. So for today? Well, we have had a week of cold, miserable rain. So, I will start by pumping water out of the outdoor fireplace footing and then finish digging it out and start filling it up with rock and getting it tamped in good. It will take all day to get the rock hauled a bucket at a time. The outdoor kitchen is something that I have looked forward to more then the house building, so I am probably just tripping over all the emotion that I have invested. Tripping over all of those visions of sitting out by the fire on a chilly night with friends and a bottle of wine. The fire snapping and jumping and turning cheeks rosy...... then I look out the window at a cold, wet mud hole.

Oh well, (sigh) I'll get off this plateau. Getting the fireplace footing done will be like losing five pounds! Finishing the arbor top, that'll be another five pounds! Setting the posts for the roof over the outdoor kitchen... another five pounds! Getting the footing done under the hobbit house? That puppy will be worth about fifty freakin' pounds!!!

By the time this place is done, I'm going to be one of those skinny mean broads.

Louie

Life Lesson #4

Life lesson number 4 is.... you can't make someone love you, so don't even go there! Inevitably, there will come a time when you lose your heart to someone who doesn't even know that you breath. It happens. It happens to everybody. Keep walking.

I know, I sound harsh. For whatever reason, people just seem to be hardwired to desire certain traits. If you try to become what that other person wants, you will lose yourself. Then you try even harder and you become a doormat. Then you become despised. I've never seen it work any other way. Sometimes it takes weeks. Sometimes it takes years, a marriage, a car payment and two children before it becomes painfully obvious. But that's the way it plays out.

So, what do you do? You go and be the best you that you can be!!! Develop your talents and strengths. BE HAPPY!! Enjoy the life you were given and keep your eyes peeled because you will attract the person that was hardwired for what you have to offer.

When I was young and met the person who didn't realize I had a beating heart, I was smart. I kept my mouth shut. I paid attention. I realized that he was attracted to girls that were wee slips of femininity. That was a strong clue that it was a bad direction to go. Me! Destined to be a Warrior Woman! I'm tellin' ya'. I've got some guns on me! I've been told that body builders would be jealous of the weight I can press with my inside thigh! I CAN'T do a wee slip of femininity! Shortly, after my realization, I met Mac. Who needed a strong woman. Who wouldn't have known what to do with a girly-girl.

This rule also extends to friendship. You just can't make someone love or even like you. Few will heed this particular life lesson, but it is true none the less. I know, it sucks.

seeking advice

As I have been blogging away all summer, yesterday I read some articles to see if I was doing it correctly. I don't think I am, but what the hell! I suppose I just over think this stuff. For instance, I was reading an article called "forty tips to better blogging content". It only went to nine. Nine tips!! Yes! I had clicked the link for reading the entire article! yes! the little spinn-y thing had stopped spinning so it all should have been loaded! Nine Tips!! What! They didn't think we wouldn't notice that thirty-one were missing?! Oh well... free advice , you get what you pay for.

Oh! more free advice was that I should shoot photographs like a professional. That's it, right there!! That's the advice! Alrighty then... HOW do I shoot photographs like a professional!? Now I had taken a photography class in high school. You took photos on either a 35 mm or a press camera. You learned how to load your film in a dark room. How to develop the film, print it, film speeds, light conditions, backlighting... all that kind of stuff. So why am I having so much trouble with digital photography? I'll tell you why! It's suppose to be easy, that and the cameras on the whole are crap!! They are slow and they are crap! I have trouble with easy.. Give me detail... mind-numbing, irritating, drive you up the wall detail and I'm your girl! Easy isn't easy... IT'S HARD!! You know why it's hard?, because everybody thinks it's so easy that there aren't any instructions.... not even the instructions that are just in foreign languages that you have to figure out just by looking at the pictures. Stupid free advice.

But wait... there's more.

Don't appeal to everybody... just appeal to your market. Okay, this is the part where you guys have to participate. Everybody stand up! Alrighty! Those of you who have a spouse who has survived cancer... who feel you might have gone 'round the bend a bit.... who are trying to create a farm/small business... whose sanity is hinged to the back of a haflinger (any horse will do)... well, you guys can stay. The rest of you will just have to leave. Apparently, you're suppose to run your blog through match.com. It's easy, they say.

I don't DO easy!

louie

Feeding time

I try to maintain a fairly tight schedule when it comes to feeding time. Amounts are dictated by weather and season. More heat producing foods in the winter. Extra hay put out when I see a storm blowing in. But that's just the chore of feeding time. It's not the watching the coming or the closing of the day. Stopping to watch the geese going from pasture to pond. It's not the low call of the horses. The call they give only to someone they really like.... or their food. the low, who, who , who, who.

This morning was far darker then it has been of late. It had rained a great deal yesterday and the heat has moved back in as well. The effect was as if by stepping outside I had been covered by a warm, damp blanket. The sky was offering me nothing this morning. No glow of the sun from the east. No stars sparkling. Dark enough I had to mind my step. Proceeding with caution as the wires of the electric fence were not visible. Just aimed for Pip's nose with the feed.

Then dipped out Chloe's ration and headed around to her lot. As I watched the ground, I noticed there were bits of glowing light. Mostly white, some with the tiniest hint of green, little stars tucked in among the grass. I have never seen foxfire before so cannot say that is what it was, but definitely some glowing fungi. It's luminescence peppered the ground around me. It left a person feeling as if fairies had been abroad during the night, forgetting their tiny lanterns after their nocturnal festivities. It wouldn't surprise me. It is part of the magic of my little farm, part of the peacefulness of feeding time. The darkness, the rumble of the ponies, the contented munching. Moments like this when all of your problems fall from your shoulders like drifting snow flakes.

There are a lot of people who just don't 'get' my battle to have this place, this life. Must be because they don't have feeding time.

louie