I treasure my remaining friends.  I sometimes have tsunami-like-affects on relationships.  I have a propensity towards intenseness, or so I’ve been told.  My husband and I constantly circle-the-wagons.  We squinty-eye each other and keep the necessary, heaved-projectile distance apart.  We have this “dance” that has lasted…………….hmmmmmmmmmmm……………..forty years this coming August the sixth………………………the anniversary of the Enola Gay’s flight over Hiroshima.  I’m fairly sure there have been times when Paul wishes he had a full-time “taster” at his side at meal-times.  And he’s less of a sound-sleeper these days since I’ve turned into a night-crawling insomniac.  I think his light sleeping may have begun in and around the time that I may have mentioned a newly discovered pastime of watching people while they sleep.  I’ve found that marriage is like any twelve-step-program.  We’ve just managed to two-step our way through forty years.

Hey, Edison, DaVinci, and Mozart were insomniacs!

I have a couple good friends.  Good, patient, tolerant friends.  Simone who you’ve met, and Esther who you haven’t met yet………………..and no, you guessed it, Ester is not her real name either.

Esther is my cigar-smoking riding  buddy.  She’s like this Energizer bunny.  Or is it Bulova timepieces?  Which is it that “takes a lickin’ & keeps on tickin”?  Anyway, that’s Esther.

Now where my seat is all over the saddle, Esther is controlled with good posture and composure even if her horse is going nuts beneath her!  And I swear she doesn’t sweat!  I curse.  I wail.  I flail.  Both my horse & I flatulate.  It’s not a pretty sight.  Ester doesn’t even have horse-smudge on her even when she wears white………..who wears white around horses!?!

Now along that line, when my daughter first got involved in dressage I was dumb-struck to see that dressage riders rode in white breeches!  Who does that!  And why?  I would understand that all breeches should be mud or throw-up colored, but not white!!!  I understand that dressage is steeped in military history.  I understand that it takes huge amounts of discipline for both horse and rider.  The levels are hard to earn and difficult.

But being completely self-focused here once again……….as a spectator-mom, watching a dressage competition……………..honestly, it’s like watching paint dry.  And the type of food vendors have available for sale…………..it’s pita-this or turkey-wrap-that.  And it’s bottled water con or sans gas…………………..there ain’t no cheap bourbon and there ain’t no deep-fried Snickers bars.  (As described before, I am a connoisseur of fried Fair food…………somehow in my mind a dressage show should have Fair food.)———DISAPPOINTED!  (Has anybody seen the movie “A Fish Called Wanda”?)

So Esther is out there on Level Prince George (or whatever it’s called) and my daughter’s out there on another some-such level.  Both looking so elegantly equestrian (even though my daughter is on a Percheron plow horse & it’s mid-day in August in Florida).  She’s competing against people who have more lineage recorded on their mounts than I even know of with my own family tree!  I am so tempted to yell “Gee/Haw” from the stands, but that would certainly cause my daughter to implode and disappear in a poof of dust.

Meanwhile, I’m cruising the barns (in the shade) looking for a fried elephant ear or anything non-healthy without kale and scoping out the Austrian grooms (Now they can wear white!).

Which reminds me, Ester even had her own dressage saddle made to fit her own personal backside as well as her horse’s own personal back…………………….plus she told me that the saddle-maker had a cool Germanic accent and was a sun-tanned hunk.  Hmmmmmmmmm.  The perks of dressage riding?……………..maybe not just wet paint?…………………..I’ll have to re-think this one.  I would expect there would have to be the necessary measurements taken much like a tailor? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Hey, we’re old.  We’re not dead!

Ester also taught me the value of good champagne.  Previously I had always thought that a good champagne was any brand that you had multiple bottles of at any one sitting.  But———mais, non!  I still will always drift in the direction of multiple bottles (just planning ahead, you see), but there IS a difference!  Ester even taught my girls the difference………………but that will be their own future food-budget’s issue…………….not mine.  HA!

Now are you surprised after meeting Ester that she’s the person who taught me how to make the perfect Cosmo using………………….Persian limes!  (I’m currently trying to sprout little baby lime-ette trees from the seeds.)

Simone & Ester are both better riders than I am.  Much better.  They are prettier riders than I am too.  Did you know that in dressage there are three (3) sets of reins!!??!!  AND the horse has an extra bit in its mouth!?!  I can’t keep track of one set of reins or even be sure that the one bit I use is over the horse’s tongue!

Bell, don’t worry, honey———don’t listen to any of this.  This will never, ever, never happen in our riding career together.  You and I will comfortably remain back-woods/scrub riders.  You will have one weed-caked bit in your mouth at a time and I will probably have some throw-up on my breeches.  That much I can promise and assure you.