Robin McKinley's Blog, page 27

My debut, continued

 

Okay, let me get the really embarrassing stuff over with immediately.

I enjoyed it.  I had FUN.  I am planning on putting myself on the official St Margaret’s rota.*

Whew.  That was hard.  I enjoyed singing Jesus Is My Boyfriend** music [sic].  In public.  How totally humiliating is that.

Sunday, which was sunny and fabulous, passed under my own personal cloud of prospective dread.  I did do some singing warm up because I wanted some chance at some voice and I tend to shut down to a tiny rasping squeak like a single lonely cicada when I’m nervous.  I didn’t warm up exactly brilliantly.***  And when I crept into St Margaret’s I was not encouraged by the sight of Aloysius ALL BY HIMSELF except for the woman who was going to be running the tech deck helping him lay out the cables.  He had said in his email that the names on the rota were a bit thin this week. . . .

AAAAAAAUGH.

Fortunately it wasn’t as bad as that.  Samantha appeared deus ex machina, saying that she hadn’t been planning to sing that night but she had realised that I was going to be all alone and she couldn’t do that to a new girl.  Eeeeep.  Thank you.  Eeeeeeeeep.  And then Sinead, another rota singer, wandered in and said that she couldn’t do her proper rota day and maybe we could use her tonight?  YES.  PLEASE.  HERE, HAVE A MICROPHONE.  Hamish, the church office magician, appeared, spun his spurs and strapped on his six-shooter.  Er.  Bass.  But that was all.  No drums.  No keyboards.  No random woodwinds.  No vicar—he’s always there.†

We plunged into practise.  I was on the near end with Aloysius just at my right shoulder which is very good because not only does his guitar give me the key I’m scrabbling for but he’s a nice strong tenor and I’d already told him he had to sing the melody.  The first couple of songs are a bit of a blur.  I was holding the mic as if it was going to morph into something with six heads and forty-seven incisors per as soon as I stopped staring at it like it was going to.  The Hammered to Death by Fluffy Bunnies song was substantially less diabolical with the new line-up but we had to go through it several times since I had no clue about what it was supposed to sound like—and of course there was no sheet music.  And then Aloysius had to get fancy and bolt a couple of songs together so you slide into the second one without a break and then revert to the previous one for a chorus repeat WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO US YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE ONE OF THE GOOD GUYS.

I don’t really know what happened except that I think I can hear God laughing.  My voice woke up.  And the last couple of songs I actually kind of like††—especially the one which is in a reasonable range, so many of the Jesus Is My Boyfriend songs lie on my voice like bricks on custard, it’s like the aural version of trying to wear someone else’s prescription glasses, and neither singing up an octave or down an octave works.  But here were two I could sing.

And I did.  And furthermore . . . and this is where I know I was taken over by an alien personality . . . I started singing free harmony.  I do not sing free harmony.  I can learn a harmonic line, given the sheet music and about six months, but I cannot just frelling riff off a melody.  Whoever she was, Sunday night, using my voice, I hope she visits often.  That was serious fun.  At the end Sinead gave me a hug and said, I can tell you like that song!

And then the live performance—I mean the service—was pretty much falling off a log.  Problem?  There was supposed to be a problem?

There are one or two things to mention here.  First, St Margaret’s evening service is small and informal.  It’s not like anyone was going to be nasty to me even if I screwed up big time.  And I don’t exactly guarantee I was pitch perfect even while the self-confident alien babe was singing.  Second, most of the Jesus Is My Boyfriend stuff is dead easy, especially if you’re used to beating your brains and ripping your own throat out singing stuff that is significantly beyond you because you take voice lessons and your voice teacher needs something to do, right?†††  It should be easy:  people who don’t take voice lessons should be able to sing their church’s worship music.‡  And third . . . I was just telling someone who asked me how I ‘learnt’ to do public speaking . . . I didn’t.  After my BEAUTY was published they sent me out on the road and I discovered I could do public speaking.  It’s like one of those James Bond things:  the car develops waterwings or the knapsack is also a rocketblaster.  I CAN DO PUBLIC SPEAKING?  WHAT?  WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?  Aside from little questions like whether I can sing or not, apparently singing in public doesn’t make this agonising doubt any more agonising.

How frelling bizarre.  I did think it was at least possible that if I didn’t freeze up, singing for purpose—helping to lead the service—would let me like the floppy, soppy music we sing better, and make it feel more like an offering of worship instead of a mortification, ashes and hair shirts optional.   And.  Yeah.  But I wasn’t expecting the harmony—or the high.

* * *

* Unless someone stops me.  Noooooo!  She’s too loooooooud!  She drowns out the keyboard!  —Ugly.  Mwahahahahahahaha.  —slightlyadaptedhellgoddess^

^ I belong to the Love Wins camp, remember, so if you’re asking me, all reigning in all the various hells—ie the nice somewhat confused ones and the really unpleasant ones—is temporary.  Which is fine.  I’m sure I’ll be ready for a new challenge when my particular corner of hell disintegrates.+

+ There will be chocolate, champagne and critters in heaven, won’t there?#

# Of course there will.  And the roses WILL HAVE NO THORNS.

** ::falls down laughing::  Thank you, dhudson.   I love this.  I’m also glad that it seems to other people that there’s something CREEEEEEEEPY about a lot of this sticky music:  I’ve been describing these songs as frelling power ballads only it’s God instead of your boyfriend/girlfriend/groupoffriendswithprivileges.  Dhudson’s phrase cuts to the chase.

Although some of the old gospel hymns, which is what I grew up with and are about the only positive memory I have of church as a kid, aren’t exactly faultless in this area.  I’ve always loved In the Garden, and it’s one of those I’ve been singing for fifty-odd years and did not have to relearn the lyrics when I started singing while hurtling as a way to shortening the warm-up when I get back to the piano and the Italian art songs etc^, but it’s always struck me as doctrinally a little dubious:

He walks with me, and he talks with me

And he tells me I am his own

And the joy we share as we tarry there

None other has ever known.

—Um.  Hmmm.

^ Also I’m beginning to enjoy the looks on other pedestrians’ faces when I don’t shut up in time and lyrics like ‘On that bright and cloudless morning when the dead in Christ shall rise’+ register on their unsuspecting ears, which in this modern well-zombied culture may rouse an unfortunate secular response.

+ Which I confess I tend to belt out with all the new Nadia-power within me.

*** I also crack a lot when I’m nervous.  How many ways is this going to be a disaster.

† Vicars.  They take holidays.  Who knew?

†† No, no, not like!  Oisin will never speak to me again!

††† HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  And for my latest stupid trick I’m learning Victor Herbert’s I want to be a prima donna—aka Art Is Calling to Me—mainly because it’s silly and I’ve always loved it for being silly.  It also has a high Bb.  The thing, as I told Nadia, that is really irritating is that I have a high Bb . . . when I’m doing the frelling washing up.  As soon as I get near the piano it jumps out the window and runs off to Cornwall.  Or Canada.  I assume this is common, you can remember a note long enough to check it on the piano?  Yes that is a high Bb, but try and do it again suuuuucker. . . . .  Nadia says, just rewrite it for now.  You can put the Bb back in later.

‡ I don’t have a problem with that;  my beloved gospel tunes are pretty much the only music on the planet that I can more or less play on the piano with both hands by sight-reading.  Easy.  Very, very easy music.

My debut

 

I can’t remember if I told the blog that I’d been blowing off my mouth to Aloysius six weeks or so ago, after the gratuitous extra-fancy swearing-in of my intake of Street Pastors last January, with the forty-seven bishops and a miracle or two*, and which Aloysius and Alfrick had attended.  Given the forty-seven bishops and various other bits of high-churchery I was startled by the music, which was the Modern Christian Whatsit we sing at St Margaret’s and which drives me to despair.**

But I sang it, because singing is better than not singing.  And what I noticed—and what I imprudently said to Aloysius—is that while it used to be that when I was in a mob and wanted to feel that I was contributing, I dropped down to chest voice and BELLOWED . . .  now, after getting on for three years of Nadia’s elegant mercilessness, I make just as much noise in head voice and I suspect it’s more penetrating.***  And Aloysius responded promptly that if I ever felt like singing with the band† I would be more than welcome.

Hmmmmmm . . .

It had occurred to me some time ago that the only way I could, you know, validly try to have some effect on the music at St Margaret’s evening service is to become one of the people who produce it.  So I didn’t laugh like a drain or whap Aloysius up longside the head.  Or run away.  I said, Ah.  Er.  What an interesting idea.

And he said, If you want to give it a shot, I suggest you try it the next time I’m in charge.

Okay, I said.

. . . Which was last night.  AAAAAAAAAUGH.

Where do I BEGIN?  For example  . . . they don’t even much have sheet music.  It doesn’t actually seem to exist for a lot of this Modern Christian doodah??  It is no longer assumed that makers of music can, and might possibly want to, read the line they’re supposed to be performing?  Or possibly take it home and nervously pick it out on the piano first?  What?  And at St Margaret’s, for example, the regular keyboardist†† doesn’t read music—he plays by frelling ear.†††  Buckminster doesn’t read music either—he has a chord sheet, as does the church office guru who I think usually plays bass.  There’s a rota, and Samantha, who is a volunteer,‡ organizes folders of music for all the regulars, in whatever form the recipient of the folder prefers—so Aloysius gets sheet music (when it’s available) and Buckminster gets chord sheets.  Ugly, I think, just gets a playlist and maybe lyric sheets, although the lyrics are also computer-projected on the walls.  Samantha was a trifle startled by my vehemence on the subject of sheet music. . . .

Apparently you only get your playlist a few days before you go on.  GORBLIMEY GUYS.  THIS IS HARD ON A NEWBIE.  Aloysius emailed ours out on Thursday in the form of a title list and some YouTube links . . . and there went any possibility of my practising Italian art songs or German lieder for the rest of the week, while I got a lot of knitting done listening, relistening, and re-re-relistening to YouTube, whilst simultaneously moaning and chewing on the furniture.‡‡  St Margaret’s spends quite a lot of the evening service singing, so there were a lot of YouTube links.  Long YouTube links.  Fortunately about three of the songs are half familiar from regular evening-service use but the one that I’d never heard before in my in-hindsight-privileged ‡‡‡ life also had the worst performance, the one that made me want to stick my knitting needles through my monitor.§  The lead singer was having oral sex with her microphone, the massed electronic instrumentation was making drooly Technicolor-sunset noises which made me feel I was being hammered to death with fluffy bunnies and there was some escapee from the Swan Lake chorus line gambolling at the front of the stage WHAT IS THIS.  ALSO, WHY.  —I failed to learn this one.  I failed to go on trying to learn this one because I don’t really want to buy a new laptop just now.

But I put my time in on the others.  God help me, God, you got me into this.  And I’m supposed to trust in him, right?  Old habits die hard.  Because I am a hopeless wet dweeb I didn’t sleep very well Saturday night because I was going to have to sing from the wrong side of the microphone the next evening.  And . . .

TO BE CONTINUED.§§

* * *

* I could have sworn I had, because I remember remarking on the plentifulness of bishops, but I can’t find it in the archive.  It’s probably in a footnote somewhere.

** Alfrick, given the setting, hadn’t been expecting it either, and commented drily that it was out of his comfort zone.  I thought of the antiphonal chanting—and the little square tail-free notes of the music—at the abbey and tried not to laugh.  Or possibly cry.

*** I do not say this is a good thing.  I merely make note of it.

† Sic.  It’s not a choir;  the instrumentalists usually outnumber the singers, and said instrumentalists include the vicar on guitar or bass, the curate on guitar—he’s got more than one guitar, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him play bass, but he has at least once played ukulele—and various admin and ordinary congregation members on electric keyboard, drums and the occasional woodwind.

Sigh . . .

†† Who I’m about to name Ugly, because he doesn’t approve of singers—and we are, furthermore, not singers but mere backing singers—and has declared that there are never to be more than three of us cluttering up the stage.  THREE?  THREE?  That is nowhere near enough bodies to hide among when you’re one of them.  I had noticed that there weren’t very many, week to week, but I hadn’t caught on that there were EVER only three.  I’m going to start putting peanut butter on the keyboard when I know Ugly is playing.  Hmmph.

††† Another reason to LOATHE HIM, just by the way.^

^ No it does not count that he probably doesn’t have a clue how to write a novel.   Or that he’s kind to his mother, has adopted six stray dogs and has solar panelling all over his roof.

‡ The kind of volunteer without whom a lot of things like churches and underfunded charities would not be able to function:  dedicated, competent, intelligent, and mad.

‡‡ Not the knitting needles.  Never the knitting needles.  TOOTHMARKS ON MY PRECIOUS ASH AND ROSEWOOD KNITTING NEEDLES?  ARE YOU KIDDING?^

^ I might chew on bamboo needles if I were desperate.  Fortunately the current project is on ash, because Hey God You’re My Bestest Bud, which I describe below, might have driven me to intemperate behaviour with bamboo.

‡‡‡ Ignorance is bliss.

§ Which would be one way of deciding it was time for a new laptop.

