I haven’t posted much about Prize lately because I would just start contradicting myself all over and confuse you about the status of her feet.
“She’s better. No, she’s worse. False alarm, all better. Wait….”
I finally got annoyed with this and called a professional. This morning I met with a vet who sees lots of foundered horses to get an aggressive rehab plan.
I proudly reported that Prize has lost about 200 lbs. The vet doubled over laughing. Ok, so she looked like a tick previously. She’s better now.
She’s now on multiple meds that she is of course refusing to eat voluntarily. She is going to get some padded glue on shoes instead of her boots for a while. For right now though we went super high tech. She has foam board duct taped to her feet. This will conform perfectly to her feet for support until we can get the shoes on.
The duct tape is where I came in handy. I went to vet school in Appalachia. That’s the only way I’ve ever been able to explain that I was taught to make beautiful duct tape foot bandages. The barn owner taped one foot while I was talking to the vet. He was looking at it dubiously when I walked over. I then demonstrated my technique that involves making a weave of duct tape on the stall wall and peeling it off. The weave goes on the bottom of the foot and you wrap the ends up around the top. Wrap some more strands of duct tape around the hoof and it will stay through anything. He looked at me funny. “You learned this IN VET SCHOOL?” I don’t know why he was surprised when the other vet (from another school) recommended foam board. LOL
It is eventually going to sink in that $250 of specialized boots are sitting in the tack room while she wears $1 worth of foam board and duct tape on each foot.
I didn’t really mean to have one. It started innocently enough. The SO wanted to go to the track to run when I did. The first time we did our own thing. The second time I decided that in the spirit of togetherness I would do whatever he did.
Conversation while walking from the car to the track:
Him: You are the competition.
Me: I am?
Him: Yes
Me: What is the competition?
Him: I don’t know yet.
Me: So, are you just going to look over at me at some point and say, “I win”?
Him: That wouldn’t be sporting.
Me: ‘kay
Him: At this point, you are the better runner and that’s just pathetic.
Me, mock pouting: Thanks sweetie
Him: You know what I mean.
Ah, ego. This is why I hadn’t suggested running with him. He used to be really good. Like trophies around the house good. Now he is broken. He is not happy.
We warmed up by walking a lap and then started running on the straightaways on the track and walking the curves. I stayed a few steps behind him. I decided that it would be bad for the male ego if I passed him right off. We alternated walking, running full laps, and running on the straightaways for a while. I decided to see what would happen if I sped up a bit on one of the straightaways. He sped up too. I decided not to push it too hard and backed off. He didn’t mention it but as we approached the next running point he hissed back over his shoulder, “Easy!” Then he added laps. That may have just been a coincidence or I may have been being punished for being bad.
It reminded me of racing Spirit. He was always the fastest horse in the neighborhood. But as he got older young whippersnappers moved in. Then he was 20 years old racing 5 year olds and it was harder to win. He still could do it but the young horse would be close to him. I had to work out a system with the other rider before the race so that when we crossed the finish point that we had decided on they would stop their horse. If they didn’t Spirit wouldn’t stop. He would have killed himself rather than be passed in a race*. The male ego is a fragile thing.
The SO told me afterwords that I was a good running partner because I was determined. I’m not sure what that means exactly. He pushed me to go consistently faster than I would on my own and to do more intervals so that is good.
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* Spirit got passed one time. I was 15 or 16. We had gone to a lesson and he was being a jerk. He wouldn’t listen at all. My instructor told me to take him into a large hay field. They had a path mowed around the edge. She said to run him all the way around to get some of his excess energy out so he could focus on his lesson. We were about halfway around moving at a really fast pace when I heard hoofbeats.
I looked back in time to see a blur fly past us like we were standing still. It surprised Spirit at first and then he kicked into another gear that I didn’t even know he had. He went about 25 yards and the other horse was still pulling away from us. Spirit slowed back down to the speed we were originally going. He knew it was hopeless. He was very subdued and listened to his lesson after that. I don’t think it was shaking off the excess energy as much as being publicly humiliated in his mind that made him mild mannered that day. Turns out the other horse was a Thoroughbred recently off the track who needed to run to even be sane in regular work but I don’t think Spirit would have cared that he only ever got beaten by a professional racer.
