This afternoon I ride not because someone needs to be trained. Not because someone need rehabilitation and physical therapy. Not because someone is getting fat and needs the exercise. Not because someone is standing at the gate begging to go too, me too, me too, dancing on pie-plate-sized hooves, pleading with jet black eyes.

No.

This afternoon, I ride because I need to.

My long-legged quarter horse mare Pinon swings into a walk the moment my butt is in the saddle, and I don’t mind. I gather up the reins and we are off. With the heeler dogs glued to our tail.

I won’t let the long, lean horse run full out to start. I’m smarter than that. And she needs to warm up. Not to mention that I’m a woman with a strong sense of self-preservation. Miss Pinon can run so fast your heart will leap right out of your mouth and get left behind in the dust on the ground, still beating like a tom tom, if you don’t watch out. I am not exaggerating.

We chew up the hills by the railroad tracks twisting a serpentine path to the south, a Centaur shadow accompanying us. I cast a look over my shoulder for the heelers, whose ragged breathe suggests they are exactly where their name implies, and I worry that the steam locomotive mare will give them a heart attack. We are so tall, our legs stretching impossibly long, the red canyon walls can’t hold us in. We almost spin off the earth, until I am relieved to feel each hoof strike the ground, and suddenly I’m a four-legged creature too. The horse tries to come in under the bit for more rein and more speed because she just wants to go fast.

Fast.

I swear we could beat the AT&SF if it came roaring by right now.

I let the quarter horse go.

We outrun The Chihuahua from the office, the surly stupid bureaucrat with a grudge, who couldn’t do what we’re doing right now for love nor money. Here, that squat creature from the nether realms simply doesn’t count. We race ahead of the pain that’s been twisting beneath my ribs like a knife for way too long. We race ahead of outpatient surgical procedures. We race ahead of beautiful boys who die young. We race ahead of food shortages and soaring gas prices and terrorists and all of the Reverend Wrights and the snake handlers and the clutch on the pickup that needs to be replaced and a kid entering junior high school next fall and alarm clocks everywhere.

We race with the sun as the mare wheels on a dime, frothing, as I’m whispering settle, settle, easy there, big girl, laying a hand on her steaming neck until we head for home with the heelers’ eyes nearly popping out of their heads in dogged determination to keep up with this brilliant blaze of fire we have become no matter what. No matter what. We race for home because Dennis will be worried if we stay out after dark, afraid we’ll burn up--woman, horse and heeler sparks combusting out of control--and he’ll come looking for us like a one-man cavalry on his head-tossing Arabian horse Morningstar, and oh my goodness, it sure feels good to be loved like that.

Pinon’s ears flatten against her head and we are all git out for what is not nearly long enough.

We nearly outrun the archons themselves.

Posted by Kimberly at April 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (8)

Our neighbors invited the kids and their houseguests over yesterday afternoon to visit with their pot-bellied pig Otis. Otis is a charming and rather shy pig, but a box of Nilla wafers is an excellent icebreaker!

For the most part, the day hummed along in the key of C. Dennis, who'd just returned from what sounds like a harrowing week in D.C., cleaned the pasture with the tractor and watered his orchard, content to be himself again in his old Stetson, wranglers and cowboy boots. (He did take a Stetson to Washington with him this time, where I'm sure he looks mighty exotic to those Easterners.) The girls and I rode horses while the boys continued modifications on what is turning out to be an epic fort out on the back forty. And then we had our social engagement with Otis.

All the while the New Mexico sky was a deep, cerulean blue. It's hard to find a sky much larger than this. Or a day better.

Music: Key of C from Tried, True and Tested by Tim Ryan.

Posted by Kimberly at April 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4)

The kids have named our two beehives. The Bumbles. And ... The Stingers.

I'd been reading in my bee books about how bees will raid another hive in a pinch, and I told them about it, which has sparked this whole idea of rival hives. (Although I am still clinging to visions of love and peace and blissful tranquility.) How the guard bees will stand at their posts at the hive doorway and escort any strange bees away. Or worse, if things get pushy. And if the interloper bees get through, they raid the honey.

