It's a Venti sort of day...

The overnight low was 26-degrees, so somewhere around 9 or 10 pm I went out to switch out Big Bird's blanket to a heavier one.  I was fastening his straps, he reached his head around to check things out.  I bent over as if to say hi and give him a kiss, as I got my face close he BIT me in the face!  Like, our teeth actually clashed! Just one of those things in life that you don't really feel the need to accomplish, touching teeth with a horse, lol.  My face was so cold I could not feel anything, though, I guess I got a pass for that one.  I did chase him off to let him know that was in no way acceptable, and poor guy, he ran over to the trees and stuck his head between two of them and quivered, he knew he was in big trouble.  So then I went over to him and gave him some good head hugs, ended on a good note.  He cracks me up, that big thing, acts like such a baby. 

Last night, I got like, no sleep.  JJ must have hurt his knee/leg sometime earlier in the day, because for most of the night he was up crying saying his leg/knee/toes were hurting him and he wanted me to kiss his boo-boos.  Finally, sometime around 3am, I had to give him Motrin because the hope of him eventually falling asleep was becoming scarce.  So during this whole ordeal of getting in and out and in and out of bed with him, James, who was trying to sleep, not being particularly helpful with caring for his child, was impeding constantly into my space on the mattress.  I happen to have the misfortune of sleeping in the middle, between mattress hog #1 and mattress hog #2, so when I wasn't directly kissing a boo-boo, I was having to whap James' limbs as they encroached into my sleep zone.  He then was cranky too, and as I'd climb in and out of the bed and of course, climb over the top of a leg or a foot, he'd get all snippy with me about it as he growled, "Do you have to climb over my leg?"  so I had to shoot back, "Do I look like I have night-vision or something?  If you'd stay on your section of the bed where you belong, we wouldn't be having this problem, now would we?" 

It was indeed a miserable night. 

I still woke up early, went out to feed.  When Drama came into the barn, I noticed that his right jowl was significantly swollen, about twice its normal size.  Last night after the Big Bird episode, I had also put a hood on Drama.  As I did, he kept shaking his head like something was bothering him, so in the end, I thought it was the hood and I took it off and left it off.  He was still tossing his head after removing the hood, so I took him back inside the barn, turned all the lights on and checked him all out to see what I could figure out.  I could not detect anything, and after turning him back out, I watched him for about five more minutes, and then went back inside.  But this morning, the swelling had become quite obvious.  So I called the vet, asked her if I needed to bring him in to check him out.  I then had to hook up the trailer, pack a bag of hay, pack all of JJ's stuff and load him and Drama up.  I headed to Plant City first to drop JJ off at my mom's, and then I drove down to the vets.  My vet, Cindy, didn't see anything that was immediately evident, nothing broken, no fractured teeth.  Perhaps it was an abscessed tooth, so it was decided to put him on antibiotics, bute, and wait and see. 

Magdalene rode home with me since they met me over there, and we got back to the barn and rode for a while, she on Raz and myself on Gallery.  We both had nice rides; although I didn't watch too much of hers except for a few glimpses as we'd pass by on occasion.  She got two flying changes from him, executed pretty well.  It was sort of weird having more than one person in the arena and pure silence, although that is very nice too.  I do get sick of hearing my voice sometimes!  I can only imagine what my students feel, ha. 

Nicole came for her lesson on Abbey, and Magdalene rode Sammy.  After the lesson I rode him for a while, took him over some fences, got some pictures.  He knocked the first two rails down, at 3'9" we then lowered the rail a hole to 3'6" and tried again.  He had been going over the first two times pretty flat and fast, but on this third trip, even with the rail having been lowered, he went over it with such height and bascule, he completely caught me unprepared for that scope and ejected me right out of the saddle as we cleared the 4-ft standards with room to spare!!  On the landing, of course, I took a good fall, got my bell rung pretty hard!  I had to kneel on the ground with my head between my arms for a minute just to let my head stop ringing, it was quite something.  But what a rush it is with him.  We went ahead and lowered the jump to 3.0 and let him go over easy twice, and then ended with stretching.  That horse is just something else.  Just when you think you've got things figured out, you realize you don't.  :)

So here's some pictures of this afternoon.  James did a little touching up on the first one, it came out looking pretty cool.  And I am very tired, my head is still slightly ringing, I think it's really saying that it belongs on a pillow somewhere dark, quiet, warm... and hopefully with no body parts from either male family member in "my" section.