The Best Worst First Date Story Ever, Continued.

Ok, now where was I?

Oh yes, we'd just left for the festival.

Well, the drive up was fine, we talked and joked and listened to the radio and generally just had a good time.

About the time we were pulling into the ranch D tells me he had to do some work before we could go do the fun things. The ranch owner, who considered the ranch his hobby (jeez I wish I had that much money!) had decided to bring his secretary and her mother down to go horseback riding.

These women had never been on a horse in their lives.

So D saddled up his trusty old pony Sonny, explained the basics, and gave the-- rather large-- mother a leg up into the saddle. She walked around a bit and seemed to be managing things ok, and the Boss wanted to talk to D about some things, so they headed toward the house, while I stood around near the gate watching.

Good thing, too, cause Mother dearest managed to kick ol' Sonny up into a trot, against the horse's better judgment, and bounced herself right out of the saddle. Thud.

Not only did she fall off, but she managed, somehow, to fall and roll underneath the horse, so Sonny, being the well mannered horse that he was, tried his best not to step on her, and gave a little jump.

It wasn't his fault that she picked her head up just as his back feet were going over her.

Sonny freaked, the mother was unconscious, I hollered out and brought everybody running.

Of course, me being me, I took off running too... but I was trying to intercept Sonny before he ran through the fence.

What? I didn't have a clue what to do for the woman, and I did know what to do with the horse.

Well, I didn't catch Sonny before he hit the fence, he cut his nose and chest a little, nothing major but in spots that bleed pretty good, so he had some dripping going on. Especially from the nose cut.

I grabbed his reins and braced myself for him to pull back, a typical reaction when a horse is freaked out and someone runs up to him, so I wasn't prepared for Sonny to shove his whole head in my chest. Hard. Like, the only reason I didn't fall was because I grabbed his mane hard. Poor horse just knew he was in trouble.

Now, I was wearing a pair of Rockies jeans, very nice western women's jeans, make even the flattest butts look good... but anyway, one of their signature styles is vertical stripes, and I was wearing those.. Blue and white, vertical stripes... bleeding horse....

So at this point I had spots of horse blood down one leg of my jeans, and I was trying to calm him down enough to get him back over to where the lady was, to see if there was anything I could do there, and he wouldn't lead. He kept hiding his face in my chest, and at one point, while I was turning him in a circle to try and get him moving, he stuck his head over my shoulder and nuzzled my cheek, looking for reassurance.

So, quite logically (to me,) I threw a leg over him and rode him back over. He was fine with it, once I was in the saddle.

When I got there I got a couple of funny looks from people, the lady was still out like a light, and someone had called 911. This being out in the middle of nowhere, we had to meet the ambulance at the start of the ranch road and lead them in, and D and I got volunteered for that.

But first, I had to take care of the horse. I unsaddled him and left the saddle sitting on a trailer, since I didn't know where it was supposed to go, put him in the pen and took off his bridle, and then raced him to the gate, since he was still feeling insecure and had latched on to me as his security blanket.

Sitting on the bed of D's truck while waiting for the ambulance to arrive, I managed to give D a bit of a shock.

"You've got blood on you."

I looked down at my jeans and sighed.

"Yeah, I know. It's from the cut on Sonny's nose. Hopefully it will come out."

"No, I mean you've got blood on you."

"Huh?"

"Your face," D pointed to my cheek, and I reached up and touched it, coming away with blood on my fingers.

"Oh, that's Sonny's too..."

"You're the strangest girl I've ever met, you know that? Most girls would be freaking out about all of this, and here you are, smeared with horse blood, acting like it's no big deal."

"Well it's not, I wash just fine, I don't shrink or anything!"

D just shook his head.

We got the Mother to the ER, hung around long enough to make sure she was ok (I think she just had a mild concussion and a broken nose from the fall and Sonny's foot) and went to get some lunch. I wanted Pizza Hut, so that's where we went.

'Course, I got funny looks when we ordered, because by this time I had forgotten all about the blood smeared on me, until D busted out laughing after the waitress left and asked me if I was gonna clean it off or not.

