Life in the "ManeStream"

It’s so much fun to have a day when all the horses and people seem to be making good progress!

Started the morning in sauna-like humidity (for Arizona) with the hardworking pair Diane and her beloved Roy. He is just under 11 months out from colic surgery and coming back splendidly thanks to her diligence at keeping him moving and happy right from the start. She says he feels stronger and more supple than ever! And she’s riding better than ever, too, thanks in part to the horses she worked with during Roy’s convalescence. Today we did a challenging bending exercise using a simple labyrinth, plus used cavaletti and a small crossrail to help stabilize her jump position. Much sweat, big smiles and much licking and chewing!

Later, I was assistant at yet another successful young-horse backing, this time the first ride for my old friend Amy’s three-year-old Friesian-cross gelding. And, like the last time, the structure of the session was built around the simple groundwork exercises I have been teaching to this gangly-but-sweet youngster for about six weeks now. Amy had been slowly introducing saddle and bridle over the past few weeks and he was pretty much unconcerned about all of that. (He had been trained to drive by his previous owner, so no real surprise that a saddle and bridle weren’t all that strange to him.)

She had also been leading him up to a mounting block and standing on it without incident; though, today he did have a little issue with her standing up there while I led him in serpentines near it and then asked him sometimes to stop with the freakishly tall human on one side of him and me on the other side. Mild baby horse sensory overload. We solved that by making the space within easy reach of the mounting block “the scritch zone.” When he stood there, he got scratched on all his itchy spots, which were plentiful as his late summer shed is in full molt. Of course, sometimes you have to lean on the saddle to reach the scratchy spot way down on the opposite hip. At one point, while his eyes were all soft and snoozy, I just put a hand on his shoulder in case I needed to steady him and Amy climbed on.

Minor weight shifting and worried eye-crinkling, but I think his passenger’s adrenaline spiked more than the horse’s did. After he’d had a good chance to feel his rider – and gotten quite a few more scratches to his itchy withers – we went for a little groundwork walk, turning in big soft S-turns and even introducing the concept of stopping from the seat. Much petting, a little sweat and even a few nice, deep breaths with the rider astride!

A video clip showed up on my facebook wall recently and brought up, once again, the technique known as Laying a Horse Down. I wrote about this topic in an earlier post, but this encounter with the issue sent me on a different mental path.

Probably because I have been working with a horse whose way of being in the world resembles descriptions of humans with post-traumatic stress disorder, I started thinking about how to describe what I believe to be some of the psychological costs of this extreme and wrong-minded technique.

For those of you who haven’t encountered this type of horse “taming,” the basic program is this:

• First, you restrain an animal who is programmed to survive by running away,
• Then you force him to the ground, into a position where even his ability to draw breath is compromised,
• Finally, you lay on top of him to simulate a fatal attack by a predator.

You make this operation sound beneficial by saying it will help the horse get over his fear of you. You say that afterward he will be so thankful that you didn’t actually kill him, he will then trust and respect you.

Maybe a screwed-up Stockholm syndrome version of trust and respect. Isn’t it much more logical to expect this animal to fear you? Loathe you. Dread being in your presence ever again and find some way to prevent it. But trust you? That’s got to be one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard.

Ever see a baby bunny (or any other small animal) that has been caught by a well-fed cat? Bunny goes limp and plays dead, because if it moves it becomes way more fun for kitty – who isn’t really hungry – to play with. It’s called tonic immobility and it’s hardwired in to prey animals and, incidentally, humans.

If the cat loses interest or some interfering person comes along and convinces it to let the bunny go pretty quickly, the baby might scamper off to safety. But if the cat has been toying with the bunny for some time before the reprieve or rescue, the bunny might stay immobile, as if it can no longer move. As if it has given up and decided it’s already dead. Sometimes, if you find a quiet, safe place to leave these babies alone, they eventually come back to life and when you go back to check on them, they are gone. Other times, you simply find them dead, even if they didn’t have a mark on them. I have always felt that there was some mechanism – some kind of psychic tipping point – in these animals that makes them give up and die even when they are physically unharmed.  And, there is more than one way to die – the physical body can die, but so can the emotional/spiritual body.

There’s a lot of interesting research on the web linking this type of instinctive immobility during a traumatic experience to human psychological conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative behaviors, anxiety disorders and even catatonia. One very interesting blog even linked the chemistry involved in this reflex to chronic pain in humans.

