Ms. Brightside

Those of you who have been following me for a long period of time have seen me go through a couple of jobs along this very strange and wonderfully odd journey my life is taking me on. Most recently, I ended up far, far (far, far, far, far, far) from my last homebase in Connecticut when I took a job in Texas. It wasn't ideal, and it wasn't really what I wanted to do, but I needed something. It seemed like it would be fun to do for a little while.

It wasn't. But that's life.

In a very bizarre turn of events, seven months into this new Texas life I decided to take a few days off for a clinic and mini-vacation. During this time, I received a very unpleasant shock when I received one lone text stating that all of the horses on the property were leaving the Tuesday after I returned. Permanently. I'm not clear on why, but it doesn't matter. Very effectively, this has completely eradicated my job. I have the task now of finding a new job, a new house, and a new barn... quickly. Again.


But I'm not doing this again. I'm not throwing myself to the mercy of someone who offers housing, board, and a salary in one big trapped-like-a-rat burrito ever again. I'm not grooming, riding, managing, or catering to the elite any longer. I'm not going to ever be in a situation where I find myself panicked, jobless and homeless whenever a job falls through, for whatever reason. It's a miserable way to live.



Honestly though, despite everything, I'm glad this all worked out the way that it did. Because I took the job in Texas, I found Future Hubs, and that in and of itself is worth all of this drama and heartbreak. If I hadn't moved here, I wouldn't have ever met him. And because this job has been so sub-par, I had the incentive and drive to actually start school, and get going on my career of choice. I was happy with my last two jobs, so I didn't bother to do more than look into it. This time, I took the initiative and went for it, and I'm glad I did. I'm not ready at this point to take on clients, but I will be soon. If I can get through this interim, everything will come together. If I can make it through whatever kind of housing situation I end up with for the next six or so months, I'll be able to get a place with Future Hubs (that's when his commitment at his current house ends). If I can get some sort of something-or-other job to just pay the bills for however long, I can take it part time when I accumulate more clients, and I can eventually go full time with trimming when I am ready.




So yea, it sucks a bit at the present moment. There is going to be a period of time when I am probably going to be a bit hungry and a bit miserable. But really, how is that going to be ANY different from the past three years?
There is a better life coming, and I'm making it happen myself. It's the journey that counts just as much as the end result.



Go hug your grooms and barn managers today though. They bust their asses for you and they struggle very hard breaking their bodies down for minimum wage. Thank them and tell them they're doing a good job every chance you get. If they do a good job, they deserve to hear it.

Not too much to report.

I haven't had anything much to report on the Gogo front lately. She eats and eats and eats, naps under her shady tree, and eats some more. She's enormously fat now that the grass has been refreshed - we've had a fair bit of rain from the huge storms that spent the past week rolling through the area, and everything looks green and refreshed. We've had somewhere between 10 and 20 reported tornados in the area, and have had at least one close call every day for the past several days, yesterday being the first that hasn't been filled with terror and hiding in my hallway.

Check out the hail:




That is some big hail. I've never seen anything like it. And the storms that rolled through dropped BASEBALL sized hail in some places. And tornados, obviously.

We're all fine here. Gogo spent the scariest nights in a stall in the barn, away from the knock-you-on-the-head-kill-you-dead hail. I hope everyone else that experienced this recent set of storms is okay... I heard over 250 people died, and that we've had over 800 reported tornados, surpassing the old April all-time record of about 550 or so. It's been insane, to say the least.

Work is exhausting, school is crazy intense, and I've been super tired from doing the work of two people on no days off for a month now (our other staff member left in the beginning of April, and I am the sole employee now until we find someone else)... so I've just not had much energy to write, or do anything beyond study and try to maintain some sort of semblance to a normal existance. Not having any days off to recoup has been a bit damaging to me, physically as well as emotionally. Readers who were around last year might remember when I blew my hip out when I worked for two weeks straight and played catch every night in order to keep myself sane, and suffered horribly for it. I've been wanting to run again, but I've been getting increasingly uncomfortable, and am worried that the hip might blow out again. I've been working every day, doing everything in the barn, riding both competition horses, and doing most every night check. And I'm exhausted.

Which is why I haven't written much. I'm just not feeling so great.

Rolex is this weekend, and once again, I'm not going. I'm just as annoyed about it this year as I was last year. Next year, I am NOT missing it. I absolutely refuse.

I need a nap!

