Normal work day.  I walked around at lunch again and was able to find a little vase at Goodwill for $0.39 for the little English ivy that I found on the ground the day prior.  Someone asked me if I was going to take the ivy home - hell no.  That shit's toxic to my kids.

Hauled home to ride the Kid.  BO came by a little after I got there and tacked up to ride at the same time.  She made a concession to my horse's insanity and rode with me, rather than going out to the woods/meadow/dirt road to ride.  I hope that in thirteen years, Archie is still able to canter little cross rails like Skinny Guy.  I just hope he looks a hell of a lot better than Skinny Guy.  I got in a full half hour, though I can't remember what exactly we did.

The hubs and I attended the "First Time Home Buyers" class.  Workshop.  It was almost eight hours long.  Here's a summation of what I learned:  there will always be one dude who will not STFU (in our case, he was an old veteran dressed like a pimp); hubs and I are idiots for looking at houses without being pre-approved, because we're only guessing at our price range; credit is the number one reason people can't get their own homes, not the inability to get a down payment together; the days of the 20% down are passed and the conventional mortgage only requires 3% (which is probably why so many homes have been foreclosed - big ass monthly payments); and, finally, the hubs and I are totally ready to do this and the house that we idiotically scoped out might still be a contender, baring the pre-approval (which is in the works as of right now).

I'm not normally this mean. ..But it was like looking in a mirror from a year ago. (Lunch break.)

I didn't expect to get out of the class until 5:30, so I was gleefully surprised to leave at 4:30.  That enabled me to ride.  It was dusk-ish by that time and the Kid is just a giant jerk when it comes to losing light.  Even though I think we would have addressed the issue a hundred times over, I'm sort of glad that I'm not trying to ride him by light of the barn.  He'd trip or I'd die or both.  So, he spooked two times in quick succession and I really felt like the muscles in my back got tweaked.  I also had the thought that if I could get my hands on a cutting horse, this whole spooking-sucks thing would be of the past.  I mean, think about it:  my OTTB will never drop as low as a 15 h Quarter horse in the midst of cutting.  It'd be great practice for sitting a spook.

En route to the gym.

Normal Sunday.  Early lunch, Humane Society photos, gym, library, grocery shopping, photo uploads, horseback ride, Mexican.

I think I mentioned this, but the Vol Coor at the Humane Society put out an email asking for help with photos again.  And because people signed up for dates, I didn't do my normal Thursday after work.  By Sunday, there were no new photos on the website from the photos that I had taken the Sunday prior.  I feel bad for the organization, but I figured that if two other photographers had signed up, they ought to be fine.  I was wrong.  At this point, even now, looking at the website:  I took all but two photos.  I was looking at one and his intake date was yesterday, but the photo was very clearly my style... Yeah, he was returned.

At the gym, it was an arm day.  I'm up to benching 80 pounds, but I require a spotter.  Poor D.  Because I felt funky in the back from the spooks the day prior, I decided not to do weighted back extensions.  I don't use a machine for this, I use this little angled contraption that you actually lean over while holding a plate (35#).  And because I wasn't using weights, I thought.. What the hell, let's do four times the normal.  So that was a hundred back extensions and a hundred side bends in either direction.  My obliques are fucking killing me.  It hurts to touch my waist.  But I can flex them!

The horseback ride wasn't bad.  Okay, it was a little bad.  We had a come-to-Jesus.  He just kept spooking, so I worked on resetting his brain.  We did one full lap of nothing but lateral moves, hard.  I'm not a big kicker, I'm a calf squeezer (because the Kid can read my mind and that's generally the most that is ever needed) (which is also why I had such a damn hard time riding the Western pony, as he was only ever kicked and never responded to more subtle cues).  But when I asked for movement and he didn't do it, he got nailed.  It only took once.  And then he was excellent.

Also?  Four years since I broke my butt.  I think.  Maybe it's four?  Anyways, anniversary of butt breaking!  Whoo!

I got up at the butt crack of dawn, loaded up the girls, my tripod and my camera and drove the half hour to the beach.  Oh, wait.  Did I not mention that?  Yeah, you can be jealous.  I live half an hour from the beach (unless it's tourist season, then we're at the whim of the traffic gods).  Yay, hurricanes!

I hate rim light.

I got some great photos, some not so great photos, and Scarlette shat on the beach.  It was a good exercise for shutter speed, which is what I needed.  I probably would have done better to use manual mode rather than shutter priority, but too late now.

After he mauled me.

Mauling me.

I spent most of the rest of the day hanging around the apartment.  Lounging.  Chores.  Napping.  When D got home, I went and rode the Kid.  

This is really how I spent the day.

There was some greatness and some soul-crushing despair.

We had the best canter in both direction that we've had since moving to Savannah.  It was rhythmic and fluid and he didn't feel like a racking horse/llama.

And then we started jumping.  He started great and strong and six fences in, couldn't lift his back end properly over the jump.  I don't know what to do other than call the chiropractor and hope he responds to adjusting.  Maybe think that the canter was excellent and wore those muscles out.  Hope for that, at least.  Just hope.