Horse Show Attire

This past weekend most of you know I scribed at the Spring Bay HT. It was tons of fun and I’ll talk about that in another post. What I want to talk about today is something else. We all know when we go to horse shows we should be turned out properly right? Some of us (me) never did Pony Club but that doesn’t mean we don’t know what proper show attire is and better yet, some of the people I saw were riding for bigger name trainers in the area and were even more poorly turned out than the ignorant crowd. My main “rant” about this is something I was told many times by many different trainers/mentors/friends/parents- “ a well turned out horse and rider adds confidence.” It’s also courteous to the judge, the volunteers, your trainer, any owner you might be riding for, heaven forbid a potential sponsor, college recruiter, organizers, and yourself. I have to say I was slightly appalled at some of what I saw this weekend. Let’s have a rundown of proper as opposed to improper.

Let’s start with the helmet. As we all know approved helmets are now required and as most of you know I am a HUGE helmet advocate. Its amazing how one little piece of equipment can mean life and death, but better yet it’s EASY to wear. Most people have gone to a velvet or similar type helmet, and as long as it’s black and fits you properly, great, wear it. Even helmet covers are ok, as long as they fit and are black. It didn’t happen in my ring, but seriously, you would go in a ring with not only an old dirty helmet cover on and think people wouldn’t notice? Not only that but when the judge says something to you about it, be nice, take the critique and FIX IT. Don’t come back in the SAME ring three more times with the same helmet! Eventers are nice! BORROW! 

And what about the hair? I can’t say I am a huge fan of those gaudy show-bows, but at least your hair is neatly put away in them. When your hair is flying out the sides of your helmet like Pegasus wings- don’t you think your horse might be a bit embarrassed? Seriously- the horses are here for us and ol Flash does not like it when you’re trying to help him around the ring with your hair just a-flappin in the breeze. Either put it in the helmet (although Charles Owen says no ponytails up in helmets) or better yet WEAR A HAIRNET and if that still doesn’t help…get hairspray…it’s only one day and it washes out.

Now on to clothing. A black or navy blue coat is appropriate, and it should be long enough to cover your seat, but not so long it’s a dress and not so short it looks like a sweatshirt. And if your shoes are too small you wouldn’t wear them…same goes for the coat. A stock tie is absolutely necessary, and while even I used to have the dreaded “pre-tie” at least it was clean and pressed, not dirty yellow and wrinkled (oh yeah…saw a bunch of those). On to gloves. I don’t know what trainer in their right mind would send their kids into the arena in white gloves. In case it was confusing- white gloves show EVERY movement of your hands. If you aren’t Anky Van Grunsven don’t wear them. Even when I ran around a 2* and advanced and wore tails even I didn’t wear them.. I don’t want the judge noticing if I have an attack of the “it” hands. 

Your breeches can be white or tan, but if they are white…keep them clean…seriously, no putting on hoof polish, baby oil, petting your horse, cleaning tack, etc. while they are on…if you rub your hand on your pants..we all know. And finally your tallboots. Just clean em- that’s all. Don’t come in the ring looking like you have been wallowing in a mud pit with the pigs (that is unless its pouring rain and your slogging around in the mud just desperatly trying not to drown).

And NOW your horse. If it has white, BATHE IT. If it has been wallowing with you in the mud then BATHE IT. There is little worse than trotting around the arena on a dirty horse. If it’s too cold then hot towel and again eventers are generally an amiable crowd…if somewhere in your schooling no one taught you to hot towel, someone will show you. Let’s move on to braiding. If your bad at it DON'T DO IT. Ask a friend, pay someone, ask that friendly person in the next stall, but if you come down to the ring with your horse looking like he stuck his mane in a blender and you put rubber bands around it that is just as disrespectful as going without braids and if that’s what they look like then not braiding is a better choice. Finally, CLEAN YOUR TACK. It’s THAT simple.  Grab a sponge and some dishwashing soap (if you are like me and living on a shoestring budget). It works fine. And finally your saddle pad. At least buy a $10 white saddle pad and then ONLY use it for shows. It’s even worse when you have a LOGO from a prominent farm/company/ or trainer and your saddle pad is dirty it reflects poorly on that person who is on the saddle pad as well.

It’s simple. If you look good and your horse looks good, then it’s proven that you will ride better. You make a better impression and it’s respectable to everyone involved. I know for a fact that I don’t want to stand out negatively,the easiest way to avoid that is simply to dress nicely.