I sewed more Dear Jane blocks today. I think half the fun for me is to take the horrible directions that my friends have and figure out easier ways to do them. They took the class from a woman who believed that every block was better if you could figure a way to get some hand applique into it. Not me.
These are blocks D-12 and M-5. The orange and white I converted from piecing and applique to paperpiecing. It may have been faster to applique since I had a heck of a time getting them to line up but it is the principle of the matter! I’m calling M-5 “Pink Dachshunds on Parade.”
This is my Picasso block. It is made from a Laurel Birch cat fabric. I love the way the eyes are peeking out of the corners.
Second Glance by Jodi Picoult – I think of Jodi Picoult novels as super-realistic portrayals of life so I was surprised to find this early supernatural story of hers. An elderly man sells his land to a developer but a local Indian tribe protests, saying it is a sacred site. The controversy comes down to what really happened to the man’s wife who died in 1932. It is a murder mystery wrapped up in a ghost story. I wasn’t crazy about it but I stuck with it because I’ve liked her other books.
Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search-and-Rescue Dog by Susannah Charleson – This book is the story of raising a search and rescue dog named Puzzle. It explains the training of the handler and the dog and the types of searches that they do. I liked this because Puzzle is a Golden Retriever, which I used to have, and the author also fosters a herd of Pomeranians. The Poms are depicted wonderfully in the book. I could imagine Snowball acting the same way in some of the situations.
A River In The Sky by Elizabeth Peters – This is novel number 19 in the Amelia Peabody mystery series. I’m not a mystery fan but I like this series. They are set in the early 1900s. Emerson and Amelia Peabody are English archeologists working in Egypt. They have a son nicknamed Ramses who is always finding trouble in the Egyptian underworld. The stories are told from two points of view – Amelia’s private journals (which have been left to someone who is now publishing them) and the mysterious Manuscript H (which explains in third person what Ramses is up to but never mentions the author). The books follow their lives from the time Ramses is small until he is an adult with a child himself. What I find interesting is now Elizabeth Peters is going back and writing books that fit into their world out of chronological order. So, although this book is the 19th in the series it is 12th in chronological order. I think she sort of wrote herself into a corner by giving Ramses a family and responsibilities that made him less likely to take wild adventures. She made her main character less interesting. Now she’s writing back in time when he could do more.
Although this is primarily an Egyptian series, this book takes place during a side trip in Palestine in 1910. You don’t absolutely have to have read any of the other books to understand this one but it enhances the book if you have the backgrounds on the characters. If you are new to the series I would start with a few with Ramses as a child and go from there.
My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares- I’ve seen this book all over the book blogs. I have mixed feelings about it. The idea is engaging. Daniel remembers all his past lives. He reincarnates always looking for a girl, Sophia, that he murdered in his first life and has subsequently loved in others. She does not remember him. Daniel’s brother in his first life was married to Sophia in another life and abused her until Daniel helped her escape. The brother has been searching for revenge ever since. Interactions between Daniel and his love across the centuries are well done but the brother plotline isn’t well explained. The ending is very anti-climactic. The only way I think it might work is if there is a sequel in the works since nothing is resolved.
In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker – This is the first book of Kage Baker’s Company series. A while ago I read the most recent book of the series and decided to go back to the beginning to see what it was all about. I liked this book a lot better. It is a YA book. Scientists in an unspecified future ave learned to make immortal cyborgs and to time travel. They go to the past and make the cyborgs. They leave them in place with orders to collect things like art that would have been destroyed or plants and animals that would go extinct. Mendoza is a child rescued from the Inquisition and made into a botanist for the Company. On her first assignment, to save the plants in an English garden at the time of Queen Mary, she falls in love with a mortal. This doesn’t go as planned for her. I think I will continue with this series for a while to see what happens.
Sister Mine by Tawni O’Dell – Audio – I think I need to quit trying to listen to fiction on audio. It takes too long to hold my attention. Non-fictions holds my interest more.
This book takes place in the same world as the author’s other novels but you don’t need to read them to understand this one. Shaelyn is an ex-cop who now runs a cab company in rural PA. She believes that her sister was murdered by her father 18 years ago until her sister shows up nine months pregnant. A lawyer, a gangster, and a New York housewife are also in town looking for her. The book also has many sideplots that make it hard to sum up without telling the whole story. I liked this story even though it took forever to get through on audio.
I did speed work today. On a track. Like a real runner. And I got up at 7:00 AM on a Saturday to do it.
I walked a lap and then ran a timed lap at my normal pace to see how fast I run. It was about what I expected. I was doing about a 13 minute mile. Told you I was slow! I would like to get to a 10 minute mile as my first mini-goal. So I walked another lap and then started running faster. I cut 45 seconds off my lap time so that was a 10 minute mile pace. I don’t think at this point I could maintain that for more than a quarter mile. I started walking a lap again and was fully recovered by the time I was 1/4 way around the track. When I got back to the start, I ran another 10 minute pace lap. It was hard for me to do but I kept telling myself that I was going to be really mad if I stopped and promising myself that if I did it I could stop. I walked another cool down lap and went home.
I told the SO what I had done and he was interested in going to the track too. I so went back with him and walked while he did his workout. I walked another 2 miles. I’m glad he wasn’t there for the speed workouts. I’m not ready for that yet. I’m embarrassed by how slow I am and he was a former fast, long distance runner before the army broke him. He’s trying to learn to run again and I could keep up with him right now but I don’t know if that’s a good idea. My dad is threatening to run with me sometime. In my last conversation with him he was talking about slowing down his first race mile to 9 minutes so he has the stamina to finish with consistent 8 minute miles instead of going out fast and running out of steam. I don’t think we are running-compatible yet.
There was a guy there running who was slower than me. That was good for me to see. I read Runner’s World and read the blogs of fast runners so I think that everyone is super speedy. I need to realize that that’s not true.
Afterwards we had to make amends to Freckles. We went out walking, TWICE, without her. We took her to the waterfall trail we found. I hoisted her up on the rocks by the falls. She was horrified. I took her leash off so she wouldn’t get tangled and that convinced her that we were planning on running off without her. We ended up walking down a trail to the river. It is a nice area where kayakers can come ashore and walk up to see the falls. She refused to go in the river either. Eventually she decided that she could drink it but she wasn’t going in. She fell in once up to her elbows and was unimpressed.
We went back up the trail to the falls and by this time I think she had gained some trust in us. When the SO went up on the falls she followed him.
She decided that hanging out by the base of the falls on the cool wet rocks wasn’t so bad afterall.
Today’s Workout – Ran 1.5 miles and walked 1 mile (warm up and cool down – getting to where I wanted to run and getting back)
I decided that I should go out and run on a flatter part of the park which is mostly mowed grass trails. I could work on some speed then. That totally didn’t work out as expected. Those trails slope sideways and there are vines that kept reaching out and tangling up my shoes. Very rude. I ended up running even slower.
So, I ended up going slow and easy. My next major running challenge is going to be pushing myself. I’m at the point where I can consistently run 1.5 to 2 slow miles without being winded. Wow. Ok, now I need to work harder since obviously this isn’t helping me lose weight. But I’m a wimp about pushing hard on cardio. As soon as I start to breathe hard my brain decides that I’m dying and starts screaming at me to stop. I need to look up some speedwork routines because I need structure to make myself work harder. Just going out with a vague idea to “run faster” isn’t going to work for me.
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I made three more Dear Jane blocks this week. Clockwise from top left they are A8, A2, and K10. I copied A2 from a picture on the internet that I thought was the right size. I made a paperpiecing pattern from that. Turns out that picture was actually too big so I lost my points when I trimmed it to size. Someday I’ll have to decide if that bothers me enough in the grand scheme of things to redo it.
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Random confusing vet conversation of the day yesterday:
A kid asked me, “Why do some dogs have dark patches on their gums?”
Me: “It’s just pigment.”
Him: “Like Freckles?”
In my brain: “How does he know if my dog has dark gums? I don’t even know if she does. Oh, wait….”
Me out loud: “Yeah, like freckles on your face.”
