Oh and before I get into anything else too deeply...

I guess I oughta fill ya's in the best I can about Eric and Jon's Excellent Adventure yesterday.

I suppose I oughta start by admitting that, yes, I guess there ARE times when Jon's lying can be advantageous. Like yesterday.... Well, his lying and my adamant refusal to accept it, that is.

(Ummm, Paul? I seem to have broken my trackback thing again and I din't even touch it... I swear. You KNOW I'd not putz around in my template without ya...)

Okay... Action got here Saturday night. Even though Eric didn't have the saddle or hackamore that Jon said he had and would let Eric use (which also doesn't exist), we took a ride together, of course.

While it was cool-beyond-words to finally be able to do that, to SEE Eric on HIS horse... wow... I was still a little pissed at Jon for starting the whole saddle thing in the first place. I mean, Jesus, it's not like he doesn't know WHEN he's lying THAT he's lying, ya know? The messed upped-est part of it all, is that WE don't know, til it's too late, that he's doing it. (That goes for any liar, not just Jon. Definite deal-breaker as far as trust goes and if I can't trust you, I don't wanna be around you. Makes sense, doesn't it?)

What was supposed to happen with the saddle was that Jon VOLUNTEERED to take Eric the next morning to the guy he'd left said saddle with to have holes punched in the leather. (Yeah, I know that's stupid. I'm just tellin' ya what I was told. Ya see why I get so tired of it? Jon thinks I'm stupid enough to swallow that he took the saddle to get it "adjusted" before Eric ever saw it, let alone sat in it to see if it even needed to be adjusted... go figure (out that Jon lies). Not only is it pointless, he's really, really bad at it.)

Anyhoo... I did get Eric up at the insane time of 7:00am, Sunday morning. He told me that's when he and Jon were leaving to get the saddle. (Riiight.) Eh, I got 'im up like he wanted. They went. Eric has a saddle. And, a hackamore.

Be nice if it was really that simple, huh?
*rolling eyes*

I can't say what Jon had planned to do yesterday when he and Eric left here. Eric and I both guessed independantly of each other that Jon would drive past some random farm and say the guy who had his saddle wasn't home and that'd pretty much be it. New day, new excuse.

Before they even got that far, Eric remembered that they were near some farm that had buffalo that Jon keeps talking about, so he suggested that, while they were so near, they go see the place. So, they did.

While they were there, Jon spotted a saddle, lying alone, under a pile of straw. He asked the guy about it and did he wanna sell it and the guy said "Make me an offer." When Jon and Eric both hesitated, the guy says "Twenty bucks?" And, that was that. Only problem was, it didn't have stirrups or a cinch.

Now, when I was radio-ed and told about this developement, I didn't quite understand... I thought Eric meant it needed the fenders and all. Not just the stirrups, themselves. I pictured just half a saddle, more or less. I couldn't imagine where, short of a saddle-maker, where they expected to find THOSE. Last I knew, unless it's customized to death, they don't sell saddles in componant parts. The cinch would BE a cinch to replace, still... I was wonderin'.

In the meantime, I was home. I had no more desire to be in a truck with Jon for an un-pre-determined amount of time than the day before and I wanted to straighten up (the house) anyway. After this call from Eric, I was in the library, "reading". What I was actually doing was... NO, not that... I was THINKING about (guess 'shit' would be the wrong word to use here, hey?) stuff. I was mentally reinforcing my "oral arguement" (like a lawyer) for why Jon was still a dipshit and why this was not a great solution. I remember dreading the whole encounter. I just didn't feeeel like doing this yet again, to no avail, for no reason... pick you perjorative. Gawd.

Then, it hit me.... WHY did I "have to"? I DON'T "have to" do this. (Whaaaat? I don't? Wowwww.) But, I really don't. It doesn't do what I intend for it to do, which is help Eric avoid the same kinda shit in the future. All it does is give him (unneeded) practice at tuning me out. Holy shit! It further occured to me that, even though it's being done entirely differently than her way, it really is no different than the (ex) BC naggin' at him. Just because I don't interject "You're a useless idiot" every nine seconds, doesn't make it any easier to hafta hear. (And why is that not "an useless", by the way? The word after a/an begins with a vowel, which denotes using "an", not "a". Dopey English. Don'tcha just love it?)

Cool, I said to myself. I kin git offa Eric ass. Excellent.

As for Jon... still steamin' Thought to myself, "It never ceases to amaze me how that bastard manages to HAMMER on my buttons. And, how he even KNOWS which ones to nail... Jesus. I have the world's shittiest luck with fuckin' saddles... HOLYSHIT!!! I forgot about that..."

What I'd forgotten about was Andy's saddle. Until just recently when I 'met' his son again, online, and he told me the end of this story, the saga of Andy's saddle killed me.