Bee wars.

So now I have two pristine white bee hives painted with the names of their prospective "tribes". The Montagues and the Capulets. The Jets and The Sharks. The Crips and the Bloods. The Shirts and The Skins, my ten-year-old son, who recently played a basketball game with his high-school-aged cousins, chimes in.

This is what happens when you hand your gradeschoolers a paintbrush and encourage them to express themselves!

Well, our bees are still down south in Las Cruces, I understand as of today. The woman from whom we are purchasing two nucs (this is something like 150,000 bees total? plus 2 queens) tells me that she wants to make sure they are sturdy enough, the queen of each is strong and secure. We will be picking up our bees somewhere around the first of May, it looks like. We have to pick them up after the sun has gone done. Like hens, bees return home to roost at night. I'm still slightly worried about the transport part of this transaction. Do I put them in the back of my SUV with their little door closed? How do I make sure they are sound asleep? What if they wake up?! I have to figure that out. This will require more than crossing my fingers.

We've cleared the space, after lively discussions all winter long about where they will be located. Leveled the ground. Placed the concrete blocks upon which the hives will stand, facing southeast. They'll receive the warm morning sun on our cool mountain mornings and be shaded from the hot afternoon sun by a curtain of pinon trees at the back. My husband the nuclear engineer has this all figured out. We believe our orchard will be in full bloom prior to the arrival of the bees. Although the three inches of April snow plus what we are still receiving as I write and stoke the woodburning stove up may slow that a little. Oh well, next year, we'll get pollinated.

My smart children tell me something about whacking the fruit trees with a stick during a good wind to take care of pollination in the absence of bees. Their teacher told them that, they say with a certain amount of smug satisfaction.

Despite all of the bee tomes I've been buried in this winter, I still feel a bit scared about all of this. But I can't wait either. And we are this close. They may spawn their very own bee blog, I'm just not sure yet.

I'm already tasting honey made from the pollen of our fruit trees and the wild flowers of the national forest.

Posted by Kimberly at April 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Wow. My percheron horse Toby is getting his own emails. He is very excited. Especially from a beautiful big gal like this. His eyes almost popped out of his head when I showed him this picture. He's begging me to teach him to type now. Although that will probably be difficult with those pie-plate-sized hooves.

Dear Toby, My name is Lady Charlemagne. Thank you for teaching us about shaking hands. I am sending a photo of me with my food bowl. best regards, lady charlemagne

ps I am also called "good girl"

Toby says-- Please send hand-shaking photos, Miss Charlemagne!

Posted by Kimberly at April 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

"Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?"

"A great shadow has departed," said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from bed... "How do I feel?" he cried." Well, I don't know how to say it. I feel, I feel" --he waved his arms in the air-- "I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!"

- J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), The Return of the King

I read the Tolkien books to my two kids when they were babies.

This was in part due to my mother's insistence about the importance of reading to infants and me trying to maintain some semblance of my sanity with a one-year-old and a newborn. I was doing full-time web development work from home with absolutely no help around the house from their dad, who was essentially worthless. (Still is, I hear, in terms of helping my kids' stepmother with that sweet little baby.) I was also getting pushed around and advised regularly by Mr. Charming that I was nothing, absolutely nothing without him.

Luckily, that's no longer my problem...

Lord, I don't believe I've ever been so tired in my life as I was when my two were babies. I could have laid down on a slab of concrete and slept soundly if you'd told me I could have a 15-minute nap way back then. I see exhausted young mothers sometimes, and I fight the temptation to say what everyone said to me, "It will get easier." Because you just can't see it. At least I couldn't then.

I have grieved what I lost during that part of my life. I have sat down and I have cried. Rivers. No one putting their hand on my stomach to feel the baby move. No one pressing their ear against my swollen belly and listening to the new beating heart inside of me. No long Saturday afternoon naps when I was pregnant and filled to the brim with life because I wasn't, believe it or not, allowed to. I could go on and on. A lot of the joy could have been sucked right out of me. But there was always that ember inside that refused to get snuffed out no matter how hard he tried.

