Something mentioned elsewhere...

Over at The Hardest Battle, Kiki is sharing the revealing of her true self. It's wonderfully exciting and makes me smile and want to cheer. I wanted to address something she said, but didn't want to put it in my comment, because I wanted that to be pure joy and celebration. So, I decided to mention it here.

Growing up, I was little-miss-must-do-everything-right. I didn't smoke, drink, or wear outrageous clothes. I corrected my father's swearing, including words like damn. Then I owned a horse.

My horse was gregarious and treacherous. I was blessed with his company for five years. He did things like spooking at nothing, to see if he could unseat me. When I cleaned his hooves, whichever hoof I was cleaning (you have to pick it up to clean out the dirt in case there's a rock imbedded) he would start to lean against me. I had to clean his stall, every day. I was in therapy for the second time, when he came into my possession. Within months, I was out of therapy. I joked about having 1,000 lb of therapy, every day; anything more was overkill. (He was actually cheaper than therapy.) I developed my own little saying that saw me through more days than I can count: "When you start the day shoveling shit, nothing worse can happen the rest of the day."

My favorite Winston Churchill quote: “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.”

Which reminds me of another favorite quote by Groucho Marx: "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."