Month: February 2004 (Page 1 of 2)

This is Sister Kitty in an exploratory mode. If only I could be so easily entertained… Because I’m not, I had a minor fret-fest yesterday morning. It’s the same old story: Instead of getting to work on what I should be working on, exploring potential horse careers started pulling me again. So why don’t I just give up this oceanography idea and do what I love? Any number of reasons: I don’t have the training, I’m too old to start training, I haven’t done much showing, especially in the last 13 years, I’m trying to learn a new skill (jumping) and it’s going too slowly to start showing then somehow morph into a professional trainer, there’s not enough money in it, and it’s way too competitive. Even though I don’t necessarily want to be a trainer, I still don’t have the skills to be a barn manager either. What about a riding instructor? I don’t even know how to get started. In other words it’s hopeless.

My sister, who can’t bring herself to follow her art even though that’s what she’s called to do, suggested I start talking to trainers and riding instructors to see how to get started. For some reason I have been reluctant to do that. If I was 20 years old, it would be easy but now that I’m closer to 40 than to 30, I feel that it’s too late. To be successful in this business, I should’ve been showing since I was 10, at the latest. I can still be a good amateur adult in the show ring. It’s never too late to start on that goal. That means that horses are strictly a hobby, not the focal point. This sounds stressful to me because there’s never enough time to accomplish higher goals. On the other hand, starving to death to work with horses is stressful too. Dilemma and the basis of my fret-fest. I’m called but I can’t go.

Fortunately there’s a therapeutic riding center about a 25-minute walk away. I decided to check it out to volunteer yesterday and am very glad I did. I watched the riding lessons of one autistic girl, one girl who walked with a cane and had braces on both ankles, another who was slightly retarded, and another who only had one arm. The environment at this facility is far more about caring for horses and people than at a competition barn. I don’t think I would ever feel good enough in terms of my skills, the horse I’ll be able to afford, the quality of my equipment, nor the height of my goals at a competition barn. At Ride On it feels like all goals are acceptable. The quality of your horse (just your horse handling skills), your tack, your competitive goals are not under scrutiny, yet some of these kids who are able to handle a horse on their own (many cannot and must be held on by the instructor and a volunteer on either side of the horse plus the person leading the horse) do go to shows, similar to the Special Olympics — the same idea anyway.

I cannot describe how good I felt being at this facility. The horses are small and sweet, the kids are fun, and the whole program is so beneficial. I feel like I’ll be doing something positive, I’ll get to be around horses, I’ll learn about instructing beginning riders, and still get to be involved in the competitive world but on a very different level. I start volunteer training on March 6 and will volunteer about 3 hours a week on Thursdays (tentatively).

I just love this idea. It completes so many aspects that feel unfulfilled right now: the need to be useful and to be outside doing something with my hands. I’m really not well suited for a desk job. I’m also looking forward to working with a sect of the population I’ve never had experience with and barely have had any contact. Horses give me something in common with these disabled folks.

Yesterday on my walk, I counted four horse boarding places on one street, less than a mile from my house. On Sunday I walked in a different direction and found two horse boarding places, still within a mile from my house. All six of these places are within the city limits of Los Angeles. Barely, but they are.

When Dave and I were looking for a house to buy four years ago, he suggested Chatsworth because it was near the hills, affordable, and had a small town feel because of all the horses in the area. Back then he never knew that my horse obsession was brewing and about to take over my life again. What he did know is that I was a farm girl who had never lived in a big city and he wanted to make Los Angeles as easy as possible for me.

I think moving here was a great idea. Just north of the place in the picture, there is another boarding facility that also runs cattle. They have cattle-harassing events, like team roping, cow penning. I say”cattle-harassing” with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Yes, there’s some truth to that but I don’t believe it has to be cruel. For example, rounding up cows to drive them into a pen is not cruel. They are separated from their comfort zone, i.e. the herd, for about one minute. Team roping is different. Steers are roped about the horns and heels but they do not have to be stretched out so they fall over. This just takes a little sensitivity. Calf roping, in my opinion, is cruel. They are just babies and they’re roped about the neck, thrown to the ground and have their feet tied up. Still, for only a few seconds but still… All these events are useful skills to have if you have cattle when it comes time to brand (or tag), medicate, or any other activity that requires close proximity to cows.

