A Better Sunday

My day turned around shortly after my morning post. I didn’t have any other unfortunate happenings like my failed attempt at my chai latte and the plumbing malfunction. My parents made it home from the lake and then my mom and I worked on our grocery list while we talked about our Saturdays. I grabbed a Boost Plus for my snack and then we were off to Trader Joe’s. New favorite of ours. We got everything on our list, plus a few extras. A quick trip to Stein Mart and then we were on our way back to Bahama. For lunch I had a turkey sandwich with a twist. It was a delicious combination of turkey, thinly sliced apple, brie, and raspberry jam. I had the rest of the apple, grapes, leftover veggies and pretzels along with it.

I watched some of the Steelers game before heading out to the barn for the afternoon. It was overcast and I think it had all of the animals feeling sleepy. I lunged Vinnie in the arena again. There were many things that he handled incredibly! The neighbors across the street were hammering and had a generator going, Cookie was patrolling the perimeter, first direction I was lunging all over the arena and second direction he got practice with working while another horse was in the arena. He was fantastic today! He just didn’t want to go forward. He just kept breaking stride at the canter lope because he is lazy. The first direction it looked like I drew cursive e’s all over the arena from where the lunge whip was dragging in the sand. When I switched directions Lena joined me in the ring with Bey. Her and I chatted while we worked our boys and I even picked up a good idea for Vinnie! Lena told me the way she attached the lunge line to Bey’s bridle was the way she learned at the Morgan barn she grew up at and that it is the best way to apply consistent pressure across the bit while lunging. Can’t wait to try it out! I need to do as much work as possible with him in the bridle before my saddle arrives 🙂 I put hoof heal on him today and it got me wishing his hooves were naturally this glossy. Before and after shots: Awkward poses hehe. Murdock and Tilley were snuggled up together on a horse blanket in the tack room. G was happy when I put Vinnie back in his pasture. Ray was peeking at me over Mare. Silly horses… gotta love em.

When I got home I made an alteration to my new reins. I attached easy clasps (that I salvaged from an unused headstall that I had) to them for quicker removal. I then prepped for a recipe that my aunt gave me for chocolate chip pumpkin muffins! I made the muffins while simultaneously eating my snack. Then I took a nice hot shower and did an experiment on my mom’s nails using to different colors of polish to do a funky design. We then started to fix up dinner. I put together the salad and sliced the baguette and put an Italian dressing and garlic mixture on the bread before toasting it in the oven. We had an amazing lasagna with it! We got it last week, from Trader Joe’s of course. Highly recommend it. Now I can’t wait to try out the muffins I made for my bedtime snack!

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Did you do anything exciting or anything that challenged you?

Rehash

Well, my Sunday is off to a rocky start haha. I guess it’s nothing too bad, just feels like bad luck. This morning I woke up and then had to deal with plumbing issues. That’s not a metaphor for anything. Literal plumbing issues. Tons of fun right there… Then when I was fixing my breakfast I was using the fancy espresso/latte/coffee machine that my aunt got my mom a really long time ago, and when I was about to steam my milk for my chai tea latte, it used up all the water. Boo… I thought I could pour more water into the top of it, but it was so hot and I didn’t want to break it (because that would happen to me). Microwave it was. So I exaggerated some, but I hope things go a little smoother for me for the rest of the day. Since I missed blogging yesterday I feel like I have to much to catch up on! Where to begin…

Friday Night

When my dad got home from getting the RV fixed my mom and I made dinner. We decided not to go out just because my dad had a busy day. So we used what we had on hand, which just happened to be burgers. Two Friday nights in a row with burgers! I think I’m all burgered out. It was good though. We had mixed veggies and tots as our sides. Then for my bed time snack I went with a pumpkin greek yogurt from Trader Joe’s 🙂 How did that get in there??!

