Losing weight threw me for a loop in a lot of ways beyond the physical, one of them regarding how I dress. My chubby idea of clothing that fit was clothing that was loose enough for me to move around in, and that hid my exact, generous, contours. In the X-Plus sizes, nothing was “too loose,” but now that I am into the regular numbers… stuff will fall off if I choose too large a size.

This is obvious to the normal-sized, but I am still trying to find a balance between, “That looks and feels too tight,” and, “That is how clothing feels when it fits.” Some of my bewilderment is just the old dog/new tricks challenge, but some of it is how fussy I am about tactile matters in general.

I am pretty tactile avoidant. With a few close family and friends exceptions, I don’t like people touching me casually. It’s not a germ thing, it’s an I do not enjoy other people’s hands on me thing. I can shake hands and even hug others (now),  but I have always been socially stand-offish.

For a long time, I thought I was just wired wrong, but then I started coming across Participants at the barn who cannot stand to touch the horse. They will sit in the saddle and enjoy riding the horse, and some of them ride quite well, but the whole, “Pat your pony!” or hug your horse routine… not only no, but heckin’ darn no.

The feel of that coarse, often dusty, horse hair is unbearably repugnant to these riders. These are the kids who as toddlers had tantrums if their shirt tag touched their nape. I am not that far down the continuum, but I understand their reactivity.

The upside is, I love soft textures. Flannel sheets were invented for me. Really cushy socks are my guilty pleasure (you can spend a lot on socks if you’re not careful). To pet a sleek, soft cat calms my nerves.

Fleece is my friend, and one of my treasures is an angora scarf woven in the All Scotland purple plaid and purchased in Edinburgh. Warm, and soooo soft. I think those folks from days of yore with their capes and shawls were on to a tactile delight. Those garments are snuggly warm, soft, and pretty.

I got to thinking about this business of textures when I noted that a week off meant a week in play clothes–loser, softer, less structured attire. Slippers instead of my Brooks or Hokas, the special alpaca socks that I don’t wear to the barn no matter how cold it is. Like hot tea and pretty flowers, what I allow next to my skin can be a real comfort and joy to me, and I am so very grateful that to a significant extent, I am in charge of what and who touches me.

Are you a hugger? A handshaker? A closet soft-sock collector? Or maybe you don’t give much thought to your tactile preferences, though cooking spices or colors or footwear are serious business for you?

My winter went off the rails when I spent the holidays contending with a rare occasion of deadline writing. Some writers create their best work with a deadline looming near at hand. A few writers can only generate prose when the clock is ticking down.

I am not one of them, and I hope in the future to avoid that sense of, “This book must be done by the end of the month or else.” I got it done, and it’s a good book, but the process was Not Fun. Then January continued the Not Fun theme with foul weather, a visit from the norovirus’s more persistent cousin, and the extra house work that comes with foul weather and many pets.

February was just as slog. I overcommitted myself at the therapeutic riding barn in terms of hours and days per week, and I am also in the Dunning-Kruger dip as an instructor–the place where you admit this gig is more complicated, stressful, and demanding then you realized, and holy Ned, your ignorance is vaster than you imagined.

My barn schedule will be lighter going forward, and I have the first week of March off from all horse duties. The writing schedule is in a good place (waves to Lord Julian), and the weather is moderating. I have a window of days to rest and refresh, and by gum, I intend to make the best of them!

For me, part of R&R means going back to  that old, elementary school basic: Playing outside. I still have a few bulbs I can stick in the ground, I have a yard full of windfall to clean up. The point is: Go OUTSIDE. Get some Vitamin D the way nature intended, touch dirt, re-connect with my tiny patch of paradise.

Another part of a re-charge is wearing play clothes. There’s office attire, courtroom attire, barn attire, and, for me, slack day attire. Into my slack day attire I will go. All very soft, loose, warm, and comfy stuff.  The play clothes wardrobe somewhat assumes I will avoid socializing, which figures near the top of the agenda.

