Back in the Saddle

Last Saturday my friend Carla let me tag along when she went out to visit her horse. She even let me ride for a bit.   I didn't ride for very long because holy cow am I out of shape! I am kind of embarrassed to admit how sore I was the next day though.  Riding is a good workout!

I had a blast though, riding and grooming and just hanging at a ranch where horses were.

It has been a long time since I got to do any of those things.

This is Carla's horse Jessie.  Isn't she beautiful?  Carla has had her since she was a baby and she even broke her herself!  That amazes me.  She is so sweet and mellow and such fun to ride. Carla has done such a great job with her.

Riding Jessie brought up a lot of fond memories for me.  I had forgotten how peaceful I feel on the back of a horse.


For many many years horseback riding was a huge part of my life.

I used to be a stable girl.      :)



From the ages of 12-26 I had a horse.  Every day I hung out at the stables.  I met some of my best friends there, and we are still friends today.

Riding again got me to thinking about the horses I had over the years.

I wish I had pictures of my first horse.  He was an Arabian named Karim.  I loved him so but soon I wanted to be more serious about riding and showing so I gave him away to a friend and got my next horse, Sandman.

This is Sandman.   He was my baby.

He was supposed to be my show horse but it turned out he didn't have it in him so he was delegated to my best friend and I showed other people's horses from then on.  

Oh how I loved him.  And my bangs in this picture.  Awesome.

Riding consumed every moment that I had outside of school. 

Here I am with my Sees-ter and her horse Shuttle.

I showed in a couple of small horse shows close to home and loved it so much I decided to get serious about it.  I had wanted to show Quarter Horses but showing Sandman didn't work out and somehow found myself on the Appaloosa circuit instead.

Appaloosas are beautiful horses.  So colorful and each one is unique.


This is Cara.  She was owned by my trainer and was the horse I showed for on for 4 years.

I think am about 14 in this picture.  I can't believe I was ever that thin.

This is Sunny.  I showed her only for a year or so.  She was sweet.

Kind of a blurry picture. 

I rode Sunny both English and Western, but I only showed Cara Western. That was my real love.  

I never really took to English riding.

Here I am with some of my trophies.  I had never competed in any kind of sport before so it was pretty cool to compete and win so many awards.   I did quite well showing and one year was number one in the State of CA, and 7th in the nation.  

In 1993 I was asked to ride in the Rose Parade with a group of riders who placed top 10 in the state of CA.  It was so much fun and such an honor to be asked!  I don't have many pictures from it though.  

What a fun walk down memory lane.  I miss riding.  If I had the chance (and the money and time) to own another horse, I would in a heartbeat.

And now my niece Grace is starting horseback riding lessons and Lisa says she loves it as much as we did when we were her age.  Lisa and Scott  are in sooooooo much trouble.

I am hoping she will let me her ride her new horse next time I come visit!  ;)

Busy

I promised my new job wasn't going to cause my blog fall by the wayside.

I am terrible at keeping promises. Apparently.

I think about writing on my blog all the time.  Yup, I think about it. I just never do it.

My job is mostly to blame.  It is crazy busy.  Like have no time to breathe busy.  Then when I get home I am so tired.  I surf the internet for an hour and then I watch a couple of hours of t.v. and then fall into bed.

And start the whole process over again.

My job is  great. But I can honestly say I have never worked at a job that has been this busy.  Even when I worked with kids, and it was crazy and loud and messy at least I had moments where I could breathe.  Not so with this job.  They have 5 lines and they ring off.  the.  hook. We turn away new patients every single day because we are booking into December. It's crazy.  I had no idea so many had problems with their skin.   :)

I barely have time to choke down some lunch on my break and many days my break doesn't even consist of a full hour because I can't go to lunch until all the patients leave and one of our doctors is *always* running behind.

It can be exhausting.  But I have been logging a lot of overtime and they pay me time and a half for it, so I can't complain about that.

Weekends have consisted mostly of catching up on sleep and watching movies and just hanging out in my p.j.'s.  No complaints there either.

We have been loving the new Fall television lineup.  We watch a lot of t.v.  Most of it we record and then save up and watch it all on the weekends. Sometimes there are so many shows we can't even watch them all in one weekend (Did I mention we watch a lot of t.v.?)


