The consequences of riding your horse

As a real farm girl having a horse, the whole idea is to actually ride your horse every now and then …

Oh yes, he's so handsome!

And whenever you’re done with work on the dairy, which really never gets done, but you just feel the need to ride your gorgeous stallion (see: How a girl gets a horse), you really don’t think about anything else anymore. You just hurry down from the farm, grab your; “ I’m standing in my pasture enjoying my nice green grass”, horse and you don’t make yourself go into the house, change into good durable underwear and comfortable riding pants, NO you just wear your G-string and jeans and jump on your horse and GO!

After one hour of hobbling around you think, "hmmm, my bottom really hurt’s…"

Chilling in his pasture

And after you get done, and you actually make it into the house, and you find out by looking at your refrigerator (and the little magnets with appointments) that you have to go to the dermatologist for a checkup the next morning, there isn’t really anything you can do anymore to prevent you from disaster…

So, I knew I got myself in an awkward situation and because of that I took my mom with me to the appointment for support.

The dermatologist had to check my ENTIRE body every three months for abnormal spots/molds and I knew I had to go to this appointment I just forgot it was the next day.

 And yes, he is 28 now!

Lucky all my little molds were fine but when she had to check my buttocks, she said, "well…. looks like it’s a bit irritated in this area!" I’m telling you I could just dissapear into the ground right there and then. And it didn’t help that my mom was sitting in the examine room with me and while I was trying to save my dignity by telling the doctor, “no, my husband and I don’t have a crazy sex life, I was just riding my horse yesterday in the wrong underwear”, she pretty much fell off her chair!

Saving my dignity wasn’t really an option anymore….

The nurse practitioner, the doctor AND my mom were all laughing very, very loud and just couldn’t stop laughing while I was trying to hide my red face.

Oh, so much fun!!!

So I decided right there and then I’ll NEVER go horse riding again wearing a G-string, I’ll NEVER forget to look at my little magnets at my refrigerator for appointments and by doing that I make sure I’ll NEVER have to explain why I have blisters on my bootie anymore!!!

Farmgirl meets tattoo

My very best friend K wanted a tattoo...
I loved tattoo's but not too many and always on somebody elses body... or on hot men...

The HOT man, not anybody i know :-)





On a bright Wednesday in 1999 my friend K and i decided to go get a tattoo. She really wanted one and i thought i go along an support her with this decision. Because everybody knows that the best tattoo's are done in Amsterdam, we decided to take a road trip and go to Amsterdam.

Coming from the boonies this was a big deal. We each told our mom's we were staying over at the other ones house and  skipped town (little village with less then a 1000 inhabitants, that is).

After arriving in Amsterdam we went to go see Tattoo Bob, on of the most well know tattoo artists in The Netherlands, but he was too busy to take care of us little farm girls so we went to another one. There pretty much hundred's of tattoo shops in Amsterdam and we just picked out one that looked the "safest". And luckily for us we found one that looked pretty safe had a female artist what made both me and K feel much better!

K thought it would be a splendid idea if i got one too! It would mean we would be friends forever and had the tat to prove it... Since I'm not very good at saying no (never was and never will be) and she even let me help pick the one, i said yes... OK...

We decided on a four leaf clover. And YES, this should ring a bell!!!

We both could use some luck, in our friendship, in our lives and  defiantly in our love life. What better symbol to use, we figured. And we wanted it on a spot where it wasn't too obvious.  Not too obvious ended up being right above our buttocks, that way if we grew old we could wear old granny pants and nobody would see our tat's...

K and I showing our tattoo after 12 years, It's still there!!!
And my hair was coming back after chemo, YEAH!!!








We went upstairs after the nice artist introduced herself and sat  us down besides a 400 pound guy with no clear skin left, AND getting a new tattoo of a pig, and argued about who needed to go first. K freaked out a bit so i offered (she made me) to go  first. The lady was going to tattoo dry first, so i would get used to the feeling and then she was going to put the four leaf clover for real on my body.

While i was laying there with my booty sticking up, a big fat guy smiling at me and K asking me a hundred times if it hurt... No it doesn't hurt and if it did i wouldn't tell you anyway otherwise you're gonna back out... I got myself a nice tattoo right above my pantie line above my buttocks.  And if i wear low jeans, it is visible. K followed me (i looked really though but it hurt like hell) and got herself a bright new shiny tattoo too!

