It’s been a rather stressful week month career at work lately.  In January I was thrilled to receive a promotion, which has greatly improved my quality of life salary wise but now I am realizing that when people give you more money they expect you to do more work, and we still haven’t been able to find the right employee for me to manage and help out with my task list.  Don’t get me wrong, I still love my job and all the challenges and multi-tasking it requires (and believe me, it requires a lot of that) but at the end of the day I kind of look like this…

Needless to say, by the time I got to the barn last night riding was the furthest thing from my mind.  Insurmountable obstacles stood in my way – like having to find the horse turned out in the big field in the dark, and changing clothes. It was damn near impossible, so I just took Simon out to give him some love.

The usual dynamic at the barn is this – old ancient omg almost 30 Lauren is surrounded by a group of teen/tween barn rats.  Last night was no exception and as one of the girls was complaining about how she was so poor and didn’t have $5 to her name, and I had what can best be described as a stress induced loopy break of sanity.

“You know what’s really awesome?  One day you get old and you get a good job and make decent money, but it all goes to bills and the rest of it you’re too tired to use!”

The teens stare at me.  I continue brushing Simon’s tail and start to giggle to myself.

“And then you end up paying $600 a month to pet your horse!”

They started to smirk at me a little.

“$600 a month to pet him, feed him treats, brush his tail and tell him he’s pretty!”

Then they started to laugh, and I did too.

I spent about an hour in traffic last night driving to the barn to then feel too tired and blah and brain dead to actually ride.  But I brushed Simon, worked on shedding out his winter coat.  Put conditioner in his tail and got it slick and free of tangles.  Gave him his ulcer paste and then a giant handful of treats to make up for giving him his ulcer paste, and then I hand grazed him for a while and watched the lessons going on.

And I would gladly pay all of that and risk the blips of mental instability to chill with my sweet horse, and listen to him contently rip up the blades of grass and chew contently.

You may also like:

Big Girl Helmet If I Had Words Things That Happened Highs and Lows Simon Versus the Bot Bees