§§ Sorry.  I have to go to bed.  Raphael is coming tomorrow to discuss why Outlook occasionally decides to send a crucial email to perdition instead of to me^ and various other variations on a theme of technological havoc and I may be looking at a new laptop after all.  I need to be well rested for the conflict.

^ Maybe the hellgoddess shtick confuses its tiny solid state unmind?

Horn the Second, guest post by Midget

 

After my last post, Robin asked me “how did you happen to choose that instrument? I would have said it’s notorious for being a ratbag to play. Why did this particular challenge appeal to you?”

I’ve always enjoyed the sound of the french horn*, but I didn’t start out life as a horn player. Like most of my early musical decisions, this involved my older brother. He was one of my heros growing up**. Anything he did, I wanted to do too. When he decided he was going to learn how to play the trumpet in elementary school, I decided I would be just like him. So four years later, when it was my turn to pick an instrument and join the band, I joyously took my brother’s old trumpet (which was about as big as I was at the time) to the first day of band.

Fast forward another four years. It’s Christmas break, and my siblings and I are just dinking around and talking about random stuff. Out of the blue my brother says, “Midget, you should learn how to play the french horn. That would be cool.” So I went to my band director and asked for a horn. He gave me a horn and a fingering chart and sent me home to figure it out. It honestly never occurred to me that it might be a ratbag to play, or that it was considered a challenging instrument. My brother thought it was cool, so I did it. Simple as that.

And as lucky as that. After teaching myself how to play the horn, I auditioned for and made it into the top symphony orchestra at my high school, and discovered that I had a lot more natural talent as a horn player than a trumpet player.*** It was really fun to suddenly be good at something––I was an adequate trumpet player, nothing special, and while I probably could have worked hard enough to be better than I was, I never really put in the time. By the time that initial flush of talent had worn off and I realized that the horn could be really stupidly hard****, it had already sunk its fangs into me and had no intention of ever letting go.

And like most creative outlets, I have a love-hate relationship with playing my horn. Some days, when you’re limber and focused and everything lines up right, it can be a transcendent experience. But getting the most out of any instrument requires dedication and passion and precision, and there are some days when you’re gray and crumbly and feeling like soggy toast and it’s just one thing too much to play that stupid slur that always cracks one more time. But you keep at it, because it is worth doing even if it sucks sometimes. Music changes lives. Sometimes it’s the music itself, sometimes the making of the music, and sometimes it’s the people you meet along the way.***** But it is powerful and wonderful, even if you’re an amateur horn player who took a blind leap into it because her older brother thought it was cool.

And speaking of blind leaps….

The one thing I droolingly envy about woodwind players† is that when they want to shoot up into the stratosphere of their range, they just press a button. They have an octave key. You poke it and boom, you’ve hit the International Space Station. When I want to go dink around in my high range, I have to do it with my FACE. With an exquisitely controlled raspberry, for goodness sake (because that high up in the harmonic series fingerings are an ephemeral formality and the only reason you bother with them at all is because pressing down a particular button for a particular note helps you correlate what your face is supposed to be doing). I would kill for an octave key.

But no. I am stuck with my face and my raspberries and the lurking fear that every high note I play is going to squawk like a dying duck.

The one thing that helps with the squawking is commitment. It’s kind of like jumping off a cliff. If you hesitate at the last moment, you crash and burn and hit all the rocks on the way down. If you commit to the leap into space, you’re a lot more likely to survive. Or to hit the note you’re aiming for. The bad thing about this is that it’s a lot easier to do if you use lots of air, which pretty much translates to “play loudly”. If you have to come in quietly on a high note††….I’ll bring flowers to your funeral.

However. If that committed leap into space actually works, it’s pretty great. And when you get it really really right and nail that sucker to the wall, life feels pretty amazing.†††

*****

*This is the song that taught me to love the horn: Jupiter, the Bringer of Jolity from The Planets by Gustav Holst (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz0b4STz1lo) It’s been my favorite song on earth since the fourth grade, and every time I get to hear it live it makes me cry.

**He is still super awesome, but the hero-worship has died down a bit since we’ve gotten older.

***This was due to personality, the physical conformation of my jaw and lips, and the simple fact that being a former-trumpet-turned-horn player gave me an amazing high range for a while. Since most of the posturing and jockeying for status trumpet players do revolves around how high and fast you can play, I felt like pretty hot stuff for an eeny weeny^ high school student.

^My friends used the top of my head as an arm rest every day while walking to lunch. I attribute my body type to my Danish fore-bearers–short and sturdy.

****I have caromed off of every problem any horn player is likely to have, including having bits of my horn FALL OFF right before a lesson. Send me the problem kids, ’cause I have spades of personal experience in fixing stuff.

*****Have I mentioned that I met my husband in marching band? Speaking of changing lives….

† or strings, or pianists or other percussionists or pretty much anything except vocalists, who suffer from similar problems

††During one band rehearsal we were sightreading a piece which required the first horn to come in on a high A very quietly and hold it for 4 or 5 slow measures. When the note was over, she put her horn down and yelled “Oh my GOSH!” with great feeling. The rest of the horn section felt like that was a very appropriate response. Also that the composer should probably be burnt at the stake^.

^I love John Williams. He writes great music. I also want to kill him on a fairly regular basis when playing the insanity he writes for the horn section (“Why yes, let’s have the low horns hit a high A at the end of a 10 minute piece! That’s a great idea!” Please go die.)

†††There was one concert in which we played a song (American Overture for Band, if anyone’s interested [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esh1gypV_8M]) that required the horns to do lots of high notes and octave jumps, and the entire horn section rocked that performance. I walked around in an euphoric haze for two solid days.

 

KES, 121

ONE TWENTY ONE

“Tha protector should not have let tha come so far,” Murac added in a voice that implied that he thought we were having a conversation and furthermore assumed I was paying attention.

I blinked again.  Murac as the voice of sanity and sweet reason.  No, that was a little strong.  Murac as the voice of current, um, reality.  But that was almost as bad.  The hand holding the hilt of a sword—my hand holding the hilt of my sword!—was trying to spasm.  Ow.  Ow.  At least Murac was human.  Probably.  I was trying to remember if I had ever addressed the issue of Murac’s heritage.  I doubted it.  He wasn’t a major character.  I lowered my aching arm and relaxed my stiff hand—as much as it could relax.  Protector?  Possibly that meant poor old Watermelon Shoulders.

