Ouch

Riding horses a few weeks ago at the Ferme D'Anais: Sophie (on the white

horse) and Mailys. Pascaline is the mother of both Marine and Mailys.

Marine, The 12 year old daughter of our friends Pascaline and Nicholas, is WAY into horses. She goes to the riding center every Saturday and Sunday and stays there from noon to six p.m. She only rides for one hour, but the other 5 hours she chats with her pony-obsessed girlfriends and brushes and cleans the horses.

She REALLY wanted me to come for a lesson with her this weekend, and I also really love horses, so I was definitely interested. Of course this weekend it has been raining non-stop and it was totally ugly and drizzly.

Pascaline brought me a rain jacket to borrow and said "Now don't fall, eh?" to which Marine replied laughing, "You are going to fall!" Pascaline smacked her on the arm and said "CUT that OUT!" Or something like that in French.

When I got to the farm, I talked a little to the instructor and Marine fetched the horse, Cheyenne, for me. After trying to scrape the mud off the horse and get her all saddled up, we finally got in the ring and got down to business. Cheyenne and I were doing pretty well, we walked and trotted and even galloped. It's been three years since I went riding, so the galloping was a little scary, but exciting at the same time.

Then the instructor made us switch horses. I got Marine's horse, Enzo, who was a lot shorter than Cheyenne and kind of a spaz. The second go around the ring, I almost stopped and asked the instructor for a little advice on the gallop. But I didn't. BIG MISTAKE.

Halfway around the ring I knew I was going down and when my face and right shoulder hit the ground I thought "I'm sure glad I'm wearing a helmet" (right before it flew off my head upon impact).

I felt totally nauseous and had to lie down with my feet up for several minutes while everyone explained to me that when you fall you get a cake, and how I needed a nice massage for Christmas, and they would be happy to call a "beau pompier" (handsome fireman) for me. I could barely manage shifting the car on the way home and immediately jumped in a hot bath.

Pascaline (who is a doctor) wrote me a prescription for some special cream to rub into my aching shoulder muscle, and this afternoon I went to pick it up at the Pharmacy before everything closed until Wednesday. Pascaline's Prescription

So now it's Christmas Eve and I have gifts to wrap and goodies to prepare but my shoulder really hurts when I try to lift anything. Merry Christmas to me!