jennyaxe: Photo in black and white. I'm in profile, looking to the left, with a calm and content half-smile. (Default)
I do crafting. I'm easily bored. That means I jump from project to project, and rarely actually get around to going back and finishing anything. Thus, there are a lot of unfinished objects (aka UFOs) in the house.

But today I actually finished something! A hat made with reflective yarn, which I intend to wear at the stables to be more visible on winter evenings.

Hat I knitted in blue yarn with a reflective thread
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I was born 1971 and I grew up in Gothenburg. I’ve got a few thoughts on the current kerfuffle, aka "#swedengate". (Note that a lot probably has changed since then; I don’t have any children so I’ve not needed to think about it, but I’m fairly sure it’s a lot more relaxed now.)

First, in the 1970's there was still a lot of “children should be seen and not heard” around. When I went to play with another kid, I’d expect to play only in their room, not in any common family area. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case anymore, but I really didn’t expect to interact with my friends’ families except for saying hi and maybe being given a glass of juice and a cookie or something. I’d just stay out of the way to “not be a bother”.

Second, we had a very strong tradition of family dinner. The rule was you could play where you liked, as long as you were home in time for dinner.

And third, there was indeed a poverty issue, but not in the way most people seem to take it. In the 70's we were only a generation away from being a very poor country indeed. People found taking handouts, “charity”, deeply shameful. So the poverty-related  issue wasn’t “we can’t afford to feed an extra child”. It was “let’s not imply their parents are too poor to feed them or too uncaring to want them home for dinner”. Hanging around someone else’s family at meal times in the hope of being fed was a sort of freeloading, and you just didn’t do that. Sending your children to someone else’s house to eat, without their being expressly invited, was also freeloading. For Jane Austen readers, see chapter 15 where Aunt Norris complains of a child being sent over with a pair of boards for his carpenter father. “I knew what all this meant, for the servants’ dinner-bell was ringing at the very moment over our heads; and as I hate such encroaching people [...]” Or, for that matter, Edith Nesbit’s “The Railway Children”, when the children had the whole village join in giving birthday presents to their friend, and he was insulted because he thought it meant everybody thought he needed charity.

You really didn’t want to be considered one of those encroaching people, so you didn’t go to anyone’s house expecting to be fed. Offered a snack, a glass of juice, “saft” or lemonade for a child or a cup of coffee for an adult - definitely. But just showing up and getting dinner? God, no. I’d get told “don’t go there now, they’re probably having dinner”. Any unannounced drop-in visit would be at a time that wasn’t likely to coincide with dinner.

Note that this applies only to uninvited guests. If they’re invited for dinner, of course you feed them. And of course a parent could call the other child’s parent and ask them if it’s OK for their child to have dinner. But just assuming they need to be fed, because their parents wouldn’t want them home for family dinner or be unable to feed them? Rude!

Also, as for offering food to uninvited guests: there was fika! Coffee, some sort of biscuit, cookie or snack, that was what you’d give them, every time. Fika culture is strong!
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Today we celebrated Lammas, commonly seen as a harvest festival. It was the first time the whole coven met up since Covid started.

So I've been thinking a lot about harvest, and about reaping what you sow.

What we harvest today is what was sown in our past. The wheat on the nearby field was sown in the spring, the apples ripening on the tree outside my window were pollinated in May. And what we sow now will grow later on. That's the essence of the three-fold law - all we do comes back to us, three times over.

I'd like to extend that law, in a positive way. It's one thing to say "I'll do something good now and it'll come back to me in the future". But what if we also say "someone did me a good turn, so I'll do the same three times over"?

"Someone left me their parking ticket with an hour's parking still to go. I'll do the same for three other people."
"Someone gave me a seat on the bus when I was really tired. I'll do the same when I'm able to stand, for three other people."
"Someone lent me money when I was broke. I'll do the same, for three other people."
"Someone helped me with a place to stay when I needed it. I'll do the same, for three other people."

