straightening a few things out

Trudi was better last night- she got a little uneven at the trot while I was thinking "prepare for canter" so I was obviously doing something stupid and she was responding to it. Pesky sensitivity thing again. I changed things up and did some walk/trot transitions and THEN cantered, and everything was fine, at least until I lost a stirrup and Trudi ran like a jackrabbit to get away from it. I've lunged her with the stirrups down before but she's always hated having them bang on her sides.
A little lightbulb went on when I decided to really work on straightness by riding with more intent and less hand- we did straight sides stopping at the wall and Trudi quit trying to anticipate and bend early. Just picking a point, and riding straight to it (imagining that I was actually riding THROUGH it) helped a lot- she got much straighter, and forward, and even went to the bit better and started pulling on it a little. I realized the more I did with my hands, the more crooked I probably made her, so it was a refreshing wake up. Sitting trot was better as she realized she could still stretch down without me posting- and I think I'm getting a little better at not coming down hard on her back- it's not something I did often, but now and again she would scoot forward and as I fell behind she would get hollow. This means I stand in my stirrups a little every once in a while, which isn't great, but it does spare her back and eventually we'll put it all together all the time. We struggled some with bending for a while and I got frustrated, but again realizing that getting mad won't solve anything helps (is this maturity? :D) and we worked through it.
Overall we worked through a lot and it was really good.