I am still hanging around a lot on Pinterest.  I just love it there.  I can't even tell what it is about it that is so addicting but when I do get the chance to be online I find myself heading over there more often than here or FB.

I'm kind of done with FB.  They have been making a lot of changes and they are about to make a lot more.  The new ones look really cool.  Most of the changes I like but some of them I can't stand.

I know, I know, it's free(I wish I had a dollar for every person that said this to me).  But I can't get behind some of the changes to privacy so I just won't be over there as much.

I will still be there, posting ocasional status updates or pictures, but if I want to comment on something I will use a private message or an e-mail.

I have been posting more on Google + so if you are over there, look me up.

I suppose that's it.  A really boring update to my blog.  Nothing exciting going on here.

I did get to go horseback riding last Saturday and that was super fun.  I have been thinking about doing a post on that but I can't promise anything.

Because I am terrible at keeping promises.

Soap for a good cause

My friend is selling some lovely hand made soaps as a fundraiser to bring their second kid home from China.  Handmade soap is one of my favorite things and I have ordered a few of my favorite scents.  I can't wait until they come!

They have a bunch of great scents to choose from. These would make awesome teacher's gifts.

You should go over and check it out!

Click HERE to go to their site.




I saw this on Pinterest last night and it cracked me up.  (This is for you, K)

Have you all heard of planking?  I am strangely fascinated by it.  Mostly because I don't get it.  No really, I don't get it at all.  But I can't help myself from looking at pictures of people doing it. (Google it) People are WEIRD.

Tired

(How cute are these pandas?)

That about sums up my life right now.   Tired.

The new job is partly to blame but the fact that I don't get enough quality sleep is mostly to blame.  I don't sleep well most nights.  Either I toss and turn all night or I go to sleep fine but wake up at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. and can't get back to sleep.  On those days I'm so exhausted I can't see straight.

I do take medication to help me sleep, as well as Melatonin(which honestly does nothing for me) and I am very strict about "sleep hygiene" but many nights per week it just doesn't work.   It has been decided that sleep will probably be a lifelong problem for me.

My sleep apnea has been worse lately too. Joe says he can hear me snoring from the other room on some nights and I wake myself up quite often due to snoring as well.  I don't have my machine anymore, as I need to re-do my sleep study and I just haven't had the time to do it.  Yes, I know it's important.  It's just a pain to schedule an overnight appointment and now with my insurance changing I have to wait until that is all sorted out.  Not to mention I really want to schedule it on a day I can either have off the next day or go in late because I swear I may have slept a total of one or two hours the last time I did one.  I'm not even sure how they got the info they needed for the study.  They should have called it an awake study because that's what I was for most of the night.

One more thing put on the back burner for now.

My body has also been slow in adjusting to working five days a week.  Working four days per week really suited me and helped with the chronic fatigue I suffer from due to the kidney disease.  Not much to be done about that though.  I just really try to get plenty of rest on the weekends.  I also started working 8:30-5:30 instead of 8:00-5:00 and I am finding that little extra time to sleep in in the mornings is nice.

Aside from working five days I am really loving my new job.  It is stressful at times and crazy busy but the day just flies by.  I swear I look at the clock one minute and it's 8:00 a.m. and I blink my eyes and it's time for lunch.

I love that.

The other thing I love is how thankful they are to have me.

Almost every day someone thanks me for being there and tells me I am doing a good job.

That is so weird for me.  I have never experienced that before.  And I don't just mean from my old job (where they pretty much told me the opposite.  Nothing like having your boss tell you you suck at your job).

I mean even from my job before that, where I worked for 15 years.  I always got excellent yearly reviews when I worked there but no one ever just walked up to me and said "Hey, you are doing a great job".

But they do at this job.  It kind of makes me uncomfortable actually.  I'm just not used to it.

I'm so grateful to have this job too, which really changes your outlook.  I'm just very grateful.  I'm sure a little of that will wear off as time goes by but for now it's a pretty good place to be.

Appreciated and thankful.  Two things I haven't felt in a very long time.