Tolkein sustained me.

Will everything sad come untrue? I don't know the answer to that question.

I do know I have two beautiful kids who are a joy to me. Monday night when they got back from their dad's, we lay on our backs in the buffalo grass, shoulders touching, stretched out along the curve of the earth, breathing in the cool mountain air, watching the sun set and the half moon raise its pale face in the pale sky. I marveled at the two pairs of deep green eyes, so much like my own, snapping and flashing as my ten- and eleven-year-olds told their stories about their school day and we were laughing. I have the sense sometime when we are together that time is speeding up to double or triple what I would expect, and it is slipping through my fingers like the dry red earth that manages to produce the coarse stuff that passes for grass here in the desert. They grow so fast.

I know that yesterday morning at work, when I went to meet with a psychologist at the State Penitentiary, I was greeted with a depth of warmth you hardly see in other people any more by the inmate who was cleaning her office. He clasped my hand and introduced himself, and I told him I was glad to meet him. And I was. My friend the psychologist works every day with men who've done some unspeakable things, and yet she manages to see them as more than the sum of their mistakes. Occasionally I am in awe of that woman. I left my meeting there wondering at a life force blazing as bright as an orange jumpsuit.

I know that when I went to the pasture last evening, our appaloosa horse Teyla was waiting for me at the gate, like she's been doing more and more often. I cast my eyes down as I approached her, because she still gets nervous. I stand by her shoulder, give her a rub, feel her muscles relaxing. Move my hand down her back as she turns her head and her eye softens. I inch up to her head, cautiously, and surprisingly the horse doesn't move. I trace her jaw, rub her speckled ears. She wouldn't have let me do that a few weeks ago. But my husband Dennis, the horse whisperer, the one who whispered me back to the land of the living nearly a decade ago, has taken to currying the generally standoffish horse nearly every afternoon. He says she looks itchy to him, shedding out all that crazy winter coat of hers.

Something's shifting inside of the horse.

As I caress her face, I ask her if she has forgotten. If she has forgotten the years of abuse before she came to us. The loneliness. The despair. The pitch black dark place where you hit the bottom. Where chains rattle and where, if you are not strong enough or smart enough or capable enough or you just don't know how to open the goddamn gate, you are hog tied and branded. If somehow it has slipped away from her, slipped away like an old garment.

I let it fall to the floor until suddenly I am standing there naked. My bare feet tingle against the cool hardwood planks. And then I remember. I remember how I used to ride bare-footed as a girl. My ankles pressed against warm flanks. Toes tickling fur.

The horse lays her eye on me softly, a caress. One ear is cocked in my direction. To let me know she's listening.

Posted by Kimberly at April 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)

I am driving into Albuquerque, approximately 9AM, enjoying the red-dirt-colored skyline in what more often than not strikes me as a downright stark (and if the sun is just right--occasionally pretty) high desert town. A big red pickup hauls past me on the right. It's business as usual. Cowboy in a Cowboy Hat Driving a Chevy with Country and Western Blaring on the Radio.

(If you're a big city person, this is nothing like those rapper fools whose music penetrates you to your DNA level, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, because he thinks that everyone else in the world wants to listen to the noise he's listening to. No. I'm not talking about that.)

What gets my attention is strapped to the back of the flat bed trailer that cowboy's towing through the post-rush-hour traffic. It's a longhorn. As in cow. And it's dead as a doornail.

Thankfully.

I guess ... ?

I can't take my eyes off the darned thing it's so awful. My eyes dart--

Traffic. Cow. Traffic. Cow. Traffic. Cow.

I'm noticing that the other drivers are seeming to have the same problem too. The speckled longhorn is at least two of my percheron horse Toby, and he's huge. I get that unpleasant picture out of my mind. Fast. I can't see a bullet mark on that cow. She's as neat as a pin. Eyes closed peacefully like she's really just taking a nap. Although her hooves are undeniably sticking up in the air. Poor thing.

