The Differences Between a Lady and a Cowgirl

A lady never spits; a cowgirl can hit the 3" gap between the skid steer frame and loader bucket.

A lady gets pedicures; a cowgirl makes sure to wash her feet before bedtime.

A lady perspires; a cowgirl sweats... and is okay with that.

A lady never swears; a cowgirl can cuss you out and still make you feel loved with the addition of that one little phrase:  "Bless your heart".

A lady is always perfectly coifed; a cowgirl can and will use anything available to hold her hair back out of her face.  A clean sock, a zip-tie, even a bucket strap will do... and she'll look good in it. 

A lady worries about the perfection of her make-up; a cowgirl just makes sure her face is clean before she makes a run to the John Deere dealer or the grain elevator. 

A lady hires a pet psychologist to find out why her pedigreed bit of fluff seems filled with ennui; a cowgirl can needle a bloating calf, drench it with corn oil and have it on the road to recovery in 15 minutes or less.

A lady swoons at the sight of blood; a cowgirl can shove her arm up a cow's hoo-hoo to the armpit and turn a calf the right way around so it can be born.

A lady knows which fork to use for which dinner course; a cowgirl knows which fork to use for which barn chore.  3-tine fork for forking hay and spreading straw, 4-tine fork for cow manure, 5-tine fork for horse manure, and silage fork for pig manure.

A lady worries about what people think of her; a cowgirl lets people think what they want, secure in her knowledge of herself as the true embodiment of everything that's wonderful about being female. 

Making cookies with this child

I love as if my own

And while we’re busy having fun

He slips and calls me “Mom”

 

I act as if I didn’t hear

Or that he didn’t say it

I turn away and wash a bowl

So my tears will not betray it

 

The one word that my heart longs most

To hear, well, it just did

But it only brings up memories

That would be best left hid

 

And so I blink away the tears

That would only just confuse him

He’d want to know, and ask me “Why?”

And I never can refuse him

 

I answer questions all day long

Like why the sky is blue

Where does the sun go after dark

Do dogs have belly buttons too?

 

But how could I tell this sweet child

That sometimes life’s not fair

That we don’t always get our wish

No matter how we care

 

So I will let him think for just

A little while yet

That life is rosy, fair and sweet

And your fondest wish, you get.

Have you ever been blindsided by a memory from your past; a memory so painful that it left you in tears more than 40 years after the event?  I was, just this morning in fact.  I must have dreamed about it; even though I don’t remember the dream I woke up crying, thinking about this event regardless of the fact that it hasn’t crossed my mind in literally decades. 

This event, although not earth-shaking by itself, is a benchmark for my entire childhood.  Even though I was the lastborn, in no way was I ever the baby of the family.   My next-older sister is 5 years and 7 months older than me, but she was born prematurely… extremely so, and it truly was a miracle that she lived given that she was born in 1960.  She weighed only 2 pounds, 12 ounces at birth, and lost a certain amount of weight as newborns always do (she lost down to 1 pound 15 ounces).  She spent the first 40 days of her life in an incubator (these facts and figures were ingrained into my consciousness as a litany of sorts; not a week went by that I didn’t hear them in one way, shape or form) and so she became the “baby” of the family forever.   So it was only natural that there be a certain amount of animosity between us… I never got to be the center of attention, ever, and simply by being born I piddled in her Wheaties on August 15, 1965 at 10:55 p.m. and didn’t stop being an annoyance to her for the next 41 years.  It was only when my daddy died and my mother decided that she didn’t need me as a daughter any longer that I stopped being potential competition for this “sister”. 

Anyway, all of that is spilled milk, and definitely not worth crying over.  Neither is the event whose memory left me in tears this morning; tears which threaten still to betray me even as I protest that I am “fine, absolutely fine, no, it must just be my allergies acting up, I’m not crying, why would I be crying?”.  But I must give a bit more background before I get into that. 

