palace of winds

Today I wanted to make a little graph in paint showing the relationship between the stock market and my chocolate-consumption habits, which is: when the market crashes, I eat lots of chocolate. Largely because it is October, and October is a great excuse to put a gigantic plastic pumpkin full of candy on my desk. It was going to have funny axises (axes?) all ‘bury pennies in back yard and hide out in bunker’ and ‘buy second private Tahitian island’ and you know what? The phone, it will not stop ringing. So funny paint graphs are so out today.

I give you instead this totally unrelated but much funnier picture that Bryce sent over: click!.

I have a couple of really adorable videos of my nephew that I shot last weekend, when he was feeling particularly sugared-up and like dancing — including a rare few moments of the Pony Macaroni, something we’ve been trying to get him to show us for months. Alas, these vids are sadly stuck on my phone at the moment; they’re apparently too big to upload, so I have to wait ’till I’m home, where the cable is, and then hope that I can persuade them off the card where they’re saved. And then save them onto something else so that I can bring them back into work, where I can upload them, and — given the speed with which I’ve gathered and edited and uploaded my Maui photos and videos, I leave it to you to guess when this might actually happen.

In the course of trying to sweet-talk the vids onto the internet, however, I rediscovered a few pictures I snapped when I was in Cali in early August. Behold, then, the deliciousness of the sweet potato fries at The Counter, and the generous leg room in the bathroom stall at the drop zone.

Y’all, it’s that time again. Also, the sound on this video is SUPER quiet (note to self: speak louder at phone), but it’s really not worth turning up your volume anyhow. (And I did try to fix it, but WMM does not like .mov files.) I tried a new stylist last night and had an awesome time. My salon policy is to leave it up to the experts. I went in with hair just getting below my shoulders, and came out with this.

Yesterday my office played hooky; we snuck out mid-morning to head up to my boss’s cabin. We spent the day on the lake, playing on the jetski and cruising in the pontoon, drinking and fishing, having a nice leisurely dinner, setting off fireworks. The weather was entirely perfect, sunny and 80’s. I could easily envision the rest of life in a sleepy little cabin on a forest-hugged lake. Just mix in some family, some horse, and I’m there.

Sunday Ev and I had a great time at our clinic. We accomplished Goal #1 (stay on the horse). There were actually no other formalized goals, but really I was going for a safe, positive experience, and we definitely had one. He was excited when we got there, and it’s a little hilarious for me watching the video back because he felt so up to me, all animated, looking at everything — and in the video he looks totally calm. So I think partly it’s that I’ve gotten used to riding him in total surfer-dude/half-asleep mode, and partly that our few previous crashes have left me a bit rattled and every time he takes a look at something I’m half expecting him to leap and take off in some unexpected direction (which is kind of unfair to him because while he is a baby, overall he’s a pretty laid-back guy). So mostly I was the more nervous of the two of us at the clinic.

We rocked it, though — we did our first: pile of poles, crossrail, little log, bigger little log, baby ditch(es), up-bank, up-bank to up-bank, down-bank, bridge crossing, water time, etc etc. My group was split up at the beginning — which worked really well, since there were two of us out for the very first time and two with more experience — but one of my new barn buddies caught a little video in the beginning and mid-way through when we were back in the same field. We shall speak not of my position (a nine year break from jumping does not, I can report, improve your form over fences), but look instead upon the Boo’s calm willingness, and imagine the eventers we will one day be:

I had a really, really great Fourth of July weekend, and this picture pretty much sums it up. (There were a few other pictures that I thought said it a little better, but I didn’t want to post pics of other people pretending to lactate wine from a wine-in-a-box pouch without said other people’s permission.)

What you can see is that I’m on the Meramec River, and that my floatin’ hat is made of awesomeness and win. What you can’t see is that we had two rafts and a canoe lashed together with bungies, and at the moment pictured I was balancing with one foot on either raft. I found it much easier than trying to stand on my tube on the Apple River. (I also drank beer instead of vodka on this trip and actually remember the whole thing.)

The drive through Iowa was surprisingly less excruciating than I remember — though I wasn’t the one driving, so that probably helped, and M and I got along like gangbusters and spent most of the time talking talking talking and the rest listening to Avenue Q and Ricky Gervais and Harry Potter. The drive through Missouri was downright gorgeous. The weather was perfect, totally perfect. I did not get sunburned, and I resisted the temptation of s’mores (oh sweet gooey grahamy delicious emblem of summer, how I miss your forbidden marshmallowness). Everyone was really lovely — it was one of those instafriends weekends, and oh Iowa of far farmfields how I hate you for being between me and more of that.