Unintended Hiatus (April 2016)

((written in April - much has happened since))


*peers around corner* Hello?

Ahem. Hi, guys. It's only been....what.....nine months since I've posted anything?

Gosh. I could have had a baby in that time. (Don't worry, I didn't. And won't.)

I feel like so much has happened, and yet in some areas nothing much at all has happened. So consider this a quick recap of the last nine months, in non-linear order.

1. From September to January, I broke out of the non-dating rut and was seeing a guy for a while. This is after not dating anyone for 4 1/2 years, so it was kind of a big deal for me. To make a long story short: I liked him (a lot), he liked me (so he said), he realized he had a bunch of emotional baggage/issues, asked for a 'break', and I haven't seen/heard from him since New Year's.

So. There's that.

2. I have a new protégé at the barn: an 8-year-old Quarter horse named Due. He's a special case because he was given some very cursory ground training as a young'un and then was left in a pasture with no further training. The people I ride with bought him and his father (the latter had had some professional training put into him as a 3-year-old but then was put out to pasture as well) back in August or September. We had a bit of a rocky start because he didn't know ANYTHING and was incredibly reactive--there was a short time when he responded to anything he didn't understand with shooting backwards as quickly as he could go. This resulted in me nearly getting yanked off my feet several times and even (to my shame) screaming hysterically at him at one point. Needless to say, it was not one of my better moments.

As the months have gone by, here are some of the before/after scenarios:

Going from shooting backwards uncontrollably at sudden motions ----> tossing his head slightly;

Not being able to walk in a straight line under saddle ----> following the wall;

Very little control on lunge line ----> walk, trot, lope, and changing directions with rollbacks;

Not wanting his feet handled ----> calmly standing for extended periods of time while he gets shod;




Et cetera. Two weeks ago I went with two ladies to a Clinton Anderson clinic in Memphis and we all came back determined to be more systematic with training in general. We're working through the Fundamentals (the first level) right now and are making charts to keep track of all the horses' progress. I will say, even over the last week they have all responded very well to having a thorough, consistent approach--especially Due. He's the kind of horse that would raise his head and hold it there while he gets worked, but now every time he rests he drops his head and looks far more relaxed. I love it.




3. Art-wise my goal this has been to get one large drawing done per month. So far we have:


January: Car bumper for work (every time we get a bank loan we put a bumper sticker on the car)
February: Hand-lettering practice (playing around with pen and ink)
March: Watercolor of horse and rider (started off as watercolor practice for me but I ended up selling it)
April: Beatles commission (for Will--album art for a school project); tree commission (for a guy who is revamping the logo for his business)




I started out the year hoping for a few more commissions, but not counting on getting any soon. As soon as I started posting artwork more consistently I had several people approach me about doing commissions - a girl that I volunteer with wants a drawing of her horse, and a lady from church wants a drawing of one of their calves.




The only issue with commissions is that it takes time away from working on stuff that *I* want to do. XD But that's the nature of the beast...




4. Photography is still around but definitely in hobby status right now. Anymore I just like to show up places where I know interesting things will be happening and snap pictures. My favorite place to shoot lately has been at local fox hunts, because everyone shows up in their classy English duds and the horses look amazing. (No, they don't actually hunt foxes, they just run the dogs and occasionally they'll flush out a coyote or a deer)

Twenty-Fourteen: A Recap (Part 3)

October 2014

As mentioned before: my Aunt Amy and I had been talking back and forth about plans post-ranch, and she suggested (especially since her boss had offered the job) that I could apply to work at her office. My life motto at the time was 'well, why not?' (one good thing about the summer is that it seemed to make me a little more daring), so I sent in the application, had an interview over the phone, and was looking for a place to live. Amy or I would find a place online, and she would go check it out for me. By the time I was ready to leave the ranch on October 5^th, we still hadn't found a place. So I decided to drive to her place, stay for 2-3 days, finish up the application process, and try to find a place to live. That didn't give us much time, but it was at least something.

Wonder of wonders: the day after I drove there we found a little quadplex about 5 minutes from the office (I finally got pictures of it around Christmas).

Looking in the front door...

Kitchen area!

Living room....

There's a fireplace too!

Upstairs...

There are windows to open so that all the warm air will heat up the upstairs

Mine bed

The "craft room" (currently it's littered with fabric and the makings of a quilt)

The next two weeks were very fast paced: I drove home on the 9^th, spent the next week and a half packing, and my parents helped me move on the 20^th. (Happy birthday to me…) Mom and Dad stayed for the remainder of that week helping me move in and such, and on the 27^th I started working for State Farm.