All this happens within the city of Los Angeles. It’s like being in another place, a place where you can escape traffic, noise, asphalt, even for a little while.

I am grateful that this winter has been cooler than any previous winter I’ve experienced here in SoCal. The last several days have produced a lot of rain. Today is cloudy, as in the photo. More rain is expected tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it even though the sogginess has prevented me from riding at all, which is a major drag.

These hills are about a mile west of where we live. I will miss this view when we move some day. The reason I keep reviewing the things I’ll miss is because so after so many other moves, I never stopped to think about what I might miss until long after I was gone and had no chance of visiting. I am being more aware of my surroundings.

This result seems more like me than the Book Quiz result:

You’re Switzerland!
While most people think you’re sort of stuck up, it’s really
just that people don’t interest you that much.  That’s why you’d rather
just stay out of everything and be as neutral as possible.  Somewhere in
there is an ability to be a psychiatrist because you’re so objective, but you
might just be too cold for that.
Take
the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

I love to read. So when I read Switched at Birth blog and found this Internet book quiz, naturally I took it. My results turned out to be a book I’ve never read and probably never will. Should I look at deeper meaning? Nah…

You’re Stranger in a Strange Land!
by Robert Heinlein
Most people look at you and think of you as a Martian, even though you
were born on Earth. Silly Earthlings, er, people. Anyway, you’ve been telling people
about free love and relaxing like it’s some radical idea. Most of them want you to go
back to the ’60’s (or Mars), but others are in your groove. Grok on!

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

(photo credit: APHA)

Someone from an email list I belong to wrote this on the subject: My yearnings are more for “place”….MY place in this world, my purpose. I wonder, if I ever find it, if it will be in some other city?

I think this is what I’m referring to more than for an actual physical place. I’ve always felt out of place, even when I lived up in WA so I’m a little nervous that actually moving up there is the cure. Until I find my place, my purpose, I will feel out of place even in my old haunts, when I didn’t know there were other places to live.

However, I have always longed for property so I could own horses. When I was a kid in Washington, I dreamed of moving to the West, the real West, which is east of Washington, like Idaho or Montana, where there were still open ranges and cowboys. Also, I imagined that there would be real purpose in owning horses, if one owned a ranch. Even though I grew up on a farm when I was a kid, it wasn’t that kind of farm. We farmed pigs. No large spreads, no rounding up the herd. We had enough property to own a horse but not enough to ride. Dad was certain the neighbors wouldn’t want me tearing around their cattle pastures on a horse. He was probably right. In short, I learned that horses were an unnecessary luxury, even though I was certain I needed them (yes, more than one) to be complete.

When I was in my early 20’s, I started taking riding lessons at my mother’s suggestion. We had been on a short vacation in eastern Washington. My sister and I rented horses at this trail riding place twice in the days of our short vacation. On the way home I dreamed out loud about moving to eastern Washington where there was space to own horses. Where would you work, a sensible adult asked. Work? Who needs work? I’d have horses. Then my mom suggested I keep my secretary job and take riding lessons. Well, why didn’t I think of that? Little did she know that that suggestion would lead to my quitting my secretary job and first working as a stall cleaner, then as a groom and assistant trainer. Eventually I bought my own horses y(es, two), which eventually lead to me renting a double wide trailer on 1 1/2 acres of land with a barn where I could keep my horses. I had found home, a place where I fit, belonged. There was money in horses. Not necessarily for me but I did earn a living.

Then I met a man, before I had recuperated from the last man. We got married. He was a non-horse person. I became convinced again that horses were an expensive luxury and we couldn’t afford them. That was the second time I believed that. So I sold my horses, believing I was doing the right thing. Immediately the emptiness set in, an emptiness my marriage could not fill. I tried to fill the emptiness with so many things: running, skiing, bicycling, skating, firefighting, writing, reading, cooking, kayaking, triathlons, lacrosse, marathon training, ocean swimming, climbing, moving, dancing, yoga. These things are still important but not enough. Nothing would fill the void but I didn’t recognize what I was missing until I perused a UCLA recreation catalog. There was a 6-week riding class. Surely I could afford that. The six-week class turned into two riding lessons a week. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t just the riding that I missed. I missed the grooming and fussing about horses. I missed the comraderie, the gossip, the politics of the barn. I missed training for horse shows, getting up way too early to remove manure from the freshly bathed horse and braid manes. I missed the horse show nerves, the depression of losing, the temporary exhileration of getting a ribbon, any color.