If I tackle some house work, I will start on my bedroom upstairs, the place where I put the day aside and literally rest, or where I go to read in quiet with Madam Travis the Cat purring beside me. The big chores that result from winter wear and tear on the house probably won’t figure on the list. Those I will do weekend-by-weekend as spring progresses.

And I will read. I will go upstairs earlier than I have been (Travis approves of this part of the plan), and after a couple days of sleep-in-if-I-want-to, I will set my alarm to get me up with the sun.

None of this is complicated, but I still need to be intentional about it, or I will go down You Tube, housework, research, and socializing rabbit holes, and my week to rest and recover will be gone before I know it.

How do you put the court in recess after a compression phase?

One of my junior high social studies teachers would, when his lesson plan ran short, have us play the map game toward the end of class. He’d pull down the big world map in the front of the room (Mercator distortion view of course), put a student on either side, and call out a country or capital. The first kid to find that location was challenged by the next kid and so forth.

The competitive aspect of the game was distasteful to me, and I realize now that the game was easily biased. The teacher simply had to pick eastern locations to favor the student on the right side of the map, and so on.

But that big world, with all the strange names, different colors, enormous mountain ranges and huge seas… I liked knowing where everything went on that world.

Fast forward to any weekday morning, when I’m reading the daily newsletter from International Intrigue, (“Your cheeky guide to what’s going on in the world…”) and I am frequently stumped. Yes, El Salvador is in Central America, but is it north or south of Nicaragua? (North, and no shared border with Nicaragua). Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are all stacked on top of each other, but in what order? (Alphabetical from the north.)

Because I was so frequently flummoxed about a world map I once knew pretty well, I made myself a little rule: If I don’t know where a place is, I will look it up. I might not remember next time what I found this time, but that just means I’ll look it up again. I am gradually getting the -stans sorted, along with west central Africa, and southeast Asia.

On the one hand, I am ashamed of my ignorance. Do better, Grace Ann. On the other hand, I notice that my life is full of personal micro-rules, some worthwhile, some ridiculous. When I’m shopping, I observe the “never take the last one” rule, because the pandemic left me with some lingering tendencies to hoard and to “shop anxious.” I don’t want to be the reason some tired parent goes home empty-handed when the Vandal Horde expects the three cheese, stuffed crust home-baked pizza dinner.

On social media, if I draft and edit the same comment three times, I’m not allowed to post the comment. I’m probably arguing with a bot or a troll anyway, and denying FB one more piece of engagement data about me is always the better course. My other rule about social media is never, ever let that crap blight the beginning or end of the day.

These micro-rules reflect my values: Be a responsibly informed citizen of the earth. Think of others. Guard my peace of mind, but don’t be an ostrich. Don’t be greedy, balance legitimate fears with common sense and compassion….

And somehow not taking the last pizza is supposed to be a contribution to a better tomorrow? I dunno, but it’s enough if exercising a little restraint contributes to a better Grace today.

Do you have micro-rules, even if they would make no sense to anybody else, and are sometimes honored in the breach?

People who train horses quickly get wise to the notion that horses can spot patterns better than people can spew words. Horses also get cause and effect. “If I trot off smoothly when she bumps her calves against my sides, she strokes my shoulder. Yay! If I sidle away from the mounting block, she moves the block close to the rail, so I can’t sidle anywhere. Boo!”

Because horses do pick up on patterns, most riders are very careful about certain moments in a training ride. When do you let your horse go from the working phase of the ride to the cool down phase? Ideally, when he has just been a very good boy, of course. Even if the ride has been largely frustrating, you find something for him to do that he can handle well.

My daughter (who is 5 foot 8) with her wee pony

Old Thunderbolt will think, “I changed my canter lead in the middle of the arena and then I got to walk. Walking is easy!” He will be more alert for that change-the-lead cue in the subsequent rides, because it might mean easier work is ahead.

When do you end the ride and hop down? After more good behavior, if at all possible. When do you put him into his stall after the ride? When he’s being calm and mannerly, NOT when he barges down the barn aisle like a tank in overdrive.

