What a time, What a time

I was originally going to put the title as "what a week"  but the past couple (or more?) weeks have kind of blurred together so I really have no certain clue what happened when.

But the past little while has been trying.  The saying: Everything happens at once, is most definitely true.

Our family dog, Mckayla, had started showing signs of age.  And her condition very rapidly digressed until my parents decided she had to be put down.  That was in a matter of a couple of weeks.

I was devastated, she'd been a part of our lives for 12 years.  Helped us get over the loss of Logan and got both me and my brother out of depression.  I was scared too, because I didn't know how to handle loosing her without having another bundle of fur to keep me distracted.  (I love my cats, but they're not very helpful in these situations).

But I did have comfort that at least I'd have Belle to ride and distract me.   HA.

Except that halfway through my riding lesson, on the same day Mckayla was being put down, she went lame.  I'm still in shock I didn't start bawling right then and there.

But I made a decision that I was not going to be angry at God.  If that's how things were going to go I was just going to trust that it was for my good.  And bawl my eyes out in the meantime.

And I think that was the key point during this whole thing.  I realized that having faith doesn't mean you're going to be happy all the time.  It means having trust, even while you're filled with despair and doubts.  It means being determined to forge ahead, even if you have no idea how things will turn out, but trusting that they will.

It also helped that I learned that yes.  I am human, I have emotions, and sometimes those emotions are part of the process.  Feeling them that is.  And grief is one of them.

That being said, things still weren't easy.  Belle and I have been having domestic issues.  Her end due to many unfortunate incidents making her a little jumpy on the crossties, and me having very little patience left to deal with the spazztic moments.  (There has been a lot of: oh my gosh seriously?? moments).

On top of all that, I received a huge heating bill, as the cheques were cashed for the memberships for show season that I seriously hoped I would actually be using (as I flashed back to a couple of springs ago when my pony injured her suspensories right before show season) and a winter that seriously will not go away.

Add to the list of 'things that suck' the fact that I was/am seriously exhausted and you have one very emotionally frazzled Leah that just wants to lay down and cry.

Easter dinner was nice, but it sucked coming home for the first time in 15 years and not having a dog run up to you, eyes bright and tail wagging.

And it also sucked having someone ask: When are you guys getting a new puppy?  Less than a week after your dog died.

Week two, started to feel better, rode some horses at work since I couldn't ride my own, and felt less depressed enough to actually try soaking my pony's foot in case it was an abscess.  (Which caused some more domestic spats).

When I woke up to snow friday(??) morning, it was noooot pretty.  I won't go into details, but I won't deny that I did in fact cry.  I've learned something about myself:  When I have to deal with big things in life, the little things become intolerable.  Snow is now on that list.

However, I've learned that, everything happens at once, can also be good things that happen at once!

Got a message from my coach saying that my pony was perfectly sound (I'm still being cautiously Yay about that one, knock on wood please).
Got to ride a fancy horse a work (Um totally over the moon yay about that one)
I downloaded an app to my phone that would let me watch General Conference (woot!)
And the snow was gone by noon.

I also rejoiced in not having to get my extremely muddy horse ready for a show.

She STILL has some mud left from this.

And even though I was chilled and shivering Saturday morning, I got to enjoy a lot of laughs and some amazingly uplifting messages.

Life does sometimes suck, but at least in those moments you can find out exactly what you're made of.

Sometimes Inspiration Hits Like an Arrow to the Head

Okay not really, but that sentence popped into my head and I wanted to use it.

General Conference + Spirit = Inspirition and guideance galore.

Sadly I was ill prepared and this conference has not been on the list of most epic.  But that's also because I missed all of yesterday, and hit and miss internet made me miss most of this afternoon's session.  But this morning?  Absolutely fantastic!  Though once I got back to my parents I bawled my eyes out.

What can I say? Sometimes I'm a hormonal woman who gets highly emotional.  90% of the time I'm a major tomboy who's one of the guys (I prefer those times).  But sometimes crying is exactly what's needed.  And it's not exactly the crying that helps (barely breathing and having tears and snot streaming down your face isn't enjoyable) but the opportunity to just feel what needs to be felt is sadly a very rare, but very freeing blessing.

What could've prompted it?  I won't go into all of it.  But I think it's partly me feeling entirely overworked.  Well... not necessarily overworked per say, but over tired.  I've been denying it for a while now, since I work at most 5 hours a day, how could that make one over worked?  But I think it's because the timing of my schedule is a bit awkward... Add to that the hour drive to get to where most of my friends live, means I have a pretty darn non existent social life.  If I didn't live at the stable where people come and go I'd have no social life, which would be a major bummer.

Though now I've hit this awkward limbo where I want to do things with people, but still don't quite follow through, or my schedule just doesn't work out.

Ironically this wasn't even what I was going to originally write about.  But I don't mind when my fingers take over and write for me, they know things.

Anywhoo, I was reading another blog (I'm reading more and more) and it suddenly hit me.  I need to write every day!  That's what I've been missing!

I've been trying to do this for years.  But what struck me this time was that I should write about my experiences every day, even if I can't post them to here.  There's been so many days where I've wished I could update my blog, and then I realized that even if I can't update it that moment, I could at least write about what's on my mind.

I think I sometimes forget that blog writing is still writing.  I've gotten overly obsessed with book mode that it kind of completely ruined my creative writing mojo.  I realized recently too that I'd stopped writing for the reasons that got me to love it so much.  I used to long to write for the characters and the stories.  To see how these visions in my head would translate to paper.  And that's what finally helped me finish a chapter I'd been avoiding working on for months.

But the habit isn't there.  I still avoid it and still don't write like I want to every day.  Which is highly counter productive to trying to get a story written.

Sometimes too, I feel completely inadequate to do what I feel I should be doing.  I feel these stories in my head are so big, I don't know how I could possibly do them enough justice.  Maybe what it all comes down too is that I'm afraid everyone will hate them and so I want to keep them hidden.

But that also fills me with anxiety cause I know they need to be written.

Sometimes I want to rip my emotions out so I can write... but I can't write without emotions so that would be null and void.

Maybe all I really need is to open up to the people around me.