At what point?

At what point do people just not want to hear anymore? I know everyone has their limits to how much "stuff" they can handle from someone else. In some ways I feel like I should just start keeping everything to myself, and in other ways it seems to help to be able to talk about it. So I don't know. It's not about sympathy, it's not even 'poor me', it's like things build up to a critical mass and something has to give. I'm lucky to have some friends that don't seem to be too overwhelmed by me right now and are pretty much willing to talk whenever. A lot of the time it's not even talking about my dad, who had a massive stroke the day after Thanksgiving, but just talking. It's good to sit and listen to someone else's day. It really seems to be the only thing that can get my mind off of things.

My old girl, Mindy Lou, is 26. She was my first horse and I got her when I was 13 and she was a yearling. I wrote a tribute to her here. This winter has been hard on her, and she had a bad night on the 23rd where she laid down for too long and her body temp dropped to 94. It's supposed to be 100. Her back legs weren't working very well. The vet said it's up to her to stand up before morning. With an electric blanket and comforters and blankets from Pam's house her body temp got back up to normal and she stood up on her own a little after midnight. She seems to be doing OK, kind of back to just being an old horse, although is going to be in a stall with hand walking until the temperatures warm up. I remember when I was overseas and couldn't sleep I would think about showing Mindy to relax. That point in a class where you've scoped out all the competition in your peripheral vision and KNOW you've won the class. And know that your horse won't take a wrong step, will go through all the puddles, and will do a halt to canter transition if need be. Made even sweeter by the fact that your dad, who knew nothing about horses, got up at 4:30 every horse show morning and hooked up the old orange truck to the 1968 green 2-horse to get you there. And carried water buckets. And mom would show up to "help" although her version of holding a horse was following it around letting it eat hay from hay bags tied to other people's trailers. And that you trained your own horse through a lot of trial and error, and often placed higher than the trainer you took lessons from.

Poor Alexandre had 30 days of stall rest because he was off on his left hind. After 30 days he was let back out into his paddock and re-injured it. It looks like he's back in a stall for but for 3 months this time. Luckily the people that are buying him are caring, patient souls.

Jasper's stall and paddock look like Armageddon. There are bloodsickles everywhere. The stretch of white vinyl fencing is dripping with frozen blood, there's blood on the electric fence, there's blood on the walls and floor of his stall and in his feeder. A LOT of blood. There was not a scratch on him. No dried blood in his nose or cuts in his mouth. He had to have sneezed it out due to the spray patterns on the fence. Hopefully it was just a bloody nose. He was not appear to be in any distress at all. Bright eyed, eating, drinking, playing, and doing his normal running and bucking up and down the fence line when people took their horses into the arena that shares a fence line with his paddock. (The other boarders realllllllllly like that).


Today he really and mysteriously injured himself. He has a huge gouge in his right front arm pit. The vet was able to stick her whole hand up in it. She had to suture muscle and skin. His whole shoulder shakes. He's not putting any weight on it. He rears back, loads his hind end, and hops forward on his good front leg. He's locked in his stall, and I'm going out in the morning to see if he's putting weight on it. If not we'll do x-rays to see if there's a fracture. The problem is that the high today was 17 degrees and the x-ray machine's readout screen doesn't work in these temps. If there is a fracture it would be his Humerus, which is a major weight bearing bone in his leg/shoulder. There wouldn't be anything we could do.

I don't know. It seems like this would be enough, without stuff like my source of income ending sooner than I thought, or my (practically new metal) roof leaking, or the fact I hit a deer with my dad's car and knocked one of the mirrors off. Or the fact that school is starting tomorrow morning. Don't get me wrong, I know I have a lot to be grateful for, it's just that I'm feeling kind of numb at the moment.

And I think I may erase this pretty soon after I put it up.

I haven't been doing a lot of riding lately, but took Jasper out for our first walk in the snow yesterday. He loved it.