HotToTrot
Well-Known Member
My preparation the day before an event is meticulous. Whether it's parking tickets, lost keys, boob exposure or general disarray, I have this whole "prior planning and preparation" lark absolutely nailed. And, since I'm so clearly successful in my eventing endeavours, I'll share this new tip with you, for free, just so that you, too, can be as smooth and as polished as I am.
Vomit.
LOTS of vomit.
Actual puke.
Multiple lots of actual vomit puke.
I was woken at 1.30 am on the morning of Little Downham by the sound of chunder. Well, that's ok, babies do make some sickly sounding noises, so this was probably just a bit of a gurgle. The chucking sound continued. Resigning myself to the reality, I reached for the wetwipes. This probably wasn't too bad, I thought, baby-vom tends to be fairly inoffensive; a little milk and that's about it. No. This was proper puke. Actual sick, with actual chunks and actual stomach bile and actual vast quantities of it at that. Wet wipes, quite clearly, were not going to cut it. I stripped the cot, stripped the baby, rinsed the baby in the sink, discovered it still stank, covered it in my shampoo, rinsed it again and jumped back into bed with it, hoping that that was the end of that.
It wasn't.
At 2.15 am, there was some more gurgling. In my bed. This time, I can assure you, I did not wait to find out whether it was a hoax or the real deal; I was not going to stand by and watch whilst this vile vomitting creature hurled unashamed and unchecked over my pillows. "SHEETS!" I bellowed. "Don't let it soak into the mattress!" I rushed the baby into the sink again. There were chunks in his hair, chunks stuck in his ears. Husband sprang into action and whipped the sheets off, helpfully dropping them on top of my clean jods that were laid out for the following day.
The "Feed Baby" alarm went off. Exhausted, I grabbed the small puking creature and started to feed it, falling gratefully back to sleep as soon as he'd latched on. The "Get out of Bed and get the Horse Ready" alarm went off. I barely registered. Then my husband's alarm went off. "Viv!" he yelled "It's 6 o'clock! Get up!" I fell out of bed, made a flask of extremely strong coffee, and set off for the yard.
My husband and I don't always work in harmony though. The previous weekend, we'd gone to SoE for my first Intermediate with P(C)arrot. My husband reproached me as we walked back to the trailer after the dressage. "Why were you dicking about like that?" he demanded. "It just makes you look like a weirdo. Nobody else does that. Non-conformity's all very well" (he conceded, looking at my unplaited mane) "but only up to a point. Why can't you look a bit more like everyone else?" I felt attacked and the rage began to rise. "What", I said, icily, "exactly, do you mean by "dicking about" and "looking like a weirdo"? Did I, for example, whip ten dozen parsnips out of my hat at B, juggle them momentarily on top of my horse's ears and then twirl them around both little fingers whilst kneeling backwards on one leg? No. No, I did not. THAT, my darling, would constitute "dicking about" and/or "looking like a weirdo". Frankly, unless you can clarify what it was that I did wrong, and what you would like me to do differently, then your comments are unhelpful and it just feels as if you're being mean. We KNOW this horse can't do dressage and we also know (but not in capital letters) that I can't do dressage. Defensive, my husband glared at me. "Fine." he snapped. "If you can't take criticism, then I won't comment on anything you do again."
This one's going to be difficult for a lot of you to accept, but please try. Hard though it is to believe, I do have the odd little character imperfection. There, I've said it - just take a moment now. So along with the fact that I am a BMW driver, that I'm normally covered in vomit and wee, that I don't plait my horse, that I can't see a stride (or, apparently, ride a test) for toffee.... I'd like you to know that I'm also an only child. And I can sulk for Britain. "I don't know if I can do any of it now", I said, haughtily, the drama queen in me playing out her role. "I just feel as if you've totally undermined me. I think we should go home." This, of course, was his cue. His cue to apologise, to beg my forgiveness, to talk me round, to cajole me into staying, to tell me that of course I could do it, that he was wrong to call me a weirdo and accuse me of dicking about. And I, the innocent, wounded party, the centre of the attention, would reluctantly accept, would hold enough of a grudge to make him remember what he'd done, whilst I graciously tried to forgive his errant ways. My husband hadn't read the script. He stared at me, stony-faced. "That", he said, in glacial tones, "is absolutely fine. And if you we go home now, then I am never coming to another one of your events again." P(C)arrot picked at some grass. The toddler hid the car keys in my water bucket. The baby fell asleep. My husband and I glared at one another in silence. I got off my high horse. I got back on my actual horse. I went over to do the showjumping.
