It’s been a friend-intensive weekend already, and it’s only Saturday afternoon.

This morning Marv called me to come look at one of his horses. Vet calls are expensive, and if it’s something small, I can sometimes treat it or at least tell him he should have the vet out. I give all of his vaccinations, for instance.

He’s got this old palomino mare — his first horse. She’s had arthritis pretty bad for the last few years and has been retired. I suggested that maybe it was time for her to go last year when her knee swelled up so bad that she couldn’t walk, but his horseshoer gave him some advice and she’s limped along OK for most of the year.

But last night that knee was looking a little swollen, and by this morning it was running and ugly, so he wanted my opinion. On first glance, it looked horrible. Her leg was swollen all the way up to her shoulder and she could hardly move at all. It looked like an abscess had popped and was draining all down her leg, taking a lot of the hair with it.

I talked to him about balancing treating a horse that’s in that bad of shape with her quality of life afterwards. You have to look at the money, and whether or not it’s something that’s curable at all. I told him that at the least, it was beyond my expertise to fix, and if he wanted to treat her, he’d better have the vet come out. And that’s several hundred dollars right there, and may not end up treatable. The tallow truck charges a couple of hundred to pick up a dead horse too, so if he chose to go that way, I could help him.

So that’s what he decided to do. He said she’d been in enough pain and cost enough money, and it was time to make that call. But he couldn’t do it himself, so I did it for him. I led her to the gate out of sight from the road so the truck would have access, and put a bullet in her head. It was pretty ugly, as such things are, and I left him with strict instruction not to let his wife go back there.

Poor old gal, she was a good horse and taught a lot of people to ride in her day. She also taught a lot of us to duck since she was prone to taking off through the orchards when she got the whim. I spent a lot of time on the back of that horse, but when it’s time, it’s time. And that’s the sort of things friends do for each other, even if it is sort of unconventional.

Right after that I had to head back home because my friend the Photographer was coming to pick up my extra washer and dryer. I’m glad I scavenged those; they were originally for the barn, but Cowboy never came and got them. The Photographer is starting over from scratch, so I’m glad I could help out my friend.

We went out for lunch and spent a couple of hours catching up. We’ve both been burned pretty badly this year and have remarkably similar ideas on dating and philosophies on life, so we chewed on those for a while. Then it was on to a side dish of freaky ex behavior — mostly his. His has required supervised visitation with his kids for no real reason (since he’s one of the best and kindest fathers I know) and he’s having a hard time finding someone acceptable to both of them to be the third party. His friends up in Sac don’t want to get into that can of worms because she’s truly unhinged and will be all up in their faces. But since I don’t live anywhere near her, I’m not a girlfriend, and I have known both him and the kids for a long time, I offered to throw my name in the hat if he needed me. I can spend a day on my off weekends up there as easily as down here and it’s good to help a buddy out.

It comes back at you too — his company’s looking for treatment plant operators, which I happen to be. I’m going to pass along my resume and see what comes up that doesn’t require too much traveling. I can act as a contractor to his company if I have to also, as I’m already set up to do that. I just have to get my certification as a woman-owned small business, and I’ll get even more points on my side. Man, if I only lived up there, I could have my pick of jobs, but not being able to move is really going to do bad things to me when this job runs out.

So, I think I’ll go get things together to head up to the mountains tomorrow. It’s a little ugly, but I could use a day of peace, and peace is up there.

I can’t remember the last time I had so much trouble making a simple decision, but I kept waking up last night agonizing over whether or not to get Angus neutered. Today was the big day.

 I also don’t remember the last time that I gave this much thought to a non-human’s nuts, actually.

I know it won’t change him much and I know it might keep him from leaving home to chase the ladies, but I’m worried about making too big of a change in his personality. I like him as he is; I don’t want him to turn into a lazy fat slug. I’d just like him to stay home a little more. And what if I do decide to breed him again?

Since you can’t exactly change your mind and put the nuts back on, I finally decided to cancel the appointment and think about it some more. I can always make another one if I do decide to do it.

Man, I didn’t worry about it this much when I had myself fixed. It shouldn’t be rocket science or deep philosophy; he’s just a dog.

I knew that karate class would kick my ass, but I had no idea just how much ass-kicking I was getting into. I guess I thought it would be more like the kids’ classes, where they learn things slowly. But no, they threw me right in and told me to just follow along the best I could.

First up was warming up, and that was actually the worst part for me. You take someone who’s hardly moved for months and make them do jumping jacks and run in place, and things start to degenerate real quick. I haven’t had to do push ups since college, when I swore that I never would again. And I could only do four!

I threw my best into warming up, but by the time we went into stretching, my best was coming right back at me and I had to go sit down and wait for the nausea to pass. Sensei told me not to worry about it, that one of the new guys had the same thing happen to him just a couple of weeks ago. I felt a little better after a while and went and finished out the stretches. That was good for my confidence because although I’m fat, I’ve always been insanely flexible. I can still put my palms flat on the floor. It’s nice to be good at something for once.