I wind up tailing this cowboy and his deceased longhorn down I-40 towards the Sandia Mountains. I have ample time to observe that the only thing holding her onto the flatbed as it bounces down the asphalt is a set of ratchet straps ratcheted right around those impressive horns. Horns that nearly span the width of the flatbed trailer. Now there's a bad end, I'm thinking. I do have a soft spot for these critters, which is why Dennis won't ever in this lifetime let me and the kids have a 4-H steer, because he says he'll wind up feeding it for the next twenty years while I teach it circus tricks or some such nonsense.

As I'm about to make my exit, I'm really relieved that I'll be leaving this ignoble sight behind me. I reach to tune into the local AM radio and then all of a sudden I'm cursing under my breathe, seriously cursing, mind you, as the cowboy Charon ferries his gigantic dead beast right across the lane in front of me. I can see her pink udders waving in the wind. Couldn't he have covered her up or something? Where is his sense of decorum?

I follow him all the way down San Mateo Avenue, feeling worse and worse for that longhorn with every passing city block. I half expect the cowboy to turn his rig into the Livestock Board Offices, which are on our left, but he doesn't. At a stoplight, I fight the nearly overwhelming temptation to roll down the window of my SUV and ask --

So what happened?

And where are you going with a longhorn ratcheted to the back of your flatbed trailer? A barbecue?

Hey, cowboy, I feel I have a right to ask. After being stuck behind you and your dead longhorn for something like a good half an hour while I'm trying to get to a meeting.

It's right there on the tip of my tongue. Then I consider the idea that the recently departed longhorn might stink if I do roll down my window. Might stink real bad, actually. I think about the boy I knew over twenty years ago who was the keeper of the Texas A&M longhorn mascot. He loved that longhorn. Loved to drink beer and tell stories about the spotted fellow. Even showed me a photo of him and the big boy on the football field once. That longhorn's horns were as wide as goal posts. I keep my hand off the window button and mind my manners.

My kids' friend's dad is a taxidermist. I consider that as the light turns from yellow to red. Maybe the cowboy is decorating one of those high-end Santa Fe haciendas and they're going for the "working ranch look" in their living room, complete with glass-eyed longhorn. Or better yet--their foyer.

I was in a super duper upscale house in Santa Fe once whose Hollywood owners had larger-than-life Kachinas decorating standing sentry in their entryway. Imagine 7-foot hairy wolves with gnashing pointed wooden teeth, if you will. Not to mention recessed and theatrical lighting straight out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Kind of had me wondering if there would be blood sacrifices after the tiramisu and coffee. (The floors were glossy red ochre. The walls covered in lightning bolts. This mess made it into a very expensive coffee table book of Southwestern architecture eventually.)

I've seen worse than stuffed longhorns.

Posted by Kimberly at April 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)

"It's a rather joyous song . I like very much the last verse. I remember singin' it to Bob Dylan after his last concert in Paris. The morning after, I was having coffee with him and we traded lyrics . Dylan * especially liked this last verse "And even though it all went wrong , I stand before the Lord of song With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah"

Leonard COHEN (interview,Paroles et Musiques,1985)

*....and Bob Dylan sung live "Hallelujah" during his 1988' tour

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well, really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I learned to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah

Posted by Kimberly at April 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
Well, it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well, your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well, baby, I've been here before.
I've seen this room, and I've walked this floor.
I used to live alone before I knew you.
But I've seen your flag on the marble arch,
And love is not a victory march,
It's a cold and it is a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well, there was a time when you'd let me know
What's really going on below,
But now you never show that to me, do you?
But remember when I moved in you,
And the Holy Ghost was moving too,
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well, maybe there is a God above,
But all that I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.
It's not a cry that you hear at night,
And it is not somebody who has seen the light
It's a cold and it is a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Posted by Kimberly at April 11, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Long-legged quarter horse Pinon comes rushing down from the top of the pasture like there's a bear on her tail. I enjoy the sight of all that muscle and energy and rolling brown eyes sailing right past me all worried like, and wait for the black shaggy beast to come lumbering after her, roaring in a fury. My husband--who once had a stand off with a bear over an elk, a story which is now epic mythology in my family--says bears can run as fast as horses.