Possum Kingdom Wildfire Update

I apologize for being quiet all week.... as many of you have seen on national news, the area just northwest of my town has been fully ablaze for well over a week now, and it's not over yet. The towns that have most recently been evacuated are less than 30 miles from my house, and with a fire moving at potentially a mile a minute when the winds pick up, this doesn't give us much time to get out if it decides to swing this way. Possum Kingdom lake (I know, like many other alternative music fans, I had no idea that this was an actual place and not just an awesome song) connects to the Brazos River, which our farms backs right up to, and the damage had been unbelievably extensive. As far as I have heard, the fire is still only 25% contained, but at least the danger of it coming this way has (hopefully) mostly passed. Honestly, I barely know anything beyond the few bits of information the news has fed us - that the fire has scorched over 150,000 acres, that it killed a firefighter, that we're in severe drought - and it's been incredibly frustrating because of it. Nobody will tell us anything about the fire, or whether or not we need to worry about its location. We've had all our trailers hooked up and packed for days and days, just in case. Thankfully, we're pretty sure that we're safe. Maybe. At least the enormous clouds of billowing, hanging smoke have mostly dissipated. They've been hanging high for quite some time over the farm, but when they roll in low, we all cough, wheeze, and hack our way through the day, barely able to breathe. We had a bit of misty rain earlier in the week, nowhere near what we need, and this turned everything into a giant steamy, foggy mess. It's been a bit intense.

I'll have more updates later. Just wanted to let you all know that we are still alive and not burned to crispy pieces of bacon!

FLYING TOMATOES.

Gogo, the critters and I have all survived our first Texas twister. Yep, you heard me.... a freaking TORNADO! All those things I've been saying about how terrified I am of tornados? The fear definitely got healthier after last night!!

It's been hot all week, miserably hot. (Yes, I know it's going to get a LOT hotter, but it HAS been almost 100 every single day out here in the country...!) The forecast for yesterday evening had a slight chance of thunderstorms included, and I didn't think too much of it until around 6pm. Suddenly, out of nowhere, giant angry clouds appeared on the horizon just northwest of my house. One minute it was clear, and the next time I looked out the window.... BAM! That can't be good.



The clouds continued to build up in the west, and looked like they were going to land a direct hit on our place. Radar showed that the movement of the storms was north, but that they were crawling VERY slowly east towards where we were. I floored it over to the main farm, and found this waiting for me:




My boss made the comment that they looked like tornado producers. I didn't stick around long enough to find out. The lightning had begun, and I rushed to secure everything, lock the horses in the barn, and hightail it back to my house, where Gogo was still out in turnout next to her neighbor Bobo. I checked the radar, saw we were now under a Severe Thunderstorm Warning (had only been a watch before), and called my landlord's wife to let her know that we needed to bring the horses in, NOW.

Both horses were in the very back of their fields when we went to go get them. Neither showed any interest in coming to us, even though we were calling and calling their names. It was impossible for them to hear us over the roar of the increasing winds, and every time I turned back around to look at the incoming storm, I was blinded by ground-seeking bolts of lightning. At this point, Bobo had decided that he had had enough of this crap, and came galloping towards my landlord's wife. Gogo, not to be deterred, blasted off like a bottle rocket, galloping right past me (of course I was almost at the very end of the pasture by then.... thanks Gogo) so she could follow her boyfriend's every move. When she got near the gate, she stopped dead, eyeballs popping out of her head at the sight of the lightning. We got both horses safely in their stalls, gave them water and hay, crossed our fingers, and all took off to our respective houses.

This is what was outside my door at this point:



And then, night closed in around us. The wind completely stopped. There was nothing but silence, and darkness... the calm before the storm. It didn't last very long.

The storm crawled slowly closer and closer. It continued to move mostly north, but it didn't stop inching sideways towards us. All I could see at this point was lightning, neverending lightning. It flashed repeatedly every second, darting through the clouds, streaking towards the ground. The thunder became louder, the winds stronger. Without warning, the sky opened, and rain lashed the windows, rattling the panes and sending my animals into a tailspin. Quarter-sized hail came pelting down out of the sky, and I had a moment where I honestly feared for my windows. The lightning was so intense that I could do nothing at this point except stare wide-eyed out my window, breathing shallowly and wondering if this was the time to gather my pets and hunker down in my innermost bathroom - the only shelter I have against a big storm. And then, something strange was happening to the clouds. They were doing things that didn't make sense. Illuminated by the neverending lightning all around me, I saw the very finger of God coming down out of the sky, and my heart stopped. It can't be.

The Weatherbug on my computer chirped at me in a sweet way as I stood frozen in the windowframe. Tornado Warning! You might wanna take cover! I didn't even know if my legs would work to get my terrified self to safety. I was paralyzed with fear.




I was lucky enough that what I witnessed had already passed me by, and was some miles away from me at this point. I was very stupid NOT to go hide in the bathroom, but radar showed the cell to be passing us completely with a break behind it, so I didn't completely panic even though I maybe should have. The cell went right over the main farm, and my boss heard it and tried in a frenzy to get all of her dogs into her back room. By the time she had started to collect them, the roar of the freight train had already stopped. This morning, there are a few huge trees on the ground, and every jump we own is scattered all over the place, but those are the only signs that something was amiss last night. We were lucky. Really, really lucky.

