Technical Difficulties

We cantered yesterday! Two times around the arena in each direction! And good transitions, both trot-canter & walk-canter! (One of the canter-walk transitions was nice, the other one kind of a mess. But I have historically had trouble with canter-walk, so it's not surprising.)

He's getting acupuncture treatments. It's hard to say if they're helping, because he can't tell us, but we know he enjoys it.

Reminder (shameless self-promotion) that if you want more Milo updates, $2 at my patreon unlocks the Friend of Milo tier, wherein I make frequent reports.

ME: Underfoot Cat, what are you doing?
UNDERFOOT CAT: I'm singin' in the rain, just singin'--
ME: Try again.
U.C.: Um. Your socks were lonely?
ME: My dirty and undoubtedly reeking socks that I just took off my feet after coming back from the barn?
U.C.: Yup! They're awesome!
ME: From the way you're treating them, you'd think I've been walking through the catnip mines.
U.C.: Um. I like horses?
ME: Have you ever seen a horse?
U.C.: . . . Maybe.
[UNDERFOOT CAT rubs his face lovingly against my argyle socks]
ME: You do realize this is not normal, don't you?
U.C.: It's not my fault! I was found up a tree! *
ME: Where all the horses wore argyle socks?
U.C.: It was an awesome tree.
---
*True.

1. For anyone looking for verisimilitude, below about fifteen degrees Fahrenheit is too cold to ride. (Below zero is too cold for ANYTHING.)

2. Our Formerly Feral Ninja was well taught by her Feralista Mama. On Saturday I found her with a dead mouse (!) in our bedroom (ZOMG!!!11!1!). She hadn't eaten it yet, thank goodness (because the only thing worse than a dead mouse is a dead regurgitated mouse, don't ask me how I know), but she was definitely giving me the fix my toy, biped look. I did not oblige her.

3. My dear friend and frequent enabler, heresluck, gave mirrorthaw and me Season One of Elementary this holiday season. It took us a little more than a week to watch the whole thing, plus the special features (this is why it's a good thing I don't like many TV shows, because I am the opposite of will-power). I liked it a bunch. I liked the games it was playing with the source material; I adored Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu, and Aidan Quinn (and Jon Michael Hall also!, although his character is not in the slightest canonical). In some ways I liked it more than Sherlock, in some less. I may make a longer post about it at some point, but the thing I actually wanted to note here is not directly related to the show; it's something I noticed in the special features, something I knew but that it's good to be reminded of. It is very difficult to give an interesting answer to a general question. The actors and writers were getting thrown these slow underhand lobs over and over (you could tell by the answers they were giving), and it just didn't give them anything interesting to say (especially because they had to avoid spoilers). There was nothing they could hit out of the park. The set designer and the prop guy and the editor and the composer, on the other hand, who could talk about very specific details, were awesome. The composer actually demonstrated the way he puts music to a scene, which was very cool, but the best bit for me was the prop guy, who said, "Every prop has a ghost." By which he meant that, once you've established a prop, an object with which an actor interacts, it's a visual cue that tells its own part of the story without anything needing to be said. It was a tiny interview, but it was brilliant.

But nobody asked Jonny Lee Miller, in these tiny special feature interviews, specific questions about the choices he was making as an actor. Nobody asked the writers to talk specifically about how they wrote a particular episode, or how they decided what they were going to do with the bits of canon they chose to interpolate. (And there are some very interesting and specific questions that could be asked.) And so they couldn't really get beyond platitudes, like the platitudes Crash makes Nuke rehearse in Bull Durham. And it's worth remembering as a rule of thumb: to get interesting answers, you have to ask specific questions.

4. Things are better with my little Cthulhu machine. We tied the tentacles to the headboard with twine, and I can now roll over without encoiling myself. I still hate the fucker, but that's a different problem.

5. The present given me by 2013, like a cold dead squirrel on my pillow, is migraines! I now get migraines as part of my PMS package. Did you know, there is nothing cool about migraines at all? Nothing works on them except specific drugs, and those specific drugs can cause heart attacks and strokes by the inherent nature of what they are. (The first one I tried also made me so light-headed and woozy that I was no better off than I'd been with the migraine and its wicked little nail gun.) And mine last for days.

They aren't bad migraines. Even without the drugs, I'm not incapacitated. I'm not nauseated. The pain is, comparatively, not as bad as my menstrual cramps even now (and not even in the same league as the menstrual cramps I had in college, which routinely hit too serious for numbers).

But dear freaking Jesus is it annoying.

Diana Wynne Jones famously deduced that the horses of Fantasyland are vegetative bicycles. Here are some ways that real horses are anything but:

1. Horses are very large animals. This is something that you can know in the abstract, as we all do, and still be taken aback by when interacting with an actual horse. Horses take up space. Their heads are massive chunks of bone. Even when they're being affectionate, they're still a good eight to ten times larger than a human being, and they are proportionately stronger.

My perspective on large dogs has completely changed after two years of dressage lessons.

1a. Corrollary: horses have very large, hard, heavy, inflexible feet. Obviously, if one steps on you, it's going to hurt. But even a glancing accidental blow is likely to leave bruises. As I was bringing Milo in the other night, my foot happened to get in the way of his. (See above re: horses take up a lot of space.) Entirely accidental on both sides. And I ended up with a welt on my heel where the edge of his hoof hit me.

