Horses

Summer Adventures, Part 3

Posted on August 12, 2008 by Debora

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air…”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I just spent an amazing five days at a horse camp in Montaña de Oro State Park in up in San Luis Obispo with Julie and her sister Kelly. Julie and I drove up on Wednesday; Kelly lives in Merced and met us there. A fourth girl, Heather, joined us Friday night and left early Sunday morning.

This park is absolutely gorgeous. There are mountains and creeks and little foresty places, and a long sandy beach that just begs to be galloped upon.

The first day we were there, Mahogany wanted nothing to do with the ocean. On the second day I coaxed her into at least walking in wet sand. This was big progress for my water-phobic mare, but she forfeited her brownie points later in the day when I had to dismount and lead her across a tiny little creek back in the hills. Actually she leaped over the creek and landed practically on top of me. No cookie for her!

On day three we actually got her to stand quietly as the waves washed over her ankles! Whoot! And on the fourth day, miracle of miracles:

Day four was full of firsts, actually. She willingly crossed a creek about three times wider than the one she’d balked at before, without the slightest hesitation. I guess once you’ve been in the ocean those little babbling brooks aren’t quite so terrifying anymore. Then we rode a trail that took us over several long wooden footbridges, and amazingly Mahogany moseyed right onto and across them.

This trip was the best thing that could have happened to her! I’m hoping to find time to ride her down to my hideout sometime soon and see if she’ll cross that creek now, while the experiences are fresh in her mind.

I can’t say enough good things about this park. On two different days we saw seals swimming near the shore, and once Julie galloped her horse out within ten feet of one inquisitive seal. We had campfires every night and the food was awesome thanks to Kelly, who is quite the camp chef. The only unpleasant surprise for me was how cold it was. A chilly marine layer hung over the whole area for four of the five days we were there, and I froze my butt off the first two nights. On the third day we drove into town for more ice for the coolers, and I bought a sleeping bag (the air mattress and single comforter I’d brought with me were just not cutting it). After that I was toasty warm at night. On day four the haze cleared and the sun came out, and I was so unprepared for that I got a blistering sunburn. Sigh.

Here’s our campsite:

Here are Kelly (seated), Julie, and Jake, one of the two dogs Julie brought:

Dueling cameras!

By the end of the trip, Mahogany was looking lean and fit:

I’m so glad we did this. It was even worth coming home to a house that looked like flying monkeys had been living in it for five days (Steve stayed here with the kids while I was gone). I’d love to do more stuff like that, although ideally I’d like to be able to bring the kids along so they can share the experience. This is something every kid should get to do, I think.

I can’t believe the Summer Of Adventure is almost over. School starts back up in less than two weeks! We’re going to Knott’s Berry Farm tomorrow for Luke’s birthday, and then it’s back to the boring old grind. I think we made pretty good use of our summer though, all things considered. I’m aaalllmmost ready for Fall, and cooler weather. Almost.

Categories: Animals, Horses, Life, trail rides, Travel | 7 Comments

Second Verse, Same As The First

Posted on July 18, 2008 by Debora

Now that Steve and I are separated (again), he has donned his Devoted Dad hat (again), and begun making time every day to spend with Luke and Elizabeth. From my perspective this is of the good; I firmly believe that kids benefit from having a healthy relationship with both parents no matter what the state of the parental union may be. Luke, especially, has become a lot more confident and outgoing and less…well…neurotic, in the past four and a half months since his father has decided to give him some actual focused attention.

Being the astute child that she is, Elizabeth has picked up on the rather fickle nature of Dad’s devotion (as in, it comes and goes in inverse relationship to how secure he feels in the marriage), and she’s been visibly cooling toward him. I can’t blame her, but it makes me sad anyway.

And speaking of our Tough Cookie, she took a big tumble yesterday.

Some backstory: ever since she was four or five, Elizabeth has liked to walk out to the horse pasture and shimmy up a front leg and onto the back of a horse or pony, letting it carry her wherever the herd took them. At first I was VERY concerned about this pastime, and considered putting a stop to it, but she always chose the nice quiet mounts and nothing bad came of it, so I relaxed a little and let her have her fun.