The learning curve for State Farm has been a fairly sharp one. The first week was completely overwhelming, of course, but as of December 17^th I was officially licensed in Property and Casualty and am becoming more confident in what I can do at the office.

I will say that initially, when my aunt mentioned possibly working for State Farm, my reaction was 'ugh'. The idea of sitting for 8-9 hours a day staring at a computer screen didn't sound like my idea of fun, especially after spending most of my working life in moderately to extremely active jobs. So I thought that I would give it a year, and if I didn't like it at the end of the year then I could do something else.

But now I'm not so sure that I could uproot myself so quickly after doing so once. And the job is a lot more interesting than I initially gave it credit. There's a lot to know, and a lot to do, and each day brings something different to the table. I'm discovering that I really like the area—it reminds me a bit of home, though for some reason the first question I get when people learn that I've just moved is 'have you adjusted to the culture shock yet?' (If 'culture shock' is measured in 'lack of good dentistry', then no, I haven't quite gotten over that yet.)

The job is sedentary, yes, but I've been making up for that in walking 4-5 times a week. Usually I can get in at least two miles over my lunch break, and if the sun is still up at 5 I can go to a little state park nearby to squeeze in another mile or two. I've found a place to ride horses, and the owners are incredibly nice and welcoming people--basically they say 'come over and ride whenever you want whatever you want!' and it's great. There is also a little mare on one of my walking routes, and I would desperately like to find the owner (partially to see if they would mind my playing with her, and partially to find out why she still has one foot shod while the rest are barefoot. Anyway.).

It's a little strange living alone, to be sure, though after the initial shock of quietness it's really not too bad. It's nice to be able to come home, cook a little dinner, work on some projects, and shut everything down by 9 PM. The only issue is the possibility of turning into a hermit…but I'm so peopled-out by the end of the day that it's nice to not have to interact with anyone (unless I go ride) On Thursdays I've been invited to attend a women's Bible study, and most weekends I spend cleaning the house or cooking for the rest of the week (I try to cook ahead so I don't have to worry about lunch prep) or going for a hike or plugging away at whatever project I happen to be working on.

Speaking of projects, I've begun what I'm informally referring to as 'the year-long project': a quilt that is completely hand-pieced. It's in a hummingbird pattern, and based off of an antique quilt top that my mom is currently finishing. I didn't have the actual pattern, so I drew one looking at pictures and working off of the measurements Mom gave me. All the fabrics are somewhat old-fashioned: small floral prints, larger floral prints, polka dots, muted solids, etc. I've mostly been cutting out the pieces for now…but it's going to be something of an undertaking. The biggest thing to remember is to not get in a hurry, and to realize that it's probably going to take the better part of the year just to piece it. I've thought about making it queen-size…or maybe just a lap throw to start. We'll see. XD

And that just about brings us up to date…I'll try to blog when I think of it. I haven't been taking any pictures lately…to be honest, when it's just me and I don't have a subject (usually it was the dog, or a horse, or people at the ranch) every picture I take seems kind of dull. It doesn't help that 90% of the time for the past month it's been gloomy, rainy, cloudy, and cold out. I'm not complaining, mind—but just letting y'all know why there are no pictures.

With that said, keep a weather eye out, and I'll try to come back before another 8 months lapse again!

Twenty-Fourteen: A Recap (part 2)

May-October: The Ranch

This next bit is probably going to be incredibly long…so please bear with me.

After staying with Kas for a night, she asked me if I could pick up an espresso machine on my way to the ranch. I agreed to this scheme. That morning I had also gotten wind that one of the girls I had worked with last year was flying in to Denver that morning, but she didn't have a ride. So I volunteered to pick her up. At the time that seemed like an innocent bit of good-will. It turned into a fiasco of driving to the wrong terminal, having to leave the airport and come all the way back around the get to the right terminal, trying to find her, finally managing to pick her up, and THEN going to get the espresso machine.

The good part was that we stopped for late breakfast/early lunch with Josiah, the videographer from last year. He had driven up from Texas about a week before. Once he heard that I was driving my own car, he looked out the window from Chick-fil-A and asked which one was mine. Cue the following exchange:

Me: See that dirty green car? Mine's the silver one right next to it.

J: Oh. *pause* See that dirty green car? That one's mine.

Apparently he had been caught in a dust storm on the way from Texas, and what with the snow and rain and mud on the ranch his car was looking a little worse for wear.

But anyway….moving on to the ranch! We arrived sometime in the early afternoon, and all the way up the mountain I could feel myself getting more and more excited to see the ranch. After all, the last time I had seen it, the place was half-buried under a mudslide. But I knew that people had been working on it all winter. Surely the place was looking better than it did.

