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Monthly Archives: December 2013

Life Bike Twelve – The End and Beginning of Passions

After RAGBRAI in July was the MS 150 in Kansas City.  I did it again.  After experiencing RAGBRAI and the fun times in all the towns, MS 150 was, well, dull.  No matter because I had moved to the country.  I visited Roberta in the country with her horse.  I came back home and told my husband we had to move to the country.  Grumpily, he said we could look at country homes.

We drove down the driveway of the only country home advertised in the newspaper on that day.  It was magic.  The house at unattached garage were blue.  Both the spouse and I were overcome by the beauty of the property and the color blue.  We bought it and moved.

Life with the bike became a lot more complex.  I now lived at the end of a mile long gravel road.  Roads in my town were blacktop with no shoulders.  The next summer I bought two horses.  It became tough to ride my bike and play with my horses.  My bike riding times decreased.  I was still out there trying, but not as much.  The passion had to be shared with the living creatures, the horses.

I participated in a bike ride across Missouri.  My hours of getting into shape had decreased and I started getting sick as we were nearing Columbia, Mo.  I had made it from Kansas City to near Columbia. Sadly, the sag wagon was called for me.  I called my husband and about three hours later, I was on my way home. That was the end of the bike riding passion and the flowering of the horse riding passion.  The beginning horse riding passion has been made into a book awaiting some forty eight year old actress and movie maker…  The book, Susan FoxTrotter, is paperback in Amazon and also a Kindle book.

PS:  I’m retired now and have taken old yellow to a bike shop (New Town Bike and Coffee Shop) to be regenerated into a working bike again.  We’ve got part of the Katy Trail in my town…  This might not be the true end of the bike story!

Lucky Star – 2013

It’s been a while since I’ve updated everyone as to how Lucky is doing.  I was a little discouraged this past year, starting in June, when I still didn’t have a ridable horse to show.  “When or will I ever have a horse I can ride in a show arena!” I was moaning in my mind.  I had been at the Missouri Fox Trotter Spring Show cheering on the Vaughts with Nova, Powder and Tony.   I was at the Super Horse Show the next weekend and temptation overcame me.  I made a too-high-for-my-budget offer on an amazing horse. The three year old horse had already placed 12th in the Futurity at the Spring Show.  The horse was winning junior classes at this show.  Nichole and Jenny agreed that he was a wonderful horse.  Thankfully, my offer was rejected for being too low.  Plus, the owner had not yet decided to sell the horse.

At various times during the hot summer days, I looked at some of the big Horse Classified web sites.  There were tempting Fox Trotter horses that could possibly be in my price range.

Meanwhile time passed and I was riding Lucky Star every day at a new wonderful boarding stable.  I like to ride there and presto, I ride.  Lucky Star started improving!  He started moving for a quarter or half of the arena before he would screech to an unasked halt and argue about moving.  Say, this is the life!  Plus, I could get him to stop arguing much sooner and off we went again.

I got an email from the owner of the amazing horse and told that my offer would be accepted.  The horse is now for sale.  Filled with hope for Lucky Star’s progress, I turned down the offer  to buy the amazing horse.  If I got the amazing horse, I would be poor and have to sell Lucky Star.  I checked out my emotional state.  My emotion said, “You can’t sell Lucky Star!  Are you crazy?  You love working with challenges.  Lucky Star makes you feel confident.  Lucky Star can be your riding partner for many a year as you get older and older!”

The end of 2013 has come and Lucky Star has gotten better and better with everything, even the canter.  He argues less with me about impulsion into the canter. When he does get into the canter, his legs get disrupted and we go into that four legged gait where none of the legs understand the concept of rhythm.  But, just last week, we cantered a full lap both ways of the fabulous indoor arena where we are spending our winter riding time.  That was worthy of a SCREAM of JOY!

The two gaits that Missouri Fox Trotters are known for is the flat foot walk and the fox trot.  Lucky does those two gaits wonderfully.  There are many horse shows in the Kansas City area with classes for fox trotters…and only include those two gaits.  Lucky Star will be a show horse in 2014.  We are practicing those gaits to get consistent as well as trying for longer and longer times at the canter.  If we ever get the canter, we can do the Versatility classes at the National Missouri Fox Trotter shows.  If we ever get the canter and drop-to-trot lead changes, I can do my favorite class, the reining class.  I love reining class.

This late Fall, Lucky Star improved so much that he got fun to ride!  Thank goodness I didn’t buy the perfect horse.  Getting Lucky Star to be the perfect horse is going to take me a little while and I’ll have a lot of fun while headed for “Lucky Star perfection”!  yee haw!

What a DAY!

I awoke at the crack of post dawn about two hours before my normal awakening time of 9:30am…or sometimes 10:00am.  I gave up two hours of beauty sleep to start cooking.  Cooking!?  It’s a word not usually associated with the person you know as me.

My senior fitness class at Anytime Fitness in Pleasant Hill is having a pot luck Christmas Lunch today.  I had signed up to bring a food.  I struggled out of bed and into razor sharp consciousness.  Undertaking a cooking experience is fraught with danger for me.  I loaded myself up with power and opened up the demonic fridge.  Just two days ago, the fridge demon threw a heavy glass container from the top shelf to land on one of my precious toes, breaking one or more bones in the precious toe.  I glared strongly at the 32 oz glass container filled with blueberry juice and willed it to stay on it’s new shelf in mid range fridge.  It stayed.

