Why Hello, Home

Did you miss me?

I'm back on solid ground, and it happens to be very nice and homey. God, did I miss Vermont. Europe was great, city living was new and exciting, but cities are also not my cup of tea. Alex and I both decided, after 3 weeks of bus/metro-hopping (which is horribly sweat-inducing...public transport in Europe is very efficient but also fairly unhygienic), hotel-staying, museum-visiting and general site-seeing merriment that we'd never, ever, EVER settle in any state of permanency in a city.

Besides, it's impossible to have horses in the city.

I am happy to report Stella was a good girl during my leave: no accidents, injuries, colicks or anything that would otherwise send a worrywart like me into a panic. Now that I've said all this, she'll probably get herself bloodied up in the next couple of days. But it was nice while it lasted.

She was perky and in a good mood when I went to visit her this morning. Our flight got in at 11:45PM EST. That meant, since we'd left Paris CDG at 2:15PM (and Paris is 6 hours ahead of us here on the east coast) that we'd be puddle jumping and hanging out in airports for more hours than I'd like, and awake for even longer. At least she seemed well rested.

On the way to the barn I listened to Dr. Deb's Mannering CD, something I'd bought a while ago but had yet to really put into action. Depression makes it terribly difficult for you to live your life and robs you of even the simplest of joys, and for the last year my love of horses has been included. It's been hard to admit, but spending the last three weeks without the company of horses has brought this back into focus. So without going into too much personal detail or boring you with my struggle with what technically should be deemed as a mental illness (but is often looked as something you should just "get over") I'll get to the good part: the part where Stella and I make a comeback.

It's going to happen. It has to. I watched her today, her curiosity and her gentleness and her interest in what I was doing, her search for treats (my dad has been feeding her pounds of apples while I was gone, and now she's become a little expectant). We had a wonderful couple of hours grooming and working on focus: she enjoyed many scratches at which she stretched her neck and flipped her lip up in appreciation. It was a wonderful welcome home.

I'll have plenty of Europe pictures to share, and several stories as well (including how we got stopped by transport police in Nice, hopped some metro lines in Rome, got assaulted by street vendors in Paris, and how Icelandair seems to have misplaced - which they termed "rerouted" - our luggage...) It was a blast despite the misgivings, but it's so, SO nice to be home.