I'm not sure what the statistics are about vehicle ownership and usage.  I work downtown but I live in the suburbs.

Oh, god.  iPhone.  What did I do before you?

I had all of these plans.

Ride pony.

Take photos at the Humane Society.

Maybe sneak in some Christmas shopping alone time.

And then, driving home last night, my car lost power steering and both the battery and brake lights came on. (The "check engine" light is perpetually and permanently on.)  (What can I say?  My beloved car is a piece of shit.)

So, after finagling it home and talking to the husband, who knows even less about cars than I do, we popped the hood.  I wish I'd thought to take a photo of it.  (Ironic.)  The "front side belt", also known as the serpentine belt, was dangling.  Thankfully, it's new.  And was fine.  I almost thought I could handle putting it back on until I realized that the crank pulley was loose.  Like, loose, loose.

So, I completely lack any sort of ambition to write anything worthwhile.  In fact, I haven't a damn thing to report.

In that spirit, here's a survey that I stole from Carlos' Mom and Henry's Mom.  Oh, and reading between riding tells me that Mexi's Mom jumped on this bandwagon, too!

Splurge or Save

First Thing That Comes to Mind

This or That

About You

Favorites

1.  Breed?  OTTB.  (Again, with the "OTT" part.)
2.  Discipline?  I'm a H/J rider that passionately wants to ride Eventers.  Even the dressage, dammit.
3.  Coat color?  Bay.  Dappled bay.  Red bay.  Blood bay.  Dark bay.
4.  Famous horse?  Ruffian, RIP.
5.  Horse race/competition?  The kind that I get to participate in.  Fox hunts are fun!
6.  Brand of tack?  The kind that fits and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.  I'd love it if nothing had to die for it, but the Wintec doesn't work anymore.
7.  Thin to do with your horse?  Take pictures!

What is it about the holidays that sends the masses into a funk?  All I want to do is curl up on the couch with a good book and some alcohol and call it a night.  (And then I realize that's all I want to do, any night, regardless of the proximity of holidays.)

I'm having a hard time figuring out what to get the hubs for Christmas.  He's a hard one to shop for.  Loves technology, but only certain brands and products.  Loves clothes, but has a particular preppy-boy style that I have a hard time staying within the lines of.  If it's a little thing, he gets it for himself.  Yarg.

I gave Archie yesterday and today off.  I figured that being ridden five days in a row was sufficient.  Oh, yeah.  That SmartPak Black Friday sale?  Totally had a million catches.  I wanted to get the Kid a cooler and some random stuff, but the total wasn't over $150, so I didn't qualify for the discount. And when I was like, fine, SmartPak, I'll buy some Back on Track stuff... Nope.  Not valid for discounts because we already get it at a "discount."

So, tomorrow runs the question of getting up early and trying to ride (even though the sun is rising later every day) or riding at dusk.  Sunset is estimated to happen at 5:20 today with sun rise at 7:05, which leaves me with negative fifteen minutes to ride.  Yarg. Pony might get a bigger break this winter than I planned.

Not much else to report.  OH!  Funny story.  At least, it's funny now.

I was washing Archie's new saddle pad last night with his girth.  So, those were the only two things in the washer.  Being unbalanced, I hear it start slamming when it hits one of those fast cycles.  I figure that there isn't any way for me to balance it out, so I ignore it.  Several minutes later, I try to go into the laundry room, only to discover that the washer has walked three feet forward and blocked the door.  Husband was not impressed.  I think I might be officially forbidden from washing horse stuff (I was trying to fly under his radar, anyways).

Other stuff:  I have an ancient sunflower Mac in the bedroom that I rarely use.  Like, once a year, I'll turn the beast on and see if it still functions (it does).  Last night, I spent two hours transferring (or letting it transfer while I went downstairs and did more enjoyable shit) videos and photos to my new 750g external hard drive.  I haven't gone through that stuff and, really, didn't look at it at all before I transferred, but I'm hoping that some of my old videos are on it.  Particularly, the one where I fell and broke my ass.  Fingers crossed!

I've been vacillating on how exactly I wanted to do this recap post.  Day by day or activity by activity?

Okay, so this is what I'll do, things for which I am grateful:

Archie

Husband

Family & Friends

Health

Creativity

Think, for a moment, how the various gaits feel.

The walk: relaxed harmony, beat by individual beat.

The trot: forward marching, working in unison.