As far as I know, the tornado that I saw never actually made contact with the ground. There was not much in the way of damage away from the farm, so I think it was just enough to give us a pretty good scare and nothing more.

Sure worked though. I went to bed at around midnight, and another mega cell came overtop of us not too long thereafter. The power went out, the lightning flashed, the thunder boomed, and I curled under my bedcovers and hid. Future Hubs was on high alert for me while he was at work, watching the radar and sending me alert updates, so he let me know what was going on with the storm. I had my bathroom all bedded up at this point, filled with blankets, pillows, water, and bowls for the pets, and I was ready for the moment when I needed to run. I probably should have just gone for it, seeing as tornados can and do randomly pop up in big storm cells like that. Next time I won't be so stupid.



Good lord. Welcome to Texas springtime. I knew I had a reason to be terrified!

Here Yesterday, Gone Today

Wow... sometimes you hear news that just blows your mind.

Remember where we did all our rehab work last winter before the weather improved and we were able to continue on outside? This indoor:



(Also a fun video. She's my special girl.)

It collapsed last night under the latest insane amount of snowfall Connecticut has dealt with in the past month. Totally demolished. Gone. I also heard reports of several other arenas in the area also caving in, and I know of at least two barns that collapsed, one of which killed two trotter mares. Wow. They got everybody out of my old place ahead of time as they were worried about the attached barn, and it's a lucky thing they did. I can't believe it.

Go hug your barns and arenas!

One more thing to be totally terrified of....

FIRE!

Fire is a whole new realm of danger for a girl coming out of soggy New England. Out in the flat, bone-dry climate of Northeast Texas, fire is a serious issue and not even in the dead of winter can it be escaped. (By dead of winter, I of course mean 60 degrees and beautifully sunny, but you know.) Everything is seriously dry out here, and the wind howls pretty much nonstop, so we have a seemingly neverending burn ban for the entire area. What happened today was purely accidental; someone down the road was welding and a single spark escaped onto the grass beneath his truck. Before he knew what was happening, the whole area was on fire and spreading fast. The winds today were blowing steadily at somewhere between 20-30mph, and the fire spread from the grass to nearby roundbales, trees and buildings. I had just handed a horse off to my boss to go ride, and she hadn't been out of the barn for more than 5 minutes when one of our own welders who was there putting in new pipe paddocks came sprinting into the barn. "Brush fire," he breathed. "She said put halters on all the horses and get ready." I tossed halters on all the horses in the barn, and trotted out to see what was going on outside. The neighbor's property was lightly smoking, and I could see my boss and her horse stopped at the far edge of our property, watching intently. Without warning, the fire engulfed a metal barn, and huge clouds of billowing black smoke exploded into the air. I could see loose horses galloping wildly around near the blaze, and for a moment didn't know what to do. I had never seen anything like it. Then my boss, whose house burned completely to the ground just a few months ago, appeared at my side to give direction. In a heartbeat, we had her rig hitched and pulled forward, the welder's truck hitched to the other trailer, halters and boots on all the horses, and all six of them loaded, along with all our important tack. The smoke billowed higher and blackened, firetrucks roared onto the scene, and still the neighbor's horses galloped. We stood at the back of the loaded trailers, dogs all in the trucks, waiting to see if the wind would change. Our property backs up to a river, and the prevailing winds almost always take flames away from us. We were lucky this time, although we might not be out of the woods yet. Roundbales are still burning, and the blaze isn't totally contained even now. The fire flanked the road for a good long way on my drive home, and the charred damage path spread nearly a mile. Trees, fences, buildings and more were all totally destroyed. If the wind changes at all tonight, we might very well be totally screwed.

This is the one thing that terrifies me about keeping my horse where she is. If a single spark catches in her field, the blaze will be instantly out of control and she'll have nowhere to go except over or through a fence. She is probably smart enough to jump out over a fence, but I don't think I can guarantee that. Nobody is there at that property during the weekday, so I'd never know about it until it was too late. Same goes for tornadoes... and there is NOTHING you can do if a tornado drops in the middle of her field. Fires and tornadoes are real and serious threats in my area, and truth be told, they kinda freak me out. Okay, they REALLY freak me out.

I guess I know what I absolutely need to do ASAP.... microchip my horse. If a fire takes out my field, everyone tells me to just open the gate and let her loose. Better a loose horse than a charred dead horse. God knows that plain dark bay horses around here are a dime a dozen, and she needs a way to be identified should something happen. Aside from a distinctive freezebrand, a microchip is probably my best chance at not losing her forever should something terrible happen.

Anyone have any fire/tornado/disaster recommendations?