Stick Horse Cowgirls

It’s Saturday, and I am so glad!!  Of course, here I am at 4 a.m. typing this post, so sleeping in has escaped me, but still I have the weekend ahead with no set responsibility!  I may snuggle back down in the bed for “second sleep” before it’s all over. Except I need to be doing house cleaning…. But that, too, is a luxury.  MIL has arranged for (and insisted I use) a housekeeper every other week.  I think she’s tired of the dust bunnies in my corners and all.  So, housekeeper comes this Wednesday.  What this means, of course, is that I ha ve to clean  my house!  If I don’t, she’ll turn on her heels and flee at first glance. I’ll be picking my mother up this afternoon to spend the rest of the weekend out here.  She’ll clean, too—nothing like extra hands!  Then she, MIL and I will go out on the town—Saturday night, you know! And, mundane post that this is, let me talk again about the weather:  It is glorious!  Instead o...

Ah, another week has drawn to a close.  Has it?  Well, I’ll be working today, although it is Saturday, so it seems that my week is not actually over.  That’s h ow hectic the week has been.  But it’s fine—there are many folks who have no work.  And, too, I relish the time on Saturdays without the interruptions of the ringing phones, the drop-in clients, the staff questions.  This week was so busy that I found myself saying to my assistant, “ Could someone give me just one more ball to keep in the air?  Bet I could do it !”  She felt the same. No, Saturdays offer pure, uninterrupted thought and work time.  I actually enjoy that.  It is when I can act upon my work rather than simply react to demands of others, if that makes sense.  And I won’t be there all day.  On Saturdays I can get done in three hours what I might accomplish in a full usual day—or more. The downside to working on Saturdays is the lack of work that gets d...

I am a wee bit worried about myself.  I’m thinking I might have a lazy streak, and it might be sizeable.  That is not a good thing, I realize.  Now, don’t get me wrong: I work very, very hard.  I am busy as a bee from sunup to sundown.  I have so many balls in the air each work day that keeping them each from crashing to the ground is a constant struggle.  No, I’m not lazy about my profession, and when I come home, I am usually very tired, which gives me great justification for what I am about to say…. What I am lazy about is most things physical.  I don’t want to exercise (and there’s little time, for it given my work schedule—see? Justified!) And I don’t want to clean my house!  I am thinking of hiring a housekeeper to come in every other week or so, but I am going to have to clean the house and put away the clutter before anyone will take this job. I was out to dinner with my good friends from next door, midlife country girl .  They...

My soon-to-be-ex husband has fairly poor taste (in all but first wives, mind you). Let me give you some examples: When we were into our marriage about two years, we lived in an apartment owned by my father, so we felt at liberty in “decorating.” I indulged his whim by allowing him to follow his dream and paint the kitchen cabinets cobalt blue with lemon yellow doors. The effect was horrifying—like something out of “Yellow Submarine.” Something like this: This color scheme did not last long. He struck again when we built this house. He made the arrangements for gutters to be installed. On the day of the installation, I got a concerned call from the installers. Could I come out there, please? My husband had specified “chocolate brown” for the guttering (unbeknownst to me), and the installers wanted me to be certain before installing. When I arrived, the Hispanic installer explained in very broken English, very pronounced Hispanic accent that if he installed it, the gutters wo...