“It was a trifle —” I stopped, coughed, and tried again, endeavoring not to crackle and squeak this time.  There wasn’t a PA system to blame for the way I sounded, the way there had been the first time I gave a speech at a con to an audience big enough I couldn’t see the back row.  I couldn’t see any of the audience here and I doubted their weapons were peace bonded.  “It was a trifle busy, our side of the—gate,” I said, clearly and firmly.  I remembered the giant maggot with the teeth and shuddered so hard poor Monster threw up his head and sidled—and I felt the bulge of mighty muscles against my bare legs.  I gasped, but maybe the saddle had a little magic in it too, because I stayed beautifully in place and that straddling-a-small-city sensation did not return.  I did seem to have a misplaced buckle or a twisted strap chafing just below my left knee, but that didn’t seem crucial at this moment.

I didn’t want to have come so far.  I wanted to roll back time to—to—to before the company of horses and riders in the road to Cold Valley.  Before that inconvenient pile of fresh horse dung had ruined the comforting hypothesis that I was merely losing my mind.  Before Watermelon Shoulders had told me to fetch my sword and before I’d had a sword to fetch.  I couldn’t bear to think about my new kitchen as I had left it—where was Sid?  Was she okay?  Was she safe?  Was the spiky shadow on our side, as Watermelon Shoulders seemed to think?  Mr W was a big guy with an impressive hacking and slashing technique but he needed more allies than one skinny dog.  Maybe the spiky shadow would motivate the rose-bushes.  Maybe the madwoman in the attic would have a gift for garrotting and a desire to maintain the status quo.  Hey, maybe deinonychus and Yog-Sothoth would join the Rose Manor team.  But Sid—I didn’t want her to have been better off living on the street. . . .  My eyes burned.

I refocussed on Murac, sitting on the horse next to mine.  He had a recent-looking scar that tugged at the corner of his right eye before disappearing into his hairline.  I didn’t want to know.  I didn’t want to be here . . . and then felt an idiotic pang of conscience and patted Monster’s shoulder.  Nice horsie.  I hadn’t stopped being silly at eleven.  If it had been my fifteen-year-old.horse-camp-attending self sitting here she would have thought she had died and gone to heaven.  She’d think Silverheart was cool.  She might even have thought Murac was romantic in a ramshackle sort of way.  I had had terrible taste in men pretty much right up to Gelasio.  I wanted to think about Gelasio even less than I wanted to think about Sid.   “Possibly,” I said around the lump in my throat to the scruffy bandit next to me, “the patrol on this side—on what should have been this side—had become just a little lost earlier?  Which may have contributed to the—er—interdimensional confusion on—er—our side?”

To my surprise, Murac grinned.  The scarred eyelid pulled down, giving him a kind of squint and making him look even more shiftily dangerous than he did already.  I didn’t want to be here and I really didn’t want to be hanging out with Murac and his mates.  Even if there were some very nice-looking horses involved.  Murac’s horse looked a lot better than he did, and he sat in his saddle like both he and his horse were comfortable with the state of affairs.   A man who takes good care of his horse can’t be all bad.  Define ‘all bad.’  That twisted strap under my knee was going to give me a blister if we started moving and I had to try and remember how to, you know, ride, and not just perch on a saddle.

“It may have so, eh,” said Murac.  “We’d heard there was new Defender and Tulamaro wanted t’look.  Trust Borcaithna to get it wrong.  We should’n have come tha side at all, but his hand slipped.”

 

Yurk. Also, from the ridiculous to the sublime

 

The yurk part:  experiments in raising my activity level to previous modest heights are proving unsuccessful, or at least inspiring undesirable repercussions.  Which is to say I have barely got the hellpack hurtled today, and possibly in slo-mo, I’m too whacked to be sure of what my legs have been doing, but Pav can create her own alternate realities, and hucklebutts rather well on her extending lead, given the absence of large inconveniently-placed trees.  And the hellhounds are, after all, well into middle age, and are happy to saunter along, looking elegant and fabulous, with a brief sprint when no one is looking but me.

The rest is a daze.*  And this one. Word. After. Another. doohickey, whatsit, blog is just beyond me tonight.**

But I don’t want to leave you entirely without frivolous reading material.  So here’s the ridiculous part:

http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/02/the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-tolkien/

B_twin, knowing my feelings about Peter Jackson***, sent this to me several weeks ago and I laughed and laughed and saved the address so I could hang it on the blog some day† and today is the day.  Some of you’ll have already seen it . . . but there are paragraphs definitely worth revisiting.

The sublime part:  http://www.diegrossestille.de/english/

Aloysius loaned me the DVD . . . oh, months ago.  Probably months and months.  I watched it once fairly quickly but really—even after you’ve watched all the extra bits and clips—it raises more questions than it answers so I wanted to watch it again before I gave it back . . . and that plan of a plan went on kind of a while.  Poor Aloysius finally asked for its return so I hastily rewatched it right around the time B_twin sent me the SMAUG review . . . and these two so clearly belong together.††  You know.  Ridiculous.  Sublime.

The SILENCE web site is a little obscure but keep clicking.  The film is a documentary about a ‘closed’ Carthusian monastery and it’s . . . well, it’s amazing.  I didn’t, myself, ever forget I was watching a film—I’m a trifle resistant to arty films and this one has AAAAAAAART stamped on every frame, and the suggested use of it as a meditation aid I’m like, what?—but the mixture as demonstrated in these monks’ lives of the spiritual and the practical, the outer and inner, the ordinary and extraordinary, was lovely and moving.  And the landscape is spectacular.  Although I’m glad I don’t live there, aside from the whole no-talking thing.

* * *

* There was a lot of lap time today.  This is now the second and third generation of critters to think that ME is a great invention.

** Also I need to claw myself together to go to my monks tomorrow night.

*** The brief polite version is that I thought THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING was a mostly honourable failure, I hated TWO TOWERS and never saw RETURN OF THE KING.  There was never any way in any universe similar or dissimilar to this one that I was going to see what smashed and broken melee he was going to make of THE HOBBIT.

† Preferably before the third film comes out, but greatness, in reviewing as in everything, is timeless.

†† I am sick.  Yes, I know.

Nine roses

 

I bought nine roses last week.*  AND I PLANTED THE LAST TWO OF THEM TODAY.  It’s only been a WEEK.**  And I’ve already got ALL OF THEM them in the ground.***  Are you impressed?  Trust me, you should be impressed.

So I thought I’d give myself a Slightly Short Blog Day to celebrate.†  And maybe I’ll do a little work.  Or go to bed early.††  Or something.

* * *

* Hey.  I need more roses.

** I can’t remember if I told you this story or not^.  I’d ordered from a rose nursery that isn’t impossibly far from here and said I would pick them up.  When they rang me that my roses were ready I suggested to Peter that he come too and we’d go on afterward to the big public garden nearby and have a wander.  So that’s what we did.  Except that by the time we got to the big public garden . . . we were too tired.^^  So we didn’t walk around it.  Ho hum.  Life in the Slow Lane.  But I did get my roses.

