Month: March 2004

Tomorrow we’re leaving town for a short and well-deserved vacation to Catalina Island. It’s on my list of things to do before we leave LA (someday). Actually tomorrow we’ll be spending the night in Long Beach, which is peaceful and laid back compared to LA. From Long Beach we catch the boat to Catalina on Sunday morning. We’re taking our bikes along so we’ll be exploring both Long Beach and Catalina by bicycle. We also plan to take a few tours, hopefully one of the casino in Avalon, go horseback riding, and possibly go kayaking if the weather warms up a little. Mostly we’re going to relax and get away from the daily grind.

It’s Spring Break and I’ve felt burnout settling in, ever so pervasively (oooh, that’s a big word for me!). So I’ve been working one day and feeling guilty about not working the next day. Only a little guilty though. I’ve completed a tremendous amount of work this quarter and am only a little behind, not enough to get me into the panic mode.

I’m off to make margaritas (this time Dave is helping me!) and relax for the evening.

Today was my first day volunteering at RideOn, a therapeutic riding facility. Last Saturday I went through the 3-hour volunteer training session then volunteered for real today. Mostly the staff turned me loose with getting the horses ready because it was clear that I had groomed and saddled horsees before. My only questions were about the location of things if they weren’t on their own hooks.

My favorite horse so far is a Norwegian Fjord mare named Berit. I can’t say what I like best about her — she’s soft and very hairy (shedding season), generally well behaved. But so are the rest of the horses. Another mare I took a liking to was a small sorrel, named Roxie. She worked in a lot of lessons today but never got grumpy.

Because I spent so much time getting horses ready, I didn’t get to interact with the staff nor the riders very much. I did help in one lesson though. A woman who has trouble with her legs and is riding to strengthen her legs rode Roxie toward the end of my shift. I helped “sidewalk”, which means that I walk along beside the horse with my forearm across the thigh of the rider. My hand grasps the knee rolls of the saddle. Another person sidewalks on the other side and yet another leads the horse. With the instructor, there are a total of four people for one rider. This, of course, insures absolute safety for the rider and the horse.

At the end of the day, I felt I had worked hard and my efforts were appreciated. I was invited to volunteer more frequently than my reqular Thursday afternoon time. I just might. This kind of work is good for my soul.

I misspelled my own name as ‘Corring’ in a recent email. Apparently this is another misspelling of my name. Often I misspell it as ‘Corrian’ but ‘Corring’ is a new one. Sheesh…. I’m going to blame it on the new margarita recipe I found in Better Homes and Gardens. Well, I had to try it! I tried to scale the servings for 6-8 down to one serving and managed two servings. Okay, I’m a lightweight…. The margarita recipe is as follows:

1/2 cup lime juice
1 cup tequila
1 cup Cointreau or Grand Marnier or Triple Sec (i.e. an orange liqueur)

This makes 4-6 servings.

I adjust for two servings this way:

1/3 cup lime juice
Fill up the measuring cup to 2/3 with Triple Sec
Fill up the measuring cup to 1 1/3 with Tequila.

Somehow I calculated 1 1/3 cups as two servings, while the original recipe says that 2 1/2 cups is 4-6 servings. I suppose my calculation isn’t off by too much but I feel like I drank 4 servings worth. Again, I’m a lightweight but it’s Spring Break so I deserve a little slack.

On to other things:

This morning I had a wonderful riding lesson on Sophie. Goldie isn’t quite back to her normal self. Although when she was turned out, she bucked, snorted, and ran about as if she were a wild mustang being chased by mountain lions. I’m kind of glad I wasn’t riding her today.

It drizzled a tiny bit this morning but not enough to obscure my vision so I was comfortable jumping. Barb has me jumping at least 2′ jumps, possibly 2.5′. I feel comfortable. My position has improved a great deal since I’ve been ridnig under Barbara Vasilaros’ tutelage. I’m not falling all over the place after we land. Jumping has always been fine but landing can be a problem if my body is not right, i.e. heels down, butt over saddle, back flat, chest and shoulders up.

Did I mention that I went roping on Sunday? I’m a header, which means in team roping that I rope the front end of a cow, i.e. the horns, while a heeler of the team ropes the heels. It’s been either 13 or 14 years since I’ve roped. My first time back was Sunday. I caught 3 out of a bunch of cows (maybe 10?), which is better than I expected. I expected to catch zero cows. One of these days I’ll post pictures of me jumping and roping. I have to convince my husband to be present long enough to snap a few photos. Normally he’s more interested in riding his bike or rock climbing. I can’t say that I blame him.

