Sitting on the patio at Peddler’s Fork, alone out here as it’s a SoCal pre-Christmas bit of chilly, i.e., 60 degrees, way too cold for the cycling clan packing the tables indoors, brrr, but perfect for me as I’m the kind of writer who likes to wear sweaters, for once, and watch the mallards fuss about down in the gurgling creek and the squirrel scurry by my riding boots as I wait for a visit from my muse—and gear up for a riding lesson that terrifies me. Not the horse, the horse is a generous Majesty. It’s the effort I shy from, of being gaspy only half way through the lesson and a noodly wreck afterwards instead of composed and powerful enough to food shop, pay bills, scrub the bathroom, make homemade chicken nuggets, rake the Ponderosa, be a mother, be a GREAT mother (this typically involves playing the Dr. Seuss I Can Do That game, thus hopping around the Trick-A-Ma-Stick with a rubber ball between my knees), be a Taxi Mother,  draw the bath, ready the pajamas and the lullabies, and write, all in one, hours-stingy day. But I tell myself:

I can do it.

Something I never let myself in on until I became a mother. And even as I say it, I feel the terror surrender and climb meekly into the newspaper boat I made for it and sail off down the gurgling creek and into the dark drainpipe, instant ghost ship, abandoned. Gone.

Each day, over the last 6 years, the terror that I won’t be able to accomplish what I want to goes away a little bit faster.

May 2014 be full of this kind of s***.

Yours in goals,

P (if you give a horse a carrot…) B