 When I was nearly 5, my next-older brother was killed in a car accident on his way to school.  My family sort of fell apart for a time; if it hadn’t been for my paternal grandmother (who I miss desperately still, even though she died on my birthday in 1979), my middle sister, my oldest brother and his wife, I shudder to think what my childhood would have been.  Timmy’s death, aside from leaving a raw, aching void in my life (he loved me beyond all reason, indulged my every whim and never ever treated me like the pest I was) left me with a job at the ripe old age of 4 years and 9 months.  It was understood that I now had to be a “big girl”.  My job was to behave perfectly at all times, be available if a family member needed to cuddle, be the comedienne when the family needed a laugh…  but otherwise be invisible.  And so I did.  I became very adept at sensing others’ emotions, supplying the needed support, and then blending into the woodwork.  As such, my needs, wants, emotions… all became inconsequential.   “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” is a truism which entered my consciousness long before I ever saw an episode of Star Trek.  Largely forgotten, usually left to my own devices, I spent my time alone perfecting my reading, my handwriting, getting faster at the former and prettier at the latter.  One result of this was that I was an absolute terror to the other Sunday School students when it came to Sword Drills.  Give me book, chapter and verse while I hold my Bible high in the air, tell me “Charge!” and watch me fly my fingers through the pages and leap to my feet while the others are still trying to remember whether Galatians comes before Ephesians or after.   So a few short years after Timmy’s death, I found myself the undisputed Sword Drill Champion of Vacation Bible School, ages 12 and under (I was 7 at the time).  The prize was a plane ride!  Our pastor was a licensed pilot, and owned a small Cessna.  As an incentive he had offered plane rides as the top two prizes for VBS.  Each child who won would be taken up for a ride and could bring a friend along for company.  I was so proud and excited, and imagined being the center of attention for once.   I went to school that following Monday and naturally told all about it during Show-and-Tell (I remember that I even took my Bible to school as the “show” part).  For a very short while I was the star, the school darling, someone everyone wanted to be friends with… instead of being the strange girl who wore hand-me-downs and read books at recess.  I imagined that my new-found popularity would only increase as I decided who would accompany me on my flight.  For one brief, shining moment, I felt wanted. 

 I imagined wrong.  Instead of being able to collect my reward, it was decided that my next older sister and her friend Jody would be taking the ride in my place.  I never knew the justification behind the decision, and as with all injustices, the decision has always seemed arbitrary, unthinking, uncaring… just downright mean.   Even with the clarity of vision borne of many years gone by, I cannot fathom what would make a parent do that to a child.  I will never know now; the one whom I could have asked has been gone for 6 years now, and the other two who know about this event barely speak to me.  And I refuse to give either of them the satisfaction of knowing how deeply this wounded me.  Stubborn pride?  Perhaps, but it is all that I have to sustain me when memories such as this one pops to the surface like a deep sea diver hell-bent on getting the bends. 

And so this is the memory which blindsided me this morning.  It hit me like a rocket sled on rails, and left utter devastation in its wake.  In a strange way, I’m feeling the emotions which I denied myself for years.  For so long now, I’ve used the tactic “if you don’t think about it, it won’t hurt” to avoid painful childhood memories.  I guess I’ve stuffed the emotions down for so long that there simply isn’t room for any more, and so my psyche has decided to do spring cleaning a bit early (or a lot late, depending on how one looks at it).  I’m just afraid that if I let this continue unchecked, there won’t be a whole lot of me left when it’s all said and done.

Hours later, the tears continue to fall; fat, silly, useless tears which pour down my cheeks.  The more I concentrate on stopping them, the more determined they are to increase their already torrential downfall.  I’ve always hated self-pity, but this is much more than that.  This is a hurt which stands proxy for all of the other hurts in my childhood, times when I should have been put first, deserved to be put first, needed to be put first.  “Que sera, sera”, “It is what it is”, and volumes of other trite, very unhelpful sayings run through my mind now.  I don’t know what memory will be the next to surface, when it will occur, or what will be the aftermath.  The one thing that I do know is that the pragmatic side of me won’t put up with the emotional side of me for very long… it may come to blows, but one side of me will win out. 

