A Fun Weekend with Friends and Outdoors

Seneca Rocks

So, this weekend, I hung out with one of my oldest friends for the entirety of Friday night-Sunday evening.  It was great to get out and do some stuff.

Friday night saw us just chilling out, watching Greek (my new favorite old show that I just watched all of on Netflix and am now going through withdrawal over), and talking.

Stuart's Park

Saturday morning, she went to work for a few hours while I slept in a little and then got up and did some proofreading.  I had finished what amounted to almost an entire self-help book by the time she returned and started working on another one that was due that afternoon.  She had noticed that there were some street sales going on on Third Street, namely the local book store, so we headed a couple blocks over for lunch at a little cafe that I had never been to (their chicken quesadillas were amazing) and then book shopping.  This was when I had my little book splurge.

I bought a book on how to grow medicinal herbs and plants (don't let your mind run away with you here) and their healing and medicinal properties.  I've always liked the idea of using essential oils for medicinal purposes, and in all the hype that sometimes surrounds that, it's forgotten that the actual plants that those oils come from can have an even bigger effect.  It's something I've been wanting to learn more about for a while now, something that really started niggling at me last summer when we thought Orion had a tendon problem again (which thankfully just ended up being a really bad abscess that hadn't made it's appearance to the naked eye yet).  When we thought his legs were having troubles again and couldn't immediately get a hold of a vet (one was out of town and one just wasn't answering), my old BO suggested making a tea with comfrey leaves and soaking and wrapping his legs with it.  She happened to have some growing in her garden, and it made me think about starting a little herb garden myself for things like that (not to mention for cooking).

I bought the book Vampire Academy, which just came out as a movie.  I haven't seen it, and I don't really know what kind of reviews it had.  I do usually like vampire books though, and this one seemed to have a different kind of spin than others I have read.  I usually like books better than movies anyway, so I figured why not?  It was on sale.

Then I bought Dances With Dragons, the fifth book in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series a.k.a. Game of Thrones for those who aren't fanatics about it like I and a lot of other people are.  I finished the fourth book, A Feast for Crows, about six months ago or something like that.  I've been itching to read the fifth one because with the way the fourth and fifth books are written, a lot of my favorite characters didn't make appearances in the fourth book, but they will be in the fifth one.  I've been contemplating buying it on my Kindle so that I instantly have it at my fingertips, but since I have all of the ones before it in paperback, I made myself wait.  I had other books and other things to keep me occupied in the meantime.

Then, we later went to Walmart, where I bought Deliver Us From Evil, which I discussed in my last post.

I've been told I could be part vampire. I'm glow-in-the-dark white, and I burn in sunlight.

After our book spree, we went back to her house, where I finished editing my second gig of the day while she accomplished some stuff off her to do list in the backyard and around the house.  After that was when we went to Walmart to buy groceries for making dinner that night and lunch or dinner the next day.  We spent two hours in that store, and only maybe thirty minutes of that was grocery shopping.  The rest was spent looking at books and movies and music.  We are nerds.

I made my famous (among friends at least) chicken alfredo for dinner, and we had a nice bottle of West Virginia white wine with it.  Then we built a campfire in the fire pit in her back yard and sat around it talking and laughing at stupid stuff and drinking Smirnoffs before finally going back inside to watch Game of Thrones after the fire burned down.

Sunday we woke up super late, since we had stayed up super late watching GoT.  We both dragged our feet and procrastinated getting ready for the day.  I flopped around like a damn fish trying to get off of my makeshift bed on the floor, since I was one arm short of being able to make myself roll over/sit up/do anything at all helpful for myself, before finally somehow getting up (this wouldn't have been anywhere near as dumb or difficult if I hadn't slid down to lie on my back in my sleep - I've been having to sleep sitting up on a ton of pillows to be comfortable and also be able to easily get out of bed in the morning).

After getting ready, we went to her family reunion at Stuart's Park with her sister's family.  I felt slightly awkward at first - but she wanted me to go because she doesn't usually go to this reunion and she felt awkward.  I said yes because a)it was more friend time that I wouldn't be getting much of once I go back to Philippi to work and b)it was at Stuart's Park, which meant the opportunity to hang out at the river.  And we did hang out at the river, which is where all of these lovely pictures came from.  Usually I would be the first one in the water, but with the whole broken bone thing, I didn't think that was a good idea because while usually somewhat graceful in rock hopping across the river, I'm also usually the first one to slip and fall in the water, as has been proven multiple times over the years.  Not exactly conducive to healing a bone, so I had to be content with rock hopping on the shore and finding a good spot to sit at the water's edge and just soak my feet in the river.  Not as fun as the alternative, but it was still a pretty good day.

