Instead of a Christmas Card

I’ve never been one of those types to send out a holiday “this is how we’re doing” card or anything, but it occurred to me the other day that this is my first holiday season as an officially single person, and with the year I’ve had, I thought catching up some loved ones might be a good thing.

Gracie is beautiful, gorgeous, and five. She is classified as a child with a disability (nothing specific, we just say it’s a behavioural something she’s going to grow out of), and because of this, she gets to go to the greatest school in the world, where she is making wonderful progress and having a terrific time. Awesome Academy (it’s this special ed school) is also wonderful to parents, let me come in whenever I want, have support groups with in-house babysitting, and I actually joined the PTA. They have me come in and do improvisational storytelling in classrooms, and I’m going to do a yoga class for the parent support group some time soon. It’s fun, and so very rewarding.

Gracie is talking more and more, and one great joy is being able to take her to the library on weekends. Despite all the changes to her life over the past year, she remains a wonderfully happy child, enthusiastic and smart and sneaky.

My health is okay. The MS is under control as long as I behave myself, as is the stomach thing with the hiatal hernia. I go to kickboxing twice a week and have recently started krav maga. No horse riding for me til spring…if you haven’t heard, my beloved Shadow died just before Thanksgiving, and I’m not ready to ride again just yet. Oh, for those playing the home game – I think Shadow is a Pegasus in horsie heaven, not a unicorn. I always said she was part thestral anyway.

I’m not really performing much, and it’s a bummer, but there’s just no time in the life of a full-time single mom with a special-needs child. Camp is wonderful and gets my performance jones out in little ways, and of course the Lady Mondegreen videos keep coming. I have been volunteering places, anywhere I get to use my talents and make people smile, and if they want to pay me, that’s great, but I’m not too fussed. I do miss the renfair a great deal. I’d love to do more stuff and will when the universe sends some my way – but right now I can’t pound pavements, I have to focus on Gracie.

I have lost many people this year, but I have also gained some and gotten back some I thought I would never see again, and that is a blessing. My family remains wonderful and supportive, as do my closest of friends (you know who you are). I didn’t get to ride the World’s Largest Carousel, but I did complete another phase of my Masonic studies, so that’s all right. My cat is hanging in there, and I am beginning to like Doctor Who. Um, what else. I got the roof repaired, and am slowly doing nice things to the house. I take a lot of vitamin D3.

All things considered, Gracie and I are doing really well. I’m not going to lie and say the past year hasn’t mostly sucked, but we have each other and I have hope, and faith that everything will work out the way it is supposed to, and it doesn’t matter that I don’t know now what that is. I wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season. If you are with someone, cherish him or her, and if you are alone, don’t be sad. Nothing stays the same forever, and things do get better. I believe that. Keep smiling…I know I do.

A horse and her girl

“Hey Cat, I think we found a horse for you.”

It was fall of 2006.  My friend Jeanne has her own farm about half an hour from my house, and I would go there to ride her horses when I had some free time.  Gracie was about a year old and Rob was still around.  I had never thought about a horse of my own since I was twelve, so when Jeanne said We had found me one, my first thought was, We had actually been looking?

Apparently some friend of hers who also had a farm needed the space for paying boarders, and the personal horse of (I think) her daughter needed somewhere else to go.  It would be a lease arrangement, technically the horse wouldn’t be mine on paper, but I would be responsible for her.

I didn’t expect to want to go for it.  I was busy enough, I had Gracie, Jeanne’s horses were fine for me to ride.  Then we went out to the ring, and there was this little bay mare standing there.  Apparently when Jeanne went to get her from her friend’s house, it had been raining and the pastures were all muddy, so Jeanne’s first sight of this horse was this dainty brown Morgan perched on a rock she had climbed up on, to keep herself out of the mud.  When she saw Jeanne bring me into the ring to meet her, she came right over.  She was this nervous little thing who seemed to say with every anxious step in my direction, “are YOU going to be my new friend??”

I never knew what her show name was, but she was called Shadow.  Jeanne is the kind of person who prefers to get these older horses who often do not wind up with happy fates, and make their golden years wonderful.  Shadow was about 21 when I got her.  She had a bad back from having spent a few months ridden by some person way too large for a smallish horse.  Apparently a previous rider had also been severely retarded.  But she had done all the big Morgan horse shows back in the day, and had the smoothest and fastest gaits I or Jeanne has ever experienced, and once she knew that she had a Home and a Rider and what her new rules were, she was a champion.

I had never even cantered before Shadow.  She taught me how, and was so smooth and sensitive that it was easy.  I don’t think she had been a trail horse before coming to me, but once she got the hang of it, she would gallop up hills and through fields and no one could catch her.  I exercised and stretched her back and it got better.  She took care of me.  Depending on Rob’s schedule and when he could stay with Gracie, I would go out once or twice a week, as long as it wasn’t raining.  My riding companions were usually the same three or four girls who had favourite horses of their own, and we would often go to dinner after.