A couple years ago she came in complaining that Balki (an Icelandic pony we used to have) had tossed her off and hurt her arm. This was the same pony that gave her an actual concussion the first time she rode him, so we just told her to stick to the safer horses for her pasture jaunts from now on, and let the fun continue. (A week of “My arm feels better today, Mom”s later, I took her down to have it looked at and learned that she had been WALKING AROUND WITH A BROKEN ARM FOR A WEEK. Hence the “Tough Cookie” nickname.)

The other day I caught her trying to slip onto Mahogany’s back from a top fence rail. I nipped that plan right in the bud. No ridee Mahogany! But when I saw her hacking around on Marshall, I thought it over and decided not to fuss. Marshall’s young and green, but he’s also calm and friendly.

Okay, so yesterday I glanced out the window just at the right moment to see Marshall BOLT out of the corral into the pasture, and Elizabeth hit the dirt in his wake. I shot out the door and into the corral, calling her name. She was all, “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay,” but she wouldn’t or couldn’t answer my questions about where it hurt and what body part she’d landed on. Her knees were all scraped up, and she seemed very disoriented. I brought her in and settled her on the couch and shone a flashlight in each of her eyes, and her pupils responded normally. I suggested a warm bath (she was filthy from the corral ground and her scrapes were very dirty, and I figured she would feel better after a nice soak). She got in the tub, but then started wailing that her head hurt. I checked and found a respectable goose-egg on the back of her head, so I gave her some Children’s Tylenol and went to find her some clean jammies.

When I got back she was kind of zoning and sleepy. I helped her out of the tub, and she got dressed in slow motion; she just wanted to go take a nap. I knew there was a good chance she had another concussion (for those of you keeping score, that’s one broken arm and two concussions so far. CPS should be knocking on my door any day now), but I also knew that if I took her to the emergency room they would: 1. keep her waiting for hours before anyone attended to her, 2. most likely eventually diagnose a concussion, and 3. tell me to take her home, keep her quiet and give her plenty of rest. So I let her go take her nap, opting to spare her the stress of a trip to the ER. She slept and SLEPT and slept. I went in every half hour or so and nudged her until I got some sort of response, because there is a risk of a concussed person slipping into a coma if they’re allowed to sleep too deeply.

She seemed to feel better when she finally woke up around 5pm, and she had some supper. And then threw it up. And then threw again at bedtime. Steve and I talked back and forth on the phone for a while about whether taking her to the ER to check for complications would be worth all the additional trauma it would put her through. (The ER is in Murrietta, btw, almost 50 miles away down winding mountain roads.) Finally it was decided that I would sleep with her, and if there were any signs at all that things were getting worse instead of better, down we’d go.

She woke up early, around 4:45am, and seemed to feel a lot better, so we all heaved a sigh of relief. But around 9 or 9:30, she kind of crashed again. I called her pediatrician, and miraculously they were having a slow day and said they could see her in the office at 11:15.

The doc gave her a careful examination, including a rather alarming bit of hands-on skull twisting to check for fractures, but Elizabeth was unruffled by that. He confirmed that she had a concussion, but said that there didn’t seem to be any life-threatening complications, and that I should take her home and keep her quiet and give her plenty of rest. No running or bouncing or anything that might possibly cause her brain to slosh around in her skull for at least a week or two, and no riding horses, climbing trees, or anything that might cause another head injury for at least a month. So, the Tough Cookie’s on the sidelines for the rest of summer vacation. Poor kid. She threw up again the instant we got home, then went and took a long nap in the hammock.

She’s a little cranky.

So I guess our Summer Of Adventure will have to be limited to non-physically-strenuous activities from here on out. No swimming, bowling, roller skating, bike riding….Looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of movies.

Where’s that catalogue where I saw that child-size bubble-wrap clothing? I know it’s around here somewhere….

Categories: Family, Horses, kids, Life, Love, Marriage | 3 Comments

Summer Adventures, Part 2

Posted on June 25, 2008 by Debora

The last day of school was June 13th, and it couldn’t come soon enough for us! Steve and I picked the kids up right from school and took them down to Temec to see Indiana Jones, to celebrate. I was the only one who’d seen it before and I was a little concerned that Luke would have a hard time sitting still for the whole two hours, but both kids were completely mesmerized from the first frame to the last. Gotta say though, it didn’t help Luke’s fear of stinging/biting insects one bit. Curse those giant ants!

The following Tuesday, the 17th, we finally squeezed in our “spring” roundup.

