Wednesday, April 8

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

That I had a good riding lesson on River today. We did a really good job at the collection today, he was more still in his head and accepting of the contact, and even held the bend to the left properly. We worked on doing transitions from walk to canter back to walk and trying to stay in collection and getting to the walk cleanly. Really tough!

The start of the day was pretty rough. I had very little sleep last night, because I woke up when the furnace guys showed up in the morning, and again when my husband got up fairly early to go to the city to do a routine drug test for his job, then the cats wouldn't leave me alone. So I woke up tired and already really crusty.

I am grateful that my sweetie picked up turtle food, some fresh groceries, and the mail. If he had to go out today, at least he made it worthwhile.

One of our cats, Fatty, was sneezing a lot the last couple of days, and I was worried that it could be an upper respiratory infection, which can quickly become serious in cats. My husband made an appointment for the vet, which is good, but he made it for right before my riding lesson. We would barely have enough time to get from the vet to the barn for me to tack up and warm up before my lesson, so I was stressed the whole drive into town, and the cat was screaming the whole way, and I was soooo tired.

It was warm today, and sunny, so that was nice.

The good lesson put me in a better mood. My husband had gone back for the kitty while I was riding, and the vet wasn't even sure he was sick, but gave him an antibiotic shot. I'm not sure I would have done that without confirming that he was sick, but we couldn't even go into the clinic with the cat because of Covid, so I didn't get to weigh in.

We had to wash Fatty when we got home because he basically was so worked up in his kennel that he purged from both ends. If you've ever had to wash a cat, you'll understand how scary it is. We both got some good scratches.

Then we watched "A Monster Comes", which is about a child facing the truth of his mother's dying of Cancer. Not really a happy feel-good movie, but at the same time I relate a lot with the theme of loss, and how awful you feel the whole time someone is sick and you suspect they aren't going to get better. I go through this horrible feeling of guilt every time with my animals, the feeling like I kind of want them just to die and get the dread and suffering over with, as well as feeling like if I could have just done more, or not given up on them they might not have died. Also, the movie deals with things like how people aren't always "good" or "bad", which is stuff that comes up when someone is dying too. Like my feelings about my brother in law who now has lung cancer; I have a lot of bad memories of him from when I was a kid, though he has tried to be a better person. It's not an easy movie to watch, but it is a well made movie exploring death.