Best friend's brother-in-law and nephew.

After we left the reunion much later than anticipated, we went back to her house where she made tacos and rice, and we watched more GoT before I had to go home.

All in all, it was a great weekend and has inspired me to do many more outdoor things.  I'm starting a bucket list of things I want to do before summer's end, which includes but is not limited to: hiking the trails behind my new barn, going to Spruce Knob, and hiking to the top of Seneca Rocks.  Also, the second my bone is healed enough for me to drive, I'm getting my license so I can more easily do these things, as well as go everywhere else. lol  My car just needs a little more work, and it will be ready to take me wherever I want to go. :)

But seriously, is this kid not the cutest?

My Week in Pictures

It's Saturday, and since I'm spending the weekend with one of my best friends and doing all kind of fun stuff, I thought I'd just share a few pictures from this week.
Enjoy!

I splurged a little bit today and bought myself some new books.  These are pretty much the only things I splurge on the past few years - books and horse things.

Chelsea's cat, Ginny, is obsessed with shoes.  My flip flops became hers temporarily last night.

This is why I love WV...because just an hour or so from where I'm staying, there's this.  And this is just one of the countless amazing sights my state has to offer.

My old church sent me a get well card.  I received it yesterday.  Thank you Philippi Baptist Church!

Who needs a puppy when your little brother does this?

Grainy, crappy quality picture of where I've been doing my proofreading and blogging for the past couple of weeks since the accident.

The Last Ride

Rewind from my last post, back to last Sunday, the 22nd.

I stayed with Chelsea Saturday night, went to El Gran for dinner and drinks, then headed out to the barn on Sunday morning to tack up for our last ride together on Orion and Kit at the old barn.  The only issue in getting started was Orion's reluctance to take his bit because the big brat knew he could prolong leaving the barn if he did.

Finally, after much struggling, it took a team effort of Chelsea, Linda, and I to coax him into taking it, and we headed out.  Chelsea recently got permission to ride on an old trail that Orion and I used to love and go on until the land changed hands, and we stopped going because we didn't know the people and whether or not they were okay with us riding there.  So with newly acquired permission, we headed up that way.  There were lots of new things on the way that didn't used to be there...large trucks, timber piles, and a group of people, among other things.  Both horses were a little nervous but not enough to really act up.  With our guidance and words and pats of encouragement, they kept it together.

It turned out that no one had been on the trail since Hurricane Sandy blew through almost a couple years ago.  Jeez, it doesn't seem like it's been that long! Time flies!  There were downed trees, but other than those, the trail was in relatively good shape.  We had to get off to lead the horses under two trees before getting maybe 2/3 of the way up the first leg of the trail before it branches off and coming across a tree that we could go under or around.  Both horses handled it relatively well.  The first tree presented a problem the first time we went under it, on our way up the hill.  Kit, with her pony shortness, cleared it just fine.  I had to lift it up slightly to let Orion pass under it, and when I thought he had cleared his saddle horn (I was riding Western), I let it down slightly and turned to walk him the rest of the way away from it.  Bad move.  Apparently he backed up slightly when I let the tree down, and he wedged his saddle horn under it.  I heard Chelsea yell something as she was looking back at us and heard Orion suddenly scuffle around behind me.  I glanced back and just had time to jump to side as he came barreling out from under the tree like a bat out of hell.  He just barely clipped me with his shoulder as he started to go by, and I fell.  He ran into Kit's butt, and she swung around and glared at him as if to ask what the hell he thought he was doing.  He immediately looked chastised and calmed down as I was climbing off the ground, still holding his rope.  I didn't have a mark on me, somehow, but I was peeved.  Chelsea later remarked that her favorite part of the day was me ranting and ending with, "Why the hell is it that every time we ride, I always somehow end up on the ground??"

The rest of the ride progressed just fine.  It was great being able to ride in the woods again (since last fall, most of the trails that we normally go on had been closed to us, so when we did ride, we had to ride on the road - a back road, don't worry - but it's not as good as riding in the woods.  Orion gets bored on the road but loves the woods as much as I do, if not more.).  The only other slight issue was overcome pretty easily, and I was proud of us for it.  When we got to that last tree, Chels rode Kit up the hill a little ways to see if we could ride around the uphill side of it.  That was a no go, but Orion almost had a panic attack at the possibility of his herd mate leaving him and first tried to bolt up the hill after her, then when I thwarted that, he almost crashed into a bush, contemplated jumping down the hill on the other side of the trail, then just ended up spinning a couple circles when I pulled his head toward my leg to keep him from doing anything stupid, as it was obvious he had stopped thinking logically at that point.  By that time, Chels and Kit had picked their way back down the hill to us, and he immediately chilled out.  I got off and led him down the trail in anticipation of having to lead him under the next tree on the way back.

