Roller coaster Typhoon

Wow. Interesting weekend to say the least. I'll go into detail in more posts but this is just the general overview. 

Thursday-Find more melanomas on Riesling's tail

Friday- Have a lesson where I finally realize my saddle doesn't fit & ride 3 horses (sit on another 2)

Saturday- Yoga + house cleaning

Sunday- Buy a horse (??!!) and have a saddle fitting with Riesling.

Yeah. I'll leave you with pictures of Ries being sassy on Thurs 

Ready for spring!

Tuesday I had the opportunity to leg up Argorn. His friend in the stall is a 3 y/o RPSI stallion named Zeitgeist (coolest name ever). Argorn is a teen Oldenburg gelding that schools/showed 4th level. Unfortunately his new owners (my horse trainer used to own him as a lesson horse) aren't out very often and I'm always more than happy to get in rides on as many different horses as possible. Hes been out of work since probably last summer so I was happy to get him out. 

He is a notoriously lazy horse to ride (which is great for kids learning or his new owner a 13 y/o beginner rider). We weren't sure if he was going to be "fresh" because of so much time off so opted to ride without spurs (big mistake). He has the mindset that he will not work unless you know what you are doing and make him work. The really neat thing about riding him is that for some reason I can really feel each of his legs move independently which helps me understand biomechanics as a rider.

We did a lot of walking working on getting him to stretch into the contact and step under himself again. I had to pony kick this guy to get him to trot and just stayed off his back to let his back warm up. When he is this out of shape he really doesn't want to work and I got very winded trying to keep him going. After one series of trot work I nearly puked from trying to get him to keep trotting. He had a few moments of auto-pilot and stretched nice. I could tell he enjoyed being out again. 

I'm really excited to keep riding him more because he really teaches me a lot as a rider. He has so many buttons and is so fine tuned you have to be very accurate with your aids. Just need to get him back in shape so I don't get winded as fast (and realistically me get back in shape as well!). 

Balancing Act

Hadron the Newfie (horse trainer's dog)

One of my biggest struggles is balancing everything in my life. Being sick last year really threw it all out of wack. Honestly, I'm a really terrible student. I don't like doing homework and I somehow always think of something better to do than go to class. But this week I've been on my game.

I managed to get all of my homework done on Sunday and spent all day studying yesterday for an exam. The first tests of the semester are in and I am passing! My business law professor is kind of an ass and makes his exams hard. He told us in his teaching career only one student has ever gotten an A on one of his exams so I was pretty happy just to pass that test. 

Today I begin legging up all of my trainer's horses. They are out of shape, I'm out of shape, should be a blast. The weather has been really stormy on my ride days and my weekend got way out of control trying to get shit done. I've just seen Ries to stuff his face full of cookies and let him know I still exist. He is a traditionally lazy horse so he doesn't mind this after having a hard ride early last week. 

Our little farm is starting to become a real farm! Bf decided he wants to raise meat chickens so this should be an interesting little adventure. They are pretty cute and cuddly right now. We've also began painting our ancient cabinets white. We managed to get a whopping 2 doors painted. Ha. That should be finished this week, however. 

Ruger (mom's dog)

I also have puppy fever so hopefully I can have my own dog here to join me on adventures soon. 

It feels good to do everything I need to. When I can get house chores, school, and pony time in on schedule I am happy and not stressed. The goal is to get better at my time management and kick some ass this year. I apologize for the word vomit, but that's the little update on my life. 

Chicken with the head cut off

That's me. Running around blindly. Probably a bad idea to write a blog at 11 pm but this is going to keep me up all night.

I'm having my "pre-life crisis" (because I'm just barely an adult). And WHAT AM

I DOING WITH MY LIFE. 

I've never really had this panic before. Not quite this full blown. Do I want to own a barn? Do I want a future in the horse business? Would I explode in a 9-5 job?? 

I'm irritated with school (mostly calculus and dumb teachers that DON'T STICK TO THE SYLLABUS). I'm kind of wondering why I'm doing this. I'm wondering if I should have gone to be a working student after highschool instead. 

I mean I'll get this degree even if it leaves me heavily wounded by the end of it. I'm too far in and I don't think I would regret getting a degree. 