Anyway, I swore that I wouldn't let my blog go by the wayside if I started working full time, so this is my boring attempt at at least posting something semi-regularly.

Sorry it wasn't more interesting.  Did I mention I have been tired?  :)

Update on the new job

I have been meaning to do an update on my new job but when I get home from work I am too tired to do much on the computer and then time kind of slips away from me and I totally forget about it.




My new job sucks and I hate it and I wish I never left my old job.


I'M JUST KIDDING!!!  I know some people who probably hope the above sentence  is true.

But too bad. Because  my new job is going well.

Very well actually.

The first week was stressful and I had a hard time adjusting to all the changes.  Week number two was easier.

And as I finish up week three (can you believe it?)  things are pretty much awesome.  I caught on quickly to how their computer software works and know my way around pretty well already.  Of course there is a learning curve and I still have so much to learn but so far so good.  Very good.

Plus it has some really great perks (aside from the better pay and excellent benefits).

I get a deep discount on some excellent products. If you need something and we carry it, drop me a line.  I will hook you up.

Pharmaceutical drug reps come by quite often.  Not only are they easy on the eyes, but they bring us treats quite often.  They actually have us fax them a request sheet for everyone in the office so we all get exactly what we want.  Starbucks.  Juice it Up.  Gourmet cupcakes.  It's pretty sweet(literally).

Then two days a week we have catered lunches as well.  This totally rocks because I have been packing my lunch every day and I already have the lunchbox blahs when it comes to deciding what to pack each day.  And the food they bring in is not only delicious, but healthy.

I have actually lost 6 pounds in the last three weeks.  I think part of it is stress but the fact that I'm not eating crap every day is definitely part of it.

It's only going to get better from here and I wake up every day grateful to have this job.



Although things overall have been very good, yesterday was a nightmare because we had a power outage around quarter to four.  All of the rooms but one in our office don't have windows, so people were lying on tables half clothed in the pitch dark.  And not one flashlight was to be found(nice emergency plan there).  The doctors were having to use their cell phones as flashlights so the patients could get dressed.  What a nightmare!  Then people were still showing up for their appointments and they were pissed that we couldn't see them. People are crazy.  We had no lights, no phones, no air conditioner.........you know..........NO POWER.  What part of that is hard for people to grasp?  All of our charts are electronic too, so no access to those either.  One woman actually asked if the dr. could just freeze off her child's warts, since they drove all the way down there and all.  She wanted her daughter's warts frozen off....IN THE DARK.

Crazy, I tell you.

Then the nightmare continued for me as I tried to drive home only to discover that none of the traffic signals were working and the streets were completely gridlocked.  I tried driving the opposite direction of my house hoping the signals would be working elsewhere an d I could work my way back, but the power was out in all of the surrounding cities too and there was nothing but rows and rows of cars just parked.  Plus I have no air in my car and it was at least 90 degrees out.  I was soaked in sweat.  It took me almost exactly two hours to get home and I live only 25 minutes away.

Like I said, nightmare!

We have power at home now but I hear the power is still out over there and all of San Diego County as well.  I hope they sort it out soon.  What a pain for all those poor people.  My little inconvenience last night is nothing compared to that.

I was very happy to see Friday roll around this week, even though it was a short one.

TGIF!

And The Winner Is............

I drew the name for the winner of the digital scrapbook software this morning.  I meant to get to it last night but I was too tired.

I was also going to choose the winner via the random number generator thingy but it costs money to use it (and I am cheap) so I went old school and just wrote everyone's names on a slip of paper (for however many entries you got) and pulled one name out of a basket.

Anyway, the winner is.......................

Tracy at My Minivan Rocks!

Congratulations Tracy!  I will be in touch to give you the code to redeem your software.  Happy scrapping!

For those of you that didn't win, My Memories  is offering this coupon code for $10.00 off the software, plus a $10.00 credit in their digital store.  Just use this coupon code at check-out:

STMMMS68603


Their website is HERE

Thanks everyone, for playing along!

My Memories Scrapbook software {giveaway}

Last chance to enter the giveaway for the scrapbook software.  I will be closing the entries tonight at 10:00 p.m. and drawing a name tomorrow morning.  There aren't that many entries so your chance of winning is pretty good!