Congratulations E!!!

Got a call from E today, he had some news.

Seems he checked his voicemail down here, and he had a message from Del. This, of course, sent Ed into a panic. He thought he'd failed his Speech final.

Turns out there was someone looking for E, and Del was passing on the message.

As soon as E gets back, he'll be employed on a local ranch. And training cutting horses. I'm so happy for him, it's a sweet set up. He'll have a house on the ranch, and he'll be able to show, which is what he's been working towards.

I guess the ranch owner (who's family has trained some pretty spiffy cutting horses in the past, I'm not up on their recent work, but they go way back with my family, cutting for fun and buying horses from us) has heard so much good about E that when he needed a hand, he went looking for good ol' E himself.

He was vibrating on the phone, he's so happy about this. And I'm just as happy for him.

Congratulations, E. No one deserves a break more.

He Stole My Line!

Tuned into the NFR tonight (after straightening myself out on the actual air time, one in the morning is a replay of round nine on ESPN2, round ten was at seven on ESPN) only to hear one of the announcers totally gank my Superbowl line.

Now, I admit, it could be a coincidence. It was, after all, a rather apt comparison.

But, I don't really buy the whole coincidence thing. Especially when not believing in coincidences means that I was quoted at the beginning of the most gut-wrenching, suspense filled night in professional rodeo.

Admit it, Announcer Guy! You stole my line! Own up to your theft and get me tickets for next year's NFR, and all shall be forgiven.

And, if you pay for my hotel too, I'll throw in a blog post on the psycho gate habits of barrel horses, and why Molly Powell flipped her right rein up over her horse's head for barrels two and three.

No, really, I've probably got about a thousand words just on the gate thing. Course, once I revise so that I'm not calling them some variation of psychotic in every other sentence it might be less, but it's total quality!

NFR!!!!

I forgot....

YEEEEEEEHAWWWWW!!!!

National Finals Rodeo Round Nine is tonight. Round Ten is tomorrow night/Sunday morning. Technically here in Colorado it starts at one in the morning on Sunday.

Depending on how exciting tonight is, I might just have to stay up and watch it live, anyway.

For those of you who don't understand what National Finals Rodeo is, all of the rodeo cowboys and cowgirls in the country fight tooth and nail to qualify for NFR. It's the top competitors in Bareback Bronc Riding, Saddle Bronc Riding, Steer Wrestling, Team Roping, Barrel Racing, Tie Down Roping, and Bull Riding, all competing for ten days straight, night after night, and against the best stock in the country for the right to be called the best in the country.

The top earning cowboy will break $400,000 for the year in prize money, even if he doesn't win the buckle in any of his events.

There are cowboys who have three events a night, at least one of them usually rough stock (bronc or bull riding) and there are a lot of injuries. They're all competing anyway. (And they wonder where the phrase "Cowboy up" came from....)

It's the pinnacle of the rodeo year. It's the Superbowl, except instead of playing one game, you play ten, one every night, and the other team (being the critters) gets to physically beat the crap out of you over and over again.... And you don't even have the satisfaction of thinking that they're just as tired as you are because they get rotated out.

It's so great!

Now, That's Just Weird...

Ya'll may remember my post here about how I tripped on the stairs in the lecture hall. Well, the touch tenderness is finally pretty much gone... it hasn't been bad for a couple of weeks but the bruise was still present and it was still tender when I pressed on it.

I had honestly kind of forgotten about it, until I thought tonight to check the bruise and see if it was gone yet.

Got to poking around... and I have a dent.

An honest-to-goodness crease in my kneecap.

WTH??

I never thought you could dent your body! Even with my rather spectacular acts of clumsiness I've never managed to leave a dent before!

What am I supposed to do about this?? Sand off the paint and smear some Bondo in there?!?

It doesn't hurt... the patella is still in one piece, it won't flex no matter what pressure I put on it at whatever angle, and everything seems to work just as well as it did before it happened.

So, to my medical readers... Should I be worried? I mean, is this something I should get checked out? Since it doesn't seem to be causing any problems I would really rather not have the doctor's bill, if I don't have to. However I'm not medical enough to know if this is likely to cause a real problem, or if there's anything that can be done about it at this point anyway.

