Now this could be the last of all the rides we take,
So hold on tight and don’t look back.
-My Chemical Romance “The Kids From Yesterday”
Blog Move! (But Not Really)
As a few of my readers noticed earlier this month, I started a new blog entitled ‘J.B. Stables’. My stable blog, home to all of my equine content, focuses on stories and events related to my horses and equestrienne life. Keeping all of my horse related content in its own realm of the Archives blog has been difficult for me lately. Since horses are the most important thing in my life, I certainly did not want to risk having my other writing compete with them for time and blog space. I’d guess approximately 70% of this blog is my writing -stage plays, illustrations or otherwise- and to me that’s disappointing! Because of this I decided to start another blog focused solely on horses, hence the creation of the new stable site!
For my friends who don’t care for horses but enjoy reading my other writing, do not panic! I will not delete the Archives or remove its public visibility status. Think of this as a split -all of my random creative ideas in the Archives, then my horse news on the stable blog. Then I’ll feel that instead of managing one blog toggling between two very different topics, I’ll have two blogs containing information organized pertaining to the topic. Hopefully everything will work out wonderfully! Here is the URL of the new blog. Please check it out and feel free to leave any feedback!
In about an hour I am leaving with French Club on our winter Quebec trip. Expect beautiful snowy photos when I return!
-DA Agelle
Seize the Year
Goodbye, 2011.
…but I won’t be sad to see you go.
Its true, this was the year I spent as a high school sophomore (and junior, later on), went with the marching band to Boston, celebrated my sweet sixteen, and of course, took my horse Adam to the county fair. I took the stage during the school play The Wizard of Oz as a flying house while also taking on the role of the assistant stage manager. I’m even taking riding lessons again, something I was begging for during this very time last year! My life changed in 2011, as I predict it will continue to in 2012.
In this last blog post of the year 2011, I would like to say that I have no regrets towards the things I did this past year. Everything worked out fine for me in the end. I plan on using the valuable experience and courage gained over the past year across the threshold into 2012 to take on everything the coming year will throw in my path (including the zombie apocalypse, if it may). I plan on seizing the year, living my life the way I dream it, and keep working towards a future horse jockey career. Adam’s coggins and vaccine papers came in the mail from the vet today, so we will be taking on the 2012 show season and the county fair again! From now on I plan on showing English. This past week I got a new pelham bit, riding helmet, and breeches to start off with! I had a wonderful Christmas spent with my family and cannot wait to celebrate with them again tomorrow for the new year. (Happy Birthday, Dad, too!) Thank you to the year 2011 for the great memories, and welcome 2012 to keep the fun times going! Happy New Year (and belated Christmas) to all of my friends, family, and blog readers.
-DA Agelle
A Helena Halloween
This Halloween I did my best to replicate the dress worn by dancer Tracy Phillips in My Chemical Romance’s music video for “Helena”. Originally I wanted to wear it to their concert in the middle of September, but due to the cold weather I decided to save it for Halloween.
The fabric for the dress originated from a few articles of clothing purchased at a Goodwill store. I bought a black dress a few sizes larger than usual and just kept taking it in and sewing it until its shape resembled Helena’s black dress. Then I added the bright red fabric underneath, the black fluff near the dress’s top, and finally the black netting for the lowest layer. Since it was originally designed to survive a rock concert, I shortened it compared to the real dress to prevent anyone from accidentally stepping or catching anything on it.
I can’t wait for Christmas!
Ever since the start of November I really haven’t had the opportunity to start anything interesting, yet alone blog about it*. AP Literature & Composition stole every writing-based cell in my body for the year. Adam and Madam are fine as usual, locked inside the corral and away from the pasture for the winter. While riding Adam I popped over a few jumps with him. They were all under a foot, probably closer to 6-8 inches. Still, I think that’s an accomplishment for him! I also bought new spurs, which help a lot with cantering. They are gorgeous English spurs with black Italian leather straps, studded by two blue crystals on each.
Anyways, I can’t believe there are only ten more days until Christmas! Thanksgiving absolutely flew by, thanks to the huge amount of schoolwork and projects I’m facing in my junior year. Last Saturday I finally had a great chance to relax when my best friend Bolana invited me to a dance. There we had fun dancing (yes, I actually danced and loved it!) and Bolana introduced me to her homeschooled friends. Then all that I have to do is survive two school weeks and…Christmas break! I wonder what wonderful horse-related presents are awaiting me this year. There’s a gorgeous white sheepskin show saddle pad that I saw in a tack shop that I would love to have for future horse shows! I updated Adam’s vaccinations and u test so he is good to go for showing this spring/summer! I am continuing to take riding lessons and they are going very well. My instructor said I have a beautiful seat (thank Adam for that!). We’ll jump after Christmas and then who knows what? She also said she’d let me try riding in a double bridle, which is another piece of tack I adore. Come on, Christmas break…just six more school days!!
