so not jazz

driving to the stables my girl says,

i like it when you spend time with bucky, he puts you in a good mood.

i thought about that quite a lot. then i had to tell her about her little friend's mom's passing.

she was sorry to hear it. and we spent a great deal of time talking today. relating. appreciating each other again.

we've had a lot of spats lately. nothing i can really change, but to sum it up, a show was on that i particularly like and one of the people said,

yelling is art.

she looks up from her drawing (the child is always drawing) and says,

did he just say yelling is art?

yes.

you've prefected that art.

which is a sad fact. i've never claimed to be the best mother, the best anything. but i do hope my job is adequate and i'm not giving her too many things to hate me for and talk about in therapy when she is forty. but we are mothers, this is our dilemma. no matter what we do, they always end up in therapy saying it was mom's fault. that's just the fact.

i'd rather hash what we can out now. she knows she can talk to me.

so i help lead some horses in from the far paddocks on the ranch. after successfully retrieving velvet (sigh) by myself (with my girl distracting the other two horses), though i let the gate swing all the way open and didn't think that through too well.

so i volunteer to help fetch the remaining four horses, and in the process while leading this giant dark bay in, i go to walk him into his stall, while the trainer is putting her new quarter horse away, and i don't think it through (so what else is new), and proceed to try to walk in the stall with the horse (at his side).

ever tried that?

i don't recommend it.

i got squished and laughed because i felt like such an idiot.

when i got out of there, i said to my girl,

you could have warned me.

because her and the trainer were asking,

what did you do?

(to make you scream out like that). i told them, feeling foolish but laughing.

my girl, on the way home tells me,

you never let a horse go through a door before you.

i didn't,

i said.

i tried to go alongside. (duh!)

the horse's friend. what a knucklehead. and my girl laughed. i said,

didn't you see me?

but she was watching the other horse as she was brushing down velvet. (sigh again).

all ends well. i won't make that mistake, and i now know how not to lead a horse into a stall.

my girl asked me, when i did something else wrong,

didn't you watch me enough to know how to do that?

i'm always trying to find new ways to do things,

i said.

but this logic isn't the greatest. i really need to mimic her, not improvise. this is horsemanship not jazz. and i'm such a beginner. woefully beginning. but we all have to start somewhere.

and so i have.