Shadow loved me.  You can just tell.  She often gave me attitude and was definitely smarter than me and she knew it, but she loved me and for that reason she mostly did what I asked of her.  When I rode her on shot day, she could somehow tell that Rider wasn’t feeling so hot and she took extra care of me.  One winter she hadn’t been drinking enough water, became constipated, and actually almost died from it.  Jeanne called me and said Shadow was lying down in her stall and wouldn’t get up, and this is always a bad sign for horses.  I rushed out, terrified.  I put down a saddle blanket on the floor of the stall by her head, prepared to just sit and soothe her until the vet got there – but she minute she saw me, she got up.  “Rider is here?  I can’t just lie around, I have WORK to do!”  She didn’t like it much when the vet did things with tubes at both ends of her to clean her out, but she was a good patient and within a few days she was fine.

I could tell Shadow stories for ages.  She was a funny horse.  She topped herself this past summer when unbeknownst to anyone, she got herself knocked up and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, who we named Beulah over another wonderful older horse who had lived at Jeanne’s for a while, whom we all loved.  Shadow was a wonderful mother, and that miracle baby brought her and everyone else ridiculous amounts of joy.

I hadn’t gotten to see her as much as I had wanted to in the past year or so.  Once it became just me and Gracie in the house, I could only go riding while Gracie was at school, and a lot of days I was too tired, the weather was uncooperative, or Jeanne wasn’t around to ride with.  I missed Shadow, but whenever I did see her, I knew she forgave me.  Once Beulah showed up and Shadow was nursing her, I didn’t ride much.  Life this fall has been hectic for both me and Jeanne, and it was hard to find time.

Yesterday I was on a plane on my way back from a weekend in Colorado.  I had been thinking I needed to call when I got back and go out to visit, even if it meant I had to bring Gracie and couldn’t really ride (Gracie loved Shadow too, and rode her with me when she was only a year and a half old).  My phone had been turned off for takeoff, but then we got an announcement saying there would be a delay and we could turn our electronics back on.  The second my phone came back on, it rang and it was Jeanne.  Shadow had had a stroke.  Her back legs, which weren’t good to begin with, had given out.  She couldn’t get up.  There was nothing anyone could do, and the vet had been called.  I begged Jeanne to have the vet wait (as long as Shadow could wait) until I got there so I could say goodbye.  Jeanne gave her a painkiller and a tranquilizer, said Shadow would be comfortable, and the would see me when I got there.

This was one of the longest days of my life.  It took forever for that plane to take off, and then I had a connection in Chicago which I almost missed.  In between all this and trying to subtly sob in my window seat, I spoke to my mom and my friend Julie, and between them they arranged for Mom to meet Gracie’s school bus and stay with her for a while, and Julie picked me up at the airport and drove me right out to the farm. 

Shadow was lying against the wall of the stall.  She had tried to get up, couldn’t, and had banged her head against the wall.  Jeanne had cleaned her up, given her another shot, and was doing her best to keep Shadow calm.  Some animals, when they are ready to go, they let you know.  Shadow didn’t want to.  She was angry and she was scared.  When she saw me, she tried harder to get up, and I talked to her and did what I could to soothe her.  She calmed down, and I stroked her head and said goodbye, and promised we would run together again one day.  Jeanne suggested I go home before the vet came so I wouldn’t be there for the actual dying part.  Julie took me home and I held Gracie a lot, which helped.  Jeanne called me this morning and told me that it was done and went fine, that they had gotten Shadow moved to the center of the stall and once she could stretch out, she seemed accepting and calm and went peacefully.  Jeanne had another horse, a blind 30-year-old who was a mess and had been needing to be put down for a while, so the vet did both of them, and they will be buried together tomorrow in Jeanne’s back field.  We cut a bunch of hair from Shadow’s tail and I will have it made into a bracelet.

Shadow was special, and I think she was lucky that she got to spend the last years of her life being cosseted and loved, and baby Beulah is glorious and healthy and Shadow loved her and was happy to have given everything she had to her baby.  It would have been awful if I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to her, but I think she was glad I came.  An old friend came up with this theory, a few years back when Beulah died, that when horses are as loved as this and they die, they become unicorns.   I hope Shadow is a unicorn.  She deserves it.

It Gets Better, my two cents

The It Gets Better Project is a wonderful thing, and I write in not so much to reassure the world that it did get better for me (and it did), but to let you all know a large part of HOW it got better.

I was bullied for every reason imaginable.  I was chubby, awkward, that kind of smart that doesn’t help you grade-wise, so I couldn’t even fit in with the nerds.  I spent almost every school day thinking up ways I could get sent home, faking illness just so I could hide and not have to hear the teases and taunts from everyone outside my room.  The school years for me were very very long.

I’ve watched a lot of videos and talked to a lot of people, and so many of them talk about how once you survive high school, college is worlds better.  That’s true.  But for some, college is years away

Here’s what got me through. 

I went to a summer camp called French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts, in upstate NY.  Don’t let the name fool you, the program is huge and diversified, and while they do 70 or so productions for all ages every summer, there are plenty of kids who never set foot on a stage and have a great time anyway. 