The canter: hints of flight coupled with the security of a rolling beat.

And the gallop: soaring, strength beneath you.

It's almost assumed, as an experienced equestrian and as a horse owner, that all four gaits, all four experiences, should be available to you on demand. If you can ride it, ride it you will.

But, somewhere along the way, the canter started to scare me. Not every canter. Just my own horse's. The launch from walk or trot into a canter stride, where only a millisecond's notice is given that things are going to be okay or that things are about to go wrong. In the situation where things go wrong, instinct takes over. My back gets taller, my butt gets deeper, my legs wrap further around his sides and my hands raise to bring the bucking mess back up and under control. The primary goal is to stay on; the secondary goal is to push forward and get the damn canter.

When things go well, though, we both immediately relax. His back comes up through the stride and it feels as though we are rocking. It isn't necessarily pretty and he certainly isn't strong, but we are both exhilarated and proud and madly in love with each other and our partnership.

Tonight, I fell in love again with Archie's canter.

I figured that there must be a few people reading my blog who might be bored with family time or whatever.

So, here's something that I've been working on, with heavy assistance from the Man:

www.twoblackdogsphotography.com

I don't have much to share, so I pulled this post from the draft pile and thought I'd give y'all a bit of history.

Fair warning:  some of these have blood.

This is at my old clinic in Augusta.

This is my 17 year old hyperthyroid Siamese mix, Mickey Blue Eyes. He crossed the bridge that night.

Learning to take radiographs.

Charcoal administration.

You'd be surprised by how many dogs got stuck on these things. Generally requires at least a light sedation because they tend to work themselves in deeper.

Stuck eggs.  Bit me.

See the tiny drop of blood on my second knuckle?

Scar & Sav'h having to sit before we left.

 Epic Cat Bite

My mom was staying over the night prior to the cat bite and, as she was leaving, didn't understand why we had Scarlette in the laundry room.  She advised against it, since the food was in there.  What she didn't realize was that Scarlette had busted out of her kennel and locked herself in the laundry room, with the litter box, and promptly panicked.  I came home to this.  I had to climb the dryer to get in because I couldn't open the door.

I was tracking the Red Line of Doom.

Just a little beefy.

Toward the end of the healing, when I was able to bend it for the first time in over a month.

Topical antibiotic caused the flesh to peel.

Savannah's Dental

In my creepy dog mom moment, I still have all twelve in a pill jar.

That seemed to be the theme for the weekend.

Friday, I actually did get off of work early enough to get in about a twenty-ish minute ride.  It was dark, of course, by the time I finished.  BO came to feed and was carrying a stack of firewood back through the pasture to her house across the street.  She made a point to tell me that she was walking slowly with this wood so as to not spook my horse.  Just as I wanted to tell her that unless she started waving the firewood at his face, he'd be fine... her dog bolts by us, with two more dogs on his tail.  So.. Archie spooks.

After the ride, the hubs took me to see Breaking Dawn.  I thought it was phenomenal and I don't want to give away any secrets, but I will say that parts of it made me want to vomit.  Or cry.  Maybe vomit and cry.  (I sorta want to go see it again.. like, tomorrow.)

Saturday, we took the little monsters to the vet's office.  I will say that my previous employment and subsequent friendship with the staff is the only reason we were seen half an hour before scheduled appointments on a Saturday.  Saturdays suck at the vet's.  Anyways, clean bill of health, nice little monsters, absolute joy to be mauled by.

Aphrodite (who needs a nickname) watching the door.

Then it was taking the kittens home, fiddle-farting around (ie, falling asleep while a documentary is playing and waking up with my ear throbbing because D's favorite couch that we can't get rid of until we buy a house has horrible edges in the arm), and then running errands.  The normal:  shopping, lunch and cupcakes.  This was followed by me coming home and riding.  I feel for the Kid, I gave him a hard workout.  We did a bunch of trot work and then I decided that I wanted to actually lunge him.  I never lunge him.  Like, ever.  Like the last time was back in January.  But I wanted to focus on him figuring out his new, adjusted body with a better topline at the canter... without me fucking him up.  But I also wanted it to be a little hard, so we did it on the one "incline" that we've got.  The consensus is that he's funky in the back end still.  I have included video.  :)  Cross canter much?

After that, he got a nice walking cool down through the woods and the meadow.  I kept his saddle on so he could still have the effects of the saddle pad, though.

