Wet Cotton

Every year I think I'm ready for the heat and humidity of a Missouri summer.... and I never am. The first few 80+ degree days are miserable, but I acclimate. And I think hey, not so bad! And then we get strings of the 90+ degree days, and I go back to why do I live in the Midwest again? I don't do well with extremes of temperature -- although extreme cold is just as bad (I'm looking at you, polar vortex from a few years ago), extreme heat is the one we deal with more regularly. Add in the humidity so high it feels like you're breathing through wet cotton.... ugh. I spend a lot of time hiding inside with cold beverages.

Preferably cold beverages in my new favorite pineapple sipper.

I will say that my summer hours are helping this year -- although it's not always easy to make the drive out to the barn to work Ruby in the mornings unless DH is doing chores, I am definitely working Cinna more regularly. Of course, with no one home, all the work is lunging, so super boring media. But she's definitely coming along. She also sprouted a case of scratches on one leg overnight, so cleaning and treating that has been added to the routine. Luckily it was pretty small when I first spotted it, and it's already responding to treatment -- free Rolex samples FTW!

Testing out a new bit with her drop noseband bridle (because we're still playing musical training set ups to find her favorite).

Insert treats here plz&thanx

Majestical unicorn, obvs

j/k awkward baby with legs everywhere

 

I did manage to squeeze in a birthday ride on Ruby last week, and she's the same old superstar she always is. I picked one of our varied terrain fields and we did a lot of trotwork, focusing on changing my diagonals (and her bend) every 10 to 15 strides. I also tried to mix in 10 strides of sitting trot focusing on straightness every few switches. It took her a minute to figure out what I wanted, but once we were both on the same page, it felt really good. Did it look good? No idea, but that's more "dressage-ing" than I've done in a month, so I'll take it. On that front, I have an instructor I want to contact about resuming lessons, but the onslaught of a string of 90 degree days kind of deflated my excitement... 

 

I was actually trying to take a picture of her shiny spotty turnout buddy for his mom, but Ruby photobombed looking cute so enjoy haha.

But basically I just wanted to drop by and say we're still trucking along. DH is less than 3 weeks out from graduating and then hopefully we'll be able to settle in to more of our new "normal", whatever that may look like. I'm also excited because we may get to host a fellow blogger overnight in a few weeks as she drives through -- more details about that in the future! ;)

Also I got these fun reins in the mail yesterday and am STUPID EXCITED to put them on Ruby's bridle.