So, what exactly is a person doing to a horse by intentionally forcing the animal into this state? The justifications for perpetrating this kind of primal attack on a horse makes no sense to me, on any level – intellectual or emotional. Everything I know about what happens when a living being’s very survival is threatened tells me this horse, deprived of his first line of defense – flight – will either fight until he is horribly injured or dead or he will just check out mentally and emotionally, dissociating to the point that it’s as if he barely lives in his body anymore. Those vacant-eyed, shutdown horses may seem safe to people are either afraid of horses but won’t admit it or “easy to handle” for those are too lazy to do the work to create a respectful relationship with their horses, but doing that to another living being is a travesty. What, Stepford wives weren’t enough? Now we want Stepford horses?

Make no mistake. Horses who have been induced to check out are neither tamed nor trained. Both of those are processes that take time. Training is a mutual process of teaching and learning. How well would you learn if you were trussed up, forced to the ground and had somebody lay on top of you? (I believe when humans do that kind of thing to each other, it’s called assault!?)  If it’s such a great teaching tool for the early education of a living creature, why aren’t elementary schools the world over simply employing thugs to tie up the students and sit on them while the teacher expounds on the subject of the day? Wouldn’t that produce quiet, respectful students?

What makes me the maddest about the people who promote and defend this type of “training” method is that we know better, each and every one of us human beings. We can’t say that because we are predators, we just don’t directly relate to the instinctual responses of a prey animal. Although our intelligence and ability to design all manner of tools and techniques to maim and kill places us atop the food chain as master predators, don’t forget that we also have in our collective memory the experience of being prey. There are all manner of predators who can take down a human being, so we have that primal knowledge programmed in, as well.

Don’t think so? Just imagine dumping a couple of suburban families off in the Australian outback, the remote Canadian Rockies, the Amazon rain forest or a mid-east desert with no satellite phone, no weapons and no survival training. Are they predators or prey? Or ask anyone who has been physically abused or assaulted by a by another human. Freeze, flight, fight, fright – we’ve got it all in our circuits, too.

I have owned two horses in my life whom I suspected had been thrown as part of their early experiences with humans. Both were hyper-vigilant, dissociative, over-reactive and “hard to handle,” not because that was the underlying personality of either, but because of what had been done to them in the guise of “training.” With years of patience and consistency, they both found their places in the world and learned to exist fairly successfully with people. But the fear and discomfort they had to endure and overcome was entirely unnecessary. So much time and potential gone to waste. Their lives were made much harder and less happy because of a few misguided moments with the wrong people. That’s just wrong.

Nothing quite like being lied to first thing in the morning, and by someone who was disturbing me and who wanted to sell me something. At 7:30 this morning, the phone in my home/office rang. Though I’m a dedicated call screener, I generally answer early-morning calls because I expect it’s either a client calling to change or schedule a lesson that day or the barn management telling me something has happened to one of my horses. Not today.

“Hi, this is Stan from Equine Somethingorother and I see you indicated you were having some problems with horseflies.”

“I did what?” (Mind you, I am most emphatically not a morning person and my brain cells were not primed for a telemarketing call.)

“You submitted an interest card, probably at a horse expo or show …”

“Nope. Didn’t happen. First, don’t you think it’s a little early for a business call? And second, I have not been to a horse event in years, so I am quite sure I did not submit any kind of card. Good-bye.”

Does someone at this company (regrettably, I failed to rouse the brain cells enough to ask him to repeat the name) really think that I don’t know whether or not I requested information from them? That I won’t realize they just prospected my contact info. off the web and cold-called me (despite my number being on the national no-call list)?

And even if I were interested in what they’re selling, would I buy from an organization that started off our professional relationship with a blatent – and completely unnecessary – lie? If he had said “we saw your website and thought you might be interested in our products,” I still would have suggested he was calling a bit early, but I wouldn’t have been angry.

If any of my fellow horse biz professionals get a call from this guy, please email me the name of the company so I can check them out!

As an independent service provider, I surely enjoy collaborating with other self-employed and self-empowered folks to make my work easier and more effective. And I’m very lucky these days to have a number of wonderful resources oriented toward making the world better for horses and riders in my “it takes a village” group of friends and clients.

Just this morning I worked with a new student who made truly unprecedented progress at finding a more balanced and free-moving seat on horseback. She was referred by my talented yoga colleague Jenny Kendall, who had already pre-programmed in some of the crucial awareness of body and breath. Made my job – and that of my faithful school horse – so much easier. And the student, an adult coming back to riding after a decade away from horses, is going to recapture (and, I suspect, exceed) her previous riding competence with much less of the pain and stiffness she expected. Everybody wins!

