Next in a series of posts to show off minis I have painted in the past two years.
I loved the look of this mini and bought it with the point of painting it to look like a nightmare. I did the fire effect with the help of an online tutorial and lots of washes. Took a while, but I’m happy with the result.
What happened: I took Tori to put her in the cage walker. She refused. Many. Times. I took her to do a send and receive and Sue ran over yelling that I can’t work her that hard or she’ll get too stressed and lose the baby. I took her to hose her off and walk her to cool her down. She kept walking faster than I did. I got a chain shank and we did showmanship until she started stopping when I did.
What I made it mean: Tori wouldn’t get in the cage walker because she didn’t trust me enough because I’m not a good enough trainer. I responded to her “misbehaving” with more poor trainering and I’m never going to be a good trainer because I never do anything right. I probably already made her lose her baby anyway, so I’ve ruined that. I’m just always surrounded by people who know what they’re doing because they’ve been doing this so much longer than I have, so I can never be right. And even the showmanship that I did wasn’t good, it was all higglty pigglty. Tori keeps overrunning me, but she’s perfectly happy to have me just push her back over and over, and since she’s doing that without a fuss I can’t escalate, I just do it all over and over and I never seem to get it right. Even when I finally do put her away I feel like I was just saying she was ‘good enough’ so that I could go have dinner and be done with my day.
And now I release what happened, and what I made it mean. It’s in the past and has no effect on me anymore.
So for those of you who don’t know, I have temporarily relocated myself and the important pieces of my life (namely my computer, my husband, and my cats and horse inthatorder!) to Myakka City, Florida in order to intern for six months in the breeding program of one of the top horse breeders in the country, Sue Schembri.
I (and pieces) arrived in Florida on January 2, 2013 and proceeded to move into the lovely, snug little apartment and subsequently got my butt handed to me. Things move very quickly here, and I wasn’t really ready for it. Now no one was mean about it, it’s just the speed of how things work. I am just really grateful I got here before breeding season really starts ramping up in February, because I was able to get my feet under me first.
It took me over two weeks to learn to recognize all the horses and over a month to get to the point where I know most of the routine things enough to do them under stress. Next will be learning some of the more obscure things! Yay!
When I was still in college, so a million years ago, I had no idea what Warhammmer was. BUT! I saw a set of Britonnian Pegasus Knights. They were horsies with wings, and being the creative type, I bought them. I had no idea what I was doing and thus at the time only managed to paint one white, one black, and one red.
After the timeskip, when my husband and I moved back to Blacksburg, I became interested in minis again. Mostly because our D&D default had shifted to using miniatures, and having a unique mini for ones character was popular.
Enough backstory. I grabbed the unfinished pegasus knights, simple greened most of the paint off of them, and painted them again.
It was only after I ‘finished’ the minis that I found the old box I had bought back in college that had some shields that I never put on. I’m not entirely upset about that. With all the other minis I have to do, I don’t have time to go back right now. Maybe someday.
Notes: These pegasus are colored for three chymera (pegasus with horns) from one of my stories. The white is Prism, the red is her father Fleetfoot, and the purple is Nightwind. Prism and Fleetfoot’s barding is the same color because they come from the same manor. Nightwind is from another.
So most people in this country can drive, and the vast majority of those people do it with absolutely no idea how the car works. Of course they know that the car starts when you turn the key, that it goes forward when you hit the gas and stops when you hit the break, and it turns side to side with a twist of the steering wheel. If they didn’t, they would hopefully have not passed their driving test, and would not have been issued a license. A car, after all, is a weapon and should not be driven by someone who can’t control it.
A lot of people in this country ‘ride’ horses. Yes, I put that in quotations, because for the most part, I believe that most people don’t actually ride horses. They drive them. For most people, they know that when you kick a horse’s sides, they go forward, when you pull on the reins they stop, and when you pull the reins to either side they turn.
They do all of this without any (or very little) understanding of a horse’s mentality, or inner workings, just like most of them don’t know how their car works. Why is this? A horse is a huge animal, capable of inflicting serious damage or death in the same way a car can, only added to that is the fact that a horse is a living, breathing creature with a mind of his own.
The reason that so many people can get away with knowing so little about the horse’s mind is because of how gracious the horse is. He is, by his very nature, a submissive creature, and when a person simply gets on his back and drives him around, he is perfectly happy to just go.
At Advantage Ranch in Blacksburg, VA, the riding instructors are intentional about teaching riding as opposed to driving. On the first lesson they may use a car analogy in order to present the basics of how to ask a horse to go forward, stop, and turn, but that very quickly (age appropriately) develops into understanding how a horse moves, and supporting him with legs and reins, helping him to bend and supple his body, and have rhythm when he moves forward.
I still remember the first time I learned what real riding was. I had gone to a few shows to help work out the ‘show nerves’. (It was a rather eye opening experience to see my gorgeous, steady-minded mare quite literally freak out when she sensed my show nerves, but that’s a story for another time.) I was doing a circle. Now I’ve done circles before, but this time I was focused on actually making a circle that was even on all sides of a cone.
The this requires supporting the outside of the horse (the side on the outside of the circle) with both legs and reins to keep him from falling, which makes the circle bigger. As well as supporting the inside of the horse with legs and reins to keep him from falling in and thus making the circle smaller. All while continuing to keep the proper bend in the horse. The trick is basically to feel when the horse is falling one way or the other (which is basically every step) and to help support them. For the longest time I had thought that a horse just went and it was really on that day that I feel I went from a driver to a rider when I finally understood just how much support and thus work it took to actually ride a horse.
Now I’ve learned a lot since the above, and now realize what more there is to making a circle. If finding out how to really ride a horse sounds interesting to you, then look us up at advantageranch.com.
