~:: Valentines! ::~

First of all:

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!!

In my life, this has been more a day of making things for people and leaving secrets here and there than getting stuff.  Which is not the case today – *blush*.  So I have made a handmade offering of a Valentine:

And you have to know how I mean this.  You guys have more important things to do than coming here to say hi to me.  But this connection – it’s really important to me.  Some of you I only see once a year.  And I know there are kindred spirits who visit – and I’ve never even seen your faces.  So thank you.

AND #2 – A story.  A sad, sad story.  In a nutshell, it’s only this: two days ago I fell off my horse.  But I had to wait to tell the story until I had some really good charts and stuff, because I didn’t actually exactly fall off – but it’s complicated.  Now I am ready to present the facts.  Which are – first, it was really really cold.

So I was wearing this stuff: my heavy denim, lined LLBean barn coat.  You can see from the illustration that it only has two buttons left on it that work.  And my heavy canvas, heavily lined with therma-whatever over alls.  Several scarves and hats.  My big muck boots.  When I am dressed like this, I feel roughly the way a toddler stuffed into a snowsuit feels.  On the right, you see my usual lighter, more winsome self.  Flexible and fit and shapely.

This illustration shows you the basic situation from the side.  This is Hickory, which I’m sure you can tell already, and he’s standing on the far side of a steel panel (which is not black in real life.  But then, neither is Hickory).  There are panels between each feeding station – two of them, actually, dividing the open side of the barn into three open twelve foot stalls (are you following?  Please don’t look ahead.)  Hickory and Zion share the one you are looking at.

From the back: the panel, which is thin, is the big black line on the right.  Hickory is there eating out of that blobby horse trough.  And Zion is the horse  – ummm – butt to the left.  I think he stands that way when he eats to discourage Hickory from trying to share Zion’s own trough.

So on the day in question, I just got the urge to sit on Hickory while he eats.  I often do this.  Well, not often, but sometimes.  And it’s really fun.  He doesn’t move much because he is a very focused eater.  And I just sit there and annoy him, which is fun for me.

The way I usually do this is, I climb up the panel like it’s a ladder, balance, and then sort of leap sideways from panel to horseback along that line up there.  Or, more clearly:

Can you see it more clearly?

And I land thus.  His ears are back in this frame because that’s what they do when he realizes I’m up there, which is pretty much the moment I land.

I am very good at doing this.  Like I say, I often do it.  Sometimes.  And it feels great – like I’m Tarzan, swinging through the jungle on a vine, or like one of those cowboys from the westerns those of us who are still alive remember – the way they used to grab mane on a horse that happened to be passing at a dead gallop and swing themselves onboard.

The thing that happened that morning was this: I forgot I was wearing all my winter gear.  In the winter gear, my hips lose rotation.  So do my shoulders.  In fact, I basically move like a Macy’s balloon with pretty much poky-out arms and legs.  I should have factored this in.  Because my leap didn’t take me over the top.

I kind of hit absolutely broadside.  Which did not work out for either me or Hickory.  In fact, he was way past annoyed about it.  So I sort of politely flipped over and banged myself on the panel and ended up basically like this:

which was not at all what I had envisioned.

You will note the absence of horses.  Zion didn’t so much absent himself as simply move over, probably without breaking the rhythm of his jaws.  But Hickory absconded to another country.

In the end, I made him come back.  But he refused to stand close to the panel.  And when I started to climb it, he moved even farther away.  So I had to get a really tall bucket and climb on that, then on him.  And I still said, “Ooof,” trying to get my leg up high enough to get over.  I had to talk him into eating after that.  And his ears stayed back, like he couldn’t trust me not to do something else weird and annoying, even when he did eat, which he would only do in snatches.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this other than maybe because I was looking around for a present I could give you and this is all I could come up with.

Next year, I’ll buy you candy.

love,
K