Then it was home to figure out what we would be doing for dinner and a nice, quiet night out.

Sunday, I surprised the man by saying that I wanted to go to the gym.  That.. was painful.  We focused on legs.  I've got another run coming up in two weeks, which I haven't trained for at all, so I hopped on the treadmill to pound out a mile.  My goal was to do two miles at a 6% incline, but dammit.  My legs and hips protested.  So it was a mile at between 3 and 6%.  Then we did alternating squats and calf raises.  I've never focused much on weighted squats, because Shaun T taught me so much about cardio squats, but the husband loves them.  He also likes the Smith Machine - which, if you aren't a gym rat, is this little contraption that helps hold the barbell in linear fashion, with safety stops along the way up and down.  Anyways, the best I got was two 45s and the bar.  Considering we've never really focused on it, I'm pretty pleased with 90+ lbs.


After the gym... uh.. oh, grocery shopping.  Cooking lunch.  Eating lunch.  Taking a nap.  A ten-minute bareback ride on Archie.  Since I worked the big muscles so hard the day before, I wanted something light and more controlled.  We got rained out.

Lurves my Tipperary.

Then I went and photographed about twenty-five animals.  I had assistants this time, which was both great and crappy.  They were excellent at capturing the dogs' attentions, but no one ever seemed to grasp that I need the attention on me - hands with treats were always too far over and too high up, so all the pictures look a little weird.

Sad news:  Ares and Apollo were both returned.  Apollo twice.  :(

Immediately after the photo session, I had our last soccer game.  The games are normally at four, but this one was pushed to six because of another tournament.  It was horrible.  It was cold and raining and we got our asses kicked.  Oh, I also accidentally hit another girl in the face.  I really have to work on that.  Husband came and watched and noted my improvement on the field.  I kicked balls.  :)

Can you tell that I have the feverish glow of being soaking and red-hot exercised?

The day ended by nachos and beer, cooking (and burning) my first-ever rum cake (which I think has too much rum, and that's saying something), and uploading all sixty of my photos to email to the Humane Society.  Long day.

Toasty rum cake.  Guarantee that it will be eaten. Ps.  Certainly didn't use the fine Malibu behind it - Baccardi Gold.

As I was getting ready for bed last night, I checked the hourly weather for today.  I made an executive decision that I would not be attempting to ride in 40º weather, wet and gross, and would rather cross my fingers that my boss lets us off early again today.  It's about a twenty degree different with the potential addition of some sunlight.

There's something about being the only woman in the iron-pumping section of the gym that both enthralls and infuriates me.

I had a few sequential thoughts about it: Sausage fest. .... Uggghhn, lift arm. ..... Why is that dude watching the veins pop in my forehead? Has he never seen a woman working out?  Is my level of red sexy? .... Where are all the women?...  Cursory glance around shows women are, in deed, still at this gym; however, they are all on machines.  Men are also on some machines.  The ratio of women to men is higher on the cardio machines.  This makes me wonder:  why do women focus more on cardio than muscle-building?  When women are lifting weights, why do they mostly use machines?  Is it lack of knowledge of technique (I admit, I don't expect everyone to know how to do an Arnold shoulder press)?  If men did not dominate the free-weight section, would women still stay out of it?  I've never been to a "Curves" gym.  I wonder what the dispersal of people looks like there.

Otherwise, the gym work out was pretty good last night.  I admit, I'm a wimp and I haven't been pushing myself with the weights.  We primarily worked with dumbbells and I upped the weight last night.  In the past, I've stuck with tens and fifteens as my "heavy".  If you've picked up anything about my physique from reading this thing, you should know that I am a (not) lean, (occasionally) mean, fighting machine.  But I am pretty beefy, dammit, and I should be able to do more than some damn fifteens.  So I did most of the workouts with twenties.  Except the wide flies on the bench - those were just twelves and they hurt, hurt, hurt.  I tried to do some bicep curls with a thirty and I couldn't manage it.  Next time, I'll try 25s.

And I am sore.

Sore feels good.

More bits of rando:

• BO can't put on a blanket to save her life.  Okay, let me rephrase that: she can't buckle the chest piece of a blanket to save a life.  I don't get it.  A piece of Velcro and two buckles.  Instead of having the two sides of the Velcro meet, the entire front is gaping open and the buckles are only partially shoved through the keepers.  I should have taken a picture of it, but I was too busy taking pictures of us:

• I brought in my pieces for the art show (which, in this light, I can tell the glass needs to be cleaned).  I've had two people ask if the frog picture was an iPad.  Shit you not.  Is that a compliment to my picture or to Apple?  And are we so entranced by technology that we no longer recognize "art"?