^ And the Footnote Labyrinth makes trying to look back and check somewhat challenging.

^^ In my case all that frelling driving was aggravated by a long conversation I had with one of the rose-nursery proprietors about, how surprising, roses.  She was full of embarrassing information I should have known.+  I have, for example, never had any luck with the symbiotic fungus stuff that you put in the hole when you plant your rose, and it colonises the roots which then develop like crazy in all directions and your rose is very, very happy.  Except it didn’t and it wasn’t.  I thought it was another fashionable scam.  Nobody told me that root fungi don’t like blood-fish-and-bone which is the traditional rose and general perennial shrub food.  You ALWAYS put BFB in the hole you’re planting a rose in.  Not when you’re using mycorrhizal fungi.  Oh.  –So I bought some more of the frelling stuff and have used it.  Except I’ve only used about half the packet and it only keeps for about a year and it’s stupidly expensive, you wouldn’t want to waste it nooooooooooo. . . . .

+ Although we did a little mutual howling about people who don’t get it that roses are, you know, living things.  I told her a story I know I’ve told you, from when we were still at the old house and opened our garden on the National Gardens Scheme.  I had someone at least once every open day saying, your roses are amazing, how do you get your roses to be so amazing?  My roses are barely struggling along.  And I would say, well, what do you feed them?  And they would look at me blankly and say, Feed them?  FOR PITY’S SAKE, GUYS.  HOW DO YOU THINK ROSES PRODUCE ALL THOSE FLOWERS?  MAGIC?  How can anyone look at a modern, repeat-flowering rose, frelling bowed down by the weight of its flowers, not least because it’s been overbred for flower production at the expense of everything else like leaves and stems and good health, and not realise it’s going to need a little more help than scratching a hole in the ground and plonking it in??  That’s like buying a racehorse and feeding it straw.  GOOD GRIEF.

*** Well.  Mostly not in the ground.  Not in the All the Plumbing in Hampshire cottage garden.  Most of them are in pots.  I suspect I have rather good drainage, between the builder’s rubble and all the plumbing in Hampshire, but most roses that aren’t major thugs, in this garden, do better in pots, possibly just because they don’t have to fight off the thugs.  But I lost a few this wet winter that I don’t think I should have lost so . . . more pots.  A few of the new intake are in pots smaller than they’ll stay in forever . . . but they’ll do for a year or two.  Or three.  Just keep feeding them.

† Also because I took Peter to the ex-library again today and we battered our way through all the other media and went and hung out in the small dark corner where the books now live.  I found a little trove of knitting books . . . and then read one of Peter’s thrillers over tea.  During which I absent-mindedly ate a Very Nasty gluten-free pistachio cookie.  I think I object to a book so absorbing that you can eat nasty food without noticing till it’s too late.  That’s the problem with thrillers:  they make you forsake all rationality and keep turning pages.

And then I went bell ringing at Crabbiton for the second week in a row.  I haven’t been ringing, I’m too tired, and the idea of facing eighty-six bells and a ringing chamber the size of a ballroom at Forza is too much for me.  Crabbiton has six bells, and a pretty laid-back and low-level band, and I found out by accident that Wild Robert has started teaching there pretty regularly again.  So I went along last week and made bob minor possible—they generally only have four inside ringers, and bob minor requires five—and so this week they were really glad to see me.  It’s a hoot being one of the big kids.  Although Felicity had to go and wreck my feeble glow of self-satisfaction by inquiring if I wouldn’t like to make up the number at Madhatterington on Mothering Sunday.  Nooooooooooooo.

So . . . after all this febrile self indulgence . . . work would be good.

†† No!  No!  Not that!

Horses. And singing.

 

Bratsche

But back-yard mutts can surprise you. The woman who first taught me dressage . . . did wonders with a series of back-yard mutts.

I’m glad to hear that on a couple different levels. One is that some day I will need to look for another horse for myself, and it’s good to have those stories tucked in my memory to encourage me to look at “any” horse. . . .

Yes—with those quotation marks firmly in place.  I was trying to think of what I would say you must absolutely look for in a horse—four sound legs is always a good place to start, and while Grace’s mare always was sound, no, you know, sane person would have risked her, with that crooked leg.  In Grace’s defense she was very experienced as well as knew the mare from a foal, had done most of her Heinz 57 mum’s training and was a friend of the original owner who as I recall insisted she’d always have her back as a pasture ornament if she broke down.

I’d say the bottom line non-negotiable in a horse for ordinary—um, rider mutts—like you and me is a kind eye, very visible, I might add, in the photos of Amore.  Having established the eye you want something who likes its work—which is a little harder to ascertain in the usual for-sale try-out, but that’s where your secret weapon, Rachel, is deploying herself on your behalf.  Rachel will know!

The second reason I’m glad to hear that is because of a big change that’s coming to our barn…it’s time to get my girls their own horse. . . .They are OVER THE MOON about this, naturally!

Snork.  Naturally.  When are you going to get your husband on a horse?

 . . . we can get whatever horse is the best fit for us and worry about getting a next step horse for the girls later. Another thing I love about my trainer is that she is happy to work with ANY kind of horse, which is a great attitude to be working with.

It’s really the only attitude to be working with.  Yaaaaay for Rachel.

So, wish me luck with finding my next amazing horse, whoever it will be!

GOOD LUCK.

And if there’s a good story attached to it, I’ll see if Robin wants another horse guest post.

YOU’RE KIDDING, RIGHT?  ROBIN ALWAYS WANTS ANOTHER GUEST POST.  IF IT’S ABOUT FABULOUS HORSES, SO MUCH THE BETTER.

I’m still assuming—by not thinking about it too clearly—that I’ll ride again some day, but I admit I don’t know how or under what circumstances.  The problem is that I went over the casual-hack line decades ago.  I don’t want to have the occasional amble on horseback over the countryside, even this countryside*, I want to have a relationship with a specific horse, and contribute to its quality of life, well-being and training as it contributes to mine.  And that kind of relationship takes an investment of physical energy I simply haven’t got.

But I still think in horsy terms.  My MGB, who is still in the garage at the cottage while I dork around endlessly about selling her, was my little cream-coloured mare from the moment I set eyes on her—the old-car garage who found her for me had actually brought her in from Dorset or Lithuania or something.  I’m pretty sure describing her as such still exists on the web site somewhere—and shortly after I’d put that bit up I received a Very Huffy email from a preteen girl who had a horse telling me, more or less, that she had Lost All Respect for me for preferring a car.  It wasn’t a question of preference, it was a question of bank balance.

