Farmland and French Fries

Today was the last day of summer even though it's only August 14th and some idiot thinks that's now the beginning of fall.

I took Bess and Becky to the beach, the only willing volunteers.  Bess is a beginner surfing maniac, and it turns out when you take Becky the dog and both get in the water, she is a surfing maniac too. Not to be left on the beach, she charged right in with us and swam and attempted to surf. Which meant I had to stay in the pretty shallow water until she got tired out so she didn't drown in her enthusiasm to not be left behind.

Seeing the dog tossed about, and leaping over waves, and seeing the 10 year old almost fifth grader managing the surfboard that is feet longer than she is, in her mini wetsuit, with her long California blonde hair and summer tan - and the ocean herself, washing machine tumultuous, full of sand and freezing and churning us up - this was our last grasp of summer. We played knowing there was frozen yogurt directly afterward, our tradition. French fries and farmland waiting as we drove home, our tradition. Swimming and hair washing and the long night before school ahead.

I'm not sorry I spent the summer with my babies, the tall and the short, the four leggeds and the furry. I got to see them sprout surfer's legs, I got to wrestle through the heat and the boredom of long days. The real reason for summer is to give your mind that long stretch off, to think nothing, to find other things to do, books to read, skies to watch, cousins to sift through, water to float on and contemplate your life.

This is as important as AP classes. It may in fact be the Real World. The fertile soil and the tan skin and the French fries on the way home.

No More Fat Chicks

So a fat lady rode my horse and now he's limping. She wasn't fat really, just she must have had bones the size of those big round poster tubes. If I had ten more of her I could have a killer football team. I have no idea how many guys are on a football team. She was a hard cardboard poster limbed giant, 5'11 (which I used to be til I shrank to the shrimp boat 5'10 that I am and my six foot son looks down on me. In every way.) But wait back to the lumbering giant.

I kind knew we weren't perfect for each other because on her website she makes candles and she quoted some bible verse from the Cornelius or the corndogs or something. Homemade candle making church giant. But she had $35 dollars and she wanted to come give it to me, she was in fact kind of insisting and I was just gonna take my horse over to the arena anyway, might as well get paid to do what I do for free.

I had in the back of my mind this thought: your horse will be flattened. Your round stomached, pin legged horse who is built for racetracks and tiny baby chick sized men in the Kentucky Derby is not going to like to heft around God's chosen heavyweight. But $35 dollars kept sounding so good, and it was hot and I was tired. And I like to meet these weird horse people who hand me money and then entertain me with their psychosis while the horses and I just listen and walk our dusty trails just the same.

This month so far it's been Courtney, who's finishing up at USC and has flossed her mind into a nice, sanitary situation where there is no original thought. But at least she weighed like nothing. And then there was Andi whom I liked because she told me about thru_rider on Instagram who is a badass girl riding the PCT trail alone with two horses up to Canada from Arizona. But Andi never came back, andi, why? She was too smart for me. Then there's Amelia, a tiny Australian with a bawdy sense of humor who likes to knock back a few and sells pet medication out of her car. Amelia and I are the shit. She's come three times in a row.

But I got this huge mom on Dewey, and she had no idea what she was doing, but I did what I do best, which is pretend she was the best rider ever. Because really, when people get on my big horse, they relax, and slow down, and that's what I'm here for. To spread that Dewey peace.

It was dark when we got all untacked and done, but the money was in my pocket, and my kids are expensive so that helps. It feels good to get paid for something that feeds your heart. But then this morning there is Dewey holding his foot carefully out like he's been speared, and giving me the tired eye like 35 dollars? Really Jule?

I will respect my meaty horse with the delicate ankles of a 9 year old figure skater. No more fat chicks.

Me Napped

Maybe when the sheep left he blew a hole in my perfect world. Things are less busy, sheep wise, and more busy, busy-wise.

Teaching and arranging and conducting in class and after class. Large teenagers striding around, helping keep the house running. We have mighty house, and staff is required. I think they are looking forward to getting out, because that's part of it, isn't it, growing up, wanting to run your own life and stay on your computer or phone as long as you want. I guess you know you're doing it right if your kids are looking forward to all the things they get to unwrap in their upcoming lives.

I can't look at too much of it without a magnifying glass, but where is my heart in all this. Parts of it are huge and overused and parts of it are shrunken and weak. Some of us are just standing around in there wondering when the fire was.

I'm rushing around in my life because I don't understand where all of this is going. Why is it going, and where do I fit?

With the horses I understand. There are steps, and elementary education is happening, and they are simple and furry, and dopey and genuine. Also huge and I must be a lion at times to be heard and understood. I guess not that different from my real human life.

When I finish a book like I just did, and send it to the agent then there's this gap and I try not to fall down. I start looking around and avoiding writing the next thing. I go and see old friends and they make me remember who I am and I miss her, even though I am in her.

My life has run away with me.

One Sheep to the Wind

Well our old buddy Travis went to live with a lonely donkey. Is there really any more to say?

He has two acres of weeds to get started on, so I'm sure he's hitching up his (wool) pants and getting directly to work.

Dewey called to him when we walked him to the guy's car, and hefted him up inside the back seat of the station wagon. Travis did not look back. He was very happy with the cheerios and the hay I had put in there for him.

I was subbing with a class later, and kept staring into space, hearing Dewey calling to him and feeling his heart breaking into a million pieces.

Dewey loved Travis from the minute he came home. A gentle big brother, always sharing all the hay. Travis loved Dewey too. They kept each other good company until he got Maggie.  So now Travis was free to take his friendship skills to the next lonelyheart.

Also he had to go because he had started butting people when he wasn't getting his way. A sheep's skull is a serious weapon, dude. Especially when aimed at the human nut area.

I used to complain at him everyday for busting into the barn when I'd open the door, or just being a general busybody. Now the barn is quiet and smaller without him. But it's not bad, it's just different.  I'm glad he has his weeds, and he's got a new friend and a family that will love him, and the space to be a sheep. Grazing all day.

When you make the heart of a horse eased by your fluff and your weaving through his legs, you have done a loving thing, Travis. For being there. You gave Dewey a year, and he is grateful and changed because of you.

One Small Step for Mag Kind

For all of you riveted by my progress with one small dapply buckskin mare, aged 4, Maggie is learning to trot. Julie is learning to not be afraid of her, which seems to help a great deal! Maybe it's learning to ask for what you want, in the kindest way, and then get tougher until she understands what it is you're cueing her for. Then she does it.

The first time I asked her trot under saddle she did and then slammed on the brakes and started biting  me and then moving backwards at high speed. That was way long ago. That caused me to only walk her for like a month as I built up confidence and worked with her outside the arena and on the lunge and tried to get her knowing that the cue to GO means forward, not slamming in reverse.

The second time I asked her to trot off the lunge, under saddle, was a few days ago, and she still tried to argue with me, but after about half an hour, she started trotting at my voice, leg and crop cue. After almost an hour, I got her to make one lap around the arena.

Today I had her usual resistance at first, but after about 20 mins, she was trotting at my leg cue much better. We did a few lopsided laps, but they were laps! Posting even! I could feel her kind of see that we can work together, nothing bad happens. We will work on rhythm, just getting her to go and accept the cue was my goal. We'll get her steady. I have to always quit before I want to, because I want to end on a good note. It's hard to know when that is all the time. When is enough.

It makes me happy, though, on days when I'm burned out from teaching and all the noise, to have the horses to work with. It fills me in tactile and problem solving ways. And I like to see the results come creeping in, and I like to see who I can be and what I can do. They're big furry kids, and they're peaceful, mostly. A tiny bit bratty, but willing.

I also walked them separately back home, and they were yelling like long lost lovers. But once they get used to it, that should help them to know nobody dies if they're not together. It's the one that's left behind who has the biggest sadness.

Mother Teacher Daughter Horse

My current obsessions are when will I get time to write my Carrie Fisher thing, and what is it exactly I am writing.

And subbing non-stop. And then mothering after subbing, when I get home and I'm fresh, oh yes, with ringing ears from kids high-pitched voices, and organizing and looking intelligent (stress LOOKING, not being).

And then riding, because I like the routine of training, and the quietness of the horses, even the asshole one that is new and likes to be a baby and chew on everything, and eat everything on the trail, and not trot when I want her to but then okay she does. I still like the work of it, because it is just me, and we can only go really one speed, and it isn't very fast.

And the roses I get to see blooming, and the little Buddha statue we pass with the purple flowers now around it, and I breathe when I see it because it is calming, and the sky was wide open cracked with grey clouds and sunshine with sharp edges, and nobody was crazy, just me out there quiet and knowing the world was still here, all in one place and silent.

Then it's okay if the dishes have to put away, and then I can handle going to the mall so my youngest can get her first pairs of earrings, because it's two days away from when she gets to change her earrings for the first time. And this is worth spending time on, because it's the first time, and this is life.

All of it, every second, being there.

Knit Wit

So I couldn't find anyone to shear my sheep since I live in LOS ANGELES and people WORK FOR A LIVING like in little cubicles, here, so I just got some scissors and four blisters and some serious skin rubbed off my hand later, I have a fairly sheared sheep who now hates me. I only cut him one time, but it did look pretty gruesome.

Travis is one year old, and he had started looking like who's that black dude with the afro, Larry King? Rodney King? Wait, somebody King, from the 70's. Anyway, he was looking SWEATY.

So now he's baa baa black sheep haven't any wool, and I have two bags full. I decided what the hell do I do with the wool, so I looked up "what to do with wool" and you wouldn't believe the huge amounts of terrible and useless things they showed pictures of. First was the animal rights sites that said sheep are being skin stripped which okay I'm not doing that but suddenly I had to SEE and can't UNSEE that. Travis is about as far from that demise as he can get, since he likes to sometimes wander into the house. Then I see that if you want to spin wool into a sweater (which I don't), you have to wash it, a bunch of times in a kettle, rinse it, dry it, pick it apart, pick all the dirt out (it would take hours  just to pick apart ONE piece of wool, let alone two bags full), comb it out and then you have chunks of wool that you can make into ugly decorations that none of your friends would want.

Like wool coasters. Or a wool wreath. Or you can do a bunch of other junk to it where the end result is buying the Sleeping Beauty spinning wheel and making it into actual yarn to actually knit. I am a knitter but I barely even want to pick up the sticks in my hands to knit WITH,  so I see the joy in getting the yarn already colored and clean and ready in strings at the store.

But I am not ready to throw out the dirty wool. I may wash it just to say I did, and I may pick it apart on some day that I really don't want to do something more boring like clean the house or play with the kids. heh. Then I could make a pillow or a comforter for the dog or something. Right?

But then, can you WASH that? Things that are all natural are like, way more complicated. They wear like sandals and have goatees and wear their shorts kinda baggy and ride bikes in the rain.

I just want to say that my natural inclination is to zip it into an old sleeping bag and say there ya go. Instant dirty comforter. DO NOT UNZIP.