High on horses

I jumped today--popped over a crossrail several times. My instructor, bless her, I could tell didn't understand why I seemed so unreasonably pleased with myself. Six-year-olds jump bigger fences after all. She just sees a neurotic, slim woman who runs everyday--athleticism like that should be a breeze.

I was always the last kid picked in gym class. Pudgy, and clumsy, I thought losing weight would give me grace. And as much as I feel and look better, there has always been an awkwardness in my movements, a sense of discomfort in my body I've never been able to shake. I can conceal it from people sometimes, but you can't lie to horses.

It is so humbling to see my teacher's seventeen-year-old daughter, shy in her own right, get on my horse and play him like a maestro plays a piano, when I struggle. Communication beyond words, in so many ways, has eluded me all my life. And even without trying--just jumps on the horse to show me what Sailor can do, gingerly protecting her nails and the good clothes she wore because she didn't even plan on riding today.

I learn so much from horses--about the world, about myself. I woke up this morning, feverish and stuffy-nosed and after time in the outdoors I feel alive.

I feel deep down, somehow, if I could only have a horse, live on a farm, make my money with writing yet still become more connected to the physical world, I would be happy.

I suppose that's the typical city mouse dream, though....

Being single means never having to say you're flabby...

Well, maybe that's an exaggeration.

But today began with a (fortunately scheduled) visit from my plumber. Of course, this put a crimp in my whole day, as everything was pushed 2 hours ahead. Although I work as an editor from my home office, by and large, I still have deadlines to meet--yet I was also able to steal away for a quick ride on my bike--in addition to working out, I always make sure to take time for activity breaks, just so my back doesn't seize up.

I was a fat, inactive kid, and it's amazing how much I look forward to exercise, or simply joyous movement, like riding a bike through the melting paths of snow on a February afternoon.

Not having the obligations of other people's schedules, like a spouse or children, can be wondrous, or having someone who would rather be watching TV as recreation than moving about in the world.

I really admire mothers who are fit--it doesn't matter if they are thin, but fit, and don't feel guilty about the time they take for themselves running or in the gym.

The plumber was cute and told me some funny stories, while snaking my kitchen drains and probably costing me a fortune (I haven't got the bill yet). He told me of having to extract roses from the garbage disposal of a couple in Rumson. Now there is a story, or a 'found' poem--if only I was a student of creative writing again, and only had the responsibility of writing poems and stories!

This Is Just To Say

I have called
the plumber
for your roses
you gave me

and which
I put down
the garbage disposal
PS It didn't work as well
As you said it would.

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

I live alone

"You live all by yourself here?"

I looked at the man, surprised. He was installing the new range hood of my new oven.

"This place is so big!"

My house has about five rooms. One of my jobs is as an editor for a private educational consulting firm, and I have been inside the homes of clients who have rooms almost as big as my entire home. To call my house palatial seemed like a farce. I tried to catch a glimpse of his eyes to see if he was joking as he writhed above my new on-sale $400 oven, but I realized he wasn't.

Of course, I remembered the reaction when the house passed from my mother to myself after her death. My aunt and uncle told me I should rent part of the house, although I had no economic reason to do so. I was confused--did they want me to sleep in the bathroom perhaps. They said, like the man it was 'too big.' For a woman alone, was their implication.

Yet I have always been a woman alone. When I was fifteen, I spent the summer in the Soviet Union as a student ambassador. I was the only person from my school to apply to the program, not because I was the brightest girl in school, but because no one had ever done so before. I went to an undergraduate college, Wesleyan University, to which no Shore Regional High School student had ever applied as well. People preferred to apply and to to where there friends were going. Later on, I lived in England for two years, and afterward people would say to me, shocked--but you didn't KNOW anyone in England, when you went.

Unfortunately, I'm not very daring, although this presentation of myself suggests that I am. Instead, it is that I have a kind of social stupidity. I never look to either side of me, I seem to lack that unconscious social instinct supposedly all women have.

I am also happily single and hate going to the bathroom as part of a potty pack of girls.

This blog is about my life as a woman alone, and the things I do because I am alone. Because I am alone I can run free at night, despite caveats about how women should always be within ten feet of a man to protect her (because men never get attacked of course), of learning to ride horses (poorly) at middle age rather than watch a child learn something I've always wanted to do--for myself, and my musings as a happy single lady who hates to wear jewelery, particularly rings.