Last week was Not So Good. Let’s just say the Not-So-Good part started at Sudden Onset of Extreme Dizzinesss, went directly to Extreme Panic, made a bee-line for the ER with help from the serendipitous timing of a visit from my dearest long-long-time friend, and then ended with the realization that I am a Mo-ron.
This realization made me feel a lot better right away. Although to arrive at it, I had to ride my spinning carousel of a living room while trying to focus my spinning eyeballs long enough to research my predicament on my spinning computer.
Now, after almost two weeks after fixing the Mo-ron part, which means going back on the SSRI I had inadvertently stopped taking cold-turkey, which was the cause of the dizziness, I am feeling like My Old Self, Which is, as you know, mostly OK with some not OK parts. Bottom line: Drugs are good, at least for now.
So this week I have been spending a lot of time just being thankful for my life. For being able to watch summer evening sunsets from my front porch, work at a job that is enjoyable and pays me well enough to afford my front porch and drugs, have my lovely Mommy close by and willing to come babysit me anytime I need her, have a great big, sweet horse to ride, and have the comfort and support of my dear friend who I have just simply adored for about 42 years or so now, exactly when I needed her here, even though she lives 3000 miles away.
About 25 years ago, when I was more of a City Girl, I used to go with a friend to the Sacramento Symphony on Friday nights. We would get all gussied up in fancy dresses and jewelry (hers) and drive a red BMW convertible (hers) and act like Real Women of Culture And Sophistication. I loved the symphony.
At that time, I was also wearing suits and pumps to work, studying piano, taking college courses at night, buying my fingernails, living in a townhouse, and probably smelling better overall.
Fast forward to now. I still consider myself to be a Real Woman, but it occurs to me that the Culture and Sophistication parts have officially hightailed it out of here, as far from my present being as my feet are from their next pedicure. The little black dress, good jewelry and convertible replaced by riding pants, boots, and my dirty beater SUV, I head out on a Friday night to different sort of symphony — dusty old Garth Brooks hits blaring from a loudspeaker. I sit on a garage sale-quality dinette chair, eat a home-made pulled pork sandwich courtesy of Daisy’s Chuck Wagon, and watch local horse people do team penning.
- Team = Two or three riders and their horses
- Penning = separating a single young cow from a herd at one end of the arena and moving it down to the other end, into a pen.
The team sits waiting at one end of the arena. When given the go-ahead by the announcer, they start walking, trotting, loping or galloping (depending on the horse and/or rider’s desire to actually get close to those cows) toward the herd of terrified or bored (depending on the cow) cows at the other end. The cows are wearing numbers, zero to nine. There are several of each number. The announcer calls the number of the cow to be penned when the riders have started down toward the herd.
The teams have to find one cow with the correct number, cut that cow out of the herd and then make it go by itself to the other end of the arena. Since the cows know by Herd Instinct that they are safer if they stick together (safer from what, one wonders, when the closest thing to a cow predator within miles is Daisy herself, and she’s busy with pork), the cut cow will try its hardest to get back to the herd, in which case the rider’s job is to yell “HAH HAH HAH YIP YIP YIP” and jerk their horse’s head around trying to get them to track the cow and scare it down the arena and into the pen. The horse’s job is to either to be obedient to the rider’s jerking or jerk the rider around in a bucking frenzy. Which is way more fun to watch if you are the audience. Definitely more fun if you are the horse.
Or, the cut cow just won’t care anymore since it has been doing this team penning crap every Friday night for 6 weeks in a row and the outcome is inevitable — it gets driven down to the other end of arena, goes into the pen, waits for the applause, and then toodles on back to the herd. So the cow just plods along resignedly in a Just-Shoot-Me stupor, infuriating the rider who wanted to show off his riding skills and giving the horse a much-needed break from getting his head jerked around by those same riding skills.
And this goes on for hours, as long as there are teams that want to pen, and the cows are still awake. Long past sundown, and into the wee hours possibly. I don’t know, I didn’t stay until the end. But when I left, Garth was still singing and I thought this was just a way cooler Friday night than the symphony ever was.
Life in the Fast Lane on a Dirt Road 