What we sow, we reap. What good other people sow, let yet others reap. Three times over.
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In the past 21 years, I've moved several times. In what is probably a really big surprise to everyone who knows me, I've had some boxes that haven't been unpacked at all in the past few moves, but which I've not been able to bring myself to throw away. I'm a very bad thrower away of sentimental junk!

The latest move was seven years ago, when we moved to the house we live in now. At that time, we'd also started reading a lot more e-books rather than paper books, and the floor plan of this house doesn't give as much space for lots and lots of books. So in addition to my boxes of sentimental junk, there were now also a lot of boxes with paper books in them. They ended up being stored in the room with the boiler (which is the geothermal variety). And there they stood.

Until last week, when Calle heard a crashing noise and went down to see what the cats were messing with. It turned out to not be the cats. The boiler was leaking water, flooding the room, and causing the boxes to crumble. The noise Calle heard was one of the boxes collapsing.

I called a plumber while he handled getting the boxes and the water cleared out. Plumber found that the reason was that the water containers in the boiler had corroded and burst and the boiler was so old that there wasn't anything to do. He made the water system bypass the boiler so we still have cold water but not hot. We ordered a new boiler.

But that's not what I was going to write about. This is a song about L-space - remember L-space? This is a song about L-space. Because when I went through the boxes in order to find what was damaged and not, I found this:



Of the signers, the only one I'm still in regular contact with is Mike Knell.

I miss Usenet!


Badger!

Jun. 28th, 2021 06:53 pm
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It's very hot here in my part of Sweden. Like, *very* hot, even during the night. The hottest June in about 75 years, if I remember correctly.

I've got a nice sort of pavilion on the porch - fabric roof and sides, and a layer of insect netting too so you can choose to have the fabric panels open but the netting closed and sit in a nice breeze without getting eaten by mosquitoes. And given the heat, I've put an air mattress out so I can sleep here when the night temperature doesn't go below 18C.

Last night I was sitting in my chair, thinking about going in to brush my teeth so I could go to bed, when I heard a weird snuffling/smacking noise from the bird feeder area. It sure didn't sound like a bird, so I thought maybe a squirrel would be there, and looked by the light of my phone. Nothing.

Then I looked a little lower...

Badger snuffling around under the bird feeder in my garden

The badger hung around long enough for me to take a picture, then apparently it thought I was moving around too much so it scurried off down the garden path. I've not seen it since, but then I'm usually not out here that late.

jennyaxe: Photo in black and white. I'm in profile, looking to the left, with a calm and content half-smile. (Default)
Thanks [personal profile] kalmn !

Zebras: I have only seen them in zoos. They seem too small to ride comfortably; I'll stick with horses. (My horse is doing quite well, thank you; he's enjoying the summer pasture.)

Exit: I try to have my programs do a clean one, delete any temp files and log what's happened.

I try to not block fire exits.

In fact, I try not to block exits at all, neither physically nor metaphorically. If someone doesn't want to be where they are, forcing them to stay or tp work around me to get out is unlikely to lead to a good outcome.

Reminder: I have a lousy memory for things I should remember, and one far too cluttered with useless trivia. But then, I do enjoy picking up said useless trivia, turning it over and playing with it - and things we enjoy are per definition not useless, right?

Thanks for the reminder to actually post something!

jennyaxe: Photo in black and white. I'm in profile, looking to the left, with a calm and content half-smile. (Default)

There have been some things happening in my life lately that I don't yet feel up to talking about. So instead I'll talk about the video being posted around facebook and other places, where a pediatrician claims that letting trans children receive puberty blockers is tantamount to child abuse.

I have very strong opinions about this. Namely, that those claims are a crock of bullshit. So when a net friend posted and asked about it, I ended up writing a fairly long screed about it. Here it is, somewhat amended to work as a blog post instead of a facebook comment.

TL;DR: puberty blockers aren't a drastic change, taking them doesn't do harm but withholding them does.

