Instead of taking my last minute vacation in one and a half months, I’m going to wait six months. I guess I realized that while it might not break the bank, it will keep me from furnishing our new apartment in Phoenix. I really like having a bed, so I’ll wait on Venezuela.

So you might be wondering about my featured image up there. That is a logo that I designed (awaiting the addition of color and other coolness by one of my bff’s Gustavo) for the October 7th Presidential elections in Venezuela. I borrowed the caption from one of the local newspapers after a unified opposition candidate was named (Henrique Capriles Radonsky, who we love) in the first ever primary elections. It was a fun, action packed night as we all waited for the results to be announced and tweeted everything we saw and heard. The plan is to print and distribute T shirts and other fun things and to get the logo out for others to use free of charge for the same purpose- encourage the Venezuelan people both in Venezuela and especially abroad, to vote on the 7th of October. Of course we want Chavez out. The translation is “And now, to the 7th of October.”

In the meantime I’ve been going Pinterest crazy. Up until two days ago, I didn’t even know it existed. Now I’m wondering how I ever kept track of anything before.

That’s about it. Animals are happy, I’m working from bed, life is good.

But alas, if something is going to break a responsibility streak, it might as well be a trip to Venezuela. Truth be told, it’s pretty exciting that at this young(ish) age I can decide to pick up and go abroad for two weeks without breaking the bank. Not everyone is too happy about the decision and in a moment of “oh my God, what have I done?!” I tried to cancel my ticket, though to no avail. So I’m headed to Venezuela on April 4th. Here we go again!

Looks like it’s going to be a good Saturday! 

Really?! But… but… we’re a small little bakery. Ok, so our social media presence is anything but small (can you say ranked #1 for check-ins on Foursquare for the whole city? 20,000 Facebook fans?) but still, if someone had told me that I’d be sitting on a panel next to the big minds behind those big brands I would have fallen over with laughter. 

That’s right, I will be sitting on the panel. Why? Well, because I am in charge of all things social media (which basically means I tweet, Facebook and blog all day long… it’s a tough job but someone has to do it.) So as a result, I finally get to use my lovely and unusual head shots from that cover story I did way back when. But I also had to write myself a bio. Ok, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. But when your fellow panelists all have MBAs and PhDs and you don’t have much of an education to speak of (I’m an eternal student!) it feels like an awfully big task. So my solution was to do it Amelie’s style! Here is the bio I will be using, taken from snippets of various magazine articles and news broadcasts:

“As an echo boomer, Lexi St. Laurent understands the ins and outs of her generation’s unique online culture. Armed with a love of food, a keen intuition and a BlackBerry, she has led her family business to social media fame by encouraging meaningful conversation and real interaction. With an active following of nearly twenty thousand fans on Facebook by her side, Lexi has helped to establish Amelie’s French Bakery as one of the most followed, tweeted and “checked into” restaurants in Charlotte.”

See y’all on the flip side! 

Waking up, BBM chat, booger filled horse nose, driving, swinging, shopping, and our llama nearly runs over a chicken.

My first ever 28 Second Days video.

“Make it conscious. Live it. Feel it. Release it. And cry if you want to.”

Thank you dear brother, I think I will.

When you ask for an answer, you will invariably get it. The question is, will you listen? That is my problem. For a very long time I have begged and pleaded with God for an answer. I have cried, kicked and screamed and demanded. I have turned my back when the answer wasn’t the one I wanted and demanded a new one, convincing myself successfully that I simply didn’t hear it right, or it wasn’t clear enough. I’ve repeated this cycle over and over. And over and over again. Sometimes things looked up, and I thought I was on the verge of hearing my long awaited “yes” only to get yet another unclear “maybe.”

But finally, thanks to the help and patience of some very dear friends, I was able to step back just far enough away from the noise to hear the answer and accept it. At long last I understand it, and the answer is a definite “no.” 

Thank you, God for clarity and peace despite the pain. 

Coming back into riding after a seven year break is no easy task. Things that seemed second nature to me then are now physically impossible in my current condition. Minor misbehaviors on the part of a grumpy mare now seem life threatening. Willow is an incredible horse. She is, by all accounts, my dream horse. A big, beautiful bay mare, one of those horses that any high level rider would drool over. She shouldn’t have been mine- too fancy and too expensive. But miraculously she now resides in our humble, cozy barn.

But we’ve had to take things day by day. Near constant rain has turned our fields to slippery mush. This type of horse is not known to be the most sure footed. A lack of work has made our infrequent rides even more challenging and our attitudes have reached a boiling point more than once. We’ve had a few major disagreements, most notably a hoof aimed at my head. It wasn’t intentional, but it sent me into a shaky stupor for quite a while as I remembered why I quit riding to begin with. I’m not immortal.

But it is these very incidents that have given us hope. I was reminded why horses never ceased to amaze me. She could kill me at any moment if she wanted to. She weighs nearly two thousand pounds and I weigh- well – about fifteen more than I should. But she follows me around in the pasture and puts her head on my shoulder, allowing me to scratch behind her ears. She lowers her massive head voluntarily for me to place a bit in her mouth even though I could never reach on my own. She stands still while I unfold a ladder, yes, a ladder,  to climb on her back and bounce clumsily around as she trots. She objects sometimes, a little hop reminding me that I am unbalanced. Sometimes she throws her head down trying to take the reins from me, only because my hands are too heavy. But still, she tolerates me and I suddenly remembered what is undoubtedly the most important ingredient for a successful horse/rider relationship. Trust.

I built a dressage arena- a 60 by 20 meter riding ring for a riding discipline called dressage. I built it out of cinderblocks and landscaping timbers on the only flat part of our hay field. It looks lovely and has given us a real place to work. We rode there for the first time today, and for the first time at all in a while. Having that ring brought make so many memories and I was able to do more than I had been able to do in a long time. Simply having a consistent space in which to work has given us a whole new outlook on things. We will go out there almost every day, weather permitting.

Today I finally feel that it really might all come back to me. It’s a good feeling.

Riding in the Hay Field