Then, this afternoon I sent out a new edition of my business newsletter featuring an article on practical and emotional preparations for the death of an equine companion. I had commissioned it written by client, friend and celebrant extraordinaire Kristine Bentz. That project grew out of a shared experience this spring when a barnmate spent an agonizingly frustrating day juggling all the logistics to put down her cherished horse. Instead of spending a sad-but-calm day enjoying his company and easing both their transitions before the scheduled euthanasia, she was on the phone for hours finding a suitable burial place and negotiating last-minute for the necessary equipment.

In addition to creating a lovely (but short) ceremony on the fly that day to acknowledge and celebrate the horse/human bond, Kristine provided a wealth of practical information about backhoes and cremation facilities and state laws regarding burials. As the owner of a 27-year-old horse, I realized I really can’t escape thinking about plans for his final day (though, happily, he’s not showing any signs of going anywhere any time soon.) And really, all of us who share our lives with horses know on some level that injury or colic could strike any day. Better to be prepared than to add worry and frustration to an already fraught situation. So I’m very happy to have a resource who knows how to help folks channel their emotions and find a heavy-equipment operator after hours.

Thanks ladies!

“My horse hates to longe … detests dressage … loathes lateral work … can’t stand circles … grinds his teeth over groundwork.”

I can’t tell you how many times over the years I have heard someone tell me how much his or her horse hates some basic exercise. And I always think to myself, “Your horse hates it, or you hate it?”

Of course free longing isn't fun for a horse who is allowed to be heavy on the forehand, slamming into the ground at every gait.

Why in the world would a horse dislike any exercise he was carefully and respectfully taught to do? If the human thoughtfully plans and competently executes a progression of training exercises designed so each skill builds from what has been mastered before, most horses are pretty happy to play along.

Of course some skills will come more easily for each horse, depending on breed, conformation, temperament and experience. The build that makes rollbacks and spins a breeze might render extensions more of a challenge. The horse who loves to gallop cross country might find quiet, collected work more mentally difficult. But there’s no reason for any horse to take special exception to being asked to trot a correct 20-meter circle, to walk quietly when being led from the off side or to canter in civilized fashion over a pole.

In my own experience, my horses have only balked at doing what I ask in a few situations:

•    Instances when I got in a hurry and didn’t teach the mechanics of the movement well enough in an orderly sequence. I hit the ground a few times from horses who had natural talent but who hadn’t mastered the mechanics of jumping well enough to help them problem solve in less-than-perfect conditions.

•    Times when I didn’t adequately prepare my horse physically to accomplish the task without discomfort. It took several years before I could school lateral work with my long-backed race-bred Quarter Horse without his loin are getting really sore, but eventually I figured out the combination of conditioning and bodywork that let him learn lateral work happily.

•    Situations when imbalance, imprecision or incomplete understanding of my own biomechanics meant my body was moving (or not moving) in a way that either confused the horse or actually prevented him from doing what I thought I was asking him to do. Not long ago I had to apologize profusely to a very frustrated horse after a session in which I was trying to work out the “geometry” of the seat aids to transition from leg yield to half pass.

Teach the horse to balance and move with ease and comfort, and the same exercise becomes fun and beneficial for horse and handler.

I’m working with a couple of horses now whose posture choices and balance habits mean one “hates the round pen” and the other “kicks out a lot, so be careful of him on the longe line.” Both of them exhibit some combination of classic bad carriage on a circle – head high, hollow back, hindquarters disengaged and nose tipped out, shoulder dropped in, hindquarters disengaged. And both display the discomfort of their lack of balance on a circle quite similarly – they careen around at top speed, slam on the brakes unsolicited and try to cut across the circle or turn without being asked. Hyperness, histrionics and generally much ado about nothing. Walk/trot/canter/halt/turn on a circle is not difficult, advanced work. But those skills do form the basis for advanced work, so it’s important for both horse and human to find a way to practice and perfect them happily, completely and with confidence in their abilities.

I’m betting that after I invest some patience and time, a little bodywork and a lot of miles of groundwork, both of these horses will be converts and will enjoy learning new, fun exercises in the roundpen and on the longe line. I like it! And I’m betting so will they.