When we finally pulled in the front gate…I almost felt like crying. The place looked better, it really did. But I knew that they needed to have the place open in a week, and all I could see was mud and heavy equipment and patches of melting snow. It looked like a construction zone. (The place was cleaned up in time for opening, but the very first impression was a little depressing.)

As a wrangler, the vast majority of the first week was spent on trail maintenance. One memorable moment of walking all over the mudslide, and then walking up a steep trail trying to keep up with Nick (the head wrangler) and nearly dying in the process sticks out very vividly in my memory. The rest of the time we were picking rocks from the new arena—that is, the new arena area, since the arena hadn't been built yet and we wranglers were going to build it over the summer—and getting horses from the lower pastures and helping the farriers and basically spending a great deal of time doing a lot of hard, manual labor. It was during this time that our wrangler group had to get to know each other and decide whether or not we would work well together.

Here are the wranglers, by the way!

L-R, back row: Andrew, Terry (honorary), Austin, Casey, Derek, EB, me, Larry (honorary)
L-R, front row: Claire (honorary), Gabrielle, Tori, Sara (women's work crew boss), Levi (ranch kid)

Can you tell that we have a hard time taking pictures of just wranglers? XD

The one face that I sorely missed was that of EB. 

EB and Copper

 

Me, Gabrielle, EB, Tori (otherwise known as 'EB and the triplets')

She's a few months younger than me, but for some reason it seems like she's much older and wiser (To be fair: though we're the same age, she's spent her years at a much higher RPM than me). I spent a lot of time in 2013 sitting quietly in her workshop and watching her work with leather and talking about people and life…so we became rather good friends. I still count her as a very dear, close friend. So when I heard that she wasn't coming back in 2014 I was pretty devastated. The first reaction, if I'm very honest, was 'if EB isn't there, then I don't want to go'. Thankfully I quickly came to my senses and decided that it would still be good if she wasn't there.

The summer wouldn't be complete without a description of the horses on my string, so here goes.

Chester-pony

Chase (part Bashkir Curly, a horse that has kinky/wavy hair)

Grace (aka Brunhilde, as I affectionately called her)

There was a bay gelding without a name, but I called him 'Patchy' due to some hairless spots on his face and neck. He started off as a major thorn in my side, but by the end of the summer I was starting to like him. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of him. :/

There's so much that I can say about the summer…to keep everything from dragging out too terribly long I'll try to condense it into the general impression left on me.

I started off feeling very optimistic: I was doing something I loved (that is, working with horses), with people that I liked, and was having a great time doing it. I really fell in love with the horses on my string, which probably wasn't the greatest idea but there you have it. I also came to know the horses in the guest string so well that I could tell who was who at just a glance; I knew their temperaments and little quirks and what set them off and what calmed them down. I was learning an immense amount about riding and training and absolutely reveled in it.

I had also become friends with everyone in our wrangler group—some better than others, of course—and had struck up what seemed to be a great friendship with one of the guys. And that, so I thought, would be that.

About a month into all this, I realized that I was developing slightly more than friendly feelings towards this guy. And I hated it, because (a) there's a 'no-purple' rule (i.e., no dating) and (b) I really wasn't sure if this guy was a good person to feel that way towards. So I tried not to worry too much about it.

A couple of weeks later—well, a long story short, we had something of a falling out. I recovered from the incident and thought it was all okay. But one thing led to another and my interactions with this guy for the rest of the summer turned into one misunderstanding after another. I let it affect how I felt, and spent several weeks feeling like a dark cloud was hanging over me. I tried not to let it affect how I interacted with guests, but I started withdrawing more and more from staff: when work was done I would retreat to make phone calls or write in my journal or draw, and end up not going to supper or to the extra-curricular events most nights.

In short, I allowed the summer to become rather isolated and hellish. There's no other way to put it. I found out slowly that it wasn't just me feeling that way—some of the other girls, who I had withdrawn from partly because we weren't around each other much and partly because I didn't try to see them in my time off, said that the tendency to isolate was same for a lot of people. By the middle to the latter half of the summer, most of the people who were staying all the way through were feeling burnt out and beaten down, like they couldn't wait to go home. This was a huge change from last year, where I felt like I didn't want to leave.

There was a lot of good stuff that happened, a lot of funny things, a lot of sad things, and a lot of bad stuff. Last summer was simultaneously the best, most difficult, most stretching, most strengthening time of my life. I made some great friends, and turned down some potentially great friendships. I made a lot of mistakes, and learned a lot about how people work. I learned a LOT about horses and discovered how badly I miss them when I can't be around them for twelve hours a day. All these lessons were dearly bought.