Long version (and it turned out to be really long!)
I want to look at this from a practical point of view, and try to figure out what does the least harm to an adolescent/pubescent child and to their future adulthood. This is what I see, and it's informed by what I have learned of how these drugs work, as well as the information I've got from my transgender friends who've talked about it:
  • First, puberty blockers do not change the body. What they do is to stop changes that would otherwise happen. They delay onset of puberty as long as the blocker is taken, but they do not in themselves cause any other change to the sexual characteristics of the person taking them. Therefore, giving puberty blockers does not cause any long-term danger (and indeed is indicated for children with extremely precocious puberty!) And it does not cause anybody to transition, either - they still have the same pre-pubertal body.
  • Second, if an adult person transitions, the process will be a lot more complicated and difficult if the person has fully gone through puberty - their voice will have changed, they will have beard or breasts, and so on. Therefore, making a trans child go through puberty may cause long-term damage, whereas letting a non-trans child delay onset of puberty doesn't.
So from the principle of least harm, I see far less harm in postponing puberty than in forcing a person to grow up with increasing body dysmorphia and then have a lot more medical intervention be necessary once they are allowed to transition. I also see less harm in allowing a person to postpone puberty even if they then choose to not transition. The two risks and harms are by no means equal even from a purely medical standpoint and looking merely at the direct effects of the puberty blockers.

But the direct medical effects aren't the only basis to use when deciding this. Trans children are at a far greater risk of suicide in their teens. Part of this is because society isn't accepting - there are a number of homeless kids in the world, who have literally been kicked out of their homes by their parents! - but another part is because of increased body dysmorphia as the body develops its secondary sexual characteristics during puberty. Eating disorders are also more prevalent among trans kids, because if you don't eat you won't develop as much, you won't get periods and your breasts won't grow, you won't grow as tall and you won't get as broad shoulders, etc. And an eating disorder or self-harm or suicide attempts are way more dangerous to a teenager than puberty blockers are!

I know trans people who've always known their bodies were wrong and they suffered very much during puberty. I have never met anyone who was convinced of being trans during their childhood and adolescence and who later changed their minds. I won't say that they don't exist, but if they do, still they would not suffer any harm from getting puberty blockers, while the first group do suffer harm from having them denied.

(I also know trans people who endeavored to accept their body during adolescence and only transitioned when they were well into adulthood, as well as non-binary, genderqueer and any other non-cis persons you can think of, but they are not really relevant to this particular discussion.)
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In Februari 2000, [personal profile] cdybedahl and I became a couple. We ssaid from the first that we'd try to take things slow and wouldn't even discuss marriage until we'd been together for at least a year.

This year was up the day before the first day of Redemption, a fan convention for fans of Blake's 7 and Babylon 5. Calle and I went to England a couple of days early, to spend our 1-year anniversary in London. And having been together for a year, and still not only being in love but also liking and loving eachother (not necessarily the same thing!), we decided that getting married was definitely on the cards. We went out, looked for rings but didn't find any (we did see some that were bronze, from around the 5th century if I recall correctly, but they didn't fit well and it would be hard to get matching wedding rings). So we settled for having a nice dinner and the next day we went and bought plain gold bands at the first jeweller's shop we found, and then we got on the train to go to Redemption.

Calle had been a fan of both B7 and B5 for longer than I had, and knew a lot of people there. Nine years earlier, in November of 1992, he'd started a mailinglist on the Lysator systems, and a lot of list (or Lyst, as it was called) members were at the convention. I'd joined the list, but I never wrote much - still, people were nice and welcoming and we had a good time at the convention. And there was a bit of overlap with Terry Pratchett fandom, where I knew far more people, so I wasn't completely out of the loop.

Calle and I got to hold an interview with Tanith Lee, which was great fun, and we spent an evening with her, her husband and Damien London, who'd planed the Centauri Regent in Babylon 5, and who told us lots of stories from Hollywood. Those are my best memories from that convention.