The moments when what naturally follows feels like a reward to a horse have to be carefully considered, lest you set the horse up to think that lagging, jigging, bucking, crow-hopping and other tiresome naughtiness is what yields results the horse likes.

I am not a horse, but in my typical day, the same kind of, “Choose consciously” moments appear. When I sit down at the computer early in the day, my first cuppa tea steaming to my right, my mouse pad to the left… I have two options: I can jump right into my work in progress, or I can read two newsletters and then jump into my work in progress. Pretty much any other course–solitaire, yesterday’s sales, a jig saw puzzle, scrubbing that cruddy spot where a muddy cat brushed against the kitchen cabinet…

Not smart, Grace Ann. That is asking to end the day admitting in my journal that, “The morning got away from me.” The whole morning did not get away from me, but that one moment, fingers poised above the keyboard, mouse ready to click, very much got off on the wrong foot.

Another tricky moment occurs in the early afternoon, when I’ve done my writing for the day (I hope, I hope), checked email, and  dealt with any financial matters. Then what? This is the time to get away from the computer, take on a few house chores, go for a walk, and get my head free of the to-do list. If I don’t, if I yield to the jig saw puzzles and FB doomscroll (once a day, and I try to keep it under 20 minutes), I usually don’t get anything worthwhile done, but I also set myself up for a dull, fretful evening.

The time to goof off, for me, is late afternoon. I can let myself–or sometimes force myself–to frolic and detour, watch a horse video, read a physical book, or research the history of Wellington boots, and then as evening rolls around, I might have more juice for say, writing blog posts, updating the web site, or doing other not-very-creative work-work.

I don’t need to think so much of scheduling my whole day. If I want to keep a balance between productivity and pleasure, between focus and freedom, I just need to manage some of those critical moments, when I will transition from one phase of the day to another. If I let the moment slide by and take the path of least resistance, then the rest of the day often goes sliding by as well and that’s not how I most like to manage my spoons.

Does your day have moments you have to manage a little more carefully? Little windows that can sneak your time away  in the wrong direction or set you up for a nice steady trot down the preferred to-do list?

So I’m reading along in a fascinating little book, Horse Brain/Human Brain, which details how equines and people perceive and process the world in different (or similar) ways. One of the similarities is, the horse’s eye, by about age 20, is no longer taking in light as effectively as it did at age seven.

I did not know this happens to people too. As we age we don’t see as well in dim or very bright light (I though it was just me), in part because we adjust more slowly to changes in brightness, and in part because the window pane of our eye gets cloudier. I should know this. I was literally born cross-eyed and I wore glasses by age three, but I did not come across this fact previously.

This might explain why I so enjoy the brilliance of sunlight on snow, which I’m in a position to appreciate today. At this coldest, bleakest (ye gods my heating bill!) time of year, we can also get the highest blasts of natural, cheerful illumination. I really like that. The summer sun tends to accompany too much heat, as well as a lot of, “Where is my hat, my sunscreen, my lip screen…” fussing.

Winter sun is just purely wonderful. I also think the absence of bugs is just purely wonderful. Right up there on the same list is the absence of kittens at this time of year. Kittens in the abstract are wonderful-plus, but you-will-never-catch-me kittens peeking out from under my summer kitchen in the spring are a testament to my failure (thus far!) to trap-neuter-vaccinate-release my way to a feral-free property. But come winter, when many of the wilder cats will creep into the house during a cold snap, I often trap in higher numbers, and this fortifies me to keep up the good fight.

And speaking of felines and their less endearing traits… there I was, minding my own business, sorting socks and undies by the dryer when I heard that signature thump of a soft, feathered body against glass. Wings beating. Uh-oh.

Came into the living room to find a small blue jay frantically climbing the window while a half a dozen cats batted ineffectually, swatted, and generally menaced the poor creature. Mind you, jays are not my favorite bird, but this one was a guest in my home, as I am a guest in hers. I feed wet food to the cats every day to reduce their predatory activities, but I doubt this bird just spontaneously hopped through the cat door to say hi.

