I had a pretty crappy day today.  I don’t usually blog about the crapper side of life, preferring to focus on the positive, but there wasn’t much positive to zero in on today.  I should have skipped riding, or better yet, just stayed in bed.

I headed out to the barn, and knew that things weren’t going to go right when I detected a weird atmosphere lingering in the barn aisle.  Maybe it’s just because my greeting was ignored by the only person in the barn.  Don’t know for sure, but I had that sad sinking feeling in my stomach that told me to just go home.

I started to get Blondie ready, and M appeared a little while after that.  Someone was going to come and look at Gizmo for a breeding, and she was going to start getting him looking presentable.  I finished up with Blondie, and then M asked D if he would oversee my lesson.  The very long pause before he agreed also set me on edge.   Great.  Just wonderful – I so love it when someone who doesn’t really care is going to give me a lesson.

Things were going ok until he had me start cantering figure 8s in the middle of the ring.  I have a terrible time with this on a horse that knows what it’s doing, let alone a horse that doesn’t.  This was a disaster, and M just happened to be looking in on the tragedy as it played out.  She took over the lesson, but by that time I was a frazzled mess, and so was the mare.  Why can’t we start doing these kinds of things with Nyk?  He knows what he’s doing.  I don’t.  Neither does Blondie.  I hate doing pattern work and really felt that today I was asked to do it so I would get all frustrated.

What an awful lesson.  I felt that I took many, many steps backwards during the twenty minutes I was out in the arena.  This is on top of not doing well in the equitation classes at the show on Saturday.  I sucked.  I now feel like all the work I’ve been putting into this was wasted and that I’m not getting any better.  F*ck.  I hate feeling like this.