And, about a year later, it began to be a question of ME.  Feh.  But there are other things.  I totally identify bell ringing as a partnership with a live creature with a mind of its own at the other end of a rope/rein.  One of the tangential pleasures of Nadia as a voice teacher is that she rides.**  I’m not one of her, cough-cough, better students, but I’m easy to get stuff across to, first because I have more imagination than is good for me, and if Nadia tells me to close my eyes and become a tree, I close my eyes and become a tree. . . . And second because I’m another horse crazy and she can tell me to get my weight off my forehand and my hocks under me.

Possibly on account of Bratsche’s horse story I’ve been thinking about singing in horsy terms even more than usual.  But I’ve mentioned here that for some time now my voice has begun to feel a lot like another critter, some live thing that is my responsibility, that needs kindness and exercise and attention.  Gleep.  It no longer feels like my voice—where is all that NOISE coming from??—and ‘I’ feel overhorsed.  I don’t know what I was expecting when I got into this voice-lesson shtick but I was not expecting this disconcerting mixture of strength and lack of control.   Horsy metaphor:  when my voice is warm and full and open I can’t frelling do anything with it, and it reminds me rather a lot of the four-year-old warmblood I exercised for a while many years ago.  Four years old can be pretty young in a big horse.  This one had barely been backed and had everything to learn, including how to make his legs function in an orderly sequence.  Some of you will know about teaching a young horse to canter under saddle and how all over the landscape they can be as they try to figure out how to perform this complex task.  This boy was a sweetie—speaking of the kind eye—and totally willing to try, but oh my.  Mostly we trotted, which is, of course, what you do with a horse that can’t canter yet.  The more stable and rhythmic the trot, the more possible the canter.  But he had one of those gigantic warmblood trots as well as being a loose cannon.  Actually he was a lot of fun and I hope he grew up to make some nice human rider very happy.  But at the time trying to enable him to move in a straight line or a gentle curve even at the trot . . . is a lot like me trying to carry a tune now when my voice is up and running.  If I shut down and go all control-freak on myself I can hold that tune, no problem, as I’ve been able to carry a tune fairly reliably all my life . . . but it’s not a sound quality you want to encourage.  As soon as you—or more often, Nadia—wakes up my inner young warmblood . . . I’m all over the planet, tune-wise.  Arrrrgh.  One of the ironies is that at the moment I sing worse for Nadia than I do at home—because she can get the voice out of me whereupon I go to pieces.  ARRRRRGH.

Another horsy metaphor:  I was singing some poor innocent song this Monday at my lesson, soared up to my Big Note and . . . lost my bottle and went flat.  I said to Nadia afterward in frustration, this is exactly like coming up to a biggish fence on a horse you know can do it backwards and if you put it up another foot, and at the last minute you bottle out and sit back on her—and she raps it with her feet and brings a rail down.  ARRRRRRRGH.

I’m still hoping I’m going to grow up to make some nice human rider very happy.

* * *

* Which at the moment is eyebrow-deep in mud anyway.

** She was a bit of a hot shot in her youth.  It wouldn’t surprise me if she dusted off her hot-shot status once her own kids are a little older.

Horse stories

Bratsche

The nice thing about dressage is that there’s LOTS you can do without needing to sit the trot; so if that happens to be a problem, you can still do a ton without dealing with it. . . . your comfort will also probably vary a lot from horse to horse since different horses’ gaits feel so different.

There’s pretty much always something you can do with dressage, given that you have a good trainer, a sound horse, and can get yourself into the saddle.  One of the ironies in this skill as in so many is that sometimes what you need is precisely the skill you haven’t got yet:  I know I’ve told this blog before that my great breakthrough about sitting the trot was when I realised it was my stomach muscles, not my back or my seat, that were crucial—at which point my back stopped bothering me.  But I don’t think it would have done me much good to be told that I would sit the trot with my stomach when I was first starting to learn;  I had to be mostly there already and needing only the final thud over the line.*  The really counterintuitive thing for me was the way then that those frelling gigantic warmblood trots** became if not precisely easy, then comprehensible . . . and thrilling.

My trainer says jumping is pretty much just dressage where someone left some jumps in the way. . . .  That makes some sense to me, but I’m sure it will feel VERY different at least sometimes if I do try some jumping eventually. . . .

But the bottom line about dressage is that it’s about making you and your horse and particularly you-and-your-horse happier, more supple, better balanced and more flexible about anything and everything . . . so jumping is dressage where someone left fences in the way:  dressage is the bottom line, whether you call it ‘dressage’ or not.  This was really making some good sense with Connie . . . siiiiiiiiigh. . . .  and Jenny was a show jumper.***  Jumping was her first love and the years she had suitable horses she even earned money at it.  But she absolutely believed that dressage was the necessary basis, for show jumping or anything else.  Although she was funny about some of dressage’s little foibles.  The point of show dressage is that the horse does exactly what you tell it to† when you tell it to.  The last thing I want, Jenny would say, is some animal that waits for me to tell it to perform a flying change.  And of course a good show jumper is figuring out the next fence as soon as the rider has settled on their line so it knows where it’s going—which may be about half a stride to spare, depending on the course, so it needs to be able to make some of its own decisions.  Connie had lovely flying changes—not that I was necessarily in the right place at the right time, riding her, either to ask her or to let her do them.

. . . I am SO spoiled! I would never in my wildest dreams have thought I could have a guy as great as him! . . . . It does mean, however, that the kind of horse I’ll be wanting for my next one (when Amore can’t be ridden any more — hopefully many years from now) is going to be much different than if my first horse had been a back-yard mutt (so to speak)

Well, add me to the forum chorus of JEEEEAAAAAAAAALOUS.  But back-yard mutts can surprise you.  The woman who first taught me dressage—and totally did my head in by proving I could learn to ride††—and who had no money, did wonders with a series of back-yard mutts.  I learnt the extended trot on her first success story, one of those ‘Quarter Horses’ that has about as much QH bloodline as I do, but they arrive on the East Coast in gigantic truckloads for auction, and the paperwork says ‘QH’ I suppose because they’re from Out West Somewhere and the paperwork has to say something.  He had a back as long as a city block and his shoulders and his pasterns were perfectly upright (speaking of the comfort/discomfort of sitting to certain horses’ trots) and he had no business ever so much as coming on the bit and getting his hocks under him . . . but he did it, with Grace training him.  It was pretty funny really:  his back accordioned about six feet as he came on the bit.  Suddenly he was (almost) a normal-looking horse.  And his extended trot was amazing.