Ok my rant is over. I just don't like anyone to disrespect the people who are out there painstakingly puttion on a show for us. These people spend countless hours out there so we can have a good learning experience. The lease we can do is dress nicely and be properly turned out.

signing off

~Mandy

A little about the Weekend and a tribute to Will

Words cannot express the pain of loss, of any kind of loss. People can tell you it will be ok, everything will be alright but when you experience a loss of someone you care about you just can’t agree with them. I lost my mother eleven years ago and to this day I think of her every day. I experience a dull pain whenever I think of the hole in my life where she isn’t and I thought that was the worst pain I could ever feel.  I think this past weekend I felt a kind of pain that rivals that to a degree that I never imagined possible.

What should have been a good first event of the season this past weekend at the Ark HT in Monroe, NC turned into a bittersweet, long, slightly surreal weekend. The trip down and setup was smooth, albeit the last 25 miles of the drive are hell on wheels because there is a light every 200 yards and Charlotte traffic is awful.And don't even get me started on the trip home (what was supposed to be 7.5 hours became 12 because of a horrible accident on I-75 which caused us to sit at a standstill on the interstate for 2 hours) Since the Ark is a one day, we knew it would be tight and we had a plan.

Saturday ran smoothly to start. Mira went first and put in a nice dressage test (in a downpour), but then the sun came out and so did Mira’s  “jackrabbit shoes.” She had wings on her feet that day and nothing was gonna make her touch a rail or a cross country fence. She finished in perfect time and we won our PT division. Kellie Driscoll took her own Remington who was foot perfect in dressage. It was during her warm-up for showjump that I heard something no one wants to hear at an event. There was a “hold” on cross country. You always fear that announcement. It means one of a few things and none of them are ever good, but as always you hope it was no one you knew and you pray everything is ok for all involved. I didn’t dream it would affect us because you only hear about that stuff happening to other people- not to the people you are directly associated with.

Kellie had an excellent show jump round and headed out slowly to cross country because the “hold” was still in effect. I told her I would run back to the barn to grab us some water and be back in a few, she had plenty of time (as an aside here since this isn't the main purpose of the post, Kellie did end up having a great run, as did Catherine and her pony Ransom who had an excellent first horse trail).

There is nothing in this world worse than walking around the corner of your barn aisle and seeing people standing at your group of stalls talking and just knowing something isn’t right. There is nothing to describe that feeling you get when you know it was a friend you were showing with for the weekend that was affected in that “hold” and  no way to express the pain you feel when you find out the horse that you have been around for years isn’t coming back to that stall.

Now, let me tell you a little about Willpower aka “Will”. When KC was selling him I wanted that horse so bad. He was such a nice animal. He had the cutest ears, floppy like the nicest dressage horse from the minute the rider got on him. He was quirky. He loved to jump and like little Mira put his heart into every fence. I have never seen a braver/bolder cross country machine either. We will never forget Will standing in the barn aisle ground-tied patiently waiting on Maggie to come back to him or the flames she clipped on his rump every winter.  Let’s also not forget seeing Maggie in the barn aisle late on those winter evenings blow drying Wills coat (yes I said blow-drying..with a hair dryer) because he would sweat and she didn’t want to risk putting him out wet.  He had a heart of gold and would let even the rankest beginner go for a trail ride on his back or teach an up-down lesson. Will earned nicknames like “Willard” “William” and “The Pirate”- so named by my niece, Maddie when she saw Maggie leading him to his field one day last summer with that ridiculous pirate fly mask from Rolex on.

Will was a good soul and as I said on facebook the other day, horses, like dogs show us unconditional love. Any animal that can repeatedly jump fences at a gallop when asked, or dance around a dressage arena, and keep his toes up over rails that fall even when they are exhausted goes to heaven. All dogs do, I truly believe horses like Will do too.

Will is in heaven Maggie, he died doing what he loved for the person he loved the most. He will be watching over you and your future horses giving you the "willpower" to fly around with wings on your feet.

RIP Willpower. Hang in there Maggie!

Signing off

~Mandy

Positive Show Nerves

Show Nerves.

Just that phrase inspires memories in all of us. It makes me think of the startbox on the biggest advanced course I ever ran, or starting into the dressage ring at an FEI test, or jumping around in front of the huge crowd at Stuart Horse Trials. There is nothing like it. It’s those butterflies you get when they start the countdown. It’s that flip-flop flapjack feeling you get when you walk a big course for the first time and it’s the queasy sensation you get when you’re about to do your jog on Sunday morning. I just wanted to talk about this because my students of late seem to have the same problems that I used to (yea right they are still there, but WAY less intense). There is nothing worse than coming out of that show ring and beating yourself up. It drags on your psyche and makes you believe in yourself less. What’s more is it starts to take its toll on your riding ability.

