What's Up Wednesday

You guys! So much stuff is going on! I went out and socialized THREE nights in a row (I'm still exhausted) AND I've been riding! But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back to Thursday.
My mom and I had tickets to see the Bodyguard in Hartford (the closest "city" to where I live, about 40 minutes away). I wasn't super excited to go because I was going to miss wine book club and the weather was kind of iffy. They weren't sure if it was going to rain or snow. It wound up raining where I live, but snowing in Hartford. Mom decided she didn't want to go, so I was able to meet up with the book club girls instead. We met this month at a local restaurant for $5 martinis and book discussions. We read The Wife Between Us which at first I wasn't into, but it has a fun twist in the middle. I really liked it. Not what you'd call "literature" but it was entertaining and a quick read. Reviews were mixed in the group. I'm finding that the psychological books that I really like seem to not go over well with some of the group. The psych major in me keeps trying to analyze that....
On Friday, a friend's husband and his band were playing at a local pub. The restaurant was closed for a long while, and just recently reopened under new owners. I was excited to go and check it out. Only catch was, the band didn't start until 9:30. I'm super old, so that was pretty late to be going out after working all day. I made myself keep busy until it was time to get showered and changed. It was a good call. We had a ton of fun and the bad was surprisingly great.

But holy crap, I am OLD and Saturday came early. I'm not going to pretend like I got up early and was super productive. NOPE. I slept till almost NINE (which was glorious) and then made myself a delicious breakfast.

It was a lovely morning honestly. The best part? We actually saw the SUN! It was only for like an hour, but it still counts.

Obviously, I had to ride my horses. Duh. I made them wear pink in honor of the upcoming spring weather. I did Jampy first. He had a nice lunge up at the scary end of the ring which was maybe a little too much for his tiny brain...

But once the crazies were out, he was actually pretty civilized. We had a nice ride, and he even let me use most of the ring. That shouldn't be a big deal, but it is. Can't teach an old dog new tricks in this case!

Rio's been a little off, so I gave him a light lunge to see where he's at and then tack walked.

I just really love getting to sit on him. Feels like home up there. We didn't ride that long though because true to form lately, it started raining. After pony time, it was off to shower and then out for the THIRD NIGHT IN A ROW! Seriously this weekend was like reliving college, but with slightly less drinking. And much earlier last calls because CT.
We were meeting up to celebrate my friend Katie's 30th birthday. Her request was that we go to a brewery that she has not yet been to and that allows dogs. Her sister, Ashley, is an expert party planner (seriously, check out her blog, and also you may remember my photos from Galentine's Day, and last year's Kentucky Derby, all her there!) so she found us not one but THREE breweries to check out that were relatively close to each other. We had a great time, and since Ashley brought us all the food we could want, it was a pretty inexpensive outing.

The dogs had fun too. Our final stop had a couch and the pooches were more than happy to curl up and nap on there. So cute. I love the idea of being able to bring your pup out at night. I left mine home because sometimes they poop in new places... #awkward. I didn't get home until close to 1 and wanted to spend some time with my pups before bed, so it was a ridiculously late night for this elderly woman. Needless to say, I wasn't up early Sunday either. No loss though since it was pouring buckets. And would continue to pour buckets ALL DAY. No riding, womp womp. On the bright side, I made more progress in my cleaning out the hoarder's hovel (aka my house) so that was nice and productive. The veterans picked up my 20 bags of donations on Tuesday. I'm hoping to finish weeding out over the next couple of weeks and have them back one more time. And then hopefully have a nice, cleaned out, well organized house! (Hahahahaha! We shall see.)
Ugh, and then it was Monday again. BUT, the bright side here is that it's been in the fifties with minimal rain ALL week so far! I've ridden Jampy every day after work this week, and Rio's been getting lunged. He's looking a little better too, so that's good news!

Jampy is still TERRIBLE in the dark, so we haven't really gotten much accomplished. I figure after pretty much the whole winter off though, he's not fit nor strong enough for real work anyway. At least we're gaining some fitness while we battle the shadows. And the clocks change soon, so we will have daylight rides in no time! I'm just hoping super hard that the snow stays away and spring appears soon. Friday may or may not bring a snow storm so who knows what will happen?
And that's what's up this Wednesday! Nothing terribly exciting, but I did get to have a lot of fun both with and without my horses this past week. What's up with you? Do anything fun this week/weekend? Did you ride?! Let's chat in the comments!

