January Recap and February Goals AND 2017 Goals Update

This picture took a lot of work! Pony kept trying to follow me.
Look at how cute her little Navy ROOTD is!
Also, "love" how everything outside of her blanket is yellow

January Goals

Ride More:

Nope! I did ride more consistently than I was in December but it was closer to 3 days a week than it was 6. I am continuing to work my way up though and the last couple of weeks I've been able to ride more consistently.

Focus on Forward:

Yep! I'm really happy with this one but now wouldn't you know, I need to ride more with my hands. Dressage is just so hard!

Groom Better:

Meh, I did more consistently groom with multiple brushes (George Morris may be having a panic attack somewhere but being happy about multiple brushes is where I'm at right now) than I had been and I did a nice spa day where I clipped, detangled and brushed her tail, trimmed her tail, "pulled" her mane, and sort of scrubbed at some of her green spots with a green spot remover. Overall I'll take it :)

Pony humor=pooping consistently at that far corner
so I need to walk as far as possible to clean it up

February Goals:

"Ride her Neck":

I'm taking this one directly from Jane. It's not as crazy as it sounds, basically I've always had an issue with getting Katai where she should be on the contact and correctly flexed and then I let it go and don't remember to get it back for at least half the arena. That means that she's going incorrectly more than she's going correctly and that's not ok at this point. I need to step up and RIDE! At my last lesson Jane coached me every stride to "ride her neck" meaning correct flexion, no pulling, getting her stretching forward to the bit, NO giraffe pony etc. and I did it! Now I just need to do that on my own and not make Jane lose her voice yelling at me for 5 minutes ;) I also need to not lose the forward, and relaxation, and stretchy that I gained this past month.

Ride More:

I'm making this a goal again. I don't know that I'll consistently be able to ride 6 days per week but I'm making it a goal again. I'm on my way this week so now I just need to stick with it.

Improve That Pesky Right Leg:

My riding position has come a really long way with Jane over the past few months but I'm still struggling with my mutant right leg. I'm going to focus on keeping my hip more closed on that side and keeping my leg back and not braced in front of me. If I can make even a little progress on this during February I'll be really happy.

Getting some use, complete with pony slobbers

Overall Goals Update:

No, this isn't going to be a normal thing each month. In fact I'll probably wait until the end of the year to review my overall goals but I did have one big change that I'm making and wanted to mention it now rather than waiting for December. 

Get a Trailer:

Yeah, I'm disappointed about it but it's for a REALLY good reason. The next few paragraphs are going to be about my personal life so if you can't be bothered feel free to skip down. It's just that this is playing into everything about my riding life right now so I figured I'd mention it.

I've changed a lot about my life recently and the reason  is because I finally stopped living with the idea that I was "getting by" until I have a partner and therefore a second income/all the other amazing parts of having another person as a support system. Last fall I switched my mindset to "owning" my life and not waiting on anyone else. Because of that I switched where Katai was boarded and when I had the opportunity I moved to my grandparent's house all so that I could pay off debt.

I mentioned in this post that I was hoping to build/buy a tiny house and wanted to do it before I hit 40. For the past couple of months I've been thinking a lot about where I go from here. My car getting hit was such a blessing in disguise since it meant that I could pay off even more debt and between that and the other changes I've made I'll have a very large chunk of my debt (everything except student loans) paid off by early next year. 

Spending way too much time pinning tiny houses on Pinterest...

The thing is that this living situation will only last through December (at the earliest hopefully) since I know my family wants to sell this house. I'd just stay and keep paying off debt for a bit longer otherwise (and that's still the plan if it looks like it won't sell this year) but it put me in a situation where I was starting to think about next steps. The more I thought about it the more I realized that it might actually be a good idea to go straight from this place into a tiny house. I've been able to find tiny home loans where monthly payments would be less than a cheap apartment in this area. Even better, it would mean that I'd own my home by the time I'm 40. That would give me so much flexibility to buy land and build a barn, at some point, that I can't even believe it. Even better, I could spend this next 7-8 years living in a couple different place so that when it comes time to buy land I'd know where I want to buy (hopefully).

This was built by the company I want to work with

Of course it's not a perfect plan but I'm feeling more happy and relaxed about my future than I have in a LONG time and it just fulfills so many of the goals/plans that I have for myself. With that being said the amount I was going to get for my tax refund was going to buy my trailer this year (a small, old, modest two horse since I just don't need anything fancier) but if I put that towards debt instead I'll have everything paid off by December this year which perfectly fits with the rest of my tiny house plans.

It doesn't mean that I'm going to let my plans to show this year go out the window. I've already started talking with Jane and as soon as the ice is gone I'm going to start practicing trailer loading Katai on her trailer. She's also willing and able to trailer to some shows as is one of my barn mates. The women who trailered us to the Hunter Pace lives two houses away from Jane's barn and I know she'd invite me to do more paces with her. Plus, L and my previous barn manager both have trailers and would likely be willing to trailer me and my pony places especially if she's more well behaved. I think that with those options this just makes more sense and is a smarter plan for me this year. I just need to be more stubborn about making it happen but I can do that, especially with such a great prize on the horizon :)

Updates, Lesson Recap, and Future Plans

Because I haven't been blogging regularly I feel like I've just got all sorts of random life and pony updates. Lucky you, I'm going to just dump them all in one post and then try to get back on the blogging bandwagon over this next week or so.

