It’s starting to feel like every post these days is me playing catch-up. Sorry about that. My brain hasn’t even had time to attempt more structured content. Time flies when you’re busy? Anyway, a lot has happened in the last week, so let’s go.

Last Wednesday I took Grace out to the specialist/embryo transfer vet to drop her off for the breeding season. She was starting to show signs of coming into heat, and given that we’ve been trying to get Grace pregnant for a while, I figured taking her early would be best. They can start tracking her and try to get her bred as soon as it’s looking viable (hopefully in a couple weeks). It would be great if we could get an ET or two out of her this year, plus one for her to carry, but let’s just focus on getting her pregnant first. Since she was already starting to cycle I thought it was best to cut her winter riding a bit short and just go ahead and take her. Plus with work being so busy right now and the ground being so hard, I wasn’t succeeding in getting much riding done with her anyway. Fingers crossed we have some baby-making success this year! I’m feeling positive about it. Plus I got to squee at the two babies already on the ground at the vet’s place… always a highlight and totally worth the drive.

The end of the week was consumed with prepping for a blast of winter weather, which rolled through on Friday and was luckily milder than anticipated. I have a lot of trust issues after Winter Storm Uri last year where they were EXTREMELY WRONG about how bad it would be and how long it would last. Luckily this particular wave was just some sleet and frigid temps, and the sleet didn’t accumulate on anything but the metal gates and my truck since it had been 80 the day before. I was still grumpy AF about it, but after last year I’ll (begrudgingly) take it.

Otherwise the horses have been doing fine (knock on wood) through our continued yo-yo-ing weather. At this point we go back and forth from 80 to 25 so much that they’re just always getting salt and soaked feed, which they seem to be totally fine with. Gemma, to her credit, has been a trooper through all of it.

On a different note, I got a new XC vest last week! I won a decently sizeable gift card during Christmas from Ride Equisafe, and was finally able to get that Champion Ti22 vest that I’ve had my eye on for a long time. It fits great and is super comfortable, so once I actually get to ride in it a bit I’ll have to do a review. I love my Champion helmet, and so far I’m really pleased with the vest too.

And last but not least, I’ve become fairly obsessed with my secondhand Apple Watch (gifted by Hillary – she da real mvp) which I have lovingly nicknamed Twatch. It doesn’t care if I just spent 45 minutes doing a spin class, it’ll still ping me and be like “time to stand up!”. F you, twatch, I just sat down. But also thanks for tracking all my shit so I can look at my metrics. At this point I pretty much only use it for the Activity stuff and to control my Spotify when I’m in the barn, but it’s great for that. I walk a lot more than I thought I did (especially with Gemma here since she’s a little bit higher maintenance, thus I’m back and forth to the barn a lot more). I walked 55 miles the week before last and 49.5 last week. Plus it keeps track of all my workout stuff too, which is nice… I can keep track of my spin classes and weightlifting stuff more formally than what just lives in my head. So fancy. So modern. (I’m like the last person on earth to get with this technology, I know…)

We did have a fairly exciting outing with the horses (yep, plural!) this weekend too, but that’s a whole nother post for tomorrow… stay tuned.