Me and King during my first lesson a couple of weeks ago

My Sunday mornings are being swallowed up by horse riding lessons.  I’m learning to ride on an ex-racehorse named Kingdom Come (IRE) … his friends call him King.  He earned over $200,000 in his racing career and is now teaching green riders like me how to ride.  At the same time, he is learning how to be ridden with a Western saddle and how to play horse soccer.  Yes, you read that right … horse soccer.

My sister is riding with me, on another ex-racer named Devil on the Roof (aka Dev).  This morning our trainer, T, and another friend of hers joined us in the arena and we all played horse soccer.  Basically, there is a giant inflated ball (a Parelli ball) that the horses kick around with their legs.  Our job is to steer them in the right direction; their job is to move the ball.  King is pretty good at kicking the ball (he really lifts his front leg and connects with his knee) once I manage to get him to it.  He tends to be on the lazy side … so much for the myth of the “hot-blooded” Thoroughbred!

Here’s a link to a video of my sister P and I practicing last weekend. The horses were extremely lazy because it was pretty hot; I think we ended up sweating more than they did, though!

I didn’t get a picture because (a) I didn’t know it was there until I pulled up at the signal and (b) I didn’t have time to pull out my phone, turn it on and take a picture before the light turned green and (c) it was 6:45 am and my brain doesn’t fully turn on until at least 7:30 or 8:00 am and it never even occurred to me to pull out my phone and take a picture.  Oddly enough, it did occur to me to text an update to Facebook, which I didn’t do because as we all know, texting while driving is BAD.  And my brain wasn’t entirely up to speed.  Still, it was an interesting way to start my day … and I get to see it again on my way home, but I still won’t get a picture because it will be dark by then.  So, the memory of the BIG ROCK will have to live in my mind rather than on the screen … which is a pretty frightening thought, when you think about it.  Poor rock!

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Horses will break your heart
Not can
But will.
They can’t help it.
We want so much from them
See so much in them that isn’t there
Or at least is only there in
Fleeting glimpses.
It’s no wonder they disappoint us
Dash our dreams
They are not perfect
Much as we wish them to be.
Sometimes they break our hearts
Not with loss and grief
But with beauty.
This is the good kind of broken heart
The kind that mends all the stronger
And makes you come back for more.
Even in defeat
We love them
For their strength and speed and grace
So much greater than our own.
We long to fly without wings
To make the ground shake with our passing
Horses remind us we are small
But they lend us their power so willingly.
It is a privilege to share the world with them.
And this is what breaks our hearts
For we shall never see perfection
In ourselves
But in them, in sharp timeless moments
That linger in memory
And bring us always back for more
We see it
Now and then.

I find this one extremely disturbing for some reason.  Did the kids catch a wild cherub and harness it with licorice ropes?  Is the cherub pulling them or trying desperately to flee?

Okay, this one is just creepy.  ’Cause nothing says I love you like fishing loose organs out of the lake and gathering them in a basket.

Where are these kids going with that tree and why do they have such devious grins on their faces?  Something is definitely up ….

Cupid’s offering to you: Let me stab this giant heart with huge arrow until the blood comes dripping out.  Because there’s nothing more romantic than that.

Here we are, in the magical land of Faerie, where apparently everyone runs around in her nightgown under the flowering cherry tree.  Or is there something more sinister at work?  Several children are cowering fearfully against the red-gowned piper.  And is that girl in the lower right sitting down to listen to the bluebird sweetly sing her a song … or has the bird  knocked her down and she is now desperately trying to fend off the fiendish finch?  That little red bird looks ready to strike now that the girl is down.  Dance, little girls, dance, to appease the murderous tendencies of your avian overlords!!

Wow, that was actually worse than a Monday at work …

Cover via Amazon

I’m reading a great book right now called Crow planet : essential wisdom from the urban wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.  It’s about crows, obviously, but more than that it’s about staying connected to the wild even when you have to live in a less-than-wild place.

Suburban southern California isn’t the wildest place around, but it’s where I live and for better or worse, it’s the habitat I grew up in and am adapted to.  The creatures that share this habitat aren’t as glamorous as the wolves and lions and orangutans that inhabit the “wild” parts of the world but they are just as resourceful and just as determined to survive.