It was wonderful to see the cows and calves all fat and happy again on the lush spring grass. Mahogany started out fidgety and spooky, but she settled down nicely as the morning progressed. And this was the first year that Elizabeth was able to really help with bringing in the herd, thanks to her growing rapport with Stormy. It was a good day!

It would have been a great day, except while we were there at the pasture the fuel pump on my car quietly died, and I ended up having it towed up to Idyllwild for repairs. They couldn’t find a new pump for it anywhere but at the Saturn dealership, ditto the fuel filter that they recommended I have replaced at the same time, so the whole thing ended up costing me just under $1000, including the towing fee. Yowtch!

Back when the kids and I were planning out our “Summer of Adventure,” we’d scheduled a trip to The Imagination Workshop for Wednesday the 18th. We weren’t sure what exactly it was, but it looked interesting and didn’t cost much for admission, so we wanted to check it out. When Steve heard about the outing he wanted to come too, so we made a family day of it. Which worked out well, since the guy at Idyllwild Garage said they were waiting on the parts for my car and I wouldn’t have it back until Thursday at the soonest. So we all went down in Steve’s truck.

The Imagination Workshop totally exceeded my expectations! It’s an amazing and delightful clutter of silly “inventions,” optical illusions, cool science and physics gimmicks, secret passageways and plenty of hands-on fun. I wish I had more pics to post, but something about the lighting in there confused my camera and almost all of my photos came out blurry. :^(

After we left the Workshop we stopped for pizza at a place we’d never tried before, called the Temecula Pizza Company. It doesn’t look like anything from the outside; just a featureless storefront tucked in between a Carl’s Jr and a Mobile station. But the pizza was INCREDIBLE! I ordered a personal-size piece of heaven with white sauce, smoked chicken, dried cranberries and two kinds of cheese (provolone and gorgonzola) that was freaking amazing. We will most definitely be going back there.

Thursday was the day I was supposed to leave for Laughlin with Julie and Josh, but they were having technical difficulties with their boat and weren’t able to get it fixed in time. They were still going to Laughlin, just not on the river part. After a lot of agonizing over whether or not to go anyway, I finally decided to bow out this time. The urban/casino scene isn’t really my thing, and I was afraid I’d feel so out of place that I’d dampen their fun.

The fuel pump didn’t come in on Thursday. The Idyllwild Garage guy said I wouldn’t have my car back till Friday. I told him that was fine, I didn’t really need it until Saturday anyway.

Friday Steve wanted to have a father-and-son day with Luke. They took a bunch of trash to the dump, did a couple of ranch calls (Luke likes to hand the shoeing tools to Steve as he needs them), and then they headed down to Hemet to get the truck’s oil changed.

While they were doing all that, Elizabeth and I saddled up our trusty (and not-so-trusty) steeds and went for a nice ride. It was fun to cruise along, go as fast or slow as we felt like, and talk together without Luke’s endless chatter constantly interrupting us. We might have to do this guy day/girl day thing more often!

All four of us arrived back home within twenty minutes of each other, and shortly after that I realized that somehow at some point my cell phone had fallen out of my saddlebag. Luckily the ride had mostly taken place on actual roads, so Steve drove me back over the route to look for it. No luck. When we got back we tried calling it, and it turned out that a friend of Steve’s had found it in the road near his driveway. He was nice enough to bring it up to our gate. Yay!

Since I was originally supposed to be in Laughlin that weekend, Steve had planned to take the kids to the Orange Empire Railway Museum on Saturday. With me not being in Laughlin after all, it was decided that we’d take my car and save some money on gas. Except! The fuel pump STILL hadn’t come in, and now my car wouldn’t be ready till Monday! Whee!

So we piled into Steve’s truck and headed to Perris. Steve’s parents met us there at the museum a bit later.

Luke was delirious with pleasure at being surrounded by all those trains and machinery. The rest of us were delirious with impending heatstroke. It was 107º in the shade that day, and we were not in the shade; we were in the broiling sun surrounded by hulking metal behemoths and often on black asphalt. I’m not normally bothered by heat, but that was like being in a toaster oven. And inside the trains it was even worse! Gaaahhhh.

Still, it was a great museum if you like trains. I forgot to bring my camera (!!), but Steve’s mom had hers so we got some nice pics. You can’t even tell how close to heat collapse we all were.

