Horses

Memory Lane 3: Wee Folk (Mature Content Warning For Mild Nudity)

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Debora

While I was in my “coloring book” phase I drew a lot of elves and faeries. The elves were always elegantly garbed…

…but the faeries never had a stitch on:

I’m not sure why all my wee folk were nekkid, but I suspect that it was a subconscious response to the soul-crushing repressiveness of my home life. You know, I couldn’t do anything about the situation I was trapped in (or I thought I couldn’t, which amounted to the same thing), but by golly my faeries were going to frolic unfettered by any constraints at all!

That whole “coloring book” art style was kind of…well…not my best work, but it segued into something a bit more snazzy in my third year up here, when my friend Dani asked me to do some illustrations of creatures she had created for the rpg world she was developing.

Those pics tomorrow!

Categories: Animals, Artwork, Family, Horses, Life, NaBloPoMo | 3 Comments

Memory Lane 2: Dead Canaries and Coloring Books

Posted on November 2, 2008 by Debora

If I produced any artwork at all during my first year in Anza, I have no evidence of it. I’d been living among relatively normal people for the previous couple of years, and moving back in with my family was, um, a difficult transition for me. My mother had written to tell me that I must either move to Anza to financially assist them in their time of need, or I would No Longer Be A Member Of The Family And Also I Would Of Course Go Straight To Hell. Obviously if I’d known then what I know now I would have jumped at the opportunity to be free, but at the time I was still deeply enmeshed in the cult mentality I’d been raised in.

Also, Dani’s circumstances had changed; she and her husband and now two young sons had moved in with her husband’s parents, and while my dear friend had insisted that I be allowed to live there as well, my services as a nanny weren’t really needed anymore and I felt very out of place there.

So, me and Stormy moved up to Anza seventeen years ago, and we’ve been here ever since.

I’ve been debating with myself about whether or not to go into detail about my home life those first few years. I run the risk of looking as though I were exaggerating or seeking pity, because it was seriously like something straight out of a Roald Dahl novel. I’ve decided to put in the so-bad-it’s-funny stuff and leave out the so-bad-it’s-not-even-close-to-funny stuff.

My family had been living in Anza for about a year before I moved up; there were my mother, my younger brother, my older sister and her baby daughter, who was about two months old [edit: that’s incorrect, my niece was almost a year old] when I moved in. The baby’s father wasn’t in the picture.

They lived in the “permanent residents” section of a campground, in a camper about 28ft long I think. Built onto that was a creaking, lopsided, hideous room thing that they’d built themselves using, among other things, cannibalized parts from another trailer that they dismantled right there onsite. This addition was divided into three smaller sections: a “living room,” a tiny bedroom and a tinier bedroom. In the four or so years I was living there two other equally horrific structures were built onto the mess, altogether creating the ugliest, white-trashiest site in the entire campground, and believe me, that’s saying something.

I was given the tinier bedroom; it was six feet wide by ten feet long. The agreement was that I would get a job, give all my money to my mother “just until we got out of debt” and then pay a fair rent after that. I kept Stormy in the backyard of an elderly couple that had a property near the campground.

There was a gas fireplace in the living-room section of the addition, and there was something wonky about the way it was set up or vented or something, because in the winter when the fireplace was going there was always a fine layer of soot all over everything. It’s totally going to sound like I’m making this part up, but my mother used to keep a canary in a cage in that room, and they kept DYING from the fumes from the fireplace; she kept having to replace them. But would she ever consider the possibility that maybe air that could KILL CANARIES might not be completely healthful for the human inhabitants? Heck no, that would be SANE PERSON reasoning. Every time one of her canaries died she called it a “spiritual attack” from the devil.

You know what? Screw this. Never mind the backstory, let’s get to the artwork.

During my second year there I developed what I think of as my “coloring book” art style. I would draw detailed pictures in black ink, have a bunch of copies made at a local shop, then use felt markers to color them in. That way I could experiment with different color palettes and such. Those pictures were almost all fantasy genre stuff; at no other point in my artistic pursuits before or since was I ever less interested in reality. This was pure escapism.

A lot of my stuff from back then has been lost or ruined, but I do have a handful of the original uncolored pictures. Here’s a sampling:

Tomorrow: nekkid faerie pics!

