2016 in Review

It’s been a pretty amazing year, I can’t lie.

Check it out:

“Don’t forget what happened to the [wo]man who suddenly got everything [s]he wanted.”

Howdy! It’s been a while. So much has happened, dear God.

Let’s see. Last month we went on a vacation to Disney World…the worst HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH!!!

Trying to make the best of Disney…

 

While I was regrettably away and because Gigi is possibly the most spoiled horse on the planet, I hired a pony sitter so she’d get ridden and loved on and basically not be a nightmare when I got home.

I ride at a mixed discipline facility, so Gigi got to enjoy Western Pleasure camp while I was away. We learned that Gigi jogs, knows spur commands and is basically awesome except for the fact she thinks there are DEFINITELY VAMPIRES IN THE WOODS BEHIND THE BARN. They tried and I think, failed, a relaxing trail ride in the shade, but Gigi was insistent that this decision was unwise. Many, many props to Gigi’s pony sitter, Rachel. She’s leaving us and moving on to bigger and better things down in Georgia – got her eye on a Congress win – and she will be missed greatly by all of us. I wish her the very best of luck and will likely stalk her progress on Facebook.

Rachel taking Gigi to cowgirl camp.

After that I came home and worked, worked, worked with Gigi. If you know me, then it’s common knowledge that I’m a very goal-oriented person. There’s not much I do just for the sake of doing it. I know, I know: What’s wrong with me? So we came back from vacation with the goal of attending my barn’s schooling show on September 17th. I wanted to get a feel for how we behave together with a bunch of people standing around judging us before we haul off to another city to embarrass ourselves, lol.

We planned to do the little Novice division, which was three flat classes and a small jumping class: 18 inch fences, one lap around the outside, four fences total. Seems so simple, right? RIGHT?! It should be simple. When I left competitive riding as a teenager, I was schooling 3′ with intent and ability to go much higher, but lacked horse talent to carry me over the fences. This left me competing 2’6″ -2’9″ depending on what kind of horse I could drum up.  But now…these little mole humps I’m attempting to jump seem like GODFORSAKEN MOUNTAINS, I TELL YOU. It’s a hilarious mind-trip I’ve given myself.

I guess years and age and you know…a healthy sense of my own mortality…have altered my eyeballs and now every fence looks absolutely enormous. And when they don’t look enormous, I see bad spots – these horrible, catastrophic long spots. You know, when you completely mess up the striding and are forced into an awkward half stride or a HUGE, simply STUPID long jump that can easily end in all kinds of disaster? Seeing the spot…that’s my biggest fear/downfall/problem. And it’s kept me from jumping this mare who is a bold, brave, strong, jumping machine for far, far too long.

So my plan was…get our flat work pretty solid, pop over a few fences schooling and then hang on for dear life and hope we make it around this little Novice course and sort of rip the band-aid off. Ok, ok, ok. OKAY?! That’s what I told myself.

So like a week before the show, I embark on some supervised jumping with my weekly instructor and yeah, we made it over a few jumps, but they weren’t pretty. I saw visions of the 9,000 hours of YouTube videos of horrific jumping accidents I’d watched (WHY?) in my head and I fell apart and my heels came up and I was so far forward in the saddle, I was practically laying on Gigi’s neck in fear/anticipation/TERROR.

And she’s all, “FINALLY! WE’RE JUMPING! YAAAASSSSSS!” She completely ignored all my very poorly executed signals to slow down or stop, so sort of charged around the ring leaping over tiny fences. I had this out of body experience where I could see how hilarious this was, but I couldn’t laugh. It’s like when you’re on a roller-coaster and you want/need to scream but you just open your mouth really wide and nothing comes out. It was a mess, lol.

