Monday Musings.

While I think I have tried the subtle approach to getting what I want, say, for my birthday - there are times when subtlety gets you what someone else thinks you want.  This, then, puts you in a position where you are now the proud owner of something you absolutely detest and will never use, and you have to be gracious and all gushy about it to the gift-giver.  This year, I am taking no chances.  I have emailed a link to both sisters and declared it ALL I want for my birthday this year to my entire family.  I got all giddy and goosebumpy when I saw it.  Some girls want jewelry.  I want the...SNOW WOLF!  Go ahead - you know you want it, too.

It is a rather sad state of affairs when I am HAPPY that a tick chose my shoulder in which to burrow! At least I can see it and reach it. Another of the joys of singlehood - tick checks and itches in awkward places. Thank goodness for those little bamboo scratchers - China be damned. TMI? I'll say...
The coyotes are back. All 100 of them. Since my go-around the last time, I realized that the little sissy-pants "pop" of my .22 does nothing but earn their scorn. I've since discovered that my 1.5 qt., heavy-bottomed saucepan, delivered with some force, flat-bottomed to the top of the deck railing, has an amazingly gun-shot-like sound that really gets everyone's attention - and it carries! I wonder if it comes with a holster? Of course, this will now segue into a childhood memory.

We left off with my casting aside my black patent leather MaryJanes for a terminal case of horse love. I had horse models - my favorite was a rearing Palomino with "flowing" plastic mane. OMG, did I love my horse models. There were three girls in our family, of which I am the eldest. And the bossy-est. Just ask them. Our family was typical of the day - father worked, mother worked in the home, kids toed the line. We did not have a lot of extra money floating around, so we had to take turns when it came to extracurricular activities. I took tap dance classes, then my middle sister took ballet (she WAS graceful), etc. Luckily, my youngest sister was too small to take any classes, so my MS and I were able to double-up for a while. After an endless stream of histrionics, melodrama, moping, and whining, my parents signed me up for horseback riding lessons. Oh Heavenly Day! My father took me to get fitted out with riding gear. I had no interest in English riding, oh, no. I was going to be a cowboy. I came home with powder blue jeans, a matching Western shirt in powder blue and peach plaid, resplendent with pearl-covered snaps, a gen-u-ine cowboy belt with a BIG buckle, and boots. If I had been allowed, I would have had that outfit sewn onto my body and would have worn it until it fell off in tattered shreds.  I had even managed to talk my father into the piece d' resistance - a bolo string tie with fake turquoise decoration.  I was so amazing I couldn't even stand myself!

Fast forward to now.  I was standing in line at the hardware store recently, fishing around in my pockets for change.  I came up with:  a sticky nickel, a pile of goat treat crumbles, a Christmas hanky, a sticky piece of baling twine, and a balled up receipt for something - too sticky to tell.  All that stickiness had to come from something - I cannot, for the life of me, remember what sticky thing had been in my pocket.  While I was rifling my pockets, I happened to focus on the front of my zip-up sweatshirt.  Mistake #1.  That led to looking down at my feet.  Mistake #2.  Which sent a chill through me, as I realized I had not looked in the mirror since 4 a.m. that morning.  And it was a glancing look in the dark - which, of course, doesn't count.  I realized that I had left the house and gone *gasp* out in public wearing manure covered muck boots, jeans that had been dragging through the wet muddiness of the farm and had wicked up same clear to my knees, a sweatshirt that had been in almost continual use for half a week, and my sun-bleached, sweat-stained, battered Vermont ball cap.  Oh, how charming.  And I wonder why I'm single?