The Fixer Upper by Mary Kay Andrews – This book was recommended by someone who participated in the meme a few weeks ago. I can’t remember where I saw it. I was in the mood for something lighter than what I had been reading and this was perfect. Dempsey Killebrew is a lobbyist in DC who is involved in a scandal that gets her fired. Her father has inherited an old house in Georgia and he sends Dempsey there to fix it up to sell while she is out of work. The house is in worse shape than expected, there is a cranky old squatter and her dog, and the FBI is following her.
The Wedding by Danielle Steele – An entertainment lawyer spends her days and nights babysitting the stars she represents. When she leaves a dead end relationship and finds herself rapidly planning to get married, events in the lives of her clients and her immediate family threaten to derail her plans. This book isn’t one of the author’s best but it isn’t as offensive as the last one I read, BIG GIRL.
Tara Road by Maeve Binchy – This may be a reread because I refuse to accept that I missed any of her books but it didn’t seem familiar. The jackets says that Ria and Marilyn exchange houses when they are both having problems with their marriage. Knowing that I kept waiting for it to happen. But the first part of the story is all about Ria’s perfect life. If I didn’t know that I always like Maeve Binchy’s books I probably would have stopped reading. Maybe that’s what happened before. I was screaming, “Get to the point!!!” by page 177 when she found out about her husband’s affair. After that it was good.
The Batboy by Mike Lupica – I like Mike Lupica’s novels so I didn’t hesitate to read this one even though I can’t stand baseball. I wasn’t disappointed. Brian Dudley is 14 and just got his dream job as a batboy for the Tigers. His father is an ex-Major League pitcher who walked out on his family when his career was over. Brian loves baseball especially Hank Bishop, even though Bishop was banned for a year over a steroid scandal. When the Tigers pick up Bishop mid-season Brian is thrilled to meet his idol but learns that you might not like getting what you wish for. This is a YA novel so it was a fast read but very good. Even if you don’t love baseball the characters are worth the read.
http://www.amazon.com/Men-Didnt-Marry-Novel/dp/0345491181/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279379094&sr=8-1 by Janice Kaplan and Lynn Schnurnberger – When her husband announces he’s leaving as they are dropping their youngest child at Yale, the heroine starts on a quest to reconnect with the ex-boyfriends she had. Her ex-boyfriends are a billionaire, a guru, an underwater photographer who shoots with Angelina Jolie, and a politician. My ex-boyfriends are slackers compared to that list. I should have done a better job of picking them out!
I ran 3 miles today! I can work that into any sentence. “I need to take a shower because I ran 3 miles today.” “I’m too tired to do the dishes because I ran three miles today.”
When we left off I was planning on going for a run on a flat bike path to see if running hilly trails all the time (where I can’t do two miles without stopping and breathing like a freight train) actually made me fit enough to run three miles on flat ground.
I got up at 7 AM on a Saturday (ponder the weirdness of that for a moment) to go for this run since it was cooler than the surface of the sun at that point. Later in the day running on asphalt loses some appeal. I had a special eclectic playlist on the iPod just for this occasion.
I started with “Bad Things” by Jace Everett. That’s the theme to TRUE BLOOD. It has a steady beat but it is slow. I ran with it since I wasn’t going for time here. I wanted to make the distance even if it was in slow running motion. After that was “Bad Romance” by the Glee cast since I love Chris Colfer’s vocals on that. The half mile marker came up pretty quickly. I was going back and forth between the path and the shoulder since I like running on dirt and gravel better than asphalt. I run like a trail runner – short strides because you never know when something is going to try to trip you. I almost fell twice today going from path to shoulder. I figured it would be just my luck to hurt myself on the easy course.
“Centerfield” by John Fogerty was next. Happy, bouncy, just makes you want to run. “Dime que me quieres” by Ricky Martin came up. When I was in Costa Rica in 1992 his first solo album had come out and was a smash hit. At 3:30 on weekday afternoons my job was to watch the music video show and yell for the females in the area when any of his videos came on. Every woman from 15 to 80 would come running to watch. This one was a favorite for the motorcycles, shower, and barely legal Ricky doing bad choreography. (I was looking up the link on youtube and Z was dancing around the living room. See, everyone loves Ricky.) This one distracted me because I’m trying to put all the Spanish words in when I sing along and it is hard for me.
