From Morning to Mid-Day in Sixty Seconds

I am only home for a half of an hour...Rhonda has her first private lesson with me at four. Mondays are so chaotic; I jump awake at five am on Mondays without fail. The rain finally stopped. My deck at five-thirty was covered in ice cold puddles. The humidity was gone. The air was clear. The horses were turned out.

At the farm, each barn entrance had developed a muddy barricade filled with hay and gnats. The flies were everywhere. Carey brought in coffee and doughnuts and they swooped in like their breakfast had been served.

The answering machine was blinking the number '3', the driveway was ridden with potholes. This was not going to be a Monday morning spent in the arena on horseback or working from home on the sofa with Ernie.

I set out returning phone calls. Most of them were working parents confirming the day camp tomorrow. We host them each time kids are out of school on holiday. The parents love it because they don't have to worry about daycare. I was about halfway through my messages when a woman who is bringing her scouts troop tomorrow stopped by. She has been out several times before but her family had horses and a big riding stable out west so she has some pretty particular ideas about how she wants tomorrow's event to go. Carey, Ricky, Kathi and Jessica tackled the stalls in both barns while Miguel ran the box-scraper over the driveway to smooth out the potholes.

I had planned on doing some direct marketing but it's going to have to move to Wednesday's agenda, as is the stack of release forms that Carey was going to enter into the database.

If I head back to the farm NOW, I can get my horses tacked for evening lessons, teach my ass off, and hopefully still have the energy to ride Bandit or any one of the other horses on my list.

The week will fly by.