My instructor this season is Michelle and she and I totally hit it off right away. Between Harry Potter, plastic sheet protectors, the front of my curriculum notebook and lots of other things, we are a good match! My horse that I'm working with is Cayanna, she's beautiful and a Halflinger. (Hmmm, I just realized that I haven't linked you all to their website, here's the website and here's Cayanna's page.) As you can see from the pictures and description, she's a draft pony and their driving horse. Yesterday, I learned some basic horse safety info and got my curriculum and homework for the week (I have a test next week!) and groomed Cay. She was kind of grumpy, she's a mare and they can have their time of the month and be hormonal just like us and she didn't like me grooming her flanks. There are several different kinds of brushes, and they all do different things - a brush for combing manes and tails, loosening dirt, flicking off that dirt and a dandy brush to polish things off. Next week, I'll be learning how to lead a horse with the wheelchair. I will actually be working with Scout, one of their geldings, because Cayanna has a mind of her own and can be bossy with new students and it will be easier to learn with Scout. Apparently, the only thing that Scout is known for is trying to eat during lessons. (As an aside right now, I'm in the bunny room with Bennett and he's being hilarious, totally acting prissy and prancing around. He just laid down with his front feet all the way forward and his tail in the air - if only I had a camera. Now that I've said something about it he immediately jumped up like - why are you laughing at me?!?!?) Anyways, speaking of the bunnies, Michelle totally wanted me to bring in Bennett to say hi, she thought it was really cool that we road trip with them and they are litter box trained (ok Bennett is - but it's not Ella's fault that she can't control it, although she did go on me a few days ago and I was furious - it sprayed everywhere on me, I had to change all my clothes - ick!) Both Michelle and Mary have dogs that hang around the office and barn, we met Mary's dog at the intake interview - a great dane, and I met Michelle's dog, Bella, a chihuahua, yesterday. I'll have to bring Bennett in sometime when I'm not taking the bus out there, when Laurie has some time off. The season is long - it ends May 26th, so I'll probably have at least one time when Laurie doesn't have to work and we could take Bennett and show him off :). We have a creative transportation system in place to get me to Camelot which is in really North Scottsdale, pretty far from Chandler. I take the bus to Laurie's work and then she takes "lunch" and drives me out there. My lessons go from 3-4 pm and she has a class that start at 2:55 pm, so she drops me off around 2:30 pm and I sit and knit or help shred thirty year old documents for them. Yesterday, Laurie had to drop me off much earlier, the whole school was doing AIMS/PLAN/PSAT/etc and she had to proctor the kids with accommodations for the tests. Our little system works out well, and Michelle told me that lots of their students have creative transportation stuff like me, so I didn't feel so badly about hanging out in the office.
After Laurie picked me up from Camelot, we went over to TYF, and hung out for a bit, not as long as we normally do on Wednesdays but our friend Mandy came and I was excited to see her and show off my cashmere shawl to all of them. (Which reminds me that I need to photograph it to post! It turned out gorgeous and I'm really proud of it. Now that I'm done with it, I'm going though lace withdrawal, I was working on my February Lady sweater and was totally bored with it, even though it makes a good bus project. I'll have to start some new lace soon, I have some 100% silk that is calling to me...) By the time we got home, I was exhausted and had a huge headache, it was only 7:30 pm, but I got into bed and laid down until it was gone. Laurie and I ended up in giggle fits when my head finally felt better. I think I said some pretty silly things, and she kept repeating them to me until I couldn't breathe I was laughing so hard. I was good to laugh with her because the night before we had fought pretty badly and I was really angry with her. Angry enough to go sleep on the couch (which I will NOT be doing again anytime soon). Even though my intention was to go to bed early because of my big day the next day, I ended up up most of the night, either uncomfortable on the couch or just awake fuming. Believe me, a night on the couch fixed the angry thing. Laurie said the next day when we talked about it that she was glad that I am so feisty because I probably wouldn't be doing this horsemanship program if I wasn't. So it's all over and forgiven, we just make each other very angry sometimes. Definitely though, the couch got it out of my system, it was the first and (hopefully) last time I do that!!!
I think that about sums things up for my first day at Camelot! It's going to be hard work, physically and intellectually, which I'm totally up for - I hadn't realized how long it had been since I'd taken a test, so I'm a little nervous about remembering everything, because it's a lot of information all at one time! I'm looking forward to getting out of my comfort zone and I think that this will reap me benefits I can't even yet foresee. Well, I'm off to look at lace patterns on Ravelry!
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