She had another horse, a mare, she’d (also) got cheap, because she’d broken a foreleg as a yearling and it hadn’t set quite right, and the foot turned out.  Eh, she’ll never amount to anything with that leg;  and furthermore, as she grew up, her rear end grew more than her front, so she was that disastrous creature, a horse who is ‘higher behind than before’ and will spend its life running downhill.  And of course never ever be capable of coming on the bit and getting her hocks under her.

You can see where this is going.  The mare loved working and couldn’t wait for Grace to ask her to do something.†††  Grace competed her in the New England finals at third or fourth level . . . and I swear every last judge Grace rode for, from her first training show, hissed through his/her teeth and said that the mare would never go any farther because of her conformation and she’d never stay sound on that leg.  She retired sound at, I think, sixteen;  she had her third and last foal two years later. ‡

And of course my hellhounds are back-yard mutts. . . .

* * *

* Your mileage may vary.  I was a very slow learner about riding as about so many things, although some of that was my going into it with the conviction that I was clumsy and stupid and wouldn’t be able to learn.  Self confidence?  What would that be exactly?

** I don’t know if this is true across the warmblood spectrum—and I’m not going to spend the next frelling hour googling my way through a lot of horse sites, I want to sing tonight—but a lot of warmblood breeding was to produce carriage horses where gigantic sit-at-your-pelvis’-peril trots were a total plus^.  The dressage thing under saddle came later.

^ Although I don’t know what the postilions may have thought.  In my admittedly limited experience posting to an eighteen-hand warmblood powering over the landscape is even less possible than sitting.

*** Connie was the last horse I rode regularly, before the ME objected.  And Jenny was her owner and my teacher.

† Because you and your horse are a PARTNERSHIP.  A good horse is never a thousand-pound machine that does the same precise thing every time you flip a lever.  I’ve never ridden a true ‘push button’ horse but I’ve ridden several excellent schoolmasters, and they have their ways of getting their point across by doing what you told them, not what you wanted.  While your human teacher, standing in the middle of the ring, tries not to laugh.

†† I’d been mostly taught by riders with natural talent who had no idea what to do with someone like me.  Grace was herself not naturally talented in that way;  she’d worked for her horse skills and had gazillions of approaches to any given horse/rider situation . . . and endless patience.  We’ve lost touch, but I hope she’s healthy and thriving, wherever she is.

††† That mare was one of my schoolmasters.  And she was . . . a character.  Her desire to do stuff was genuine, and she’d try till she exploded—but she loved working because she had a fantastic trainer.  She could have been a serious handful for the wrong person—for someone who didn’t allow her to be herself.  She didn’t suffer fools gladly, and it was a pretty great compliment that Grace let me ride her.

‡ The downside of this story is that she wasn’t going to get any farther, not because she couldn’t but because she was a back-yard mutt, half thoroughbred, half Heinz 57 and in show dressage, it matters.  If a Shetland pony can heave itself over the fences clean in an open jumping class when nobody else has, it’s won.  If a Shetland pony does every figure in a Prix St Georges dressage test perfectly, it’s still going to lose to the eighteen-hand warmblood who is perhaps only 98% perfect but is so beautiful you could cry.  And Grace’s lovely mare looked like exactly what she was—TB/mutt—and this was also happening right when the dressage fashion was turning away from TBs to warmbloods.

Varieties of piffle

 

Peter and I went out to dinner tonight.  Just because.  To the Bard and Orpharion which tends to be our default.  And they were out of half bottles of champagne and weren’t offering it by the glass.*  We didn’t quite get up and stamp out the door but we thought about it.  Peter, in best loyal-husband mode, suggested this drastic course of action.  We could go back to the Bulgy Loaf, which was our great find a fortnight ago when the electricity went phut at Peter’s end of town:  they had teeny-weeny individual bottles of Freixenet** available, thank you very much, and they’re probably not heaving on a Monday evening in early March.  But one doesn’t really want to burn one’s bridges too spectacularly in a small town***.  So we stayed.  There may have been muttering.

And then I thought, well, okay, I have a minor thing for killer dessert wines—the kind you might mistake for treacle if you weren’t paying close attention, till the alcohol aftershock makes your hair stand on end and your socks pop off†—I’ll have a glass of dessert wine with my brownie.  THEY DON’T DO DESSERT WINE BY THE GLASS EITHER.

But at least the brownie was serious.

 

It’s not a totally weird saddo thing to take a photo of a magnificent brownie is it? No, no I’m sure it isn’t.

. . . And yes, we’d been playing bridge, where Peter fiddles the cards first so we have (a) more fun (b) a better Teaching Experience and I actually sort of almost understood what was happening some of the time.  I can’t decide if this is a good thing or not.

So we came home and Peter got one of our emergency quarter bottles of champagne out of the cupboard and put it in the freezer for twenty minutes AND I’M DRINKING IT NOW.

 * * *

*Their pathetically feeble excuse is that they’d had a wedding which had drunk it all.  A wedding that drank all the HALF BOTTLES?  What kind of a cheap cheezy wedding is that?  With only three people at the reception and two of them are teetotallers?^  We’ll have more in on Wednesday, said the lightly sweating waiter.  WEDNESDAY?  WHAT GOOD IS WEDNESDAY?  IT’S MONDAY AND I WANT CHAMPAGNE.^^

. . . and maybe the Bulgy Loaf had a wedding last week too where teetotalism was rampant and they’re all out of little bottles too.

^ I mean, not cheap.  Half bottles are ridiculously expensive per glass—you only do it because You.  Must.  Have.  Champagne and there’s only one of you, or maybe two, you’re both nearly teetotallers and one of you doesn’t like champagne much.+

+ There’s no accounting.  Maybe it’s that Y chromosome.

^^ Peter, who can sometimes be noble beyond all measure+, offered to buy a REAL bottle of champagne.  Even I quailed at the magnificence of this sacrifice.++

+ Which helps to balance out the times THAT HE’S SPILT MARMALADE IN THE SILVERWARE DRAWER AGAIN AND I WANT TO KILL HIM.

++ I’ll try to remember this moment the next time he spills marmalade in the silverware drawer.  Or unloads the dishwasher and puts everything tidily away having not run it first.  AAAAAAUUUUUGH.

** I’ve said this before, haven’t I?  That Freixenet has come a long way in the last thirty years or so?  There was a time when I wouldn’t drink it because it was nasty.  It’s still not the Widow, but it doesn’t cost like the Widow either.