We came home, and we had work and life and stuff, and didn't have the time to go to conventions, but kept on the mailing list, and kept more or less in touch with some people via Livejournal, later Dreamwidth, and Facebook for those that were there. And time passed. This year it'ss 25 years since the Lyst got started. And some people thought it'd be nice to meet - and Calle and I felt that a bit of time off would be nice, so we took Friday and Monday off and yesterday we travelled to London.

Today, we met at a pub at King's Cross, with about 10 or 12 other fandom members. I felt a bit insecure at first, because I hadn't seen these people in 15 years and I was never that active on the Lyst. But somehow when we all started chatting, it felt just like it had back at that convention - that these are my sort of people, that we could just slip back into fandom and friendliness and have a good time, even though we hadn't spoken in years.

We stayed for over four hours, and only split up because some people had a few hours travel to get back home, and others (such as myself) got very tired from being sociable even with people we like and enjoy hanging out with.

All this is just to get to this conclusion: B7 fans are nice, and I miss being a part of fandom, and I had a great time today. That is all.

jennyaxe: Photo in black and white. I'm in profile, looking to the left, with a calm and content half-smile. (Default)
I've been writing a lot during the past few months. It started when I was laid up with a hairline fracture on my hip (I wrote about that at my horse DW, and being bored, I went and read everything by Astolat that I hadn't previously read due to them not being in any of my fandoms. That included a lot of Witcher fic, and that combined with the morphine I was on to trigger a crossover with Discworld. Because really, if Emhyr wants to have a pen pal, who else but Vetinari could keep up with him, and vice versa?

And then I couldn't stop thinking about it, and started writing a follow-up, and now I'm 17.800 words into the story and on chapter 12. I do know where it's heading, but it's a bit harder to get time to write now I'm back at work, with a new client, and also well enough to go riding again. But the train rides to and from work are prime writing time.

So that's the kind of fun I'm having right now - thinking up jokes for Nanny Ogg to tell Our Heroes. It's a lot of fun, actually.

jennyaxe: Photo in black and white. I'm in profile, looking to the left, with a calm and content half-smile. (Default)
A while ago, I started watching The Night Manager. I will admit that the main reasons for watching it were two - Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston. And, to be honest, that would probably have been enough, because not only are they both gorgeous to look at, but they are two extremely capable actors. In fact, Hugh Laurie managed to play a character that was so unpleasant that I didn't find him attractive - though I can also see how he was attractive, just not to me. That takes a lot of skill. And Tom Hiddleston... his character played different parts, and he shone in them all. If you've not yet seen them, and you don't explicitly dislike the spy genre, you really should watch it. Like, right now. Also, since I'm me, I caught a few plot bunnies. One of which got finished and posted. But it's not going to make much sense unless you've seen the series, so go do that. Then you can read Hunger
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Last night was the first full night with the moon cup. It did not turn out as well as I'd hoped. (Again, here's the place you should stop reading if you don't like talk about periods...)

When I use a tampon on a heavy night, what happens is that it gets full and then the blood sort of trickles out along the threads. The clots still get caught in the tampon. But when I use the cup and it gets full, it trickles out through the little holes, and it doesn't get concentrated along any threads so it runs a bit more. That's what happened last night. I did use a pad, too, but unfortunately not the big night-time pads. So when the cup got full, I some of the blood ended up on my panties rather than in the pad. Fortunately I woke up around 4.30 am and discovered this before it had spread to the bed. So this was the second night of getting up and washing panties (and also the floor towel), and then fixing the cup, and getting clean panties, and putting in a larger pad just in case...

So, after last night, I have to say that I would prefer using a tampon at night. The max size tampons do last almost a full night, and the cup just doesn't, not during the first three or four days of my period. Tonight I'll have to set an alarm to get up about five hours after I empty the cup before bed.

Another downside is that with the tampon I usually feel when it starts to get full. With the cup, I just don't feel it. Of course the upside is that I don't feel it much at all, which is way nicer than the pain I get from the tampons, and it'll be very handy when I go to the gym or if I want to go swimming when on my period. I think it'll be good when I go riding too, though I won't get to try that until next month. But since I don't feel any difference from a full cup or a half-empty one, I tend to go check on it quite often. And taking it out is painful still, though I've gotten better at finding the nub. It's just the final pull when the vacuum lets go that is quite unpleasant. The pain does go away after a few minutes, but it's significant during that time.