So anyway, the week before the show, I woke up at 3:00 a.m. every day just like crazy-out-of-my-mind excited and nervous, because this teeny-tiny little show was basically the the culmination of every dream I’d had my ENTIRE LIFE. I mean, not showing at a schooling show – that’s not the dream. It’s like…showing your very own horse who you’ve worked really hard on and seeing what happens. That’s sort of the dream. I don’t know…that’s not quite right either. Let me shape that thought and get back to you. All I can tell you was…it felt like…one of those life moments. Felt like I was about to check something big off the list.

The day before the show, I went to school her for the last time and a few people were up there riding. I was just a bunch of nerves and our ride wasn’t going awesome – super slow, pokey, a real struggle. Another rider in the ring had a pretty good fall and her horse went joy-galloping riderless around the ring and tried to run into us. Gigi totally kept her head screwed on tight through all of it, but something about the day just felt like a bad omen…a warning of some kind…and I was sort of rocked by it all. Perhaps, this wasn’t a good idea?

I missed all my favorite trainers that day. I missed the ones who could read my mind – Lorna (I miss you), Pat (I wish I could find you!), Eileen (bless you, you terrifying nightmare). The next morning, after I had woken up before the sun (FIRST PSYCHO AT THE BARN – YEAH!), braided Gigi and tacked her up, I stood outside of the slightly chaotic schooling ring and tried to channel them. Lorna would say, “Just breathe.” Pat would say, “This moment. You stay in this one. This mare is the same mare you rode yesterday, last week, last month. Do not pretend she is some other horse. Ride the horse you know to get the one you want.” And Eileen would say, in a loud British accent so that everyone could hear, “Stop your whining you big baby, you’re fine. Now go ride your pony.”

So we marched on into the ring with like 20 little kids walking/trotting/cantering haphazardly around and I carved myself a 20 meter circle at one end of the ring. Gigi was a super cool, classy lady. I asked for three quick transitions in each direction and she gave them easily. It was like she knew what was happening – strange, I know – and was giving me the best possible version of herself. We hacked around the ring once in each direction to get a good look at everybody and she looked once and then let it all go. Three or four different people, to my surprise (?), told us what a nice mare she was as we walked out of the ring. Sort of felt like my heart might explode out of pride.

Gigi’s all sanging, “This is how we doooo it!”

Photo Credit: Michele Allison Equine Photography

And then, sort of like your wedding day…I can’t remember much. Just blips and freeze-framed moments. But I know we had a good day, lol. I remember that. Check out that nice second place finish at the end of this video. I’m calling her “No More Grey Skies” per the winner of the show name contest a while back. You can’t see me take my victory strut as Talin practically broke his phone trying to clap his hands and scream when they called our names, lol.

We ended up entering in one of the Adult divisions too and did quite well in both. She was a bit strong and we had a couple of humorous mishaps, but we did pretty well. Example: Judge is all, “Trot, please.” So I’m all, “Trot, please.” Gigi’s like, “What about I canter another lap, then do a flying lead change and then maybe I’ll trot?” Damn you, Gigi.

In the end, I decided to skip the jumping. I didn’t think we were ready and I didn’t want to mess up a perfectly good day pushing us to do something when we likely needed much more practice.

I’d call that a good day.

The bottom line is…neither of us are going to the Olympics. We harbor no delusions of riding professionally. There is no rush to get anywhere. Why? Because we are already there.

I realized this that day and every day since: that taking her to this show wasn’t the moment I had dreamed of my entire life. It wasn’t the moment I was always trying to get to and missing, but then finally, finally finding. No. Walking out to her paddock that next day, I was reminded of what the moment was. I could define it. It was unfolding real-time before my very eyes. There – RIGHT THERE – the second she recognized me, ears trained in on me like spot lights. Right when she saw me and started walking towards me tail a-swishing…walking to me, her person. That is the moment I’d always dreamed of.

I keep waiting for my house to light on fire or all the equipment to get stolen out of the shop or for some other catastrophically horrible thing to happen. Because seriously? Who gets to live that moment – the one you’ve always dreamed of – every single day? I mean, really?