Someone once told me that I needed to be more positive. I needed to let the past go. I am the first one to tell you that unfortunately that isn’t possible. When something goes haywire (you lost your stock-tie, you forgot a movement in your test, you missed a jump/had a rail/had a stop, had a fight with your best friend, forgot to eat breakfast) those show nerves from the past rear their ugly head.

Now people can tell you to “think positive” and “let the past go” but it’s always easier said than done. When your staring down that big brightly colored oxer with the fish leaping off its wings your thinking, “my god I’m gonna die when Quit Bucking sees this he’s gonna show the spectators why he has this name” instead of “how cool is that fence, I hope they get my picture on Amelia Earhart over it!” The trick is you, that’s right YOU have to believe the second phrase. It took me a LOOOONNNNG time to understand that, but now I do, and I am happier for it.

How, you ask have I been able to change from the rider in college who bit people’s heads off (sorry Liz, Sarah, Jenn, etc.) when they tried to help my train wreck dressage to the rider who can go in the ring now and smile/giggle when my horse says,” hell no I won’t perform that canter transition today.” ???

It’s not fair is it? I’m not going to say it was easy or that I  just woke up one day and I was all Zen or something. It has everything to do with the people in my life and TIME. It took my trainers being positive but not mean and degrading. It took the great Amy Tryon telling me that a sports psychologist told her she needed to learn to take all of that nervous energy and learn to channel it into positive energy (which must have worked because she took Poggio to the WEG at Aachen and finished 3^rd) It took doing 87983982 shows and realizing that nine times out of ten there is not a single person really paying attention when you flub up.  Unless you are on a remarkable horse (I used to say grey, but these days there are so many of them I don’t) who decided to perform the good ol’ spin-n-dump (see earlier posts) in dressage then no one is going to remember you tomorrow. You are rider number??? on a bay horse in one of the seven dressage rings that went Friday or was it Saturday?<-- an aside here, if your name is Phillip Dutton or Karen O’Connor I am sorry but this doesn’t count….

What I am trying to say in this post is just this... Positivity gets you farther than you think (even from a skeptic like me).  You have to remember that hardly anyone is watching (usually just the people you truly care about) and that there is ALWAYS a next time. You go in the ring and do what you can with what you have.  HAVE FUN. That is why we ride horses isn’t it? I think that got lost somewhere along the way as well. And above all find SOMETHING positive about EVERY ride. It doesn’t mean you always have to end on a positive note. It just means, if that snotty pony jumped ONE fence today when he usually doesn’t even do that then you have  accomplished something. Did you stay in the ring for your dressage test event though your horse was doing pirouettes in a walk/trot test? Yes? OK, then we have a positive. Did you get around that 1* course even though you had two runouts at that damn corner because you are sure corners eat people so your horse thinks so too? Well, you got around, so next time you can do it again and on  time number 13498348 when your amazing advanced horse says, “its ok mom, we’ve jumped these before,  its ok just hold on”  you will walk away from the toughest course of your life knowing you have been blessed to have learned that one day things will get easier. It just takes time and positive thinking. A little of that and learning to channel those show nerves into good energy J

Signing off

~Mandy

Camping and other sorts of things

Today we got our group together for our first outing of the year. Mira and crew (meaning- Pony/Rem/and Willard ) will be heading to The Spring Horse Trials at the Ark in about a month and now that I have rejoined USEA (have yet to upgrade her to FULL and rejoin USEF but hey who doesn't love broke eventers who procrastinate) I can send my entry off and get EXCITED! I mean who doesn't get excited to start their season? Who do you know that goes, "ugh, here we go again? I gotta train to go jump some big solid dangerous potentially life threatening fences and I just don't wanna do it." If you do know someone who says that please recommend they take up Knitting. SERIOUSLY? I am PUMPED! I just don't know how you couldn't be?

So to start I have been really working hard on Mira's canter transitions and despite her chagrin we are progressing. Slowly. And we have been practicing being slower over fences (if you know my mare she is a good jumper...she jumps like a firecracker smacked her in the rump right before takeoff ) and for myself to be quieter in the tack (although some of the girls on my team from school have watched me jump and are amazed at how quiet I am...I totally have them snowed lol) all to make us look as if we are "floating on a cloud" at the apex of the jump. Who am I kidding? I'm just trying to stay on most days.

