Saturday, April 11

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

A good ride on River. He was kind of excited because we're doing transitions from walk to canter, and those always kind of get him a little hot because he starts to anticipate the transition and doesn't want to bother walking. These transitions did really get him to do a beautiful round canter, though, and that's the reason why you do them. I'm glad I can still ride him at the barn. It's still a strange thing to always be there alone (my sweetie came with me the last few times) with no other riders, yet, I have to say we get a lot of real work done when it's just us, because we aren't just trying not to get hit by kids flying around on ponies or other riders who can't figure out the left to left rule. We get a lot more real work done in an hour when I'm not just avoiding collisions, and not avoiding jumps and poles being used by others.

Getting more pony poop picked up.

Having lots of time to talk to one of my sisters. She's been very frustrated by one of our nieces. I've mentioned this niece before, she's developing into a full trainwreck. She ran away from home at 17 to live with a guy, left him by basically moving right in with another guy, got pregnant almost immediately, lived with this guy for a while, then he got abusive (allegedly) so she left him and is not seeking any kind of child support. She lived at home with her Mom for a while, then met a guy online, moved in with him after knowing him for three months, married him soon after so she could act as his sponsor and keep him in the country (yes, it's that bad), got pregnant immediately, and then he got his licence to drive truck, is never home, apparently has NEVER CONTRIBUTED FINANCIALLY to her, because she always told him she would just support herself (even though they got married?), and he is floating around Quebec and "can't see her because work isn't giving him trucking routes to Winnipeg". She is going to give birth in May, and her "husband" likely isn't going to be there, won't be around to help her with the baby, or her four year old child.

My sister is angry because last year she helped this niece a lot. Helped her get an apartment, paid her rent until she could get work, helped her find a job, helped her get her driver's licence, gave her their old car, and bought her groceries. Helped her move. Didn't criticize her for marrying this guy, but was hoping that by setting the niece up with a job that she would have a chance of taking care of herself. She did everything she could to get this niece of ours into a better place in life, and she went and got pregnant, knowing that the guy she married had no desire for a family or any desire to support her financially. Now my sister is livid, and feels that our niece threw away all of her help, and likely just wants MORE help. I said maybe this time, this sister should just walk away and just direct our niece to social services.

This pisses me off too, because man, that's a lot of help from one person, and the expectation was that this niece was going to work and take care of herself and build a life, not fuck it all up again. That said, this girl's Mom is one of my trainwreck sisters, so there you go.

I waver between feeling okay about isolating, because at least my husband is home, and getting really tired and frustrated over the loss of my normal life. I don't know when or if I'm going to be able to do pottery again. I don't know when we can go watch live music at our little theater, or go out for a nice meal, or play cards with our friends, or see my Mom. There are times when this seems unreal, like, this can't be happening. This isolation could go on for a very long time. It makes everything so strange.