We leave TOMORROW!

It has all come down to this.
Tomorrow morning early, Gogo and I shove off for Chicago and the AECs. Most everything is ready to go, but it took pretty much the entire day to do. And I still need to clean my room, set up my pet stuff for Shan who is babysitting Greta and Ti while I am gone, finish my laundry, pack, and uhhh.... a lot of other stuff. No really, I'm organized, I am!

Almost everything is packed away already. Everything is spotless and gleaming, from my tack to my horse to my truck and trailer:



It almost hurts my eyes to look at that glowing thing!!

The last of the preparations finished today (or are being finished right now). Yesterday I took the truck and trailer to the do-it-yourself car wash, after pulling the mats and the divider out, and proceeded to get compeltely soaked and splattered with caked on manure that had found its way underneath my mats over the course of the past year. AWESOME. Today, I wrangled the heavy as mats back into the trailer, and recruited Jess to help me put the divider back in, WHICH IS A BIG PAIN IN MY HINEY. We fought with that thing for at least 10 minutes, because it simply REFUSED to go back where it belonged. Once it was subdued, I added in fresh shavings, loaded hay into the trailer (tied in with a very intricate baling twine system, because that's just how us poor kids roll), loaded shavings into the bed of Patron, ran out to do the last of my errands, ran back out again because I forgot to gas up (how?), waxed and chrome polished Patron (and now my eyes burn when I look at it in the sunlight), tried to see if I could polish the chrome on my trailer but decided that it's 9 years old and well, who cares, took Gogo for a very relaxing neighborhood hack (and was even waylayed by the neighbors who INSISTED I HAD to come see their koi pond RIGHT NOW), trimmed Gogo's feet (which are looking VERY beautiful given all this dry weather... and they were a pain in the BUTT to trim because they're hard as rocks right now, and her beautiful frogs feel like they're made of dinosaur hide... I'm pretty sure if someone tried to take a hoof knife to her sole or frog that the knife would just hold up a white flag of surrender because there's no WAY it could even PRETEND to make a dent), stabbed Gogo with her Adequan, cleaned allllll my tack for TWO HOURS, including polishing every last piece of metal I own, got directions, charged my cameras, and even managed to sneak in a nap. Except now it's 10:30 and I'm STILL not packed.

Still on tonight's to-do list? Finish laundry, pack clothes/books/etc, clean my room, set up my pet stuff, pack up my cameras, and burn a new mix CD because my iPod refuses to upload new music. Those things may or may not get done tonight... we shall see. I am VERY tired.


We also made a poster for Gogo's stall:



If you're going to be at the AECs, come find us! We'd love to meet you!



I really can't believe we're leaving tomorrow. That is wild. I probably won't be able to write about our first day of travel, but hopefully once we settle in on Wednesday I'll be able to give you an update. The trip last year was totally boring with bits of INSANITY splashed in, and I expect this year's journey to be much the same. Gogo will be spending the night at Alex's barn tomorrow with her old BFF Sinatra, and I think I am going to try and get video of her reaction to seeing him again. She did not adore him like she adored Polly, but seeing as she's in heat still and that she also seems to have a newfound love for chestnut geldings (she is ALL OVER Sonny and Harley, I really don't get it), it should be interesting.


Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow! Only maybe not so much because 10 hours with a horse trailer by yourself is pretty crappy. Wednesday's drive will be a LOT more fun.


See you in Chi-town!