FAMILY TIME

Before moving to the city, I lived in the country.  I rode horses, helped work cattle, competed in rodeos, cleaned out the barn and all sorts of other farm related activities.  I was constantly on horses.  After moving to the city in 2007, my time of riding was cut down drastically.  I mean to nil.  On rare occasions, I would get on a horse at my parents for about 5 minutes and be done.  But a couple of Saturdays ago, I went down there with the primary reason to ride.  Luckily my lovely and generous sister Amy let me ride her horse Obie, since I have not had a horse of my own in about 6 years.  And I must say, I did not forget how to ride!!  Yay!  Got on the horse correctly, did not fall off, sat correctly when loping and remembered how to barrel race the right way.  I rode 30+ minutes and had so much fun.  My parents and 6 yo niece Morgan rode their horses too.  It felt like old times – which translates into fun and wonderful times with family.

Here are a couple of pics of my parents, my niece and I on our horses.  Mama’s horse is named Bucket, my dad’s is Shinbone and Morgan’s is Monkey.  *My dad has always had a penchant for naming horses and dogs unusual names.  ;-)

 

 

 

Also, yesterday (7/6/13) I was able to spend quality time with Amy and Morgan – though not enough quality for any of us, it was still great to hang out with them!  J  They came to Atlanta from a small country town and according to Morgan the drive up was not good because of all the traffic here.  Haha!  We went to lunch, shopping and then came back to my place so we could go swimming.  Of course with all of the rain we have had these past few days, the swimming only lasted 5 minutes.  To go to lunch and shopping, we took my car – my awesome and fast Mustang.  It is definitely not a mom car.  Since Morgan is still required to ride in a child’s seat in vehicles, it looked completely out of place in my car – kind of threw off my car’s ‘cool’ character.  But she did have fun riding in it and loved the sound of my engine as much as I do.  The fact that she wanted to hear the engine be loud as much as I do was pretty dang amazing and funny.  (Side note - I told Amy when she was pregnant with Morgan that Morgan was going to take after me to some extent.  Her liking my car’s engine and other factors over the past 6 years have proved my prediction to be true.  Hehe!)    Oh, Morgan was so excited about coming up to see me, she woke up at 5am that morning.  Amy did not plan on leaving their house until 9:30a.  It is nice to be loved and wanted!  J

 

the misplaced carseat  ;-)

swimming the 5 minutes it did not rain

 

Random Musings on Different Topics

1)      People walking/jogging/driving by themselves and using their ipod or smart phone with both earbuds in really confound me.  I cannot believe that many adults do not think about their personal safety and do not want to be fully aware of things going on around them.  How is that adults do not give any consideration to safety and awareness?  If exercising outside, do you not want to hear people and cars coming up behind you?  If driving, do you not want to be able to hear emergency vehicle sirens so you will know to pull over to the side of the road? Why do adults not use their common sense and use only one earbud when doing any of these activities solo?  I have a hard time fathoming how people can take such a possible gamble with their safety at times.  I am grateful that my hubby does have concern for his wellbeing and uses common sense and only uses one earbud for his ipod when he walks alone. 
 
2)      I saw a guy walking down the sidewalk today barefooted.  Eww eww eww.  So gross.  I looked to see if maybe he was carrying some kind of shoes.  But nope, his hands were empty.  So I theorized that he really hates his feet and hopes to cut one foot or the other and give himself gangrene.

3)      Our 3.5 year old fairly active dog is becoming lazy and possibly even more worthless than normal.  It was confirmed today that he prefers the elevator to the stairs in our building – he stopped in front of the elevator when I was trying to walk him to the stairs.  Has the ‘lazy and inactive American’ syndrome infected my dog?  He’d rather take the elevator about 60% of the time when going in/out of the building.

4)      So I heard Chris Brown’s latest song – Fine China - and these lyrics were part of the chorus:
         
          It's alright, I'm not dangerous
          When you're mine, I'll be generous
          You're irreplaceable
          A collectible, just like fine china

Here are my thoughts:

Line 1 – he’s LYING.  He is dangerous. Does he feel guilty about singing that line?

             Line 2 – Yeah, he’ll be generous alright.  Generous with his fists and rages
            Line 3 – He does not treat his real life women like they are irreplaceable.  And I am sure
                            once he is done with them, they are glad to be gone.
            Line 4 – More like broken china.  That makes it trash - not a collectible.

5)      Heard at an Ethiopian restaurant recently “Imagine coming to an Ethiopian restaurant and getting too much food.”  My thought was – could you imagine a native Ethiopian person coming to the states for the first time and visiting a restaurant serving foods from his homeland?  His eyes would bug out at the amount of food offered in one sitting and think “what the hell!  I had to fly several thousand miles to get this much food at one time.  Ahh man, that ain’t right.”

 6)      If you ride a scooter or a motorcycle and are a sitting at a red-light several cars back and you ride your scooter or motorcycle up the right side of the cars to get to the front of the line – you are an asshole.  Plain and simple.  If a person does this on a bicycle, I can understand their wanting to do this because cyclists do not have an engine. 

 7)      If you are an instructor for a driving school, and you (the instructor) are driving the teaching car, I do not believe you should run red lights!!   Even when there is not a student in the car, driving instructors should set good examples for the public in general at all times, especially when they are driving the teaching car.  I mean, from whom do you think we learned to drive???!!!    **BTW, actually saw a driving instructor run a red light.**

 
8)      In the past couple of months, one of the roads I take home from work is a residential road with lots of cars parked on the street.  There is this one car that wasn’t a Ford Crown Victoria but the equivalent from another car maker.  (I know, not very observant.  But whatevs.)  The one thing that I did notice though was that for a few weeks the back end of the car was sitting very low.  At first I thought that they just had house things or luggage in the trunk.  About 2 weeks go by and the back end is still quite low.  So now I am thinking there are dead bodies in the trunk – shouldn’t the neighbors be concerned and call the police. 

So finally one day the car is gone.  I then think that the criminals decided to finally hide the bodies or the neighbors wised up and at last called the police.  As I drove down that road a few days later, this Ford-Crown-Vic-look-alike potential crime scene, I mean, car was back.  I guess the car owners decided to bury the bodies.  (I think the car should be searched.)