Long Flipping Summer

Hi All,
I'm not gone, not dead, not anything really. Just very tired, hot and disheartened.
Sometimes life gets to be too real to do anything but sit back and watch, and it's been like that for the last few months.
The horses are fine, I'm fine, and I hope all of you are too.
I just haven't been able to sit and write for the last couple months.
Like so many of you, we've had fires, drought, and now the threat of floods. Hay prices are soaring, the heat is staggering, and in my usual way, I have to experience, assimilate, then write.
The reason most of my stories come from the past is it takes me a long time, sometimes years, to digest my experiences and have them reappear in a format I can understand, then write about.
This summer, current events, some personal, some shared by many, have overwhelmed me, and I'm all about the experience, not the writing.
I have some decent adventures coming up in the early fall and have been keeping notes and jotting down outlines for future stories. So I'm thinking I'll be back in the saddle soon, writing and sharing with you all.
In the mean time, I'm stealing away in the very early a.m. to ride when I can. The horses are willing and easy to get along with and give me brief, much needed spurts of joy.
I hope you are all doing the same.
I'm haunting the blogs, keeping up with your adventures, so don't think I'm gone. Just for once though, I've got nothing to say.

How I'm Spending My Summer

Mecky: 

"Trying to get everything set up to get a free red, plush, velvet couch for my front porch.  Then all I'd need is a red light, and I could have a lucrative side business."  

Danet:

 "My board just went up $150.00 a month.

We were just discussing  hooking from one of the empty sheds at the barn to pay the difference.
You're fancy, you get a couch. We're going to use bales of hay.

Mecky: 

"I tried to sleep on bales of hay one time.  I brought a sleeping bag into the stack in my tack room, which could hold 40 bales and shared a common wall with Bubilee's stall.
I thought it would make me closer to him, and be romantic in a "I slept with my horse, sweetly amongst the alfalfa..." kind of a way.
Did you know that some bales of hay contain ants?
And that they can sense when some idiot tries to sleep on them?
Also:  hooking on hay makes my privates itch, just thinking about it."

Danet:

Itchy, ant-riddled privates create more action.

Mecky:

It's like the Tennessee Walker shoeing of the hooker world.

Danet:

Which draws in the Big $$.

Mecky:

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "Big Lick".
(Can't believe I just said that.)

Mouthy Monday

I absolutely love reading a story where I can hear the dialect of the storyteller through

the writing.

Flyin'Horse brought us a brand new fresh approach to a good horse story. - Mugs

Have you ever had one of those kinds of colds that make your head feel like

 you’re underwater and you can actually hear the roar of the ocean in 

your ears?  

The kind of cold where you really have to marvel at the amount of pure 

snot that any one human body can produce.  You’re sort of swimming inside

 your own head.  But, and here’s the big thing, have you ever blown

 your nose so hard that something actually spurts out of your eye??

  Believe me it’s as weird as it sounds. It is a pretty complicated duct system up in there though.  It’s like a projectile tear is what it is. 

Anyway that’s the kind of cold I was getting over on the day when 

me and my horse Molly found the dead body. Well a skeleton-y body, 

in a narrow wash in the hills on the east side of the valley where I live.

I say “my” horse Molly because I always do but she really belongs to my 

step-granddaughters who live out of state.  Their dad thought they needed a 

horse to call their own when they come to visit.  That’s sure not very often

 and it turns out they prefer quads to horses anyway.  But that’s a whole 

other story.  Anyway I’m happy to have little Molly here with me and 

I try to take her out for a spin as much as I can even though she’s not my main riding horse.  She’s a barely 14hh Spotted Saddle Horse with two dark 

crackly blue eyes outlined in black eyeliner.  Very dramatic!  She’s built like a 

small tank so I don’t feel too badly asking her to carry my 6’ self and I got

 over feeling foolish on her when I found out what a kick she is to ride.  

When she gaits it’s like riding a wind-up horse and it just makes me laugh.  

Her little head gets to bobbin’ and her fat furry little ears are always perked 

ahead and she’s says ok where are we goin’ now and what are we goin’ to 

do next!  I love that kind of attitude in a trail horse.  So far I haven’t found

 anyplace she won’t go although she will offer an opinion at times.  But I like

 that in a horse too.  Opinions.  Sometimes they’re right.

Anyway  there we were bobbin’ along through this narrow-ish wash with

 out a care in the world heading for home. 

We came around a little bend and bam! Some animal or other had been 

digging at the edge of the wash where it met the bank and spewed out a 

bunch of rocks and dirt into our path.  Pretty big rocks too.

Caught my eye for sure and I’m saying to Molly what on earth could have 

dug all that stuff out into the wash and why?  She wasn’t the least bit 

interested  as she was feeling pretty purposeful about getting home.  Then 

I saw the reason for the digging.  Part of a ribcage was sticking up out of 

the dirt  and some kind of fabric was smushed up around it.  I don’t know 

why I kept going but I did. Maybe because you see bones out there sometimes.  Deer or what have you.  We got about 50’ past and I told Molly sorry girl 

but we gotta go back and check that out again. She did offer a brief opinion

 on that.

The fabric was actually part of a shirt.  Had a tag on it, size L.  There were

 buttons and button holes and a cuff and what looked like a knitted scarf all

 balled up and sticky looking.  I sort of came to and realized there were actual

 flies buzzing around on it and it was February and some kind of god-awful

 smell was making it’s way through my clogged ducts.

The authorities were summoned.   I still  hoped that it was somebody’s big 

family dog that they just happened to dress up in men’s clothing before they 

buried it.  I know,  pretty silly.  But I was worried the cops had come out

 there for nothing. Then I was worried they’d come out there for something. 

Two detectives, a  couple of pokes with a stick and part of the pelvis was 

exposed, a few more pokes and there was the spine.  The remains were 

declared to be human.  Fully intact in a shallow grave as it turns out.

That night at home hubby and I hypothesized  and wondered and speculated. 

We joked; Ribs for dinner tonight, dear?  Yes but perhaps a bit more meat 

on them this time please!  We googled human decomposition rates, we 

googled missing persons, we speculated some more. 

We were dumbfounded. Practically in our backyard!  Well ok, across the 

valley but in a place I ride all winter long!   We had a drink or two to calm 

our nerves and toasted To Herman!  Yep I named him, guess that means he’s 

mine.  

The porkchop on my plate looked disgusting. Later on. Just me. The morbid thoughts, the awfulness of it all.  Does anybody miss him, will anybody 

be sad?  Or worse, what if nobody has missed him, what if nobody is sad?  

Is life really so cheap and meaningless? What were his last minutes like? 

Eeew. 

Why did I find him, is there some cosmic reason that I chose to take 

Miss Molly on a ride on that particular day in that particular wash ?  Or is everything just random like my jaded self tends to think?  I mean come on,

 what’s it really all about Alfie?  The ocean roars, the waves pound.  

I’m swimming inside my head.   I blow my nose hard and something spurts 

out of my eye.  It’s like a projectile tear is what it is.

Passion for Horses

It's out in paperback....

http://www.amazon.com/Passion-Horses-Katie-Gooch/dp/1477474641/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_pap?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338216604&sr=1-1