The non-domesticated mammals around here are mostly nocturnal but I have seen them: raccoons, skunks, opossums.  We probably have coyotes in the general area, but not right in my neighborhood — there are too many long lived feral cats living here; they would not live long if this was part of a coyote’s territory.

Birds are much more visible, and we have a good variety within walking distance of my house:

• American Crow
• House Sparrow
• House Finch
• European Starling
• Cattle Egret
• Turkey Vulture
• Bushtit
• Yellow-rumped Warbler
• Northern Mockingbird
• Red-tailed Hawk

Go a little further afield and you will find Black-necked Stilts, Common Ibis, Common Egret, Snowy Egret, Great Blue Heron, Canada Goose, Red-winged Blackbird, Common Grackle, Mallard, Brewer’s Blackbird, Scrub Jay, Anna’s Hummingbird, California Gull, Broad-shouldered Hawk, Golden Eagle, California Quail, Brown Towhee, American Goldfinch, Acorn Woodpecker and many more.  These are just the birds I commonly see from time to time while driving around or walking at the botanic garden.

I do have to wonder: do other people notice these fellow denizens of our scruffy-around-the-edges habitat?  Do they just see a black bird or can they tell the difference between a Crow, a Starling, a Brewer’s Blackbird, and a Grackle?  I hope that they do, but I doubt that many people can.  I feel sorry for them; my world is so much richer and wider and wilder for knowing the names of all these different creatures.

Cover via Amazon

I work in a high school library so it’s not surprising that I read a lot of YA fiction (that’s Young Adult to those of you outside the publishing/library world).  In fact, it would be safe to say that at least half (if not more) of the fiction I read is YA.  This is not just because I feel slightly less guilty about reading at work when I’m reading something from the collection — because part of my job is recommending books to students who ask for “a good book”, and how can I know which ones are good if I haven’t read them all? — but because this stuff is really GOOD.

Back when I was a “young adult” (way back in the Jurassic period when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the Sony Walkman was state of the art) there wasn’t a whole lot of good YA fiction.  It was mostly Judy Blume and Paul Zindel and everything had some sort of silly title like “Will You Be My Hamburger?” or “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” or “Run For Your Life, It’s a Giant Turnip!” (Can you guess which one of those I made up?)  Reality fiction and “problem fiction” ruled the roost and everything else seemed to be fluffy romance or sports books for boys.

Today, the YA market is amazingly varied.  Vampires and “Pretty Little Liars” wannabes are popular, of course, but that’s not all that’s out there.  I have read some lovely and thought provoking books over the last few years (and a few that are just plain fun):

• His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman (fantasy)
• Chanda’s Secrets by Alan Stratton (AIDS in Africa)
• Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld (science fiction – dystopia)
• The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation Vol. 1 : The Pox Party by M. T. Anderson (historical fiction)
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (life on the rez with a sense of humor)
• Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series by Louise Rennison (just silly British fun)
• Airborn series by Kenneth Oppel (steampunk adventure)
• Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (eating disorders)
• The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins (science fiction – dystopia)
• Leviathan series by Scott Westerfeld (steampunk awesomeness)
• The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly (historical fiction)
• The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater (fantasy with man-eating water horses)
• Going Bovine by Libba Bray (inspired insanity — literally, it’s about a kid who gets Mad Cow disease)
• Beauty Queens by Libba Bray (satire and wackiness complete with beauty products and pirates — plus an exploding volcano)
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (a glimpse into the future?)
• Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly (historical fiction)
• anything by John Green (just read his books, they are damn good)
• A Swift Pure Cry by Siobhan Dowd (an amazing Irish writer who sadly passed away last year)
• Impossible by Nancy Werlin (contemporary fantasy)
• Maze Runner series by James Dashner (science fiction adventure)
• Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson (road trip romance)
• The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson (supernatural thriller)
• Chime by Franny Billingsley (quirky historical fantasy)

I could go on and on (and on and on …) but my hands are getting tired of typing.  Suffice it to say that if you are looking for a good read, the YA section of the library or bookshop should be your first stop.

Related articles

• Book Review : Beauty Queens (mohighlibrary.wordpress.com)
• Dystopian YA Novels: It’s the End of the World as We Know It… (wired.com)

Okay, here’s this week’s clip art.  It’s vaguely steampunky, which is why I downloaded it in the first place.  Who are these people in the flying canoe?  Where have they come from and where are they going?  And why is the propeller coming out of the side of the canoe?  I look forward to finding out, so please, write a caption for this image!