Just after crossing under tree #2 on the way up the hill.  You can see it in the background, and you can kind of see Orion's sunburned pink nose.  Poor dude.  I need to get some baby sunblock for him.

He smacked his sunburned nose off a branch as he tried to grab a snack and split one of his scabs open. -_-  After that, the only thing he was concerned about as we walked back was his stinging nose and trying to scratch it on every single thing in reach. Including me.  Brat.

When we got back to the tree that he had been stuck under on the way in, Chelsea and I stood around for a few minutes trying to find another way around it to avoid the same thing happening.  What I eventually decided to do was to loosen the girth, slowly slide the saddle sideways so the horn wasn't sticking straight up, and see if Orion was freaked out by it or not.  Dude stood patiently.  I got a what-the-hell-are-you-doing-to-me glance and an ear flick at one point, but then he was unconcerned.  I then took him to the tree and lifted it with the hand I was holding his rope in (I thankfully had my long lead rope with us on this ride), held onto his girth to keep the saddle from sliding under his belly with the other hand, and clucked him through.  He was slightly confused for a minute before slowly ambling under it, unsure if that's what I wanted him to do.  Good boy.  It was an awkward situation, but it worked.  I was especially proud of the fact that all the work I did with him last summer on staying with me, not walking ahead of me, seemed to pay off at that moment.  It wasn't the best moment for that lesson to kick in, as I actually needed him to walk past me, but it was nice to see that he at least thought about it.  He wasn't scared or really even that nervous; he just seemed confused.

Once we were on the other side, I tied him to a tree and fixed the saddle.  Ohhhh if only you could have seen the evil death glare I got upon tightening the girth back up.   He was not a happy camper.  I'm pretty sure he thought he was done for the day when I loosened it the first time.  But after pointing and warning him about being an ass, he sighed and turned back to watch Kit amble underneath the tree to us.

By this point, we could hear wood saws going down where the timber piles and people had been. -_-  We decided to walk the horses back so that they felt like there were more numbers of us for safety, because the saws were loud, and we were going to have to walk right by them.  They did fine, with a couple snorts and wary looks toward the people, who thankfully stopped to let us pass when they saw us coming back up their driveway.

After that, it was smooth sailing.  I put Orion below me on the hillside and hopped up on him (I'm short, he's tall, and even with a Western saddle, I still find it difficult to get on him unless I do this or have something to stand on.), and we headed home.  We even rode through the spare field to get back, which is something I haven't done for a while because we almost always have bad experiences when riding there.  No problemo.



We faced challenges, and we handled them fairly well.  Most of them were due to circumstance and not anything with us, so I was happy with how it went.  All in all, it was a fun and interesting last ride, and I couldn't have been happier.

Orion had three days left at his home of the past two years and ten months.  I told him to enjoy it as I put let him back into the field with his buddies, and then Chelsea and I packed up the majority of my barn stuff and took it to the new barn.

It was a great day. :)

Hi!

I'm still here!  Things have been picking up like crazy at work lately, and unfortunately, even though we have more than ever going on in the way of dozens of extra caterings for the end of the school year, we have lost a lot of our staff in the past month.  So, here I am, usually working 40+ hours a week, and while I like the money, it leaves little conscious time to write when I'm actually all here.

Right now, for instance, I'm more or less kinda here....but not completely. lol  I'm a tad tired from a night staying up watching movies and catching up with one of my best friends from home, who I haven't seen in ages, and I'm coping by drenching my system in copious amounts of caffeine...as usual.  But it's totally worth it.  And I might get to go home early tonight, to spend another evening/night/morning catching up with her some more.  It's been awesome, and I'm going to be really sad to see her go home tomorrow.

So for now, I'll leave this here, to let everyone know I'm still alive and that there will be more posts coming soon.  I won't leave you all in the dark so much again anytime soon, I promise!