I was a little bit late for this, because the toddler had run off with my spanner as I was studding up. "Rosie!" I'd yelled, "Bring back my spanner!" She ran over, clutching a handful of studs. "Put these in!" she said, excitedly. "I would," I sighed, "but I need my spanner. Please, Rosie", I asked, as I bent double clutching onto P(C)arrot's hoof, a nail and can of WD40. "Spanner? Please?"
The SJ was.... Fine. The demon had tried to appear as I was getting ready to go in, but, due to my toddler's spanner-snatching shenanigans, I really didn't have time for it then and so I said to it what I'd said to her: "I don't have time for this s*** right now. Shut up and do what I want. I'm an only child."
The XC looked, perhaps not that big, but plenty technical, and we set off quite quietly as I focussed on getting him to stay in balance and to get up in the air. The water came quickly, at 3 and 4a/b, with a wide skinny in and a wide skinny out and then we moved along to a big square castle, followed by two fences on an angle and a timber wagon. I needed to open him up a bit, but I wasn't quite sure where to do it, because very soon we were coming down a hill to two uprights on a sharp turn. Now I had to kick on in earnest, for in front of us lay a trappy trakhener. When I did the CIC at Firle, I realised, to my dismay, that I had developed a weirdness about ditches. (""Developed" a weirdness about ditches, what do you mean, "developed", you've always had a weirdness about ditches" scoffed a friend when I relayed this to her. (Don't criticise me, I'm an only child.)) Anyway, here I was, here was my ditch, so I sat up, engaged the canter, hope I wasn't going to be weird, or look like a dick, or be remotely bitter about being told off by my husband for any of the above, and P(C)arrot soared over it perfectly. Well, they come in threes, don't they, so we turned to a ditch/hedge, then we turned to a coffin and then we turned to an elephant trap (which also had a ditch under it) and then, of course, because there wasn't really enough to date to make me weird about anything, we came to..... A corner. Actually, it was two skinnies and a corner, on a curving wiggle. Unfortunately, P(C)arrot had engaged the Tank Mode. I pulled. Nothing. I pulled harder. Nothing. I seriously had to slow down, NOW, so I stood up in my stirrups and heaved as hard as I could on one rein. He slowed enough for me to negotiate the line of three and then he was off. Of course he was, because do you know what came next? A ditch palisade.
As we'd walked the course, my husband had commented that the turn to the quarry towards the end of the course looked tight. "Ah", I said, knowledgeably, "that's to slow the horses down before they come to the fence. Unless the horse is P(C)arrot. I'd seen quite a lot of this fence on the course walk, because it was at this stage that the baby had decided that it needed a feed, so I'd perched on an unsuspecting fence with my boobs out and spent a long time staring down into the quarry at the barrels at the bottom. Now it all came up rather faster, but we were clear and soon through the finish. I jumped off, dicked around for a bit, looked like a weirdo, and flung him at my husband. "My legs have cramped up" I gasped. "Please walk him." As husband and P(C)arrot wandered away, I flopped onto the pram, only to discover that the toddler (who's potty training) was knee-deep in urine and the baby was after my boobs again.
Pics:
http://s1362.photobucket.com/user/V... TOUCH Pendleton Viviane_zpsdh9gvgcw.jpg.html
http://s1362.photobucket.com/user/V... TOUCH Pendleton Viviane_zpsefedkdc9.jpg.html
http://s1362.photobucket.com/user/V... TOUCH Pendleton Viviane_zpsidc1vhmp.jpg.html
Vomit.
