One More Week!

Monday, October 11, 2010

One more week to go!  God I can't wait till the clinic, so excited to have this chance to ride with Boyd Martin.

So this weekend I got a couple of opportunities to ride.  Friday I had the day off work as a comp day from all the extra hours I was putting in the last couple of weeks.  Still doesn't even out the balance, but it was nice to have the day off.  So of course, what do I do on my day off but head out to the barn.  Got there early to feed for Bonnie as she had a dentist appointment.  And then I decided to continue on what she and Astrid had started earlier in the week and clean in the tack room.  Very productively I went through my two cubbies and pulled out all my various tack and other things.  Set aside a pile of clothes and things to go home to be washed and set aside all my tack to be cleaned.  By the end my cubbies were looking pretty good.  And I also had a quite large pile of tack to clean.  Why do I keep buying bridles for all of Bonnie's horses?  Must stop now!  LOL  I am going to start enforcing the tack cleaning rule though.  The kids need to clean my tack after every ride.  And if they don't well then I'm going to lock it up in my tack trunk and they can find other tack to use.  Three weeks ago I told Vicky to clean Naughtie's bridle because it had mud all over it.  And it still wasn't cleaned.  So that's the last chance.  I will stop letting them all use my tack if it's not properly cared for.  Ok, rant over now.  Bonnie picked up Astrid on her way home from the dentist and then shortly after they arrived, Heather dropped off Ari. Bonnie head out to get sawdust and Astrid, Ari and I headed over to Luster's so I could have Joanne fix X's green blanket (finally!)  Of course while at Luster's I had to find other things to buy as well.  That's my one weakness.

We headed back to the barn and after school, Ethan and Victoria showed up.  Vicky and Ari got Fanny ready for a little bareback ride and I tacked up Kaye for a quick lesson before I had to go to work.  The diagonal triple was still set up in the arena.  We warmed up on the flat and then started over just a single fence.  After that Bonnie had me take her through the triple.  Was really good over the first two fences and then over the third I don't know what my issue was, but my position just went crap.  I started standing up in my stirrups and I really felt like I was sticking my butt up in the air.  Not pretty!  Weird thing is though, when I went through the triple from the other side, it was great.  I wasn't getting all funky with my position.  I just don't get it.  Oh well.

So I headed to work Friday night, and I found out that the schedule had been posted for the following week.  And lo and behold I was scheduled to work both the 18th and 19th.  Even though I put my request into the system on like my second day.  And Connie walked me through the whole process since I had no clue what I was doing.  So finally after getting a bunch of run around, at the end of the day I was finally able to talk to Ruthie, one of the CSMs.  Well since I was already clocked out I couldn't really do anything.  But she showed me how to go into the computer to see who denied my request.  And said I would need to talk to that person.  Alright, fine, I can do that on Saturday.

Saturday morning I was at the barn early, as Jim was coming to put hay up in the loft for us.  Three hours later, we had put up about 60 round bales!!!  At first it had only been Bonnie, Ethan and I moving hay.  Then Astrid and Henry showed up.  Astrid was a big help, Henry not so much.  Eventually we just told me to hold the door open and stay out of our way.  A couple of minutes after they got there Katie showed up as well.  So we had some more help.  And then towards the end Heather and Ari came to help.  Which was really nice to have some fresh assistance by then.  And moving around all that hay was not doing my knee any good.  We did finally finish with the hay and headed down to the tack room for some lunch.  Bonnie had the kids tack up and they all rode.  And then I had a short lesson on Kaye.  I got some really good flatwork out of her before we started jumping.  She was accepting the bit and work in a nice frame.  And I got two really nice canter departs.  So yay!  So then we started jumping.  First just over a single fence, stop, turn around and back over it the other direction.  We did that with all three of the fences and then went through the triple.  Bonnie had the first two fences set as oxers and then the third one that I had trouble with the day before was set as a crossbar.  And that fixed my weird position issues!  Awesome!  Jumped through that a couple of times and then the crossbar was changed to an oxer.  No problems, jumped it perfectly.

Wal-Mart.  And Sunday of course it takes all day, but finally at the end of my shift I found Shawn and I was able to get my schedule fixed.  Thank God!  I mean seriously I would have quit before working those nights.  So schedule is fixed and that means just one more week to get the ponies (and me ready) and then we get to meet Boyd!  Squee!

0 comments: