Y2K FTW

I just found a bunch of 13-year-old Molly's mix CDs, back from the days when each song took twenty minutes to download on Napster over your dial-up connection. Here's a taste of what I was listening to during my (in hindsight, extremely awesome) formative years.

1. Lost Prophets - Shinobi vs. Dragon Ninja (???)

2. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts - Bad Reputation

3. The Vapors - Turning Japanese

4. Weird Al - One More Minute

5. Ween - Teenage Dirtbag

6. Tori Amos - Little Plastic Castle

7. Weezer - El Scorcho*

8. Weeer - Undone (Sweater Song)*

9. Violent Femmes - Kiss Off*

10. Marcy Playground - Sex and Candy

11. Our Lady Peace - Clumsy

12. Goo Goo Dolls - Black Balloon

13. Five for Fighting - Superman**

14. Bush - Glycerine ***

15. Bush/ random artist remix of Glycerine

* Dear Phil Yates, thank you. I would never have figured out how to be this cool on my own.

** Embarrassing!

*** Whatever, Bush is awesome.

This is fun... I might post more. Please don't judge me... I turned out alright in the end.

Long time, no see

April and May passed by in a blur of injuries, moving, buying a car, starting a new job, etc. Yep, things are different.

My new address is House of Fang, which delights me to no end. I'm planning on hanging around Lex for a little while... we'll see how it goes.

Right now, I'm trying to pick up gardening. People are surprisingly generous when it comes to giving away plants. Megh and I are hoping to get some day lilies in the ground by tomorrow. See, our neighbors are both landscapers, and our shabby renter's yard is a blight on our otherwise well-manicured street. But we're working on it, we promise.

Truth be told, I'm awful homesick. Hopefully I'll figure out my path soon. Or, a path, anyway. A path lined with decorative plants!

Sprang Fevuhhhhhhh

Oh sweet Jesus, it is warm! This means the ponies are all in a good mood, the working students are all in a better mood, and the twelve-hour days begin!

Unfortunately, I have recently lost all motivation to do anything except maybe sit on a porch and drink beer. Or sing show tunes.

We did do some sweet cross-country schooling this weekend... it's amazing how much progress Grady and I have made over the winter! We were jumping the heck out of some Novice stuff on the farm, which is very exciting. I'm hoping the pictures will be posted soon, because I'm telling you... they were big jumps. You will be impressed by our daring.

Blue days, all of them gone...
nothing but blue skies from now on.

Ohhhh, also, this is awesome:

Goodness me.

What have we, what have we here... The children have finally come through the wardrobe to defeat the White Witch, and our piles of snow have (almost) gloriously melted! Hurrah! Now on to the season of mud.

We're also waiting to hear how our stallion Ryan is doing after going in for emergency colic surgery early Monday morning... it has been an intense weekend on the farm and I can only hope he recovers well.

Luckily, we have an excellent excuse to go out and make asses of ourselves in Lexington this weekend, so we have that to look forward to at least.

I was thinking about writing an essay about how horses often end up having the same personalities as the men we equestriennes are attracted to, but that seemed like too much effort, and sort of depressing, so maybe I'll do it later.

Until then,

The Chronicles of Narnia

It's starting to seem like the farm somehow made its way through the enchanted wardrobe and now we're stuck in eternal winter. What I wanna know is where's my Turkish Delight?!

Everyone's Favorite Holiday

I consider myself a conscientious objector when it comes to Valentine's Day, but it is a fun opportunity to make snide cards.

I felt a little caveman-esque doing all of the copy by hand, but it DID make me think about how I wanted it to look BEFORE putting it on the page, which is a valuable skill (and life lesson). *sigh* One day we will be reunited, my sweet, sweet Adobe!




In other news, the weather here sucks.

Things I Have Been Doing:

Cooking...
Writing silly stories...
Growing flowers...


There has also been a lot of facebook loafing, napping, and compulsive cleaning, but those aren't as easy to take pictures of.

2010 FTW

Whew. I have dropped the ball on this whole blog thing in the past few months, but our new roomie Jenn has one and updates it every day, so I'm feeling inspired to do the same. Well, maybe not every day. But definitely more than once every three months.

I guess I'll start at Christmas break... Went home on December 27 via Greyhound Bus, which is a surprisingly awesome and cheap way to travel. My route went from Lexington to Berea, KY, to Knoxville, TN, then I switched buses and went from Knoxville to Asheville, NC.

My mum picked me up from the station and I spent a few days with her and her new husband, Stan, then drove down to Columbia and spent a lovely few days and EXCELLENT new year's eve with John and Dana. Then I drove up to Greenville to visit Emily and my family. Em and I went wedding dress shopping for her, and then went to a Wasted Wine performance at the Warehouse Theater... most excellent.

Then, after about 5 days and about 5 hours of sleep (total), I drove back to NC, hung out for a bit, and hopped the bus back to ol' Kentucky.

Despite some drama and some sad stuff and some ridiculous work stuff, I'm feeling pretty OK about 2010 so far. I think it's going to be a "growing up" year... about time, I suppose.

Well, anyway, if you have survived my rambling up to this point, I'll go ahead and give you a teaser... Story boards for my silly childrens story "El Bajo" are in the works! I'll post them ASAP.

xo, Molly

THIS IS HALLOWEEN

So I'm really pumped for Halloween, if you can't tell. This is the pumpkin I carved yesterday. Chelsea and I also rented a week's worth of horror movies, including The Omen, Betelgeuse, The Amityville Horror, Pan's Labyrinth, The Shining, Psycho, and Nosferatu. No plans for the actual night yet, but I'm hoping we can talk some of the boarders into throwing a party, because Halloween just isn't the same without costumes and debauchery!