I recently attended a horse event in a very, very nice area of Phoenix at a very, very high-dollar facility and experienced some very, very appalling behavior by an alleged professional adult person who is a trainer there. Even weeks later, I’m still stunned by the way this “man” behaved.

It all started off well. The place was beautiful and full of high-quality horses. The accommodations for our horses were quite good and the barn staff was friendly and extremely helpful. The boarders in the barn where our horses were housed were welcoming, initiating conversation and generally being super nice. Great. And then came the downside.

Although we were told we would have “half” the arena to ride in, we kept being warned that “the reiners have the right of way.” Clearly that was the party line on the property; I asked one of the boarders who was also riding in the clinic why that point was made so many times. “Surely they wouldn’t ride right through a clinic or deliberately get in someone’s way, right?” The answer was a wry smile and a repeat of the mantra: “the reiners have the right of way.”  Hmmm.

Well, our “half’ of the arena turned out to be a very tiny corner, which had the benefit of an open, raised area where chairs could be placed for the auditors. For some reason, that remote corner, farthest from the gate, seemed to be a magnet for one “reiner” (not multiple reiners) who was a complete and utter jackass. Apparently his idea of necessary and appropriate training and arena etiquette included the following activities:

• Riding along the rail into our little corner, getting between the auditors and the clinician so that everyone photographing or videotaping ended up with his head bobbing through the shots. One day he spent the best part of two hours galloping one horse through that area over and over and over with no regard for the clinician or the riders. Rude, annoying, unsafe.
• Running at speed from the far end of the arena into a space just outside our little circle (except when it encroached into the space) and sliding his horse over and over and over. He could just as easily have moved over and slid into an area closer to the other corner, or chosen to go width-ways and stay out of our space completely. At one point, he slid his horse to a stop about 20 feet from our clinician. Rude, inappropriate, unsafe.
• Doing obviously deliberate “fly-bys” of the clinic riders as they were trying to warm up and cool down their horses outside the clinic area so as not to interfere with their fellow riders. At one point he stopped his horse right off my left flank and then yee-hawed to a gallop so close to me that if I’d had the presence of mind to stick out my elbow I could easily have knocked him off his horse. In any discipline, that’s a deliberate attempt to get someone dumped. I’ve done it myself, but not since I was about 10. Rude, immature, unsafe. I wonder what his liability insurance carrier (or that of the owner of the multi-million-dollar facility) would think of the risk he represents?

To make matters worse, he seems to be teaching his young students to be just as awful as he is. The second day of the clinic, the arena emptied out completely in the afternoon with the exception of the clinic riders, the jerk and two of his students, both young girls. They had the entire rest of the 150 x 300 arena in which to work, but he kept sending them right into our little corner. During my lesson, I was riding a 20- to 30-meter circle around the clinician and these girls kept getting in front of me. My horse had settled in by then and didn’t care, so I just held my line and made them move. One of the girls had the good grace to look a little sheepish, but the other had a nasty little sneer. Trainer’s pet, no doubt. Appalling, horrifying, unsafe. And what are their parents thinking?!

I don’t know whether this guy thought he was intimidating the clinician in breeches or showing off for the women auditors and riders. But he should have noticed that the very poised and confident young man from Vienna wasn’t the slightest bit perturbed by or even vaguely interested in his antics. And someone really should tell him that even women who don’t do reining (or haven’t done it in years, but used to!) can tell bad riding at a glance and are not impressed by it.

Sitting so far to the left that your poor horse nearly runs into the wall every time you go careening around the corner is not impressive. Dozens of crooked stops during which you are whacking your horse between the ears with a big stick are not impressive. Spins where the hindquarters end up moving faster than the front are not impressive. A young student with a horse cranked down in drawreins and a curb bit is not impressive. Oh, and I believe the conventional wisdom among real reiners is that a horse only has so many spins and so many slides in him, and when they’re used up the horse is no longer competitive. This guy seemed to be doing his best to use up his horses as fast as possible. Perhaps the conventional wisdom is different in his specialty, Arabian reining.

Frankly, all he did was make a complete fool of himself, make the facility that was apparently catering to him seem poorly and unsafely managed and spark a spirited debate among the participants about what specific physical inadequacy he might be compensating for. Hmmm … what do you think?!

For much of my life there has been a “there but for the grace” person in my world, someone whose goodness and determination in the face of adversity could inspire me and provide some healthy perspective in my own tough times, great and small. And this influential person was never just a generic “starving people” in some third-world country, but a real, live person whose example jolted me a bit when I was feeling sorry for myself or whining about my life or just generally not doing my best.

