Confessions of a One-Track Mind

Okay, this is total pie-in-the-sky, NOT something that is practical in my life right now. But it's a cool idea, and I just wanted to get it on record.

As a card-carrying Former Horse Crazy Kid, I was intrigued when I saw someone's craft project of a bouncy horse body grafted onto a pole like a carousel horse. Like so:



There are quite a few of them out there; this one is for illustrative purposes and not as an exact depiction of what I'd do.* (Pink and mauve roses? I think not.) But anyway, I've seen them, and thought it was a really cool idea, BUT. It would take up an awful lot of real estate and doesn't really DO anything.

Then the light dawned. What if the pole was hollow, and there was a light on the top? That would certainly help it earn its keep. Still, that's a helluva big floor lamp. So why not get a side table or coffee table with two levels and run the pole thru that? I just so happen to have such a table, a really tacky 60's number. Both levels are marble, and the posts are baroque and gilded to a fair-thee-well. The whole thing would work fabulously with an antique gold pole and fixtures and an intricately painted pony.

I know, wild idea. And I'd have to find an old bouncy horse to repurpose. It's not like there's any hurry, though. I'm miles away from having a guest room to put it in....



* I think maybe an hommage to Scandinavian dala horses....


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As I mentioned recently, J got me hooked on an app called "My Horse". You have a CGI horse that you care for and compete with in shows. I got up to Level 26 and had a catastrophe a week ago---did an upgrade and because it wasn't logged into Game Center, I lost it all.

Thankfully, when I went back to J's the next night, as soon as I synched to her wi-fi, an earlier version came up. I popped backup to Level 13, which was irritating, but better than starting over. I'm now up to Level 33, and I've figured a few things out:

If you're on the Home screen, and your horse is just ditty-bopping around the pasture, you can make him/her rear or buck by tapping it three or four times. Same while giving Treats. Also, you may occasionally see a ring of light in the grass. If you tap the circle, sometimes you can get your horse to trot through it, which will give you more XP, which is what raises your levels.

I set as many tasks as I can, both for Coins, and for Health and Love. Because I have time to play, I tend to do one- and two-hour tasks, although I may set some eight-hour tasks if I'm getting ready to head off to bed or know for sure I won't be active for a while.

Hint---You don't actually need to spend anything on food OR treats if you complete enough Love and Health tasks and or Care tasks like Mucking the Stall or Grooming.

Competition has three combined scores: Performance, Happiness (how much your horse loves you) and Presentation. Hint---it is well worth it to invest coinage in Presentation. Thanks to some numbermancing with my show tack and riding gear, my Presentation score is currently 551, which gives me an edge in whatever I enter by a ridiculous margin. We're stylish, too!

At this point, I'm doing the sixth competition repeatedly and training for the seventh. Hint---They only deduct the Health entry fee the first time you enter, not every single time you compete.

Training consists of riding exercises that have to be completed before they unlock the next level of competition. That drains energy. Unlike health and love, which lose points if ignored for too long, energy rises during dormant periods. Still, it's taken quite a while to get all the skills needed for the seventh competition, and I'm probably still a day away. Hint---do training, then a competition: Competition doesn't cost energy points, and while you're competing, your energy can build back up. Do take a moment to make sure you're at full Happiness/Love before you compete, though, as that matters, too.

Umm...I'm probably leaving things out, sorry. If you have any questions, I'll do what I can to answer, although I suspect the odds of fellow players on my f'list are slim. Meanwhile, it's a fun little diversion, and satisfies my Horse Crazy After All These Years aspect, even if it is forty years late. (Ouch!)

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The regular intake of things green has been a Good Thing, as has walking with Mb. I've been there and back, because, aside from her cats, it's so peaceful over there. I can sit on her porch contentedly staring into space for hours; she's got NORMAL neighbors....

Also, I won't be teasing her about her online games...she's been an afficianado of Farmville and Diner Dash and the like, and I've rolled my eyes more than once. But that was before J got me hooked on an iPhone app called "My Horse". As an Adult Horse Crazy Kid, I am having way too much fun with with my pixilated pony, "Hamilton". (Named for one of my childhood Breyer horsies.)

She has also gotten me hooked on LOST. I was over there Saturday evening, and after watching several eps, she called it a night in the middle of a cliffhanger. Aaargh! It's going to be a long week. We're midway through season 1; there's a lot of suspenseful goodness yet to come....

I bit the bullet and got a new mouse, since the old one really was old---this is the third computer it's been used with---and it had gotten very sporadic about left-clicking and highlighting tp copy-paste.

Btw, as of the morning of Sunday the 18th of March, I'm at 289.5. This blows me away---I'm still not completely used to a number beginning with "2"!

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What childhood toy did you desperately want that your parents refused to give you? Do you still think about getting one?

What, you mean the pony we didn't have room for in the backyard? That they said we couldn't afford to stable at a real stable? (Granted we're talking about Staten Island, NY, but there were at least two stables there that I knew of at the time.) Not that a horse, strictly speaking, is a toy, but otherwise, I had a vast collection of plastic horses (including a LOT by Breyer), an ample array of Barbies and the like, new bicycles when I outgrew the old ones---no, the one thing I really had my heart set on that I never got was a horse/pony of my own.




Reality being what it is, I don't expect to add a horse to my life, unless I win the lottery and gain a Mustang!

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Growing up, I was a horse-mad kid. I have memories of Saturday afternoons watching horse racing on TV---in particularly during the years of Riva Ridge and the legendary Secretariat. (I wanted to marry Ron Turcotte, just to be there in the winner's circle, an adjunct to greatness.)

So today, out of equine nostalgia, I clicked on the headline, "Longshot Pulls Belmont Upset", and discovered that the horse in question is named Drosselmeyer, which set off yet another wave of nostalgia: SOMEONE is a fan of The Nutcracker ballet (in which Drosselmeyer is the toymaker), and which my brother took me to see the Christmas I was seven.

This has nothing in particular to do with anything, just another one of those amusing little zingers from The Universe.

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Inspired by secondsilk, who said: "My inner child is six, and wears pig tails and frilly pink dress. Beware."

( My inner child is ten years old, has blue eyes and a few freckles and bright blond hair worn in braids. She's tall for her age, and slim, and completely obsessed with horses. )