Mom's Visiting: Hide the Contraband!

         

 My Mother is coming for a visit. A long one. I like my Mom a lot, so there’s no problem there. But it does take a bit to prepare for her arrival.

Back in the day, that meant that shortly before she landed, I'd leap into a wild flurry of housecleaning.  That mostly involved stuffing things in drawers, vacuuming the floors and stashing various articles of drug paraphernalia. I’d usually miss something: rolling papers, a mini-bong, an empty bindle or two. No matter, she’d either not notice, or pretend she didn’t see while I shoved whatever it was into my underwear drawer.

Of course was that year she arrived stood on the patio of my first floor duplex and remarked on just how healthy my landlord’s pot plants were. She knew full well exactly what they were.  So much for that.

Things are a lot different now.  I don’t need to hide the pot ephemera – it’s virtually legal in Los Angeles, and I don’t smoke much anymore.

 I do still go into a frenzy of house cleaning before her visits. Which is weird if I think about it: mom’s a worse housekeeper than I am. Still, one likes to keep up the illusion.

But in addition to clean floors and sheets, now I have a few more things on my list.  Make no mistake: aging changes everything. Last year I had the plumber install grab bars in the bathroom. This year I measured the doorways to make sure her walker would fit.  I also located the nearest CVS Pharmacy so she could get her prescriptions here instead of schlepping them with her.

I ended up renting a car for the duration of her trip. I actually own two vehicles, but neither is suitable for mom any longer. The BMW is a low-slung two-seater which she can easily get into, but not out of. The SUV is too tall for her to climb into and she objects to being pushed into the passenger seat like a bag of grain. We’ve tried it a few times in the past and she dissolves into a fit of laughter, which makes it even harder to shove her in.  

A different vehicle is less amusing, but more appropriate.  So a rental car it is.

Shopping for anything is a chore to me but food shopping is torture. I look around at all those ingredients and am constantly amazed that people can throw them together and make actual meals. I rarely even try to cook.  I just don’t have that gene. Neither does Mom.

But I know Mom can’t survive on my diet of vegetarian junk food. So I took one for the team. I forced myself to go to Ralph’s and stocked up on the basics: bread, eggs, milk and coffee. I also loaded up on a few things I never have in the house: like candy. And really good Scotch.  Personally, I’m a bourbon drinker, but to each her own.

Part of the reason Mom is visiting is to get out of the winter weather. She’s coming from New England- Massachusetts - which has had a particularly awful January and February. It’s been below zero for weeks and has had a record amount of snowfall.  Naturally that meant that the day before she was due to travel, the snow came dumping down.

This created a certain amount of tension. Would the roads be plowed? Would her flight be cancelled? They were and it wasn’t.

She arrived today and is here for three weeks. The weather is going to be perfect, and I think she has a few PLANS. Three weeks sounds like a lot of time to do stuff.  It isn’t.

  

For one thing, I’m in school, and while class only takes two nights a week, I also have a writing group that meets on Thursday, and most of my days are spent working and writing.

Another problem is the Mom factor. Even in her youth she wasn’t a fast mover. Getting her up and going in the morning was always an issue. It’s become more so as she’s aged.

Also, Mom isn’t comfortable sitting in a car for hours on end any more. So the trips of the past - Joshua Tree, Santa Barbara and Hearst Castle - aren’t going to happen this time. It looks like we’ll probably go to the Getty, Descanso Gardens and maybe the Huntington.

Hell, we’ll be lucky if we do anything. My mare is due to give birth in the middle of Mom’s trip, and if that happens we’ll be visiting her and the baby every day. I mean, she wouldn’t want to do anything else, would she? Actually, I think she’ll settle for just seeing the sun almost every day. That the temperature is going to be the 80s is just a plus.

                

We'll Never Be Royal...Except for Lucy

I was never one of those girls who wanted to be a princess. I hated the clothing, wasn’t into the headgear and found the princes sorely lacking.

