Friday

I took the day off work.  I'm such a slacker.

I set my alarm for eight because I had about a million things that I wanted to get done.  After taking care of the kids and starting a load of laundry, I headed out to the track.  I did six miles in an okay time.  I'm getting bored with the local track - around and around and around - so instead of doing laps, I did partials.  The lap is about a mile and a half (1.47, to be exact).  So, instead, I ran a mile of it and turned around.  Did that three times and called it a day.

I went home and vegged out for about half an hour - drank some soda and ate some chips to get my energy back up - and then headed to the barn.

I set up the low cross rail and cleaned up the track around some of the recent fallen trees, so you see where my mind was.  About half way through tacking up, the other boarder showed up.  This has never happened before, but it was late morning on a weekday and I certainly wasn't supposed to be there.

She asked me if I was going to hit the trails and I told her that I was going to work him in the "ring" first.  So she hung around.

The Kid was excellent!  Nice trot work, forward, super-attentive, even though I know he was keen on watching the other horse.  Previously, he'd lose his shit if another horse cantered around us or came up behind us too quickly, but he seems to have grown out of that (to some degree).  We did the crossrail twice in both directions at two different heights, trotting in and cantering out.  He was seriously excellent.  Then did a couple of the fallen trees in a tight rollback at a trot.  I know the other boarder had to think that I was crazy.

BO's skinny geriatric.

Archie following.

We went out on the trail ride and she made a comment about me opening the gate which I appreciated - that Archie and I were better at it.  We left the gate open because the BO's geriatric has permission to come out of the pasture and graze.  We thought that he would hang out and eat on the lush grass immediately outside of the pasture, but a few minutes into the ride, he was trotting down the road, screaming, to catch up with us.  Poor guy is so disgustingly skinny.

Overall, not a bad experience.  Chick talks way too much.  But, thankfully, part of that conversation was BO bashing and her bashing on her own skills (like, she can't handle her OTTB, knows she needs more training, knows she shouldn't have bought a horse like that).  It made her more human to me and I appreciate it.

I met the husband at the Green Truck Pub.  It's the Craft Brew Festival, so they were giving away swank that I wanted.  We each had two beers and went home, tipsy and sleepy and slept on the couch together for an hour and a half.  Another thing that never happens.  Then we headed out to the World of Beer to meet the chick who works for him and who used to be one of my besties, but who dropped me when I stopped drinking as much.  It was a good night.  (Except I met one of D's coworkers who is younger and more attractive than I anticipated and she grabbed his arm while telling a story and I wanted to punch her in the nose.  This my blog.  I can say things like that.  Bitch seriously missed my daggers after that.)

Saturday

We got up early and went to the local airforce base to get our cycling in.  To date, we've been averaging about 16 - 17 mph.  Today, my asshole husband (who read this and got his feeling hurt) (he only has one) decided to peddle off at 19 mph into a headwind, after we did a lower-body Arnold workout on Thursday.  For about half an hour, I hated the man.  We didn't slow our pace until the last mile, which was mile number 12.  I had nothing left in my legs.  I had nothing, at all.  I was peddling on pure desperation.

Smarmy.

After the cycle and the recovery shower, we went and got Japanese.  I love my carbs.  My yaki soba.  And then we ran errands, part of which involved spending my father's Christmas gift to my husband: $150 gift card to Joseph A. Banks.  With all the weight loss, the husband needs new professional clothes.  They were having a sale and he ended up getting three shirts and a nice pair of pants and only went out of pocket twenty bucks.  After running a few more errands, we headed home to watch the Hunger Games.

And I went back out to ride the pony.  He was pretty freaking awesome again.  We had some issues picking up the left lead, but didn't have the lurching start to the right lead.  We worked primarily on downward transitions. I had a sweaty horse after the end of it all.

Sweaty pony!

Here's a weird thing I'm thinking about: building little jumps.  I'm not super interested in height, but something I can build up on.  I was thinking about getting two 8-foot boards cut in half and another cut into half-foot segments and then building jumps from that.  Like skinnies that I could stack or set on their sides.  I just think about the width.  Most of the jumps that I've seen are the full eight feet and I'm not sure exactly why - safety? I think we could hand some skinny grids.  And I want them super bright - one blue, one yellow and one purple.  With "Burke" on the underside.  Sounds like a good Labor Day project, right?

Tonight, I'm putting partial ombre highlights and face-framing highlights in my hair.  Later, I'm going to take one of D's razors and slice my bangs in half.  And then the husband (assuming I can trust him with scissors after this post) is going to trim my ends.  I'm the daughter of a master cosmetologist.  I got skills.