But I know what I like in my life. Sleep. Naps. Cooking. Tacos. Playing with and taking care of my animals. I like planning. I like seeing end results. Wine and Netflix. No set schedule. 

What do I do with that? I had everything planned out with my career counselor but now I don't know if that's what I want anymore (I've always had things "figured out" so this makes me paranoid that my entire life is a lie). 

I know life is a journey and you can make different career choices along the road. But my brain doesn't work that way. I need a final destination to drive towards. And not just a stop, but final. The thought of this organic lifestyle changing careers and lifestyles midway through freaks me out. I want to get somewhere and be happy. 

I don't enjoy abstractly floating around in this realm of discovery. 

Ww: heart horse

Throwback: bad photography

So I recently discovered my old Flickr account (I thought I was a budding photographer). And since I have not that many fun ideas of posts, we're gunna do a few series of "throwback" posts because looking at baby Mic and baby Ries is very entertaining (I think).

So starting out with Ries right when I got him(2009). 

1) Such dark, so many dapples

2) THOSE TOES *cringing* (pretty sure it was the last owner's farrier's job atleast?)

3) he is just built so differently. Going to have to do some comparative posts. 

Friday Funday

Thanks to $900 Facebook Pony for sharing the Luxe Eq sale! I snagged this awesome Equiline show coat and shirt. Im in love! Sad I wasn't quick enough on any of the breeches. Anyways, happy weekend all! 

PS. My moose pj pants say "don't moose with me". I know, too cool for school.

Stumbling

I've been driving the struggle bus lately. I have no motivation for school. Lately I find myself just stumbling through the motions of life. I realized that is no way to live your life. So I thought about why I want to learn about business. I made some goals and aspirations for myself. I'm thinking about the big picture and how if I don't buckle down and do it I won't get anywhere. Even things I love I don't want to do. But now that I have this seemingly gorgeous future envisioned for myself I want nothing less. I'm going to struggle and screw up along the way, but damnit I'm going to do this. 

I proved to myself the power of positive thinking last night when I realized I had missed two of my tests I had scheduled. I immediately wanted to cry and kick myself but I took a deep breath and rescheduled for a few hours later, told myself I'm going to make Calculus my bitch and I feel really good about how I did on that test now.

2016 is my year. I'm going to be selfish and do things to make me happy for once. Starting with 5 things I am grateful for every morning. 

How I feel this morning:

1. An amazing hobby that led me to my best friend, Riesling, and to an awesome support system around the globe

2. My extremely supportive bf who saw the "normal" Micaylah before shit hit the fan and knows I'm going to be an even better version of myself coming out of this. 

3. Not having stupid roomates who eat my food

4. Costco sleep aid pills for helping me get some rest in. Muy importante. 

5. Waking up and driving during a beautiful sunrise. (Seriously driving to work in the dark is sad)

I'll have a riding update soon, going to ~finally~ write out some goals for 2016, and maybe do a fun little giveaway for my 100th blog post! 

Keep failing until a friend saves you. Jul-Dec 2015

I don't think I would be where I am today without the support of my friends and family (and especially all of you bloggers!). Now we will take a look at the last sixth months of 2015.

July

"Someone told me once I work too damn hard to afford my horse to not enjoy my horse. And they are right. I get caught up so easily in trying to make money and do things for other people I don't do things for myself."

"After the first jump all I could do was smile. It was fantastic. I was just smiling the whole time. Welp, back to DQ land! "

August

I don't know if I have shown off our nice pictures!

 We made it to our first away show! And did awesome!

September

This is when I started getting sick and didn't post any blogs. Sad.

October

I had surgery this month to get my tonsils and adenoids out so I didn't blog this month either. Bad Msiz

November

This is when the storm hit. Hold on to your hats folks.

" Take the risk, it either works out or you learn a good lesson." But I didn't follow my own advice come January.

Best burger of my life.

"I am looking with brightness towards the future and can't wait to share with you all that life has to bring."

December

"When I first saw him walking down the road I was sure that is how I was going to lose him. Instead he just wanted to scare me half to death"

"Adios frozen weather! Maybe I'll get a tan ;)" I'm laughing at my naive self for this last quote. I had such an idea it would be very low key visiting my brother when in fact it knocked me on my ass. 