Truthful Tuesday

Heh.... So you all know how I've been hunting a rat right? It comes in my barn. Chews on some wood. Poops a little. And hides from me. He's not welcome. I don't want him in there. So I've set traps. I can't do poison for obvious reasons. I caught one with the traps a few months ago and was hopeful there weren't more. There's not really much evidence to suggest there are many. But alas, there was at least one more. And I can't catch the little jerk. He even licked all the Nutella off the traps and somehow only sprung one of them. And he didn't have the decency to get caught in the one he sprung. But that's not my confession... Oh no. My confession is that when reloading the traps on Sunday, I managed to snap my own finger. I guess that's my karma for trying to kill a semi-innocent animal. Freakin' hurt I'll tell you! But I still reset the trap. Guess I didn't learn my lesson.
 

30 Things....

There's a blog hop going around that I thought might be fun to jump on. The purpose is to get to know each other a little better and maybe learn some things about us bloggers outside of our horses (or maybe just some horsey facts from long ago because horses have been most of my life). It would be super fun if you all played along too! I'm sorry I'm not sure who to credit for the hop, I saw it on The $900 Facebook Pony, but I know Amanda hopped on it from another blog and I've already forgotten which it was. Feel free to comment if it was you or if you know who! So without further ado... Here are 30 things you may or may not already know about me.

1. I have ZERO natural riding talents. None. Every little bit of skill and knowledge I have now came from lots of hard work, tears, frustration, and some really patient instructors. My old trainer once acknowledged she was surprised I stuck with it because I really wasn't a very good beginner.

2. Along the same lines as 1... I'm not naturally athletic. I tried dance (ballet and tap), gymnastics, and swimming as a kid. The only thing I stuck with was riding. Though I can swim enough to save myself hopefully thanks to all the lessons back in the day.

3. I've always possessed a pretty decent side eye

4. When I was in elementary school, our town library held a raffle for all the kids in town. You could earn 1 entry for each book you read that summer. I read 52 books and won the raffle! It was for a set of wooden blocks that built a pretty legit castle and a set of little metal medieval people and horses. It was amazing.

5. I graduated 6th in my class from (public) high school, but since our class was so small, I wasn't in the top 10%.

6. I've never really had a "squad" of friends. I have a handful of close friends but they don't all necessarily know each other.

7. My best friend and I have known each other since I was in fourth grade and she was in fifth. We met through riding but she doesn't ride any longer.

8. Bestie and I are total opposites. She's outgoing, loud, tall, and blond. I'm more introverted, quieter, short and brunette.

9. I graduated from Skidmore College with a degree in Pyschology. I pretty much knew from the start I would not go into that field, but I really enjoyed learning about it.

10. I'm not an overly picky eater, but I have a list of things I try to avoid as best I can: swiss cheese, eggplant, olives, sausage, and onions. The first four I just don't like, but onions don't like me.

11. I like tomatoes, but not so much ketchup or red sauce. I don't dislike either entirely, but I don't seek them out. Unless we're talking pizza. Always say yes to pizza!

12. Despite my aversion to swiss cheese, I love most others. But if I eat too much, I will get a terrible headache. Evidently, that is a form of lactose intolerance.

13. I've owned 13 horses throughout my equine career thus far, but the most I've had at one time is 5. Usually I just have 1 or 2 simultaneously.

14. I have an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto's Disease. If you have to have one, it's the best one to have because all it does is kill your thyroid. Not that you want that, but it's controllable with a medication that's inexpensive and has basically no side effects.

15. I have two brothers. One is 3.5 years older than me (we share both parents) and the other is 7.5 years younger (we have different moms). We are absolutely nothing alike and share zero interests. But we all get along pretty well now that we're adults.

Pictured here with our dad at his wedding

16. Speaking of weddings, I have been in 4. The first I was a flower girl for my cousin when I was 4 or 5. The second I was the Maid of Honor for my first step mom when I was 7. They didn't have a real wedding party, so I was MOH and my older brother was the best man. Next was my older brothers wedding and I was a bridesmaid. The most recent was my dad's third wedding. It is Jewish tradition that both parents walk the groom down the aisle, but my dad's parents have passed. My older brother and I walked Dad down, and my little brother was his best man.

don't mind what's going on with my dress... it was windy!

17. My legs don't get tan. Ever. Even if I make an effort.

For the record, I am not wearing white stockings.

18. I hate running, but I have completed 7 half marathons and countless 5K's. I kind of enjoy races because runners are the nicest people on the planet. That's probably the only reason. My half PR is 2 hours 9 minutes and my 5K PR is 28 minutes and change. I can't do any of that anymore.

19. I give human traits to everything, be it horses, dogs, or vehicles. They all get names, and I'm usually very sad if I have to say good bye to any of them. You may already know this since I wrote an entire blog post about trading in my truck last year.

20. In college, I didn't have a minor, but I was two classes away from fulfilling the requirements for both an art minor and an English minor.

21. In high school, my favorite subjects were math and English. This is weird because usually it's math & science or English & history.

22. When I bought my house I was determined to not decorate it "horsey". I soon realized that horsey is who I am, and the entire house pretty much reflects that.

