Experience the ENDURANCE of Foundation Breeding
Don't Sleep in the Bathtub!
December 7, 2007
It all started innocently enough Thursday night. I had an excellent Aikido class and really worked up a good sweat. I went upstairs, later than usual, to sit in the bubble bath and finish the book I'd been reading all week long. Alec was gone, Marc was in his computer room, the dogs were put away for the evening and the cats already had their "bath for the day" so I figured that no-one would notice I was missing.
I ran the water nice and hot, roasty toasty as it were, and put in enough bubbles to warrant buying stock in the Mr. Bubble Company. Mmmmm. I slid down into it and the day simply eased away. As I found that "comfy spot" in the bath, I opened my book and started reading. Soon I was whisked away into the world of murder and intrigue.
Much later, much to my chagrin, I awoke freezing to death, in an icy pit of soap scum. Brrrr. What the heck? I can't believe I fell asleep! I guess that's because no-one was pestering me and I was just too relaxed and enjoying the quiet.
I got out of the frigid bath and shivering violently, I toweled myself off...amazingly enough, I had not dropped the book into the water, ruining my last chapter and "who done it". Barely able to control the shaking long enough to make my fingers work to grab my clothes off the floor, I tucked them under my arm and left for the bedroom. I felt wide awake, which was weird because usually I am groggy as heck if I go to sleep for a 1/2 hour or so. I sneak into the bedroom, throw the clothes in the hamper and smile as I hear Marc softly snoring in that deep soothing manner he has. I glance over at the clock and ...
OMG!!!!!
It's 3:45 AM. No wonder I feel wide awake, it's my wake up time. I slept all night in the bathtub. Holy crap.
Okay, now I'm frantic! I dig out some clean barn clothes and figure I'll just stay up since I'd be getting up in a half an hour anyway.
Marc is still sleeping peacefully, the two cats all snuggled up against his back giving him, warmth and cozy cat lumps to snuggle with.
Hrumph. I'm still chilly from the cold bath water and I'm a little jealous of his warm toasty cocoon of covers he has wrapped around his body.
And that started my day....Friday, December 7 will forever be known as the day that nothing went right.
The coffee pot, set on AUTO to start at 3:45 AM, decided to pull a trick on me. In a fit a manic craze, that can only come from an insane coffee pot, it ran the coffee all over the counter, down the fronts of the cabinets and across the floor instead of dripping into the pot like a well behaved coffee pot is supposed to do.
The cats, who moments before were sound asleep dreaming of catnip and sluggish mice, with their keen sense of sleep-hearing, heard my grumbling at the coffee pot and decided to come and help me clean up the mess by walking through it and carefully tracking it all over the kitchen floor. Just knowing that they cared enough to give me extra work, which should warm me up rather quickly, was enough to get my blood pressure working over time. I swiftly found my body temp rising to all new highs.
The dogs, whom I had put outside so they wouldn't join the cats in mess clean up duties, suddenly found something remarkably scary to start barking at. On and on they barked, in a song about getting out of their yard (or something like that) and their carefully choreographed symphony was specifically designed to work in conjunction with the cat's clean up and drive my blood pressure up even further. My body temperature is getting closer and closer to sweats-ville by this time. And I believe they thoroughly enjoyed my joining their two-dog-night choir as I stuck my head out the door and screamed at them to "Shut Up, it's 4:30 in the morning."
The birds, wanting to get in on the screaming fun going on in the kitchen and the back yard, started their morning, "Hello!" screeching an hour early. Damn - they're gonna wake everyone up. I hissed at them to go back to sleep and this elicited a chuckling session from Patches, who LOVES to chuckle, and chuckle loudly, so now I'm frantically picking birds up and wearing them as ornaments so they get quiet.
In the meantime, I'm begging the coffee pot to finish brewing the coffee so I can get some and calm down. Trust me on this one, I was so wound up at this point, coffeee was going to be valium to my nerves.
At 5:15 AM, I decide I've had enough fun for one morning, so I grab my mug of coffee, throw on my coat and head out to the truck. Of course, it's raining outside, so I go BACK inside and put on a different coat. One that will offer some semblance of shelter from the wetness falling from the sky.
Back out the door I go and the freakin' cat sneaks out the door with me.