But it's boss mare Teyla instead, shaking her polka dots furiously in Pinon's direction.

Percheron horse Toby is a close third, bucking and farting so copiously the trees are shaking in the wind he's breaking.

Arabian mare Morning Star has her tail all twisted up in a sideways banner, a question mark, hooves hardly touching the ground.

Andalusian horse Caprichosa canters past furiously, nose in the air, her bad leg forgotten for the moment.

Teyla stops in front of me and rears up on her haunches, tucks in her chin so hard her salt and pepper mane stands up like the jagged teeth of a buzz saw or something hit by lightning. She is the unequivocal ruler of the roost, the queen of the pasture, one hundred swirling spots of pure attitude. She launches herself from the ground. For a moment she is flying with her speckled legs as stiff as pokers. I can see the white of her eye that's glued right on me. I am laughing so hard she does it again. And again.

What insanity a sudden April snow can inspire.

Posted by Kimberly at April 11, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Treatise on the Resurrection.
What am I telling you now? The living will die.
How do they live in illusion?
The rich become poor and kings are overthrown.
All changes. The world is an illusion.
Why do I seem to shout?
The resurrection has nothing of this character.
It is truth standing firm. It is revelation of what is,
and the transformation of things,
and a transition into freshness.
Incorruptibility floods over corruption.
Light rivers down upon the darkness, swallowing obscurity.
The pleroma fills the hollow.
These are the symbols and images of resurrection.
They establish its goodness.

O Rheginos, do not lose yourself in details, nor live obeying the flesh for the sake of harmony. Flee from being scattered and being in bondage, and then you already have resurrection. If you know what in yourself will die, though you have lived many years, why not look at yourself and see yourself risen now?

I've clung to this ancient gnostic text for days now since my nephew's death on Friday. I wonder if the writer ever thought that a middle-aged woman from my century would be reading his words aloud as she tried to make sense of things?

The priest at the memorial service today echoed the words of this gnostic writer. At least in my mind, he did. He spoke about the spirit of the young man who was tragically taken from us. He asked the congregation to breathe in deeply, and to breathe out. To feel our spirits, in fact, to feel our spirits mingled with the spirit of God, our spirits/our breath mingled with this young man's, and to consider and remember that part of ourselves that is imperishable.

I haven't been inside of a Catholic Church in years, or any church for that matter, but let me tell you, I am just about cried out today.

When I first came to live in the high desert from Ohio, the land of endless Kentucky blue grass, I was struck by the vividness of any flowers here in New Mexico. When nearly everything else is brown, a rose or a cactus bloom simply pops into the foreground. I mean, you just don't miss it. A daffodil reaches out and grabs you by the collar. I walked around the first spring here with this heightened sense of awareness of any bud or bloom.

In the midst of death, signs of life are striking me like that today.

My neighbor's gangly colt standing on his brand new legs next to his big momma horse in the paddock stands out in sharp relief. A child in a bright red coat and leggings in the parking lot of Whole Foods. Red Dawg's wet nose. The white flowers popping out all over the plum tree by the gate so pretty they hurt.

I inhale, and their sweetness fills my nostrils.

When my former sister-in-law embraces her 17-year-old son's casket this morning with her rail-thin arms, arms that are now achingly empty, my breathe catches in my throat, along with everyone else's.

Somehow, I remember to exhale.

And I vow to myself again to try and live what I had so easily forgotten. To stay awake this time around. Well, as long as I can manage, anyway.

Posted by Kimberly at April 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)

I went up to the light of truth
as into a chariot,
and truth took me across canyons and ravines
and preserved me against waves smashing the cliffs.
She was my haven and my salvation
and left me in the arms of immortal life.
She went with me, soothed me, kept me from error.
She was and is the light of truth.