• Bought this "new" shake at the grocery store the other night.  It's supposed to be frozen and D put it in the pantry.  I stuck it back in the freezer and am going to eat it today.  If I'm dead tomorrow, this is why (unless I get hit by a bus or something, then it absolutely has nothing to do with this drink).

• Savannah ate another pair of shoes.  I've been lax about Operation Please Stop Destroying My Crap because she's got an injury on one of her pads and I don't want her running.  I did nag D about leaving leather around.

• Achilles is the spawn of Satan.

• My tattooer shared a compilation of my half-sleeve on Instagram and I swooned.  (Btw, I'm "bekaburke" on Instagram.  I'm looking for people to stalk!) (Oh, and the final "likes" came to 23!)

This was too weird to not share:

I say "delude" because the feeling this morning, as I sat atop the wonder horse of the century, was not that I was riding in our normal pasture; rather, we were riding somewhere foreign and, strangely, surreal.

The trees have dropped these fuzzy little balls all over the place.  Coupled with the complete lack of light, I felt like I was.. somewhere else.  The closest comparison I have is skiing at night.  Everything looks the same - uniform - with the darkened outlines of trees and people.

Speaking of skiing, which has been on my mind, the husband and I are talking trips.  This isn't the sort of trip that we would normally be able to afford, not with saving to buy a house, but it's one of the perks of his employment.  Every year, my husband gets to go somewhere for a conference.  The first year, it was Chicago and I tagged along.  The second year, he went to San Diego.  I didn't go because we would be going again a few months later for my cousin's wedding.  This year, he's got the choice between a ski resort in Utah in February or N'Orleans in the Spring.  I'm leaning towards Utah.  I've skied the East Coast* - I want to try some real mountains!

*Growing up, I would go on ski trips with the high school at which my mother taught.  When she stopped going on those trips, we would still take the occasional trip as a family.  The last time I went skiing was the winter before D and I got married.  I've done one black diamond, but prefer to stick to the blues and greens.

I woke up at about 5:45.  Walked dogs, fed cats, gave dogs a treat and ran out of the apartment.  It was pitch black when I got to the barn, so I spent a few minutes extra just grooming.  Finally, at about 6:25, I figured that I need to get on if I was going to and get moving.  I turned on the floods, but, after mounting, Archie marched to the front pasture.  I turned on the program that I use to track us, CycleMeter, and set an alarm for 6:50 (it was actually one of my wake-the-fuck-up,-it's-late alarms).  I gave him an extra lap walking warm up for two reasons: he was stiff and I still wasn't able to see much.  When it lightened just enough, we trotted a large figure-8.  I wanted to work both sides in not a lot of time. There were a few moments when I felt like he was strongly debating being naughty, but he reined it in. (Har har)
He wasn't sweaty or blowing or anything - we didn't work that hard - so I just brushed him quickly and gave him his beet pulp.  I was back at the apartment at about 7:02.  Next time, I'll have a better idea of what I'm going to wear for work and will probably already set it out.  Instead, I set the dog food to soak and ran up the stairs to get dressed and clean up the effects of having ridden.  Fed the dogs, packed my lunch, and was out the door at the normal time.

Tonight, we're going to meet at the gym when he gets off of work.  I'm sort of excited about not having any huge obligation to squeeze in a darkened ride after walking dogs.  Instead, I'm going to finish the frame for one of the photos, clean off the glass, and get those things ready.  The art show is some time in December, but the exhibits are due this week.

Here are some random iPhone photos taken last night (I'm venturing in to Instagram.  Surprised?):

Lili Leau

Scarlette (LOVE THIS)

This fake Tuesday/Monday thing sucks.

Let's review, because I'm too frazzled to write much:

Kittens.

The monsters..

Are ours.  Officially.  Creepily.  I mean, lovingly.

Tattoos.

Gotten.

Has a new topline-stretching addiction: truffle-sniffing. Also:  passed the chiro with flying colors. Graduated to the wellness plan.

Super handsome.

Oh, and Cap't Coordinated...

Kicked himself.

Glass paint.

Housewarming gift to match the recipient's hair.