At this point I was in sight of the bridge! That’s the turnaround point. I was running to “Fame”. When I got there I collapsed on the benches. But the sun was beating down and I was hotter there than when I was running so I got up immediately and walked across the bridge and back to stay flexible.
“Hollaback Girl” was the end of the mix and I started back and then started the mix over. I ran all the way back. I even passed someone! She was older, overweight, strolling, and totally unaware that she was racing me but I passed her and she didn’t pass me back!
I felt pretty good on this run. Cardiovascularly I was just fine. My hamstrings and calves were tight. I need to do more yoga. Now that I know I can do the distance I can work on maybe getting faster.
I signed up for jillianmichaels.com. I get a workout to do four days a week. I am free to add other workouts on top of these as I wish. It is also T minus 17 days to my first 5K so I am an exercising fool right now.
Last night I had a workout that emphased a lot of lunges. I was cheating. The workout are set up as five circuits. Some of them have craziness like jumping rope or jumping jacks in them. I was doing this last night after working 10 hours and then eating. So I did all the leg and ab work but skipped the cardio stuff. I knew I was going for a run this morning.
My goal today was to get up early and do two miles without stopping.
First fail – I fell back asleep when the SO left so I didn’t get going as early as I wanted. But, I did make myself get out of bed and go.
Then, thanks to Jillian and her lunges, my butt hurt! Not a great way to start off running. I walk about a quarter mile first to warm up. I was hoping that my soreness would go away. But halfway through the warmup I noticed that my foot was hurting like there was something wrong with my sock. I stopped, took off my shoe and found a cut on the top of my big toe.
We get random foot lacerations all the time because we are attacked in the middle of the night. Powder, aka Death from Above, will jump from the armoire onto the bed with claws extended and lands on our feet. This looked like a cat injury. What I really needed was a bandaid to cushion it but I was sitting on a downed tree in the middle of the woods. I took a leaf off a bush, praying it wasn’t poisonous, and put it over the cut. It worked perfectly. Hillbilly first aid!
I was able to run the first mile ok. That makes me laugh to type that because at the time of course I was convinced I was dying. The first 1/2 mile is a long gradual uphill with some rolling hills in the center. I stopped once to breathe but kept going. Turning around and heading back down that trail is nice because you think it should be a long gradual downhill but there seems to be a lot of uphill there too. I think it is just messing with me.
When I got back to the main trail the next section is a very steep uphill. I walked up it. That felt like giving up. I’m not sure how much of that was physical tiredness and how much was mental. This park has benches at the top of all these steep uphills. I tell myself that at least I keep moving and don’t have a lie down before I go on. From there I started running again but this part of the trail is super hilly. I ended up walking a lot of the uphills that I can usually run. Of course I’ve never run a mile before trying them before either. They usually come early in the run.
I’m discouraged because I’m not able to run as far as I think I should be able at this point. I keep telling myself that I’m running hard trails so doing this is like running farther on roads. Now I’m going to put that to the test.
Saturday morning I’m going out to a bike path and see how far I can run on manicured trails. I know that 1.5 miles out there is an old railroad bridge over a stream. It is a good landmark to have as a turn around. There are alos lots of benches there if I need to pass out. I also need to learn what pace I can go on flat ground. I run really slow on trails because it is dangerous. I have no idea how to run in a road race.
After my run I feel like a wreck. I’m exhausted. Way more than usual. I’m not sure what that’s about. My butt hurts even more after hill work. I’m telling myself that it is worth it to fit in smaller jeans everytime it hurts when I sit down!
So I ended up working on an UFO during sewing day today. This is my Dear Jane on Acid quilt. I don’t like the look of the Dear Jane quilt. My sewing friends were doing it and it seemed like quite a trial and tribulation to them. They still aren’t done. They are ignoring it for now. One weekend in March 2008 I was snowed in with my sewing machine and one of their Dear Jane books so I made some. But I didn’t want to have it be boring so I decided to make it brighter and wilder. I made a few blocks that weekend. (And then I got un-snowed in and went out to celebrate my freedom and met a guy and we all lived happily ever after.) I haven’t done much with them since then.