               

             But I have always referred to my show horse, Lucy (Blind Faith), as the Princess. She seemed to have all of the accouterments:  she’s beautiful, exceptionally talented and is a little bitchy, er, mare-ish.

                

          Well, I’ve just discovered that she actually is a kind of royalty, which makes me, by virtue of the fact that I pay her bills, royalty too. Okay, I’m the lady in waiting. Staff, as it were.

                

         See, last year after her second leg injury, I retired Lucy. She was never going to heal enough to jump anymore and I didn’t want to risk her being hurt any more than she already was.

The plan was that she would join the other two ancient geezers who live in my backyard and serve as friendly lawn ornaments. That was the plan.

                

        Except she wasn’t a geezer. At 16 she wasn’t exactly a spring chicken, but she wasn’t that old. Not to mention that the reality was that I just wasn’t ready.

                

        We’d been together for 11 years. I bought her sight unseen. (Hence her show name : Blind Faith. That and my fondness for the band.) When she arrived, I went up and down the barn aisle searching for my new horse. Except I’d never seen her and didn’t know what she looked like. Finally a groom took pity on me and introduced us. 

                

         Lucy had been imported from the Netherlands for someone who had changed her mind. So I bought Lucy as soon as she cleared quarantine. She probably didn’t understand English, but she picked up on the word ‘treat’ almost immediately. 

For the first few months in Los Angeles, she screamed incessantly. Her blabbermouth ways reminded me of the “Peanuts” comic strip, so her barn name became Lucy Van Pelt, Lucy for short.

For the first five months only my trainer rode her – she was that green. When I finally was allowed to get on, she bucked me off and I bruised three ribs.  She had colic surgery once and almost died. When she was recovering I threw my arms around her neck to hug her. She bit me in the stomach.  Hard. That’s just the kind of relationship we have.

I believe she does care about me. Not only am I the only one she bites, (you only chomp the one you love) but she always  she whinnies when she sees me, even if it’s only been a few minutes. And God knows she took care of me when I rode her. 

Over the years, Lucy developed into a much more talented horse than I deserved, and we became a great team.  After a while, when I screwed up she’d ignore it and take over.  We won a lot over the years mostly because she was that good.

So, last year when the vet said she was done, I made a purely emotional, probably stupid decision: I decided to breed her.  This was absolutely not a good financial decision. Warmbloods can’t even be ridden until they are three, so there’s the cost of raising the baby. Then training it. The bottom line is that the foal will probably be five before I can ride it. Then I have to pray it has some talent.  

It costs a lot less to save that money and buy a trained, proven horse. But this was about sentiment, not smarts. 

So my trainer and I looked through stallion listings. Some people watch porn, others look at clothing. I looked at horses. Hundreds of them. It had to be big, a good mover, a great jumper with a terrific brain and nice hind end. It was like going through Tinder.

Eventually we found the perfect match in Canada. Geographic proximity didn’t matter: the closest Lucy would be to her baby daddy was a doctor holding the veterinary equivalent of a turkey baster.

Thank goodness she’s had a textbook pregnancy.  Sort of.  She originally conceived twins.  Twin horses rarely survive or are unhealthy so one had to be aborted.  Again, the procedure was textbook.

Last week, 10 months in,  I brought her out to the farm where she’ll stay until the baby is weaned. The baby will be there until he’s (please make it a colt!) ready to be trained at three.

The lady who runs the place is a connoisseur of Dutch Warmbloods, and asked about Lucy's lineage. While I know a lot about Throughbred bloodlines I know nothing about Warmbloods, so I happily dug out Lucy’s passport and sent along the information figuring that she was nothing special. Wrong.

The lady was godsmacked.  Apparently Lucy’s family is seriously fancy. Important even. It seems that for the last 11 years Lucy has been trying to tell me she was actual royalty, and I was ignoring the signs. Oops.

Now that I know, I guess I should start bringing her organic carrots. And maybe a bling-y tiara.