Besides, I'm curious to see if anyone has heard of this before. If I'm much of a medical oddity maybe it can make me some money....

A girl's gotta eat, ya know.

New Perspective

Thanks to OK Katrina for slapping me upside the head with a realization.

Katrina mentioned Monkey, which got me thinking.

It's a training issue. I have to train myself not to smoke.

And, in training, you build upon the previous lessons.

You don't take a horse that's never seen cattle and expect them to do a perfect cut right away.

You break it down into steps, work on each small step until it's easy for the horse, and then move on to the next.

I started to do that, by cutting back on my smoking, but I wasn't cut back enough to go to cold turkey when I ran out of cigarettes. I had my horse loping on the proper lead, and then asked it to run 13 second barrels. It just doesn't work that way.

And, in case of training failure, you back up, go back to the basics, and build from there.

So, I'm backing up.

I bought a pack of cigarettes, and I'm going back to the cutting back stage. I bought menthols, because, frankly, they're disgusting to me, and that makes it easier to resist.

The cigarettes are on the top shelf of the pantry, far enough back that they're difficult to reach. The lighter is in the junk drawer. The ashtrays are over the stove.

I have to expend effort to get a cigarette, but I'm not going to expect myself to be perfect right away anymore.

I had been thinking of this as just a matter of making myself do it, and do it now.

Thanks again, OK Katrina, for reminding me of what I should have remembered myself.

So. Re-training, Day One. It's going to be a long road, but patience will get me there faster than force, I think.

Ok, ok...

So I slipped. About seven thirty tonight I remembered a half a cigarette sitting in the ashtray of my car.

I managed to get one of the doors open, without causing permanent damage, and I smoked it.

So, slip number one from complete cold turkey.

I don't have any more butts in the car. The next slip is going to require that I go somewhere to get it. Which will make it easier to resist.

The bad part is, it seems completely sensible to slip. After all, quitting will be so much easier if I don't tax my body too much, a complete cold turkey quit is a shock to the system, and makes a person feel like complete crap, whereas a tapering off... not so much. So why make it harder on my body?

That is, it seems sensible to slip, until after I've done it.

Admission of failure, even a small failure, is a thing that comes very, very hard to me. I've physically injured myself rather than give up on something that I've made up my mind to do, before.

I'm very stubborn. Usually.

I think addiction makes us all weak. Which totally sucks ass, if you ask me.

Perhaps...

I should explain.

I re-read that last post and I realized that some of you out there may not have any clear idea of why I'm so touchy.

Maybe you've never seen withdrawals, or maybe it's never been clear for you, or maybe you just don't give a crap but typing this keeps my hands busy so sit down, shut up and bear with me until I'm done.

Nicotine withdrawals are relatively mild, don't get me wrong. Nicotine withdrawals don't make you physically ill, the way, say, heroin does. At least not to the fever, nausea, just-kill-me-now point.

However, I'm only a few hours into complete nicotine withdrawal, and I know the symptoms from previous attempts. Most of them, for me, are psychological.

I'm jumpy, I'm nervous, I'm paranoid and suspicious of everything, my mind keeps popping up images of cigarettes to taunt me with and I can't focus for crap.

Meanwhile my hands tremble whenever a craving hits, I get slightly light headed on occasion and I find myself wanting to punch something roughly every five seconds. If I were a cat I'd be the one that follows people around mewing piteously until they try to pet it, whereupon it turns and rips their arms to shreds, only to resume mewing piteously and not understanding why they chase it with pitchforks.

The worst part is, I know that all of these are irrational responses, that I don't really need the nicotine to be a happy person, blah blah blah, all of the usual crap. I know all of that.

Which only makes me more frustrated when I can't control them. Which makes me want a cigarette to calm down. Which starts the whole thing over again, only worse.

And all of this means that every time someone invades my personal space bubble in a way I can't ignore, I want to squeeze their heads like a pimple until gray matter shoots out the top and I get to fingerpaint with it!

No, really. That's what my brain wants me to do, just in case the adrenaline rush of running from the cops in some way resembled the light headed dizzy rush I'd get if I had a cigarette right now.

So, now you may have a better insight into nicotine withdrawals, or maybe I'll read this in a week and go "wtf was I thinking?!?"

We'll see.