I made the top row today. I have no interest in making the teeny tiny applique blocks in this pattern. I will pick and choose the ones I want to make. Doing that also lets me say things like, “Gee, I don’t know why you guys had such a hard time with these blocks. These are simple!” Then I have to duck flying rotary cutters.
I was supposed to be in VA judging a ride so I had scheduled last Thursday, Friday, and today off. When the ride got canceled I decided to work Thursday and Friday but kept today off as a mental health day.
First, I took my iPad and my computer to family therapy at the Apple store since they refused to speak to each other. After an hour session we found out that the iPad has deep rooted, unresolved issues that mean that it refuses to charge while connected to the computer but has relented and will now talk to the computer enough to sync files.
Then I went to a movie just so I could eat the pretzel bites and cheese at the movie theater.
I stopped by a quilt store hoping for some inspiration for my next project. What about all those UFOs in your closet, you ask. Blah, blah, blah, I can’t hear you! I wasn’t inspired though so I don’t have a plan for sewing day tomorrow. I may be working on UFOs.
I went to the library to return a bag of books and pick up some more. I was in the mood for light and fluffy books.
Then, I came home and booked our flights for our fall vacation!
We are going to ….. drumroll…….
LISBON, PORTUGAL!
Why Lisbon? Why not? We were looking at a map of hotels for one chain and clicked on Lisbon. It looked nice. We’ve never been there. We went back and forth for months on Lisbon vs. Venice. As soon as we’d settle on one the SO would go waffling back to the other. But it is all settled now. Lisbon it is.
It is cheaper to get there and to stay there. The flight isn’t as long. The more we looked at Venice the more it just didn’t seem to be “us”. Lisbon just felt better!
The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin – This book scared me because it is often compared to Eat Pray Love which I hated. But this book doesn’t whine like that one did. This is a self-deprecating look at what happens if you try out a lot of advice about how to be happier. The author isn’t miserable. She has a fairly happy life but she feels like she isn’t taking the time to appreciate it properly. She gives herself a few goals every month to try to make her life better. Some work out and some don’t.
Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay – This novel takes place in the fantasy kingdom of Kitan which is very similar to Tang Dynasty China. When a general dies, his second son spends his two years of mourning burying the bones left by one of his father’s final battles. The bones are in a no man’s land between two kingdoms so they have been left unburied. Tai moves there with the ghosts and buries the bones. Soldiers from each of the kingdoms bring him supplies in honor of what he is doing for their dead. When his mourning years are done he is shocked to be given a gift from the neighboring kingdom. He is given 250 high bred horses from the queen. Each one of these horses is worth a fortune. To be given 250 is unprecedented. Now he must figure out how to stay alive and use his new political power in the imperial court.
I enjoyed this book. It is very complicated with multiple plot lines. It is literary fiction which is not my usual reading material but Guy Gavriel Kay has interesting characters like politically astute courtesans, scheming politicians, drunk poets, and manipulative relatives to keep the plot moving.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender – The young heroine of this novel learns that she can taste the emotions of the people who make her food. She can also tell where it was made and the dispositions of the farmers involved. This started out in the familiar territory of such books as Like Water for Chocolate. Then it got weird.
I was reading along with half my mind on the conversation in the car when I did a mental double take. “Did I just read that?” I went back a few pages and yes, I was correct in what I thought I read. I don’t want to tell the plot twist because the interesting part is that you don’t see this coming at all. I didn’t really like the book overall but it is definitely unique!
The Queen’s Governess by Karen Harper – This is the fictionalized story of Kat Ashley who was a lady in waiting of Anne Boleyn. When Anne was to be executed Kat was charged with protecting her child Elizabeth. She was established as her governess and spent her life as a close adviser. This was a nice look at Tudor history from the view of the people around them. The author includes excerpts from letters of Queen Elizabeth including pleas to get her servants out of the Tower of London when she was still a disinherited princess.
Besides reading this week I’ve been watching the movie version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Review here. I’ve also been listening to podcasts about books. I just found Books On The Nightstand and also started listening to NPR’s book podcast again. The only problem with these is that you need to have paper handy to write down recommendations while driving!