So I’m about to embark on a 1/2 lease of a horse, which will eventually lead to the purchase of a horse, which will eventually lead to the purchase of property so I can have more than one to fulfill my dual interests of jumping over fences English style and chasing cows western style. Property is not affordable in southern California. Nor is it affordable within commuting distance of the Bay Area. That leaves Seattle and Portland. We need property to fulfill my dream; we need a large city for jobs. Well, Dave does. There are universities and NOAA offices in small towns all the way up the west coast. Dave needs a city that has large corporations with large legal departments. Well, what about inland, he asks. He doesn’t have any connection to the Pacific Ocean. An oceanographer in, say Houston, I ask? Yes, there are universities inland that need oceanography professors. Well, maybe. What about the east coast? I’ve lived in south Florida. No thanks, even though parts of Florida are growing horse-wise. Lots of people train there in the winter. Other than that I’ve visited D.C. Maybe the northeast. Just maybe I could be an oceanographer and a horse-owner with property there. There would be similar requirements as in Washington: a covered or indoor arena for riding in inclement weather, ways to keep watering devices from freezing, traction from house to barn to arena, pasture, manure pile. Even still I would miss the landscape of Washington: the mountains, the Puget Sound, salmon and dungeness crab.

Maybe the longing for home is about physical place but also about answering a calling. A calling, in this case, which is an expensive luxury but an important part of our economy. Statistics show that there are over 3 million Quarter horses in this country alone. The rest of the registered breeds make up another 3 million or so. Those 6 million horses need feed, stables, shavings, trailers, tires, trucks, fuel, tack, training, veterinary care, insurance, and in some cases, legal help. In heeding my calling or longing, I can both go home and not cave into a guilty pleasure but contribute to the economy.

This photo is taken from our west-facing patio. The hills in the background are the Simi Hills, which are the western division between the San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley.

The reason I’m writing about home today is because I’ve had this overwhelming feeling lately that I want to go home, even though here has been home for nearly four years. I’ve not lived anywhere for this long since 1984 and lately I’ve been feeling as though I want to stop “messing around” and go home. I’m not exactly sure what I mean by “messing around”. Maybe I mean that I want to get serious about life now, settle down, pick a purpose, and go with it. I’ve spent the last 20 years exploring. It’s been a worthwhile exploration. If I had continued the path I was on in 1984, I would always wonder what it would’ve been like to live outside of Skagit County, Washington, which is a beautiful place. Now I know and I want to go back.

It’s scary to contemplate going back because I know it won’t be the same as I knew it then. And I wonder if I’ll belong, although I wondered whether I belonged back then. I didn’t belong back then because I had a journey to take. I’m on that journey now. The destination is back where I came from, even though I will miss the view of those rocky hills from our backyard.

The digital camera I purchased via Ebay arrived in the mail today. It’s a gloriously rainy day here in SoCal and I should be working on my term paper. Instead I’m snapping pictures. Well, one so far, of the irrisistably adorable Sister Cat!

If it was a typical SoCal day, i.e. not raining, I’d be snapping pictures of the neighborhood, the house, the view from our backyard. It’s probably a good thing I’m limited to indoors today. Still, this blog may show more photos of limited interest topics in the future!

Yesterday was an unplanned cruise day. Santa Monica Bay is experiencing “Bloom Conditions”, which means that the phytoplankton, mostly diatoms, are growing faster than usual. The water is green, yucky, stinky with diatoms, the organisms I study. Blooms happen several times a year, often in the spring. We don’t exactly know what the conditions are that trigger blooms but we’re working on that. Technology is improving so that we are aware of blooms in advance. By this, I mean that we have access to satellite images that measure the amount of chlorophyll (the stuff that makes plants green) in the water. During “normal” conditions, the images are blue, i.e. low chlorophyll. During bloom conditions, the areas with high chlorophyll, i.e. high biomass of phytoplankton, is red.

