which_chick | (no subject)

I did some stuff today. I have some stuff I still have to do today.

I got up early and mixed up moravian spice cookies, which are currently ready to be rolled out and gebakened in my oven. I really, really, really like the cookies but I am not a huge fan of actually making them. Also, since there an egg-free dough, even NYR has to admit that it's A-OK to just keep the fucking dough in the fridge and eat it in cookie-sized amounts. That's a substantial temptation for me, it is. Anyway, the recipe makes approximately eighty wafer thin cookies of brown spiced goodness. The baking process takes just over an hour for all the cookies to get from dough to cookie.

I also made caramels (half of which have already been given away) because I had made noises along those lines earlier and not actually done the following-through part. Psyche! But now I have made caramels. I don't think I want to chocolate coat them, though. It's kind of gilding the lily, there. Would plain unchocolatecoated caramels be okay, do you think?

I went over to La's and fed the red idiot and then we went for a spin over across the road. She gave a pretty good effort on her part and I wasn't entirely frozen by the time we were done, so yay. I don't get as much riding done this time of year as I'd like. Finding daylight to ride in is part of the problem. (It's near dark when I get home from work on week nights.) Also, Nick lives outside in a field and has her winter coat so I don't want to really sweat her up. (Sweaty winter-coated horses take about six years to dry out.) As a result, I've been doing a lot of walk and jog stuff when I can ride. We do what we can under the conditions.

Even though I work on stuff that I know is problematic for me (like Thou Shalt Not Grip With Thy Thighs and also Sitting Up Straight and Not Leaning On Turns and Not Turning My Head More Than My Shoulders/Hips Are Turned), I don't know that it transfers to riding Cole. I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere with him and I can't find a place to *have* a conversation with him. I'm not in any particular danger, but he evades and I get frustrated and I don't have particularly effective corrections for his evasions and it's very demoralizing. I feel like an idiot at lesson because I can't get a damn thing out of the horse. (There is nothing particularly wrong with the horse, mind. He's actually a safer, more even-tempered soul than Goof. If I could just get on the same page with him, we'd be fine. I don't seem to be able to do that, though. Argh.)

I visited a bit after that and then I came home to not-bake-cookies, a project I've been having a great deal of success with thus far. Breakfast is tomorrow at La's house, we're having juevos rancheros, yay!