Apache Rides Again

I finally got to ride Apache on Sunday for the first time in almost a month. From the way he was acting, you’d think he hadn’t been out of his stall in all of that time. He was kah-razy. The fact that there was a surreal Alfred Hitchcock-esque gang of birds hanging out in about three different trees as well as lining all the power lines surrounding the arena didn’t help. It was the loudest noise I’ve ever heard a group of animals make and didn’t make Apache any calmer. We had a number of tantrums where he took off running and bucking. He even played chicken on me with the side of the barn. What a dork. We worked a “trot” (i.e., gait) circle for a long time, until he quit trying to turn it into a galloping trapezoid. : P After that we lapped the arena until he quit his I’m-excited-and-I-want-to-rack-no-matter-what-you-say antics and gave me the running walk I was asking for. After that, I finally let him canter. He decided to start up the antics again at that point. Instead of his nice rocking chair canter, he was giving me a lock-legged slamming into the ground hopping thing that was sometimes 3 beats, sometimes 4, and sometimes I just couldn’t even tell what his legs were doing. That went on for several minutes as I fought him on a circle trying to get him to bend, move forward, and give me a real canter. He finally totally broke down and started flailing his legs all over the place and hopping around without going forward at all. I smacked him on the neck and spurred him into a tight circle and then he decided to behave. After that he gave me a lovely little canter, so I let him hand gallop around the entire circumference of the arena for a few laps. After that, we were done. He still had plenty of energy, but dinner had come while I was riding and he knew everyone else was getting to eat. Since he had behaved, I let him cool out and join them. It was quite the experience. Still, it’s always a confidence builder to realize you are accomplished enough of a rider to handle it when your horse doesn’t want to cooperate. My sister did get some good pictures out of the experience.

The Niece

So my niece Sarah has started talking quite a bit now. She is still in the phase where she is learning a lot by repeating things she hears, which made for great fun. I told her something was weird and she spent the next 10 minutes pointing at everything and saying ‘It is weird!” It was quite entertaining. She is in a phase of just generally mimicing behavior as well. My youngest sister, Ashley, was trying to take a picture of my other sister Amy, Sarah’s mom, holding Sarah. They couldn’t get her to look in the direction of the camera and smile though, so I decided to help out by making faces at her. She responded by making the faces back at me. It was pretty hilarious. You can see the pictures on my flickr page. And to anyone who is hoping otherwise, no, thinking Sarah was cute did not change my mind – I still don’t want to have kids. She wasn’t cute when she was screaming. : P

Home Again

So, I did hope for some torrential rainstorms while I was home, since I miss the thrill they give me. The electric feel in the air, the smell of ozone, the wind whipping through my hair, the lightening flashing through the clouds, and the thunder rolling through the sky… it is all like poetry. One day while I was in Houston, there was quite a down pour, and there was a little thunder, but it wasn’t much of an electrical storm, so I didn’t get the entire effect. Then, the day I was leaving, there was a repeat. Again, it was mostly just torrential down pours and some thunder, but not the entire exciting experience. However, apparently further north in Texas, they were getting the entire show. So, in the end, I had to deal with all the repurcussions of that kind of weather as far as its effect on my travel plans, but without getting to reap all the benefits. I’m still glad I got some taste of a thunderstorm, as I do really miss them, but what a pain. So my sister and I were supposed to leave Houston at 9:00 p.m on the 29th. However, the plane was delayed coming down from Austin due to the weather, so it didn’t land in Houston until almost 11 p.m. Then, there was a long line of planes waiting to take off due to the all-day-delays. So our plane didn’t leave the ground until 12:30 a.m., which put us in San Jose 3 1/2 hours later at 2:00 a.m. local time (our bodies thought it was 4:00 a.m.). By the time we got our bags, caught the shuttle to the long term parking, got the car and paid, got home, and got in bed, it was 3:30 a.m. local time (5:30 a.m. body time). We didn’t really get to sleep on the plane at all either. We were on the exit row, so our seats didn’t recline at all. Sleeping while entirely upright is practically impossible as it, but I’m not sure we could have settled down enough to sleep anyway with all the stress of the travel experience up to that point. And by the time we got in bed, we had been awake beyond the point of fatigue so long that it was pretty hard to get to sleep. Ugh. Well, at least I’m settled back at home again and have spent some time with the kids (Apache and Sammy), as well as my sister. All is right with world once more. : P