Stupid People

Every Tuesday and Thursday morning I trek the mile and a half from where Im allowed to park my car to my art history class, and let me tell you- its uphill the whole way.

Every Tuesday and Thursday I get to my classroom and find about 10-20 people sitting outside the lecture hall waiting for class to start,

Every Tuesday and Thursday I look at them, turn and open the door to the lecture hall, turn on the lights and sit down- the rest of the people follow me inside and take their seats as well.

I dont get it, why am I the only person who has balls enough to walk into the room first? what are these peoples problems?!

Listen Closely

Listen closely-

Do you hear that?

Its the sound of me breathing,

Not hyperventilating, screaming, swearing or in general freaking out,

Breathing like any other normal 20 year old woman.

OK so that may have been a little dramatic but in actuality it is a really impressive really crazy thing, because right now, and for the last 2 or 3 days I have been relaxed.  Whats even more impressive is that at this very moment there is no crisis to distract me, no sick or dying person looking for my attention and no huge exam making me want to tear my hair out. It is that beautiful part of the semester where I am caught between the last set of exams and finals and the professors have little to ask of us other than to not say "fuck it" and skip out on class.

The most beautiful thing about this is that while I have shitloads of work to do, its mostly busywork that will not determine whether I pass or fail in life, its nice knowing that I don't HAVE to spend 8 hours on that assignment because if i only get a B on it its not the end of the fucking world. 

Another amazing thing is that for once, I am the hurt one and my dearest boyfriend is the normal person, as he said last weekend for once were back to worrying about my stupid injuries from working with horses like the sprained ankle I have instead of whether or not he is going to die from chemo, or staff, or pneumonia or cancer or something like that.  Hows that for a relationship rejuvenation?

Yep folks pretty much my biggest complaint right now are my shoes, and the fact that I'm a little bit tired, Last night my father had to teach late so we didn't have dinner until 10 and although it was delicious, it was a little late considering I had only gotten 5 hours of sleep the last two nights and I'm pretty useless without at least 8 consistently.  As for my shoes? I'm wearing (well kinda wearing in a disheveled manner much akin to the way my friend Liz dressed In high school) my suit because tonight I get activated into Sigma Alpha Professional Agriculture Sorority,  Quite the mouthful isnt it?  I never saw myself as a sorority girl but the active members are pretty cool and it is a wonderful thing to have on a resume, considering we are actually a clean group and much against keg parties. No offense to those bubbly drunks I see stumbling around campus 8am on Monday morning proudly displaying their letters ><.

Anyway now that I have effectively used up the time I would have spend in my class that was cancelled this morning I will go back to work
toodles!

Hospitals Part One-

I will begin this saga- one which will probably have at least 3 parts with the good news of last week,
My boyfriend, after 11 months and 24 days was diagnosed NED (No evidence of Disease) last Wednesday, In layman's terms- hes cancer free!! There is no more explanation needed, this is amazing in itself.  However I will quote my relatively annoying sometimes but very sweet neighbor who went, "Kelly, that's like, A MIRACLE or something".  So excited after a long hard day on campus I rushed home, threw on a pair of heels, and a slightly transparent top, and headed out for a night of celebration.  I got no more than 400 feet down the road when I found a voice-mail on my phone from my mother.

"Kelly, I'm really not feeling well..... I think I need you to drive me to Hopkins tonight"

Now I think this needs a side note of a bit of history.  last week my mother went on antibiotics for an infection and she was hospitalized for 2 days, and then continued to take them for a week it was on this day that she went off the antibiotics so reasonably, she was worried that the infection was back.

I look at the clock, 8:00pm, my mother was on the eastern shore, at least 2 hours away from where I was.  I promptly got on the phone with my dearest boyfriend, "Sorry to break the Mood, But I have to take mom to Hopkins" his response was valid,

"Well I'm not coming with you, I just got the fuck outta there!"
"I told mom I would meet the girl taking care of you on Kent Island, can I crash at your place untill she gets there?"
"ok"

In hindsight, we could have gone out to dinner- because I did not receive the call from mom untill 10:00 that she was headed my way, nor did I pick her up untill 11:00 but this is beside the point.  We got to Hopkins at 12:15, and were seen by a Dr. at 1:00 record breaking time when compared to the local hospital, where you were never seen for at least 5 hours unless your dying, and then they don't see you either- they just send you to Hopkins anyway. 

By 4AM 3 cultures an X -Ray and two doctors later, we got the discharge papers stating that- 'Results were not conclusive to any infection, or other problem. We got back in the car by 5 and got home by 7, where I (not sleeping yet) got back in the car at 8 and tried to drive back (2hours) to school for class.  To say the least, this did not happen, I got off the Bay Bridge and climbed into my now cancer Free's bed to remain unconscious for the next 4 hours.

