Jackie Goes Country. Weird, right?

I was never that girl. You know the one, or I perhaps should say the legion, who went through "The Horse Phase." It's not that I didn't LIKE horses, per se, I just wasn't that interested. I didn't read Black Beauty or The Black Stallion or any of those books. By then I had already learned that in books (and on TV), beloved animals tend to meet untimely deaths. I didn't need that baggage or heartache.

I have ridden horses occasionally in the past. The last time I remember I went on some church retreat with a friend in high school (where I was one of 2 Catholics. It was...strange, to say the least.) where horse ridding was one of the 'activities.' I learned that riding horses hurt. From time to time I think that it would be nice to give it another go, but nothing comes of it. Anyway, and this is going somewhere, my horse experience is mostly theoretical. Which is akin to my general view toward nature. Theoretical. I like nature. In theory. I like hiking and camping and geocaching and letterboxing. I just really, really hate dirt. This impedes my outdoor adventures as dirt tends to be, well, the basis of nature.

And then, somehow, these two things, nature and horses, collide. I offered to 'horse sit'. In the country. It was fairly low-impact. Mostly just feed the horses twice a day. I wielded a pitchfork. heh. I can't believe someone gave me access to a pitchfork.

Mud and Jay think they deserve treats for posing.
They are richly rewarded.

Pie just really wants to eat the camera. He's the one who
yells at me if he thinks I've taken too long to feed him.
And yes, horses can totally chastise you.

I'm just really glad I don't have to feed that thing.
I was scared just walking under it. If it fell on me,
there's no way I'd survive. Even if I wasn't
impaled by those pointy bits.

It's actually gone off without a hitch*, which, given the pointy prongs, is a little surprising. I'm sure that when I feed them for the last time on Thursday morning, and then go hop on a plane for the mini family reunion in Vegas, there might be a little shell shock.

Anyway, this is pretty much what I've been doing since I've not been blogging. I've only come home tonight to the Internet because I really couldn't NOT watch Veronica Mars. The country didn't have Internet OR the CW.

*well, there was that one large winged creature that attacked me, but I survived. I hate insects. Oh, and that time the wind whipped the top off the grain bucket. I had to venture out into the well fertilized horse turf. That was harrowing. More so than when the horses thought that my jeans might taste good.