For the past few months, this role has been played by a horse, an Appaloosa gelding named Chester. At 24, he was retired from a long and happy career as a trail horse, crippled by founder so bad that one of his front hooves looked like it had been twisted a quarter turn. Every time I interacted with this horse I marveled at his spirit, his calm acceptance of his lot in life and his unwavering good humor. Was he in pain every day? Absolutely. Did that stop him from enjoying his life. No way.

He was always bright eyed and inquisitive, interested in everything going on in the barn and, most of all, he was  very, very sweet. I got into the habit of dropping by for a visit most days I was at the barn, and I always got a happy, eager greeting. If he was lying down, which he did quite often to take the weight off those feet, he would roll to sternal position and reach out his nose to greet me. If he was standing, he wouldn’t usually walk to me, but he always made some gesture – a shift of weight or turn of the head to face me right on – to draw me to him.

For a horse who could barely move, he engaged his world quite fully and he certainly didn’t spend a single moment feeling sorry for himself. He’d stand in the corner of his run and play games through the fence with his neighbor, sometimes nuzzling or just touching noses and then a few minutes later engaging in mock battle, with ears back and snaky neck and all manner of threats. He loved his food and waited just as eagerly as all the others for his lunchtime pellets and supplements. He would stretch out flat on his side in the sun, soaking up the warmth while giving his feet a rest and enjoying the extra-fluffy shavings his owner bought to keep him from rubbing sores on his bony prominences.

And even though he could no longer do the job he had loved, carrying his human on miles and miles of trails, he still had plenty to contribute. The afternoon I met Chester and his owner, she had him outside the barn grazing and as I passed back and forth it became obvious she was upset about something. I made some banal comment about the horse enjoying the luxury of grass in the desert, introduced myself and talked with her long enough to find out that she was grieving the loss of a beloved pet dog and dealing with the stress of a husband deployed overseas. So where did she go for comfort? To her horse, of course.

I was also party to a small miracle, initiated and brilliantly executed by Chester, that drew out a young girl who had been traumatized by some awful, insensitive treatment by a teacher. She had withdrawn from the activities she once loved and refused to engage with any new people. But Chester, while standing innocently getting a massage, pulled her right out of that shell and got her involved in the massage process. She turned out to be a model bodywork student – bright, curious and with a talent for “feel.”

Anyone who knew Chester realized he wasn’t going to get better; in fact, he was steadily failing physically in spite of his bright spirit. His vet had recommended he be put down before the stress of summer heat took its toll, and his owner was slowly resigning herself to that plan. But suddenly last week the tendons in the worst of his forelegs started to shorten, causing him to knuckle over pretty severely in the fetlock. Nothing was going to fix that, and the risk of a traumatic injury was just too great. (Here’s where all us horse people cringe a little, imagining the painful mess that leg could become pretty easily.) So, Chester’s friend and caretaker of 22 years made the decision to end his pain, and he died very peacefully after a day of treats and loving attention and tearful good-byes from his many friends.

Rest well Chester, and thank you for cheering me up on many sad days. I’ll miss your bright eyes and sweet presence.

Horse people can be so impatient. They want their skills and their horses’ training to progress on a predetermined schedule, often based on a competition calendar or a chronological list of some kind.

This is a mindset I used to endorse, but which now just makes me smile. (Sometimes grimace, sometimes chuckle.) Why? Because I know that developing a physical, mental and emotional partnership with a horse is a process, not an event. You can’t just complete a set number of lessons or schooling sessions or shows and then declare that you are “there,” that you are now an accomplished horseman or horsewoman.

You can try, of course, but I’m betting your horse will have something to say about your personal milestone. And it might just not be what you want to hear.

When I ran a traditional lesson and training barn years ago, prospective clients almost invariably asked during our first conversation, “How long will it take before I can jump?” That usually came after they had told me at length how many lessons they had taken with which trainer or how many times they’d been on a dude-string trail ride or some such. At first I made the mistake of trying to give them an estimate based on what they had told me about their past experience. (This was before I learned that almost everyone inflates his or her experience at first!)