Went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and I had a streak about three inches wide from my cheekbone to my collarbone. No wonder she was looking at me funny!

After lunch it was off to the local park there to kill time before the dance. We'd missed most of the during-the-day activities, because of the trip to the ER, so we were just waiting for the dance to start, and decided to feed our leftover breadsticks to the ducks that live in and around the pond there.

Poor D, the one big gray goose that was there decided that D was the greatest thing since sliced bread, that is, until we ran out of breadsticks.

Then the thing attacked him. And he squealed like a girl. No, really. I thought I was gonna hurt myself laughing so hard.

The rest of the evening went pretty well, aside from explaining the reddish-brown smears and spots on my pants, and me delaying leaving to go home until the very last possible second.

D was terrified we'd find Farmdad up waiting for us, and drove like a crazy person to get me home on time. Of course, I knew that Farmdad would already be in bed, and I was right.

Fed D a cup of coffee and off he went to drive back up there, poor guy.

D and I never went on another date, but we did become good friends. When he was dating the woman he's now married to, he told me "You have to meet her! She's just like you, only better!"

Gee, thanks D.

The blood did come out of the jeans, thanks to Farmmom, even though I did get a lecture the next morning about not saying things like "its blood, the guy at the ER said to use this brand of cleaner on it..." when Farmmom asked me what the stain was....

* Author's note; Since I pounded the first version of this out in between classes, (because AD called me a tease) it was fairly rough. Edits have been made to improve the reading experience.

Relationships

In honor of Babs and AD deciding to give it up and just go ahead and get their groove on with each other, I've decided to post one of my more amusing forays into the world of dating.

This is The Best Worst First Date Story Ever.

It was a few years back and I'd been hanging out at my brother's house with a bunch of his friends, just having fun and generally staying out of trouble, when I got to talking with D, one of the guys that I'd known for a while. We joked around and laughed for a bit and he invited me to come take a ride in his new truck, which was pretty spiffy.

On the way out of my brother's house another one of his friends asked D where the hell we were going, and D just smiled at him, threw his arm around my shoulders and said, "We're going to christen my new truck!"

My brother was somewhat notorious for being overprotective... at times... so this got people a little worried about whether D would be in one piece at the end of the night or not.

It didn't help matters that as we were walking out I asked D if he had condoms, and we started an argument about who was supposed to buy the condoms, the guy or the girl. This argument actually lasted for years, and was a source of great amusement for all.

So, D and I go riding around, and he's telling me about the ranch that he's managing, and this festival that a town near there is having, and how he wants to go but doesn't really have anyone to go with him. (Subtle, wasn't he?)

So I pipe up and say I'll go, I just have to make sure that it's ok with my parents. Since I wasn't eighteen yet, and I'd be gone all day and a good chunk of the night, I knew it was something I needed to clear with them.

We trundled back to the party and I popped back to mom and dad's house to tell them about the plan and get the ok on it.

Of course, Farmdad had his Daddy hat on and decided that D needed to come and ask him for permission.

I'm gonna take a moment here to tell ya'll about D. D is a cowboy. Not a rodeo cowboy but an honest to god go out and move cattle, rope a calf and drag it to the branding fire cowboy. He's about 5'5, and wiry, and oh yeah, he's a twin. Good lookin little shits, D and his brother A, and I'll admit I had a few happy little moments thinking about both of them, but I digress.

I went and informed D of Farmdad's insistence that he do the old fashioned thing, and my brother, helpful soul that he is, grabbed his favorite long, sharp, shiny object and demonstrated to D what "the old man" would do if he actually had the audacity to show up at the house and ask to take me somewhere, explaining it all in a slightly drunken slur (the party had continued without us and everyone was feeling pretty good at that point.)

Well, D trundled over to the house and made his request in the slight stutter he tended to develop when he was really excited... or scared. The whole time he was rolling his poor abused stetson into a little tube, and Farmdad was milking this for all the entertainment value he could get out of it.

"And what time would you have my daughter home?"

"E-eleven?"

"THAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!"

"T-t-te..."

"NO! There's a dance at that festival, it's a two hour drive, and you won't have any time to have fun if you're home by eleven. Have her home by one."

