Reverie

Ugh, I skipped doing errands at lunch to write my blog post. My plan was that when nighttime came I would only have to do a little editing on it before spending the majority of my pre-bed writing time working on my book….

And the computer ate it. It didn’t save.

So, I guess, I’ll try writing this blog post again.

I’m gonna do it with a grumpy mood though. So THERE.

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Second Update:

Literally three times I have been finished with this post, and then I try to add one last picture from my phone onto the WordPress app, and it adds it…. but then when I open it up on my computer (because I can type faster than on my phone), I find it has added the new picture as well as reverted to an older version of my blog post.

I’ve literally typed this dumb blog post four times. At this point the words don’t even seem like real words. Computers hate me today. I’m going to hit publish the second I’ve finished and stomp off to bed.

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I have enough names to fill a whole barn of Morgan Horses.

I can’t believe how good some of you are at names – every time I thought I was done adding names to my shortlist, in would come another one. The response to the poll was amazing – a million thank you’s.

There were quite a few names that I loved that didn’t quite fit her. I loved the idea of naming her Chimera, because of its definition, and because of her two different colored eyes. I also liked Gargoyle (sorry, Aarene, I thought that was an awesome name) and Kelpie, and a bunch of the suggested names. I find I’m especially drawn to mythological names, and there are so many good ones out there.

There was only one problem:

Look at that. That’s a sweet, sweet face.

That’s a friendly face.

That’s the kind of face that likes you to go in the barn at night and hang out while you read a book so she can wuffle your sleeve.

All the names I really liked were just not her – they were too hard sounding, and she is not a hard horse.

I thought maybe it was because was so young, but Scandia Morgan Horse Farm had a second foal last Saturday – another chestnut colt. I guess it was just the year of the red foal for them?

Anyways, he’s an absolute beauty, and his mother is also drop dead gorgeous, but that’s to be expected at this barn. I went to go see him, and was amazed at how different their personalities already were. He wasn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination – he was just into everything with a friendly curiosity, and already had a devilish little sense of humor.

You could actually see him trying to decide. It was like watching the world’s tallest redheaded toddler. “Should I be good?……I should. I really shouldn’t nibble on her sleeve. She told me no. I shouldn’t……… yeah, no, I’m gonna try it. I just need to see what’ll happen.”

It made me doubly glad this little girl came out a filly. I always thought that colts didn’t start acting like colts until they were a little older, but apparently they’re colts right from the very start.

So, yeah. This little girl is flashy, but she’s also just really sweet, and for all that I kept trying to hang flashy names on her, they just weren’t fitting.

It’s a little disconcerting when a 5 day old horse is better at taking selfies than you are.

I thought about it for a while, about telling which were the other names that I almost picked for her, but I decided against it. There’s a reason for that. After I told the Squid what I was going to name the filly, he looked horrified. “No. No, that’s not right. That’s not a good name. We need to find another one.”

When I finally told him he didn’t have a choice, he looked disgusted, with all the deep-seated, honest judginess a 7-year-old can muster.

So far DragonMonkey seems to love horses the most out of all my kids.

I realized that if I started listing my second place, and third place, and fourth place names, then people might start commenting how I should have named her such-and-such instead, and I’m just still too sensitive to shrug it off.

I know, laugh all you want, but let’s see you get your dream after 30 years of daydreaming about it, and see if you aren’t overly protective those first few weeks.

She’d just spooked at the sound of the hose water hitting the bucket by her head – but even though she looks nervous, I feel like I can really see what she’s going to look like as an adult in this picture.

It’s really, really hard to take a selfie with her, because she’s already getting so friendly. Also, I’m beginning to realize the world is firmly divided into two camps: those that love blue eyes, and those that find them creepy.

Anyways, as you can tell from the title, I’m going to call her Reverie. Scandias Marvelous Reverie.

rev·er·ie
?rev(?)r?/
noun
    1. a state of being pleasantly lost in one’s thoughts; a daydream.
      “a knock on the door broke her reverie”
      synonyms: daydream, daydreaming, trance, musing;
      • MUSIC
        an instrumental piece suggesting a dreamy or musing state.
  1. archaic: a fanciful or impractical idea or theory.

And now I own one.

I know it seems like I’m obsessing a little bit, and I am. It’s just… I’m planning on owning Reverie until I’m in my mid to late 60s.

That’s a long time… and I’ve been waiting for a horse like this for decades. She’s not even a week old yet – the world can let me be infatuated for a little while longer. She’s only going to be this little and fresh once.

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Day 346: The List

Baby horse needs to get here soon.

I mean, there’s a lot of reasons why Baby Horse needs to get here soon, but the reason I’m referring to is so I can know the gender and knock half the names off The List.

Yes, it has capitals now. It’s not a list. It’s The List. By the time I’m finished honing it down and obsessing over it, and choosing one single name from it, it might even be THE LIST.

About a month or two after Sparkles was confirmed pregnant, I began collecting names. I mean, this is a horse who could be around for 30+ years. I need to find a name I love. And so, I began a collection. If I heard a name I liked, I put it on The List.

If I read a name in a book and I liked the way the name sounded, I put it on The List.

If I remembered a character I adored, or a story that meant a lot to me, or a phrase that I thought encapsulated what this too-nice-for-boring-ol-me foal meant to me…it went on The List. I know there are some people out there who can look at an animal and just get a feel for what that animal’s name is…. But that’s not me. I’ve never been blessed by that ability. Hence: The List.