Our booties!









A couple of months later my mom and i are watching TV. Underneath the TV in a cupboard are the sweets and my mom and i decide while watching TV to eat some chips. "I'll get them." i say and walk over and bend forward to reach underneath the TV in the cupboard....

"What do you have there on your back???!!!" Sometimes when you bend over your shirt comes up and your pants go down...

Oh, SH*T!!!

"Hmmmm, nothing mom". But she saw, and made me turn on the big bright light, asked me if it was real, when and were i got it, with whom i got it and if it was REALLY real. 
And she made me promise to tell dad. The next day.

My dad always told  me if i would get a tattoo he would trow me out of the house. Tattoo's where for bums...

So the next day after dinner (after a night of minimal sleep), i tell my dad i have something to say and show. I pull down my pants and show him my tattoo. My dad looked at it and said, "Well... i always wanted my ears pierced....").

Yoga is NOT relaxing

During all the chemo in 2008 and 2009 my oncologist suggested that I needed to do something to relax… I wasn’t feeling so good (wonder why???) and I needed to make sure that my head stayed on my shoulders the right way.

Now as you might know, “relax” isn’t in my dictionary. So she couldn’t ask for something more difficult, but I figured she knows best so, I should at least give it a try…

I knew that horse riding, which usually relaxes me, wasn’t the solution (see: How a girl gets a horse). I didn’t have the energy and stamina to stay or even get on my horse and I thought it wouldn’t look very good if I would be done with treatments but still had to go to the hospital to treat a broken arm or leg...

So I figured I might try something new.

After discussing several options with the docs, I went on the Internet and bought myself a yoga book.

Two days later I had the book and I was pretty content with myself for trying something new.

I got, like, 5 towels and spent and HOUR arranging them in the right position, and they still didn’t look like the picture in the book (which I can tell you, is NOT relaxing at all).

But I got down on the floor and while glaring at the book several times I tried to get myself into the right positions, I didn’t do much better with myself then I did with my towels….
I tried to follow the instructions and in the mean time also trying to relax and clear my mind about all the stuff that was going on. I spent an hour bending my body into the shapes in which it had never been before…

My theory, “you should do everything you do for one hundred percent or you shouldn’t do it at all.”

The next day I simply could not get out of bed. Everything was hurting, and not the hurt from the side effects! From my little toe all the way up to the top of my head, I was in pain. I defiantly didn’t feel relaxed and because I couldn’t focus true all this pain I missed my opportunity to go to the farm.

I had a pretty tight schedule: Monday afternoon: chemo, Tuesday: side effects, Wednesday morning: farm work, Wednesday afternoon: chemo, Thursday: side effects, Friday morning: farm work, Friday afternoon: chemo, Saturday: side effects, Sunday: farm work and sometimes something fun and Monday morning: farm work before we drove up to the hospital and start the whole cycle again… Not going to the farm made me even more worried because I couldn’t make paychecks for our boys. So end result of the yoga session; no relaxing, more worrying, more stress and even more pain!

And that is and was no good.

 

At about the same time me and my little brother talked about me having a drum set, I strongly believed that I would be just absolutely fantastic at drumming! I fantasized that it would be my undiscovered talent and while explaining to everybody why I was walking so funny for the next 4 days, “yes, I tried yoga, and NO, I’m not doing it again”, my brother secretly (with the help of my wonderful parents) bought a drum set from one of our neighbors for a really good price and one day of helping them out with our big pay loader.

On a Sunday not long after my fiasco with the yoga, they (as in my family) lured me to my brother’s house and surprised me with a beautiful red drum set. We took it home and set it up. And for the next weeks every time I felt defeated, angry, hurt or REALLY angry because of my sickness (see: What cancer does to somebody like me) I would sit behind my drum set and just SMASHED all my anger, hurt and frustration out of me.

I don’t have any more talent for playing the drums as I have for yoga, but I do feel sooooooo much better after I hit it and it doesn’t hurt as much as practicing yoga!

I found out not everybody deals with stress in the same way, I also figured out some people have different methods to relieve their stress. Apparently mine is hitting my drumsticks in a "tadum tadum tadum" way on my drum set for at least 10 minutes and I’ll be good for the rest of the day….