Stick Horse Cowgirls

It is cliche to talk about stepping on Legos with bare feet.    Those of us who have young children or grandchildren know how excruciating that can be.  I have no little people in my household these days, so one might think I would be free of such dangers...not so!  You know what hurts just as much?  Stepping on the shard of a deer femur. In fact, it feels very much like stepping on a Lego. It happened to me just this morning.  My latest, and third, Belgian Malinois “Lefty” is truly a country dog.   We live pretty far off the main road, down a long dirt driveway.   But, still, we wanted him contained.   We have always used our fenced backyard to contain our dogs—even Mailinois, but Lefty kept escaping. Our fence is four feet pickets, and it has worked very well in the past, except for  our Daisy, who was a digger.   Every once in a while Son and I would have to go out and fill the escape hatches she had dug under our fence with rocks.    When Lefty and his br

I feel wistful.   At age 68, I am now truly an orphan.   My parents have been gone several years now, my father-in-law, too.   This left my mother-in-law to reside next door to me, in her own little abode.   She and I, single women out in the country, did well together.   I would work too hard all day, usually stopping in to see her a few minutes before plopping down exhausted at my own home.   Sometimes I would guiltily slink past her little trailer, too tired for conversation but knowing she had been alone all day and feeling I should have spared her that few minutes of companionship—selfish me. She has been gone a couple of weeks now and I have not yet felt any authentic mourning.   I am not sure what that will look like, as I am a fairly stoic person, but I feel it looming around behind me as I go through each day, as if it will overtake at some unexpected moment. As I was shopping for groceries today, the thought of her absence came, probably because grocery shopping wa

I have a brand-new sewing machine!   Truthfully, it is about three years old.   About a year after purchase I splurged on a nifty sewing machine case on rollers.   So, we progressed from having a brand-new/year-old sewing machine still in its original packaging to one that has been carefully placed in its case…rolling case has not been opened since.  The case has rolled nowhere. So, for two years, my new, three-year-old sewing machine has languished in isolation in the corner of my dressing room, barely noticed. With the passing of my mother-in-law two weeks ago, I inherited her sewing table.   It’s nifty, too!   I will be taking my brand-new sewing machine from its isolation cell and installing it in the table this weekend.   I am wondering if I have the energy to tackle actually putting thread in the machine for the first time and giving her a go.   As I thought about that, I began again to really want to sew. Here’s the problem.   Years ago (like thirty + years a