All Hallows Eve

No horsey lessons for Rusty for a couple days. The last batch wore me out.

I can't remember where I learned it, but there is a rule that if you're not up to an all-out fight with a 1200 pound animal, don't try to train a horse when you're tired. The last session was more than my recovering old body could handle. Well, maybe it was the shoveling of dung that pushed me past my limit. In any event, Rusty is on hold, and maybe that's a good thing.

Dink needed exercised, and so I went out to the ranch. Rusty was extremely jealous that Dink got to "do something" and he didn't. Perhaps he'll be more cooperative the next time. Dink, A.K.A. Duquesne, hasn't been actively "worked" for a long time, so we spent 30 minutes doing just that. Walk walk walk walk. Trot trot trot trot. Walk sideways to the right, walk sideways to the left. Argue over what position the horse's head should be in. Both of us were filthy with dust and disgustingly sweaty when we were done.

Thank goodness we had decided as a household not to mess with the Halloween thing tonight. I used to love decorating the front of the house with candles and pumpkins and fake spider webs, and dressing up to scare the tar out of little kids who came seeking candy gifts. Last year, the night was dominated by roaming gangs of high school kids who carried pillowcases to gather as much loot as possible. But they didn't even bother with costumes.

You know what? If an old woman can bother with costuming for an evening, so can a teenager. Of course, I tend to think that if I can speak clearly and politely and not breathe through my mouth constantly, then a teenager can also not show me his tonsils while he garbles, "Trick or treat." And he could pull his damn pants up, the freakin' moron. Which one was the freakin' moron? Pick one.

Of course, when they came to the porch, I could have asked them, "What are you dressed up as, tasteless slack-jawed shitheads?" But then I would have been asking for some kind of destructive retaliation on my car or my house.

The point of dressing up as witches or spirits for Halloween was to mock the spectre of Death, to laugh in the face of Evil. Looking into the soulless eyes of those older children of Excess Wealth and Utter Lack of Morality, unfortunately, I see the face of Evil laughing the last laugh.

Bah. Humbug.