But at the end of the summer, it was easy to leave. I don't say that like it's a good thing—but I was so ready to move on and have my own space again and to not be living out of the contents of a suitcase.

Oh yes, and before I forget: in September, I cut all of my hair off.

I had been thinking about it for a long time, so it wasn't exactly a spur-of-the-moment thing. I used to say that I would never cut all my hair off, and then I started thinking about it, and mused, and made a secret Pinterest board, and thought some more, for well over a year. In retrospect, considering how the summer had gone, there was something a little symbolic about getting rid of the hair. It was almost as if I was tossing away all of the issues and stupidity of the year with it.

I've ended up LOVING it. Ease of management aside, I think it makes me look older. It seemed that the majority of the time people assumed that I was 18 or 19, and when one is almost 23 that's a little depressing. Now people ask if I'm still in college, so I guess that's an improvement. 

Tada.....

For most of the summer, I had been working out negotiations with my aunt for deciding whether or not I would be moving to northern Arkansas to work with her. That brings us to the month of October…

(stay tuned for part 3!)

Twenty-Fourteen: A Recap (part 1)

The last time I updated this blog, it was April. In the 8 months that have passed since then, it's something of an understatement to say that a lot has happened.

Nevertheless…a LOT has happened.

With that in mind, I'm going to break this down into somewhat chronological order. There will be some criss-crossing back and forth across timelines, but it shouldn't get too confusing.

April-May: ranch preparation

I had applied to work at Wind River Ranch again for the entire summer as a wrangler. Since getting the job, and deciding that I would drive there myself instead of flying/taking a train, I spent most of the time beforehand working and getting my car ready for such a journey. At this point I was still working at the gym 6 afternoons a week and cleaning houses in the AM. (I finished up a 6-month weight-lifting regimen and a Couch-to-5K program around the end of April as well—something I really miss is true weightlifting. But oh well.)

On May 3^rd, my little brother got married. It was a very, very small occasion—originally only the parents were invited, but I managed to finagle my way in under the pretense that they needed a photographer. (The finagling was only just.)

Look at the happy couple!

After the wedding—the day of, if one wants to be particular about it—I drove to my aunt and uncle's house in northern Arkansas. The plan was to stay at her house for about a week, then drive down to Texas to see some friends that I hadn't seen for 4 years, and then drive from Texas to Colorado. I had been on road trips before, but never by myself. I remember being pretty excited at the prospect—unfortunately it seems to have awoken a strange desire to see the United States in its entirety by car. We'll see what happens with that.

While in Arkansas, my aunt and I went to Crystal Bridges (this fantastic museum comprising just of American art), the Bluebird Factory, I shadowed her to work a couple of days…the week ended up stretching to almost 10 days just because we were having so much fun. During this time I was offered a job (jokingly, I thought) by my aunt's boss. It turns out he wasn't joking…but I didn't realize this until some time later.

Then I drove to northern Texas to see Christa and Ashlee!

I've known these two for quite a long time—back in 2010 we had 'The Great Illinois-Texas Transfer' where they flew up to stay with me for a week, and then I flew to Texas to stay with them for the following week. I was only able to stay for a couple of days this time, but it was wonderful. 

Also, here's a picture of me on a longhorn bull. (Or maybe it was a steer.)

I got up very early on a Tuesday (or maybe a Wednesday? The days blurred together) and made the 15-hour drive from Christa and Ashlee's to a town outside of Denver, Colorado. My Google maps sent me up through Amarillo, across the panhandle of Oklahoma, and through the southern deserty-bits of Colorado. It was one of those things that, at the time, seemed terribly exciting (except for the bits across the desert—that got a little boring) but in retrospect was kind of crazy.

I think that doing something like that on my own, with no one else to rely on in the moment (sure, I could call people if I needed something, but I was the one who had to do the actual driving and keep myself awake through the long hours of flat desert) had an interesting effect on me. It increased my confidence in myself as a navigator (much of the trip I had to use a map because my phone didn't have service) and made me realize that I could actually do these things by myself. I mean, I knew in my mind that I could do it. But until I had actually done it, there was nothing to confirm that mental knowledge.

So it was, one very long day later, that I ended up at Kas' house outside of Denver. From her house to the ranch is about 1 ½ hours, and having a place to recoup before going to said ranch was indescribable. I also knew that she wouldn't be going back that summer except for visits, and it was really nice to be able to catch up before plunging into the ranch activity.

(Part 2 will be loaded with pictures, fret not!)