I’m betting on pragmatism. 

Out Of My MInd, Back In Five Minutes

If I had a Facebook page, my relationship status would have to read "pretty much out of love with technology".  If I tweeted, I'd have blown up my friends' and family members' cell phones with the events of this little (and not yet over!) weekend.  I'm so far over any sort of relationship with "progress" at this point that if it weren't for having to use an outhouse, I'd become Amish. 

Even though I do enjoy having a computer at my disposal, I've always thought that less was more when it comes to complex technology in items that we use daily.  That little automatic window down feature on my vehicles is handy, but deep in my heart I'd prefer an old-fashioned hand crank, especially when it's 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside and the window goes down but refuses to go back up 63 miles from home on a weekend evening.  My trusty rusty Maytag washer might not have been the ultimate in modernity, but I knew it inside and out and could fix most anything on it.  When it was finally beyond all hope of redemption, I reluctantly replaced it with the oldest model Maytag that the local second-hand store had to offer.  I know that among my peers I am considered strange at best, but the events of this weekend have convinced me that I was right all along. 

It all started oh-so-innocently on Friday morning.  In an uncharacteristic burst of domesticity, I had decided to clean my oven in preparation for a marathon baking session I have coming up for my husband's surprise 50th birthday party.  My broken left foot was making my usual method of just scrubbing the heck out of my range considerably more difficult than usual.  Cranky from pain, I decided to throw caution to the wind and use the self-cleaning function for the very first time.  A little tickle at the back of my brain reminded me that an appliance repairman had once told me that the heat from the self -cleaning oven could overheat the computerized controls and fry its circuitry. Ignoring his words ringing in my ears, I locked the oven door, pressed "Self Clean" and then "On".  I blithely went about my morning's duties and did my best to ignore the niggling little sense of impending doom lurking somewhere in the nether regions of my brain.  The range went through its cleaning cycle and dutifully announced via a series of insistent beeps that it was now ready for use.  I unlocked and opened the door and wiped the accumulated ashy residue from the oven floor and sidewalls.  The sound of angels singing filled my humble kitchen as I surveyed the results: it was gorgeous!  Show-room-floor shiny, it was prettier than a speckled pup.  Cheerfully I went about mixing up one of my killer meatloaves, a fan favorite at my house.  Meatloaf in pan,  bacon arranged lovingly on top, I pressed the buttons necessary to preheat the oven.  "Unlock Door", the display proclaimed.  Actually it read "unloc dor", but I was in no mood at that moment to critique an appliance's lack of command of the English language.  Mildly panicking, I pressed buttons in what hopefully almost approximated a logical sequence, to no avail.  I re-locked and re-unlocked the door,  and again pressed the appropriate buttons to set the oven to "Bake", with the same lack of results.  The niggling little sense of impending doom instantly matured into full-blown panic.  Openly frantic now with just over an hour to feed a hungy husband and get him out the door to work, I ran (hobbled) the meatloaf over to my mother-in-law's house with instructions as to its care and feeding.  Placing a call to the appliance store where I had purchased the range and a matching refrigerator at a premium price barely eighteen months earlier (I insist on buying American-made appliances, not just "North American" made either, good old red-white-and-true-blue U-S of A, American made appliances) I was told to cut the power supply to the range and let it "rest" undisturbed for a few minutes (let it rest for a few minutes?  I was the one under stress here, for pete's sake, and "it" was the cause!) to let the circuitry reset.  I was then to turn the circuit breaker back on and again attempt to set the oven temperature.  Reassured by the appliance store manager that, no, it was perfectly safe to use the self-cleaning function on modern ranges, I breathed a bit easier for those few minutes. Sadly, my relief was short-lived.  Now, just over 48 hours later, having tried running another self-clean cycle in the hopes that it would magically reset the oven's brain, and leaving it unplugged for 24 hours, I am still sans oven.  And six days, 22 hours and 47 minutes from the instance of this writing, I have a bevy of friends and family coming who will be expecting home-made birthday cake.  Lots and lots of home-made birthday cake.