I’m supposed to be on my way to VA right now to judge a trail ride this weekend. It got canceled and I’m sad about that but I’m very glad that I won’t be spending the weekend working in this heat. It would be very melty. (They didn’t cancel because of the heat. These folks are crazy that way.)
Here’s how melty it is here. I’m greeted by this every night when I come home. My stevia plant has sad leaves.
After I water it by the next morning it has happy leaves again.
I haven’t been taking Freckles jogging because of the heat. I may risk my own life to go out in this but I won’t take the dog. The dog needs to go though since she has enough energy to stay up all night and chase the cat. We got up early today and headed off to the woods. I tried to run but when I passed the dog and was dragging her along I realized we had a problem. She apparently has more sense than me. We walked instead. She was right. I was sweating like crazy at 7:00 AM in the woods. Yep, glad I’m not going to be in the woods all weekend. My new workout mantra should be “What Would Freckles Do?” I’ve decided that my 5K in Atlanta next month will definitely be a run/walk affair.
Because this weekend’s ride got canceled I got picked up to judge a ride in AL around Halloween. They mentioned in passing that there was a costume contest. That sealed it for me. I need to take some costumes too that I can judge in and not scare the horses. I have until October to find some good ones!
I’ve had the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie in my Netflix queue ever since I heard about it. It just recently became available and it is now available to watch instantly! Major fangirl geekiness ensued.
I watched it last night. My review will have major book and movie spoilers so I’m putting it below the break in case you don’t want to know or just don’t care.
The poor thing has that name because I found that I have a strange collection of incredibly ugly fabric in my blue bin. I was trying to get rid of some. Here’s an example. This had to come from a swap. I know I didn’t give money for it. Surfers going past purple and teal palm trees. It looks much better cut up into pieces!
This quilt is a favorite of Hurricane Riley. He had to be sent outside anytime I worked on it or he’d be jumping in the middle of it and spinning over and over. I couldn’t make him stop.
It doesn’t have a set destination. It will end up as a charity quilt.
That is a statement of fact. It is not a passing fancy. It is not an affectation. You know the scenes in movies when the heroine is in a dark room and the monster sneaks up silently right behind her? She realizes that it is right there when she can hear it breathing just over her shoulder. She is all tense and has her eyes closed because she can just barely hold herself together if she doesn’t see it. That’s me when there is a baby in a room.
I don’t interact with them. I don’t look at them. It isn’t that I don’t CHOOSE to look at them. I physically can not MAKE myself look at them without supreme force of will. Just knowing that there is a baby in a room puts me on the edge of a panic attack.
My brother’s wife had a baby recently. It has been her major goal in life to do this. I told her before she ever got pregnant to realize that I would not have anything to do with any future offspring until they are older. It isn’t personal. It is the way I’m wired. She understood. I called her the night before her scheduled c-section and told her goodbye and that I’d see her in a few years. She laughed.
If I had my way I wouldn’t attend family functions for a while. But she had the kid right before the 4th of July. My dad and the SO are major pyromaniacs who look forward to this all year. They were not going to miss the excuse to blow stuff up so we had to go up there.
It was awful. I am perfectly willing to mind my own business and talk to the grown ups. I am not standing in the middle of a room screaming, “Oooooh icky! Get it away!!!!” However this is not acceptable around babies for some reason. People feel a need to wave it around in your face.
The parents of the child were fine. My SIL is totally disillusioned with the whole idea of parenthood it seems and had almost as little to do with her baby as I did. It is not going well and certainly isn’t anything like she had always dreamed. NICU, tube feeding, now refusing to nurse, screaming for hours if made to eat, etc. The baby was quiet while it was at my parents’ so she took the time to be far away.
My brother brought it over to me once. He said, “This is your niece.” Then he added sarcastically, “She’s thrilled to meet you.” I added in the same tone, “The feeling’s mutual.” That cracked us both up. Of course my mother came rushing with the camera to take a picture of the historic first meeting. I instinctively held up my hand to make bunny ears but almost flipped her off instead. I got my hand back under control in time but that made my brother and I laugh harder. I’m sure there will be several pictures of us looking ever so happy over the baby.