But maybe the other shoe doesn’t have to drop. Maybe it’s like Mr. Wonka says. Maybe what happens when you suddenly get everything you ever wanted is you just get to live happily ever after. I hope so.

Happiest place on earth…

Photo Credit: Michele Allison Equine Photography

 

 

 

Lost in Translation

I haven’t written in a while – but everything is going well!

Proof that we are still at it: GiGi enjoying her new stall guard. I’m told she utilizes it often.

This summer is CRAZY. And the last few weeks have been a frustrating time to ride: It’s just hot and rainy. Every day. When it’s not hot and rainy, I have to be somewhere: baseball with Luke or driving back and forth to Southport to participate in the never-ending boat repair saga or the dog gets sick and needs to go to the vet. It’s a pain in the ass sometimes that I still have a life to attend, lol. I’m still getting out there to ride in some capacity about 4 times a week, but I’d like to see her more. I miss her when I’m not there (although she might not feel the same way about me, lol). The barn is definitely my happy place.

I’m having sort of a bummer day about my riding. I had a lesson this morning, which I knew was not going to go well before I even got there as I was really sore and tight from riding yesterday and I just felt…drained. I hate feeling this way going into a lesson. I know that whatever challenges – however small at this stage – will not be met with the best version of myself. This sounds crazy, right? Oh, but I’m so competitive. I’m so competitive, I’m compete with myself.

Since this journey began, I’ve had quite a few people tell me I’m too hard on myself. Perhaps they worry that I miss the joy of all this because of it (My sister would assure you: I am quite joyful.)? Maybe they think it’s not healthy (My sister would probably say: Maybe?)? I’m not sure. It’s a puzzle to me, this reaction. I’m probably confused because I come from a long line of ultra-competitive people, so this is sort of programmed in my genome.

We are all competitive freaks of nature in this gang. Each of us has our own thing we are SUPER competitive about, but then the tendency to want to be “the best around” sort of creeps into everything else from board games to telling a joke. Our family can be summed up by a singular 80’s movie clip and song:

So with all that being said, I have relatively high hopes for me and this mare. And while I’m realistic in knowing we have many, many months of work ahead of us to achieve some of these goals, I can be a little hard on myself. I want to see progress every day, however small, and when we take a step back, I can feel…flustered.

Right now, the things we are working on are so trivial and silly: responding to leg cues, regulating tempo, not staring at “monsters” outside the ring. Gigi is a bit of a slow starter. She’s pokey and lazy and obstinate about any leg I give her the first twenty minutes or so. I have to work so hard to get her to move, I’m a sloppy mess. After the first twenty minutes, she’s a steam train. The slightest bit of leg contact and she’s roaring around the ring. Any correction with the reins and she arches her neck to avoid contact and then runs through my hands. It’s like riding two different horses in every lesson. She’s a challenge for me.

I’ve tried a few different things to work through this with small degrees of success, but today’s lesson was just not up to my standards. It wasn’t horrible, it was just…frustrating. I spent the day watching Olympic jumpers and musing over this situation. Why was yesterday such a good day for us and today so not good? What was the difference?

I finally decided that the difference was I had fresh legs and my patience pants on. And also, I was consistent yesterday. Today, under the watchful eye of my instructor, I wanted immediate results and didn’t take my time. When she didn’t respond to my hectic signals, I rushed around trying to force her into a frame she didn’t want to be in and throwing a dozen confusing cues at her that got lost in the mix. The result was just…bleh. After our lackluster performance, my instructor also made the disappointing suggestion that we refrain from jumping a while longer, until we’ve got the flat figured out. It’s an honest and accurate call on her part, but a little deflating for me, as I’d hope we’d be over the hump after a month or so. But alas, Instructor says: Negative. Student responds: Roger that.