23. I will cry at a funeral for someone I didn't even know. They're just so sad!

24. Along those lines, I hate crying in public. I have a cold hearted reputation to uphold.

25. I love to laugh, and my favorite people are the ones that laugh with (or at) me whenever we're together.

26. I have toys all over my office.

27. I'm not really a night person, and definitely am not a morning person. I think I'm more of an afternoon person, but that doesn't seem to be a real thing.

28. The older I get, the more of a child I become. When I was a little kid, grown ups always commented on how mature I was. Jokes on them, because now that I'm a grown up, I laugh at fart jokes and have an office full of toys.

29. I sometimes wonder if I'm a failure because I chose to work for my family instead of pursuing a career on my own.

30.  I occasionally dream of being a stay at home horse/pug mom and just peddling my crafts to support us. Fortunately, I know this is not realistic, so it won't ever actually happen. Fear not my friends.

Phew! THIRTY! That literally took me four days to write. I'd love to see your thirty things too, so I hope you'll play along! Drop a link in the comments if you do! Did I leave anything out? Have any questions?

Thursday's Threads

Outfit DAY! It's back to winter here again... Might even snow later. Sheesh, mother nature is losing it I think. But, since it was 62 degrees when I got home from work yesterday, I obviously HAD to ride my horse last night! So you know what that means... Riding outfit today!

I really can't wait until it's light out in the evening so my photos don't look like this...

Helmet: Charles Owen AYR8

Greenie! Love this helmet so much.

Top: Eddie Bauer

There's an Eddie Bauer right next to the store where I get dog food, so I popped in there a couple weekends ago when I was passing by. They had 50% off clearance, so figured I should see what winter apparel was cheap. I found this adorable button down and couldn't leave it there. I like how it has two different plaids. I have a pair of boots (not riding boots!) that match the front perfectly. And we all know Jampy has a matching saddle pad to the backside.

Yep, he wore it last night! Not the polos though, because mud.

Belt: C4

Not surprised are you? Love me some C4. Anytime I think, hey I could use a belt to go with (insert theme here), C4 always seems to have me covered.

Breeches: George Morris Collection

These breeches fall around a 6/7 on the like scale. LOVE the colors since they're my farm colors. Like the details. But the fit is kind of meh. Like everything from this brand, the don't stay up and I get the saggy crotch. But they're green and have crowns all over them so that's definitely something.

Boots: TuffRider Regal
Spurs: Evo Equine
Spur Straps: Stacie Originals

I know you're tired of these. But it's muddy out. No new boots in the mud! PLUS I haven't ridden, so I'm not putting on new boots to go die. Nope. Sticking with these grippy knock arounds, thankyouverymuch.

So that's what I rode in last night! And now on to today's work outfit.

My mom and I have tickets to the local (ish) theater tonight and I wanted to wear something nice. But then I saw the weather report and decided to compromise. This is "nice enough" I think. Plus if it's icing and snowing out, I'm not driving 45 minutes into Hartford. Sorry mom. We'll get dinner instead locally.

Sweater: Olive and Oak

I had planned to wear this sweater with some black pants and my burgundy boots. But the black pants were not very heavy, and it's cold out so I switched it up a bit. I love the wine colored details on this sweater. Makes a kind of plain top a little more fun.

Belt: Mane Jane

This one's getting worn a lot lately! I never thought I'd wear so much red... I'm really not a red person, but I guess I'm becoming one?

Jeans: Lucky Brand

These aren't quite a perfect match with the sweater, but they're pretty close. They have frayed bottoms which I love for warmer days with cute little sneakers or sandals. You know, when you can be sockless. Frayed hems are ADORABLE sockless. I can't wait for those days...

Boots: Lucky Brand

You've seen these a ton this year I know. Truth is, I never switched my shoes out for winter, so I have only a few pairs of boots downstairs. I'm generally rushing in the morning because sometimes I'm bad at adulting. This results in me only wearing what's down stairs. Maybe something different next week? Time will tell...

Arm Party!
Lefty:

Lefty is donning this mildly creepy looking horse bracelet from Betsey Johnson. It's creepy, but I still like it.... Not sure what that says about me.

Righty:

Righty is wearing this stack of bracelets that I made. I really love this silk fabric. Wish I could find more to make a cuff to match!

That's what I'm wearing today! What do you have on? Any new riding stuff you want to mention? How's the weather where you are?

What's Up Wednesday

We're riding some kind of crazy weather roller coast here in the northeast. One minute it's raining, the next it's snowing, and very rarely, the sun might pop out. This weekend was pretty much all of the above.
But before we get into the weekend, enjoy these photos from my braiding job Thursday night. I hadn't done any braiding in quite awhile, so was really happy these turned out so nicely. Helps to have a great horse with a nice mane to work on.