Then on to karate stuff, mostly punches and kicks. Sensei had the black and brown belts interspersed with the beginners, and the woman black belt (Jen) took me aside and broke things down into smaller parts for me. She did a lot of explaining why things were done that way instead of just telling me what to do, and that helped my comprehension enormously.

There are echoes of yoga in this stuff, and of Army PT, and of horse training. I heard or noticed several things that I could relate to horsemanship last night. At one point, Sensei was demonstrating something and said, “Where the head goes, the body will follow.” I can’t count how many times I’ve heard horsemen say, “Where the head goes, the horse will follow.” I didn’t expect to find this sort of parallel in this, but I guess your mind applies what you’ve experienced to new things as a way to relate.

The people were great. About half of the class is beginners, including one other woman. The other half are mostly the more experienced bunch. There aren’t very many intermediate people. Everyone was friendly and joking and easy to get along with. I’ve seen quite a few of them around in the last five years of being a karate mom, and it was nice to finally put names to faces.

Seamus piped up last night as he was going to bed, “Mom, did you make any friends?”

Well, yes son, I think I did.

I’m not as sore this morning as I thought I’d be considering I had such rubber-legs last night that I was sincerely wishing for a lower vehicle. I’ll be more prepared for the next class too, bringing some water and some sweats in case my gi isn’t in yet (I had to borrow Nettie’s extra one last night, which was black and made me feel all that much more conspicuous.) Oh, and some sandals would be nice for after class so I don’t look quite the redneck leaving in my cowboy boots and gi pants.

I can see sticking with this.

I’m starting a new endeavor this evening that I’ve considered for years.

I’m joining the adult karate class at my kids’ dojo.

I’ve considered doing it for years. John’s gone since he was about six, so I’ve been around these people for a long time. I was concerned about the time crunch, because after work on the kids week is really tight, time-wise. But now that they’re older, they can do their homework while I’m on the floor. I’ve only got one kid each night, since the other kid goes to Boy Scouts (which kid depends on which night.) So if I work it right, I can swoop in, pick up a kid and take him to dinner in town, and then be back in time for the class. It’s a little more eating out than I’d like, so I’ll try to stick to cheap and healthy.

One bit holding me back was Seamus. I didn’t want to end up in a situation where I was competing with him. I didn’t want to pass him up too quickly and make him feel bad and lose interest in it himself. He’s an orange belt now though, and he really likes it. I think it could be good for him to be the expert at something, and to get to show me what to do. He’ll like that. John is even higher, but not very patient with me, and he doesn’t care if we compete.

My motives are varied; I hope that having an assortment of good things to look forward to will keep me going, because really, I am sort of lazy. I’m using it for exercise as well as a little bit of a social outlet. It will be good for me to get out and see other adults.

I’m more than a little nervous about the physical aspect of it, but Sensei assures me that they have other people with asthma. He also says not to worry about weird schedules keeping me from classes, but I’ve rearranged my Sacramento days to accommodate this class and my second job.

So, we’ll see. Will peer pressure keep me exercising? Will a frantic schedule freak me out? Will I turn out to be a massively uncoordinated oaf? Will I become a karate fanatic and freak out even more men than my shooting skills do?

Whatever happens, it should be interesting. To me, at least. Maybe not to you all.

If I’m going to make a project out of this dating thing, I might as well put some effort into it, so in the interest of completeness, I went to the bar last night.

Now, Thursday night isn’t as weird as it sounds, because it’s karaoke night down at the joint and it’s usually got a pretty good crowd. Except I think the crowd has become significantly younger than back in the day when I used to hang out with the working guys there in the evenings. There is still a working man or two there, but they clear out before it gets too late and these young, beautiful, hip-hop country sort of things flood the place.

And they make me feel old. There are older men there, but I was clearly the oldest woman, and I’m only 36! Specifically, it was the two young twenty-somethings out grinding on each other on the dance floor way too early in the evening that made me feel my years. And Big Jeff telling me in aside that he’s had a threesome with those girls didn’t help. Nor did the small cluster of men in my preferred age group staring at these chicks with their tongues hanging out. How can I compete with that?

It’s one thing to go there with a group of my friends; I’ll have someone to talk to and to get drunk with if that’s the order of the day. But nobody I knew showed up last night and Jeff was busy working and having women hang on him. That’s funny when there’s someone there to snark about it with, but just standing there on my own feels pretty awkward. So I left early, which was fine. I’d gone and had my drink with my buddy and scoped the place out, and that was really all I wanted to do.

Jeff says I should come earlier in the evening, when all of the working men and cowboys like to stop in for a drink after work. But it’s one thing for a man to stop at the bar by himself; for a woman to do it just screams “bar hag” and I have no intention of being that.

So I think this bar won’t be a regular thing for me. Maybe once in a while, to celebrate a friend’s birthday or something, but not every week. It’s just not my tactic.