Later Friday afternoon, I needed to run some errands. I made myself presentable, and armed wtih my list of to-do's, headed out the door.  As soon as I opened the door of my Jeep, the feebleness of the "keys left in the ignition" dings made my heart sink.  I had been having trouble starting it of late, but my husband assured me it was because it had been so cold at night.  So much for that theory: here it was sunny and 48 degrees out and all I could get out of it was a half-hearted "rrrrr...rrrrr... click, click, click".  It was the perfect capper to a dilly of a day. 

So, on Saturday with the beginning stages of a techno-phobia forming, I decided to enlist the aid of a neighbor's teenaged son to try to figure out why my new laptop wouldn't connect to the internet via wi-fi.  I had been trying on my own for nearly a week, and had finally come to the conclusion that it was beyond me.  Imagine my non-surprise when it became apparent that it wasn't me, but technology that had once again failed.  Even with an available wi-fi signal (as evidenced by another laptop and two smart phones being able to access it) my computer insisted that no connection was available.  Helpfully it suggested that I contact the manufacturer via the internet (!) if I needed additional help.  To say that I was now completely and thoroughly disgusted with anything that post-dated the Civil War would be a grievous understatement. 

Sunday morning, I vowed to put the previous 48 hours behind me.  It was all over but the shouting, so to speak, and no use crying over spilt milk.  Besides, misfortune supposedly arrived in threes, right?  So I was safe.  Hah.  The humidifier had needed to be filled the night before, but in the bad mood I was nursing, I had opted to simply shut it off and deal with it in the morning.  I filled two 1-gallon jugs and the humidifier reservoir with treated water and was just about to turn it on when I noticed that the humidifier's housing didn't look quite right.  Closer inspection revealed that it had indeed begun to melt.  Hallelujah for being too exasperated to deal with it the night before.  Had I filled it and started it in a dimly lit room as tired and frustrated as I was, it could easily have started a fire.  I'm glad that I've retained my ability to see the silver lining in clouds.  At the very least this weekend has reminded me that I've usually tried to see the positive aspects in less-than-ideal situations. 

While writing this, I'm reminded that our current spate of mechanical misadventures all began about two weeks ago with the untimely demise of our furnace's fan.  So I'm left to wonder if I'm two-thirds of the way through the second set of three inconveniences, or if this is simply the way life is going to be for me from this point forward.  Oh joy.  Find the silver lining in that, Pollyanna.  ``

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The previous was written just over two weeks ago, and I still haven't figured out my oven.  I'm either in denial or being insanely optimistic believing in the possibility of a spontaneous healing for my poor, crippled range.  I'm stubbornly resisting having to pay a $75.00 service call plus parts and labor on something I believe should be covered by the manufacturer, and anyone who knows me knows how very well I do stubborn.  I do have a new battery in my Jeep (what that says about my priorities I don't want to know), and I purchased a new humidifier.  And I spent over an hour on the phone to tech support in New Delhi, India speaking with Rahjeet and his supervisor Kumar (I kid you not) about my laptop connectivity issues.  After fully 5 minutes of Rahjeet trying to tell me how to locate the "F2L" key, he finally exasperatedly said, "F2L key.  You know, like F One Two?"  It was then that I finally twigged to the realization that he meant the F12 key.  Duh.  Pressing that magical little key turned a tiny light from orange to blue and that beautiful little wi-fi icon lit up like a Christmas tree.  Miracle!  And the very first thing I did after getting connected to that wonder of wonders, the internet?  Why, I got a Facebook page, of course.  After discovering the joys of Facebook and rediscovering the annoyances of spam and pop-ups, I have decided to blog.  Rather than pester my friends and family with updates every time I have a new thought, I thought it would be prudent to confine my mind's wanderings to a site where people could access them or not, as they chose fit.  So, for better or worse, here I am and here I'll stay. 

Unless I have something I abolutely have to tell people.