I pulled the cooking stuff from the fridge.  I had much work ahead of me.

With my semi long serrated knife, I opened the bags and poured them all into the shiny ceramic crock pot inside.  After I got all the veggies in the pot, I prayed that the lid and the crock pot outside would be found in the truck, the last location.  I put on my outside clothing and went outside to feed and water the horses.  They were grateful to see that food and water come their way.  I checked the truck and discovered the crockpot outside and the lid right where I had left them last month! Happiness abounds.

Inside the house, I masterfully fitted all the parts of the crockpot together and went out the door.  I dropped off and plugged in the crockpot at Anytime Fitness and headed on to Nourish for my favorite Vanilla Almond Protein Shake and Raspberry ice tea.  YUM!  I drove to Lee’s Summit to cash a check and visited the library.  I checked my email and all the Facebook happenings. Finally, it was time to return to Anytime Fitness and not do the Senior Exercise class (because of my broken toe).  Instead, I worked out on the machines while my friends sweated and groaned with the glee of senior class exercise.

My crockpot was working!  Food was getting hot.  Class was over and now I had an hour to kill before lunch starts at noon.  I decided to visit New Town Bike and Coffee Shop.  By now, I needed coffee!  Instead I had a latte with almond milk and carmel flavoring.  I told Alan I was cooking for the senior class lunch.  He asked me if I was planning on going to college.  Sadly, I missed the humor.  Finally, I connected the words, “senior” and college.  Remember when you were a senior in high school and planned on going to college? Good Gad, for me that was around 40+ years ago.  I owe Alan a fun uncompliment!  I explained to Alan that I hardly remember high school.  He apologized.  humph!

Finished my wonderful coffee and went to have lunch with my senior class…at the Fitness Center.  Yum Yum Yum..  Us old people can certainly make great stuff!  Great googabs of my stuff was taken which made me pleased.  Whew…all that cooking and physical fitness had tired me out.

Home for a change of clothes.  Out to the barn and Lucky Star volunteered to travel with me to the indoor arena and have a little ride.  Oh he was so good.  We had a great time.  Our communication is coming along strong.  We’ve come a long way on this, the start of our third year.  We are planning to be a show horse and rider in 2014!

Home again with Lucky getting to graze in the front yard to let him know he is special.  The front yard still has green grass.  What a happy horse he is to eat green grass!  Inside for a 30 minute rest.  This was not to be a nap day.  It’s going to be tough to recover from the post dawn early awakening plus no nap.  Probably take me the rest of the week.

I got dressed up in my Kauffman Center usher outfit…white shirt, black pants and black shoes.  Outside I went.  Lucky had to become a normal horse in the pasture and I took off to usher Canadian Brass Concert.  What a great evening performance.  Helzburg Hall was full.  We found everyone’s ticketed seats and life was good.

Home before midnight…a full day of great times!

No Greater Honor-Mention from Dr Patrick Handley

Dr. Patrick Handley’s Facebook Page about Humanality:

“Insight of the week:
I received a wonderful message from youthful, 70 year old Parelli student Marilee Donovan. She thanked me for the positive, strengths-based orientation of the Humanality report and commented about how she was just now, at this stage in her life, discovering her true self and unleashing many of the personality strengths she had suppressed over the years. Marilee is embracing the RBI strengths of her personality (as well she should) and embracing her softer, more introspective side. I really appreciate her kind note and pass it on to guide us all on the lifelong journey of self discovery. I hope that Humanality and the INSIGHT Inventory can help you follow the path Marilee is paving and be open to continued learning about ourselves!

Rediscovering and reclaiming of our true selves shows up in music videos and books in many wonderful forms. Here are a couple of recent popular ones for starters—
Book: Dying to be Me by Anita Moorjani (a must read for self-discovery, wellness and spirituality)
and my 17 year old teen daughter reminds me that is a great music video: Being Me – the Strange Familiars http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW63lS9_MW4
And of course several Parelli students lead the way — isn’t that interesting!
Michelle Glover Burstrom’s wonderful song, “A Horse never Lies.”
Mary Ann Kennedy’s many great songs about people and horses –http://www.maryannkennedy.com/
Katie Drake’s songs of connecting with ourselves through our horses – naturally of course:www.katiedrakesongs.com
And these heartfelt self discovery books inspired by their Parelli journey:
Kristie Smith: Becoming Me
Susan Engle: Susan Fox Trotter
Rachel Jessop: Dreams with Horses

Please share your thoughts and what resources YOU would recommend, especially ones from Parelli students. Let’s generate a master list!”
Horse never Lies.”
Mary Ann Kennedy’s many great songs about people and horses –http://www.maryannkennedy.com/
Katie Drake’s songs of connecting with ourselves through our horses – naturally of course:www.katiedrakesongs.com
And these heartfelt self discovery books inspired by their Parelli journey:
Kristie Smith: Becoming Me
Susan Engle: Susan Fox Trotter
Rachel Jessop: Dreams with Horses

Please share your thoughts and what resources YOU would recommend, especially ones from Parelli students. Let’s generate a master list!

 

 

“Being Me” – The Strange Familiar (Official Music Video)

www.youtube.com

Official music video for The Strange Familiar’s “Being Me” from their new album “Chasing Shadows”. Download iTunes http://bit.ly/IMcD5N. Director: Erin Brown…

 

 

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