Earlier in the week, the folks from UCLA’s atmospheric sciences department alerted those of us in the biology department that the water was turning “red” — not the water exactly but the satellite images. The boat schedule was consulted then a cruise scheduled for yesterday. I got up at 5:10, rushed around the house while trying to wake up, left with a cup of steaming tea at 5:45. It’s amazing to me that even at that early hour we only travel 35 mph on the 405. Would I have to leave at 5:00 a.m. to have an easy drive on that freeway?

At 6:30 I pulled into the marina, unloaded my sampling bottles and measuring instruments, took two trips to carry them to the boat. By my second trip the people from Atmospheric Sciences arrived, except one who is notoriously late. He didn’t arrive for another 40 minutes, which made the captain grumpy because that just means a longer day. Finally our stray arrived. I settled in the cabin area with a stack of journal articles to read. Normally I stand outside to watch the marina go by, watch the scullers gracefully row their sleek boats across the placid marina water. Once we round the breakwater, I anticipate how nauseous I’m going to be, based on the swell. This time I was involved in my reading and didn’t even notice when we left the harbor; the water in the bay was mostly flat: little chop, little swell.

Ninety minutes later, we arrived at the sampling site: roughly a mile or so due south of Pepperdine University. A brisk wind freshened our cheeks and chilled our wet fingers. The captain drank hot chocolate while we shivered under hoods and jackets zipped to our chins. He wasn’t being mean, just practical. His work was done since we were “parked”. Our work had begun.

The sun came out and warmed us. Hoods were doffed, jackets unbuttoned. Chattering teeth turned to silly conversations and laughter as we passed the time, collecting samples. Two hours later, we turned from the view of the Santa Monica Mountains, rising sharply behind Malibu; the boat headed back to the brown smog of port. We saw one dolphin and two gulls and a diminutive relative of the albatross.

The collecting bottles were much heavier on the return trip from the boat to my pickup in the marina parking lot. Back to the 405, which was much more crowded, and finally exit at Sunset. Park in the loading zone, unload heavy collecting bottles and instruments, park the truck 10 minutes away in my assigned parking area, walk 10 minutes back to get the cart, push it through the building, out onto the sidewalk, to the next building, into the elevator, up one floor, then down the hall to the lab. This process, which takes 30 minutes to get bottles from lab to office and truck to loading zone, will be reversed.

In the lab my helpers were waiting. We filtered 24 liters of water through .6 um pore-sized filters. The water was stinky with diatoms, possibly the kind of diatoms that produce domoic acid, which is fatal to marine mammals. Filtering was slow. My helpers finally left at 5:15 p.m. I didn’t get to leave until 6:00 p.m., only to have to make the hour commute home. My husband understood why I was surly when I finall got home. He cheerfully handed me a martini and answered the phone when it rang.

Maybe I should change the title of this blog to “This Horse Life” since that’s all I’m writing about lately. This evening I rode a lovely chestnut/roan Thoroughbred mare named “Roxie”. She wouldn’t stand quietly enough for me to get on — I was being overly cautious since I didn’t know anything about this horse — but was very well mannered in the arena. She bended, lowered her head, gave to the bit. She leg-yielded, mostly picked up the canter as soon as I asked and always picked up the correct lead. She does flying lead changes easily. She’s steady over jumps and has a nice trot.

We jumped a small course over two low cross-rails and a vertical. My instructor was telling me to do one thing. Roxie was listening because she followed instructions, even if I wasn’t. She knows to go to the rail after a jump while I tend to cut corners. Once I understood the instructions, I realized that Roxie was doing it correctly but I was asking her to do something differently. We tried again and both did the course correctly. So that’s what a good round is supposed to feel like!

So I’m in love with yet another horse. They all have good points and bad points. Roxie probably will never jump higher than 3′, which is not a problem at all right now but possibly in a few years. I don’t want to buy a horse for now only to sell it later when I “grow” out of it. I want a horse I can grow into, yet I want it to be well behaved now, well trained, yet within my budget. Doesn’t everyone?