Parades and Ditches

***I've had this written for a while, I just haven't had the time to add the pictures.  However, I decided to make the time to add them and post them today, because my boy hasn't made an appearance on here in too long.  This is one adventure I wish we hadn't had, but at least everyone came out relatively unscathed.  Have fun reading!***


__________________________________

It's been a couple weeks a while since I've really updated on my life on here (though you can bet the quotes that I have posted and will be posting definitely have bearing in my life!).  I guess I should start with the biggest happening that occurred during Forest Festival weekend and that I am unfortunately still a little banged up from (maybe I should go to a doctor?  That's what I've been told, but I'm still determined to wait it out, as I'm getting better - it's just an extremely slow process.)

I went home for the weekend for the Forest Festival.  My band was invited to be the college exhibition band in the Grand Feature Parade and the marching band competition.  I was understandably excited and just as understandably nervous.  It had been five years since I marched that parade.  I remember how long and hot it was back then.  The difference now?  I was in a hell of a lot better shape back then.  It's something I'm working on (another slow but successful process), but I'm still not where I was back then.  Thankfully, we didn't have to wear uniforms this year as they're not in yet.  Instead, we wore our gold band T-shirts, nice jeans, and marching shoes.  Something else I'm thankful of? The piccolo is a very light instrument. :)

 We pulled the parade off without much of a hitch.  I was ready to fall over and die because of how hot I was by the end, but I survived and was proud.  The show went well too.  It was our first official performance on a high school field.  This meant that we were guiding to high school hashes rather than college hashes - something that is more difficult than one would think.  We'd practiced with them painted onto our own field, but our hashes were also painted on that field, so we were all a bit apprehensive about marching with strictly only high school hashes.  But we pulled that off too, way better than any of us expected to.

After the show was over, I was dead.  Seriously, I wanted nothing more than a drink and a bed.  I had wanted to stay and watch the other bands, but I just couldn't do it.  One of my best friends from home, Chelsea, met up with me after we finished, and we walked over to my family's new house to visit with my mom and brothers for a bit before walking back to Chels's car and heading to the store for snacks and back to her house to chill out for the night.

____________________________________

At 6:30 on Sunday morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed (err...off the couch) to get dressed and head out to the barn for an early morning ride.  It was still foggy when we got there, but our horses were happy to see us.  My boy came right over.  I grabbed his halter, went to the field, and as I was turning back around after closing the gate, he was already walking over to me.

Chels and I decided to switch saddles because I'm buying a new English one from a friend, and Chels is thinking about buying my treeless one from me and wanted to try it out.  So she used it, and I rode Western for the day, something that saved my ass from being seriously injured later on.  I'm sad to say it, but I know if I'd been riding English, I would have been in a lot more trouble than I ended up in.

Both horses behaved perfectly all morning, through tacking up and warming up and heading out.  They were both eager to get out and get going and seemed to enjoy being out on a leisurely morning ride.  For the first time, it seemed like Chels and I might have a normal ride.  Everyone was being good, we were all relaxed, the dogs were with us and having fun, and everything just seemed perfect.  And it stayed that way.


The trees are changing majorly here.  Most have lost a lot of their leaves by now, but that weekend, they were in full color and still had them.  We got a lot of gorgeous pictures.  Chelsea's are better than mine, because she has a really nice camera that she brought with her for the first time.  She's always afraid to take it for fear of it being broken, but everything had gone so well initially that she decided it would be okay to try it as long as we were careful.  And we were.

A few miles up the road from the farm, the dogs flushed a huge coyote out of the woods.  We didn't even realize it wasn't one of our dogs at first.  They had all dove headfirst down over the hill after something a few minutes earlier, and we just assumed they were on their way back up.  Then we realized that it was bigger than our dogs and not at all built the same.  It was no matter though.  It didn't even acknowledge our presence.  It just hopped up over the hill onto the road and took off gracefully up the road ahead of us.  Then our dogs came barreling up onto the road after it, and they were gone for a bit.

A few minutes after this happened, everything was still going well.  Until a couple of ATVs flew around the turn behind us.  We got off to the side of the road to let them pass slowly and keep our horses under control.  Only they didn't really slow down.  As soon as he heard them, Orion tensed up and began shaking.  He was scared but keeping it under control...until he turned his head slightly and saw them, at which point his eyes got huge and before I could react, he bucked and whirled in an attempt to bolt.  The ATVs still didn't slow down, even though they had to have been able to see it all happen.  When he whirled, he slipped, and his front half ended up in the ditch, half-standing, with his hindquarters still up on the road, and his head, neck, and right shoulder, along with me, plastered against the rocky hillside.  My right leg was between his side and the hill, and my right shoulder, side and elbow got slammed into the rocks.  Thank God I was wearing a
helmet, but somehow I didn't hit my head.  I think it was because I was leaning forward so much in my attempt to stay in the saddle, because I was partway out of it.  I was hanging onto mane, reins, and pommel trying to yank myself back on.