 Also, check out this crazy piece of wonderful I found at the craft store this weekend:

It's a folding seam ripper! No more losing the cap and stabbing myself! Any of you that have to take out braids should definitely consider getting one of these. So smart!
Ok, now on to the weekend...
Saturday morning I got all the errands run early so I could do something with the horses and clean out the trailer. The ring was a sloppy mess, so riding wasn't really likely. But the one corner that gets the most sun was usable for lunging. It was still pretty wet, but it wasn't frozen at all, and the footing wasn't slippery or sticky. I think the horses were channeling their inner four year old splashing around in the puddles.

Flying Jampy!

Rio... definitely not flying.

They were WILD. Like bronco wild. Glad I opted to lunge and didn't decide to do a tack walk instead. Spring fever has arrived... in February. Maybe by April they'll be civilized?!

After lunging ponies, it was time to tackle the trailer tack room project. I already bored you all with those details yesterday so we'll just gloss over that... I did find this gem though:

This was my junior hunter's cooler. It has an interesting story. I saved up my money for a long while to buy this custom cooler (well not this exact one... you'll see why keep reading) when I got to Harrisburg for the first time. Back then these cost around $200. Well, I got this beauty at Harrisburg and sent it along with my horse and trainer to Washington while I went back home to go to school for a few days. Bud showed in the pro divisions as well as in my junior classes, so he always got to go ahead of me. Anyway, trainer was flatting Bud in the ring one night and someone grabbed the cooler from the rail. We never saw it again. I owned it for a grand total of a week and a half. All that hard saved money for nothing! (Listen, when you're 14 with no job, that's a lot of money!) I saved all year to get a new one at Harrisburg the next year. Only they had gone up in price to $350. I only had $200. I was telling the story to the nice owner at Personalized Products (where I'd bought it) and she felt so badly, she offered to sell me the new cooler at the old price. I thought that was really nice of her. Years later, this cooler got caught by the tractor and dragged through the mud. Thankfully it didn't rip or anything, but I had to have it dry cleaned. It shrunk from a size 80 to a 76. Womp womp. I keep it around because it's fit some of the little horses like Ducky and even Romey. I mean, this cooler and I have so much history, I could never get rid of it! Plus I lost Bud in college so his stuff is all pretty special to me. (Such a sap.)
Sorry for the tangent... back to the weekend! I was pretty pooped by the time I finished the trailer stuff. So I spent the rest of the evening hanging with the Pugs and watching the Olympics.

They were clearly excited about the games!

And then Sunday looked like this:

Gross. Fortunately it was pretty warm during the day, so the melting started immediately. Not fast enough to be able to do fun horsey things in the ring, but I'll take what I can get. Plus that actually left me the entire day to finish up the great closet purge of 2018. I tried on so many pairs of pants, I actually got chaffed. (Maybe they're all a little snug. shut up.) So many pants. It took the whole day. But it's DONE! I still have a dresser to go through, but the closet part is over at least. Thank goodness! I have the Veterans coming Tuesday to take all of the old stuff away. It feels so good to get stuff out of the house and support a great charity.
Monday it rained. Which was gross, but it helps get rid of the snow, so that part is nice. Of course it leaves mud. So much mud. Thankfully? It was super windy over night which helped dry things up. And yesterday? We had this:

Yep. 62 degrees! It took everything in me to go back to work after lunch. I wanted to stay home and work ponies. The ring was still pretty gross though, so I decided to adult responsibly and go back to work. When I got home it was still really sloppy, but I lunged them each a little in the one corner. Jampy was great, and not overly nuts. Rio looked pretty lame but I kind of think he was trying to avoid the puddles. He's so awkward that it's hard to tell when he's actually lame and when he's just confused as to where his feet should land. He also may still be a bit sore from his weekend antics. At 21, that stuff takes a toll!
Know what else happened last night? My Fama boots arrived! I wasn't expecting them because the tracking hasn't worked. I was in touch with them about it, and she was working on tracking them down. And then they just arrived! Woohoo!

The fit is a lot better this time. They're a bit snug, but they'll stretch, so I'm not worried about that. I think they could have been a smidge taller, but they're just fine. My only real complaint is that they did the toe wrong. I realized when they sent me pics that they hadn't put the tan crocodile leather on them, but I overlooked it because they're gorgeous. What I couldn't tell from the photos was that they made the toe pointy instead of square. I don't really like the pointy toe.

But seeing as to how they made these half price after the not fitting debacle, I'm not going to complain about it. They're gorgeous despite the toe, and the fit is so much better than last time. Plus, that green! Ah! SO PRETTY! They even started to soften up just in the few minutes I wore them around the house. I think they'll break in pretty quickly.

That's about it from here. What's up with  you this week? Did you get to ride? Show? Something else? Did you get new boots?! (I can't be the only one, can I?)