Fiascos

Well, I sat down yesterday afternoon intending to write a blog post while it was too hot to ride my horse and my brain was empty of ideas. I stared at a blank screen for forty-five minutes and then realised it was time to saddle up, but before that I asked my husband if he’d like to ride his young horse. Big Mistake. Big Big Big Mistake coming here – note the capitals.

We have a saddle on loan that we are trying out so my sister was going to try it on her horse. I had let her ride the young horse the day before and he was a peach, I have been riding him lately just to make sure he was safe enough. Apparently he’s not safe enough despite three weeks of not having put a foot wrong, because he bucked Spencer off clear over his head and threw him rather violently into the ground near the gate before performing a rather spectacular bronc act and unceremoniously ditching my favourite saddle as he went.

Well, Spencer almost made it to thirty without ever breaking a bone – until now. Clavicle and at least one rib, very painful to breathe, not a pleasant experience and young Jarrah got a half hour of lunging while his buddies were immediately returned to their paddock with zero work done. I cannot work out why he did it, he has been such a pleasure for weeks! I can only assume it was because he wasn’t sure of Spencer. With young horses it could be any number of things, I suppose.

And so here I am sitting at home today, doling out pain relief periodically and waiting for a follow-up appointment with a doctor to discuss if the fracture is displaced or not et cetera. I’m having flashbacks from when I broke my shoulder when I was fifteen. And again to when I broke my foot at twenty-four. Not fun. At all. Amazingly though, the accident happened at about 4.45pm – we were in the hospital ED by 5.10pm and he’d been x-rayed by 5.30pm then we were home by 6.30pm! That must be some kind of record. I remember waiting two hours for pain relief when I broke my foot only to be sent home and told to come back the next day for an x-ray – which I had to wait another three and a half hours for!

But the upside is that I can have the day to write. I’d love to be able to do it every day, that would be a real dream for me. That, and being able to spend all day every day with my dogs. They’re loafing around this morning being very subdued (for them) so I wonder if they sense that its a day for quiet. There was one big bark-off this morning when they noticed the neighbour’s cat lurking in our driveway – the audacity, really!

I am working on mapping out two new stories, but being the single-minded kind of person that I am I will need to pick one and stick to it while I actually write. I am still pondering the contract offer I received to publish Exceptionally Unconventional – it’s a tough decision, much harder to make than I ever expected. I always imagined that the day I received an offer would be the day I’d burst to sign on, but here I am two weeks later still mulling it over. Perhaps it is because I set out expecting rejection. I think all first-time novelists imagine that theirs is the one that will break the writing world – we all imagine we are perfect and our story will be universally adored. But I didn’t have that, I’m a second-guesser. I never thought I’d get an offer off the bat, I was mentally prepared for rejection after rejection after rejection before someone would give me a chance and instead the first time out of the gate I have an offer. I refuse to toot my own horn here, though. I just need time to adjust to the possibilities I didn’t expect so soon. And it seems like there are so many now!