I woke up at 1pm feeling like Id been hit by a bus, my own fault for trying to sleep on the top to a bio-hazard sharps container the night before.  Driving out to my dads to get clean underwear and ice cream before heading home to my moms by 3:30 I found her burning up with a fever, shaking, and with high blood pressure.  I packed a Bag, we were going to have to go back into the ER.

I stopped at the Urgent Care Center on Kent Island, and was Denied; so I headed to Anne Arundel Medical Center which took a little convincing, but eventually got a bed for her in the ER. 

Once Again, 4-6 cultures, an X-Ray, Spinal Tap, and multiple complaints later, my mothers fever was gone, and they wanted to discharge us at 3:00am with no answers as to what was going on with her.  Apparently it was at this point that the Nurse looked over at me slumped over in a metal chair absolutely unconscious and stated, "OR, we could keep you here for observation untill morning"

Both my mother and I at this point were thinking they would kick us out first thing in the morning from the ER, so we both were surprised when they admitted us at 5am. 

The next day we had not seen anything but a helpless nurse before noon when I said to the nurse at One, "Look, I have a class tonight" If shes not released by 2 I'm going to have to leave her here for the night, because there's no one else to pick her up today and take her home.

We Let me tell you- We were discharged within 35 minutes and in the car heading home in an hour.  In actuality I did not have a class, but I did have a Formal for my Sorority, which god dammit I had already paid $50 for and was not going to miss because a Dr. was on their lunch break.

In the End- We still don't know what is going on with mother, we know she doesn't have Meningitis,  A Bacterial Infection OR Pneumonia.  But that really doesn't tell us much, now does it? However We do know that I can infact function on Very little sleep, much to my displeasure

Hay Hey Hay

Today, now that we have 4 feet of snow on the ground, the boys needed more hay.  Now I'm not going to get angry by going into the hay situation and why there wasn't enough hay were going to concentrate on the present. 

Normal People, have a tractor, that can drive in the snow, I do not have such a luxury, we sold our tractor when mom got hurt.  SO taking the greener route we have to drag our hay out over the snow.  To add to the difficulty I am moving Alfalfa, which weighs roughly 80lbs a bale. 

Enter Bart the wonderhorse; Bart is my good ol man, who for all 21 years of his life has done whatever my mother or I needed him to do, he is very good at setting his boundaries, and very good to listening to ours, and other than that he is the most useful animal I have ever met.  So as I walk out to catch him from the field for use in my mothers latest idea I am curious if he'll still love me at the end of the day. 

Here's the Goal: Get roughly 7 bales of hay down to the boys shed, which is about 350 yards from the barn door, in 4 feet of snow.  The plan is to fashion a sled out of a tarp my boyfriend picked up, and drag this behind poor Bart, loaded with hay, down to the shed using a long line, and the western saddle.

May I also mention that both Bart and I are severely out of shape at this point in the winter.  

Step One: Fashion a Hay-Dragging-Device
materials; Tarp, Twine; lounge line; 3 bales of hay

I got about half way done this when my boyfriend mentioned I might want to close up the sides as well so the hay didn't slip out to the right or left.  In the end this pretty much turned into a giant Santa Clause Present Sack.  I then took the loops of twine attached to the corners of the tarp and brought them all together with the lounge line to create a tow line.

 

Now Bart looked at this as if it were an alien at first but it was quickly resolved when he realized what I had done was wrap up a big hay burrito for him.

 

Now I'm pretty sure the only reason my boyfriend and I managed to actually get bart to drag this heavy, noisy, and uncomfortable object out to his shed was because it was at this point that he realized the purpose of this entire process was to benefit him. 

...And you said horses weren't smart!?

Step Two: Take a deep breath, give Bart a kiss and wrap the rope around the horn of the western saddle hoping he doesn't jump on top of me.  He takes it quite well; there was a definite learning curve in the carving of a path down the alleyway to the shed, as well as in my steering as to not get the hay sack stuck in the fence line.  Bart and I were both tripping over ourselves and each other in the snow but we got the first load down the hill and to the shed.

 

  

Step Three:  Throw my wonderful amazing horse a flake of hay to eat while I unload the hay into the shed feeder, and return back to the top of the hill for load two. 

The really exciting part of the entire process was when the tow rope (Lunge line) snapped on trip two and smacked poor Bart in the ass.  This sends him bucking and running away, and me stumbling after to console him.  We made up, got a new rope and moved on with the haul.  

Looking back on these pictures I realize why I have few friends outside of the horse/school world.  Because this is how I spend my Friday mornings. 

Snowing down my day.

Im just going to be honest and blunt- I only like snow for about... 10 minutes, and then once the "oooooooo look how pretty it looks on the trees!" gets out of my system, Im good for the entire winter- In the past, this has not been a problem in the state of Maryland, because we dont get "snow" we get what my boyfriend and I fondly call, Wintry Mayland Mix of Hell- because it is, it rains/sleets/snows for several hours, everything freezes and gets iced over, and then were done for the day because its melted by morning.