And if the weather holds we are going to school some cross-country this weekend. I know I'll be riding a hot tamale but I as I tell my students there is not a word to describe that feeling of jumping a big table when your horse stretches his body to get to the other side. If there ever was a "though shalt fly without wings" moment that would be it. Adrenaline aside, it's the closest thing to flying without wings. It's times like that, that make me marvel at why more people don't try our sport. I mean who wouldn't want to run at breakneck speed at a solid obstacle on a 1000+lb animal who may or may not listen when you ask them to stop. Its my kinda fun.

Now lets add the element of camping in there. In the past on our awesome horse trial camping escapades we have been trapped in trucks because we were missing pieces to the tent, stuck in terrible thunderstorms holding down the tent corners, setting up on rocks not realizing we have done so and waking up feeling as if someone has punched us over and over in the back and sides, and freaking out because we were convinced something was outside the tent and going to get us. We have decided despite these shortcomings that it wasn't "that bad"  to camp again. What this means is sometime in the next three weeks I have to FIND the damn tent, set it up to make sure the pieces are all there, and then figure out if I can get it taken down again (which usually involves a lot of cursing and band aids from trapping fingers in varying parts of the tent). Then we have to get to said event early enough that we are not phishshlapping eachother in the dark while we have way too many "cooks in the kitchen" setting the thing...in the dark...at 9pm

So if your out and about and end up at the Ark look for Shamrock Eventing. Miss Airheart and I will be running Prelim/Training. Maggie Hitron and Willpower (a Shamrock Eventing Adoptee) will be either doing the P/T or Preliminary, Kellie Driscoll and Remmington will be doing the Training/Novice and finally the cutest pony in the world Long Run's Ransom and Catherine Germer will be doing his first recognized HT at Beginner Novice (shameless plug here- Ransom is for sale and there is not a cuter/sweeter/ more perfect pony in the world).

signing off
~Mandy

Comparisons

Alright, I need to rant. If I hear one more person say, "eventing dressage isn't "real" dressage" or "eventing dressage isn't the same as dressage dressage" I may just have to go crazy. I have heard those phrases from no less than ten to twelve different people in the last week or so. Lets clarify some things before I go nuts.

The Art of Dressage is a complete harmony of horse and rider. It is the basic schooling of EVERY kind of horse and rider and should welcome horses of any size, shape, breed, and age.

Dressage by definition is a noun. It is the training of a horse to carry out a series of precise controlled movements in response to minimum signals from the rider. It is an event where the horse and rider are judged on the elegance, precision, and discipline of the horses movements. Its basic fundamental purpose is to develop, through progressive training methods, a horses natural athletic ability and willingness to perform.

 To the untrained eye dressage resembles dancing, especially when performed by a highly trained horse and rider. The rider communicates through subtle motions and shifts of weight which should be almost imperceptible to the observer. It is with these subtle motions that the horse should float across the arena in a harmony all of their own.

Dressage is not meant to be exclusive to the warmbloods and Europeans of the world. It is meant to be used as a systematic training process for ALL equine disciplines; from gymkana, and barrel racing,  all the way up to the top show jumping horses. The basic frame of the horse always being the same with the poll at the highest point and the horses face approaching vertical with most of the horses weight on the haunches allowing elevation of the forehand.

So why my rant you ask? I get tired of people saying Event horses and riders don't know how to do dressage. In this day in age, since the changes made to eventing (no more long format at the upper levels and shorter more technical cross country courses) you have to have a horse who is good at dressage. If your horse is the one cantering sideways down the center line (if they ever even made it TO the centerline) or is snorting at every letter, or is the one seen doing pirouettes and trotting backwards in a Novice level test, then you will not be in the top of the pack when it comes to scoring. At the lower levels a good score in dressage means EVERYTHING. People don't pull rails at Novice (and most of the time either they get around cross country or they don't- theres nothing in-between) so a well schooled dressage horse does better. At the upper levels the same is ringing more and more true, and if you want to make that three-stride-corner-to-corner-bending-line-through-the-trees-down-the-hill-o-death you had best teach your horse some colleciton and elevation or your not going to be one of the pairs on that coveted short list for the Olympics.

So what you ask IS the difference..
Scoring.
Wow, you say? That's it?
Yes.
 And not scoring in the way Weltensternmeisternostro (the Intermediare Dressage horse) got an 8 on his piaffe while Bottle Rocket (Advanced Level Event horse) got a 6 on his 10 meter trot circle.
Its simply in the way the scores are calculated. In Dressage competitions its a percentage, while in Eventing its a penalty. In Dressage you want the percentage to be higher, while in Eventing you want the penalty to be lower. The result both want to have HIGH scores on the test, but the calculations at the END are different.
That's it.
Or well that's the way it should be.