-DA Agelle
P.S. I have a new phone now, so expect many pictures sometime soon! :)
* Actually, I wrote a Shakespearean sonnet but didn’t like the end result.
My Riding Lesson -Since Eons Ago!
Or at least it feels that way to me. On the 30th of September I arrived at Canterbrook Stables, where my friend from the fairgrounds recommended to me. When my mom pulled in to the driveway I felt as excited as I did when I arrived for my first lesson at another stable back in seventh grade. My mind was filled with wonder as to what my instructor and the stable would be like, and what I would eventually learn. Would I be able to jump? I met my instructor who is incredible -I absolutely loved my lesson and learned that I have a great seat! I was worried at first since I started English on Adam, but apparently I am riding very well. I certainly wish to continue riding there. I probably won’t be able to afford taking lessons every week, but an hour session every three weeks would be fantastic!
-DA Agelle
French Field Trip
This Thursday I went on the first French field trip this school year. Currently I am in my third year of French, and have been on previous field trips over the last two years. Our field trip involved a visit to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and lunch at a local French restaurant.
First we stopped at a local church while waiting for our appointed time for arriving at the restaurant (we were a bit early). The inside is an example of neo-Gothic architecture. Attached with this post are a few of the pictures I took there. The girl walking in the lower right corner of one of the photos is my friend Maria. An organist practiced in the background, giving off a ‘sacred-feeling’ atmosphere. After strolling around for a few minutes we returned to the buses and left for the restaurant.
We ate at a Paris-themed restaurant which serves authentic French food. I had a diet Coca-Cola, a sandwich with ham and cheese called a croque monsieur (spelling?) and a crepe with Nutella and whipped cream for dessert! The croque monsieur consisted of two slices of bread with ham and melted cheese in between. More melted cheese covered the top bread slice. Alongside the dish was a small salad with a bit of dressing. I don’t eat salad often, but I certainly did at the restaurant! I want to eat there again someday.
Thankful for the day out of classes, my classmates and I eagerly explored the museum while having los of fun along the way. The museum contained an exhibit of French art, but my friends and I spent our time walking around the other exhibits instead! We saw a hallway of stuffed birds, vintage watches, Native American artifacts, and breathtaking Egyptian artifacts. I even pet a giant stuffed buffalo! Finally, after the field trip was done, we returned to school just in time to catch the buses home.
Photography probably wasn’t allowed in the museum, so instead I attached a few enchanting church photos. Pardon any typing errors in this post -I am experimenting with the blogging application on my new phone.
-DA Agelle
Some Meaning To It
When I logged onto my blog earlier this morning I searched through my oldest blog posts and pages’ revision records, hoping to discover some trace of my old horse posts. I remember when I started the Archies back in the spring of 2008, a few days before I broke my leg riding Adam through a door. In one follow-up post to the incident I remember typing out everything I ever felt about him, including the infamous disappointment of having the horse I love (and whose vet bill cost a lot of money the previous summer) repay me by bolting off and breaking my leg. Although in those days I didn’t quite bother to write as thoroughly and organized as I do now, I still wish I had a trace of those posts left. I deleted them when I started cleaning up this blog and categorizing my posts, thinking that they ‘didn’t fit’ and had no real relation to my other blog content. Well, was I ever wrong!
A few posts complaining about Adam’s unruliness may not seem too significant to everyone else in the equestrian community but they meant everything to me. I could have restored them had they been kept privately instead of permanent deletion. I could have used them as a tangible marker, a ‘before’ snapshot to compare to Adam the reliable best friend today. I plan on typing out a full story of both of my horses but I only wish I had the original primary source to enahance it with. Oh, well. There is no use ranting about what cannot be changed, I suppose. Instead I will have to merely retell my J.B. Stables stories, starting from the day of my grandfather’s death in seventh grade to the past county fair. Perhaps explaining this way could be better after all, now that more of my horseloving friends are aware of this blog and now have the chance to learn anything about my background they possibly missed.
There is meaning to my horse stories. I recall what I said on the way to the hospital that March evening -I wanted Adam dead ASAP. (Obviously, I did not carry through with this idea.) Now I realize that if Adam did die, I would never be the person I am today. It was because of him, one of my first horses, that I learned through the mistakes I made. Over the years I developed a bulletproof of determination (some call it stubborn, I say there is a difference).
