live racing at kyd...

quoted from the twin spires newsletter -

Kentucky Downs - Opening Weekend at Kentucky Downs!

It's opening weekend at North America's only European style racecourse, Kentucky Downs. Enjoy all the action as some of racing's best turf runners, take to the lawn for this official rite of fall. 

Things kick off with a bang this Saturday with the annual Kentucky Cup Turf Festival. Three turf stakes are carded for this day including the $200,000 Grade III Kentucky Cup Turf. Silverfoot returns to his old stomping grounds in search of another graded stakes victory. Can this eight-year-old take the cake, or will a fresh face shock the field?

• Saturday:
• $200,000 Grade III Kentucky Cup Turf
• $100,000 Kentucky Cup Ladies Turf
• $100,000 Kentucky Cup Turf Dash
• Live racing: Saturday, Monday and Tuesday with first post on Monday and Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EDT and first post on Saturday at 1:10 p.m. EDT.

The Seven Things...

I saw the part of this that's shown on the Disney Channel. Then I found it that was only half of the song.
Who can't relate to this song? I have to admit, it brings tears to my eyes.
Billy Ray's little girl is growing up to be quite a singer.

Belmont Stakes

While I was away, having fun... my horse lost.
:(
I am sad.

Kentucky Derby 134

We interrupt my life to watch the 2008 Kentucky Derby.




This was my ninth Derby, working as a teller at Kentucky Downs Race Track.
I watched the mass of 20 horses streaking for the wire, thinking that my personal pick (Big Brown) was near the front, if nothing else. I couldn't hear the announcer above the excited cheering of the crowd. You'd have thought we were at Churchill. I had a WPS bet on Big Brown, as well as a {5,9,10,20} exacta box. Knowing that it would be several minutes before the race was final and payoffs were available, I took a cash return to the money room. I had so many bills in my box, I nearly couldn't manage them all, and I had almost passed my limit on the total amount, as well.

Afterward, I slipped out to use the restroom and stretch my legs. When I returned to my machine, I saw the race results on the screen. Not only did I have my win-place-and-show bet, but I had my exacta. Since those were the only two bets I had placed, I was two for two. If I had had more time, I had planned to do a trifecta wheel as well. I would have added a couple more horses for good measure, including #16. But since the tri would have been a tax ticket, it's probably just as well. (Yet it might have been cool to win $3,000+, just once....)

Moments later, Paul came downstairs from the TV room to tell me the fate of Eight Belles. I didn't know she had even gone down. With two shattered front ankles, she had collapsed in the cool-down stretch, after finishing second in the race.

The memory of Barbaro is too near. I cry when I think about them. Thoroughbreds are so strong, and yet so fragile.





My daughter Cathie said she thought that injured horses should be kept alive, allowed to live peacefully in retirement. I thought so too, yet I know that a horse that cannot stand will die after a while. And a horse that cannot run might not want to live. I just wish we could figure out a way to keep them from being hurt while doing the thing they love best.

Life is strange

Every day I see more proof of the strangeness of life. The last three months have made this fact more clear to me than probably any other three months of my life.

My life has become more wonderful because of the birth of my grandson, EJ.



My daughter's life has fallen apart, and she has picked up the pieces to carry on, because her marriage has ended. The fairy tale and the romance are finished. Her husband has shown his true colors.

Cathie said she fell in love again with her childhood sweetheart. Yet he couldn't maintain the fantasy world he created for too long. Eventually, the wedges he tried to drive between her and friends and other family members gave way. Her heart broke down the barriers until she finally saw the truth.

The girl Cathie's husband had dated before Cathie was pregnant. He let me believe that this girl had become pregnant before she became involved with him, and that he had found her out and broken off their relationship. Since I worked with her, her mother, and her grandmother, it became a rather sticky situation, or at least an uncomfortable work atmosphere for me. I couldn't freely talk about my daughter's marriage. Then I couldn't openly share the news that she was expecting. We felt like spies, hiding from the KGB or the CIA or something, watching over our shoulders for the people who were out to get us.
I started seeing signs that the other young lady in question wanted to make peace. But dear hubby filled Cathie's mind with fear and prejudice, at least as much as a spouse could do. Cathie wanted to trust and support him. She believed in him.

