The gorgeous but unpredictable little mare who bucked me off and kicked my husband (same maneuver; she probably didn’t intend to hit him) in mid-February finally sold to someone in California, hurray, hurray.\u00a0 Until she’s transported, she’ll be out of that barn and into another site to gain weight for the trip (she’s not bony, but she’s thinned down with the heat and some very assertive paddock mates.\u00a0 The buyer asked for her to be fattened up if possible.)<\/p>\n
The horse I bought too fast after that concussion, though she doesn’t buck, is a bit of a PITA in some ways, so she’s headed for the trainer to see if Trainer Laci can convince her to cooperate with a rider rather than do everything BUT buck or bolt to make a rider decide to quit.\u00a0\u00a0 (For those unfamiliar with horses, a horse with no desire to work with you has many options besides bucking and running away.\u00a0 Beind hard to catch and halter, being hard to lead.\u00a0 Refusing to take the bit or allow itself to be tacked up by constantly moving around even while tied.\u00a0 “Puffing up” while being saddled, so you can’t get the girth\/cinch tight enough for safety.\u00a0 (There are ways to force the air out, but they’re rough.)\u00a0 Refusing to stand still for mounting.\u00a0\u00a0 Backing up, going sideways crookedly into things, turning in a circle at dizzying rate *while* backing up or going sideways.\u00a0 Both Trainer and Farrier agree Miss Molly has a genetic reason for part of this behavior, through her sire line.\u00a0 So, since my methods haven’t worked to convince her that a partnership is to her advantage, she’s going in for training at the barn First Horse is leaving.\u00a0 This will save my energy for actual good exercise (bicycling) instead of non-effective attempts to work with Second Horse.<\/p>\n
Some hints here for anyone contemplating horse ownership.\u00a0 If the horse has papers, get the papers (or enough info to look the horse’s breeding up online)\u00a0 *before* the purchase, and inquire (discreetly) among horsey friends about said bloodlines.\u00a0 Every breed has “families” known to be easy to train and work with, OK to train and work with, and difficult to train and work with.\u00a0 Save yourself trouble and obtain one of the easy ones.\u00a0\u00a0 If you’re horse-hunting and had a concussion within the past six months, *do not buy a horse in that period.*\u00a0 (Longer, if\u00a0 your friends\/relatives can tell you’re not back to normal.\u00a0 You won’t know; your brain’s not working right.\u00a0 Impulse control, among other things, is impaired.\u00a0 Did I remember that?\u00a0 Obviously not.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A cheap wrong horse will cost you more than the right reasonably good horse.\u00a0 Two cheap wrong horses will cost you more than that.\u00a0\u00a0 And even if, like me, you’ve had horses before…but it’s been years since you had a rideable one…your skills have decayed, not only from the time, but from the aging process.\u00a0\u00a0 That quick recovery you had up through early sixties…vanishes quickly in the 70s, I discovered.\u00a0\u00a0 But I’m not giving up, she said, persisting.<\/p>\n
I’m singing in the church choir again and we have a choir concert (augmented with people on summer leave from *their* church choirs…we don’t get\u00a0 break)\u00a0 a week from today.\u00a0 For the choral-musical among you, we’re doing worked by Benjamin Britten, Gerald Finzi, Ralph Vaughn Williams, and Herbert Howells, all 20th century stuff full of difficulty.\u00a0\u00a0 (No, composers, you do NOT need to change the key and the tempo markings every measure or so.\u00a0 And add all those accidentals.\u00a0 And have a love affair with dissonance.)\u00a0 (Needless to say, I am not a composer, and this complaint is made by a singer who is very far from a good sight-reader, and has trouble remembering whether the accidental means going up a half step or down a half step w\/o looking at the key signature, for which there is no time in the middle of most of them.\u00a0 And it makes my head buzz and hurt,\u00a0 hard to hold the pitch I’m supposed to sing when a harsh dissonance of half-step intervals crammed together come along,)\u00a0 Not my favorite composers, but on Sundays we’re doing Mozart pieces (last Sunday, this Sunday…I don’t know if we’re going to work all through the summer that way.\u00a0 Hope so.\u00a0 I love singing Mozart.\u00a0 Mozart is often difficult, “too many notes” as they say, but my brain seems to have some intuitive knowledge of where he’s going, while with the modernists….there are these random leaps in every direction.)<\/p>\n
