Cowgirl Up

The past two weeks things here have taken a slight turn. After slogging through a couple weeks as roommate to a woman with a warped sense of reality, I moved... again. Yeah. I'd really like to be finished moving for a while. The move was a short one, just across the street, and I'm now living in the basement of my tutor-ee's house.

My junior year in college I got an offer to do an hour's-worth of tutoring in basic chemistry over a break from classes. I decided it couldn't hurt to earn a few extra bucks, never realizing how awesome the arrangement would become. After helping out with chemistry I offered my services up for any other subject- the sciences, math, some English, etc. As a result, I received consistent work once or twice a week for the remainder of my college career. And I became pretty good friends with the family, a single mom and her 16 year-old daughter.

I kept in touch with them this summer while in Wyoming, and they were the ones to suggest the arrangement with the crazy woman across the street when I returned home. They felt bad that things hadn't worked out as planned with the house, so they offered me a way out and invited me to move in with them. After a strange series of unpleasant events across the street, I decided my living situation couldn't get any worse than it was and made the move. Long story.

So now I'm comfortably arranged in the basement with the mom and her daughter. And five dogs. And four cats. And a llama. And four goats. And two pigs. And six calves. And two miniature ponies. And two normal-sized ponies. And a fish. And my three rats.

Oh, and did I mention the 13 horses? As in the 13 performance horses used on a regular basis for competition in rodeos? Those horses?

Yeah. Much nicer over here on the other side of the street.

I've been busier this past week than I was the entire time I was in Wyoming. On top of grad school applications (which I'll hopefully, someday, be finished with), I've been walking dogs, pitching hay, mucking stalls, feeding horses, and riding. And riding, and riding, and riding. Thirteen horses and two ponies take a lot of work, and to keep them in good condition they need a lot of exercise.

Which is where my newest brand of pseudo-employment comes in. Yes, I continue to tutor, to run errands and do odd-jobs, and to walk dogs to cover my room, board, and incidental expenditures. But on top of that I've been requisitioned to help work the horses, at least two every day, to keep them in good shape and prevent them from picking up bad habits. During week one, my butt had never been so sore. During week two, I fell back into my groove, dug up a recollection of a proper seat from deep in my muscle memory, and starting building back muscles that I haven't felt in years.

This weekend, to benefit some of the lesser-used steeds, our group (the girl and her mom, myself, and the horse trainer) took three horses to a gymkhana (a casual rodeo, more or less translated into "games on horseback") to compete. I rode Cash, an antsy quarter horse cross who needs work staying calm at the starting gate. Having never before been in a rodeo, I got a five-day crash course in the events, then entered in the senior's (14+) novice class. We competed in four events: barrels, pole bending, flags, and a "mystery event" that turned out to be "turn and burn."

Most people are at least somewhat familiar with cloverleaf barrels. Pole bending consists of weaving in and out amongst a series of six poles. In both events, knocking over a barrel or a pole will result in a time penalty. Flags is a straightforward course where the rider races in an oval pattern around the arena, first planting a flag in a bucket of sand and then picking another flag out of a bucket before returning to the gate. Turn and burn is a long stretch followed by a complete circle around a barrel before the return (the worst event, since most horses are trained to go only a half-circle around a barrel, not a complete turn). All the events are done at speed and are timed.

Cash and I placed fourth in barrels and second in flags, out of 10 and 15 riders, respectively, in the novice class. In turn and burn Cash got confused about making a full circle around the barrel and pulled wide, and in poles he spooked coming around the first end pole, which a). cost time for me to reset him and b). threw his stride off, which resulted in a downed pole and a time penalty. Ah well...Can't place in everything in your first rodeo after only five days of practice, right?

So I guess thus far, I've been doing pretty well for myself without a job. I'm loving being back home with my family and friends, and I'm living well as a "ranch hand" on a horse ranch. Funny that I spent nearly half a year in the "Cowboy State," and it's only after I leave that I get to cowgirl up.