I apologize again for being so silent for so long.
I was emailing someone the other day, one of my birth mom’s dear friends in fact, who had sent me a note, and telling her that no one told me, as a teen, that those were the good days, where funerals were few and far between. No one told me that at some point I’d find myself edging in to the bittersweet days where my parents were aging, my friends were getting the diseases of mid-life, and where there were far more funerals than weddings on my calendar.
I told her that I would be making an announcement to this effect to my nieces, 14, 13 and 11. It was only about five minutes later that, over my initial righteous outrage, I realized the futility of such a conversation. They would not “get” the magnitude of the speech — what, my nieces rolling their eyes at me? again?!, and why interfere with the joys of the teenage years, where the dramas are limited to cleaning one’s room, failing an exam, boys on whom you have crushes and what clothes to wear. I imagine this is why no one ever took me aside to have a similar conversation. What a waste of breath.
Some wisdom is best earned over a long period of time. I will stick with telling them, frequently and with great verve, that life is not, in fact, fair.
One of my favorite declarative statements (and I have plenty of them!) is that, being self-employed, I either have not enough money, or not enough time.
I have a new local consulting client. To say that they are keeping me busy would be an understatement. They are keeping me, and FOUR OTHER CONSULTANTS with whom I work gainfully laboring on various compliance and safety projects.
That Dodge pick-up will be paid for in no time.
I am being diligent about not neglecting my already-existing clients. You can’t add a massive number of hours and energy to your workload, not sacrifice your quality control, without something falling to the wayside and for me, it’s been me.
One afternoon, on a weekend just a few weeks ago, with a massive to-do list sitting before me, and having sacrificed several weekends and evenings to consulting work, I said to Rich, “It doesn’t matter what I do, whether I work or ride or do paperwork or laundry or exercise or go to meet a girlfriend for lunch. It will be the wrong thing, because that time slot could have been filled with something else. Anything else. I cannot possibly get it all done.”
I’m coping.
As with most life events, I realize there is a life lesson in this one for me. The lesson that I cannot fix what I did not cause, that there is little point in caring more about this or that than my client does, that no one will take care of you unless YOU take care of you, and that, as always, there is nothing more healing than horses.
One evening, after a drainingly long day during which I vascillated between feeling homicidal and suicidal, I told Rich that I *wanted* to do evening chores. It seems so silly, but I turned up the Top 40 tunes on the barn radio, grabbed a pitchfork, gave peppermints all ’round, nuzzled several noses and cuddled with a barn kitty or two, and felt entirely, amazingly renewed. There is nothing like the simple act of shoveling shit to help me find me.
When the going gets rough, the horses are there.
While I haven’t taken the time to write about it, we had an amazing time in Vermont doing the 50 mile ride. Rachel and Ned and Ace and I got around the 50, breaking no land speed records, and getting sprinkled, misted, rained, poured and whatever other adjective describing liquid precipitationed-on you can imagine. It was a wet weekend. Our friends Gene and Dale came out to crew, and the miracle of the weekend was that despite the absolutely horrific weather, I cannot recall laughing so hard or so often in a very long time. My friends are incredible.
Sarge and Rich did not get around. Sarge had a cut on his forearm from several days before that had more trauma below the surface than was immediately apparent, and at 25 miles he was NQR. Before, during and after the ride, he had moments of uncomfortable wrinkled-nose not-eating displeasure, seemed a little colicky, and so we’ve concluded that he probably has ulcers.
We are doing a one-horse study on our theory with Gastogard this month to the tune of nearly $1K. (Sigh. Thank heavens for the new client.)
Still, we are conditioning for the Pine Tree 100 with Sarge (Rich has agreed to lend him to me) and Ned (Rachel willing to pilot him around, despite the big lug pretending he was near exhaustion in the VT then pulling her arms out as he approached camp at the finish). I’m saving Ace for the VT 100, my all time favorite ride. Thank heavens they are all seasoned beasts with an amazing fitness base. We are doing what we can to keep all of them legged up.
Best to go in to a 100 underconditioned and well-rested than the inverse. I keep testing that theory, and it keeps holding true.
I’m sitting here in a hotel room, traveling for work, grateful for some captive time where the laundry, the vacuum, the kitchen and a couple of my client’s work is out of reach. It’s given me the time to share all of this with you.
Life is good. A little too much loss of late. Which, somewhat strangely, makes the days seem that more precious.
Happy trails.