. . . I was just looking it up on line so I could spell it correctly and . . . you have to be of legal drinking age in the country you’re in to look at their site?  What?  Why?  Is looking at virtual bottles of B-list fizz really going to tip you over the edge into picking the lock on your parents’ liquor cabinet and getting pootered on Harvey’s?^  I did not, in fact, penetrate past the are you of legal drinking age click here pop up because the site background is all dark and creepy and there is ominous icky music like one of those computer games where stuff starts jumping out at you before I’ve got my finger off the ‘start’ button and I never live long enough to get out of the first level.

^ I feel that a hangover from Harvey’s Bristol Cream would probably cure you of drinking alcohol for life, but maybe that’s just me.

*** Besides, one possibly has a habit of doing it inadvertently and had better mind one’s ps and qs when one notices before it’s too late that they’re milling around in a dangerous manner^ and really need minding.^^

^ like bull terrier puppies.  All smiles and little evil eyes . . . and remarkably fast on those little short legs.

^^ Sit!  Sit!  That’s not sitting!+

+  I’m not sure what it is, but it’s not sitting.

† In my early drinking days I’ve even been known to enjoy a glass of Harvey’s.  But I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it.

 

The Miracle of the White Stallion, part 2 — guest post by Bratsche

 

At the beginning of Dec. 2012, Rachel called me.  One of her clients (I’ll call the client Gloria) had an offer to make.  Rachel had been training and showing Gloria’s horse (whom I’ll call Amore) for about a year; but things were changing in Gloria’s life, and she had decided she couldn’t keep Amore any more. Rachel knew my long-term plan to get a horse of my own, so she told Gloria about me.  That resulted in an offer for me to ride Amore to see if he would suit me.  I had admired him all along but never even thought about yearning for him, because I knew he wasn’t on the market and I probably wouldn’t be able to afford him even if he was. However, given the details of the offer that Rachel passed along, I jumped at the chance to try him out during my next lesson.  He had been trained far beyond my level* at that point, so it was a blast to ride him and feel some of the possibilities of what I could learn with him.

I thoroughly enjoyed riding him and told Rachel I would love to take Gloria up on her offer, if Gloria was sure she would be satisfied.  I then waited on tenterhooks to hear from Rachel.  Fortunately, she was kind enough to call me the moment she got Gloria’s answer, which was yes.  And that is when my miracle occurred, because Gloria’s full offer** was to GIVE me Amore and all his tack and gear!  It was so important to her that he go to a good home that she was willing to give him away to ensure he went to the “right” place.  Her first choice would have been to give him to Rachel, but Rachel already had two horses (one of whom was in foal at the time) and didn’t have room for a third.  So, Gloria’s next choice was to give him to someone who was training with Rachel and would be a good fit for Amore.  I was beyond delighted that Rachel thought highly enough of me to recommend me to Gloria and that Gloria agreed to it!

I rode him for the first time on a Monday, and on Thursday my family^ went to meet Gloria and get Amore’s paperwork from her.  It seemed almost too good to be true until I had his papers in hand and had thanked her effusively and finally had my very own horse.

So, let me introduce my horse.  He is a grey^^ 19-yr old Andalusian^^^ gelding+ who was born in Spain – but who wants words when we can have pictures?!

 

First Day He’s Mine!

 

 

Showing off his lovely new halter

 

First schooling show

 

Summer schooling show (see the pretty braided mane?!)

 

Riding in the front yard at home

 

I have had him for a bit over a year now.  He knows so much more than I do about dressage, and I am having a blast learning from him!  I’m also getting spoiled by all the compliments I get about him when I take him to a show or encounter people on trail rides.  He’s a very handsome guy, a lovely mover (as long as I don’t let his basically lazy nature take over), and laid-back enough for my family to hang out with.  I continue to be blown away by the blessing I’ve been given and hope to enjoy him for a long time to come.

——————————-

*  For anyone who knows dressage, I did some schooling shows at training level our first summer together (2013) and Rachel had been showing him at Second Level.

**  Which I knew from Rachel’s first phone call but withheld until now to give the story its full impact.

^  My (ecstatic) self, two horse-mad girls (who take lessons at my first stable) and a patient, very supportive husband.

^^  He looks white (when he’s clean), but the color designation in the horse world is grey, since he started life as a dark foal and gradually faded to white.

^^^  Officially a PRE Andalusian

+  The stallion part of the title only applies to the movie…I wouldn’t ever want to own a stallion.

————————————-

Afterword

If you would rather not read about my (Christian) faith, please stop here.  For anyone who does read on, there is another facet of this story that I only alluded to in the main portion.  My relationship with God has been a part of this whole horse journey for many years now, since I have been praying (in a rather tentative way) for a long time about getting my own horse some day and thanking God for giving me access to horses at the stables where I’ve been riding.  I know some people would count all this (barn horses & Amore) as luck or coincidence; but I see it as provision, because I have a lifetime’s worth (43 years and counting) of seeing how God provides for me.  There were times in college and as a young professional musician where I only had pennies to my name; but at that point, those pennies were enough to meet my needs, and more pennies came when the next needs arose.  It definitely wasn’t always easy to trust (not worry) about how my needs would be met; and even after all these years, I  still have to remind myself to trust instead of worrying.

Now, I would NEVER say that I “need” a horse — want yes, need no.  So, I never assumed that I was “guaranteed” a horse someday.  I hoped and did some long-range planning, but no more than that.  As a separate thing from all this horse stuff (or so I thought at the time!), I had been learning new things about my relationship with God in the past year and a half.  I have been an active Christian my whole life, and it is fascinating to me to look back over my life and see how my knowledge of and relationship with God have grown and changed.  Much like my other life-long endeavors (being a musician, a wife, a rider, a mom), progress comes in bursts & plateaus and obvious & creeping-up-on-me pieces.  So, part of what I was learning in the latest burst was that God’s love for me (and everyone else!) is more passionate and daily and detailed than I knew before.  I had learned as a kid to do my best to not want very much and to be hesitant about asking for “unimportant” things.  Hence my hesitation to be bold about asking God for a horse of my own.  However, God has been teaching me that it is completely okay to tell Him about my desires. That doesn’t mean, of course, that I will always get whatever I’m asking for; but the asking itself is a good thing for me to be doing, partly because that means I am talking to Him about what is going on in my life.

So, here I am, getting to know God and myself better, and all of a sudden (after 12 years, but still all of a sudden) here comes this big ‘ol white horse to show me that God can sometimes be really extravagant about taking care of me.  I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking God for a horse as fabulous as Amore, and I really think God knew that and gave me something I couldn’t have dared ask for to be a daily (eating, breathing, pooping) reminder of God’s love.  Amore’s registered name is actually “Beloved” (in another language), which is a fabulous bit of icing on this amazing cake of a story.