Oh, another thing. A friend of mine said that she'd heard that it's bad to use the cup if you have endometriosis, like I have. I checked on that, and as far as I've been able to find, it's based on old science that has since been disproved but that unfortunately some doctors still believe in. There used to be a theory that endometriosis was caused by menstrual blood flowing "backwards" instead of running out through the vagina, and the particles of endometrium that came along with the blood would get stuck and become endometriosis nodes. However, this has been disproved, for two reasons - firstly, that a lot of women have retrograde menstruation without having endometriosis, and second, that people who have never had periods can still get endometriosis (e.g. infants and some men who've gotten it after hormone treatments for other diseases). So that's not an issue.

So my experience of the moon cup so far: It's comfortable, but not quite reliable, especially not when you've got a heavy flow. It's a bit tricky to handle at the start but you learn quickly. It's more of a hassle to change it than to change tampons, so with a heavy flow it might not be useful when you're working or just out and about and maybe can't get into a good place to change and wash it. I'm not going to stop using it, but it can't be my only option.

Moon cup

Aug. 4th, 2016 11:39 am
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If you're a person who gets grossed out by talk about menstruation, now would be a good time to skip this post.

I am on vacation in Italy. It is very hot. Fortunately the place where we're staying has a pool. Unfortunately I got my period yesterday.

Normally I'd use an uncomfortable tampon and I'd keep worrying about leakage - I've usually worn a tampon together with a pad, except specifically when bathing, and the thread of the tampon almost always looks like it's been leaking through. Also, tampons are painful on the heavy days. So this time I thought I'd finally get around to trying a moon cup. I bought one about a month ago and used it once, and brought it on the trip with me.

Usually the bleeding doesn't get very heavy until after the first 24 hours, so I thought I'd wait until today to put the cup in. But I woke up around 5 am and realized the pad was getting soaked, so I got up, put the cup in, cleaned myself, cleaned the panties that were now an interesting pattern of red on white, got new panties, took a pain killer, checked that the bed was clean and there weren't any stains large enough to see in the faint dawn light, and got back to bed. (It's not unusal for the bed to be clean even though the panties aren't; while I'm lying down, the blood remains inside me and it's not until I get up that the panties get stained and the occasional spatter on the floor happens.)

I woke up again around eight, pleased to not have to worry about reaching the bathroom without spillage. When I got there, I thought it might be best to clean the cup out at once. So I started reaching for the little nub at the bottom.

First I couldn't find it; it'd sort of hidden against the back, just inside the opening. And when I did find it, I couldn't get a grip on it. I kept trying more and more desperately, worrying whether it'd get stuck there and I'd have to ask for help. It felt like the problem was that I couldn't get my fingers in at the right angle, due to my arm not being long or bendable enough. I finally gave up and decided to have breakfast and, more important, coffee, before trying again.

When I got back up to the room about an hour later, there was no problem at all getting a grip on the little nub. It took a few tries to pull it out, but only a few, and I managed not to spill anything outside of the bidet I was using. (Bidets are a great idea for mooncup users, if you didn't know!) I'm thinking that probably it's easier once I've been up for a while, so next morning I won't even try getting it out until after breakfast.

And once the latest pain killer kicks in, I might even go swimming.

Advice

Apr. 19th, 2014 11:25 am
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I have this fascination with advice sites - there's something about reading about what questions people ask total strangers to help them with that just draws me in. A lot of the advice given (and questions accepted) is horrible, but the few I've found that are good are really good. Pride of place here is of course given to Captain Awkward, whose compassion and thoughtfulness and lovely commenters are simply brilliant.

