boonedog

Emma June and I leave to go and stay at the guest apartment at my parent's place on Mercer Island today so that I can go to my PATH workshop tomorrow at Little Bit.  I am feeling very nervous about the whole thing for a variety of reasons.  For one thing I don't know anybody out there and I just did a quick search of their staff on their website to make sure that the crazy lady from last winter, Jan, does not work there.  The one who said I had no business being a therapeutic riding instructor because of my hobby of mounted shooting.  And who has a plan to rid the island of all us horrible pro-gun people and make it the peaceful island it was meant to be.  Anyway, she is not on the staff so hopefully will not be there.  And if she is it doesn't fucking matter.  If she is going to tarnish my image somehow to them and the instructors won't even give me a chance to show who I am outside of gossip then fuck them.  Sigh.

Also, it's supposed to be really hot this week and I think all our classes are outside and I'm hoping I'm ok with that. The hottest day is supposed to be Friday though and we're only in class till 1pm so hopefully it won't get super hot for too long before then.  And I can go back to my folk's place and go swimming in the lake with Emma June.

Then on Saturday I'm volunteering at RTR with a massage booth during their ride-a-thon.  And of course I'm worried that Roehbe and his wife will show up since he's their farrier.  But honestly, why would he? That is a day that he usually works and it's not like he's that involved with them and it's an hour away from where he lives so what would be the draw to go all the way up there? And he doesn't strike me as the kind of person who thinks of going out of his wife to "be there for support" for people.  He kisses up to them because he's got this weird "I'm so honorable because I support our troops" thing going on and he seems to put soldiers up on a pedastal (something I'm sure about them actually having all the qualities he lacks - follow-through, humility, ability to learn and work as a team, integrity, honest, etc).  Anyway, even if he was there, he and maybe he and Sarah would be two people out of however many are going - and I already have Michael, Ashleigh and Cheryl there who like me just fine and are doubtfully going to change their opinion of me just by gossip from him, and Candice and Ethan will be there and I KNOW they won't listen to gossip from him, and Maura is going with me and two new people I befriended at the Summervale show, Gene and Tammy may stop by since they live down there.  So, there are a lot of people I connect with going so worrying about some immature, uneducated little redneck with a chip on his shoulder seems kind of silly.  That's like worrying that there might be a mosquito at the party.  One mosquito, maybe two tops.

So, I'm mostly just anxious about the unknown.  And I feel overwhelmed by stuff we have to do before we leave so instead of getting on it and doing it I feel like just sitting here feeling frozen by "stuff to do".  On that note, I should probably get on it and do all the stuff I need to do before we go catch our ferry this afternoon.

Urgh. I am so sore and have a terrible headache. I think I'm having a flare-up and once again I'm having trouble with the mail order pharmacy who has not sent me my humira even though the doctor called it in a month ago. I was doing ok without it but now I'm starting to really feel the symptoms. Blah.

Work is a mixed bag. I like the paycheck and I'm starting to understand my job, but the wife portion of my mom & pop shop boss duo is really annoying. She admits she has no idea what my job is but then tries to act like a boss and go over my job duties (as best she could figure them out) and find out if everything is getting done because she's not sure it is. But part of why she's not sure it is is that she really has no idea what I do. And she apparently does not totally understand what she is doing either. Thankfully, she does not like to come in very often so she's not there very much. It's much more relaxed when she's not there. She usually rolls in about 9:30 or 10am, then takes a long lunch from noon to 2pm and then I leave at 3pm so I don't have to see her much. She can sound enormously condescending - not just to me but to the other employees and she has even said rather snottily behind Jacob's back, "Oh, Jacob has no idea what he's doing back there I don't think" which more means to me "I have no idea what Jacob does so I project that onto him". I imagine she'll do the same with me but as long as I don't take it on I should be fine. This is not a permanent career move for me - it is a helpful paycheck while it lasts.

As far as permanent career moves go I'm following up on the Path International stuff for training to be a therapeutic riding instructor. It looks like they're having a workshop in Redmond in Sept. so that's pretty cool that I don't have to travel far for that. That would've been expensive. And I found someone in Tacoma who is willing to be my required mentor and a facility in South Tacoma where I can volunteer to get required volunteer hours.

I was supposed to go out to a mounted shooting practice in Chehalis this Sunday but it turns out it is canceled. One of the women I was going to go down to meet down there cleans and repairs blankets for folks on the island and I said I wanted to pick up my horse blankets still so I would come down anyway if she wanted to hang out. She offered to meet me half-way in Lacey and we could go to Cabella's and it turns out that is really close to the Nisqually Nature Preserve so we're going to take the kids and go for a walk there. So, I'm glad that turned out. I was looking forward to meeting her in person because she seems very nice and down-to-earth and I was kind of looking forward to gun shopping with her.