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• Clip Art Captions (amilewideandaninchdeep.wordpress.com)

This picture isn't from 2001 but it gives you an idea of what we were dealing with (this is before checking books out to the kids at the beginning of the year)

As requested by Mother Theresa, here is the Tale of the Great Textbook Tragedy of 2001 ….

In that long ago summer, when the school district actually had money to buy lots of brand new textbooks, a huge shipment arrived at MoHi.  There were so many books, in fact, that even after all the students had checked out their books and class sets had been delivered to classrooms, we still had stacks of books on the tables and floor of the library reading room. 

Students and teachers were pounding down the door (well, not literally, but you know …) to get in and check out library books and do research (and print things out — the main reason any self-respecting teenager goes to the library) so those books had to go somewhere.  Therefore, they were banished to the dark realm known as Textbook Land (aka the shelves in the back of the textbook room).

The library ladies were pressed into hard labor, loading books on carts and wheeling them across the border between Library Land and Textbook Land, then shoving them onto the groaning shelves (okay, the shelves weren’t groaning, we were).  With the ravening hordes pounding on the gates (erm … students knocking politely at the door) it was a race against time to get the fields of Library Land cleared so that the minions could roam freely through the stacks and sprawl across the tables “doing their homework.”  In our haste to finish our grueling task, we loaded and unloaded books from the carts by twos and threes instead of one at a time.  Now, remember, these books are THICK and my hands are wee. 

By the end of the ordeal, my hands were aching and sore all the time.  And so, even as the Ordeal of the Biology Books ended, the Saga of the Workmen’s Comp Claim began.

To make a long story short (if that’s possible … I’ve been rambling on for a while now, haven’t I?) I spent about a year and a half in and out of doctor’s offices, taking various anti-inflamatory medications; getting cortisone shots; wearing an assortment of splints, wraps and even a cast; taking prednisone and other dubious treatments; and having surgery on my left hand that didn’t really do anything at all.  By the time my claim was discharged, I’d been to at least 4 different doctors (including one at USC Medical Center who couldn’t figure out what the surgeon had done and basically told me “You’ll probably end up with arthritis in those joints”) and had no firm diagnosis.  I was, however, declared legally permanently partially disabled, which meant I had to go to the District Office and explain how I could do my job (which I had continued to do for roughly two years) with my “new” work restrictions.

Bottom line, I was left with a pair of very sad and pathetic hands with weak and angry thumb joints.  The best explanation I got was that my joints are naturally “loose” and picking up those two and three book stacks stretched the joints beyond where they should go and basically ruined them.  I can no longer hand write for any length of time; after a minute or so, my thumbs start aching and I have to stop.  I also can’t do requires that sort of grip, like crocheting or pretty much any other sort of craft.  This is part of the reason why I don’t write as much as I used to, because now I have to have a keyboard if I’m going to write anything longer than a short note.

So, there you have it: the Great Textbook Tragedy of 2001.

I don’t want to copy her (although they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery) but I do like the idea of a picture themed weekly post so I’m going to dip into my stash of clip art samples from Dover Publications for inspiration:

Let’s start with this rather bizarre image.  At first, I thought this was not only a lion wearing human clothing, but a very tiny lion wearing human clothing because I thought the pillar in the background was a pill bottle for some reason.  I am assuming the smaller feline is a lion cub.  I am also assuming he is so pale because he is getting sick from the cigar smoke the big lion is so inconsiderately puffing out into the atmosphere.  Or maybe he’s just embarrassed by the flamboyant flower thingy on his hat.  I can just hear his thoughts: “Oh, please, Dad, why can’t you be more like Simba’s dad, Mufasa?  He’s so manly and tough.  I mean, seriously, couldn’t you have picked a better human to emulate than Beau Brummel?  The hat’s not so bad but the dang walking stick?  The stinking cigar?  And why, oh, why do I have to go to that stupid school and wear this dorky uniform?  Simba gets to run around naked and play with birds and wildebeests and warthogs.  At least let me play with a cricket instead of playing cricket.  And how come I don’t have a mom?  Not that I don’t like Uncle Dave but …”

Do you have a better caption/description for this image?