Today I got another glimpse of brilliance, this time from Carolyn Hax. A young woman asks how to handle her relationship with her boyfriend, who is apparently perfect in every way except that he uses her past sexual relationships to bludgeon her into doing things she's not comfortable with. In the midst of advice (which is a more sensitively phrased version of "run, fast and far, and hope never to see him again"), there was this paragraph:

When I read “he loves to throw things in my face” exactly one sentence after, “I’ve never had a better friend in the world,” I just want to cry for how low you’ve set your friendship bar.

I wish I'd understood this when I was much younger. I had friends as well as "lovers" who hurt me so badly, and I couldn't untangle my desire for them to be good from the fact that they actually weren't any good.

I often like Carolyn Hax. This time I love her a little. And the woman who asked - I love her a lot, and wish I could just download all the stuff I've had 20 more years than her to learn, so she wouldn't have to go at it the hard way. Which, when at their best, Captain Awkward and Carolyn Hax are trying to do, and that is why I go back and read their stuff.

jennyaxe: (libertyjustice)
Title: Informed Consent
Author: Jenny Dybedahl
Fandom: Person of Interest
Pairing: John Reese/Harold Finch
Code: Gen/pre-slash
Comment: After 1x18, "Identity Crisis"
Informed Consent )
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A friend of mine got worried the other day - she received an email from her own address, with no subject. She thought somebody had gotten into her email account and sent the message from there, possibly using it to spam or otherwise attack her friends, too.

This is almost certainly not the case. Here's a short explanation of how it works:

Anybody can use any email address at all as the sender address when sending an email, just like anybody can write any return address they like on a piece of paper mail.

Here's the far longer explanation of how it works:

There are two places to specify the sender (and recipient) of an email. One is used by the mail server handling the mail, the other is what you see when you look at the mail in your mail client.

The one used by the mail server is called the "envelope sender" (and "envelope recipient"). If you compare it to a paper mail, it's what it sounds like - it's the sender/return address (and recipient address) that is written on the outside of the envelope. They are usually, but not always, the same address that you will see in when you look at the actual piece of mail. Again, compare to a paper mail - it's entirely possible to send a paper with somebody else's address, but then put it in an envelope with your address on it. Then the paper will be delivered to you, but when you open the envelope and look at the actual piece of mail, you see that it's not your name on the paper. The difference is that with email, you usually don't see the envelope unless you tell your email client to show it to you. (How you do that will of course depend on what email client you're using.)
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I play WoW on a role playing server. In theory, this means that players should build characters that have actual character and history, and all conversations that are audible/legible to others should be spoken as the character, not the player. So if someone asks how your day was, you may be talking about the nice weather in Thunder Bluff rather than the rain in Stockholm.

In practice, of course, most people don't bother. But today, as I was hanging around the mailbox in Orgrimmar, a goblin came up to me and smiled hesitantly. I raised my eyebrows at him. He politely asked if I could possible give him transportation, since mages have the ability to make teleports available for others. He offered to pay me; I declined, saying that I thought curiousity and an interest in other cultures should be encouraged. Then I gave him his portal to Dalaran, and he bowed a goodbye before leaving.

It took all of two minutes, and it left me smiling.
jennyaxe: (feminazi)
Today, as usual, I was playing WoW while having my breakfast. I was doing dungeons and got in a good group for Deadmines. We did an achievement, which went well, and managed to get in some conversation between the fights. The tank and healer were both very good and the other dps were about my level, so it worked out nicely.

Now, in Deadmines, once you've killed the actual Deadmines boss, the daughter of the previous Deadmines boss shows up. She's not in a good mood; she poisons the group, sending them off somewhere. As soon as she came up, the healer said:

Here comes the rape.
Get back in the kitchen, bitch!

At which point I said "sigh", and dropped group. I just don't have the energy for another one of those conversations - the ones where you spend at least half an hour explaining that no, rape isn't a "traditional gaming term", and yes, it does actually hurt to read that in a random conversation, and yes, throwing gendered insults around is really hurtful and no, "just a joke" isn't a defense unless you're four years old, in which case you shouldn't be playing WoW anyway.

It wears me down.