Hobos cannot live in cardboard boxes for their entire lives. Sooner or later they have to crawl out and walk around to find a more sustainable shelter. Under a bridge, a tunnel, or endlessly strolling through a 24-hour WalMart -anything built enough to suffice. If they choose to rely upon a cardboard dwelling they will find themselves in a soggy, wet mess. I will not be that hobo.
Thanks to Adam, I never will be.
The stories in this post will continue throughout the blog posts and pages. Part of the above post can be found on my ‘J.B. Stables’ page under the heading of my stable story.
-DA Agelle
Content Revamp!
Well, did anyone notice? I spent the past two doing a bit of redecorating to the Archives. I consolidated a few pages and dug up some of my old horse content to share here. In the sidebar I removed some of the links to my stories, instead placing them on their parent pages. For example, clicking the ‘Shadow Realm Book I’ page will display a list of links for the first nine parts of Shadow Realm. This way readers can still access all blog content while preventing my sidebars from becoming too overwhelmed with unnecessary pages.
My ‘J.B. Stables’ page contains more horse photos along with a short biography of my horses. I plan on creating a ‘profile page’ for each of my horses with their stories as well. (Madam’s is already posted -see the sidebar link.) This way additional readers who are new to my blog can quickly reference the pages instead of clicking through dozens of old posts to understand the horses I blog about. Later on I will restore additional pieces of backlogged horse content.
Thank you for tolerating my hectic (and sometimes dangerously creative) mind. I know the Archives has been an obscure organizational system of a scattered purpose and eventually time will settle this blog back to a regular, clear-focused pace. I witnessed an odd pattern lately -this blog appears to mirror the distractions, thought processes, and mental state of my own mind more than intended!
-DA Agelle
And, yes, I will continue to sign my posts as ‘DA’. ;)
Revolution
Today is the one month anniversary since the day Adam and I rode into our first horse show together.
I know I have not updated this blog as much as I hoped to this past month. I am also aware that my late updates have happened before, believe me, I did not purposely intend for them to be that way. I love keeping this blog to record my life in and to talk about topics which matter to me. Unfortunately, I do not feel the same way writing in this blog as I once did when I started it. I am NOT going to stop writing –I merely plan to change how I write.
I started The Archives during my…early seventh? grade year back in Junior High. First I documented the things I loved, being primarily horses and my current projects. I started posting a few of my stories (Remember my ancient horribly written Shadow Realm drafts and old horse stories? My incessant three-line posts detailing every aspect of “ADAM BROKE MY LEG THIS WEEK!! WHY WOULD HE DO SUCH A THING WHEN I TRIED SO HARD TO TAKE CARE OF THE LAMINITIS IN HIS FEEEEEET?!?!?!?”) It was true, my posts were not as well-organized and written as they are now. Eventually I took my old work down and replaced it with the later content you see today. There is one element of this blog which I could not replace, however; the fun and love I put into building and playing around this piece of online space which I call my own. I miss posting the tiny snippets of my horseback rides and stories of fictional racehorses-turned-champions. Eventually more of my friends started visiting my blog for my writing and, well, I made the mistake of transitioning this blog too much into little more than a collection of literature. I loved writing, but horses were, are, and always will be the number one love in my life. Now I have –what?- one or two pages dedicated to my stables? That’s IT?! I meant to fix this problem sooner but more things got in the way –pressure to continue the series I started and other activities dealing with school and the outside world. Eventually I trimmed down my documentation of ‘J.B. Stables’ on my blog because a few friends felt it would not fit in with my fantasy-themed Shadow Realm content.
Well, I don’t care anymore. Now that I revamped my blog into a format I love, why not revamp the content I love as well? I know I babble incessantly about my horses in real life but I know for sure I have enough energy to continue on! Yes, I don’t post any more of Adam’s laminitis updates (since he recovered for now) or pour my heart into another post dealing with “WHY CAN’T I SHOW, I WANNA SHOOOOW!!!”. Then I decided to keep my nose to the grindstone for a bit and let go of that type of equine updates –until now.
With the recent posts about my first horse show with Adam and my future English riding lessons at another stable, I absolutely cannot wait to keep with with the current of equine related content on here! More exciting things are happening –things worth blogging about which will entertain my non-equestrian readers as well. (Although if you don’t like horses, why are you reading this? Why do you even KNOW ME?! Haha!) I feel like a little 12 year old again, jumping for joy because I lasted a grooming session “Without getting bit, daddy!!”
It’s time for a revolution. I do not plan on removing my non-equestrian literary content at the moment but I will enforce this blog’s reversion back to the horse world (it never truly left!) once again. So what if my parents don’t want me to be a horse jockey or don’t understand how important my stable is to me? They’ll have to deal with it sometime.
-DA Agelle
P.S. By the end of 2011, I want to make ‘Horses’ my top category for blog posts!
