The Owls Approve: April 2017

A Whiskey Sour

2:24 PM
By Beka Burke
7 Comments

I have happy news and shit news. To end on a better note, I'll start with the shit news.

My doctor's visit on Tuesday didn't go well. I am having to retake the medication, which fucks me up severely, so I asked Ox's owner if we could switch my normal Wednesday ride with Thursday. So after riding Archie and Ox last night, I took an apple I had to Whiskey. Thinking that I didn't have time to ride him, but I could still look him over and give him cuddles. En route to his pasture, I saw a group of about five people walking away from it. One of them looked vaguely familiar as his owner, so I verified and then introduced myself as the woman who's been riding him.

She introduced the people with her as his new owners.

I feel like this entire situation could have been handled better by his current owner, but there's nothing I can do about that now. I gave his new owners my phone number and told them to call me if anything didn't work out, because I would take him immediately. And then I proceeded to wish them a good night and give him his apple, with a side of sobbing into his mane. And if I hadn't switched my ride days, I might never have known, might never have made that possible connection.

When you go out to give an apple to the horse that you think might be The Next Horse, only to meet his surprise new owners on the way. #fml #nomorelosses #appaloosa #whiskeythehorse #ineedsomegoodnews

A post shared by bekaburke (@bekaburke) on Apr 27, 2017 at 7:39pm PDT

It was definitely a situation of counting my chickens before they hatched (I'm so southern sometimes, it hurts). In my mind, he was already my horse. I was thinking about having my farrier determine if he needed fronts, figuring out what his color would be (purple?), and sending him off for a month of dressage boot camp so someone better than me could install contact and straight.

They did seem like nice people and I'm sure he'll have a comfortable life. It's just not a life with me.

But, in better news, my little herd had a revolt. There have been too many horses on the property for too long. This would be relatively okay if the horses didn't depend on a shared resource (grass), but they do and now there is no grass.

Grass.

Ox's owner reached out to the barn owner and asked if we could move to his brother's facility across the street, which is dormant when movie horses aren't here, for at least the summer. We moved on Sunday and I swear to god that it felt like I was getting an apartment with my best friends.

I've never seen Archie play in his water. 😍

A post shared by bekaburke (@bekaburke) on Apr 24, 2017 at 11:31am PDT

There's a huge pasture with tall grass, a dressage court with a mirror, plenty of trails, and another field that we've turned into our jump pasture. All of our stuff is squeezed into the tack room and it's really like we just bought our own farm. And I really think Archie has put back some of the weight he lost. I'm okay with him being a little thin because it's better for his joints, but I still don't like butt bones and ribs.

April 13th on top, last night on bottom.

There's a little contention about how long we'll actually be staying, but any time is better than no time. So far, we've enjoyed our little paradise.

alcohol

Whiskey and Rum

12:46 PM
By Beka Burke
14 Comments

There's a hashtag that pops up when you search the one I've been using, #iamoneinfour, which is #miscarriagesurvivor. I immediately blew this off as bull shit, because why the fuck wouldn't you survive a miscarriage? Unless you were hemorrhaging or something.

And then my miscarriage progressed and I realized this shit can fucking kill you. What else in life will destroy you so completely both emotionally and physically? There's an underlying urge to go and be with your baby.

So let's talk about what kept me from the edge.

I sat in the same spot for three days and watched TV.

I mean, technically, I was recovering. My doc gave me options and I picked the DIY medical abortion, which if you're really curious about, I'll be writing about my experience. I've had surgery before (laparoscopic abdominal exploratory) and I knew I didn't want a D&C. Keep your fingers crossed that I'm all cleared - which I'll know later today.

I watched a lot of NCIS, Law & Order SVU, Big Bang, a new show called Famous in Love, and this one episode of Tanked where they built a fish tank that held DJ equipment. I feel like I was mostly in a fugue state. Day two, I finally showered. Day three, I actually showered and put on a bra.

Whiskey.

There's a horse that I've been secretly in love with for about a year. I was walking through his pasture one day and he was escorting me and it dawned on me that this horse was super fucking tall. I can't see over his withers. I can see over Archie's. This caused my little crush to explode and I texted my BM.

His name is Whiskey. Whiskey's mom isn't really an equestrian. She's a rescuer. The story goes that she took him from someone else who was going to euthanize him. In the year he's been there, we've collectively seen her three times. So I had my BM ask if I could start working him.

He's somewhere between 10-15, going by his Galvayne's Groove and the hook, and the biggest Appaloosa I've ever seen. I figured that this guy had to be intentionally sporthorse bred, because he's enormous and has feathers.

Sure, maybe you could master straight before you start asking for lateral....