Rain Suits!

Today, it was 42 degrees and raining when we got up. Chelsea and I decided to document our epic rain gear for posterity. I don't know about her, but I'm wearing two shirts, pants, two pairs of socks, a jacket, coveralls, muck boots, and a rain jacket.
It's gonna be a hard winter y'all.

LAME

This weekend, I found out what a bad idea it is to ride through injuries. I got through my dressage test OK at Jumpstart this weekend, but by the time XC rolled around, my back was all "Fuck you!" and I was all, "Oh, c'mon!" and so I fell off during warm up, further effed up my back, and had to scratch my entry.

Luckily, Megan has given me a few days off, so my gimpiness is starting to clear up. But it looks like Grady is going to have to wait a few months for his premiere, especially since he is still lame! Oh, horseback riding.

Grady So Handsome!

This is from a few weeks ago when I was practicing braiding. Grady was checking out a barn cat that hopped down the ladder.

(Sorry about the) Novel

I have been amiss posting in September, mostly because it has been busy around here and second mostly because I didn't think anyone actually read my posts. So thanks James :)

Last Tuesday was the Oldenburg baby inspection. We took our baby Fizz, who is a sweet, snuggly, stubborn creature, and she was so so good. We were freaking out the day before because it looked like she was sore on her front feet, and the vet told us to wrap them with the (very approximate) equivalent of horsey icy-hot and duct tape.

Emily and I were dreading this process because babies don't like being messed with and they sometimes retaliate pretty violently (see "Ghetto cookout and horse-related injuries"). I went to pick up one of Fizzy's feet, and instead of being angry, she just laid down, stuck out her legs, and waited patiently for us to put on her "pretty princess shoes." It was such a relief! Honestly, it's the little things... not getting kicked in the head by a baby horse can really make your day.

Last Wednesday, we went to the yearling sales at the Keeneland racetrack. Before we walked in the building, Megan warned us not to make eye contact with the Keeneland staff... or wiggle our eyebrows, or touch our noses, or make any sudden moves of any kind... because she didn't want us unknowingly bidding on a 100,000-dollar horse. Whew!

It was a kind of sad experience. All of the one-year-old thoroughbreds looked more like 4-year-old quarterhorses because they were hopped up on steriods and had logged hundreds of hours in an equiciser. Most yearlings spend their days playing bitey-face and eating grass out in a field with their friends.

Megan told us that all of the bids were fairly low this year because of the economy (ie, there were a lot of horses going for 100-200 thousand dollars instead of 400-500 thousand dollars), but we did see the bidding for a million-dollar horse. It was a half-sibling to the filly that won the Kentucky Derby this year.

On the way home from the race track, Megan drove us by a surprisingly not-famous Lexington landmark... a castle! Apparently, some really rich guy started building it as a tribute to his love for his wife. Halfway through the endevor, he went bankrupt and his wife left him! Someone else finished the project and turned it into an "inn" that costs $2500 a night. But I guess if you're flying in to Lexington to buy a million-dollar race horse, that seems like a reasonable price for lodging.

Last weekend, I groomed for Megan at the Flying Cross Horse Trials in Louisville. We took four horses and camped out in the horse trailer for a few nights. I would explain who won what, but eventing jargon is kind of confusing... needless to say, she did really really well on all of her guys.

This week, we're getting ready for the Jumpstart Horse Trials at the Kentucky Horse Park, which thankfully is only two miles from our farm. We're taking a few of Megan's students, and Emily and I are riding. Unforturnately, Emily's horse has been lame since the last show she tried to enter him in, and Grady turned up lame yesterday, so we had to do a switcharoo. So I'm riding her project horse Dolce, and she's riding my project horse Taz.

Now the only problem is that I'VE turned up lame with a pulled back or pinched nerve or something... whatever it is, I can't really walk. So hopefully I can get this under control by Friday, or I can dope myself up enough to get through the weekend. Ugh.

I will post pictures and other more interesting things once our wireless router starts working again. It is truly horrible to live without the internet, let me tell you!

Excursion

Today Emily and I decided to go on a bike ride downtown. First, we had to take Austin's old Fuji to the bike shop to get the tires replaced, and while we were waiting, we found some dog repellent... The best part: "Used by the US postal service for over 30 years."

We biked around the UK campus area for an hour or so... almost got lost, but found ourselves again, got honked at several times, thought about flirting with the bike shop boys, and generally had an awesome time!

Grady's Future

What Molly is doing with her degree:

Spraypainting pinnies for our show... and my stencil didn't even work that well! Pathetic.

Yay Grady!

Grady and I had our first mini trial this weekend... and Grady won his division!! It's a good thing he's starting to earn his keep considering how much I spent at the tack store today...

Ghetto cookout and horse-related injuries

Thursday night, we decided to have a cook out. We set up the grill in the driveway because of the six months worth of hay in the hayloft.

Also, I figured out the initiation for new working students... it involves getting effed up by some horses (and people, haha). Here's the list of injuries from yesterday:
-Grady kicked me
-Baby Mo kicked Emily IN THE FACE
-Kate stepped on my ankle
-Emily accidentally shut my head in the car door

I don't think the last one was part of the initiation, but it's funny, so hey.

And on the plus side, we went for ice cream!

Oh, also, for all you South Carolina people -- it was 79-ish degrees yesterday with a light breeze. Jealous? (Though you probably won't be in a couple months...)

Home sweet barn!