Caught the bird in my hands, which she tolerated calmly. Took her to the porch, lifted my hands and… off she flew, perching way up on a limb of the nearest big pine tree. She flew just fine, she perched just fine. What a story she will have to tell the grandkids! I am still delighted that she will live to tell it. Nature can go be red in tooth and claw on somebody else’s watch, so there!

And this is how I get through another cold snap, another double severe weather warning, another weekend fretting over the power going out (wood stove stocked and ready to fire up).

What small delights have come your way, or cheer your from memory, despite bleakness, despite bodily woes, despite everything?

So… been a week. A very cold week for this region, meaning the big snow is still very much with us, late and soon. The black ice spreads night by night, and the meteorologists sound strangely rapturous about the possibility of another dump of the white stuff in the near future. Must be winter!

I haven’t had a week like this in ages. With COVID we could and did go outside, probably more than some of us had previously, and that was good for us. With the temperature bouncing between a refreshing 2F and a balmy high of 18F, I’m channeling some indoor vibes.

And I am sleeping. For several days in a row, I’ve been telling myself, “Welp, you are over that dreadful bug, this is a great opportunity to Get After The House, so set that alarm, and back on schedule you go!” The plan is, get up early and write multiple wonderful scenes, then switch to domestic force of nature mode, and edit pages into sparkling near-perfection in the evening. Beddy-bye on time between ten and eleven, repeat.

Great plan!

And not happenin’ so far. Tomorrow’s not looking so good either. Instead, I’ve been hitting snooze and sleeping–hard–for at least another hour. My activity level is low, and yet… I am sleeping soundly. Usually when that happens, or when I sleep through an alarm, I shrug and think, “Guess I was tired.”

Guess, I AM tired. And realizing that my sense of when I’m physically fatigued is (still, yet some more) unreliable, I’m pondering what else I’m resting from, because I am resting. This torpid, solitary, low RPMs week is sitting just fine with me.

The first I-needed-a-break that comes to mind is my commute to the horse barn. It’s an hour each way, which is by no means the longest commute on my CV, but my options are for the most part interstates or back-back roads. Roads with no shoulder, plenty of wild life, no handy white line to sight down when the pick-up barreling toward me forgets to dim his brights. Bad to no cell service in stretches.

I hate that rubbishing commute and I hate, loathe, and despise it after dark. Four more weeks, and my schedule will shift, but doing that schlep on three successive days wears me down. I hadn’t admitted that to myself, but by all that’s chocolate, I’m admitting it now.

I am also admitting that trying to step into new roles–Raise ’em charitable funds, Teach that lesson!–is tiring. That stuff takes up mental bandwidth, not simply when I’m in the arena or chatting with a co-worker, but when I’m fretting over what to teach next week, which next fundraising steps I need to first mother-may-my up the food chain, and which I can bull-in-a-china-shop without supervision. I am out of the habit of doing emotional work in an organizational context, but that’s part of the deal I want to take on now.

The residual message for me is: Find some more down time and guard it like it’s my last paperback copy of The Heir. Pay attention to that amorphous sense of lassitude that just might be mental, emotional, or physical fatigue (or all three). Talk to the powers-that-barn about two days on-site instead of three with the spring session, and drive really, really carefully for the rest of the winter shift.

What has the weather helped you learn–the hot weather, the cold weather, the beautiful weather, the dangerous or sweet weather?

PS: We have a final cover for An Heir of Distinction!

I am getting over a bout of norovirus or its near kin. Not fun, but not a protracted illness either. While I was napping, slamming Motrin, and sipping clear liquids, about a foot and half of snow fell, and headline news presented us with another entirely avoidable tragedy in the killing of Alex Pretti, followed immediately by national leadership figures lying about the tragedy or ignoring the tragedy.