Saturday

Yesterday started off like our normal Saturdays. I woke up and fixed my breakfast. My mom helped me to use the steamer for my chai latte. Perhaps I just need supervision to operate that thing. I heated up one of my breakfast sandwiches and had a sliced banana with pomegranate seeds. Very good! I worked on my puzzles and talked with my mom. We planned out the upcoming week’s dinners and then went crazy with cleaning the kitchen! It almost doesn’t even look like the same kitchen! For my snack I had pretzels and a caramel nut brownie Luna bar.Pretty good, but not my favorite flavor. Then I did a few more chores and then went to the couch to relax. This is when my Saturday turned into an 8 on my social and food anxiety scale. My friend Josh said that he and his friends had an extra ticket to the Duke vs Miami game and he invited me to go with them. At first I just wanted to stay home and stay in my comfort zone and plan out what needed to be done for my closet project. My dad told me I needed to go because Duke has a good team this year and because what else was I going to do? When an opportunity for a challenge presents itself I have really been trying to push myself to conquering the challenge. So I accepted the invitation. I was nervous because I wasn’t sure if it would be awkward or not since I didn’t know his friends very well. I have always been really shy and social situations have always caused me anxiety. Plus, I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with being out of my comfort zone and making sure I stayed on top of my bubbles. I had no choice but to quickly get ready and plan my lunch and snack. I scarfed down my cheese pretzel nuggets and then ate my apple and bagel on the way. I felt much better knowing I had my lunch and snack planned out. That way I wouldn’t get anxiety at the game, and I wouldn’t have to pay copious amounts of money for concessions. Josh and his friends, Justin and Tyler, ended up being really chill and I wasn’t uncomfortable or nervous at all. It probably helped that I didn’t have a huge crush on any of them like a 13 year old girl on Justin Bieber… That always takes my anxiety way down to a normal level haha. I have been around Justin a few times before, so I knew him a decent amount. I knew Tyler, but I never really talked to him before, but we bonded over dead people. I know, I know, that’s really weird. He works at a funeral home and he loves it and I worked on cadavers a lot for a few classes I took at Appalachian. So we had something to talk about haha. They all were extremely friendly and so they made the social challenge very easy for me. Plus Josh knows of my situation, so I knew he would be understanding if I was having any struggles. The game was so much fun! Duke won 48-30. I was shocked! The students stormed the field.  After the game we stopped at Don Cecilios for dinner. I was planning on just going home to have lasagna, but they all wanted to somewhere and I really didn’t want to be complicated. So that kept me at a level 8. I ordered a chicken burrito with rice and beans and I ate the majority of it. They all are really easy to talk to. Well, for me it’s more like listen to haha. They had so many inside jokes and they just converse at a ridiculously fast pace. They are all pretty southern, so it’s not that they were talking too fast, they just had so many jokes or comebacks that they fired at each other with impressive quickness. Safe to say I was lost for over half of the conversations they had, but Justin and Tyler didn’t hesitate to fill me in on what they were talking about when they noticed the confusion on my face. After dinner we all went back to Josh’s house and watched Olympus Has Fallen. It was a lot better than I was expecting it to be! I had fun with them and I was glad I decided to join them on their activities for the day. I was proud of myself for leaving my shell and doing things that would normally give me so much anxiety. I am learning that if I just relax and enjoy the current moment without over thinking my anxiety level is substantially lower! Upon departing from Josh’s house I thanked Josh for the invite, Justin for the extra ticket, and then was offered a tour of a funeral home by Tyler.

When I got home I snuggled up on the couch and had pumpkin green yogurt again for my snack. A few random things that happened yesterday: My parents decided to go to the Lake in the RV for the night since I made plans. I was so happy they decided to get away because they deserved some daughterless time haha. I also heard from Em, my roommate from last Spring Semester at App. She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and is scared about an upcoming appointment in December. She said it hasn’t spread any where so she should be good. I told her to keep me updated and to let me know if she ever needed anything. She asked how I was doing and was so happy to hear I was doing better. It was so nice to catch up with her! Looking back on it, yesterday was a good day for me. I can’t be sure if I filled all my bubbles, but I defeated many of my anxieties!