But see, this is why I think my being competitive is a good thing. When I mess up, I don’t just dismiss it. A lot of careful thought goes into the play-by-play of my mistakes. What some might call obsession, I call thoughtful consideration. Some people can process all of this information in an instant, but sometimes it takes ALL DAY for me to realize something. Today, I realized I need to back off and take baby steps again. We need to focus on one goal each day, not a dozen. We need to simplify.

So we will simplify. And I will remind myself that these things don’t come overnight. I will be happy that this mare is uncomplicated, but challenging for me. That said, I can be reassured that I’m positive she’s not out of my league. As my clinician said last month, “Here’s the deal: You are speaking English and she’s speaking Spanish. The good news is, you’ve got some tricks up your sleeve. You know a couple of slang words and enough of her language to get around town, you just need to work on your fluency.”

And he’s right. I’m just learning to speak Spanish right now. And I will try to forget (at least for a while) about the almost fluent rider I used to be and accept the rider I am right now. And we will move forward. Which is why you shouldn’t worry about us. Worry when I don’t show up tomorrow. Worry when I say I want to quit.

In the meantime, enjoy these hilarious photos of me in the show attire that just came in the mail today:

Darn it, my trash can is in this shot.

 

Casual show Becky. Collar popped! Cheers!

What’s up, G? What does “G” Stand For Anyway?

The nerves are mostly gone. The ones that are left are just like the ones you get when you fall in love with someone…just hopeful, giddy, electric nerves. They are good nerves. I don’t necessarily need or want them to go away.

I’m only really nervous about owning a gray mare who enjoys rolling. Me: Thanks, G. G: Don’t mention it.

Day two of our journey and G continued to be a dream. We made it thirty minutes on our sweltering morning ride this time. Baby steps. I’m told (among a million other things), that we need to work on rhythm and transitions and so that’s what we did yesterday to some degree of success. We’ve got trot to canter down. Walk to trot is getting better, but still needs work. “Whoa,” is apparently not in G’s vocabulary.

Me: Whoa. Bring this canter down to a trot, please.
G: What? No. We ride!
Me: Yes, this is fun, but whoa.
G: Cantering is better than trotting.
Me: I’m aware, but we simply can’t run everywhere. 
G: Are you sure? Challenge accepted.

Yesterday, I learned that G has a good sense of humor, knows how to take a joke (Me: Hey! You won’t stop, so guess what? Twenty meter circle. Ha, ha, I win. G: Whatever, I let you win.), and has a small, but adorable weakness for watermelon.

Me: Hold still, I need a picture of this. G: Seriously? Must we document everything?

But the question remains — what does “G” stand for? Technically, it stands for “GiGi,” which was her last name (before she was “Golden Girl” before that something else I can’t remember).

I enjoy calling her G. It’s fun to see her and say, “What’s up, G?” I also enjoy the absurdity of the notion that she is, in any way, “gangsta.” It’s also fitting, because she is a Germain now — one of us G’s. Alas, we need a show name, for one day, I intend to show her. We’ve got to figure out what that’s going to be. I’m drawing blanks.

For any of you out there wondering how one goes about naming a horse, I certainly couldn’t tell you. I do know it’s usually one word that’s sort of fancy or a combination of two to three less fancy words. Help me.

Cool words that start with G that we may be able to work into some sort of show name:

Grace
Galaxy
Guardian

I’m sure there are others, but that’s what I came up with after Googling, “Cool words that start with ‘G’.”

Words that otherwise describe this horse so far:

Serendipity
Pipe Dream

I dunno. What about Saving Grace? You might could do better. Lemme know. There could be a prize involved.

 

Return of the (G)angsta

On the morning of my first ride on my first horse ever, I wake up in the dark…just a mess. Being a grown up is so annoying – you worry about the most senseless stuff. So I mosey about the house packing lunches and doing laundry and feeding animals and try to pretend it’s just a normal day. BUT IT’S NOT. There’s no fooling me. My brain is broadcasting just a steady stream of holy-hell nightmares of every terrible horse accident I’ve ever experienced in my life. I give entirely too much thought of writing my eulogy before I leave because I’m worried Talin will botch it.

