Mayhem and a Moscow Mule

       There is a time and a place for everything. I haven't sat down and reflected in a bit and while I'm not sure if that was due to lack or time or not having anything passionate to write about-I'm here now. The past year has been an absolute whirlwind of horse showing and travel. I'm grateful for all of it, but it's also exhausting. And as a friend of mine said the other day and I find it true for me too 'My soul is tired today'. Let me explain.      Anyone that's a horse person or friend of mine knows how incredible my horse career with the infamous Little Hail has been. For 3 years, that bay beast has been carrying  me around many a cross country course and was the first horse of 5 attempted horses to get me to intermediate. My focus has been entirely devoted to my career because hope isn't a strategy. Sweat and tears and committing every dollar to getting lessons and bettering myself constantly have gotten me here. Every waking day. That's...

 I finally set time and sat down to do my blog about Florida. It's only been months since my return but hey, I've been busy. So let's go back a few months and let me regale you with the latest adventures of Ali and the ever mischievous Little Hail. I remember the exact moment I decided to go to Florida and really decide to make my bid at big, bad intermediate level. I'm confident I had a panic attack. The  'Oh lord, am I actually prepared for this?moment.  The commitment to going, time, money, being away from students and my husband? They all said 'yep' which was terrifying as I now had no excuse not to go. And the fact that my darling sister lives there and would let me sleep on her couch for free? Which at age 30 did make me pause because I am not 20 and in college anymore. I have to stretch like a cat now when I wake up in order to be serviceably sound by any vet standards. Full send-that's your life motto Ali, get after it and learn to become one wit...

Anyone who says success is a straight line is a complete lunatic and needs to be put in a home. There, I said it. Success, I believe, is measured by your own relentless expectation of where YOU think you should be. And nothing else. I think back to my last year of living and my Lord it's been a wild little ride. First, things were dramatically difficult, constantly and I seemed to be this vicious cycle of self doubt and chaos. Like I was trapped in a cycle of suckiness. As if I was just wandering in a hall of mirrors and there was no way out. Just reflecting my own self insecurities and it was awful. How do you get out? Belief. Believing I could be better. That's what got me out of my loop. I had to physically write down the things I felt I was capable of but hadn't been able to achieve, yet. And then I started hacking away at that list. I had stopped lessoning and improving myself for a long time because I was so down on myself that I stopped feeling worthy of being better...

 Life doesn't always pan out the way we think it should, does it? Just when you think you have it all figured out, life throws a wrench in the works and all things go a muck. You find yourself on your bum with your jaw hanging to the floor and scraped elbows asking yourself how you got there. Or maybe that's just me. I've had some incredible past few months. Incredible in their successes and the misses. I don't like to call them failures because I learn from them. Just as I don't believe in bad days, but only poor moments. Life is perspective and one must choose have the glass half full or half empty. I'm a glass half full kind of girl and I like a rather large glass. Preferably a large wine glass or Moscow mule mug, but hey-that's just me. This awful spring sure made things tough here on the farm. I did my best to immerse myself in the day to day with the horses and look forward to my planned show schedules of ones I planned to attend and the ones I host bu...

      I have barely had a moment to sit down and write lately as I've been a very busy girl. Thank goodness the holidays are done. That kind of stress wreaks havoc on my mental state, bank account, patience and my diet. I shouldn't really call it a diet as it was truly a lifestyle overhaul. I changed everything. What I ate, how I functioned, when I got up in the morning and how I went about my day. I only wish I would have done it sooner. I'm so much happier than I was a year ago. This time last year, I was still bouncing back from that pesky hysterectomy. I remember how much my joints and tendons hurt like hell from just walking because I had lost so much blood. And then I caught Covid on top of that and was a little bit worried it would kill me since I had just had a massive surgery. I blamed my body for everything and truly hated the skin I was in. I think a lot of us women do. We struggle to feel affection towards our skin suits. If we aren't 120 pounds, we are o...