I don’t want to get into sounding like a commercial for them (they have a website for that, www.frenchwoods.com).  But the point is, I was spending my summer with open-minded, creative people, who could understand, appreciate, and support me.  I would stay in touch with the people from camp during the year, and it would be a beacon during the dark days of school when I was being tormented.

I work there now, and French Woods is the same now as it was then, and more.  Kids come to camp and find they can be gay, bi, different, whatever, and rather than being shunned and bullied, they are embraced.  The internet now allows these kids to easily stay in touch all year round, and from talking to many of them, I know that this helps.  I hear phrases all the time like, “French Woods is the only place I don’t get bullied”.

I’m not doing this justice.  I don’t think mere words could.  I’m sure French Woods isn’t the only place like this out there, but this was the place that saved me from year-long crap from my peers, and gave me an oasis to escape to in the summer, where people loved art and musicals and each other.  I wish every bullied kid in the world could go there and spend a summer feeling loved and accepted.  Until there is college, there can be camp.  They do give scholarships.  Not only does it get better – if you go to the right place, it already IS better.

Hi Blogger, nice to meet you.

Mostly I'm signing up here so I can connect with the people I know who use this and not LJ.  And I met SO many amazing people over Halloween weekend (whom I failed to give contact info), I have to do something to find them all!


I got to go to the incredible-ness that was the American Gods Low Key Gathering in Wisconsin.
The House On The Rock is AMAZING. If I lived anywhere remotely here, I would come back over and over again, as a zen exercise – I think it takes a kind of zen head space to be able to wander around that place and not continually ask “but WHY?” I took a zillion pictures which won’t do it justice, but I will put them on Faceboo anyway. For further description of it, all I can suggest is that you reread that bit of American Gods. If Neil can’t describe it for you, lord knows I can’t.

Friday night was your basic Evening With Neil Gaiman. He read some stuff, answered some questions, and was generally his cute and charming self. The event was held in this big semi-heated tent, and it was fine in the beginning when I was running around saying hi to people and giving out black cat pins I had made for the occasion, but then it got later and the temperature dropped and we were sitting still and it got HELLA cold. On our way out, though, I found myself beside Neil and was able to give him a poke to say hi, at which I got a delighted hug, sympathetic how-are-you (he knows about the divorce), him asking after Gracie and making Wow noises at how big she’s grown, and then he was whisked off to sign things while we went back to the hotel and then out again in search of food. I slept, though not terribly well.

Saturday I was up with the sun for the continental breakfast while my friend slept in a bit, and I met and chatted with bunches of fun and interesting people who all knew American Gods as well as I did. Then off we went to the House itself, and let me tell you, you could go there every day for a year and not see everything. We did see everything important – the Infinity Room, the carousel, more self-playing instruments than you ever imagined in one place, the whale fighting the giant octopus (and I do mean GIANT, the thing is incredibly huge), and their Streets of Yesterday, which was sort of like if Main Street USA had been redesigned by Henry Selick.

Neil was signing in different blocks of time all weekend, and ours was Sat afternoon. As part of our event packet, they gave us each a paperback copy of The Graveyard Book. Since I already have it, Neil signed it and told him I would give it to the most impressive trick-or-treater to come to my door, as a 1st Annual All Hallows’ Read gift.  I finally got to meet the famous Lorraine, who is lovely.

After the signing and saying hi (and I’m telling you, every time I saw him during the weekend, he had this face on like a kid in a candy store. The whole thing was joyous and overwhelming, and he seemed to be having a ball), we explored the house some more, then went back to the hotel to change for the costume contest and party.

The costume contest was back in the tent, and it took forever, but some of the costumes were incredible (pictures on Facebook). I was not the only Easter, but I was the only one who looked like she was hanging out in San Francisco, instead of looking all goddess-y.  I didn’t win, and deservedly so – the people who did win worked much harder and looked much more fabulous, my favourites being a pint-sized Dr Horrible, Emperor Norton (who had actually printed out his own money and gave me some), and a thunderbird. They got to ride on the carousel as their prize, along with some raffle winners. Amazing. I contented myself with squeeing over finding Shadow’s mount on the carousel, the tiger with the eagle’s head. It never stops being incredible, seeing things in real life after you have read about them in books. I’ll never forget when I saw the Mildenhall Treasure in the British Museum…but that’s another story.

After the VERY long costume contest was the party, and had I been smart, I would’ve either brought a change of clothes, or gone back to the hotel, changed, and come back to the party. As it was, I was exhausted, my feet were ready to kill me, and my whole body was beginning to rebel. What REALLY should've done was follow my instinct and go down to the carousel before hitting the party (it probably would've given me a second wind), but my friend wanted food, booze, and magicians.  As it was, my body won out, I conked out around 11, and my friend went downstairs to take advantage of her MUCH later sleep schedule and hang out til around two.

A wonderful weekend, though, all things considered. I heartily recommend HOTR to anyone who wants a weekend of zaniness and zen, whether you are a fan of American Gods or not. Plus, their kids’ indoor wading pool is built around a walk-through sea monster. True story. I will go here with Gracie one day.