Horses, Travel, Movies and Chicken Wings

 My social life feels like a full time job sometimes…like the past three days when I went on a tour of an Equest Center for Therapeutic Riding, to a travelogue presentation and I saw a film with my Movie and Lunch Club. And over the weekend I’m going to an art-in-the-park show. I wish I could queue up my social activities like I can On Demand TV. I’d get up in the morning, decide if I want to stay home or queue up a place to go that fits my mood, the weather and the amount of physical exertion I’m willing to spend. If I loved what I did the day before I could even queue it up again for an encore.

Have you heard about therapeutic horseback riding? Sure you have. Ann Romney---if her husband had won the White House back in their day---would have turned the front lawn into a riding track as part of her treatment for MS. The therapy place our senior hall arranged for us to tour was amazing. It's a non-profit that sits on 35 wooded acres and they have an indoor heated ring for the winter and an outdoor “sensory trail” for the summer months. They do 150 therapy half hour riding sessions a week and have a waiting list. They could offer more time slots if they had enough trained horses and ponies---only one in five pass the temperament test. They have twenty-seven horses and each riding appointment takes a certified equine-assist therapist plus two volunteers to be with the rider. They also do summer day camps, derby days and other fun things. Their youngest rider is two and their oldest is ninety. Riders are all physically, mentally, social or emotionally challenged. I have a niece-in-law with severe MS who goes there and it’s the highlight of her week. I was surprised to learn that most insurance companies cover this therapy.

While on the tour I made sure to pet the two barn cats and rub my forearm up against both a gigantic Percheron horse and a smaller Peruvian so I could take their scents home to Levi. That Schnauzer loves playing detective, trying to figure out where I go when I leave the house. I really gave him something to think about this time! When I was a teenager any bare skin contact with horses would have brought on an outbreak of hives and I also wanted to see if I'm still was allergic to them. Nope. I’ve outgrown reacting to them or to touching grass. One summer I had a terrible crush on a boy who worked at a stables near our cottage so every time I had some babysitting money I’d go riding. I spent a lot of time with pink Calamine lotion on my skin before my mom put two and two together and made me stop riding.

The Travel club. I almost fell asleep during their presentation of the trips they’re planning for 2018. For the first time since I’ve been going, they had trouble with their slide show presentation. It kept stopping and repeating the same photos that didn’t match what the speaker was talking about. Drove me crazy! They are going to Poland ($2,995 for ten days), The Baltic's ($3,999 for eleven days), Peru ($7,499 for ten days) and the Parks of the American West ($3,995 for ten days). They gave out recognition badges to people who’d been on three or more trips with the agency over the past year and all I could think about is: Where do these people get that much money to blow on trips? Any three of last year’s trips combined would cost over ten grand! 

Movie and Lunch Club. If you watch TV you’ve probably seen the trailer for the movie with Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer, Snatched. Like its title, the plot is short on content. They play a mother-daughter combo who gets kidnapped in South America and an action/comedy results. I couldn’t find a reviewer who gave the film more than two and a half stars and I’d agree with that. But if you need a break from the world of serious and sinister news, the movie will give you enough lines and antics to laugh at to get your matinee money’s worth. It’s an R rated movie for its language and it was classic Amy Schumer potty-mouth. I had to laugh, though, at one couple in our group who bought their tickets before knowing it was R rated. They’d never been to an R rated movie before and they promised they’d walk out if it “got bad.” They didn’t but I’m pretty sure they were still blushing when we got to a near-by restaurant called Buffalo Wild Wings. It’s a sports bar chain but I’ve never heard of it before. I don’t usually go to places with the word ‘sports’ in the title…no arenas, no bars, no retail stores. The couple zeroed right in on the Lotto screens on the wall and she said they used to play until they’d win enough to pay for their meals. Oh my! I guess we all have our own definitions of what’s obscene. I’ll take a few dirty words over wasting money gambling any day. ©