2. Horses are, on average, thousand pound herbivores. This means their digestive systems have to keep on trucking pretty much constantly. Which is to say, they are poop machines. And you want them to be. A horse who isn't pooping regularly (by
which I mean several times a day) is a horse who is in trouble.

Also, and I'm sorry to burst the bubble of everyone who grew up with My Little Ponies*, horses fart. Noxiously. A lot.

3. Horses are also thousand pound prey animals. They do not think like human beings. They also do not think like cats or dogs. Even a very calm, sensible horse is going to spook, and he's going to spook at things that make no sense. Milo is in general unflappable, but he has spooked, for no apparent reason, at tree stumps, a wood pile, and an elderly VW. (He's also spooked at the barn cat, but I can kind of see his point there. She did emerge from under the bench quite suddenly, so we'll ignore the fact that she's at best 1/100th of his size.) He's also spooked at himself.

4. Horses are creatures with opinions. The are, for instance, herd animals. A solitary horse is an unhappy horse. They will try to follow each other pretty much automatically, which can be awkward for their riders. Take away their pasture mate(s), and they're going to be distressed. They're likely to call for their absent friends. (One of the horses at the barn screams.) And in general, if they don't like something, they will find a way to let you know.

5. A horse's primary means of interacting with the world is her mouth. (Hard, heavy, inflexible feet, remember?) Anything that isn't a threat is likely to be something that needs to be tasted. Also, horses are opportunistc and greedy (see above re: the needs of their digestive systems). Anything that can be tasted, will be tasted. And eaten if possible.

To sum up: horses have presence. They take up space in the world. They are intensely biological. They have opinions (often very inconvenient ones). And they have needs, both physical and emotional. They get bored. They get scared. They get lonely. They are the farthest thing from vegetative bicycles you can imagine.


---
*Completely OT, but can I just say how utterly creeped out I am by how thin My Little Ponies have gotten? (Compare the first link, which is current MLP, to the second two, which are '80s MLP.) I mean, seriously, Hasbro, WTF? They're PONIES, not heroin-chic fashion models. FEED THEM.

1. The Jellicle Ninja is doing much better. Thank you for all your kind wishes!
2. Brit Mandelo has reviewed Somewhere Beneath Those Waves for Tor.com
3. Apex Magazine will be reprinting "The Yellow Dressing Gown" in their 31st issue.
4. I still like my job as a database thrall.
5. The horse continues to be a good horse. A goofy, exasperating horse, but a good horse nonetheless.

ME: [rummaging in tack room for ointment to put on a cut on Milo's right foreleg]
MILO: [from the cross-ties] I'm PEEEEEEEEEEing in the aisle, just PEEEEEEEEEEing in the--
ME: [emerging from the tack room like the wrath of god] STOP THAT YOU HORRIBLE HORSE!
MILO: What, me? I would never!
ME: Into your stall with you.
MILO: [plaintively] But I don't have to pee now.
ME: Tough.
[five minutes later]
MILO: I'm PEEEEEEEEing in my stall, just PEEEEEEEEEEing in my stall, what a glorious feeling . . .
ME: [facepalm]

1. Not to be gross, but the snotbergs in my head are calving.

2. Milo <3 June

3. Since a couple people have asked, Somewhere Beneath Those Waves is a short story collection. It will be published by Prime in November, and will collect all the non-Booth stories I've published up until 2010. (I.e., "After the Dragon" will be in it; "The Devil in Gaylord's Creek" will not.)

4. There is no number four.

5. Bat-eared fox kits! They're going to grow up to look like this, so you can see that it takes a while after birth before the ears deploy. In honor of my love for critters who can use their ears for drag chutes, have some more pictures. (Plus a bonus fennec fox.)

I would like to write a really long post about Midwest Horse Fair, but my wrists say I'd better not. So instead, via matociquala, have this large, goofy, and lovely collection of horse noses.

1. saladinahmed is looking for a few good cartographers.

2. I am really tired of feeling like crap all the time.

3. OTOH, great dressage lesson yesterday, after which Milo got his revenge for having to admit I was the boss by (a.) depositing a generous pile of manure in the stable aisle, (b.) backing up to plant his foot in it, and then (c.) pretending he had not the least idea how to go forward again.

4. I R SRS CHEETAH. THIS R SRS FUZZ.

5. The pool was closed for maintenance all last week, but I got out there today. Of course, I forgot my watch. :P

Unknown amount of time, 20 laps.
308 miles, 10 laps.

1. Today is the launch day for Whedonistas.

2. Today is practically spring-like! All the doors were open at the barn and I was riding in a T-shirt. We pay, of course, in mud, but it's worth it.

3. Today is the day I'm starting a prescription of sleeping pills. You see, the thing about Pramipexole, the RLS medication I'm on, is that at a dose high enough to deal with the RLS, it makes it hard to get to sleep and impossible to stay asleep. Waking up every two to four hours is not actually much better than just staying awake. So we try the Ambien.

4. Today is also the launch day for jimhines' Goblin Tales.

5. Today is the Ides of March.