T-minus six days until Midge and Ella’s first show. Yes, it’s a schooling show. Yes, it is a very, very small deal. And yes, my blood pressure is rapidly rising.
They’re ready. Neither is going to get 90 percent scores, but they’re ready enough. Midge’s 3s and 4s sometimes look a little more like calculus than simple counting, complete with imaginary numbers and the square root of pi, but the pirouettes are pretty super, and the trot work is gravy. He’ll be fine.
With Ella, I’m getting a better sense of the best way to showcase her without wearing her out. I’ve got a schedule, and it seems to be working. While the snow has put a dramatic dent in my plan of taking her on a tour of Northern Virginia’s indoor arenas all winter long, she’s been off the farm to strangers’ rings twice now. Ella handled both with great aplomb—I actually had to really kick her around at my friend Renee’s because she was too lazy to make good piaffe. There will inevitably be some wobbles and bobbles to the test, but she can do everything. She’ll be fine, too.
And yet. The perfectionist in me wants just four, well, six more weeks. They’d be stronger in six weeks. Ella would have better transitions, better carriage. Midge might be able to do the canter tour of the Developing Test in, you know, three breaths instead of just one. And I’d drop the 7-or-so pounds that have crept on this winter and look like Gisele in my shadbelly. Obviously. Oh, for six more weeks!
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But I don’t have six more weeks. I have six more days. So Midge will make lots of happy squishy canter. Ella will follow the plan—a normal ride Tuesday, a tough ride Wednesday, Thursday off with a massage, and a normal ride Friday in anticipation for The Big Day. And I will throw out the box of cake mix that is beckoning to me from inside the cabinet. (Gonna hang onto the open bottle of red wine, though. Just in case.)
And we’ll all be fine.