The ATVs didn't slow until they were right beside of us, at which point they stopped, left their engines running, and stared at me in apparent horror at what had happened up until that point.  Chelsea was barely keeping Kit under control and screamed some expletives at them and told them to leave.  So they gunned their engines and flew away.  That was the last straw for Orion, and as soon as they gunned the engines, he jumped out of the ditch, jumping out from under me in the process, and went bucking up the road.  I hit the ground and immediately climbed out of the ditch.

There was so much adrenaline flowing by that time that I was shaking and felt like I was going to throw up.  My elbow was killing me.  It hurt so badly at first that I really thought I had broken my arm.  My whole right side felt beaten up, and I had thorns stuck all over my palms and fingers because there was apparently a thorny bush in the damn ditch, and I had the great luck to fall straight into it.  If I hadn't caught myself with my hands I probably would ended up with a face full of thorns.  (Bright side, I guess?  At least that didn't happen.)

Regardless, I immediately began cussing the assholes that caused everything, because while Chelsea told them to get their vehicles away, they really went away and didn't even make sure I was okay.  If Orion had slipped and not made it out of that ditch on his first try like he did, he would have come back down on top of me, because as soon as he lunged, I was down.

After I assured Chels that I was okay, she went to catch Orion, which she had to use treats to do because he was so out of his mind with fear, he was terrified of everything.  Except, apparently, food.  While she did that, I sat down to get myself under control and keep from getting sick.  I pulled the thorns out of my hands and then got up and went to find them, picking up Chelsea's trail bag on the way.  It had come off when Orion bucked and ran away from everything.

When I found them up the road around a turn, Orion saw me and immediately came to me and shoved his face into my chest and just stood there.  He was still shaky and scared, but he seemed okay other than that.  With that knowledge, I was just happy that we were both okay and that he didn't appear to be mad or upset with me for falling and "leaving" him when he was scared.  He stuck to me like glue after that.  We had to walk back because when he had bucked after I fell, he apparently stepped on his reins and snapped them.  One side was completely torn away from the bit, and there was no way to really rig it.  Thankfully, I had kept his lead rope attached to the saddle, so I still had something substantial to lead him with.

It was a scary experience, but the good thing is that no one was too seriously injured.  I was more worried about Orion than myself the whole time, but he is fine.  That happened two weeks ago.  All of my aches and pains have pretty much gone away with the exception of my shoulder, elbow, and occasionally my wrist.  The massive bruise I had on my elbow is almost gone now, but I still can't rest weight on it.  Moving my shoulder a certain way still hurts pretty bad.  And my wrist only twinges occasionally.  But they all do seem to be getting better - it's just very slow.

Saturday Afternoon Ride

Finally got some horse time today!

A friend from college and I went out to the barn this afternoon and played with the horses. She got to see them lunged for the first time and experience plow-reining for the first time on Orion.

I was afraid she was going to be like "What the heck have I gotten myself into??" when I lunged O because he was completely and totally FULL of himself today.  Kicking out, bucking, running to the other side of the paddock...  

I put out trotting poles to give him something more to think about, and even that didn't work.  He behaved when led over them but went back to the other behaviors when I tried to switch over to lunging him over them....so since he wanted to run anyway, I made him do it around me on the line.  He did 5 or 6 laps before stopping because he's becoming a fatty and was out of breath. :P  

I went after him to see if he still had the desire to run, and all he would do was trot.  Once it was out of his system, he was fine.  He trotted in controlled circles, paid attention to everything I did, and came in as soon as he was given the invitation.

I lunged Kit for a couple minutes after that. I rode her today, so I wanted to make sure she wasn't of the same mind set Orion had been.  She was a perfect little lady and did exactly as she was told, even going over the poles that had been laid out for Orion without me pushing her to.

We headed out after that.  It's hunting season so we couldn't really go in the woods.  We stayed on the road and went to the top of the mountain.  She got to see where the Rocky Mountain horses are kept and where the beginning of one of the trails I ride on is.  Both horses were pretty good.  O tried to turn for home a couple of times, but A handled him perfectly and made him listen.  I'm pretty sure he loved her.  He's a lot better about listening to other people now than he used to be.

Until the past few months, the only people he was really affectionate with were me and a guy friend I had out there in the spring.  Even that shocked me at the time, because he was the first person other than me O had taken a shine to.  Now he's good with most people, it seems.

WW - Forest Festival Weekend