While this may seem like it sucks, because it does- the nice part about it is you deal with it for a day, and it goes away.  Snow on the other hand has a sneaky habit of insulating itself, melting, icing, snowing again, accumulating, and never fucking going away.  Which makes both my horses and myself more than a little miffed.  Everything takes longer in the snow, and being that my horses are what my mother and I like to call "Brumbies" (which is a slang term for  the Australian wild horse adopted by us) they are outside 24/7.

I learned two things this weekend, 1) My highly opinionated, tough ass mare Terra's blanket wasn't cutting it for her with the wind/snow/18 degree weather that we were experiencing on Saturday so she needed to come inside and 2) That our mares are bloody pigs. At the Beginning of January both the mares, of which there are two, and the Geldings, of which there are also two received 18 bales of hay in their shed feeders.  Now my gelding Bart, is a notorious eater; they should erect monuments to the amount of food that he is capable of eating on a regular basis. Once we had what must have been a bad bag of grain because none of the normal horses wouldn't eat it.  Perplexed because the grain wasn't dusty nor did it smell bad we offered a handful to Bart.  When he turned the grain down we immediately were on the phone with the grain company, "no, you don't understand... BART wont eat it there has to be something wrong with it!"  Getting back to the root of this discussion, The mares have eaten all of their hay... ALL OF IT.  The geldings have at-least 10 bales left.  the art of out-eating Bart had never been mastered until this weekend.  So because my mares are fat-asses, I again, need to find more hay to purchase, in the snow.

My 10 minutes of snow enjoyment were extended this weekend due to the fact that I was able to go for a ride in the snow with my best friend Lisa.  Shes more or less a beginner but works really hard and improves every time she rides; shes also not too easily intimidated. All qualifications for an excellent riding buddy.  I was happy to introduce to her how easily one can get lost in the scenery of a hack along with the rhythm of a trot.

Currently I am truly living my double life, and back at school contrasting city life in the snow with country life and understand why urbanites when asked about snow will spout out depictions such as, romantic, scenic, relaxing and call it their favorite part of winter, because when I stepped off the shuttle this morning, my tuition has paid someone to clear all of the paths I need to take from building to building of all snow and ice.  As I chuckle a little bit to myself about the sheltered lives of those who don't experience the weekends I do, I trod to class and pretend to be "normal"

ChaChaChaCha Changes....

               Its been a while since Ive had the time to write, thank god i have a breather atm.  actually not really a breather because my professor should be in to teach class soon, but for the next 20 minutes despite the 300 people about to be sitting around me I feel as if I can relax.  What a month December was! University of Maryland is now where I consider myself a student and the transition has gone smoothly- well almost.  I cried, when I left QU, I will miss many of the amazing people I met but this first week at UMD has taught me that change is good.  However the first step to getting back to MD was to haul all of my shit the 6 hours down 95 I needed to travel.  Let me mention- I have a Chrysler Seabring; which could be bigger sometimes, like when im trying to move 30 bales of hay, hauling 3 horses worth of tack to another barn- or in this case moving all of my worldly possessions back to Maryland.  Lets just Say- it was an interesting trip- it took me 2 days to pack most everything into my car- I was quite pleased with myself when I had completed the task- but then I turned around and there it was- my double papasan...  I loved that chair, and often slept in it, but it was about the size of the interior of my car.  I had friends offering to keep it for me but, it couldn't be left behind- the day I bought it off of craigslist for $90 was one of the happiest days of my fall semester.  No, it would definitely  have to come with me..
               It took 4 limbs- lots of leverage, and even greater willpower to get the mattress into the back of my car-  when the backdoor closed and didn't pop back open on me I let out a cry of joy to turn around and find that I had gathered a crowd of about 5 strangers not offering help but probably rather amused with me.  This mattress was the final step to creating the wall that now existed of my backseat and rear window- I certainly wouldn't be using my rear- view mirror during the trip. 

               With that task out of the way- there was the frame to deal with- I will summarize this process with one statement- I am the goddess of tie downs.  When Taekwondude walked up the first thing that came to mind seemed to summarize the vehicle best....

"You could play Mario Kart in that thing..."

                Indeed I probably could have.  Now with my faithful driving companion ( A freshman who also lived in MD) at my side I headed home- hoping not to cause myself too much of a headache as the tie down closure above my head sometimes smacked me if the road was too bumpy.  When we got to the Jersey Turnpike we were enamored for about 10 minutes with the fact that the bamboo on top of the car made a humming noise- the amusement went away as soon as we discovered that the radio would not cover up this noise... 6 hours later neither of us could hear ourselves think.

                But we were in Maryland with the promise of 6 weeks without entering a classroom or lecture hall, which made up for just about everything.