After I wised up, my standard answer was, “Anything from six lessons to six years.” That tended to be followed by a moment of mutual silence, which I generally followed with a laugh and the statement that although I was joking, I was also serious. This led to an explanation that every rider and every horse progresses at a different rate, and that my focus was on teaching good basic skills to keep both members of the partnership safe, sound and happy. The people who just wanted to run fast and jump high never called back. A good number of the sensible folk who actually wanted to learn to ride as well as they could showed up and generally did stay safe, sound and happy. Seemed like a fine business model to me, and it still does.

This approach does, however, present more of a challenge than you might think. Over the years a number of older riders, those lovely folks who take up riding in their 40s or 50s or even 60s, have lectured me about my firm insistence that they practice and master all the basic skills. One particularly prickly older gentleman got quite heated during a session in which I was focusing on improving his abysmal sitting trot despite his wish to lope circles at varying speeds. He informed me in no uncertain terms that at his age he didn’t have time to trot around and around until he was no longer bouncing on his poor horse’s back like a sack of potatoes. (Okay, my words, not his!) He was only interested in practicing the skills he needed to go work cattle. I was being unfair to him, wasting his precious riding time on things he didn’t like to do.

My response was that while I understood his sense of urgency, it wasn’t really relevant. The one who was putting up with his rotten seat was his horse, and she didn’t care how old he was. In order to work with her, instead of hindering and annoying her, there were certain things he needed to learn. And he couldn’t learn the advanced skills without mastering the basics any more than he would have been able to read classic literature without first learning the alphabet.  “See Spot Run” before “War and Peace.”

Your horse doesn’t care that a month from now there’s a show, a cattle drive, a group trail ride or your 50th birthday. All he knows is that today, in this moment, you and he need to come together – body, mind and energy – to build on what you learned yesterday and the day before and the day before. Learning is a progression – one thing leads to another leads to another. That’s true for horses and for humans.

And it’s not a straight line, either, no matter what some calendar or checklist might indicate. During the good times, it’s one step forward at a time. In challenging times, it’s one step forward, three steps back. It takes as long as it takes. And if you skip a step along the way? You might get away with it for a while, but I guarantee holes left in the basic skillset will come back to haunt both rider and horse one day.

I was in Ace Hardware today, trolling the housewares department for gifts for a friend, and was witness to three instances when men came in to return Christmas lights and decorations. The explanations were all the same, some version of “she didn’t like these.” What I found so interesting was the obvious fact that none of the men seemed upset or angry to have been sent on this errand. They didn’t act like they felt inconvenienced or picked on. They laughed and joked with the cashier while explaining and it seemed when I thought about it later that I could even hear in their voices the underlying fondness they had for their wives. One guy said he had been there twice already today, taking home different things on approval. He talked about this calmly, smiling and in quite good humor.

With a recent change in my living situation on my mind, I couldn’t help thinking how nice it was that these guys seemed to have made peace with the fact that their wives cared way more than they did what the holiday display looked like. It was just part of their lives and not cause for a single ruffled feather. It wasn’t about them, even though it involved them. Nary a comment about “the old ball and chain,” even. Mind you, these men were all older, gray-haired and probably retired, because they were free to run errands for their wives in the middle of a weekday afternoon.

I left the store with a good feeling, sort of heartwarming and hopeful. If I can keep working and working on being more patient and giving and flexible, I should be able to face whatever comes up in my life with that same calm good humor. How nice.

Afterward, as I drove home, I was thinking that some of the conflict between the sexes stems from the very different pressures our culture brings to bear on each. I know for a fact that the way I prioritize my time and the things that cause me to feel vaguely (or very) inadequate are at least in part programmed by the household and culture I grew up in. I mean, my mom still wipes the tops of all the stinking door sills every time she cleans. “It doesn’t take very long,” is her stock statement about it.

I was raised with the ‘50s housewife as the paragon to emulate, and I have never, ever managed to meet that standard. The sane part of my brain doesn’t even want to. But it’s always there … the little voice that says “the vents need dusting” and “the windows need washing” and “the baseboards are covered with lint” and, and, and. Being the perfect cook and cleaner and decorator and laundress and groundskeeper and gardener is exhausting, especially when we also have to go out and be successful businesswomen. It’s too much for one person to do alone, to run a “proper” household and still have time for frivolities like sleep, fun, relaxation. I don’t think we necessarily even know who we’re trying to please anymore, but we still keep at it, day in and day out.

It was such a relief today to imagine having a partner who will pitch in and help lift some of the burden of chores, someone to cheerfully run to the hardware store to return the “ugly” lights. Sigh …