Katai has adjusted so well to the new barn. She was right back to herself in very little time. I think that she enjoys the quieter environment. I actually have realized how much I enjoy it as well. I've always enjoyed the social aspect of being at the barn. I enjoy talking horses with people and I always feel more motivated to ride when there are other people there. However, knowing that I'll always have the arena to myself and that there won't be people watching means that I have an easier time concentrating on my riding and Katai rather than what other people are doing which is amazing.

Hussy mare is pretty sure she's in love
with Serenade, her neighbor mare

Jane is absolutely amazing! She provides really good, individualized care to all of the horses. What's really nice is that she treats them all almost like they're her own. She really loves Katai and treats her that way. Katai clearly is already very attached to her which is amazing and brings a really good feeling to our lessons where I can tell how much Jane cares about both of us having fun and enjoying our ride. She is able to really strike a good balance between pushing me and being very direct while still making it fun and lighthearted. For some reason (I think because of how reasonable and reassuring she is) my lesson anxiety (that I've had for my whole life with both music and riding lessons) is completely gone. I've never felt better about going to a lesson that I do right now with Jane.

I was going to do a lesson recap on the specific things that we covered on Tuesday but instead I'm going to just dump it here because again, it's more of the same. I'm sure everyone is probably getting tired of reading about how much we're improving, how amazing Jane is, how I can't believe how much progress we're making blahblahblah but that was still the case at this week's lesson.

For the first time we really NAILED the leg yield and got that amazing floating consistent trajectory feeling. We also had NO tantrums about canter transitions even though she was in absolutely raging heat. None, not a single bit of pony tantrum. I seriously don't know what magic Jane is working but it's amazing and worth way more than she charges. We also did a ton of canter in each direction and only had one break down to a trot. Plus, again no anticipating or almost no anticipating of the trot-canter transitions. I was so, so, so proud.

Rough water on Lake Superior

As for my personal life, it's been a weird week. I had taken a four day weekend, Saturday-Tuesday this past weekend so new guy and I had a road trip planned up to Duluth, MN. Unfortunately things didn't work out between us but the shit didn't hit the fan until we got to Duluth and spent a few hours walking around and shopping. At that point we had to endure a nearly 3 hour drive back home. It was an emotional car ride. I was, and am, sad and upset that things didn't work but I'm also proud of myself and how I handled things. In the past I would have just bit my tongue, pouted quietly and then dealt with it very passive aggressively once I got back so the fact that I handled it directly and yet politely was a big thing for me. My mom also has a great way of putting things into perspective and reminded me that this is exactly why trips like this are so important while dating since it causes issues to show up when it's easier to deal with, early on.

It was a dark and stormy day even before we decided we weren't a good fit for eachother

The nice thing was that I then had a couple of days at home Monday and Tuesday which I basically spent recovering since I was mentally exhausted and, I think, also was fighting off a cold. I don't normally go to the barn on Monday but did end up going to my lesson on Tuesday as planned (see above). I mainly try to leave all of this relationship stuff out of my blog for reasons like this. However, I was really confident that it was going to work in the first couple of weeks and then very confident that it wouldn't during this road trip and I don't want to hide the big things in my life either. It's a tough balance and I'll probably handle it differently next time. Live and learn.

The reason I brought up future plans is that part of what was so good about this guy and the reason that I was so excited to have found him is that he had very similar goals in life as I do. Then I was going to share that on this blog and realized that since I really haven't talked about it that wouldn't mean much to anyone here. Since this is already kind of a dump post I figured I'd just stick it here.

So, as mentioned I grew up on a farm. I was incredibly lucky to be able to have horses, goats, bunnies, ducks, etc. and yet I always just wanted to live in the city. However, even though I wanted to  live in the city I never doubted that I'd end up in the country again with my own piece of land. It was simply too amazing to be able to care for my own horses my own way for me to board for the rest of my life.

I do love living in the city, pretty much everything about it actually, and I LOVE boarding. It's great to be able to take vacations whenever I want and not to worry about having to do chores when it's -20* out. So, while I'm not in a huge hurry, there's also no doubt in my mind that at some point I want to have my own little farm and a small herd of ponies.

My dream location would be somewhere closer to the west coast. I don't have my heart absolutely set on it but I'd LOVE to be near Portland somewhere. My goal would be to own about 5 acres with a very small european style barn and some really nice large, dry lots with great drainage since ponies can't have much grass. Also, a nice track around the property for trail riding, a nice trailer, very nice fencing, a comfortable heated tack room with washer and dryer and... I could just keep going. There are lots of places that I feel I could be very happy, including near where I live now, but that would be the dream scenario.

Who wouldn't want this perfect tiny kitchen?

As far as living quarters for me (seriously who really thinks about anything outside of the barn) I've wanted a tiny house since before Tiny Houses were so popular. I never really planned or wanted one on wheels but I was going to either build a small apartment in my barn (who wouldn't want to feed the horses in their pajamas) or just a very small house. While I'm still considering a barn apartment I'm also getting very fond of the idea of building a tiny house on a trailer because of the freedom that would give me and also the cost. I'm working hard to get rid of debt and really don't want to turn right around and get myself back in debt. I'd like to have these things before I'm 40 but I also have way too much college debt from my master's degree so I'm trying to be reasonable as well.

Absolutely perfect

Of course not many other people want this mix of things or actually don't want/can't have this sort of life. This guy used to live in OR as a kid and wanted to go back, he actually initiated the conversation about living in a tiny house because I had basically given up on finding someone that wanted that. He also wanted a small piece of property, loved animals, didn't want kids, etc. It was amazing until it wasn't and I'm sad and still sort of dealing with it.

The good thing is that it really pointed out to me what I find most important in life.