Eventually The List was 70 plus names long, and I began weeding. Of course, the problem was that for every name I took off, I found another I liked just as much and added it on. Lately, with the foal due ANY DAY NOW, I’ve started to get serious. I mean, out of 70+ names, there ought to be a few that I didn’t like as much, or that wouldn’t work as a horse’s name, even if it was perfect.

For example: Farandolae.

If I ever got a tattoo, it would be of a farandolae. (Well, either that or Calvin and Hobbes – you know, the scene where the two of them are lounging that tree? That’s a close second, if I were to ever get a tattoo.) Anyways, back on track. What’s a farandolae, you ask?

A farandolae is a made-up scientific term from A Wind in the Door, the third book in Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time series. In the book Charles Wallace is becoming sick, and nobody can figure out why. Eventually it becomes apparent that a great evil is convincing the farandolae in his mitochondria to not “deepen”. When they are young, farandolae are allowed to float around, moving here and there with nothing tying them down. It’s natural for them, but as they mature they are supposed to grow roots and attach themselves to one spot in the cell in order to do their work and keep the cell healthy.

But they don’t want to.

They listen to the voice of darkness which encourages them to avoid being tied down. “Fool. Once you deepen and put down roots you won’t be able to romp around as you do now… you’ll be stuck in one place forever… and you won’t be able to move ever again.”

In the climactic scene where good argues against evil, one of the older, rooted Farandolae says in return, “Now that I am rooted I am no longer limited by motion. Now I may move anywhere in the universe. I sing with the stars. I dance with the galaxies. I share in the joy and in the grief. We must have our part in the rhythm of our world, or we cannot be. If we cannot be, then we are not.”

I think this means a lot to me because I never really wanted to “grow up”. When I saw people with their full-time jobs, and their passel o’ kids, and their mortgages and their sensible lives, I shied away. Even as it was in the process of happening to me, I shied away. And no, I’m not saying that route is for everyone… but for me it was something life needed me to do, and I never wanted to. I could see it looming ahead, and I fought it, because I thought to throw down those roots was to lose my freedom, and to lose the beauty of my carefree life.

As I grow older, I realize how wrong I was, and how right that older, rooted Farandolae was. I am no longer limited by motion – now I can move anywhere, and be anything.

The concept is such a huge life lesson I’ve had to learn, and so beautiful to me…

…And just awkward as heck to say and harder to spell, and dude, do I really want to explain something so personal every time I introduce my horse?

And therein lies my dilemma – trying to balance my need for a name with meaning vs a name that’s actually spellable and that I want to say out loud on a day-to-day basis.

Garibaldi? Roheryn? They’re cool… But again, I’d have to repeat myself over and over when introducing the horse.

Paladin? It’s PERFECT….. oh, wait. Stupid Mugwump stole it first for her dog.

Pickles? Story? I LOVE THEM BOTH, and they’re on my list for personal reasons…. but they also belonged to a friend’s animals, and it seems almost disrespectful to keep them on the list.

Bramble? Pretorian? I like the way they feel when they roll off my tongue, but they don’t make me that excited, so I should probably strike them from The List.

Wanderlust? It’s perfect in meaning (rather than travelling the world with a backpack I am travelling Oregon with my amazing Morgan!), but horrible in reality. How do you even say it out loud? What was I thinking? Wander isn’t bad, but…. but Lust? Lusty? “Hey, Bean, dinner’s just done and there’s a few minutes before bed… can you watch the kids for a while? I want to go to the barn and groom my Lust for a while… she’s a dirty, hairy Lust.”

Yeah, that’s a definite scratch.

Precept? I think the only reason his made the list was because I was listening to Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera series on audiobook and I liked the way the narrator said that word.

StayGold? I really wish I could make Robert Frost’s poem into a name, because it’s been a staple in my life since I first read it when I was 12 (Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold….) …but it’s awkward, and again, a lot of responsibility to put on a young horse’s shoulders.

Name by name, oh-so-slowly I’ve been weaning down that giant list, and I finally have it down to just over fifty.

Fifty.

Fifty potential names…..for just one little horse.

I have had WAY too long to overthink this.

Promises (to Keep)
Miles to Go
Chantilly
Sonora Webster
Madmartigan
Elora Danan
Remington
Sangria
Haven
Amity
Epona
Thistle
Keeper
Icarus
Epiphany
Daydream
Paladin
California
Paksennarrion (Paks)
Cloud
Alleluia
Gilead
Zion
Banner
Zuriel
Hobbes
Kelpie
Scorpio
Gulliver
Pilgrim
Voyager
Bard
Peregrine
Pippin
Rohan
Gondor
Hodor
Troubadour
Siren
Trouble
Ronja
Ronin
Epiphany
Warrior
Centurion
Saffron
Apoya
Mariachi
Alegria
Elegir
Wander
Haven
Frontier
Pilgrim

And then, of course, right when I was patting myself on the back for making it even shorter, Aarene had to go and add another one to the list: Fairy Bramble. Bramble I’d already struck from the list, but Aarene pointed out that if Sparkle manages to hold on to her baby until she arrives this weekend, Fairy would be a perfect name, and Fairy Bramble an even better one. Aarene will be crashing at our place, since she’s the official storyteller at our city’s Fairy Festival…. hence Fairy Bramble for a name.

So, I guess, it looks like I’m still adding to That Danged List.

(I couldn’t find any applicable pictures for this post, and it seems boring without any pictures, so here. Here’s a couple of gratuitous pics of the boys riding Carrots.)

DragonMonkey on Carrots

Squid on Carrots

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