But I’ll give myself this, if there’s something I’m really good at, it’s pushing through fear. I’m terrified of airplanes – I still fly (although I hate every second of it). I’ve taken countless risks with this business – sometimes dragging Talin along against his will – to achieve success. Against my better judgement, I’ve white-water rafted, swam with a shark, rescued my dog from an alligator (you’re welcome Woodhouse) and learned to drive my husband’s fishing boat on the ocean (a feat you’ll only fully understand if you live and boat in Wilmington). So I can get on this damn horse and ride it today. Because even though it was many moons ago, I’ve ridden probably a hundred different horses in a thousand different situations and really, just stop this and go ride your horse. Seriously.

And I do. In 99 degree weather with 100% humidity. We make it…25 minutes? Plus a stroll around the farm. LOL.

That’s what that looks like, by the way. The hotness.

G is charming. There are these two little ponies in her pasture who clearly want to get out and raise hell and we have to have words because they won’t let me get to where my horse is. Off in the distance G sees me and just ambles over. Swats the ponies away. Accepts her treat. G: Little witches. Me: Thank you.

Today, I got to remember what a lovely canter G has. I learned that she likes drinking from the hose and has to be in my business all the time.

G: What are you doing?
Me: Putting fly spray on you.
G: What about now?
Me: Washing your bell boots.
G: How bout now?
Me: Nothing. Just looking at you? Staring my dream in the face, I guess.

 

 

She Travels Like a (G)angsta!

The morning of the day I get my first horse is a little eerie. I always have this feeling right before something unbelievably good happens — like this might be the last thing that happens to me before I show up on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Robert Stack will be all, “Rebecca lived a quiet life in a small town until she bought her first horse and was murdered at a gas station when she stopped to refuel on the way back home.”

If you knew my life story, you’d understand why I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But I wake up before the sun, as usual, and drive to the barn with a well-spun ball of anxiety in my gut. At 15, this feeling would have been different – sheer excitement, but at 34, I’ve lived just enough to worry excessively over everything. I meet the nice people who have offered to trailer my digs from Southern Pines back to Wilmington. I spend the next three hours picking their brains about everything I don’t know about or can’t remember about horses. What hay? What feed? What supplements? Which farrier? Which vet? I can’t even be embarrassed anymore about what I do or don’t know. I’m buying a horse, I just have to get this all figured out. I’m almost old enough now to not care if people are judging me – definitely old enough not to let it stop me. They are good people who entertain my endless barrage of questions at the crack of dawn.

We pull up to this darling little barn and G is there waiting for me, freshly bathed. She is her usual self (from what I can remember when I rode her in my last lesson program): pleasantly amused at our arrival, mildly curious, but also sort of un-baffled. I feel a strange bit of panic for her. She has no idea who I am, where we are going or why. She is at my mercy and the heart deep inside the control freak of me, breaks for her.  But this is why I think she will be a good partner for me: Because, to the shock of my helpful trailering buddies, she steps right up on the trailer and looks at me. She’s all, “Lady, relax. I got this. Roll out.”

They are, I think, so relieved that she’s an easy traveler, they hustle this obscene amount of tack and gear and supplies the previous owner is generously giving me into the trailer tack room so fast, I barely had time to finish reading and signing the bill of sale. Before I know it, we are on our way back home and G is sticking her head out of the window, throwing hay on the highway like they’re beads in a Mardi Gras parade.

At home, her arrival is about as anti-climatic as it gets: she hops off the trailer, flairs her nostrils at one offensive puddle on the ground and starts eating.

G: That puddle is looking at me funny. Me: Please, don’t freak out.