I am officially off stride, and Lord Julian is just going to have marinate for a while in his many imperfections, contradictions, and endearing strengths. I’ll get back to the work in progress soon, but just… not… yet.

I am all for staring reality right in the eye, dealing with facts, and relying on fact-based sources, but right now, I also understand the need to hit pause, put the court in recess, and get some settings back to neutral, or as close to neutral as I can manage with the resources available to me now.

I start with a truth: It’s not all going to perdition. The power is still on. Maryland has one of the best grids in the country (and it’s fracking-free). The power could drop two minutes from now, but so far, the house is toasty, the pipes are working, and the potty flushes. I have all the back-ups in place (wood stove, stock-piled water, stock-piled cat food), but not having go Little House in the Dark Ages so far is a tremendous gift.

The cats are enjoying the snow. Many of them have never seen snow, much less the kind they can walk on, and they are darting around outside like Arctic foxes for a few minutes here and there.  The sun is shining, and sun on snow as well all know from Lord Julian’s mutterings, is very, very bright.

My upstairs cat, Travis, thinks I really should be taking three naps a day. Best idea yet! She’s an odd personality, very stand-offish, until it’s plain I’m down for the count, and then she’s the head-booping, face-pawing, jet-engine purring champeen of rural Maryland. Her company has been a comfort.

The quiet has been balm to my soul. NO TRAFFIC (I did hear a salt truck on Saturday night). But none of the up and down the road all day noise that we think we tune out, but we don’t really. My days have been truly, wonderfully, restfully QUIET, and then,

the best quiet of all, the quiet of a heavy snow fall.

So far, I am benefiting from the weather, which leaves me feeling guilty, because of course, so many people are hurt by it. But I needed a hiatus this week, and I am getting one, and for that I am grateful. I am off to shovel another few feet of walkway, and maybe take my first nap of the day. May you all stay safe and warm and on stride.

Any back-handed benefits befalling you lately? Re-sets you didn’t plan, or schedule changes that worked out for the best?

I am a bit under the, um, weather. Might be flu, might be food poisoning. Aches, low fever, chills, GI upset… When I am feeling more than thing, I will get a blog post up. Assuming the power doesn’t go down, or the internet, and that my supply of paperback TBRs is sufficient…

Stay safe, folks!

I learned to make lesson plans on my way to becoming a therapeutic riding instructor. This involved crafting long term goals for each student, and lesson-by-lessons steps for reaching those goals. One of the concepts that pops up over and over again in the lesson planning process is the zone of proximal development.

That’s a hifalutin way of saying, “What is the next skill this rider could work toward that they cannot do now on their own, but can make progress toward with support and practice, and eventually even do independently?” Key to working productively in the zone of proximal development is having a lot of the prerequisite skills already in place. To hold the reins, a student has to be able to control their grip. To ride a sitting trot, they must be able to stay on without support at the walk (which takes a heap more skill and strength than you’d think).

One lovely aspect of later life is that we have acquired a ton of skills. Most of us have had several careers or career phases. We’ve navigated, at least short-term, more than one culture. We’ve weathered several different kinds of long-term relationships. We’ve driven a stick, a tractor, a golf cart, and an SUV. We’ve bounced back from bad decisions and bad luck. We even (sometimes) know how to keep our mouths shut when popping off with a dearly held screed would not be helpful.

With a few very significant caveats, when it comes to learning, the world is our onion. I like learning, and I know it’s good for the old bean, so I’ve set myself some challenges that lie in my zones of proximal development. I’m going after another horse-related certification (about which I will probably bore you at length, later). I have also taken on some fundraising tasks for the adaptive riding barns where I work.

Begging for money is no fun, so why do this?

Welp, my very first job in Washington, DC, forty-thousand years ago, was coordinating the drafting and production of proposals in response to government requests for bids. In law school, I took the classes necessary to be certified in procurement law. I know a lot about the intersection of public money with private enterprise and I love to write. So… how hard can it be to tweak those skills into thumping the tub for the worthy cause of safely putting people with disabilities on horses?