~ Song 38, Songs of Solomon

My children's 17-year-old cousin died in a car crash in Albuquerque Friday afternoon. He was returning home from a sports event. Changing lanes from left to right, his SUV clipped the back end of a city vehicle, slammed into a concrete wall, and he lost his young life. His cousin, also 17, in the front passenger seat survived, as did the other 17-year-old friend in the back seat. All honor students. All athletes. No drugs or alcohol involved. All with their lives, all of that brimming potential, everything, everything still ahead of them.

I had almost 30 nieces and nephews from my first marriage. I count this young man among them, even though I haven't seen him for several years because I'm no longer part of that familly. I loved him. I've known him since the day he was born. I remember he and his older brother tumbling over me like puppies when they were toddlers, giggling, and their mother scolding them.

This weekend has been spent consoling my two children, who can only say in the middle of the tears that their cousin was just here and now he's gone.

Gone.

Where?

I don't know. I can't tell them. And when I struggled to explain the inexplicable, they both reminded me that we are all sparks of the divine.

Pilgrims.

Sojourners.

Apparently they've been listening to me.

Such utter emptiness. I cannot imagine the agony of this young man's parents. No easy answers.

I don't buy the Sunday School explanation any more.

Yesterday, we painted the brand new bee hives with a coat of clean, bright white. Sat in the sunshine together. Decorated the front entryways with images of bees and flowers and horses. All painfully aware of who is missing.

I am struck by the warmth of the horses' breath in the mornings when I feed them. I want to wrap myself in the warm aliveness of their coats, but press my head against them instead and listen to their sighs.

I am surprised when I wake up to see the sunrise reflected back at me on the mesa, which is burning red. Where is this place? I ask myself. Where am I in this four-poster bed at 6:00 AM in my ranch house at the foot of the mountain exactly? I clutch the comforter, being washed downstream in a current too strong. Too strong for swimming to shore.

I fry bacon. I wash dishes. I almost resist the temptation to hold my own dear children in my arms and kiss them repeatedly, and tell them that we are safe and together at this moment.

This moment in time.

Posted by Kimberly at April 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Horses killed by lightning - Elderslie, 23 January, 1941. Photo by a Mercury Newspaper photographer (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart). "Mr E. J. Duthoit, an employee of Mr. F. Reynolds at Elderslie, near Broadmarch narrowly escaped being killed when a team of horses he was driving was struck by lightning. He was thrown to the ground and although badly shocked escaped injury. Duthoit was sitting on a rubber seat on the cultivator and had his feet on a timber platform, saving his life."

My silly Percheron horse Toby has gotten a little head shy.

Let me explain.

I inadvertently shocked the Big Boo Boo a few times over the course of our long dry winter when I was grooming him, or even if I just touched him, and each and every time he considers it a personal affront. Like I was rubbing my hands on my jeans real quick just to muster up enough electricity to give him a good zap.

Right.

He sucks up his lips, rolls his eyes, sticks his nose in the air, and trots a few indignant steps away from me, eyeing me accusingly as if to say now why did you go and do that?

Our equestrian vaulting horse is very sensitive to static as well. You should see us trying to get Irish Draught horse Shakespear's blankie on him without shocking the fellow, who is just between you and me cranky enough in his own right thank you very much. He stands in the cross ties and shakes his head up and down, up and down, don't you dare, don't you dare shock me you big meanie. I have become a real quick blanketer, let me tell you.

Now to just impress upon Toby that I'm not electrifying him on purpose.

Too bad I can't show Toby and Shakespeare this photo. (I don't know about Shakespeare, but Toby would try to eat it.) Who would have thought?

Posted by Kimberly at April 4, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

I Gallop On had 48,296 unique visitors in March. I've been running just a little under 50,000 unique visitors each month for the last few months, which is not bad.

I recall when I began blogging a few years ago being excited at having 300!

Thanks for visiting.

Posted by Kimberly at April 3, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4)