Fox Point, Mares and Riding in the time of COVID

 I've been working from home for nearly a year now, and it's been hard to balance the want to pick up blogging again with losing the will to live, feeling really busy, trying to ride while I have the chance, and... life. 

It's hard to pick up again, and figure out how to summarize what's been missed, and it's hard to not feel like people will judge me for being like... well things are about where they were last year.

Here's the highlights of the last year:

- Arya is now on Regumate. It helps. She's still not perfect, but it helps.

- I still have no desire to compete.

- I took Bailey to a clinic with Daryl Kinney (SUPER POSITIVE, JHOMPED BIG THINGS) and felt like I sucked a little less than I remember

-Later in the fall, had my confidence cracked schooling at Otter Creek, our most local horse trial location. I fell off, and probably broke my tail bone, and spent the next few months in a lot of pain. 

- Pre-clinic, my Vision started to not fit. It was brushing Bailey's withers and just wasn't working for me, and I finally gave up the ghost and sold it in the fall. It's been replaced by a British model Stubben Roxane MF (which, I promise, doesn't actually stand for Mother Fucking Big Blocks... but it has them) and I am really in love

- Reading my last post, um. Yes we still stuck at going right. Both horses. It's a work in progress.

The horses continue to bring me joy. This year has been weird, in so many ways, but it's been a bit of a gift, too. For a good part of the summer, I rode a horse nearly every day. It's some thing I've never had the opportunity to do, and taught me a new form of grit when I hit a wall and didn't want to ride, for once. Recovering from breaking my butt and my confidence is probably still ongoing; the stiffness still lingers, and I am sure my jumping position is still fraught with habits picked up when I protectively stopped using my stomach muscles and waited on tenterhooks for things to hurt, randomly. 

As things haven't yet been announced as changing, I've been looking at this coming warm weather as further chances to ride as much as I can, both to get myself fit again (seriously, my core vanished in less than a month, what the hell) and to move Arya towards "broke" and Bailey towards "possibly suitable to take out for lessons". I'm hoping we can achieve that and more, and that I'll have something interesting to write about again.