But Whiskey doesn't appear to know a goddamn thing. Riding him is like riding a cat. His head is in a different dimension from his body and he ballet dances with his legs. I feel like maybe he's fucking with me, but he doesn't have the muscle tone for me to really push him. So far, we've done four 10-15 minute walks. I love him.. I still maintain dreams of becoming his owner, even if he's old as shit. As Denny says, you can ride a horse young or you can ride a horse old, but you can't do both. Given the pure lack of knowledge on this guy, I think I can ride him old. And I want to..

I bought All The Things.

Archie got a new halter. It's black and padded with turquoise and chrome. So, of course, he needed a matching lead rope with chrome. And speaking of chrome, I needed some new earrings. Like three very similar pairs of silver earrings. And I needed new clothes because pregnancy and post-pregnancy have made me fatter. And I bought Hillary's Equisense, which I'm super fucking excited about, because I'm tired of using multiple apps to track my rides and I didn't want to download a third to track Whiskey. Speaking of Whiskey, the kid needed grooming supplies, so I bought the bare essentials (curry, dandy, hoof pick). Oh, and my bareback pad needs a cinch. Might as well toss in a Riding Warehouse t-shirt. And then I saw a thing to hold plants because, I dunno, every year I have a garden and wrist-deep in warm soil feels good.

Rum.

L shipped a bottle of magical rum to D and me. I hate to say this, because I ardently believe it solves very little, but alcohol is a solution. Have the super-sads and can't stop crying? Just nurse a drink for a little while and focus on breathing while the drink takes the edge off. My drink of choice is a diet Coke and rum, so I'm definitely appreciating L's gift. Tasty, thoughtful, and helpful. <3

Friends & Fam

People have come out of everywhere, literally everywhere, to show support and compassion and empathy. People I never knew had miscarriages have talked with me about their experiences. A fellow boarder with three gorgeous boys stayed late one day and cried with me about her first pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage and how, ten years later, it's still a gaping wound of loss. Bloggers have reached out, old and current coworkers have sent messages, and my friends send random how-are-you texts. A tech at my vet's came into our exam room to offer her condolences. I was too excited to keep it all to myself, I told everyone, and I knew that there was a possibility that this could end poorly. At the time, I said that I wanted to share my joy and I would want help with the burden of grief. I've gotten so much help.

Ink

Scheduled for Sunday.

death

Grief.

12:38 PM
By Beka Burke
40 Comments

I was pregnant.

And now I'm not.

Now I'm a statistic, a grieving statistic.

I can't tell you how excited I was to share my future little equestrian with you, my experiences as a pregnant rider, and this whole adventure of bringing a human into existence. But now I'm not. I also can't articulate the immediate and all-consuming love. I didn't expect to love the child until he or she was in my arms, but I loved my baby from the first stirrings.

On April 4th, Archie's birthday, the hubs and I went for my first ultrasound. 8 weeks and 5 days and super excited to see my little gummy bear and hear the hopeful 180 beats per second.

Only, there were zero beats per second, per minute, per hour. There was nothing. My little gummy bear was a tiny gummy bear, nothing compared to the google images of an eight-week-old fetus.

That bottom portion should show the spikes of a heart.

I bawled. I broke. I exited the back while my husband made a follow up appointment and I called my mom. Because mothers make it better, even if all she does is sob with you. I wanted to be that mother to my child, only my child didn't make it far enough to share my tears.

The plan, before my heart was ripped out, was to use Archie's birthday to announce my pregnancy. To this blog and to the rest of the world. Early, sure, but what could go wrong? Except everything.

I went back Tuesday of this week to have a follow up appointment. My friends have come out of everywhere to support me and I received a dozen texts before the appointment time, wishing me hope, wishing the doctor was wrong, sharing my plea for a miracle heartbeat.

But now I'm not pregnant. Because there was no heart beat.

Because the baby was smaller than she'd been the week prior. Because my 9 week and 5 day old baby had died three weeks ago.

Images aren't enough for me. Images can lie. Technology can hide. My body is a giant mess of organs and tissues and I wanted as much confirmation as science could provide, so I begged for blood work. After the second ultrasound, I sat in the tiny lab room and was stuck by the super proficient tech as we talked about tattoos. For a comparison of my HCG levels, to make 100% sure that they weren't secretly rising as my baby was apparently dying.

The way that HCG works is that it nearly doubles every two days from conception. These magical little pee sticks are just measuring the presence of HCG, as only pregnant women have it.

So I went back on Thursday, my 10-week mark, and chatted up the little technician and joked with her about the bruise left on my arm as she stuck a different vein. And my new friend walked the blood work over to the lab instead of waiting for the nightly pick up, so I would know immediately.

My HCG was 24k on Tuesday. By Thursday, it had dropped to 19k. My body is starting to clear up the evidence.

And because the emotional pain just isn't sufficient, my body will be working on the evidence, destroying the last remnants of my baby, over at least the next week or so.

If you've never had a miscarriage, you can't understand. It's a group no one wants to be a part of and that no one gets to leave. I'll never be the same.