It’s… not so easy. The private foundations with money to disperse seem to all but hide their existence; the major corporations who claim to have charitable arms are also apparently stealth operations. Fortunately, I am tenacious and determined. I am also starting down the American Sign Language education path.

Why? Because I enjoy languages. I’ve studied French, German,  and Spanish to the point of having rudimentary competence somewhere along the way, and I’ve seen Latin and a few glimpses of Scottish Gaelic through the linguistic binoculars. Riders who cannot speak are part of the adaptive demographic, and even though assistive devices can be incorporated into a riding lesson, why not just learn some ASL and see if that’s helpful? The sign for horse makes perfect sense to me.

So those are two of this year’s learning challenges, and what strikes me about both is that I can enjoy them. I can enjoy learning about the charitable foundation data bases, enjoy helping wonderful organizations find slightly firmer financial footing, enjoy trotting out my new sign vocabulary for the week.

What skill or expertise lies in your zone of proximal development that you could enjoy working toward?

PS: And because the first rule of fundraising is, “You have to ask!” if anybody here does have some ideas for how to locate money to host a little barn dance/fundraiser, please do drop me a line at graceburrowes@yahoo.com!

Later this year I am slated to teach a series of unmounted (not-in-the-saddle) horse barn lessons. We’ll look at how horses see, hear, and feel differently from humans, learn what an un-mucked stall can tell us about our horses, and compare human cognitive capabilities with horse minds. Maybe. If a bunch of six year olds sign up, I’m not sure what material I’ll present, so I’m asking the other instructors what their favorite ground lessons are.

The first response I got was, “Just ask your students, ‘Can you do nothing with your horse? Can you stand quietly for two minutes beside your horse and not fuss, not walk on, not start braiding the mane…? Horses stand quietly with each other by the hour. Can you do the same, and what do you learn from trying?'”

Grace explains how horses see

My first thought was: Erm, don’t think I’ll start with this exercise… Then I tried it, and realized that the compulsion to lead that horse around, to give the horse neck scratchies, to talk to the horse, was nearly overwhelming, BUT part of that urge is just because I am in a horse barn. I strongly, strongly associate a horse barn with getting stuff done. I am there to make a contribution with my effort, not to improve the landscape by impersonating topiary. Muck that stall, lead that pony, put away that tack.

If you asked me to just hang out with a horse in a loafing shed or in the pasture, I’d probably be more able to coast in silence simply because the venue changed.

I strongly associate creative mental activity with my writing chair, and the only place I have ever written books is at my kitchen table (with a few hotel rooms thrown in). I read in bed to wind down–nowhere else. I visit with friends in restaurants at lunchtime. Without ever meaning to, I have assigned certain functions to certain places. As a kid, I was marched off to Our Lady Victory Church for mass every Sunday. I am sad to say that fifty years on, I still associate churches with that place where you are bored, you sit on hard benches, and you try not to squirm or talk for an ETERNITY. Church = a place for physical, social, intellectual, and emotional discomfort at all once.

The strength with which I associate places and functions leads me to ask: So, Grace, where is the place for grief, fear, or anger? The answer might be…in my eighteen year old Prius. I drive in silence, and usually over familiar routes, and without company. In that situation, the harder emotions have room to surface–I realize that I am still pissed about that guy who cut me off at the Safeway, or that what I’m calling anxiety is really fear generated by current events. Oddly enough, the inside of my car is pretty untidy, and full of a lot of “just in case” stuff, like spare clothing, bottles of water, tools, fix-a-flat, and reusable grocery bags.

And this brings me to the question that stumped me this week: Where do I celebrate? Where do I rejoice? When I am luminous with joy, what place do I gravitate toward? I haven’t come up with an answer–flower beds are celebrations for me–but if I don’t have a place suited to celebrating, why not, and what am I going to do about it?

What places do you associate with joy?

PS: Watch for pre-order links for A Gentleman of Modest Ambitions, Lord Julian’s twelfth mystery, scheduled to publish at the end of May.