Tuesday, May 19

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

My family is starting to use Facebook to keep in touch. We have a family page that is closed to the public, and we've been posting there. It's sort of to keep in touch with each other about Mom, but we put other things there too. It's nice.

I feel a little better. I was really hit hard when Mom went into the hospital. I'm trying to come to terms with all of this. She might not be going home. She hasn't been walking. At least she seems somewhat lucid, but I think her short term memory has really taken a hit. Others in my family think she's herself, but I feel like she just pretends that she remembers some things, and she kind of just goes along with what you're saying, but it really isn't her usual way of conversation.

There really is a point in life, where everything good still seems bittersweet, because you become very aware of the transience of everything. You feel a lot more like an observer than a participant, or that you're almost doing things thinking of the next people.

Having a good lesson on River. It's funny how oddly intimate a relationship you can develop with a riding coach. Likely true of any kind of coach. We don't necessarily talk about my personal problems, but sometimes we talk about how weird social isolation is, and sometimes we do talk a bit about life, and she definitely knows when I'm having a bad day. She's worked with me through my fears, she knows my weaknesses, and I'm sure there's things about me she knows that I don't even know. We have butted heads too, because she's the owner of the barn, and I haven't always been happy with things, and I've done a few things to piss her off too. That can make the next lesson kind of awkward, but somehow she puts aside those things (provided we get it out in the open). It's a strange dynamic, because you have to be vulnerable and honest to move forward, and she has to push you but know when enough is enough. It's not exactly a friendship, yet she's someone I've seen a few times a week around the barn for about five years. I've seen her go through two pregnancies, seen her kids a lot, see growth in the development of the property and it's her home, not a separate work space. You see her cats and dogs and horses every time you're at the barn, and they become a bit like your own pets. I've met some of her family. There isn't much that can be kept private from the people who ride there. Yet, if I weren't at the barn anymore, I might not even hear from her, as this relationship is likely just within the context of the barn. There is still a certain distance and formality, and some of that is just that she is the owner and the coach and I am the boarder/student, so we are not peers. She's also the coach, supportive and so on, while we're in the lesson, and the owner outside of the arena. There's actually an awful lot of social dynamics to learn at a barn like this; where your place is, where her place is, social rules of interaction between other riders (generally a very nice group of people, very little gossip), and yet a funny formality to it all. She had to learn her role, because she just opened the barn, really, when I started boarding there. She'd taught lessons, but at someone else's barn, so she had a lot to learn, and me too, since the dynamic was new to me. The anthropologist in me finds it fascinating.

Coming home and getting the second half of the garden tilled. I didn't get all the grass roots pulled out, which kind of sucks because tilling doesn't really kill them, but I had to till because we are expecting rain all weekend, which means it would be too wet to till later, and I need to plant right away.

Having a nice bath.

Monday: A nice warm day.

Meeting up with a woman selling some Silpada necklaces. After a fair amount of driving in circles (the area she lives in is very poorly planned, and every time I have to go to that area I curse the builders/developers, whoever it is that's responsible for that mess). She had everything laid out nicely with prices, which I appreciate rather than trying to dicker once you're there, and we were both being careful about our distance. I found four necklaces that are very nice and I know I'll wear, so yay!

Getting a bit of work done in the garden.

Working on some art.