Stick Horse Cowgirls

I had to turn the heat on this morning for the first time this season.  This harbinger of winter has me thinking about doing all the winterizing chores that need doing around here.  I need to cover the outside water faucets and make sure the light bulbs in our two well houses are lit. Those tasks are easy enough to do, but there are larger ones, too, that I dread dealing with.  For one thing, the back refractory board in my fireplace is crumbling.  This means I need a new one.  This has not been as easy as I had hoped since I don’t know the manufacturer of my fireplace  insert.  Apparently, I will have to go “generic” and cut one to fit.  Just one more thing on my “learn-how” list.  In any event, it must be done before a fire is built.  And we simply must have our fires in the winter… The other thing is the generator.  I have one of those gasoline-powered jobs, and it won’t start.  I’ll have to find a way to get it to some...

After Halloween, I always feel like I am in some kind of "home stretch," with the race culminating at Christmas. For some reason, New Year's Eve/Day are a bit anti-climactic. We hustle and bustle for Thanksgiving, picking up speed for Christmas, and then New Year's is a sort of time of rest after the holiday frenzy. This year is going to be different for me, and I am so looking forward to it. I don't mean to imply that I did not like my Holidays Past. To the contrary, I loved them. We have strong holiday traditions which I may write about in another post. But the last "normal" holiday season we had was in 2007, before my husband took a powder. The past two have been tinged heavily with the flavor of a family in distress. I'm thinking this year will be the first "good" season in several years for my son and me; I can just feel it. My home was the gathering spot for a lot of my family at Thanksgiving, and I kept my two ovens humming ...

As I fastened these pearls around my neck this morning, I thought about how they are one of my “symbols” of freedom and new life. This new, single life is not one I ever asked for, nor did I want it; it is made necessary by my husband’s betrayal. Having said that, there is definitely an upside to this unfetteredness I feel after decades of being “one” with another. These pearls are real. The gen-you-wine thing and, therefore, priced higher than I am accustomed to forking over. But their authenticity was part of the allure for me. I am, after all, a Southern Girl (yes, it is capitalized!). And you know what Southern Girls say: Your smile can be fake; your hair color can be fake; your boobs can be fake; but your pearls must always be real! And, girlfriends, I subscribe to that. I purchased these from J C Penney (of all places), having spotted them as I strolled past the mark-down jewelry counter. They were marked down 65%. Why they had not sold before is beyond me, other than t...

My brother-in-law taught me a new term yesterday: “Tell.” Apparently, in playing poker any body language that tends to give away is called a “tell.” Google provided list upon list of them: eyes shifting quickly toward the chips can signal that a player is nervous about the strength of his hand; acting nonchalant (“ Oh, is it my turn? ”) can indicate that a player’s hand is strong. These are involuntary. Oddly enough, the whole conversation that introduced me to “tells” had to do with my tractor and my lying husband. Only this time, it was the kind of lying that one hears referred to as B**LLS**T. (Cleaned up to maintain my PG-13 rating). I was telling my BIL about hubby’s reaction to my tractor woes. A friend had borrowed it a couple weeks ago but returned it promptly, saying it just was not powerful at all and he was worried about using it. Great! A few days later I got on it and it was fine, then I had to baby it along, and, finally, it just quit in the middle of the pasture...

Well, it is bound to happen. Ours is a mid-sized city--our metropolitan area holding just under 400,000 and, truthfully, most of my "circle" frequents one particular area of the city. So, my sister and her family ran smack-dab into my husband, his honey, her two kids, and their new baby. In Target. Awkward. She said that she and my hubby had that "deer in the headlights" startle, and both groups bounced off each other like same-pole-magnets, heading quickly in opposite directions wordlessly. Sis says that the babe was in a carrier but she could not tell me whether the blankie was pink or blue, so eager was she to exit the scene. My youngest niece is eight. She was my husband's particular favorite at the time he left (the youngest always is). She ran to him each time she saw him, and he would scoop her up, carrying her around. My sister went a long time after our separation without saying anything to her kids except that Uncle C was "away," thi...

I've been side-tracked, ranting about cell phones and being nostalgic about my Dad. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, things are progressing. Those of you who are just tuning in to the little mini-series melodrama of my life can find the back story at my June 16 post, "Ruth and Naomi..." (I cannot get my link thing to work...me, I'm sure) My mother-in-law is getting settled, but it is a much, much slower process than we had hoped. We are giving ourselves pep talks about how we have no schedule but our own, and I think we're relaxing a bit. One problem is that I am so stinkin' busy. This is, really, a good thing. I am blessed to have lots of business (although, this is, of course, a mixed blessing in that much business for me means others are divorcing...oh, yes, there's plenty of that, unfortunately). I am working long hours, so there is not a lot of time for me to help MIL settle in physically. She has contracted for her deck. The materials have been de...