My younger brother has a girlfriend, a young single mother with adorable children I happen to be very attached to. Cathie's husband - oh, let's just call him "DH" for Dear Hubby - told both Cathie and me that this woman was dealing drugs, and that he had her on videotape. According to him, her arrest was imminent. Likewise, Cathie's brother Paul was involved in all manner of shady business, along with his girlfriend. DH told Cathie that Paul's girlfriend -- another young single parent -- had tried to seduce him (DH), and that she had announced her intentions to either break up his marriage or cause him to lose his job.


EJ was born three weeks early. Just as they were preparing Cathie for a C-section, EJ decided to come naturally. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck, but he was still healthy, if tiny, at 5 lbs and 10 oz.



A few weeks later, I was gravely concerned about Cathie's emotional health and the state of her relationships. She had been trying, since December or so, to find and talk to her DH's former girlfriend about his daughter and him. She wanted to make peace, even though DH did not want her talking to this young lady or any of her friends and relatives.
I had managed to help her get back on speaking terms with Paul, and he gave Cathie's cell phone number to the young lady.

That's when things began to get interesting....

Cathie told me she and the former GF had gotten along fine, and the babies were so cute together. Former GF agreed to let DH see their daughter, even though the hearing had determined that DH would not get formal visitation for a year.

Cathie also told me she was beginning to doubt some of the things her husband had told her. I was already taking some of it with a grain of salt. After all, wives of cops don't have to be cloaked in complete secrecy. I was married to a state trooper for years, and my older brother has been in law enforcement of some kind ever since he became a police dispatcher at the age of 18. I had thought DH just needed to learn to be more laid-back about things.

Cathie had been fighting against rumors she had been hearing, only a few of which I'd heard too. Rumors that he'd had an affair with Paul's girlfriend before she started dating Paul, that he'd been caught having sex with a girl in the WalMart parking lot in the back seat of Cathie's extended cab pickup truck, and that he was currently dating a teenaged girl. We actually drove around town looking for his car.

We were back at their house in the baby's room where Cathie had been sleeping for weeks in an extra bed (she'd said because she kept DH awake when he was home), when we heard a car in the driveway. DH's mother was dropping him off. I had long since become uncomfortable being there when he came home because I didn't want him to feel I was trying to be a third wheel or interfere with their relationship in any way. I told Cathie and baby EJ goodnight and went home.

A few hours later, my mother was trying to wake me to tell me Cathie's cell phone number was on the caller-ID. I was so groggy, I hadn't even heard the phone ringing. I was trying to call Cathie back when I heard her at the front door. She was on the phone with either my brother or her stepmother, EJ's carrier and the diaper bag in her arms.

Last year, March signaled the beginning of change at the track, with a new group planning to purchase the controlling shares the company. There were significant changes at CafePress that impacted them as well. Even their Google ranking dropped like a rock for some time.
I had doubts about both of my jobs. I was at a phase in my participation in the Vanderbilt study on depression where I was kind of winging it, going solo, like Dumbo when he finds out he doesn't have a magic feather in his cap anymore. (Oh, you know, the cartoon. If you have never seen it, you are deprived. Go rent it.)

All this stuff sent me into a dark place for a while. I needed a flashlight to find my way out. And then I found my wand to guide me. Lumos. But it took several more months before I really felt better. Life did change at the track when it changed hands. For one thing, my brother no longer worked there. For another, Paul worked in Bobby's place, though not for the same pay. My hours changed, getting worse, then better, partly because several other tellers began to leave.

I also quit doing the Kentucky Downs gear through Horses-Around on CafePress. The wife of one of our new owners was an Equine Artist (because they are apparently superior to the rest of us peons), so the track is now filled with her work. There's a monochromatic screen printed t-shirt and sweatshirt now on sale, replacing my designs and t-shirts. I rescued my stuff from the cabinet where they had been stashed and took them home. Even though I had legal signed permission to use the KYD name and facilities to sell merchandise, I decided it would useless to complain. All I would likely do is endanger my job as a teller.

When the truth came out about DH, it enabled me to redirect the distrust I had felt toward several other tellers to the real owner of all the trouble, DH, and it was great. A sense of relief and freedom accompanied the new anger, so it empowered me. Finding out her husband had been cheating on her since day one did the same for my daughter. She was nothing but courageous, changing from the remorseful hermit I had worried about, hiding in her house across town, to a woman with a purpose, a single mother with an innocent child.

There's more to this story, but as of January 2, 2013, it won't be told here.

Quantum Leap video ~ "Always On Your Side"

Valentine's Day Secret....