So next week will be interesting, in terms of extra rehearsals and the concert itself, and it’s just as well I won’t have Miss Molly to worry about.\u00a0\u00a0 (The rehearsals & concert call times would throw her evening feed time way off.\u00a0 One night a week I can manage–extra hay, plus a late light feed when I get home–but three in a row, in this weather, is asking for possible gut trouble.\u00a0 Hers and mine both.\u00a0 Better she’s in a boarding stable, under the watchful eye of Trainer and others.<\/p>\n
On the writing end, I’m doing mostly nonfiction stuff, including political snarls.\u00a0 Not bringing them here.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes the citizen has to take the time to BE a citizen.\u00a0\u00a0 I am picking through notions (not even ideas yet, just notions)\u00a0 of where the SF might go, trying hard not to be seduced by the very dystopic trilogy I thought of a few years ago…it would be extremely depressing to write (particularly the first book and probably also the second and no notion yet how it would avoid total disaster in the third.\u00a0 I really don’t want to spend years in depression with these people and neither do you.\u00a0\u00a0 But…politics.)\u00a0\u00a0 So I’m looking at other notions.\u00a0 Maybe do a non-fiction or two, just to clear my head.\u00a0 Maybe let this concussion get fully healed (good idea, says husband.)\u00a0\u00a0 But there are two nonfiction books I’d like to take a whack at.\u00a0 Only problem is since they’ve been put off and put off, I need to do current research for them, not the stuff I had together before.\u00a0 Meanwhile I have a few months of Ky’s story extended from the end of INTO THE FIRE…I\u00a0 know about the graduation ceremony, which is where I want to start it, I think, and what happens between the end of ITF and the beginning of unnamed book three.\u00a0\u00a0 But not sure which of the bits of unfinished business to use.\u00a0\u00a0 Editor wanted to go straight to unanswered questions from Cold Welcome, but that’s too abrupt.\u00a0 Even if Ky & Rafe went back to the mysteries she found, they couldn’t do it until it’s summer down there, and it’s summer in the north at the Academy graduation.\u00a0 So at least a quarter year, actually more, before they can leave.<\/p>\n
So here’s a snippet of what *MAY* be the start of the next Ky Vatta book.\u00a0 May.\u00a0 Not necessarily will be.\u00a0 It’s still too nebulous.\u00a0\u00a0 There’s several more pages, but that would be too much spoilerage.<\/p>\n
……………………………………………………………………………………………..<\/p>\n
Commandant Vatta escaped the reception after graduation as soon as she could, and changed quickly out of her white uniform in the guest suite of the Commandant’s residence.\u00a0 Commandant Corsey’s luggage had already been moved into the Commandant’s suite; Ky had wanted the transition to be as easy for him as possible.\u00a0 Rafe, stretched out in one of the club chairs, said, “You’re in a hurry; I didn’t expect you back for another hour at least.\u00a0 Don’t you want to shower before you leave?\u00a0 It must’ve been steamy up on that platform.”<\/p>\n
“I want to leave before someone asks me another question that rightfully belongs to Commandant Corsey.”\u00a0 Ky pulled on the slacks she’d left out.\u00a0 “Is everything else in the car?”<\/p>\n
“I think so.\u00a0 No–wait–I put some things in the bathroom for you, thinking you’d shower. I’ll get them.”<\/p>\n
Ky pulled on the top she’d planned to wear, then rolled her now-useless Commandant’s uniform and tucked it into the open case, followed by the things Rafe brought out.\u00a0 She’d done the final check of drawers and shelves that morning, but she did it again.\u00a0 She wanted to get downstairs and away before–<\/p>\n
A knock on the door.\u00a0 “Commandan–er–Admiral–”<\/p>\n
“Just leaving,” Ky said.\u00a0 She sealed the duffle and went to the door.<\/p>\n
The very farewell committee she’d hoped to escape, including Commandant Corsey, newly commissioned Ensign Biester, the top ranking cadet of each class below, and the officer-sponsors of each class.\u00a0 And they had a wrapped package.\u00a0 No, several wrapped packages.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The gorgeous but unpredictable little mare who bucked me off and kicked my husband (same maneuver; she probably didn’t intend to hit him) in mid-February finally sold to someone in California, hurray, hurray.\u00a0 Until she’s transported, she’ll be out of that barn and into another site to gain weight for the trip (she’s not bony, Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,28,10],"tags":[17,7,21],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","category-snippet","category-the-writing-life","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-the-writing-life","tag-vatta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":457,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}