D was flabbergasted at this point, and didn't know what to think. Farmdad had kept up the stern dad thing all the way through, so I can't blame him for being confused.

"Y-yes sir."

"And boy?"

"Y-yes sir?"

"Stop abusing that poor hat, what did it ever do to you?"

So, at eight the next morning, D picked me up to go see the ranch where he was working, and go to the festival.

Thats when things really got entertaining....

Whoops! Time to get ready for class... To Be Continued...

Lit Class: WTF?

So, today in Lit we were given the assignment of reading a couple of chapters, one of which consists entirely of the six short-short stories that we'll choose between to write our first paper, a comparison/contrast.

Now, here I feel the need to mention that my Lit book prides itself on being "contemporary" enough to include the latest in the "Literary Canon" which is defined for us lowly students as "a group of works that are generally agreed upon by writers, teachers, and critics to be worth reading and studying."

Some of it, to be completely honest, just strikes me as weird. It makes me wonder if some of these authors just sat down one day and said "hey, I'm gonna write a 'story' (snort, chuckle) composed entirely of song titles." Or some such.

Don't get me wrong, the author picked out good song titles for her subject, and it *does* lead you through the path of the "story" but come on, that's not a short story, not even a short-short. Maybe an odd kind of poetry, but not a story.

Even the story that is five sentences in its entirety makes more sense to be called a story than the list of song titles.

I know, I know, its supposed to challenge us, make us think beyond the classic view of literature, blah blah blah... but dangit, how in the heck am I supposed to write a comparison/contrast paper that's longer than the story itself? And you know, doesn't have artist information in parenthesis.

I'll figure it out. I've got a day or so to choose my subject or subjects, so I can re read them a few times and try to make sense of it all.

On the bright side, our prompt papers were returned to us, and mine had a little note on the end of it: "Good Writing."

*On an edited note, I wonder if my instructor would allow me to write my comparison/contrast paper sprinkled liberally with internet acronyms? Could be fun....

Apologies and Blog Props

I realize that I've been doing a lot of venting, and just day to day blah blah stuff on here. Honest, I'm trying to think of a funny to tell ya'll, I know I haven't done one in a while. I'm workin on it, I swear!

On another note, massive "props" (hey, I sit between two citified guys in my business class, don't kill me for not being able to think of a country-fried way of saying "Good job, dude!") to MattG for hitting 50,000 site visits on his sitemeter!

Matt, I'm jealous. Maybe I should try AD's suggestion of toilet humor and google-riffic phrases?

Lets give it a shot, see how my stats do today after this;

Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Angelina Jolie. *

Nudity, farting, poop, anal. **



*These are women that I think should be banned from appearing on the cover of cheesy supermarket tabloids. Give someone else a chance to get slandered, will ya?

** These are all things that were discussed in my Horse Production class today. Yes, really. Gotta love it when you're discussing taking a rectal temperature on a sick horse and someone mutters "yeah, but that thermometer isn't big enough to really enjoy the anal action." Oh yeah, and I now know how to bribe my Horse Production/Riding instructor. She likes Jaegermeister.

Conflicted

I've been conflicted on various things since I started getting everything set up for school.

To stay at home, or to get an apartment.

Which elective classes to take, i.e. should I take the ones that I really want to take that have nothing to do with my degree, or should I take the ones that look mildly interesting but have a bearing on my degree?

To get a student loan, or not to get a student loan.

Which horse should I bring?

Should I open my mouth now, or keep it shut and play nice?

Should I wait for the time I was *supposed* to bring my horse up, or go ahead and bring him, since they told me I could if I really wanted to? (Plus side on bringing him early was getting to go ahead and start riding. Minus side was the feed crews aren't organized yet, so I'd have to feed myself. Also, they asked me to wait to bring him, so the waiting side won out.)


Today, first class of the day, opening my mouth won out. One of the girls that was sitting in the same row as I was, was complaining about being up since four am.

Since she was complaining loudly, I figured she was talking to anyone within earshot, and offered my two cents.

Which was along the lines of "oh stop freaking whining, you have no idea how cushy you have it."