I got away from posting everyday, which I really want to do. But I think I just have to do it in the evening instead of the morning, since I have more time in the evening. Anyway, I still haven’t missed any days of running which is pretty awesome. Nick is getting taller, but is still gangly. I’ve started framing Tori again. And I’m setting aside time each evening to work on my stories. All in all, pretty cool.
So we’ve been trying to get the broodmares outside for over a week now, except for the forecast of cold. It has finally got up to a reasonable temperature, so the broodmares and babies are now in the field behind the outdoor arena. I will miss having Nick inside so I can see him whenever, but I’m sure he’ll be much happier out there, and will grow up big and strong!
Yesterday and today I finally did 25 minutes of run/walking. That hill is really killer, and I have to start timing my leaving home better so I have the full half hour when I do that starting Monday. Morgan had a little spill off Dill so I ended up doing yoga by myself. Then I still finished chores early!
Tori got new shoes today with wedges and she’s much less lame. Not 100% but I was able to ride her for the first time since Sue’s clinic! I know…it was too long, but at least I’ve been working on my exercising.
Honey Nut CHeerios for breakfast. Cutie after yoga. Sheppard’s Pie for lunch along with handful of oyster crackers and an apple. Dinner was the pie again with some club, multi-grain crackers. Snack was two cuties.
It’s getting harder to come up with a title for these posts. Oh well.
Back into the weekdays and I…forgot to set my alarm for the first time in like…forever. I’m awake, lying there at 7:11, just thinking: ‘This is so nice, my bed feels so good, and in a few minutes my alarm will go off…ihavetobeatthebarninfifteenminutes. Suffice to say I was a little late (only ten minutes) and I didn’t get my stillness or my exercising done. I did them both later in the day though.
Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast. Lunch was my PB and J sandwich with a little honey. Handful of oyster crackers, and the other brand of Greek yogurt that I had. I liked this one more. There was more fruit on the bottom, plus I felt the yogurt itself wasn’t so…dry? gritty? I’m not exactly sure how to describe how Greek yogurt is different from regular yogurt. Dinner was leftover bean and hotdog casserole.
So the clinic is going on at Advantage Ranch this weekend with Sue Cumming-Schultz. Friday night was the yoga session, which was pretty great. I have been doing yoga with Morgan and Deb for…I guess it’s been at least three months now. So I kinda knew a lot of the stuff already, but since Morgan’s still learning, there was still a bunch of new information that Sue was able to bring up, one of which is the art of meditation. About spending a bit of time each day being still and just doing nothing, which is a pretty ridiculous concept in this day and age when everything is goGoGO all the time.
But even while we were having the session, it kinda surprised me at the number of people who said they felt like they had to be doing something all the time. It’s just the way society seems to be. And really, it makes a lot of sense. I feel guilty when I have so much to do (even out of things I *want* to do) that I feel like I just have no time. I guess even with Morgan telling me that everyone feels the same things just at different times, it didn’t really sink in until there were that many people all saying the same thing.
Anyway, Saturday morning we had our first session at the barn, and we talked about mastery of a craft, horseback riding in this instance, and I began to feel guilty. Horses suffer when we ride them without knowing what we’re doing. Sitting on their backs wrong, pulling them into positions they can’t handle physically, mentally distressing them. And since I’m learning that’s all part of the process. And while I love riding, and I love that connection that I get while riding Tori, I’m not interested in riding in the capacity that Sue was talking about.
I look at what Morgan can do on a horse, and I think ‘Wow, I wish I could do that.’, but at the same time, I don’t feel a real drive or desire to work as hard as it would take to get to that level. Sort of the same way I look at a really cool drawing and wish I could do that, but have no patience to work on my drawing skills. On the other hand, when I see what Deb does with training the yearlings, I find myself thinking, ‘I am willing to do whatever it takes to be able to learn how to do that.’ I’m not sure why, maybe it has something to do with creating a young animal, and helping to shape it toward greatness, and the ability to be the perfect partner for someone one day. Maybe it’s something else completely.
But even that dream costs money in the end, and the two complaints that I have with my life, that I know I shouldn’t have because I have so much to be thankful for, but in still being human are: my lack of a real money paying job, and my weight. Sue rightfully pointed out that I can do something about my weight right now, even if the universe continues to deny me a job. And while I know Deb and Morgan have said it on many different occasions, something else was added that really made it feel more doable to me, was that Sue said that I would be the first person she would want to see when she comes back in September, and whether or not she meant that literally or not it gave me, for the first time, someone to be accountable to. I’m new to this ‘self-discovery’ stuff, and I know I’m weak on ‘working hard even when no one is watching’, but she also made me realize that that’s okay. That the people at the barn are there to support me and encourage me even when I’m feeling all too human.
So that’s why I’m putting this all in my blog. Because then I can hold myself accountable, because other people may or may not be reading this each day. People who I will see and encourage me. And also because when I’ve gotten a few weeks in (or longer), I can look back and see how much I’ve already done and feel good about keeping consistent, which will help to encourage me to keep it up. I’ll work on being accountable to only myself, but for right now I’m fine with where I am.
So for today, I came back from the barn and walked around the block while I waited for my husband to come and unlock the door I forgot to take a key for this morning. Then I ‘googled’ healthy Chinese takeout, since that was what my husband and his friend Andrew were getting. Turns out one of my favorites, Beef and Broccoli is one of the more healthy (Yes, I know it’s still Chinese takeout) that you can get since it has vegetables and nothing fried (if you get steamed rice). I got a small, and forwent my normal egg roll and crab meat wontons. :'(
The only problem being that the tiny little meal didn’t fill me up. And I’m sure I’m still hungry because I drank water and waited over an hour and my stomach is still growling. So I think I will go make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and that should take care of me for the night.
