What the Spirit needs...

If I'm back to blogging, that means you're back to reading about the really, really boring things in life. Sad, but the truth is sometimes there just ain't nothing horse-happening.

  

Like yesterday. Out to the barn, peak in on my gimpy horse, who thankfully had less swelling in the cannon and it was more localized around his ankle, still a fairly stiff puffed mess. He was still resting it quite a bit, but a horse owner can't fret too much when they catch the "injured" horse backing and kicking at their pasture mate in order to stay supreme-leader-of-the-hay-net.

Yes, he's an a$$ that way. Puffy ankle or not. And yes, I contemplated beating him into proper hay-side mannerisms...but I knew it would just lead to more poulticing on my part ; )

Up the hayloft I climbed, fed those darn ponies their hay, and as the sun settled behind the trees, I gathered their feed buckets and made my way back to the warmth of the heated garage. What can a girl seriously do? Not much with a gimped horse and daylight faded before 5:30 pm. And a day job. There's always this confounded day job...

Now me, I do love winter. I know a lot of you look at our good coating of snow and think "Boy, that would be a fantastic winter holiday, 3 days of trekking my horse through the powdery white puff, sipping on the mint hot cocoa and building a snowman with a carrot nose and some *cute* little button eyes".

I get it. I do. We're magical and mystical and the perfect extraction of Miracle on 34th Street in our holiday glory. We are.

HOWEVER, when the temperatures start to plummet down to a naughty -40 C (which is -40 F ironically), well, quite suddenly your balmy temperatures and brown grass have us yearning for the deep south. We admit it, we do.

Irrespective of all of that, winter is a very distinct and separate season up here for me. You see, because when it's blustery cold, the ground is frozen solid and there's always white powder swirling about, you feel quite okay with laying aside the garden tools, the outdoor tasks, the need to actually "do" anything. Winter, when you live in a terribly cold and frigid place, is the PERFECT and natural excuse to hole up at home and vegetate.

This is my season for relaxing. Suddenly I have weekends where I honestly do nothing. I lay on my favourite plush chair, an old book or a wrinkled magazine in hand, and I do nothing but daydream and fantasize and on occasion...frequent occasion should it be either a rare sunny day or a miserable cloudy day...fall asleep in the middle of a Saturday afternoon under a big down duvet and wake up to make christmas cookies at 7 pm like I've actually reached old age.

This is my season for not doing.

And so, yes, you can see my pony is portly and yes, I'll be out Saturday afternoon riding him through the snow and having a blissful time. And we'll ride the winter away, but dear folks, everyone, absolutely everyone, needs to spend a week up here, on our coldest, snowiest, blusteriest days, and regain a true understanding for what it means to hole up and simply exist for a moment in life.

Sometimes, that's just what the spirit needs.

Welcome to Winter.