Truthful Tuesday: Winter Doldrums Edition

 

Well. It's February. Which means I've reached that feeling of "why won't winter end". Which is totally unfair really because it's barely just started. But we got a bunch of snow yesterday. The weekend was bitterly cold (Friday's real feel was 1 at the warmest point of the day). And well... I'm over it. All of it.

Photo taken at the start of the storm. 
We wound up with about 10 inches I think.

While I'm SUPER grateful to be able to board the horses for the winter, making the snow less of an inconvenience to me, I miss having the horses here. I'm so tired of being rushed all the time because I'm trying to work three horses around a schedule of lessons and hours. They keep changing the times we can ride and while for the most part it's not unreasonable, it kind of is when you have multiples. 

Super grateful for a nice indoor to use in the winter!

For example, the barn used to not have actual hours. The only rule was to make sure all the lights are out when you leave. Then it changed to the indoor closing at 8 pm and the barn at 9 during the week. Weekends everything closes at 5. So I adjusted my schedule to riding one horse in the morning and two at night and put Pammon on full care to assist with the timing in the morning. In other words, it's more of an inconvenience and literally costs me more money to adjust to that time frame. But I did all that to make it work.

This pony costs me extra.

Weekends are tough in general during the winter because lessons have a lot of people in them and they are jumping courses in the ring. So trying to work around all that is sometimes not even possible. Usually if you get on at the same time as the lesson and just kind of work into the flatwork portion it's doable though. (Not with Shiny, since she's kind of a bitch... but that's my problem. The boys are fine in traffic.) The mornings aren't too busy, so if you ride early, it's easier. But call me lazy (the barn owner certainly does), I just don't want to be at the barn at 7:30 on Saturday and Sunday. I'm tired after the 14 hour weekdays everyday. I like to come around 8:30 or 9. But then, when it's 9 degrees in the morning at that time, I'm not riding then. It's not good for the horses and it's hard for asthmatic me to breathe in that. 

I swear I'm not complaining that I have too many horses to ride.
I love riding all of them everyday. Especially after all that time where 
I couldn't ride at all.

So that leaves the afternoon. This Saturday I had a virtual baby shower to attend at noon and since the morning was absolutely frigid I decided to ride after the lessons at 2:30. But the last lesson ran late, so it was close to 3 by the time I got on my first one. That left me two hours to ride three horses. Not ideal, but it's just one day, I could work it out. But then at 4:30 as I was tacking up the last one, they went in to drag the ring which took 20 minutes. That left me ten minutes to ride and put away Shiny. Cool. She had a super short ride, but I decided I could be a little later in the barn since it was their dragging that made me late. Not sure if that's valid reasoning but I was going with it.

This face is not at all sad about an abbreviated ride. #lazypony

What I learned from that is 2:30 is too late to start riding. Okay fair. Most of the time I don't ride that late anyway on the weekend. But then Sunday, barn owner/trainer comes in the barn and says no one can ride on the weekends during the big lessons anymore. Meaning no riding unless you're in the lessons between 11 and 2:00. I told her that's pretty tough if the barn is closing at 5 and I have three to do. It's really asking a lot for me to split my day on the weekends also when I already do that during the week. I do have other things to attend to on the weekends. So her answer was to come earlier (which won't work when it's cold because I care about my horses and my health!) and that she is not making any exceptions. I feel like having multiple horses is not encouraged at this place as she makes it harder and harder to do it. Like, the more money you spend there, the more of an inconvenience you are. Thank goodness I'm only really there for the winters. Sheesh.

Anyway, all that bitching and complaining to illustrate how grumpy winter makes me. Maybe if they let us work remotely moving forward I should start wintering in Florida. Once I'm vaccinated of course. Wonder how my dad and stepmom would feel about 40 year old me moving in with them for the winter...

If you've made it this far, thanks for listening to me vent. As a reward, you get a second confession. Which is that I own this:

Yes. It is as warm as it looks. Also yes, it's like a sausage casing and I should have gotten the next size. Third yes, it was probably more difficult to shovel snow in it because it is so tight. But I was toasty warm!

Anything you all need to vent about today? Winter getting you down?