Sunday we all spent here at the house, hanging out and playing Clue. We just recently discovered that game, and it’s turned out to be oddly addictive. Simple enough for Luke to easily grasp the concept, but with enough opportunities for surreptitiously gleaning clues from other players’ careless remarks that Steve and I have begun to get downright cutthroat about it. Ah, the pleasures of clean family fun. 🙂

Monday my car was finally fixed, and we brought it home. Hooray!

During all of this, Steve and I have been doing the two-steps-forward, one-step-back cha-cha. Some days everything seems to fall effortlessly into place, and other days feel like one long struggle to mend an unmendable relationship. It’s…wearying.

We finally decided that it’s time to try marital counseling. So we picked a guy pretty much at random out of the yellow pages, and Tuesday was our first session.

We can’t decide whether that went well or not. The guy listened to our tale of woe, asked a bunch of questions, and finally said (rather dubiously, Steve and I both thought) that he could help us if we really wanted to try and make it work, and when did we want to start our weekly sessions?

Interestingly, the fact that a marital counselor appeared to be of the opinion that our marriage is probably doomed has only made Steve and I all the more determined to make it work. Apparently we both possess the “Oh yeah? We’ll show HIM!” reflex. Nice to know we have SOMEthing in common. ;^)

And now I need to get outside and get some work done in the yard, because it turns out that yardwork does not do itself while one is out galavanting around at museums and such.

It looks like the apricots will be ripe within the next week. Mmmmmm, apricots.

And that’s all the news here. I will attempt to get back to posting more than once or twice a month, so my updates don’t all read like novels. :^)

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

Level One, Day Five

Posted on June 2, 2008 by Debora

We’ve had quite the week here.

First, the fun stuff: On Friday, my friend Julie and I went to see Indiana Jones. What a great flick! A big rollicking roller coaster ride from start to finish, with a real plot and everything! I thought it was a very satisfying conclusion to the Indy saga.

Then we spent a few hours running errands, and that was fun too. I think a full day of nonstop girl chatter might be better than therapy. I mean, presumably. I’ve never actually had any therapy. Steve and I recently talked about seeing a marriage counselor, but we’re kind of afraid he’d listen to our story and then say, “You’re all wrong for each other, just walk away. That’ll be $250, please.”

Not-so-fun-stuff: In the spirit of Getting Everything Out In The Open, Putting The Past Behind Us And Beginning Anew, Steve has been (rather courageously, I think) filling me in on Things I Should Know About Before Making A Final Decision About Getting Back Together.

He started with the easy part, telling me about a bunch of stuff he did during our separation. He figured (correctly) that it would be much easier for me to learn about those things from him than to find out from someone else somewhere down the road. It was kind of difficult to hear, and I can’t say I really wanted those images in my head, but I did appreciate his honesty and I was glad he’d told me. People apparently do some crazy stuff when their marriage falls apart.

Next he moved on to the hard part: confessing things he’d been guilty of during the years we’d been together that even I hadn’t known about at the time. There was nothing really divorce-worthy in and of itself, but taken all together his confessions painted an even more dismal Big Picture of our old relationship than I had seen before. Again I appreciated his desire to come clean and put it all behind him, and I did my very best not to make him feel like he’d made a mistake in telling me about this stuff, but damn. Kind of a major shock for me.

Saturday was the Clarke Family’s annual roundup and branding. We usually all go, but I skipped it this year. Steve and I are still officially separated, and I didn’t feel like answering a bunch of questions that even I don’t know the answers to yet. So Steve took the kids to the roundup, and I saddled up Mahogany and headed down to my old hideout to do some heavy duty thinking.

Gorgeous day, and there were still some late wildflowers brightening up the canyon.

Once we got to the hideout, the dogs played in the creek while I introduced Mahogany to the concept of being turned loose in the little grassy area. I made low “fences” of dead cottonwood branches across the two exits, but she could have shoved through them or hopped over them if she’d really wanted to. I figured I might as well find out now whether she was going to stick around voluntarily or have to be tied to the tree every time we came down.

She stuck around. I was glad — it would have been a long walk home.

So then I settled down to ponder my situation. And I guess it all boils down to this: either I can choose to believe that Steve’s desire to change is sincere, that he has come to realize what truly matters to him, and that he’s ready to put his self-absorbed ways behind him…or I can choose to believe that he’s the same irresponsible opportunist that he’s always been, and not waste another day of my life on him.

