Aqueous Humor

As some of you may know, on Thursday I worked from bed. Yes. Not just from home but literally from bed. I was not sufficiently motivated to get up and so I did not, and instead had a productive, fruitful and restful day working from bed, courtesy of Verizon Wireless. When I was done working, I went to…uh…bed.

By Friday I was exceedingly well-rested and totally sick of chez moi so I went to the farm for what ended up being a very soggy muddy and eventful weekend.

Friday

• My friend Rebecca and I ride out on Friday afternoon. I ride Burton and she rode Baxter for the first time. Baxter is red and oddly put together.
• We went out with two other people, one of whom is visiting from England and who looks at me as we get into the second hay field (she has no idea where she is going) and says, "can we Andale Andale?" I say, "You want to Andale Andale?" "Yes, I want to andale andale." "Burton! Andale Andale!" And we were off!
• During the andale, I look back to see how Rebecca is doing on Baxter. She is not having a good time. Baxter is carrying himself along like a camel, head straight up in the air, feet pawing forward.
• I take pity on he and we go in and leave the other two to andale some more. We put Baxter the Camel in the wash stall. We think about going up to Apt. B to have some wine. But the camel gets agitated when we move away from it. It bleats. Like a sheep. It swings and shuffles around in the wash stall. Head very high. "We can't leave the camel," I say. "True," Rebecca says. "True." Rebecca gets a phone call so leaves the barn to take it and the camel wails and moans. I go stand next to it. Looking up at his nostrils because his head, being a camel, is so high up in the air. The camel is comforted by the smell of my hair I guess, and slowly stops making noise and swinging around. By the time Rebecca comes back the camel's head is resting on top of my head. Nice camel.
• Then I decide to do the evening chores for Dale. Evening chores at the farm takes about two hours with two people helping. First thing was we had to drop hay from the hay loft onto the gator. That's fun. Dale goes up and throws hay bales out and I make sure they land properly in the gator. One gets covered in hay dust. We can get ten bales on the gator. Then I drove the gator away with all the hay with one arm out backwards to make sure the hay didn't fall off. It wobbled back and forth a lot but did not come off (I drive the gator a little too fast anyway so that doesn't help).
• Then we have to set the feed out in the stalls in which we have just put all the hay Then we have to go get all the horses who live in stalls in from the fields for their dinner. Then we have to feed the horses who live outside. It's a 200 acre farm so there's a lot of driving in the gator. Then we have to set feed for the next morning. This is all done in total silence. I don't know how to set feed so Dale did that while I drove the gator all around at top speed bringing horses in, putting horses out, and driving feed all over for the outside horses. The most fun was, of course, bringing in Kona. He was at the far end of his 50 acre paddock and came RUNNING all the way up the hill for his dinner and then was blowing so hard he stopped quickly and was run over by Manny who was right behind him. Ding a ling.
• Then Rebecca and Dale and I went up to Apt. B. and ate "round things," (fresh figs, cherry tomatoes, round water crackers, brie, wine).
  
  
  Saturday
• Saturday was pouring rain all day and so Dale insists that we go out and do interval training on our horses. The intervals were to be 5 minute trot, 3 minute walk, 5 minute gallop, 3 minute walk, 5 minute trot, etc.
• But it was truly pouring rain so it was like being on a shipwreck. I couldn't see anything, water dripped off my hat onto my hands so I kept dropping the reins, even with gloves on, I would shake my head to get the water off and it would spray all over me, my jeans were stuck to my body, rain dripped down under my collar, the mud from Dale's horse in front of me was everywhere. The rain would come in sheets and it was like getting hit by a truck when it came across the fields.
• But it was warm. So it was like doing intervals in a hurricane or something. Or in the Caribbean. Very strange.
• Burton got covered in foam from the work (interval training is hard) but when we were done we just took off the tack and left him in his field because there was not point in bathing him. He self-bathed.
  
  
  Sunday
• Hunting at Annapolis Rock. Bright sun. Wet woods. Deep mud.
• We had no men at all out so Mary Anne Ridgely, the Katharine Hepburn of Howard County, led the field with Carter behind her and me behind Carter. About 12 others were (supposed to be) behind us, including Rebecca. Temporarily, at least.
• It was so warm and wet that as we moved along through the woods our horses steamed. The hounds ahead of us steamed too. We could always find Barry our huntsman just by looking for his steam. The steam was billowing off of everybody, like smoke from a chimney on a cold day. Waves and waves of steam. We were like a traveling sauna. From afar we looked a little blurry from all the steam, as if someone took a photograph but overexposed the horses. The hounds were a little traveling steam sauna too. We had blue sky, wet dripping leaves, ripe smelling mud, and steaming animals.
• The corn is still standing so the usual fun of running at Annapolis Rock was hampered. We tried though -- around a cornfield of standing corn, which is, to be honest, pretty dangerous. You have to stay to the edge but the trees are low hanging on the edge so you have to run inside the first row of corn without letting the corn itself rip you from your horse and without veering too close to the trees or else you'll get decapitated.
• Running through corn is very hard on your knees. The corn gets between your horse and your stirrups so you have to let your legs go like jelly so you don't put up too much resistance. If you fight the corn, you're a goner. Instead, you let the corn lift your legs up around you so your feet are up practically on your horse's back and then you grab mane and pinch your knees and try not to lose your balance. Your knees hit the corncobs whack whack whack as you go. Your feet hit your horse which makes your horse go faster which makes you knees get whacked whacked whacked more and then you go down hill and around a corner and everything gets a little more desperate and extreme and you pray for your horse and you pray for yourself and you daren't raise your head too high because you might get whacked by a tree and then you stop suddenly BAM and you realize you are still on your horse and your knees are completely black from corn dust.
• When we were done knocking ourselves silly around the cornfield we realized everyone was gone. The only people left were me and Mary Anne and Carter, and the huntsman with the hounds. Carter says, "Mary Anne, I think you lost your field." Mary Anne: "What? Why?! (pronounced Whaaa?)." Carter: "I think they all came off back there." Mary Anne: "So who we got left, why it's just you and Kim!" And indeed it was. Just us three with our very black, bruised knees. We three looked like we had knee pads on but it was corn dust.
• The only adventure we had after that was there is part of the Patuxent we have to cross where there is a beaver dam. We call it The Beaver Dam. Duh. Anyway, you can't cross upstream of the beaver dam itself because the river is too deep and we didn't feel like going swimming. Downstream of the dam there is no way into the river at all. Just three foot banks sheer down into the water. Barry our Irish huntsman decides the only way is to leap of the bank across a little tributary onto an island made of rocks and then on across. He looks back at us three women with our black knees and says in his Irish brogue, "Well I did it just fine as you can see but I don't know how you all will manage." We ladies with black knees found this rude of our huntsman so we each promptly launched gracefully off the river bank, floated through the air with the greatest of ease, landed effortlessly and lightly on the rock island without hurting our horses at all, and hunted on, smiling. Barry was impressed.

And that was essentially the end of the weekend except the 12 who came off or whatever it was that happened to them behind us in the run around the corn got lost trying to find their way back to the trailers. We three who had hunted on were back at the trailers and loaded and back at the barn and all cleaned up before they ever got out of wherever they were -- easily two hours behind us. My poor friend Rebecca had been scraped off on a vine and then her horse ran away and wouldn't let her get back on and then when they did get back to the trailer he ran away again, down the road, and then Sara's horse ran off into the woods while Sara was trying to help Rebecca. Etc. Horses never run away from trailers. There's HAY in the trailers! Rebecca and Sara were not very happy with their beasts when they finally got home.

Nevertheless, everyone is hoping to go out again on Wednesday.