LOTS of vomit.
Actual puke.
Multiple lots of actual vomit puke.
I was woken at 1.30 am on the morning of Little Downham by the sound of chunder. Well, that's ok, babies do make some sickly sounding noises, so this was probably just a bit of a gurgle. The chucking sound continued. Resigning myself to the reality, I reached for the wetwipes. This probably wasn't too bad, I thought, baby-vom tends to be fairly inoffensive; a little milk and that's about it. No. This was proper puke. Actual sick, with actual chunks and actual stomach bile and actual vast quantities of it at that. Wet wipes, quite clearly, were not going to cut it. I stripped the cot, stripped the baby, rinsed the baby in the sink, discovered it still stank, covered it in my shampoo, rinsed it again and jumped back into bed with it, hoping that that was the end of that.
It wasn't.
At 2.15 am, there was some more gurgling. In my bed. This time, I can assure you, I did not wait to find out whether it was a hoax or the real deal; I was not going to stand by and watch whilst this vile vomitting creature hurled unashamed and unchecked over my pillows. "SHEETS!" I bellowed. "Don't let it soak into the mattress!" I rushed the baby into the sink again. There were chunks in his hair, chunks stuck in his ears. Husband sprang into action and whipped the sheets off, helpfully dropping them on top of my clean jods that were laid out for the following day.
The "Feed Baby" alarm went off. Exhausted, I grabbed the small puking creature and started to feed it, falling gratefully back to sleep as soon as he'd latched on. The "Get out of Bed and get the Horse Ready" alarm went off. I barely registered. Then my husband's alarm went off. "Viv!" he yelled "It's 6 o'clock! Get up!" I fell out of bed, made a flask of extremely strong coffee, and set off for the yard.
My husband and I don't always work in harmony though. The previous weekend, we'd gone to SoE for my first Intermediate with P(C)arrot. My husband reproached me as we walked back to the trailer after the dressage. "Why were you dicking about like that?" he demanded. "It just makes you look like a weirdo. Nobody else does that. Non-conformity's all very well" (he conceded, looking at my unplaited mane) "but only up to a point. Why can't you look a bit more like everyone else?" I felt attacked and the rage began to rise. "What", I said, icily, "exactly, do you mean by "dicking about" and "looking like a weirdo"? Did I, for example, whip ten dozen parsnips out of my hat at B, juggle them momentarily on top of my horse's ears and then twirl them around both little fingers whilst kneeling backwards on one leg? No. No, I did not. THAT, my darling, would constitute "dicking about" and/or "looking like a weirdo". Frankly, unless you can clarify what it was that I did wrong, and what you would like me to do differently, then your comments are unhelpful and it just feels as if you're being mean. We KNOW this horse can't do dressage and we also know (but not in capital letters) that I can't do dressage. Defensive, my husband glared at me. "Fine." he snapped. "If you can't take criticism, then I won't comment on anything you do again."
This one's going to be difficult for a lot of you to accept, but please try. Hard though it is to believe, I do have the odd little character imperfection. There, I've said it - just take a moment now. So along with the fact that I am a BMW driver, that I'm normally covered in vomit and wee, that I don't plait my horse, that I can't see a stride (or, apparently, ride a test) for toffee.... I'd like you to know that I'm also an only child. And I can sulk for Britain. "I don't know if I can do any of it now", I said, haughtily, the drama queen in me playing out her role. "I just feel as if you've totally undermined me. I think we should go home." This, of course, was his cue. His cue to apologise, to beg my forgiveness, to talk me round, to cajole me into staying, to tell me that of course I could do it, that he was wrong to call me a weirdo and accuse me of dicking about. And I, the innocent, wounded party, the centre of the attention, would reluctantly accept, would hold enough of a grudge to make him remember what he'd done, whilst I graciously tried to forgive his errant ways. My husband hadn't read the script. He stared at me, stony-faced. "That", he said, in glacial tones, "is absolutely fine. And if you we go home now, then I am never coming to another one of your events again." P(C)arrot picked at some grass. The toddler hid the car keys in my water bucket. The baby fell asleep. My husband and I glared at one another in silence. I got off my high horse. I got back on my actual horse. I went over to do the showjumping.