Dashing through the rain,
in a one cat open joke,
here she goes again,
blood pressures a stoke
Five minutes later, no thoroughly wet through and through, I capture the run away beast and toss her back inside the door. Of course, being bath kitties, they don't give a wit about the rain so she's as wet as I am and not even concerned. She hits the floor and saunters off to find her sister, not caring a bit that I have just about decided that the chinese food restaurant in Fogelsville might need to Oriental Cats.
(sly grin)
As I'm walking towards the truck, it appears to be sitting funny in the driveway, all leaned over to the one side like it has a side sticker or something. As I get closer, my night vision clears and I find that the rear tire is flat.
(sigh)
I am NOT changing the truck tire in the freezing rain so I drive very slowly to the gas station to fill that traitor tire with air. If I can get to the barn, I can drive up into the arena where it's dry and change the frickin' thing. As images of tire irons spinning out of control rush through my caffeine crazed brain, I put in the three quarters to PAY for air (kinda like paying for water...two things our planet has a ton of, and I'm paying for it) and although the damn machine kept my quarters, it sure didn't give me any air.
(groan)
Fine, I'll just drive really slow to the barn and hope I don't mess up my $300 fancy rims.
During my excruciatingly slow drive to the barn, I find two patches of black ice on the road and start wondering why God put me here on this planet. Was it for his own personal entertainment? I think so! Sliding like a hockey puck across the rink, Waltzing Matilda shows me EXACTLY how much waltzing she has left in her at her age.
(eek)
I get to the barn and sit in the truck a moment breathing in and out, trying to calm myself. I find some soothing Rammstein on the CD and crank it up to deafness levels.
(ahhhhh)
Okay - let's get these chores over with. The weather guy said the freezing rain was supposed to change to all rain as the temps rise and I have a ton of work to do, let's have at it.
As I walk around doing my morning check on the horses, I find not one, but two horses cast in their stalls. God only knows how long they've been upside down. One was easy to right up, she's a small Appaloosa mare and pretty agile. The other wasn't so easy, as she's a HUGE Appaloosa mare, and was stuck up right in the corner of the stall, all four feet pinned against the boards and her head curled into the corner as if praying for relief from her plight. Using every technique for moving a large horse by yourself at 5:30 in the morning, practicing my heavy breathing exercises, bending my arms in directions that only an Aikido Master could appreciate, I get her right side up and check her over to be sure I haven't damaged anything in my enthusiasm to achieve an excellent aerobic heart rate so early in the morning.
I pull the hose in from the hill to start watering and find that whomever used the hose the night before (that would have been Thursday night, December 6 so if you are the person that did this to me, remember we have a new rule about the hose. You break it, you pay for it) not only didn't drain the hose properly, so it froze, but in the sections where the hose froze, it split ... so now I cam soaked with ever MORE cold water. Obviously, sleeping in the cold water of the bathtub and chasing a cat in freezing rain wasn't enough for the humor-gods this morning...I needed a dousing of chilled well water to get things going for the day.
(grumble)
Fine, just fine. I'll leave Alec a note to water by hand when he gets here.
I decide since I'm already drenched, what can a little more water mean to me? I get Flame out of her nice warm stall and tack her up in rain gear. I take her out and do some road riding, carefully avoiding those obvious patches of black ice on the roads, and ride her for an hour. I can feel my blood pressure slowly coming down, as if a hole was punched in the side of the balloon. Kinda like the tire on the truck.
Damn, I forgot about the tire.
I fly back to the barn, untack Flame, towel her off and get the haying done. I don't have time to mess with changing the tire, so I run up to the other gas station and fortunately, their air is working. Unfortunately, I had to MAC out some $$$ because I only had two quarters and their air machine takes four quarters.
(sob)
Back to the house. Shower. Dress. Head to my client of the day.
I get on the highway, am on the highway for approximately 7 seconds, when the radio guy says - "Wreck on Route 22 East Bound between Krumsville and New Smithville.
Guess where I am?
Sitting in a parking lot for 48 minutes between Krumsville and New Smithville.
Get that Rammstein going on the CD player, I'm needing it.
I arrive at my client's site, an hour later than I promised, and find that a million and one things have happened since I was there last and none of them were good. I had a plan laid out for what I wanted to accomplish while I was there this day, but ended up fixing the computer I was working on, fixing the multitude of other computer and database errors they had and didn't get ANYTHING done.
