February was not my best month.
I didn't ride my horse all month. He was fine. I was not.
The month started with a medication change that knocked me on my butt for a few days. I haven't mentioned it here, but back in the fall I was diagnosed with ADHD - inattentive and hyperactive. The new dose of medication for that left me feeling really slow for a few days and I had little desire to do anything after work.
I basically got over that and immediately got a head cold. Cue another week of not wanting to do anything while snot drained and dripped from my body.
And as soon as I felt better from that, I lost my job of 30+ years due to restructuring through an insolvency.
Another dump of snow and freezing cold temperatures a couple of days later left me with little motivation.
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| Stitch has been feeling good when given the chance to get moving on good footing. I never manage to capture the good rodeo moments though - they're much more exciting than this. |
Job-wise, I'm still trying to figure it out. In Canada we have employment insurance that we pay into from our pay cheques that you can claim when you lose your job due to no fault of your own. It's not nearly as much as I was making before, but I should be able to make it work. I've been able to pick up some extra lessons to teach now that I have more time, and I've been offered the opportunity to do a couple of days of barn chores a week in exchange for board. I told the barn owner today that I'll do that and start in a couple of weeks (I have a bunch of appointments next week) so at least in the short term I think things will be okay.
Now that I have all this free time (hah! It doesn't seem like it!), it's time to get my horse going!
Stitch has definitely made good use of the winter. He's grown up and filled out. And has been feeling quite good when given a chance for a free run in the arena.
I haven't been feeling any motivation to get in the saddle all month. Talking to a few other people, they're kind of feeling the same. This has been a cold, snowy winter, that started early, and seems to have no sign of ending. Sure, this weekend it's supposed to be +10C. But there was enough fresh snow in the field today that I was up to my knees trying to find a way out to my horse (who has met me at the gate every time for the last few weeks, but barely acknowledged my presence until I was almost in the back corner where they were all grouped together). And then it's going to drop right back down again to -10 daytime highs the next week.
We are so over this winter.
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| The blueness of the 5-ish pm picture taken on Thursday March 5th represents my feeling about this winter. So much snow still. A bunch of it melted over the weekend, but the temperature is dropping yet again, so we're back to needing to skate everywhere. |
Uncharacteristically for me, I had a bit of anxiety about getting back on. I suspect that it was a bit worry about what my baby horse who has barely been ridden over the last three months would do.
Spoiler alert - Stitch was absolutely perfect. Completely chill, he maintained the pace that I set, and was not at all worried about the person on his back who was trying to force herself to relax.
We didn't do very much, I think our ride was all of 25 minutes. But sometimes just getting on when you don't want to is all the win that you need. And that's okay.
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| Still the bestest boy. |
I really need to measure him again. I measured him a couple of weeks ago and he was a solid 15.3. But standing next to him while tightening my girth, I had to look up at the top of my saddle. I don't remember it being so far up before! But I'm not sure if he's actually gotten much taller as I didn't struggle to reach the stirrup, so ???