I was a little bit late for this, because the toddler had run off with my spanner as I was studding up. "Rosie!" I'd yelled, "Bring back my spanner!" She ran over, clutching a handful of studs. "Put these in!" she said, excitedly. "I would," I sighed, "but I need my spanner. Please, Rosie", I asked, as I bent double clutching onto P(C)arrot's hoof, a nail and can of WD40. "Spanner? Please?"
The SJ was.... Fine. The demon had tried to appear as I was getting ready to go in, but, due to my toddler's spanner-snatching shenanigans, I really didn't have time for it then and so I said to it what I'd said to her: "I don't have time for this s*** right now. Shut up and do what I want. I'm an only child."
The XC looked, perhaps not that big, but plenty technical, and we set off quite quietly as I focussed on getting him to stay in balance and to get up in the air. The water came quickly, at 3 and 4a/b, with a wide skinny in and a wide skinny out and then we moved along to a big square castle, followed by two fences on an angle and a timber wagon. I needed to open him up a bit, but I wasn't quite sure where to do it, because very soon we were coming down a hill to two uprights on a sharp turn. Now I had to kick on in earnest, for in front of us lay a trappy trakhener. When I did the CIC at Firle, I realised, to my dismay, that I had developed a weirdness about ditches. (""Developed" a weirdness about ditches, what do you mean, "developed", you've always had a weirdness about ditches" scoffed a friend when I relayed this to her. (Don't criticise me, I'm an only child.)) Anyway, here I was, here was my ditch, so I sat up, engaged the canter, hope I wasn't going to be weird, or look like a dick, or be remotely bitter about being told off by my husband for any of the above, and P(C)arrot soared over it perfectly. Well, they come in threes, don't they, so we turned to a ditch/hedge, then we turned to a coffin and then we turned to an elephant trap (which also had a ditch under it) and then, of course, because there wasn't really enough to date to make me weird about anything, we came to..... A corner. Actually, it was two skinnies and a corner, on a curving wiggle. Unfortunately, P(C)arrot had engaged the Tank Mode. I pulled. Nothing. I pulled harder. Nothing. I seriously had to slow down, NOW, so I stood up in my stirrups and heaved as hard as I could on one rein. He slowed enough for me to negotiate the line of three and then he was off. Of course he was, because do you know what came next? A ditch palisade.
As we'd walked the course, my husband had commented that the turn to the quarry towards the end of the course looked tight. "Ah", I said, knowledgeably, "that's to slow the horses down before they come to the fence. Unless the horse is P(C)arrot. I'd seen quite a lot of this fence on the course walk, because it was at this stage that the baby had decided that it needed a feed, so I'd perched on an unsuspecting fence with my boobs out and spent a long time staring down into the quarry at the barrels at the bottom. Now it all came up rather faster, but we were clear and soon through the finish. I jumped off, dicked around for a bit, looked like a weirdo, and flung him at my husband. "My legs have cramped up" I gasped. "Please walk him." As husband and P(C)arrot wandered away, I flopped onto the pram, only to discover that the toddler (who's potty training) was knee-deep in urine and the baby was after my boobs again.
Pics:
http://s1362.photobucket.com/user/V... TOUCH Pendleton Viviane_zpsdh9gvgcw.jpg.html
http://s1362.photobucket.com/user/V... TOUCH Pendleton Viviane_zpsefedkdc9.jpg.html
http://s1362.photobucket.com/user/V... TOUCH Pendleton Viviane_zpsidc1vhmp.jpg.html
Though I find myself ever more confirmed in my avoidance of small children!
Thankfully never again.... I had a reflux puker, and it went on for nearly 18 months 
