Thursday’s Trifles

Thursday’s Trifles are based on what I’ve read in our local newspaper, the Dagblad van het Noorden.

Miraculous resurrection

A dead chicken came back to life after almost an hour. Reason for our fun loving newspaper editors to interview the owner of the miraculous chicken.
“Mouth-to-beak-resuscitation?”
“I’m not crazy!”
“What happened?”
“We came home from a barbecue party. My daughter found chicken Curry floating in our pool. Dead.”
“The chicken couldn’t swim?”
“The chicken couldn’t swim.”
“And then?”
“I wanted to dump the dead chicken in the garbage container. But the children thought that was sad, so we were going to bury it the next day in stead. Since I work on an ambulance I started to massage the chicken. You know, in one hand the chicken and in the other hand a pint.
But first I held the chicken upside down. Lots of water came out. And after about 45 minutes it regained consciousness.”
“A miracle?”
“I don’t know anything about chickens. We keep them for fun.”
“Was Curry shoved into the pool?”
“You’re thinking of attempted murder? I think it just flew in the pool.”
“Maybe the neighbours…?”
“Our garden is enclosed. And the chickens don’t even cluck.”
“You keep more than one chicken?”
“Sateh may have escaped too. But she was back in the coop again.”
“Curry? Sateh? Will they end up in the frying pan eventually?”
“No, if that was the case it would have been better if I’d chopped Curry up into a pan immediately. She was freshly dead!”

Very Important message

Okay guys and girls, listen carefully: I will zay zis only wanz:
I’ve decided to start another blog for my photos. It’s called brinkbeestphotos. You can also find the link at the bottom of the page. Exciting, isn’t it? Who will be the first member of my photo-fanclub? Will it be you?
The main reason for this new venture is that I think sometimes my photos need a place of their own, without too much other things going on around them. Oh that sounds really pretentious. But I’ve registered for a workshop Horse Photography and a Photoshop course. All this schooling will hopefully result in lots of shareworthy shots.
(Perhaps I also need to start a blog about words I’ve invented. You may think I’m making mistakes, but I’m just doing some creative and inventive spelling ;-))

Of course I’ll still be posting the usual nonsense and stories about my life in general in this exact location. And to prove that I’m totally over the stupid Lyme disease and can blog ‘til I drop again, I’ve also accepted an invitation to join in the fantastic Fridge Soup blog (my first official Fridge Soup post).
I know, I hope I’ll end up in an institution that has internet access ;-)

Getting jumpy

Horse riding, and specifically dressage. That’s what I like to do. My horse Naloma however has a different idea. She likes jumping. Understandable, because she was bred to jump. I’m not.
In fact, after every jump (on horseback that is) I need clean underwear. And that is almost true. Being scared shitless comes quite close to what I feel when riding towards a jump. Funny thing is, that I only experience that much fear when galloping towards a jump. Jumping from a trot doesn’t faze me at all. Perhaps the fact that Naloma starts growling like a lion when she gallops towards a jump has something to do with it. And that she builds up so much speed that I lose control over her could be one of the reasons. I literally have seen my life flash before my eyes on occasions. So I gave up jumping and concentrated on dressage.

But recently, to please Naloma, who became jumpy even without actual obstacles to jump over, I’ve plucked up some courage and taken up jumping again. Strictly under the supervision of friend and trainer Jans who used to be an international show jumper. He knows what he’s doing. I don’t.

Now, another fear of mine is being photographed. Honestly, I’ve cried when seeing photos of me. So very disappointed by seeing that ugly mug staring back at me. I know, it’s sad and shallow.
So there are not many photos of me. Until I recently had a riding lesson. I’ve asked hubs to take some pictures. Just to see how it looks. And I instructed him to screen them well; to take out the ugliest ones before showing the acceptable ones to me. And hubs took up the challenge. He didn’t take a couple of photos. No. He took about 500 (yes, five hundred). Well, one of them hád to be acceptable.

And the best thing is… I can look at most of them without crying. Progress!

The dog is called Ruby and is Jans’s little assistant. This is one of the first jumps.
Doesn’t look like much, and it isn’t much, because this was from a trot. piece of cake ;-)

Look! Getting braver by the minute. But not quite ready for the Olympics yet.

Biggles found a front row seat to watch the show from

LATEST UPDATE (before publishing): Last week Naloma and I jumped a ‘course’ of three jumps (not the one in the photos below, that is just a follow-through), galloping all the way. HUGE triumph for me. And Naloma behaved very well. Jans thought I had jumped a course before, but it was the first time in my life!
What can I say: so many talents ;-)