I always thought that I take too many pictures. I was wrong. I’ve never seen so many pictures taken. There were both sets of grandparent paparazzi there and my SIL’s brother and his wife and one year old. Everything was photo worthy. The one year old ate a hamburger. She was probably blinded by all the flashes going off. My brother kept muttering, “It’s not like you’re never going to see her eat again.” My mother took as many pictures of the kid she wasn’t related to as the one she was.
Poor Freckles had to deal with the mobile child. She kept trying to put funnels on Freckles’ head like a hat. She looked at the kid like she was obviously nuts. Freckles learned quickly to jump up on a couch if she saw the kid coming.
My mother believes that most everything I do is just to cause trouble and to “be difficult.” So of course she brought the baby over and sat next to me and ordered me to touch it. She told me that I was crushing my SIL’s feeling by not playing with it. I looked at my SIL. She just seemed very relieved not to have a baby at that moment. Then my mother touched me with the kid. Remember the movie scene from above? I jumped straight up and yelped. Involuntary response. I fled the house for the front porch and stayed there until the baby was gone.
I didn’t have to see it again thankfully. But this morning my passive-aggressive mother had a conversation with Freckles that I could just “happen” to overhear. “You’re a good dog. Everybody likes you. Everybody pets you. (She goes through a whole list of everyone who petted her this weekend). Jason petted you even though your mommy won’t pet his kid. Blah, blah, blah….” Maybe she didn’t really say blah, blah, blah but I tuned her out.
The SO wants to go back for Thanksgiving. At least I have 4 months to psych myself up for this again.
It is time for the Monday roundup of what I read this week hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee – Hoarding is something that I just don’t understand. I have the opposite problem. I hate to have too much stuff around. My grandparents qualified as hoarders though.
I remember when I was little that you could do into their basement and walk around on the paths through the stuff. Those paths were eventually filled in so now you can get to the furnace only. No one has been able to get into their attic in my lifetime. They have rooms full of crap. My mother and her brother don’t have this stuff obsession but my aunt and her daughter do. It is going to be like an archeological dig to clean out that house when my grandfather dies. My mother is concerned because she can see her sister wanting to go through every paper to make sure nothing is missed that might be useful someday. I think if it has been buried for 30 years then we can all assume that it is possible to live without it.
The book talks about what causes people to hoard possession or animals, what to do about it, and the effects on family members. It was a very interesting look into a psychological phenomenon that I don’t know all that much about.
Showdown by Tilly Bagshawe – This is a romance set in the worlds of Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse racing. It is fairly standard stuff – unrequited love, jealousy run wild, and a jerk of a male vet. Why do I keep finding these books with the male vet theme? LOL.
It was a slow week for me. I’m puttering through a few things but there has been a lot of visiting instead of reading.
I’m reading a book called THE HAPPINESS PROJECT by Gretchen Rubin. I’m only partway through but one thing that struck me was her idea that she should work on being herself. That meant not trying to force herself to be interested in things that she thought she should be interested in and to embrace the things she did like even if she was embarrassed about them.
I understand that feeling. I’m not into stuff that the “cool kids” like. I started making a list:
1. I like 80s pop music and perky music in general. If I can’t dance or run to it I’m not very interested. I’m never going to develop an interest in angsty alternative music.
2. I like light fluffy books that I read for entertainment. I don’t particularly care about the classics. Melville and Dickens bore me to tears.
3. I like blogging. That probably seems perfectly normal to anyone reading this but if you tell muggles that you blog they tend to look at you funny.
4. Vegetarianism also makes people look at you with grave concern.
5. Letterboxing is fun if difficult to explain to people without sounding totally goofy.
6. I don’t have television service and I would fight tooth and nail to prevent ever getting it again. Seriously weird to most people.
7. I’m never going to care about opera or most classical music.
8. I’ll never be a person who manages to look all coordinated and put together when I’m running errands. No matter what Stacey and Clinton say it is easier to put on put on shorts than nice slacks.
I’m sure that I’ll come up with many more things that could go on this list.