Categories: Animals, Artwork, Dragons, Family, Horses, Life | 2 Comments

Memory Lane

Posted on November 1, 2008 by Debora

My sister left this comment in response to my request for NaBloPoMo fodder:

I think seeing samples of your different artwork spanning the last 20 years would be cool. From the elfy forest scenes to the horse portraits, etc. Favorite recipes, too.

Well, then.

20 years ago I was 19, and when I tried to remember what my artwork looked like back then I drew a total blank on the whole time period. I was all, “Let’s see…that was after Missouri…was I living on the Saddlebred farm? No, that was later; I was living…in that camper shell at the lumberyard? No, no, I remember now, we were all still in that little trailer in old man Egbert’s front yard.”

None of those residences seemed particularly bizarre to me at the time, but now I shake my head bemusedly as I type them.

When I was 19 I was working at the Saddlebred farm but not yet living there; my payment was feed and board for the wild-eyed yearling Arab filly I’d just been given by a nice couple who were going through a divorce and had to sell off all their horses. Stormy was too crazy unmanageable for anyone to want to buy, so they let me have her for free. This is what she looked like the day she arrived at the stables:

As you can see no one could get close enough to groom her; she looked much better after she’d had a bath and some TLC. Which didn’t happen right away, because did I mention the crazy unmanageable part?

For actual money I was working as a soda jerk in one of those 50’s-style diners that were all the rage in 1988. When business was slow I would amuse myself with the hula-hoops:

I can’t decide what I like most about that picture, my hat, my red suspenders or my little black bow tie.

Here’s another picture of me at 19, which I want to share because CHECK OUT THOSE BANGS. I think they had their own zip code.

So, artwork. I don’t think I was doing much of that at 19, or 20, because I was ALL wrapped up in my new horsie. Here she is at age 2…

…and at age 3:

I cringe every time I look at my hair in those old pics. Yikes. Gotta love that big-socks-pulled-up-over-my-jeans look too.

When I was 21 I was living with my friend Dani and her husband, working as a live-in nanny for her young son; I think he was three or four at the time. We and two other friends were heavily into rpg’s, and my artwork was mostly elaborately-drawn character sheet images. I don’t have any of those; they were lost in a tragic postal incident. Long story.

I do have this sketch from that year:

I like the study in conformational differences between the two horses.

When I was 22 I moved up to Anza and back in with my mother and siblings to help provide financial assistance. I stayed with them for about four years, and it was completely horrific. Fortunately for this blog, my abject misery found an outlet in some rather interesting art. I’ll be posting samples of that throughout the month, in chronological order.

Stay tuned!

Categories: Animals, Artwork, Family, Friends, Horses, Life, NaBloPoMo | 3 Comments

Current Events

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Debora

Friday there was a big barrel-racing competition in Corona that Julie and four of her friends were riding in, and Julie invited me along to cheer them on. It was a nighttime event in a lighted arena to spare the horses from having to compete in the heat of the day, and I knew I’d be home really late, so the kids spent the night with Steve.

Julie brought a green horse she’s training and rode for “time only,” meaning that she didn’t pay the full entry fee and wasn’t eligible to take home any prize money.

This was an end-of-the-season event, which meant that the riders were not only competing for day money but also tallying the points they’d won over the spring and summer in hopes of taking home one of the prize saddles. Julie’s friend Shannon was already in the top of the points, and Friday she scored day money for her ride AND the saddle for the points she’d accumulated.

It was a fun night. I got home about 2:30 Saturday morning, and I would have loved to sleep in late. I didn’t get to though, because I had a calf to brand at Trinity that morning.

One of my cows (Steve and I split the herd when we separated) had calved after our spring roundup, and it needed to be branded. I asked Steve if I should handle that with some of my friends, but he said no, he’d come and help. In all honesty I was glad to have him there, because he’s bigger and stronger and more experienced than anyone I could have rustled up to help me. I still invited Julie, and she brought Josh’s two strapping teenage sons to lend a hand. And Steve OF COURSE brought his parents, because he is apparently unable to function without them.

Anyway, it all went smoothly. Turned out one of Steve’s cows had a new calf too, a little bull, so we branded mine and castrated his at the same time and had the whole thing wrapped up in less than an hour. I wish I’d gotten pictures, but my sleep-deprived self forgot my camera.

Sunday morning the kids and I went to church. Those of you who know me well are rereading that sentence, wondering if it’s a typo, because me and organized religion have never really gotten along very well. The one time I’d tried a local Anza church a few years back, it only reinforced my impression that home worshipping is, for me, the way to go.

