December already?

Christmas is less than a week away.  Just throwing that out there.

With no proper internet access at my house, and I absolutely cannot stand to write on my phone, I'm now sitting in the mall, at Starbucks, trying to focus on writing this blog post, while trying not to think about all the bazillion other things I have to do this weekend. At least the coffee is good.

And my cat is cute. Yes, he sleeps like that.

Since this is primarily a horse blog, I will attempt to update you on what I have been doing lately.  

About a year ago, when I first started planning this move, I vaguely entertained the idea of leasing a horse, then decided not to because of wanting to move Lady with me, and so on and so forth. Keep that in mind.

Now that I have been here for nearly six weeks (how did that happen?) I can say that my perspective has changed on a lot of things. I focused on work for the first few weeks, then slowly got irritated with my life, really frustrated with a lot of things, etc, etc.  And I really really missed my horse.

During the first week of December, I decided on a whim to go visit some barns again. It didn't look like Lady was going to be joining me out here very soon (still doesn't look that way) so I figured I might as well start meeting people and trying to get into the horse world in some obscure way. Good plans, right?  Haha....

I hit up my favorite barn from the last time I visited barns and arranged a meetup lesson with the trainer who is going to go by Liz for right now.  I got to ride this lovely lesson pony named Mojo and we did about an hour of flatwork and getting-to-know-each-other-stuff. I had a blast, we got along really well, and I decided that this was awesome.

Mojo. Adorable, perpetually grumpy, gets lots of  kisses from me.

Immediately following this lesson, I decided that I was interested in a lease again. Tasting the horse world and riding again made me so happy!  So, of course, I hopped online and took a look around the horses for sale/lease in the area. Almost right away I ran across an ad for a lovely little TB mare up for lease. On a whim, I decided to text the owner and set up a time to meet this horse.

Last Sunday, I met R, the owner of Missy, the mare. She is at the Texas Tech barn, so different barn than I had started taking lessons at.  In order to have the lease, I would have to be in a lesson program at the barn, and would probably end up on the school's equestrian team. The horse, Missy, is a very sweet girl, and I really liked her. Her owner has done a fantastic job with her. I'm still trying to set up a lesson with the coach at the barn in order to find out if we're a good fit and if I could work things out with the team and so on.  That portion of things is still up in the air, so no answers for you!

Missy! Very pretty, well trained, easy to ride!

This last Tuesday, I had another lesson with Liz, again on Mojo. She started me over jumps, and suddenly I'm really addicted to it.  Somewhere near the end of the lesson, she mentioned that there was a horse on the property that I could probably ride and maybe even lease.  So after my lesson, we pulled this horse out and put him in the round pen so I could see him move.
Winston is a very handsome warmblood gelding that I instantly fell in love with. I've hacked him twice, taken him over some poles, and overall been very pleased and happy with him. Once again, the lease is being funny to work out, so I have no answers there either. But I really do like Winston, and if all works out, I will be leasing him and possibly showing on him in the spring.

Probably no answers or finalities until the new year, but there you have a basic overview of what I've been up to in the horse world.
If I don't get another post up before then, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Me and Winston.  Huge, handsome, perfection.