Permission to slack off
It’s that time of year when everyone seems to be busy and the galloping housewife is not immune. The world seems to be on hyperdrive with people rushing everywhere. Of course, it’s all exacerbated by the fact that the days are about three hours long. If you’re one of the unlucky ones with an office job, it’s probable that you haven’t seen daylight for weeks, except on the weekend when it’s likely to be pissing it down and blowing fifty bastards. In the galloping housewife’s part of the world it’s dark at 4:30pm. Great for Christmas lights, rubbish for just about everything else.
The galloping housewife seems to be dashing from Christmas party to drinks with friends to dinner engagements. All very enjoyable but so. much. effort. She’s got teenagers sitting mock exams, which she knows and the kids know mean absolutely nothing in the scheme of things, but she does have to make an effort to pretend that they’re important, if only for appearances. She’s got a house to decorate and Christmas to plan. She’s contemplating whether it would be socially acceptable to book herself a solo holiday in the sunshine from the 23rd until after New Year’s Day and leaving them to it, but knows in her heart of hearts that she’ll somehow manage to roll out a 5 course meal with all the trimmings for all the waifs and strays that seem to crawl out of the woodwork.
She’s got a workload that would make an Oompa Loompa sweat. Every year she promises herself to have everything under control by the end of November so that she can glide into the holiday season feeling relaxed and with champagne in hand and yet each year she is still sat in front of her computer at 7pm on Christmas Eve in an attempt to prevent Armageddon in the two days that everyone else closes down. 2019 is shaping up to be no different. She still hasn’t done a single item of Christmas shopping and the only one who has organised a party in her own house is the 18yo. For 20 of her closest friends. On the 21st. What was she thinking?
Normally at this time of year if she does drag herself up to the yard, it’s pitch black and freezing cold. The horses are fresh from being indoors 23 hours a day and the only good thing about that is that they are at least not covered in mud. Competition season is mostly over and there’s not much on apart from the opportunity to get soaking wet down to her pants for a score that will likely be .1% below a qualifying mark after having driven fifty miles at 30mph in an attempt to not get blown off the road and into the ditch that is a flowing ice slurry. If motivation had an elevation, it would be subterranean. It’s very apparent that when whoever was in charge of placing the silly season in the most inhospitable time of the year, he was most definitely having a laugh. At our expense.
The galloping housewife would therefore like to give you permission to slack off. If you don’t feel like riding at this time of the year, then feel free to give it a miss. If saying a prayer and crossing your fingers before swinging your leg over the hissing, fire breathing dragon that has replaced your usual dope on a rope, steady neady doesn’t appeal, then stay at home and pour yourself another glass of wine. He won’t mind a jot. When your get up and go returns from wherever it went, he’ll be waiting and he won’t have forgotten a thing. A break may even do you both some good. In an ideal world you’d find a field somewhere and take his shoes off and say ‘see-ya’ for the month of December, but it’s also OK to give him a quick spin on the lunge or send him out on a hack or put him on the walker or handwalk him. It’s a time when survival is the priority and preserving your sanity is of the utmost importance. From the galloping housewife to you: good luck, God bless, and I’ll see you on the other side.