Horse news

Mar. 20th, 2011 09:43 pm
jennyaxe: (foal)
Prime Diamond finally complained enough that I helped him update his journal. He mentioned something about knowing some o the stable cats are amenable to bribes and he's sure they could think of some way to convince me, probably having to do with dead rats, so I bowed to necessity. You can read it at his journal.
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I have had such a wonderful day today!

My riding club had arranged a Pay&Jump. That's essentially a non-competition jumping meet - there is no placement list or winner, you don't get any rosettes or anything, but you do get to jump a proper set of fences in a new environment, so for many people it's good training before the season begins. The rules are a bit more lax too, in a regular competition you aren't allowed to continue if the horse has refused a fence more than three times but at the P&J it's up to the judge how long they can be allowed to try. Also you can get help to get the horse across (e.g. by someone leading the horse or egging it on), or get a fence lowered a little. Since quite a few horses have learned to count to three, knowing that after the third stop they get to go out and won't have to jump anymore, it's very useful to let them continue on. Some of them looked very surprised indeed...

There was one incident with a horse that kept baulking at the fences, where the rider got frustrated and started using her whip too much. You're allowed to use the whip as an aid; that is, to indicate with a light touch that the horse should do something. This rider got frustrated and unhappy when her horse refused fence after fence and gave him a sharp touch with the whip after he'd refused. I told her to use the whip only as an aid and not as a punishment, and she got over the fence on the fourth try. When she rode up to the next fence she started whipping the horse on the way up to the fence, and as she did it without switching the reins to one hand, she was also pulling on the rein on the side where she held the whip. The horse, unsurprisingly, refused, and she used the whip again. At that point I had to tell her that since she kept using the whip in the wrong way I was excluding her. I let her jump one more fence - without using the whip - so they wouldn't end with a refusal, since that is a bad memory to leave the horse. She was of course very unhappy, but I feel very sure that I ddi the right thing. After all, she will want to go to actual competitions later, and that sort of thing will get her thrown out of those, too - better to learn early and in a non-competitive environment!

When it was all finished, I got a ride back to our own stables (the event was held in an arena several kms off). I got to meet my darling Diamond again. I wasn't sure he'd remember me, after all he's still young and it's been five months since I saw him. When I came to his stall and opened the door, he walked up and put his head against me and demanded to be skritched behind the ears and on the throat, just as I've been doing since he was a few days old. He kept bumping me with his nose and wanting more skritches and seemed very happy to see me again. So was Skutt, by the way. He was at the P&J, and while he and [personal profile] gnapp were in the collecting ring he heard my voice, and immediately turned towards me. That was nice.

The horse I fell off of five months ago also remembered me. When I went to her stall, at first she came up and was all "oh, there you are, cuddles now plz!" After a few minutes of that she decided that no, she didn't like me because I'd abandoned her, and went off to the other corner of the stall to sulk. I do look forward to being able to work with her again - so, I suspect, do most other people in the stables as she's been getting to be difficult to handle due to her being bored from not getting to work. Her owners have started working her a little, but they really don't have enough time to give her the attention she wants, so it'll be nice for everyone when I get back.

After that, I went with [personal profile] gnapp and her husband to have dinner at one of our favourite hamburger places. One of the staff also rides and she came over to talk about horses and accidents. Then they drove me home and I got back shortly after 8 pm, having been gone for twelve hours.

In all, it was a lovely, lovely day!
jennyaxe: Photo in black and white. I'm in profile, looking to the left, with a calm and content half-smile. (Default)
It turns out that the venue does have elevators. The organiser apologised for not having checked, and thanked me and the (AFAIK ablebodied) other woman who'd been checking the place.

The organiser also said that she'd assumed that a large place would be accessible. I pointed out that yes, one would like to be able to assume that, much as one would like to think that a major software company wouldn't sell operating systems with large security flaws.

In other news, in theory there's no difference between theory and practice...

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jennyaxe: Photo in black and white. I'm in profile, looking to the left, with a calm and content half-smile. (Default)
jennyaxe

November 2022

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