Day Fifteen--Why I Need to Buy a Horse

I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing that’s going to make me feel better is if I buy a new horse.

That’s it, plain and simple.

Therefore, I’m horse shopping.

Honestly, this started before we quit smoking. I’m just using the quitting smoking as an excuse to buy another one. The horse shopping actually began when I told the story about the bucker and one of my blog buddies contacted me about a horse she had for sale. That’s all that has to happen to get me going—the mere mention of an available horse. Even if I am on full-horse-overload (the ratio of horses to stalls is unbalanced), if someone tells me about a horse they think I could use, I have to stop and consider.

Due to Christmas and having to go up to New Jersey to visit my mother, we were not able to move fast enough on my blog buddy’s horse and he was sold to someone else. But it was too late. I got the bug.

The truth is, now’s the time to buy. In fact, now is the time to get a free one if you’re not picky. The whole bottom has fallen out of the horse market and people are driving by horse sales, slowing down just enough to kick out some horses and then speeding away before anyone makes them load them back up again; that’s how bad it is. We knew we needed a horse. Actually, we knew we needed two horses. My favorite horse, Harley, has headshaking syndrome.

And Kelly stole Kurt’s horse Bullet because we retired the old guy.

But we were going to wait until the summer to start looking. Then my blog buddy opened her mouth. Then my friends from Nicotine Busters told me that I should reward myself with something that has the most incredible flowing mane and tail in the world and a nice big booty to match.

I thought, “That’s a great idea!”

So Kelly and I set out on a road trip yesterday. I’d been horse shopping online for the past few weeks and I made appointments for two prospects, about two hours south of me, and an hour apart from each other, in North Carolina. We’d mosey along, stop and get some snacks, stop and have some lunch, maybe take of a few pictures of interesting things for my blog and go see horses! And since I got my singing voice back because I quit smoking, I stocked the truck with some good music including my new Smokey Robinson CD. I would sing along and serenade Kelly at the top of my lungs. People say I’m the life of the party ‘cause I tell a joke or two… It’d be fun!

Do not trust the GPS or Mapquest. Why can’t I have a map like the old days where you simply pulled over to the side of the road, figured out you had to get on Highway 10 and then get off on Highway 6 and then make a left onto Main Street? But nooooo. It doesn’t work that way anymore. The GPS had me going left and right and following motorways into brick walls and getting me all nervous telling me I was going to turn soon where there was no turn but a simple bend in the road that you would have never noticed if the English chick hadn’t piped up to begin with. Then, luckily I have a great sense of direction because it had me going north, away from my destination, and I noticed it right away.

“This don’t seem right Kel,” I said to the kid. “See if Mapquest jives with what the GPS is saying.”

“What’s ‘jives?’” she asked me.

Oh man, now I had an English language barrier along with the GPS getting me lost? I was starting to feel irritable. I wanted to smoke.

“Jive talking! Don’t you know what jive talking is? Haven’t you ever heard of the Bee Gees? Okay, reach in the back and get the CD case and look for the Bee Gees. You’re going to really like this one. I can sing the Bee Gees real good.”

The kid rolled her eyes and then denied doing it.

Let’s put it this way. I tormented her the entire trip. The only good thing she got out of it was I was very agreeable about stopping to buy junk. Whatever she wanted to get, it all looked good to me. We got Bubblicious Sour Citrus, Tom’s Coconut Slices, Lance cheese crackers, Uncle Al’s sugar wafers, Combos, some kind of sour wormy thing. We got these peanut butter things that were kind of like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups except they were covered in a cluster of nuts. How can you go wrong with that? And of course barbecue-flavored corn nuts because what road trip is complete without the corn nut?

We got bellyaches. But we didn’t get a horse. One of them bucked just like Spirit did when I was buying him. I learned my lesson from that one. Never buy a horse that bucks when you are looking at him to buy. In fact, never buy a horse that does something wrong for the first time when you are looking at him to buy, as in, seller scratches his head and says, “He ain’t never done that before.” Whatever he has never done before will, in fact, be an ingrown, incurable habit.

The other horse I wasn’t gaga over. Therefore I’m having major nicotine fits and am at serious risk of relapse.