I know, I know...

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Yeah I know I pretty much disappeared for a while.  But things have been crazy.  Between work and horse shows and the annual Albany trip, I've barely had a moment to think in the last month!  So where to start?  I guess with Catt Co Horse Show.

Friday afternoon I headed up to Little Valley after work.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to get Friday off, so I ended up missing all the Friday classes.  But we did make it up in time to party Friday evening, always important.  :)  So Saturday I ended up riding in 3 classes.  First up was the Arabian Ladies Western Pleasure, where Dalal and I ended up 3rd out of 5.  Not to bad to start off with.  Later in the evening we went back to the Open Ladies Western Pleasure.  It was a tough class, not only did I have Emily to contend with, but her sister Shelley as well.  We ended up 3rd out of 10.  Very respectable.  And then just a couple classes later was the Arabian Western Pleasure Open.  Luckily this year there were no explosions to contend with.  I though Dalal and I had a really good class, but apparently the judge disagreed and we were 4th out of 8.

That evening we had a bit of excitement after the exhibitors party.  It started out as an adventure, but got pretty scary towards the end.  Since it was pretty cold at night, and New York state law doesn't allow fires anymore, the adults all set up for cards in the barn aisle.  We hung out with them a bit but soon got bored.  So Emily, Shelley, Daphne and I all piled into Kim's golf cart and went for a drive around the fairgrounds.  Well shortly after we left the barn we saw this old beat up boat of a car driving around.  And he was driving around all road blocks.  Emily and Shelley had seen him the night before and thought he was creepy so we decided to follow him around.  He was acting very weird, he would drive up to a building, stop, turn off his lights and sit for like 5 minutes.  And then he would turn on the lights and drive a little further.  And then stop again.  We followed him for a little and then we decided we would get close enough to get his license plate.  Well as we drove past him we saw that he had a police uniform on.  We kinda laughed at first, but then started thinking that even if he was a cop, it was still kinda creepy behavior.  Plus you hear all those stories about people buying police uniforms and posing as cops to lure kids into their car and kidnap them.  So we headed back to the barn to tell Kim all about it.  And Kim was basically like "he's ok, he's been here all week.  He's a cop."  So we drop the whole thing.  Shelley decides she's ready to go to bed so we take her over to her camper.  And then we drive over to Daphne's trailer.  And eventually head back to the barn to give Kim his golf cart back.  It's close to 1:00 and we start heading back to the campers to turn in for the night.  Well Daphne was parked over on the other side of the gate from where Emily and I were.  Just as we were getting to the point where Emily and I split from Daphne, the 'cop' drives around the corner and starts yelling at us through his window.  He's yelling for us kids to get where we belong.  Well Emily and I can't resist being smart asses so we tell him we are where we belong.  He yells again about calling our parents to come and pick us up at the gate and crap like that.  Well both Em and I are like we're 28, not kids.  And Emily tells him to go ahead and call her parents, her dad is sitting in the barn.  He keeps on yelling a few more times about us kids getting off his streets and to stop causing trouble and stuff before he starts to drive off.  Well Emily and I look at each other we figure we better mention this to Kim.  Even if the guy really is a cop, he has no business acting like that and yelling at anyone.  So we turn ahead to head back to the barn and the 'cop' was just a little past the barn.  Well he sees us walking back that way and whips his car around and drives towards us.  Emily and get off the road and more towards the barn and we start speeding up, Emily calls for her Dad.  Well the next thing we know the guy has stopped his car and is getting out to follow us!  We start running for the barn, Emily's screaming for her Dad, I'm screaming for Tom.  Ace comes running out of the barn first, followed by Tina, Tom, Bill and Kim.  Emily and I get behind the other adults and Kim walks up to the guy trying to calmly speak to him.  Ace meanwhile is just circling waiting for an opportunity to do something.  Well the 'cop' starts getting in Kim's face and eventually starts threatening to take him to jail because he's intoxicated.  It was ridiculous.  Finally he went away and left us alone.  It was pretty scary while it was all going on though.  And I really don't think he was a legit cop.  I mean he never identified himself or anything.

So after all the excitement Saturday night we had the Championship classes on Sunday.  Tom took Dalal in the Open Western Pleasure Championship and then I got to take him in for the Arabian Western Pleasure Championship.  We had a good ride, but we were up against Emily and Tony and another really nice gelding. We ended up 3rd out of 3 in the Championship.  We had a good ride though so I'll take it.

Back at home, I've been getting a lot of lessons from Bonnie, getting ready for the Boyd Martin Clinic in October.  So of course that means schooling lots of gymnastics.  I'm just glad that we're going into fall and I won't be wearing shorts any time soon.  My new method of actually getting over things the first time is to smack myself in the leg with my crop.  So I'm getting a nice red welt on my leg.  But I'm getting over the fences so it actually works.

In other non-horsey news, my cousin Jeffery got married Labor Day weekend.  And well it was about what we expected.  Jeff asked me to light a memory candle for Bum Bev and Pap Bill at the beginning of the ceremony.  I was kinda touched that he asked me to do that.  Otherwise, I pretty much didn't want to be there at all.  It didn't help that I ended up having to go alone thanks to a staffing crisis at FedEx.  Already I was kinda feeling like crap watching my younger cousin get married before me.  But to have to go alone too, that was even worse.

I also had the Pink Ribbon Horse Show last weekend, but more about that in a seperate post.

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