How to have a nice ass without trying
What our incidental horse has taught me about ease, work, and commitment
Monday morning. We were waiting for the call.
Finally, Matt’s phone rang.
“The owner is considering your offer…she wants to know if you will take the horse.” Our realtor’s tone politely implied we should agree if we didn’t want her to scream.
Take the horse if you want your offer accepted.
We were tired. Our realtor was tired. We had been seriously looking for a house and a little bit of land for two years. I won’t lie, we were particular. It had to feel right. But many places felt good enough, so we put in offer after offer, getting hammered by California transplants, whose excessive cash offers could easily displace our decent Texas incomes and conventional loan.
My husband and I agreed to take the horse.
We were nervous; between the two of us was exactly zero horse experience. I was never a horse girl. You know, the outdoorsy rich girl in grade school with a long braid and dreams of an equestrian career. Her binders were covered in horse stickers and she spoke sweetly and selectively. Not me. My parents were working class. My notebooks were full of my streetwear designs, I dreamed of becoming president. I was, ahem, opinionated. I had never considered wanting, much less having, a horse.
The thirty day closing period was full of Matt and I talking ourselves into the horse. One of us would ask the other, do we really want a horse? What exactly are we committing to? And invariably the other would respond, we really want the land so I guess we’ll figure it out.
One month later, we closed on the horse, the house and the five acres beneath them. The realtors sent a mobile notary because I was so pregnant, there was a high probability I could go into labor at the closing. Instead, we sat at our dining room table in our rental house, with a notary dressed like a judge, and signed 100 papers.
Three days later, our daughter June was born. Matt and I crammed the many years of life we had been putting off into that one week.
“You own a horse!?” asks every adult who finds out we have one.
I can hardly believe it myself.
“So what’s it like to own a horse?” They often ask with a twinkle in their eye, their fleeting childhood horse dreams projecting from their smiling, expectant faces.
I never know how to answer. How does one describe the polarity of owning a horse? She’s breathtaking in our meadow, wind blowing her mane and sun glistening her rusty red haunches. She’s big enough to kill you with one false move. She’s a bit of a stubborn ass, and her list of needs is long.
We hire a ferrier who tends to her hooves and an equine dentist who tends to her teeth. Matt is often found unloading bulky bales of hay and heavy bags of feed from his SUV. She will snort at you and try to block the front door of the house if you are running late for dinner. She loves to push boundaries. She prefers her distinct stink over a bath.
“It’s kinda like having a weird, giant dog,” I respond with a half-laugh.
“So it’s expensive?”
“Absolutely.”
We have a picture window in our bedroom that looks out over Sandy’s pen. From our bed, I can see the pink hazy dawn peeking out from behind the wall of pine trees that hug Sandy’s red barn. She is grazing and the morning calm washes over me. I can’t believe I get to live here.
I stand up to put on my slippers and robe. The baby is cooing and grabbing her feet. I look out again and Sandy has spotted me. She wants me to know she sees me. She makes direct eye contact. Breakfast, she glowers. I go to brush my teeth and she holds her stare through the bathroom window.
Breakfast for Sandy is two blocks of hay and a horse-sized scoop of grain. The grain resembles elongated cat food and smells like apples and oats. It comes in 50 pound bags that Matt has become adept at throwing over his shoulder easily. I squeeze his arms and pat his disappeared beer belly and tell him he is getting “ranch-ripped.” He smiles.
After I brush my teeth, I shed my robe and get dressed. I emerge from the bedroom. Matt is already up and buzzing. He has dressed the baby, fed the dog, and he pours us iced coffee that we make “in-house.” He hands me my coffee and then passes me the baby.
“Thank you, baby!” I chirp. I lean in for a kiss and he hustles off. Most days we follow him outside; baby June loves to watch the horse chew. Our black and white spotty dog named Bucket zooms around sniffing for wildlife and scavenging Sandy’s crumbs. I can’t believe how sweet these little things are.
With baby June on my hip, I water the herbs and the garden we recently constructed and planted. Matt investigates the gopher damage. He channels Bill Murray from Caddyshack, muttering to himself while setting another gopher trap.
Matt and I agree chore time is one of the best parts of the day.
If it’s a weekday, Matt commutes to work. I work from home, so I start my day when the sitter arrives.
If it’s the weekend, we do our morning ritual at a slower pace. Once we are done and the horse is fed, we set off for our different tasks, building toward our respective goals for the land. We are digging water lines, mounting shelves, moving rocks, and building businesses online.