So here’s how it happened: when school started up this year I volunteered to help out with an upcoming fundraiser. This led to having a very nice lady named Michelle invite me to join a walking group she was putting together. That led to meeting a bunch of other very nice ladies that I go walking with in the mornings now, and also to a recommendation that I try out a local nondenominational church with a great pastor.

So to church we went, and I did indeed enjoy it (and so did the kids, who got to make tie-dyed tee-shirts in the Sunday School part), and we’ll be going back next Sunday.

Sunday evening we had a dinner party. Not as fancy as the term might suggest, but fancy enough for us. It was a couple of weeks ago that Luke first said that he wanted to have a dinner party on Sunday. I kind of brushed him off, saying that dinner parties are expensive and the house was a mess and blah blah. A few days later he brought it up again, and I told him that the last thing I needed right now was a bunch of people in our house. This time he clarified that he didn’t mean for me to invite people over. He just wanted the three of us to have a fancy Sunday dinner together. I have no idea what inspired this request, but I told him that yes, that sounded like fun and we should do that sometime, and then I instantly forgot all about it. So when the next Sunday rolled around and Luke asked if we could have our dinner party, I had absolutely nothing on hand to serve that was worthy of such a grand event.

But THIS Sunday I was PREPARED. When we got back from church I sent the kids to go visit Steve, and then I got busy roasting a chicken, making mashed potatoes and gravy, baking biscuits, and chilling sliced cherry tomatoes and zucchini in a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. I got out the good dishes and some candles, and when the kids got back we had a perfectly lovely dinner party, just the three of us.

It was so nice that we’ve decided to make a Sunday tradition of it.

Today Julie came over with her truck and helped me get rid of the last of the trash, the big stuff that never would have fit in my car. So that’s DONE!! Whoot!

And because no Ramblings post would be complete without a bit of navel-gazing, I’ll share a minor epiphany I had this week.

I think I like being single.

I don’t mean that I’m glad Steve and his issues are out of my life, because duh, obviously.

I mean that I’ve begun to genuinely enjoy my life just the way it is. I like the freedom and the simplicity. I like the lack of drama, and the quiet sense of unity, and the cleanness of it. After 39 years of shaping my life around the expectations and demands of other people, I’m discovering an unexpected peace and joy in simply tending to my own spirit for a change. That sounds horribly selfish, but I can’t help it. It’s where I’m at right now.

And that was my weekend, and the rest of my week is even busier. Sadly, my immediate future is mostly full of oil changes and smog checks and doctor’s appointments and school meetings and similarly unblogworthy events, so if there’s a long dry spell that’s why. I’ll be back when things slow down a bit!

Categories: Animals, Family, food, Friends, Horses, kids, Life, Ranching | 2 Comments

Carrots

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Debora

Luke’s loaner horse Beau went back to his owners last spring, so for a while I was giving him lessons on Stormy. That worked out really well — my good old mare went out of her way to reassure him and build up his confidence. But then she caught a nasty respiratory bug and was under the weather for a couple of weeks, so we decided it was time to put Luke back on Trinket.

They got off to a shaky start — Trinket can be one stubborn little pony if she thinks she can get away with it — but after one scary bolting incident Luke decided he’d finally had enough. From that point on he never let down his guard, never gave her an inch, and she sensed the change and fell reluctantly into line.

A week or so ago Luke decided that it wasn’t enough for him just to bend Trinket to his will. He wanted her to love him. And being Problem Solver Guy, he quickly Came Up With A Plan To Make It Happen.

So now when I go out to feed the horses, he comes with me and gives Trinket a carrot. She’s begun to look for him, and trots up to him with a friendly eagerness that’s very unlike her former surly aloofness.

It makes me happy that Luke wasn’t content with just mastering Trinket, that he wants her affection and willing cooperation. It makes me happy that he thought of the carrot idea on his own and hasn’t missed a single day since he started. And also that he carefully washes each carrot before giving it to her.

I know that right now Trinket’s mostly just loving the carrots. But I hope Luke’s devotion will pay off in the long run, and a real friendship will form to replace the combative relationship they’ve had in the past. And I’m deeply grateful that at the tender age of eight my son has already realized that sometimes the carrot speaks louder than the stick.

Happy Love Thursday, and may we all remember the beauty of the carrot whenever we’re tempted to reach for the nearest stick.

Categories: Animals, Family, Horses, kids, Life, Love, Love Thursday | Leave a comment