SPRING BLUR

I’ve done it again-let the spring months blur by without posting a word on the MMSC blog. I did the same thing last spring. I swore this January I would do better. So much for New Year’s resolutions.

Here are my explanations (not excuses!) for this lapse:

1. Life is daily.
I make a “to do” list every night. It’s always long. Here are some of the daily features: 
BARN: Feedings, groomings, messing up, cleaning up, training, treatments.
OFFICE: Input/output of emails, letters, phone calls, bills, reviewing applications, putting out daily conflagrations, planning.
APPOINTMENTS: Board, staff, or committee meetings; adopters looking at horses, or looking at horses myself off campus, attending industry conferences, or to trying to meet at least one potential sponsor or donor every week. 

I guess some people get from A to Z on their daily “to do lists.” I never do. But every day I try. Hope springs eternal.

2. Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.

The“to do”list falters with the lobbing of curve balls: Impromptu visits of old friends or new ones popping in the door. The server goes down. The printer breaks. A horse goes awry: Maine Avenue comes in with a pulse in both feet. Reggie gets his neck stuck under the fence and twists his neck out of alignment. The proud flesh on Formaggio’s right heel is growing back. Agie’s rain rot has flared up. Jake is diagnosed with EPM. Max is being Max, and the thirty minute training session goes on for an hour. Bandi throws a shoe, AGAIN.

Those days it takes me all day to get from A to B. And sometimes, I get turned totally upside down. I am lucky then to make it from A to a!

3. It is wonderful to have written.

“Writing is easy,” said the late brilliant sports writer Red Smith (1905-1982).  “I just sit at the typewriter and open a vein and bleed.” Really? Red Smith’s columns flow with stylistic ease and grace. He struggled?! 

I love the English language. When I speak, I flirt with vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure to the best of my limited ability. But writing is different. The words don’t evaporate like spoken ones. They hang around. In fact they entrench themselves on the screen before me. When I reread them, they tend to lurch and lumber across the page recalling my long ago days learning to drive a stick shift. More often than not, I’ll write a paragraph and stall out. Especially if I am trying to craft a blog while I am at the MMSC. That’s like trying to drive a manual car on the steep hills of San Francisco in the midst of a blizzard.

So I resolve to do it at day’s end, after my hour’s drive home, taking care of my horses, making dinner, trying to be a bit present for my family, and of course, making the “to do” list for the next day. But the lure of bed where I can dream of having written is too seductive.

That leaves weekends.  But “what, pray tell is a week end?,” I ask, like Violet, the Dowager Countess Grantham from the hit BBC production Downtown Abbey. 

I am not so sure I know. That’s why I have a day clock  on my office wall at the MMSC. It’s only marginally effective, however. One reason is that we work on Saturdays, taking Sunday and Mondays off to accommodate the schedules of potential adopters. This off stride week would make even the most calendar conscious individuals stumble. Then there’s the whole guilt thing: Why should I be off when the majority of people around me are working? The truth is, leaving all complexes aside, it feels weird to be relaxing while the rest of the world toils. Finally, there’s the “I have too much to do!” internal whipping boy. Most people know about that pesky inner being. He’s alive and well in me.

So I am always working.

Or perhaps I am always playing?  

Isn’t playing doing something that you love to do? 

Don’t you find that the harder the challenge, the more fun you have? 

Isn’t it great to never be bored?  To always be inspired?

If that is the case, then I never work.  

We should all be so lucky!

                                               Cheery bye,

                                                                        Susanna