Warning, this post may need to be a series... (and, by the way, forgive the clipart, but I can't figure out how to do actual photos on this one and preserve privacy...) As you may know, I am a lawyer. "Power" needs to be my middle name: I have to persuade judges (and, infrequently, juries), I have to scream at other lawyers. It's just, generally, not a good thing for a lawyer to appear to be powerless. Here I am, the bringer of justice (just kidding!): My mind has gone back fifteen years or so ago. There was a "pioneer judge" (we'll call her "PJ," for short) on the bench of a court in which I practiced. I call her a "pioneer" because she was one of the first women lawyers in our area. The rough-and-tumble of being one of few women in this rough-and-tumble profession had given her an edge and tough skin. She was smart, and she was forceful. She was feared by many lawyers and known for a short temper. She and I got along just fi...

I am so blessed to have great neighbors, great friends! Here I am on the farm, now single, with all this equipment that has been the sole province of my husband for the past forty years. I am playing catch up in knowing how to use and care for it all and, I must say, I am loving it! (See the post from last year, “Power Woman Update” for a look at the beginning of this equipment odyssey). My male neighbors have been such a help to me in learning about tractors and mowers and weed-eaters and such. This week’s lesson included a marvelous product called “fix a flat,” which is aerosol and you just pump it right into your flat lawn mower tire and Voila ! the leak in your tire seals right up! Amazing…all women need to know about these things… This long Memorial Day weekend was built around rain, which very much impeded my outside ambitions, but I managed to get some work done. I have developed an actual love of riding the lawn mower over our acreage. It is really satisfying work to se...

The last four or five days my son and I have been smelling a strange odor in our house. It comes and it goes. Sometimes I smell it in my bedroom, other times its in the den. Actually, we have smelled it in all parts of the house, except not at the same time. It "floats" around and some times we can't find it at all. The worrisome part of this is that it smells "mechanical." You know how your vacuum cleaner smells when you've jammed it or the belt is loose--like a burning motor? Well it's sort of like that, only not exactly. My son, too, described it as "mechanical" without my prompting. So, we've been in all areas of the house, in all the attic compartments, outside, sitting next to the heater. We have tried everything we know. We have tried sniffing while the heater is off; and we--for sure--sniff around while the heater is on. This seems to make no difference. You need to remember that I am newly-single. Thus, I am probably overly-nervous...

I have been plagued with pink eye for about four days now. I've been working through it, explaining to clients that my refusal to shake their hands is out of consideration for their own eyes; trying to convince them that, no, I have not been on a three-day drunk. If that were the case then, surely, both eyes would be equally bloodshot. It's been okay, but certainly I have not been working up to par. In addition to having a watery, itchy, sore, unsightly left eye, I am also feeling very like flu coming on. It is that achy feeling riding just beneath the surface of the skin. Still, duty calls, and I have gamely persevered through work--until yesterday. Yesterday morning I had a short hearing in a court two counties away which means a little over an hour's drive. When I arrived, the usual schmoozing lawyers were gathered in the judge's chambers to preview the docket and glad hand and gossip. I walked in and "Whoa!" was the exclamation. Someone said, "Who cl...

Bear with me, here: FYI, I have learned to bushhog!! It was great fun, although the pasture does not look as good as it did when my wayward husband used to do it. I must say that, while it was fairly easy, I had a moment on a hillside when I thought I was going to tump over and realized I could kill myself in a heartbeat on this thing... must not go on hills horizontally! I am working on my farmer's tan, too. To be fair to myself about how the job looked, I must say that the grass had grown over my head in places and I am not yet skilled in getting around trees, etc., although I am getting there. I think the next bushhogging will make the place look decent. I was running low on fuel and have to get diesel before continuing. I can't believe I'm buying diesel--this is way out of my bailiwick, but I'm adapting. I also have learned how to air up the tractor tire with a compressor ( !!!) and, when I found the tractor battery was dead, I charged it up all by myself!!! Of c...

This morning was take-out-the-trash day. This is a chore that I have been accustomed to leaving to hubby or my son. Since neither of them is here any longer, it falls to moi ! I was determined to do my duty! Of course, duty can get in the way. I had a 9:30 a.m. appointment—no problem; I had plenty of time. That is, no problem until you factor in my “dutiful” (new) exercise regime. I got out and did a brisk walk. It was invigorating! It ran me late… I dressed in my lawyer clothes, congratulating myself on remembering the trash, a task I normally manage to repress. I went out with the first bag (yes, there were multiples, being the trashy person that I am) and stowed it in the “way back” of my little SUV. I left the back door open and went in for more. As I returned, my heart warmed; there was my Chili (one of my dogs, a Belgian Malinois), laid up in the back of the car. “Awwww,” I thought. “Poor Chili wants to go for a ride! How sweet!” Then I noticed the bottle. Lying on the ground beh...