I leave the site after 6 hours of frustration.
And I am no sooner on the highway, then the radio guy says, "Accident west bound Route 22 between 191 and 512."
Guess where I am?
Sitting in a parking lot for 25 minutes between 191 and 512.
We're supposed to be at a Christmas party for Marc's work at 6:00PM
I haven't gotten to the barn to do chores yet.
I have a student coming for a lesson and I won't be there.
I am losing my mind.
I call Alec. "HELP!"
And the first good thing to happen to me today arrived in the form of Alec's happy reply, "Sure Ma, no trouble at all."
So I skip the barn and head straight to the house. I don't have a THING to wear to this Christmas party and last year it was formal dress. All the women were fancy in their black dresses and done hair, jewelry and diamonds flashing with their fake holiday smiles. I am not even thinking clearly as I make a pit stop at Peebles to buy a dress. Me? Buy a dress?
Of course, I am dressed in barn attire, dragging mud everywhere as I hunt through rack after rack of clothes, not finding what I want. Being as I look like a Swamp Thing wandering through their store, the floor sales people carefully avoid coming over and asking me if they can help me find anything.
GOOD! Another good thing to happen today.
BAD! I can't find a freakin' thing to wear.
After a day fraught with disaster, why did I expect anything else??? My mind boils with previews of everything I have in my closet at home. mentally I toss article after article of clothing out of the closet and into the heap growing on the bed as I frantically hunt for something stunning to wear.
Why the hell do I care what I look like? Mostly, because I need to be a pretty wife for my husband.
(sigh)
What is wrong with me?
I arrive home, about the time I have exhausted my mental review of the closet, and I decide that it's time to make a statement (What? Me?) and just put together something that will prove (once again) that I am the eccentric Dodie Sable.
(rolling eyes)
I quick do up my hair in an elaborate French-Twist, jump in the shower, shave my legs, soap the stress of the day away, and put together a very 70's look of long black skirt, fluffy red turtle neck sweater, worn outside the shirt and clinched off at the waist by a wide black leather belt, black fishnet stockings and red laced high heel shoes.
Let me tell you a quick story about these shoes. I bought them for Naoma's wedding which was red/white colors. I had more men come up to me and compliment me on my shoes than I can ever explain. Yes, I said MEN. They're a heeled sandal with red lace straps you wrap around your ankle and tie in a bow. It was actually embarrassing to have these guys mooning over my shoes. My own brother in law took PICTURES of them on his phone.
(gag)
So, I don't know WHY I would wear these shoes to a Christmas Party, except that they matched my shirt and tied the whole picture together nicely.
Yes, several MEN at the party complimented me on my shoes.
I'm guessing that these shoes have some sort of glandular or hormonal kick to them.
(double gag)
Okay - parking was a nightmare and we had to park four blocks away from the Hotel in Bethlehem where the company is holding the party. This means walking on the ice crusted cobblestone walkways (and yes, cobblestones are never even) in these high heeled shoes, holding onto Marc's arm and praying I don't pull a Dodie-Clutz stunt, trip and pull him down with me. We get into the hotel to find we have four flights of stairs to walk up to get to the room where the party is being held. On the fourth floor, where it's hot because all the heat has risen up there and is trapped, and I'm in a sweater - dying from the heat.
All in all, the party went smoothly and I found that I was actually dressed right down the middle this year. Some women (skinny women) were dressed fancy with glittering jewels and shiny shoes. But other women (fat women) looked like frumps at a bazaar with uncombed hair, wrinkled clothes and wearing PANTS! So us middle of the road weight women all dressed similar, casual yet nice and we hung out together as if to shun the frumps and princesses from learning our secrets about how to throw together a wonderful wardrobe to wear to a Christmas party using the clothes from the back of the closet.
I suppose, given the day I had, I survived one more year of Marc's company Christmas party. I have four more to go to - three are clients of mine and one is for the Dojo. All four parties are "Dress Casual". If I had not fell asleep in the tub, I suspect that the day would have been much better.
Instructor/Manager: Dodie Sable
Located in New Smithville PA at 37 Fenstermacher Road, 3 miles north of Kutztown University
Call us at 610.756.3836 or email us at dodie@newpromisefarms.com