Vacation? What Vacation?

I arrived at the Old Homestead to a lovely and relaxing Sunday afternoon, chilled with the FarmParents for a while, and went with Farmmom to ensure that moving the water tank where the horses are didn't cause what we here in Blowdirt County, Colorado like to call a "flash flood," before reminding myself that I get to ride the world's most neurotic horse this week. But first I have to call the Courthouse Coc... I mean our fine upstanding County Commissioners... and ensure that I won't be stepping on any toes by hauling him in and using the County Fairgrounds.

I wouldn't worry about it, really, since I can close the gate to the corral for a little while and have an enclosed space, but the fairgrounds has one overwhelming bonus... the track.

Yep, our tiny little town has it's very own race track, used for... well... nothing, anymore. They used to hold wild horse races on it but then some tree hugging fur-is-murder pansies had to spoil the fun for the rest of us.

I know what you're thinking, you're thinking "Farmgirl, you're not usually so mean!" It's true, I'm not. But, in this case, I feel it's justified, because around the same time the wild horse races went out, so did a good 90% of the fair attendance, and thus the revenues generated by it. It's all been downhill from there. Now we have butt-ugly scrap iron statues on Main Street, the local kook is debating one of the pastors in the Letters to the Editor section in the news paper and signing them "The Reverend Priestess," and you can't find a decent party to save your life. What really tweaked me off about the wild horse races though was the whole attitude that people had towards them:

"People could get hurt!"

... Kind of the point, I thought. Darwinism in action! Kinda like Nascar.

Well, I'm probably going to re-instate the tradition all by my lonesome, with Red. I plan to run that little sucker till he can't run anymore. See if he tries any crap then. Not to mention the old tried and true fact that if he's busy running forward, he can't get much vertical. I really have no desire to be all bruised up... and I don't have as much time as I would like to work him into behaving gently, for the sale, so, we'll take the faster (but less long-term) method of running off all the excess energy so that he might actually listen.

I'm not going to try to pass him off as broke, I just want him to not act like a completely neurotic little skeez in the sale ring.

And yes, I am building up my expectations of his performance already. I do expect him to be the worst horse I've ever ridden, that will take all of my skill and some velcro on my ass to stay on.

Ya know why?

Because that way, he won't surprise me unpleasantly. Unpleasant surprises with horses tend to be painful and I plan to be able to pig out this Thanksgiving.

What an embarrassment if I was too sore to lift my shovel..... er..... fork..... at the dinner table!

Not to mention my family would have enough leftovers to feed a small third world country if I didn't eat my fair share, which according to Farmmom is approximately equal to three times my body weight. (This instead of having enough leftovers to feed a platoon of Marines, which is the usual amount. When the FarmFamily does a holiday meal, we do it right!)

No one is really sure about that measurement, they haven't figured out how to tie me up well enough to keep me away from the food long enough to weigh it.

Although it is kind of priceless when the pizza delivery guy tries to flirt and ask me if I'm having company when I order a medium pizza and a double order of breadsticks, and I tell him no, but the smell of dinner in the oven was driving me nuts and I needed a snack.

(On re-reading this, I had a thought: Perhaps I should wait an hour after watching Jeff Dunham before writing a blog... like eating and swimming, except with snark instead of cramps...)