I was a little anxious about going to Chehalis because of the R-issue (I'm tired of typing out the name Roehbe) and fears of running into him especially cause he lives 2 blocks from Ariane (the girl I'm meeting). But as time goes on I'm starting to just not give a shit if I do run into him. I'm feeling stronger about being an ok person even if I do make mistakes and feeling more secure that there really isn't much he could do to me (short of something freaky and violent which hopefully he is not the type to do that and thank god there are actually sheriff's deputies on the island and one across the street from me). Anyway - socially I'm pretty sure I don't need to worry too much about him. If he says shit to Ariane about me at this point hopefully she's mature enough and we've talked enough that she would just ask me about it.

I still have bouts of feeling really humiliated about the whole thing. I find myself wishing I hadn't deleted all our texts so I could show them to a non-biased party (like a therapist) and ask them, "Was I crazy? Was I delusional? Did I make this whole situation up in my head?" I was reading articles the last few days on limerence - or delusional infatuation. I guess trying to figure out if I was delusional to think there was some sort of romantic feelings for a couple weeks between myself and Roehbe. The way he framed it, he was just flirting and being nice and I misconstrued it somehow. I knew logically that he wasn't going to leave his wife for and start dating me but emotionally I at least felt like there was something between us - something that he had purposely separated as "special between just the two of us" and excluding his wife. Which made me feel awful for her.

If I step back and just look at the fact though it was our typical "guy trying to cheat on wife" scenario and I didn't end up falling for it. I mean, my emotions got a little whacked out but I never even touched him and I had the self-preservation sense to after it all started when he came out here to shoe my horses have it fly out of my mouth almost immediately, "We have to stop flirting like this! I can't do this to your wife!" So if anyone was being "the real man" in the situation it was me. If anyone was taking care of and being true to his wife it was me. So, really, I should probably step back, look at the situation and pat myself on the back for being the bigger person and the only one of the two of us with any sense of morals and respect for his wife (who I've never even met). It does hurt my feelings that he was never actually my friend, but then that's compounded by my hurt feelings that Audrey was never actually my friend. Maybe she thought she was my friend but I'm not even sure of that. Who knows. Her idea of friendship might just be that it's ok to talk shit behind your friends backs. Regardless she is not my friend.

My cough has almost completely gone away which has given going to bed a whole new appeal because I can lay down without starting to cough until I gag. I've been catching up on sleep the last few days.

I had to work 45 minutes late because we had a big order to get out to "the billionaire" - this guy who was friends with Steve Jobs and has some big wig Tibetan Buddhist place in San Francisco that he needed cushions for. Anyway, he didn't like the blue fabric that we had so he sent us a bunch of this nasty wool stuff (that made my hands itch because of the stuff the wool was treated with) that cost about $49 a yard. Anyway, Lidunn sewed 50 cushion skins out of "the nasty stuff" as we called it and we had to finish making all of them today. They looked very nice, they just felt very uncomfortable and of course without my gloves they made my hands itch. Anyway, we had to get it out today so we had to kick ass to get it all done before UPS showed up for their daily pick-up at 4pm. Now I'm tired. But we got it done and it looked very nice (even though who in the right mind is going to want to sit on this stuff? Billionaires are weird). I'm tired now though. Lots of heavy lifting. And I'm already sore from trying out a yoga class on Wed. night.

Yesterday was nice - I went out to the Port Madison Indian Reservation to massage a horse for the Native Youth Horsemanship Program. The lady who runs it lives in a little one room shack that was really cozy and the horses just roam freely around her 30 acre yard. She wanted me to work on her 18 year old stallion and he was so amazingly sweet. He didn't react in any typical "stallion" ways and seemed to really enjoy his massage and yawned and farted a lot and near the end he actually turned his head, nuzzled me a little and tried to groom me as a way of saying "thank you." It was nice that the lady who runs it gushed over how good I was with her horses and how much they liked me and that the stallion is usually stand-offish with strangers but seemed to really take to me. I did say that most horses really like people who massage them so it wasn't too hard to get him to like me. I'm going back in a couple weeks to work on her mare. But since she doesn't have much money I said I'd go out for payment of a couple of her cd's that she made back in the day when she was professional musician in Nashville.

(I started writing that last night - Friday - and got distracted - finishing this Sat. a.m.)

I was supposed to ride in a clinic this weekend up at the park but I couldn't find a ride for Mr. Geir. That was disappointing but now in retrospect I think it turned out ok because I need as much time as possible to catch up on work around the house and yard as I can get. And I'm sore from work yesterday and lifting all those 30 to 40 pound boxes which were big and bulky and not easy to carry. It's not so hard to lift something small that's 40 pounds, but it's a lot harder when you have to carry it with your arms spread way out and trying to balance it.

Next week I have some parents with their little kids coming to meet me about riding lessons so I'd like to have some things - like the grooming area in the carport all set up by then. And I'd like to get the garden done this weekend so I can start planting stuff. Although it's probably fine I waited this long because the night time temperatures keep dropping below 40.

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