To the Wire

I am well ready to be done teaching high school. If it weren’t for the fact that Turnpost is a tiny town and I can’t offend anyone as I’m soon going to be relying on every last member of the populace to support me by coming into my store and buying coffee, I would quit my sub job and let someone else deal with the crazies of high school kids in their last few weeks of school. I swear I might accomplish as much or more talking to an empty room. You can practically see my words ricochet off one thick skull after another as they utterly fail to penetrate the miasma of hormones and summertime daydreams muffling each kid’s brain. At this point I am just trying to survive.

I made an offer on my building and it was accepted, so now we are in seemingly interminable phase during which a lot of people look at the building and the finances of everyone involved and nod their heads and rub their chins and agree that everything appears to be in good shape. Travis has been counseling me to be patient. He says these things always take a long time. I am a little worried though, since my evictors are going to be arriving in two months and my new building is nowhere near livable.

But I did find someone to finish up the space for me. Chad is still coming to the kettlebell class and he recommended a builder named Casey who has done some work for a few people he knows. I called Casey and he sounds exactly like the salt-of-the-earth, straight-forward type individual I imagine would be good at building things. I even managed to talk my Realtor into letting me take him in to assess the amount of work that needs to be done. He said he will have to finish some of the downstairs before I can move in, because I should not breath in certain types of dust. He said he could probably get those parts done downstairs and the upstairs space habitable in four to six weeks. It could still be a couple weeks before I get keys to the place and the authority to start making changes. Yikes that’s going to be cutting it close.

On Sunday Gauge and I

went over to Liv’s. She lives in the new sub-division on the west side. It is a long walk for me. Luckily I turn 16 in about a week and will then be able to drive.

The occasion was a new puppy. Liv’s mom found a breeder she liked online and had the puppy shipped. I never thought of that as a possible way to get a dog . But what do I know.

Gauge believes the puppy is demon spawn. He would not let it near him. He kept trying to hide behind my legs. Some noble protector he’s turned out to be.

Moose

Believe it or not, I am a horse owner. I’m having the hardest time not telling Becca. I’ve decided to keep it a secret because I think she’d have trouble concentrating on finishing up school if I told her. She’s already calling almost every day to tell me how much she is looking forward to the summer. She still hasn’t made any good friends out there and I think she wants a change of scene as much as anything, but it’s gratifying to know she’s so excited.

The horse is called Moose and I know very little about how he’s been trained except he should be good for a little girl who doesn’t know how to ride. I’ve been out to see him a few times and Taylor said I have a lesson a week on my account whether Becca is here or not and I can ride him if I want. I said no thanks. I guess I just feel like I know enough about training dogs to understanding riding a horse would be opening a door to a whole new realm. I don’t know that I have the time to go there.

Wendy was over again for most of the day today and I think we just about finished things up with the house. She bought three big blank canvases for the giant wall in the dining room and painted them this rusty red color, then hung them in a triangle pattern. I’m surprised how good it looks, even though they are basically just solid blocks of color. Wendy certainly has a more creative mind than I would have thought.

So now it’s down to working on the yard. The weather is much warmer and the leaves and grasses are growing in earnest now. Also I have to find somewhere to get Becca a helmet. The girls fly in one month from yesterday.

Two New Things

It’s been an interesting week! On Tuesday I went to the rec center for a class in something called kettlebells. I’m not sure what I was expecting. I knew it had to do with weights, but when I got there I was completely surprised. It turns out a kettlebell is a little round ball with a handle on it that is much heavier than it looks.

The instructor was this really nice, quiet guy named Travis. There were three other women in the class, two a little older than me and one quite a bit younger. The young one is called Madison and she might be an assistant instructor; she helped the teacher demonstrate things a few times.

I was surprised the weights class was all women and I also didn’t expect it to be that small, but both Travis and Madison were enthusiastic. Travis is clearly way stronger than I could ever be in my life, but I chatted with Madison for a little while after class and she told me she’s only been lifting weights for a short time. That is encouraging. She said she could tell a difference in her core strength only a few weeks into the class. She also has very nice, toned arms. I wouldn’t mind it if mine looked like hers at all!

Today I rode Moose for the first time in a lesson setting. I was a little sore from the weights class, so that wasn’t helping, and actually I have to say I had a lot more trouble with him than I expected. He wasn’t bad about anything, he just seemed like he wasn’t very willing. Taylor had to pay a lot more attention than usual and explain a few new techniques on getting a horse to do what you want. I wanted to give up in the middle, but by the end we were walking and trotting around. I was surprised Taylor wasn’t mad at me for being so sloppy, but after the lesson she actually went out of her way to tell me I’d handled everything well, and to explain that horses are always unsettled by a move. They lose all their friends, their home, and the people they know, yet we expect them to jump right in and continue to perform just as well as they did before. She said horses form deep emotional bonds with other horses and people, so poor Moose is going to be a little down and distracted for a few weeks. I hadn’t ever thought about it that way before. I made sure to tell him what a good job he’d done while I was grooming him. Hopefully next week he’ll be a little more settled in.

Friends and Horses

What is weird about not being best friends with Annette anymore is that it is not weird at all. Lunch was the main thing I was worried about but actually it is so much nicer now. I never realized how much of talking to Annette is actually just listening to her talk and agreeing with her, but now that Renee is Annette’s new best friend I can hear how I must have sounded before.

Jackie and Courtney are really pretty nice although sometimes Jackie sits with James and when that happens me and Courtney just talk quietly a little bit while we eat. Courtney is actually kind of shy and I know hardly anything about her even though I’ve been sitting with her at lunch every day for a year which is weird. Today Annette had something she wanted to do in the library before the end of lunch break and she told Renee to go with her so they left and Jackie was with James and so there we were just Courtney and I. It was so nice we just had a normal conversation.

Chad drove me to Taylor’s again because the horse he has been riding hasn’t sold so we are still having our lesson together and he showed me a new horse there named Moose that belongs to the guy that fixed our porch! Also, Kyle’s mom is riding that horse now instead of Chip so that’s funny.

After the lesson Taylor told me Chip is going to be free on Tuesdays now and if I want to I can ride twice a week: on Tuesdays I’d ride with Kyle’s mom on Casey’s horse so it would be cheaper like when I ride with Chad. I said I’d have to ask my mom but maybe. The number one thing I’m really worried about for the summer is I don’t know how I will be able to see Chad. Once Taylor sells the horse he’s riding I won’t have lessons with him anymore and no school too will mean no Chad. If I rode at Taylor’s twice a week I might see him sometimes but really it’s no guarantee because lessons are always in the afternoon and Chad always does stalls in the morning I have always known that but I always hope to see him anyway. So I don’t know I’m not sure if my mom would let me anyway.

And what’s funny about Chad is even though I know now for sure that he doesn’t like me except as a friend I’m still as in love with him as ever. But it is different now I just like being with him without hoping he will start to like me back. I guess it’s better I don’t know but anyway it is not as confusing.