Before I Forget

Yesterday morning, as I puttered around the house w/my headache, I actually turned on the television of my own free will, flipped channels around a bit, ended up seeing horses on PBS & had to stop for a bit. It was a Nature Special, called 'Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies'. Compared to our wild bays, paints & buckskins, Montana's mountain horses are dark & vibrant in color - blood bays, blue roans, blacks - all the colors of stone and cloud imaginable (I wish I could find a picture of the horse Kathrens dubbed 'Many Coup' - he was a slate-grey blue roan). Cloud was a pale ivory stallion. Like our mustangs (technically mestizos), they have broad chests, pot bellies and are shorter & stockier than say, a thoroughbred or Arabian. They're basically where quarter horses came from. A woman, Ginger Kathrens, followed this particular stallion around for about 5 years & biographed his life, from birth to starting his own herd. Kathrens had documented Cloud's earlier unsuccessful attempts to steal mares from other stallions or to sneak mares away from watchful matriarchs out of season. Horses are bloody fighters and constantly fight one another during breeding season... but anyway... Many people, especially those not connected to their pets & livestock & those who aren't Pagan, consider animals as being soulless, emotionless & completely driven by instinct. I can't remember the exact words that Kathrens said it in, but she was saying something along the line that 'Cloud's family started not in a furious battle with another stallion but in a moment of perfect stillness'. He had found a mare that had separated from her herd to give birth. She was accompanied by a yearling foal from the previous Spring, and had given birth to a sickly foal. She refused to leave the foal to return to her herd, and Cloud became her companion. He stayed with her even after the foal died & waited patiently with her til she was done grieving. And instead of returning to her own herd, which hadn't moved far from where she had strayed off, she stayed with Cloud & followed him instead, and the yearling colt stuck w/his mama. I was amazed at the Universe for at least a few brief moments and I thought I might want to remember it at some point.

Rob & his dad managed to actually fix the car instead of breaking it more.

I went to the dentist (dunh-dunh-dunh!!!) today for a check-up - I was supposed to get a cleaning as well, but the hygenist was out sick. Of course. I got bite-wing x-rays. You'd think modern technology would let them make the film a little smaller for smaller mouths, but nooooo. So the underside of my tongue & the roof of my mouth are all sliced up. And the dentist asks, "So, why has it been so long since your last check-up?" I'm like, because the x-rays make me bleed. And the teeth cleanings make me bleed. And the flossing. And of course, I've got 5 cavaties, so I had to wrangle it down to 2 visits, because if I have to keep going back I won't go, which is why I opted to have teeth pulled out instead of root canals. I could just let the big cavity go til that tooth breaks out & get it pulled, too, but I'm trying to get all this done before the end of June in case my insurance suddenly ends thru no fault of my own. I figure I can either get good & drunk before I go in, or take maybe 20mg of Valium & see if it has any effect on me. I may end up bolting for the door. Just have to wait the three - four weeks til the appointment & see. Gods do I hate the dentist.

2 more weeks of training Kelly, and then I might actually get a vacation. Whheeeee!