The state of my horse ownership

Lately I have been distracted by showing at the Royal, Amanda showing at the Royal, a friend showing Diddy at the Royal, and planning my day around when I can make a trip to Tonganoxie to hang out at the barn. I have gone through periods where the horses weren't the first thing on my mind, but this isn't one of them. Unfortunate that this phase of the cycle should fall so near my final exams.

Diddy is banished to a pasture, where he and his buddy Sprite are enjoying free choice hay. Technically I am banished to my studies, which are pretty daunting, considering final exams are looming and I have yet to discover the secret code that decodes the tax code. (I'm aware that's an awful sentence. Mere reference to tax class muddles my brain.) Yet somehow I've still gone to the barn twice in the last week with plans to visit over the weekend.

It's hard to explain why I feel guilty about making time for something that makes me so happy. But I do feel guilty, the way I used to feel guilty about changing my undergraduate major to creative writing. Somewhere in elementary school I determined that fun things are not valuable things, and it's been a difficult notion to shake. According to this logic, tax dominates my life and is the fodder of constant waking nightmares; because it is miserably difficult, it must be of great value!

Today I drove through seamless rain to the barn, slogged through the mud to catch a very wet and very obese pinto mare named Sprite, and I was damp and shivering and smiling idiotically by the time we arrived back at the barn. Shame on you, Universe, for allowing me to enroll in Federal Income Taxation; but thank you, thank you, for horses.