We juggle the baby between us. Sometimes she is in her little wagon, or in a hiking backpack on one of our backs. Sometimes, we take a break because she wants our full attention. She likes to listen to records, especially Paul Simon. Mostly, she observes and babbles as we work at a steady clip, swirling around each other and singing to her.
We have never worked harder. We have never been happier.
Five years ago, I could not have dreamed this life.
I lived in a laundry room. My room was the smallest in a house shared with roommates, and my room also contained the house washer and dryer. My housemates would respectfully run their laundry when I was out of the house.
I was broke and underemployed, hustling side gigs while trying to grow an online business alone. I didn’t eat much, since food cost money, so I ran mostly on caffeine and the adrenaline of “making it work” and “getting by.”
Consciously, I was obsessed with remaining as “free” as possible in every way, snubbing a “real job” and questioning my ability to commit to anything, including a relationship. Since falling in love with Matt, I yearned to see what we could build together, but a purchase of that size–and opening to the vulnerability of being tied down to one place and one man–seemed impossible.
In retrospect, I believe I unconsciously sourced excitement and importance from this imbalance. My father has always been self-employed so the solopreneur’s feast-and-famine-cycle was deeply familiar and psychologically comfortable to me. Without awareness, I believed that work had to be a struggle and a sacrifice; that it always demands more than it gives.
In my quest to remain free, I had created a prison. My avoidance ate away at me. I was exhausted, lonely, and the gnawing lack of fulfillment pained me.
That laundry room became a cocoon for my next transformation. Shut up in that little cave, I discovered the cold dark bottom of my loneliness and despair. Craving the warmth of belonging, I wondered: what would it be like to commit to something wholeheartedly? Could I find joy in the constraints?
Burnout. Burning the candle at both ends. The burning fire within. Firefighting urgent tasks. A rage-quitter goes scorched earth.
Work speaks in the language of fire.
The energy for work, for burning bright, comes easy for me, but somewhere I had lost the thread. My relationship with work and life more closely resembled a forest fire: a bleary hellscape.
Without constraints, there’s no ease.
Healthy boundaries give rise to true productivity. Think of a fire in a hearth, bound to its place, marking the time of day with its cycles. The flames rise as they are fed in the morning for breakfast and again before dinner, a bright warmth in the evening smolders into the deep heat of coals at night. Contained fire is humanity’s most magical possession and is the mark of a warm and welcoming home.
Horses make thriving look easy. Sandy is a professional chiller, cruising around her five acres, searching out her favorite grasses without a worry in the world. She thoroughly chews one tasty bite at a time. Without rushing.
She even has a perky round ass for days without ever squeezing in a workout. Hustlers and boss babes could take a note from her routine. She does not strive. She simply is.
And at 4:45 on the dot everyday, she begins to pester for her dinner, peaking in our front window with her ears perky. Clockwork.
I chase her off the front porch.
“Sandy! Dammit, you know you aren’t allowed up here!” She scoots off while she blows raspberries at me. Dinner, she glowers.
With the baby on my back, I go to her feed box and scoop up her dinner serving. We wander to the trough and pour it in. She snarfs it up and dances around with glee while chewing.
June and I go check the mail. We water the garden, and water the herbs. Golden hour.
Bucket skips around, pushing her nose against my legs to herd me to the kitchen for her own dinner. Matt calls to let me know he is on his way home and he picked up our favorite bread from the bakery near his work. “Thank you, baby!” I chirp.
I feed and bathe the baby and put her in jammies. I make another batch of cold brew coffee and I cook dinner. If I time it right, dinner will be ready about 30 minutes after Matt arrives home. Enough time for him to shed the day, wash up, snuggle the baby and crack open a cold one.
I do these evening chores wholeheartedly. I tackle each task one bite at a time. I give these tiny rituals an easy pace; they act as recurring anchors, grounding me from the swirling winds of internet chaos into the living reality of our warm bodies.
The family life I once viewed as a boring, mindless trap, has become a radical act of devotion. I choose these little things with love.
So what’s it like to own a horse?
Completely mundane. Occasionally, majestic. Like any meditative practice, the fruit of labor is in the work itself. In the commitment, I found the meaning.
I enjoyed reading your story so much. I felt as those I was walking with you through your day. Loved how you paint a picture with your words. Keep the stories coming. I’m well entertained and soothed at the same time.
I can’t emphasize how much I loved reading this