Tis' The Season

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I had the chance to go to Boston Mass. with my parents and visit some family there for the day. It's a 3 hr ride one way so I spent 6 hrs in the car with the rents which was interesting. I had a great time laughing with my cousins and telling stories with the rest of my family. The food was exellent and I was lucky enough to be able to bring home a plate. After dinner and before dessert we took a 2 mile walk around their neighborhood which was good because I was literally stuffed. It was nice to get away for the day but on the ride back home I was anxious to go home to my doggies.

Possum has also been doing pretty well lately. We had visiting hrs here on Friday for 5 hrs and I couldn't come back home until after 8p. It was a yucky and rainy day and the dogs and I spent most of it huddled in the tack room of the barn staying dry and warm. I did manage to run down to the indoor with Possum and just rode around bareback not working on anything in particular. Yesterday was a gorgeous late fall day with the temps maybe touching 50. It was bright and all the rain we got on Friday was starting to dry up. The barn was busy and I took my time getting Possum ready. I let him pick scraps of hay outside of his paddock while I brushed him. Because it was so busy in the outdoor ring I warmed up out there and then went down to the indoor to work. We started jumping in the indoor just trotting and then cantering low fences and gradually making them higher. Then I got down to the meat of the workout. I set up two fences at about 3 ft with two strides in between. My goal was to 1. get good distances to the first fence, and 2. get him so that right after he lands to then pick himself back up and prepare for the next fence. My goal for the next ride is to then turn it into a one stride.

Possum did pretty well and I was able to navigate him to pretty good spots for the most part. I did notice as we went to the right that he was drifting towards the rail and kind of twisting in mid air. The next time around I made sure to have a strong left leg and also making sure that I had equal weight in both stirrups since the left is my weaker leg. It got a lot better after that. Then we cooled down and went for a walk around the farm and watched the end of a jumping lesson that was going on in the outdoor ring. So my goal for the next ride is to turn that line into a one stride to get him to really lift himself up on the landing of the first jump and then get ready for the next, especially with it being of good height at 3ft.

I've still been running and walking. This past week obviously was hard because of the holiday weekend, but I did manage to ride my horse twice and then run/walk 3 times. This week I hope to get back in the swing of things again. The weather has turned rainy and raw again and I hope that by tonight it lets up so I can go for my run. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do in the winter. I've even thought of going to the barn and running in the indoor at night which could work. The college I work at obviously has a gym and fitness center and I'm hoping that I can talk to the dean and have access to the facilities so that I can continue to work out and stay in shape. The trust of the matter is that even though I hate running and working out, it does make me feel better after I do it so I just need to suck it up.

Well I think that's about it. Just trying to budget now and save money and pay bills and with Christmas seson coming. I've been saving money by cooking more and eating out less which is a huge savings, but it seems that whenever I seem to get ahead on bills other things come up, like our rent just increased by $100, I just paid car insurance, Possum gets his winter shoes on this week which is over $200 and I also need to get my winter tires and an oil change on my car. Again, these are all issues that everyone deals with, but man it just makes me want to be a kid again for a few days.... OK, promise, the next post will be the book review that I have been talking about for a while now. Have a great day!

P.S.- Minnesota dude is good. We still talk on a daily basis and he is also working on things in his own life. We hope to have a visit planned for January, I'm crossing my fingers, I really wanna see him!!!!