Summary

Overall, 2015 was filled with a lot of learning experiences. I am so thankful it is over but I am also so happy I blogged about my year and am able to look back and re-learn my experiences. Cheers to 2016.

Try, fail. Try harder, fail again. Jan-June

2015 Overview

I have neglected to post a wrap up about 2015. It's never too late to write a post, however.

2015 was a very difficult year. One of the most difficult years of my life. But it had to happen. And I feel incredibly stronger and like more of a person having experienced it. I want to look back at each month and reflect more about my year rather than about the bad experiences that seem to stick out. 70 posts, here we go.

January

"1) I work too hard to buy nice things and not get to play with my horse, so thats stopping"


"I'm not down to rock the sports bra in my college classes with some hot guys. Ya know?"

Two favorite pictures and two funny quotes. I posted about my resolutions and a few of them I accomplished! Pretty good start to the year.

February

"But my world got turned upside down." 




Awesome pictures this month hahaha. This is when I had to move all of a sudden. I wasn't working which was nice. I got some jump time in and talked about my favorite thing -bling.

March

"Im pretty sure I have the worst luck ever." "#peglegmuskateer"

I got hurt and reminisced about the younger days.

April 

\

I jumped again! Ries turned 13 and I stalked the mailman for my Monacos.

May

Recovered from being super sick and dealing with dumb roomate. Mom got married and happy gotcha day to Ries!

June

"So I have probably thrown down over $1,000 for this one show over membership fees, entry fees, and show clothes. Let's see if we can win some satin! "

I had my first dressage show ever, where Czoey Czar saved the day. Ries was very hurt and I cried a lot during that show. I ended up with Reserve Champ! 

Next six months coming soon. Quite a ride for those last six, if I only knew what was coming!

Riding Update 1/29-2/1

Where is my coordinating pad woman?

Whew! After a (business) week of a post every single day of course I get knocked on my ass. Monday I got super sick. But before then, I got some good rides in!

Friday I was supposed to have a lesson but CJ had to go out of town. I don't remember doing anything super spectacular, just a generic ride.

Saturday I finally brought out the AWESOME pink sparkle polos from Alli & Dino. They are epic. Only thing I need to do is add an extra tab of velcro because the sparkle velcro tab is too long for the other side of the velcro (wow I can't explain anything)

We had a fabulously relaxed ride where we did a lot of stretchy trot. We also got some very good canter transitions in. Our walking spiral in is doing great as well!

Sunday is when I had rescheduled my lesson and for whatever reason it was postponed again. Personally I tell CJ to reschedule for whenever because right now we aren't doing anything exciting and I'm poor so one more day of pretending to have money is great. He was kind of a jerk and just overall pissy. He was exceptionally over sensitive. We attempted to transition frequently like we have to for tests but he wasn't ready for that yet apparently. I basically just ended up doing a lot of long and low to keep him stress free. 

Monday Ries told me he was overwhelmed with the workload. I stopped doing chores at the barn which makes me actually want to be at the barn all the time again! Previously I would be at the barn but I didn't get a chance to ride. This was the first time he had been ridden three days in a row in quite some time. 

When I first went to grab him from his stall he was standing in his stall stone still, perplexed by something in the field across the street. Standing in the cross ties he was very jumpy as well. It didn't help that his dumb OTTB neighbor was freaking out and running from his paddock into the barn and slamming into walls along the way. 

As soon as we left the barn and headed for the indoor he started jigging. I attempted to just hand walk him around the indoor once hoping it would relax him enough to just jump on. This was not the case. So instead I ran back into the barn and grabbed the lunge line and whip. 

Once I got the majority of his nervous energy out I hopped on. I kept it short and simple and just reminded him that I was in control of the situation and he was safe. We ended the maybe ten minute ride by walking figure 8s around the indoor for 15 minutes on the buckle. There were a lot of sighs of relief towards the end of our walking. I thanked him for holding his composure during our ~terrifying~ ride. He was very relaxed and happy going back into the barn. 

About 2 hours after the ride I suddenly felt very ill and was miserable with some weird sinus pressure, migrane, fever combo for the next few days (which was good timing because I had planned on giving him a few days off). I'm feeling much better today which means riding for the weekend!