Since spring is decidedly here in SoCal, I thought I’d post my last winter picture. This is a picture of Stoney Point, a local rock climbing place where some of the reknowned climbers got their start. It’s about a mile from where we live so my husband goes climbing there frequently. When I was climbing I went too but now I’ve been more interested in horses and my climbing shoes hurt my feet. Two good reasons to not climb.

Speaking of spring, the reason I haven’t been posting on my blog regularly lately is because I’ve been doing other things, like living instead of being introspective, a winter habit for me. The shoots and blossoms are bursting out of the fruit trees in my back yard, I’ve harvested lettuce from my little container garden, the tomatoes have blossoms and the eggplant has fruit. I’ve internalized this signal to go forth and do things. And so I have. My days are busy with school stuff then I spend my evenings taking walks in the neighborhood. On Tuesday evening, after a day of being an oceanographer on Santa Monica Bay, I rode a horse and twirled my lariat around his head. On Sunday I intend to chase a few cows from the back of said horse and hopefully catch a couple with said lariat. My roping is rather rusty so I may just end up chasing the cows. My jumping trainer doesn’t relish the notion of me riding in a western saddle and chasing cows but I’ve never been one to fully commit to one event or another. In the words of Sammy Davis Jr., “I gotta be me!”

Yesterday, though, I had a fabulous jumping lesson from the back of Sophie, a wonderful Thoroughbred mare (Goldie is still recovering from her stone bruise). Sophie will jump anything and she makes it easy. Even though I hadn’t jumped in about 3 weeks, my trainer had me jumping new heights and I was comfortable with it. Why should I give up jumping so I can rope or vice versa? There’s no real reason I can’t do both. Regular people either pick one or the other and get good at their chosen sport (vice?). I’ll be mediocre at both but have a lot of fun and know why I’m not an expert at either.

The peach tree in the backyard. It survived my alternately loving then neglect. Wonder if we’ll get fruit.

All of the horse-related plans I’ve made in the last two weeks have been postponed in some way. I’m not sure what to think about this but am becoming convinced that the Universe is trying to tell me something. And I’m not getting the message.

My 1/2 lease of Goldie, the very nice Thoroughbred mare, started last Monday. I wasn’t able to ride her until Thursday because the rains had mucked up arena footing so it wasn’t safe to ride and it would ruin the arena for future riding. Everyone was locked out. Then when I did ride her on Thursday, about 15 minutes into the ride I noticed she was lame. So I had to put her back in her stall. As of yesterday I was not able to ride her in my lesson. Instead I rode a one-eyed Thoroughbred named Jammers. He’s a very nice horse but couldn’t jump because he’s recoving from a hock (back leg) injury. I didn’t mind not jumping since I haven’t ridden in a couple weeks — I wouldn’t mind getting my riding legs back. Goldie has to see the vet, which kind of worries me because it makes me think that her injury might be more long term than I’d be willing to lease her for. The same might be true for the person who has the other half of the lease. Neither of us can use her when she’s in this condition.

I had also planned to attend the volunteer training at the therapeutic riding center so I could volunteer in earnest in a couple weeks. However, only two potential volunteers had signed up so the training was postponed until March 20.

The third thing was that I had planned to watch a team roping even at a stable to the northwest of us. I rode my bike there despite the terrible head winds (we’re having Santa Ana’s again). No steers were in the arena and only one guy had his horse out and saddled. I stood around for a little while until an Asian man came close enough for me to ask whether there would be roping today. No, the arena is still too wet and it’s a little too windy.

Writing all these down makes me feel as though I’m being a little too impatient. After all, what’s the big deal? If Goldie has a real problem, I terminate the lease and hopefully ride some other lesson horse. RideOn, the therapeutic riding place, isn’t going anywhere so I will be able to volunteer eventually. The ropers will probably be back in business by Wednesday or even by next Saturday. That everything happened one after another seems suspicious to me, like I’m missing some billboard in the sky that I should be paying attention to. Well, if I can’t read the signs then I guess I just have to wait and see if the next message is clearer.

Here is Goldie, the horse I have a half-lease on. This morning was to be my first ride on her in a couple weeks because of the rain. Alas, our ride was cut short because she limped on one side. Darn!

My results. And, yes, it’s accurate:

Tarzan!

What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!)
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My results from another quiz from Quizilla. Boy, do they have me pegged:

You’re a Glass of Wine!

What Type of Alcoholic Beverage Are You?
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