G: Jesus, relax lady. It’s fine. Puddle was trying to step, though. Me: *Deep, cleansing breaths.*

In total, we spent 6 hours traveling to get her and it’s hot as Jesus, so I leave her to her stall and go home for the day. I’ve got my first ride on my first horse tomorrow – weather and work permitting.

I’ve still got the shakes. Today, I cut six rather large checks: a horse, trailering, board, vaccines, supplements and supplies. I feel like someone has slit my savings accounts’ throat and it’s just bleeding out helplessly before my eyes. I’ve got a thousand worries about if this partnership is good or right or deserved.

But she’s here now. I guess I better get my shit together and ride.

 

Maybe One Too Many Mimosas…

 

Hi, everyone! I’m Becky. If you want a seriously abridged version of who I am to get your bearings, check out my About page. If you like livin’ on the edge, read on. While ultimately I promise wit and hilarity and many opportunities to judge me, we must begin somewhere and so I give you the beginning:

I have a love for dreams – big dreams. I was raised to believe that if you just worked hard enough, if you just gave your whole heart to something – anything is possible. A little bit of this just has to do with my personality type. A little of this must be credited to my parents. They are the stuff of grit and determination. What I know from a life lived this way is that everything I’ve ever achieved of any significant value was a result of my hard work – luck is mythical. And anything I missed out on? Well, as my mom would say, “You just didn’t want it badly enough.” Preach!

I grew up (lower?) middle class, which is probably one of the most privileged ways to go through a childhood. We had just enough money to have what we needed and just shy of enough to get every single thing our little hearts desired. This is a good way to grow up. You learn to get creative with this kind of childhood, but you get to be a kid and not worry about too much.

That show jacket I’m wearing…it’s like two sizes two small for me. Mom let it out for the third time to stuff me into it here to avoid the excruciating expense of a new jacket. You can tell by my shit-eating grin that I’m really upset about it.

While my parents paid (at great sacrifice at times) for weekly horseback riding lessons, I spent the greater part of my early horseback riding career feeding, mucking stalls, tacking up other people’s horses for other people’s lessons, taming stubborn ponies for their less brave owners and burrowing my way into my trainers’ hearts like a parasite so they’d give me whatever riding education I could get. I loved it. Working to ride are my fondest and best memories of my childhood.

That’s me on the end…on the boney rescue horse I worked my arse off to ride, lol.

That said, I never got to compete with the best horses. Ribbons were the fruits of my blood, sweat and tears – literally. But that made winning pretty epic. There’s nothing better than collecting a blue ribbon on a rescued Thoroughbred in front of a line of 20 kids on five figure horses. I was all, “How do you like them apples?” Drops the microphone.

This is day one of a super long show weekend. I think there were three of us riding at this event? I feel our ribbons are a respectable rags to riches story.

 

But I often wondered how far I could have gone with a little more privilege, a little more access to better horses. I still wonder…

But this is a stupid waste of time. Seriously. Don’t live in the past people. Or at least, don’t let the past haunt you, if at all possible. For the most part mine hasn’t. But it is there, sort of following me. Sometimes, I have trouble falling asleep at night. Sometimes it’s because I’m restless or stressed out or had maybe one too many mimosas. But I always get to sleep the same way. I imagine the three beats of a canter, just the echo of the footfalls. Poof: I’m asleep. Even during long breaks from riding, horses are the common denominator. They are always there, in the back of my mind.

So now, all these years out of the competitive saddle later, I’m buying my first horse. Tomorrow. She’s not super fancy and she’s no Grand Prix jumper, but then if she was, we’d be breaking tradition.

I feel…terrified. I’ve never had a horse all to myself – just mine. It’s been so long since I’ve ridden or cared for a horse daily. I mean, WHAT IF I BREAK HER? WHAT IF SHE BREAKS ME? Shit. I almost forgot: When you finally climb to the top of the mountain, in order to touch the dream – you have to jump off the cliff first.

Alright, G. I’m ready to jump. See you tomorrow…