As long as their are people out there who believe Eventers can't do dressage there will always be a discrepancy. And as for me I've put my theory to the test as I know many other eventers are doing these days. I took Cam to a dressage show a few years back and rode against the other fourth level horses. My little Advanced Event Horse up against Weltensternmeistronostro (I love this name BTW) and we finished 2nd. So, the next time someone tells me my Dressage Trainer doesn't know what "real" dressage is I am going to show them the results of a few of the Dressage shows in Florida and show them just how many horses in the top 10 are Eventers by nature. I'll bet there are more than you think.

Ok, happy cold February week everyone. I don't know about you but I can't wait for spring

Signing off
~Mandy

That Good Ol' Spin N Dump

So I noticed my good friend and mentor Georgia was posting about an old friend at Masterson the other day named Cody. I read her facebook status and remembered what fun my little sister, Annie and I had when we worked out there as kids and then I remembered about a time when Annie decided Cody was the only horse she would ride. As with all of my stories this one involves me and my little sister in our usual quarrels.

For those of you who don't know Cody he's a mustang. His "mustangedness" is what makes him so cool. When Dakota akaCody came to us at Masterson he was this cute little black mustang with the classic freezebrand up the neck and a kind eye, but was terrified of his own shadow. He is coal black and has a little white star and stripe going down his face. He has been a staple of the Masterson Station Equine Program for years on end now.

Annie instantly loved Cody when he came. He was short like her and a bit timid (read scared of his own shadow) and he wanted to please. At the time (though I guess still) I was a bit wild when I rode and decided to get us both into beacoup amounts of trouble. We would go ride in the lessons and help teach lessons and sometimes we would take Cody and Duncan (my old horse) out on trail rides around the park. My favorite thing to do to poor Annie was to be walking along and all of a sudden scream, "gallop!!!" and take off. Inevitably Cody would spook, Annie would fall off and then Cody would do one of two things. He would either run as fast as he could away like someone stung him in the rump with a hot iron, tail over his head and snorting all the way or he would stand there and stare at her with a wild eyed look trying to figure out if he should run, but really wanting to be close to the human he loved. I would come trotting back laughing like a hyena to make sure she was okay and usually get screamed at. It was always, " That’s not fair! I'm going home! I HATE it when you do that!", to which I would reply that I was just trying to get her to race, why couldn't she just get him to gallop when I did!

Next was water crossing. Cody wanted us to know he was never meant to be a wild horse roaming the plains, he really did like his little drylot (being a mustang he felt the need to gorge himself at any chance in the event of imminent bad weather...in July...in Kentucky...damn frost might be here tomorrow and Cody knew frost meant no grass) where there was accessible drinking water and he could see the coyotes/wolves/bears/snakes that might approach from any direction. Cody did not feel any need to cross water, no matter what might be chasing or leaving him. He was the best spin and bolter I have ever met, however Annie was the polar opposite to Cody. He spun and she fell off, there was no “sticky” in her style.
 
Even better was on the way home at the end of the day we were always lazy and tired. No one wanted to dismount to open and shut the gate into the yard. Duncan was the quiet, easy to maneuver horse so I always volunteered to do the gate (that and I knew the following outcome every time and my evil nature made me want to see it over and over). Now Cody was no stranger to my ways and anticipated the gate every time. Duncan and I would push the gate open and then go to the other side. Cody and Annie would come through and at juuust the right time I’d swing the gate…It would touch Cody’s rump and he would scoot through at Mach 3000 inevitably unseating Annie who would 9 out of 10 times “say hello to the dirt.” He would then trot on up the little hill and stand himself by his gate patiently waiting to be turned out- tack and all.
I wish I could say this got old, but it never did. Cody was as reliable for a spook as I am to be on time to work. And to this day I still think Cody in his old age would probably remember our rides and might still give Annie a run for her money.
All in all every single “grounding” I got for my little escapades was totally worth it. It never failed to make one of us laugh (and sometimes both) and it taught us a valuable lesson…Cody’s spook at two things…things that move aaannnd things that don’t.
Signing off~
Mandy

Tornado!!!...or not....