The discussion continued and it turns out she had a valid reason for being upset, a problem with her roommate, but then proceeded to whine about not being able to get ahold of the Dorm Manager (or whatever they call him, he's not the RA) to try and get a new roommate.

After five minutes of me offering suggestions (she was complaining about it, with the attitude of "oh what do I do?" so I figured she could use some suggestions, like leave a note and have him call her, or call him and ask him when she'd be able to sit down and talk with him,) and her coming up with reasons why none of them would work, ("But he's never there") she gave me a half-joking "When I want your advice, I'll ask for it."

Fantastic, and when I want to hear you complaining about stupid things while I'm trying to do a quick review of the things I read last night in between cleaning my apartment, doing my dishes, going to the grocery store, and doing homework for two other classes, I'll ask you.

What I said was more along the lines of "Keep complaining loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, and I'll keep offering advice."

I was pleasant, I didn't get snide, I started out actually trying to help this girl figure out ways to resolve the problems that she has, and degenerated into really wanting to tell her to suck it up and act like the adult she keeps wanting everyone to treat her as, but I stayed polite.

Mostly, I just wanted to get sarcastic.

Did mommy's widdle babykins not sleep? Poor baby, let's get you a pillow, and then we'll rock you to sleep and sing you a lullaby, and tomorrow you can go home and be mommy's widdle girl again and you won't have to do that nasty college thing anymore.

But then again, maybe I'm just a cranky old lady. Lord knows some of these kids make me wonder if I was ever that young....

Why I love my school...

So today at the barn, after the rousing round of ground cleanup, we had some time left in the class, so the instructors and some of the students hung out in the barn itself, bsing for a while.

One of the second year Horse Training students was talking with the head honcho about a colt that had come back for the second year. Seems that the kid had had the horse for green breaking, and wanted to take him on through cutting.

"Can I, JJ? I really liked that little colt."

"Is it the same colt? I don't think it's the same colt."

"No, it is, I seen him when they brought him in!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes! I'm sure! Can I have him again?"

"Well I still don't think it's the same colt. I think he's here for green breaking. Why don't you grab a halter and go down there and throw a leg over him bareback, you could do that with that other colt last year."

And off they went in the little golf cart... A little while later, the kid comes back, walking like something might be a bit sore.

"Yeah, it's the same colt. I don't think he's been ridden all summer though, he gave me a little trouble."

At this point the instructor that went with the kid started choking and snorting in a manner that made me wonder if there wasn't a bit more than "a little trouble" down there at the pens, especially with the kid walking funny.

Alas, our instructors are honest-to-goodness gentlemen, and won't share the good jokes with us girl types, so I can't confirm it, but I think the kid racked himself on the horse's spine.

But, my point is, where else could you be in a "structured learning environment" and have one of your teachers tell you to "run on down there and throw a leg over him"?

I love my school!

Freakin A its hot...

I'm taking a little bit of time to cool down after working out at the barn. We're trying, this week, to get everything done that must be done before the horses get here.

Considering that includes cleaning up all the construction debris, digging a couple of trenches to put in water lines, setting up stalls, pens, and building fence, I don't know if it's all gonna get done.

But, the instructors do have a whole herd of strong backs to do it all, so it may get done after all.

Just a note to the guys: When you're in a group with a whole passel of female types, and they're all working manure forks picking up wood and straw and such, and you're standing against the building in the shade... ya look bad. Sorry, ya do.

Apparently they're having some problems finding enough horses for the EBM students that didn't bring their own, so I volunteered my little sorrel, if he's needed. The surprise on JJ's (JJ is one of my instructors) face when I said I had another one to bring was well worth the price of admission, let me tell you.

"JJ, if you need another one, I can bring another little gelding up. He's not real well behaved and he looks like a freaking pony but he's got four legs and a back."

"But... you're bringing your own, aren't you?"

"Yeah, but I can bring another one, if you need it. Just let me know before Sunday, thats when mine's coming up."

"Yeah! That's great! I'll let you know by the end of the week!"

Always good to have the head honcho of your program grateful to you.