I seriously need to find something else to say to start off my Monday recap posts other than “last week was busy”. All weeks are busy. And they somehow seem to be even busier now that I’m unemployed (self employed? partially? I have no idea.), but in a good way I think. At least the things I’m doing are things I enjoy and am interested in rather than dedicating my life to someone else’s dream. There’s definitely freedom in that. We’ll work on the money part.

Anyway! Let’s try to recap this in a way that doesn’t require a novel.

Last Monday I had my second jump lesson with Presto. He was really good, like… almost surprisingly so. The day before he’d been a bit of a terrorist so I wasn’t sure what I was walking into, but honestly he was pretty much foot perfect, easy, and chill. We’re slowly figuring things out together, and I definitely have fun riding him. He’s going to be a really cool horse eventually, I’m pretty sure of that.

On Tuesday Hillary flew in. It’s not too hard to twist her arm to get her here, but we had some business things to take care of and some networking opportunities, so she hopped on a plane and came out. She hasn’t been able to ride much back in Texas, with Lex being here in Florida, so naturally I started shoving horses at her immediately and suggested she take Henry over to Steph’s for a lesson.

On Wednesday afternoon I was covering Windfall’s Century Ride for Eventing Nation (look for that article this week!) and brought Hillary with me. I wanted to try to get both photos and video, which is obviously not possible to do alone, plus I’d been invited to the dinner afterward and thought that would be a good opportunity to chat with some folks about BRC. Hillary is a much better socializer than I am, she’s less awkward in that setting, so getting her to come along (again, very little arm twisting was required) was fantastic.

We didn’t even make it all the way in the front door before being introduced to the Trakehner breeder contingent – who knew of me, which is always slightly alarming because my first thought when that happens is always a panicked “oh god wtf have I said” – and we spent most of the evening talking to them. Well, ok. At one point I did what is standard for me at parties: I plopped myself in a corner and immediately made friends with the dogs.

It was fun to bounce ideas and thoughts off of the breeder group though, they were fun, and I finished my interview stuff after we ate some barbeque and cake. I’ve certainly had worse Wednesdays. Super nice of Windfall’s owners to include us.

The rest of the week was knocking out business stuff for us, working the horses, and moving Lex over here to WTW from the training barn he was at. There must be some kind of aura of chaos that horses have and can sense in others, because Presto took one look at Lex and lost his shit trying to get over to him to be best friends. As entertaining as it would be to turn those two out together, I don’t think the farm could survive it. I can’t even imagine Presto’s level of chaos and mayhem combined with Lex’s ponytude and additional chaos and mayhem. Good god.

Hillary fit in a lesson with Steph on Lex last week too. Nothing like not riding for weeks and then showing up anywhere near me where I’m like HERE RIDE THIS LETS GO DO THIS WHY NOT ALSO THIS OMG I HAVE ANOTHER GREAT IDEA YOU TOTALLY SHOULD. She went home sore AF and slightly broken so ya know… job complete.

The only one she didn’t sit on this time was Presto, mostly because I hogged him all to myself. Sorry not sorry. I think she already had more than she wanted to ride anyway though, and Presto is… a lot. According to my abs he is the grand consumer of strength and energy.

Hillary’s daughter also got to take a turn on Henry, because duh. The man. The myth. The legend. The king. Gotta start them out on good horses while they’re still young and set the bar high.

The horse part is the more interesting stuff to talk about here, but in reality it was a smaller portion of what we were up to. We also got pretty much everything done that we needed to, business-wise, which was definitely much easier with both of us together in person. We also had some good brainstorming sessions and I think we now have a pretty solid, cool, exciting plan going forward. We would both really like to be fully self-employed, and together we’re stronger, so I’m excited about some of the things we have in motion at the moment. We’ll see how it all pans out!

She did extend her trip by a couple more days to stay the weekend, which gave us the chance to go XC schooling. More about that tomorrow…