I feel flat as a pancake today

 The neighborhood ladies were texting about the 4th parade a month ago.   Someone wrote "I miss Carl and his tractor"  Which morphed into "we should have a Carl memorial tractor" which morphed into "lets make it a memorial for all the neighborhood folks, and also pets that died recently.   The night after that was set up I was tossing and turning and went "I don't want to drive dad's tractor as his stand-in for the parade,  I was thinking I'd ride CJ in the parade but since they wanted Carl memorial I had the middle of the night thought to do a riderless horse, but hunting theme and not so somber and spit shined as a military funeral procession.    

So this was the result.    I got myself walking regularly the month before so I'd be fit and took CJ out once, and he led fine so I figured this will work.   UGH,  CJ was channeling RazzMo and Tanza, acting all goosey about the tractors and 4 wheelers with flags.   He finally settled down after a few blocks but I was still having to really hold him to make sure he didn't get ahead of me and circle around me.  But I got him through the parade and back home.   

I don't think a single person in the neighborhood got what I was doing.  The folks at the start just saw a rambunctious horse and if anyone understood the symbolism of the backwards boots and the cap on the saddle horn they never said so to me.  I texted the pics I took of CJ and of the tractor the neighbors decorated to sis and asked if she had gotten in a trail ride late that afternoon.  She had, she sent me a selfie;  NOT one WORD about CJ or the tractor memorial and she got her check from the insurance company that was a PITA to deal with earlier in the week, I got mine as well.  She texted to make sure the split was correct cuz of the extra dividends on it but of course didn't bother to include a "thanks sis"  

I need to be riding Tanza and slowly rehabbing his stifle but I was so exhausted from the parade walk and from people overload attending the potluck.  I brought watermelon and someone else had already set up a huge bowl of nice melon.  I didn't enjoy the food as much as last year.  They may have just boiled the dogs and they had them all in buns so I took one with a crappy hot-dog bun to be polite.   There were deviled eggs and I had some and I had lots of yummy desserts but no one brought tater salad.  Lucky I bought some store stuff last week,  I added some pickles and onions to it today to make it taste more like good tater salad.  

So I'm just feeling tired and deflated today.   

Evening P.S.  I rode Tanza and he was off afterwards not super ouchie ouchie stabbing his toe but landing on the toe  and a bit short stride.  Arghh.  I didn't put surpass on it or anything.  I will see if he is still landing on his toe tomorrow.   If so I guess I need to set up to have his joint injected.   I'm thinking possibly just a  bit of overwork, (or perhaps it was him scooting through the gate when I went into the paddock) won't really set him back but who knows.   Buying another horse doesn't feel wise, but life is so much easier when you can just get a good ride on the weekends and that is their conditioning for distance riding.  Tanza is probably going to need to be ridden 3-4 times week always now.   It might be good for me to be forced to ride that often;  I just don't want to mess up that stifle and have him permanently lame.