Life in Aylmer Quebec

With Emma this morning and Todd, we discussed marriage and whom you marry, and why.  And whom Emma will marry, and why.  And how sometimes you don’t marry the one you think you want, but you marry the one you need. If you are lucky enough.  And trick questions.  Like how she asked me if I married Daddy because I needed him or wanted him?  How can you explain the intricacies and tangles of love and need to your almost eight year old?  Suffice to say, I told her that I was lucky enough to both love and need him, and that there are certain things that are just really hard to explain, that you have to experience it yourself.  She wonders though.  Sometimes, so do I!

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I was thinking about getting another part time job, weekends, so had contacted a farm that I knew was looking.  Turns out, they called my boss for a reference (which I had not oked, but they knew where I worked), and she called me, worried that I was thinking of leaving.  I assured her that I wasn’t, and explained that I just wanted to work a bit more, so she offered me more hours on the weekend.  I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I will take her offer.  I love working with the horses, to me it is not a job, and a bit of extra coin would be nice to go towards my savings and my debts.  And it is so great that the barn is a 15 minute drive, and not an hour commute like most other barns would be.  Plus I already know all the horses, most of the people, and the routine.  So I’m pretty happy.  Oh yeah, the other barn had offered me the job too!  So that felt pretty good.

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Closer to forty than thirty.  Been that way for a bit, but another birthday bites the dust.  I know I’ve said it before, but why is it when you are a kid, you can’t wait to grow up.  Once you are grown up, you wish you could be a kid again.  With your entire life stretched out before you, unmapped and free.  As a kid, you hate the rules, the homework, the bedtimes, the inability to set your own plan and the ability of the grownups to tell you what to do.  As a grownup, you hate the debt, the work, the lack of sleep, the inability to set your own hours, and the ability of others to affect your life in ways that you have no control over.  And your life is no longer stretched out before you, it is now passing you by faster than you can blink, and if you don’t grab the things you want now, you will never get them.  I can accept the fact that I will never ride in an Olympic, and I can be happy for Eric Lamaze  and the Canadian team for doing what they did, but I still have goals and hopes for myself.  I will ride Jumper at an A show, I will have a powerhouse horse at some point, and I will savour it.  I know I will never be a vet, I will never be a Grand Prix rider, I will probably never write a novel (although I may surprise myself yet), I will never win the lottery, I will never play with a big Symphony, and I will never be the Prime Minister.  That’s okay.  I can take it.  But I will accomplish some of my goals, even if they have to be in a minor key.  I may be older, but I’m not dead yet.

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Indulgence for the week:  Jilly Cooper.

Need I say more?

Really?

Okay.  I absolutely love her books.  Totally soaked in alcohol, sex, british bad boys and girls, horses and hounds, outrageous behaviour, and pure absolute unreal fun, fun, fun.  Life is not a novel, but if it was, it should be a Jilly Cooper book.  As a teenager, the book ‘Riders’ made the rounds of our Pony Club, and never in my sheltered life had I read something so provocative and entertaining.  We passed that book around like a joint, hiding it from our parents, and treasuring it.  Worried that if it was found, it would be seized and destroyed.  Maybe that was part of the magic.  Whatever it was, I still treasure her books.  I reread them every once in a while the way some people reread Lord of the Rings.  My Magic.