Or, I suppose there’s a third option. I could promise to give him another chance, but then end up driving him away myself with all my mistrust and old resentments. Really hoping to avoid that one. I need to either make a clean break of it or honestly throw my heart into the ring for all it’s worth one last time. At least if it still doesn’t work out I’d have the comfort of knowing I wasn’t the one who screwed it up.

The thing is, he feels different now. To me, I mean. For the first time in years, my finely-honed Bullshit Detector isn’t tingling even a little bit. He feels…authentic. The man who used to deeply resent being asked to call home if he was going to be working late, now calls me two or three times a day just to ask how my day’s going and tell me about his. He converses with me. Actual conversations! And he didn’t even blink when I told him that, until I feel more secure in this new marriage we’re building, I would need him to stop going out and partying without me. He just agreed. He said from now on we’d go out together or he’d stay home with me.

My favorite gesture so far:

In our old marriage, the kids were “my job.” If we had some family outing, I’d be the one getting Luke and Elizabeth ready to go while Steve relaxed in his comfy armchair, flipping through channels on tv and periodically asking what was taking us so long. Yarg.

Fast forward. I had plans to be out with Julie this Friday, so Steve was going to pick the kids up at the bus stop after school, keep them overnight, and then take them to the Clarke roundup Saturday morning.

Friday morning at 7:30am he showed up at my door, to help me pack their suitcase, because he didn’t want me to feel like I was doing all the work myself.

A girl could almost dare to hope.

I spent a couple hours mulling things over in the hideout, then rode home feeling pretty good about giving the new marriage one solid shot. I have firmly resolved that if it fails this time, it won’t be because I didn’t give it my all-out best effort. That’s really all a person can do in life, right? Throw their whole heart into it and pray that love can find a way.

Now if only Steve’s no-strings-attached ex-girlfriend would stop leaving bitter messages on his cell phone. That would be swell.

Here’s to the future. May it be as bright when we get there as it looks from a distance. :^)

Categories: Family, Horses, Life, Love, Marriage | Leave a comment

Luke’s Boot’s 15 Minutes Of Fame

Posted on March 5, 2008 by Debora

Had a mildly surreal experience today. I got a phone call from Golden Era Productions, asking if we had a young child who was in possession of a horse and a pair of cowboy boots. Seems they’re filming a documentary about some old Montana cowboy and they need some footage of a child’s boot in a stirrup. They were having trouble finding a workable child with workable boots (the shot was supposed to be set in the 1920’s, and the only other child they could find wore purple boots, so no good there), until a guy who knew Steve from the Ramona Pageant gave them our number. They just wanted a shot of Luke’s leg and boot, in a stirrup. They wanted to drive up from Hemet today, as soon as he got home from school, and take it. I couldn’t think of any good reason to tell them no, so I said that’d be fine.

They arrived as I was leaving to pick up the kids at the bus stop. Steve met them: two men and a woman, all with various exotic accents and dressed in black. They wanted a darkish horse in the pics, so Steve decided on Sam. They wanted an authentic ranch saddle, so Steve put his own roping saddle on him. When I got back and handed Luke over to them, they gave him an adorable little pair of roughspun brown trousers such a country lad might wear in the ’20’s. He went in the house and put on those and his boots. He put on his hat too, even though it wouldn’t show in the pics.

Even with the stirrups on Steve’s saddle adjusted all the way up to the shortest hole, Luke’s little seven-year-old legs couldn’t reach them. So to get the boot shot right, Luke had to lean way over and stick one foot in the stirrup on the camera side, with the other leg kind of dangling over the seat. He was a good sport about it, but he wasn’t crazy about being on Sam in the first place, and I could see him trembling a little sometimes.

The whole shoot was rather elaborate, with ladders and ginormous cameras involved. The woman, Debbie, gave me a pile of paperwork to fill out, waivers and such, during which I learned that Luke would be paid $100 for the filmographical use of his foot. He was pleased to hear it.

Then they packed up their equipment and left, and Luke’s stint in show biz was over. He didn’t look particularly sorry to see them go. He did ask me if I’d get him a pair of brown pants like that for his own though; I think he kind of dug the look. They did look awfully cute on him.

I’d love to get my hands on a copy of that documentary when it comes out. “LOOK! There’s Luke’s boot, there it is!!”

Maybe we can get it autographed by Tom Cruise. ;^)

Categories: Family, Horses, kids, Life | 2 Comments