Today, it most made itself apparent – lately I’ve been feeling like I’ve been moving in slow motion. Time has been going by more quickly – a friend once remarked that this is because when you hit fifty, it’s all downhill. Now, if Einstein was a woman, he would have spent more time exploring this topic. I, being a woman, would spend more time exploring this topic but I don’t have a bent for the hard sciences.

Only those who have a bent for the hard sciences can truly understand Einstein’s theory of relativity. To me, the theory of relativity has something to do with the memory of dead aunts and uncles. Gosh, all but my Uncle Bob (on my mother’s

Last week's weather

side) and maybe, my Aunt Mickey (on my father’s side), are done decomposing.

The odd thing is, as you get older, more and more people fall by the wayside. I found myself thinking that if I, at the age I am at now, were to step back in time ten years, say for a few weeks, I’d most likely reconnect with those who have since passed on. I am talking about reconnecting with the famous and infamous.

This feeling of slow motion is mainly due to the weather. It’s been a long winter, cold, dark, and windy, all of the above, cept for now the light’s coming back. I charged into the season, outside, I was doing agility with the dog and horses. I was also attempting to figure out a way in which I might teach Tyra to paint.

I also, when riding, was working on horse/human body awareness. I at some point began moving more slowly mentally and physically. Outside: I’m still riding, but I’m not doing any more than I was before with the horses or the dogs. Inside: I was doing a lot of reading in the area of positive reinforcement training. Lately, I’ve instead been reading narratives, of various sorts.

I feel like I’m treading water in mud.

My friend Fran, who lives in Fairbanks will laugh at this next statement: It gets very cold where she lives, in fact down into the below zero double digits. 10˚F after being -20˚F or -30˚F seems balmy. To me, 10 F and below is uncomfortably cold. I can and do ride, but my focus on body awareness goes out the window.

My energy level has dropped in accordance with the temperature. I figured out that, really, the only way to deal is to get outside and soak up as much sunshine as possible.

I opened the kitchen addition door this morning, before suiting up, and thought, I won’t ride today. This will be too hard on the horses, I thought. And so, I worked inside on the book project, making calls until noon. I then stepped outside and decided to test the waters by taking Shadow and Tinni for a walk. The waters were such that I deduced that taking the others out would be to my and their benefit. And so, this is what I did.

I felt a smidgeon of accomplishment, but alas, it was just a smidgeon.

Next: 40. 2/9/21: At the Day’s End