So I feel that I haven’t beaten a dead horse enough. I am bored and I feel I must expound on the happenings of my last week. Did you know that wind shear/straight line winds can develop into a tornado? I didn’t. Did you know that the same straight line winds can ignore a house but tear up a barn and vice versa…when said house and barn are within about 15 feet of one another? I didn’t. Did you know that your roommate could miss the whole thing while sitting in the house that is so close to the barn? I didn’t. This was Tuesday January 17^th, 2012…the luckiest friggin day of my life to this point.

To start I was still at work…teaching practice to two students. It’s January and there was a thunderstorm which for Kentucky is HIGHLY usual ßbet you thought I’d say unusual didn’t ya? Nope, it’s Kentucky and strange weather happens here all the time. Still I don’t think I have experienced a thunderstorm in January for as long as I can remember (sadly that’s only a few years- I blame the several concussions I have had in my life..I think my brains are a little scrambled, especially in the memory department). I had told both of the students if the horses got rambunctious to just dismount and we would see if it passed over. Right about the time it started easing up my boss comes into the arena. She wanted to tell me some things, but her phone rang so she answered it. Amidst my teaching I hear her yelling into her phone, “WHAT? A Tornado? Just now? AT JULIES?”  I spun around so fast I almost fell. It was a student who works for Julie telling her that she wasn’t going to make practice because she was helping clean up from what they thought was a tornado at the farm where I live and my horses live.  Needless to say practice ended while I made a phone call to my roommate to see if everything was ok. When I called Kerry said yes everything was ok and asked why? I told her about my boss’s phone call and Kerry flipped out.  She said, “that’s why the house shook so hard and all of the pictures fell off the walls!” I then called Julie to check on her and got the whole story.

She had just pulled in to the farm from grabbing lunch and was sitting in her car eating and waiting out the storm (its Kentucky these things pass fast) when the wind picked up and she watched the barn roof pass her car and hit the electric line that goes into the barn on the way by. It also hit a limb on the nearby tree dropping a branch on her trucks window, smashing it and then picked up the front end of one of the trailers and rotated it a couple feet. The electric line started sparking so Julie called….411…nerves will do that to you and somehow a 9 turns into a 4 when you are watching your livelihood fall apart and the animals you love be in danger. Bless the lady on the other end for calling the fire department for Julie. The most amazing part was the Scott Co Fire Departments response time…6 minutes…we live in the far boonies in Scott Co and they were wicked fast. It was amazing. The turned off the electric line and put out the fire before it got worse. In the meantime Julie and Arizona Hillary turned out all of the terrified horses in the barn. And poor Kerry never even heard the Fire trucks coming down our driveway, sirens blaring…

I decided to leave work for the day and go help with cleanup/moral support. When I got home I was floored to see what had happened. That sheet metal roof weighed hundreds of pounds (I know because we moved some later) and some of it ended up all the way down the road in the farm owner’s yard! There was a small group already doing debris cleanup so Kerry (who came out of the house finally) and I climbed in the rafters of the barn to tarp over the exposed stalls to keep them dry until the roof got replaced. It took us over 3 hours, but we got it done. It was great Tough Mudder training…hanging on for dear life in those rafters and hammering nails at odd angles with nothing to balance with, then swinging like a monkey to the next place. Later we moved some of the roof, I was grateful that I happened to be wearing glasses that day the metal that I was carrying whipped back and smacked me in the face. I have an awesome bruise on my nose as a result.

Somehow in all of this I managed not to fall out of the rafters yet get slapped by sheet metal…the day is not complete until you get slapped by sheet metal. Oh, and you get filmed by the local news channel (Channel 27 woot woot!)- and naturally he chose to film nice butt shots of Kerry and me in the rafters…

This is how we found out on Wednesday that we got lucky. The National Weather Service came out to assess the damage and said it was straight line winds that hit us…and then went a half mile away and became an EF-1 Tornado that flattened another barn (no horses inside).  If that had been a tornado when it hit us, this whole story could be very sad. As it is, the electric company fixed the barn electricity the next day, there is an awesome Amish contracting group that has already done some barn work for Heronwood that will be fixing the roof today (Thursday) and hauling away all of the other debris, and the insurance company fixed the windshield of Julies truck for free.  All that was lost in our house was a couple of picture frames and the little “turny vent thingy” from the roof over my roommate’s bathroom (which incidentally is probably REALLY bad…for reasons I am sure you can guess).

It could have been much worse. No animals or people were harmed and everything is fixable. I hope to never encounter a situation like this again in my lifetime... So, now that I have told and retold this little tale it’s time to move on….

Signing off~

Mandy