Andy is the guy on my sidebar. Briefly... we'd gotten very close, very quickly (and for the record and any South Jersey ASSHOLES who heard different.. NO, WE DID NOT... have a physical relationship. Andy was much more than just that, ya stupid losers who never DID have a clue.) and he died less than 90 days later. A week before he died, he gave me a western saddle he'd won, here in Pa., at a rodeo. About a week AFTER he died, I started getting threatening phone calls from that Amazonian cunt whose basement Andy had been living in when he died. She went from threatening me, to nearly accusing me of stealing it, so I got pissed off and decided to give the damned thing to Grant, Andy's brother (whom I still have SEVERE doubts about, Rich notwithstanding). Grant not only took Andy's saddle from me, he also didn't want to hear what Andy had asked me to tell him if I ever got the chance, so it really hurt me, badly. (I found out since, from Andy's son, that he DOES have the saddle, which is fine with me. That is as it should be...)

Plus, Bob, the guy we got Action from, had mentioned when we met the horse, something about maybe sending his tack with him, which he musta changed his mind about, cause he didn't do it. We were both wondering if he was gunna, but neither of us mentioned it to either of them. We just let him do what he wanted with that. What were we gonna do? Whine at him about it, after he "gave" us the horse? Naaaah. (I say "gave", cause we really paid a dollar for Action... lol. A dollar for a King-bloodline Quarter Horse... I still can't believe that.)

So, that could have had some bearing on my attitude being so much harder this time, when it comes to 'par-for-the-course' from Jon, with his lying. I mean, yeah, it ALWAYS bugs me, but I'm not ususally so unbending in my anger. But, add this saddle-shit to the lies and factor in that it's ERIC he's fuckin' with and not ME and you can start to see where my head was... whew.

Ah well, if I didn't beat his ass this time, chances are I never will and if it hadn't been for Eric telling me to 'chill', believe me, I would have this time.

So, anyway... back to the guys...

They, while I was having this stroke/epiphany, were petting buffalos and thinking of a place to find stirrups. (I must mention here and now, that NO mention has been made since they found that saddle, of Jon's saddle and I doubt there ever will be... sigh.) They went to another farm/tack shop that was closed, but the lady who owned it still set 'em up very nicely. She not only sold them a hackamore, she also went back into her own tackroom, removed two stirrups from a rarely used saddle and let them have 'em for $5. The hackamore was $15.

They came back here and went to work on Eric's new saddle. It needed a coupla things cleaned, a few things put on, adjusted and riveted and while they were at it, I finally got my own stirrups adjusted (they were about an inch too long), too.

Then, in the rain even, we saddled up both horses and went riding. Finally. lol

God was so cool. After He realized we were gonna go, come Hell or high water, He had it quit raining for about an hour. Sweet, ain't He?

So, for a grand total of $194.00, including "shipping" for Storm, we've got two utterly wonderful horses, tack and all.

Oh yeah... one other thing that was kind of a surprise and not a great one is that Action is on meds. Not one WORD was EVER said about that. Not that it'd have changed our minds about him but, still... ya know? It's kinda like finding out AFTER the act of sale that there was a murder in the basement of the house ya just bought. Not a MAJOR problem, just one it woulda been nice to have heard of even once before.

We're gonna have Doc Streams check that all out. The meds are for his joints and the stiffening thereof, if any. We'll see.

Oh, and they can't figure out horse height fer shit. They have him written down as 15.1 hands, which he ain't. Action is 58 inches at the withers, which translates into 14.2 hands. Storm is 61 inches, thus is 15.1 hands.

A 'hand' is 4 inches. It was originally "the width of a man's hand". It has since been standardized into four inches. That's how they measure horses. In hands, 4" increments, from the ground to the top of the shoulder.

To get just a bit esoteric and into it a little too deeply, for showing purposes, a "horse" has to be 14.2 hands or taller. Any shorter and they're shown in "pony" classes.

Oh, and they WILL measure shoes and compensate for them in the calcualtions if ya wanna try to be cute, altho most people would argue in the opposite direction. In other words, there ARE people who will "train" a horse to "crouch" when being measured for classes to be able to compete in the "easier" pony classes. If ya don't believe that, read James Herriot's books. He talks about that.

Matter of fact, the measuring of the hosses pointed out a cool incongruity with MATH, of all things. After I measured both of them, I worked it out on paper and Jon used a calculator. He got 14.5, for Action, which on the face of it, is impossible, because the .5 is 1 hand 1 inch in itself, which woulda put Action at 15.1 hands....(beginning to think I know now how the previous owners got it wrong). I, on paper, came out with 14.2.

Both of us were right. 14.2 is like saying 14 and a half, because a 'hand' is 4 inches and half of 4 is 2. So is 14.5, 14 and a half. It's just that my 14.2 is "horse-world" math and his 14.5 is "calculator-world" math.

I suppose there's some kind of "scientific" reason for this. I, personally, write it off to math's usual irritating senselessness. I hate math with a purple passion.
I can spell nearly anything ya want and I can write a letter better than yer average lawyer, but fuck math. Completely.

Anyway, I suppose I oughta get on to other shit, here. Plus, this is long enough, no?

And, Eric is coming in the door for lunch, so....

Talk to ya's later.

Peace.

Posted by: Stevie at 11:33 AM

Comments

Posted by: Light & Dark at July 19, 2004 09:55 PM (eT6wp)

Posted by: Stevie at July 19, 2004 11:50 PM (Hcxbh)

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