palace of winds

Briefly, since the day’s almost over: yesterday was good. My hammock finally arrived; I picked it up after riding, and set it up, and it is glorious. I can’t wait until it stops raining so I can use it. Maybe by the time I get back from Florida? (Where I’m going June 14-18, which I don’t think I’ve mentioned before, actually…)

I also had a very important phone call. It was not with a boy at all but I totally felt like I was setting up a first date, and tomorrow I think I’ll feel a little like I’m going on one. I am nervous and excited and couldn’t sleep at all last night. I don’t mean to be a tease about it, but I want to note the date for myself and really can’t say more until things are further along. I hope I’ll have lots of wonderful to share in early August.

How much would you pay someone to stick a laser in your eye? If it made you see better, I mean.

I had my Lasik consultation yesterday. I am an excellent candidate (and am possessed, apparently, of big pupils [not to imply that they make me a better candidate]). It is sort of monstrously expensive. With the money I could, for an example pulled from an email I just got, go to Portugal for a week to train with Olympic jumping riders: five days of morning lessons and afternoon trail rides. Surely I could go to Egypt for the cost (it is, I think, my next Peru). I could get a lovely new saddle. I could get nearly two Everetts, for that matter. I could horde it; spend dark nights stroking my account statements, all My precioussss. Or, that old haunting refrain: Down Payment.

I’ve really struggled with this whole money thing. Do you have money mentors in your life? How do you make your spending decisions? When do you say when? It’s always been quite a secret thing in my family, money, and I admit I feel a little adrift about it. I’ve never been one to do something just because other people are (a bit of the opposite, really), but I’m also a research fanatic and this is one thing I’ve really come up dry on. I keep searching after some conventional wisdom, a pool of experience, but I can’t find any rhyme or reason in this. How should I spend? I don’t know what the rest of the world is like, but it seems Americans have really fallen down on the whole budgeting/money management education thing. Where is that line between saving for later and living now?

I like my eyes. The idea of cutting them open and shooting lasers in them is a little freaky, but not having to mess around with glasses or contacts any more sounds blissful. Today S– said that I should do it, and I asked why. “Because life is better,” she said. “Life is just better.” What a compelling idea, that.

(Unrelated: I took this just after my move to show you the mess of boxes and trees and lamps and stuff my life had exploded into. I still haven’t found a place for that damn tree.)

I had a dream the other night that Sara gave me a puppy. A corgi, specifically, a gorgeous blue-speckled corgi with huge foxy ears and big dark eyes. I thought, in the dream, that she was a blue merle, and maybe she was, but the great mysterious internet seems to suggest that blue merles must have irregular blotchy spots, and she was regularly and perfectly flecked, or ticked, or speckled, or whatever. Regardless, she was beautiful and ever-so-cuddly, and I was quite distressed since dogs aren’t allowed in my apartment. I had no idea how I could keep her, but very much did not want to give her up.

I think, periodically, about getting a cat. It’s clearly a bad idea since I’m never home, but I always turn to this perfectly sound explanation with a faint trace of guilt, because even if I were home more often there is a part of me that still would not want a cat. There are lots of cats out there who deserve good homes, but I really like being able to go out of town without a second thought, and never having to worry about hair or vomit or a litter box. That and I still can’t really think about my cat, can’t even think his name, without feeling like someone has pulled all my insides out. I almost didn’t make the horse decision for it.

Anyway, mostly I like the total lack of responsibility. Same sort of reason having kids (ever) doesn’t quite appeal to me. (That and the expense. Children are dreadfully, dreadfully expensive.) Is this something people get over before they get pets or have kids? Or is it something that just evaporates after the pets or kids have been acquired?

I have decided, for now, that I will not get a dog unless it is that blue-speckled corgi. Which is really a moot point because my new apartment doesn’t allow dogs either, but it’s one less decision to make down the road. Or one more window for fate: if that puppy materializes, I’ll know it’s time to move again.

Also, totally unrelated, IT IS STILL COLD and I demand that it STOP RIGHT NOW PLEASE. I’ve lost track of the number of days in a row that I’ve stepped outside in the morning and had my nose freeze shut a little. I want to get back to playing with my horse, please. Please? Pretty please?

Western diet increases cancer risk for Asian women.

I also highly recommend The China Study for — well, I was going to say for anyone interested in the link between diet and cancer, but I hope everyone’s interested. So I highly recommend it, full stop.

01/14 Sun: nada
01/15 Mon: 45 min C
01/16 Tue: 30 min C&S - JF Arms
01/17 Wed: riding
01/18 Thu: rest
01/19 Fri: riding (lesson)
01/20 Sat: riding

Friday (and Saturday) I rode a new horse, an off-track thoroughbred another girl at the barn has out on trial. He hadn’t been ridden in a week or two, and even after lungeing him forever he was in fine high spirits, speeding endlessly around in that big amazing trot of his. I’d love to give him a try on a cross-country course, though I don’t think he’s ever been jumped before and, well, it’s winter. And we don’t have a cross-country course. He’s a very pretty boy, though.

Have I mentioned I want one? I do, terribly. Though yesterday I updated my budgeting (I use the Microsoft Money utility that came with my computer, and that’s astonishingly wonderful for a — well, I guess it wasn’t free exactly since I’m sure the price was incorporated into the purchase price of the computer. Anyhow, I really like it), which I’d neglected through the holiday season. I have to say one of the best things I’ve done for myself in this past year is keeping rigorous track of my expenses — first in my checkbook register and then in Money. I’ve got a full year of spending habits to look at now, and while I still have the sketchiest of budgets, a thing dictated by rather than dictating my spending, it’s nice to know I could easily pinpoint places to cut back if I needed to. Which I don’t, which is even nicer to know. And I put over 20% of my income into my retirement fund, and I’m proud of that. Playing with Money makes me feel like I’m a real adult, and one who’s doing well. End own-horn-tootage. (Tootage, heh.)

Also! On Friday? My bank boy totally made my sign. It was just scribbled on a deposit envelope and he didn’t put it up until after I’d made my deposit, but it was brilliant.