staying out of trouble

OK, I have a lot of opinions about shetland sheep.
And perhaps my writing style, with it's "meant to make you laugh" style, is confusing. However, when my good friend starts thinking I am hinting negative things....about anything shetland....that refers to anyone in particular. Then it's time for me to stop.
Yes, I have strong opinions, they may not always be right....heck...they may be off the wall...but I write them here in my blog...and that, I thought was OK...and I like to talk about sheep a lot....there isn't anything else out in these parts lately. A lot of yellow leaves falling in the pond....some dead fish...some crazy cat that likes lamb. Some very brown dirt that the ewes keep sticking their noses in and puffing up little dust devils. We only have two more orange days on the weather calendar...that's exciting...now if they could figure out how to draw clouds.
So I'm just going to talk about my childhood.

I grew up in one of those ideal fifties homes. You know, the one with both a mother and a father. I have a big brother too. He is seven years older...and spent much of his childhood baseball practice rocking my crib. By the time I was big enough to go outside and play....I would have been by myself....but I had my dear cousin living next door. Dick was almost my same age, and we played everyday. Well, he would come to get me in the morning....but I couldn't go outside to play until my mother had combed my hair into long curls....kind of those very same ringlets you see on old bopeep pictures. So we played Dick and Jane stories together....well it was really Dick and Mary Ellen....no one was allowed to call me anything but both my names. We played let the chickens out of the coop, and other games of tag. We made hats and umbrellas out of Rubarb plants. One time we stripped all the bark off the wheeping willow tree in their yard, that must have been fun....In the evenings we all played red light-green light. Kind of a you're it game, and caught lightening bugs in glass jars. Some summers we made rubber-binder guns....Boy, those hurt if you got hit in the face....we cut inner-tubes into binders, and used clothes pins for the triggers. Dick and I played invisible people lots. They were outer space folks that came and captured us.
I have old snapshots of us playing in a sand pile, and sitting together on my very own rocking horse. Who is still in my living room. I found a wonderful man to live my life with....and he also has his old rocking horse....it is in the kitchen.
Such is the stuff dreams are made of. What is it about little girls that makes them horse crazy? I'm sure I pestered my parents about having a horse....my rocky horse is named trigger. After my true love Roy Roger's horse. Since my parents told me I couldn't marry my cousin Dick....because he was my cousin. As if that made any sense to me? I decided the next best thing was Roy Rogers. I was going to marry Roy...and that was that. One mean person told me Roy was already married to that Dale Evans person....I have never liked her since. I remember crying and crying. I can't hear Happy-Trails-to-You without being still pissed. Oh , I am sure they had a happy life without me. I had a black holster with some silver things on the belt...and a cap gun that had white grips with a long horned cow on them. We may have gotten real caps around the fourth of july....otherwise you just said bang bang! I lived pretend. Riding my rocky horse, and swinging on my swing. Those were the days when swings were made of long ropes tied to the branches of a tree. None of this gym stuff. If the branch of the tree was perfectly straight....the swing would go back and forth. If the branch was crooked...so was the ride on your swing. I could sit "side-saddle" on my swing and pretend I was going off into the sunset on my horse.
My swing was made of wood. None of this old tire stuff at my house...those things made your clothes dirty. And the sand in my sand box, that my daddy made for me....that was white sand. No ordinary dirty type sand for this little girl. Every week the ladies would have a tea party.
That was an activity at my Granma's house. She was a lovely little german lady, who smelled of face powder and hair pins....if they had a smell. And I was the only girl. Believe me in those days you had better act like a little girl too. I wore frilly dresses, and had curls in my hair...and I went to every tea party. Even tho I was too small to do the sewing and crocheting like the real ladies. Dick and I....yes, he had to come too. We had our own set of tin dishes in the china cupboard. I'm sure he would have rather been playing football with some boys. But he sat and played tea party with me....We even had a working egg beater. Little girls and boys were to be seen and not heard. But Grandma had both a front and a back porch...so we could play in the one the ladies weren't using.
When kindergarden came....I was the one that had to go to school...and my only pal in the world would sit on the bank and wait for my school bus to bring me home. Not long after that, my Dicky and his family moved to town. My mother and his were not often on speaking terms. So I only got to see my life-long friend at family doing...weddings and funerals...when our mothers were wearing white gloves and hats, and acting lady-like. Did I mention kindergarden yet?
I didn't fit in well. "Does not play well with other children"....that would be me. I only knew one other children well....and he wasn't there. We had to do icky things at school. Like glue paper together with little wooden sticks that we scooped that library paste stuff out of the jar with. The paper got wet and tore of you tried to squish the lumps out of it. The paste could be eated if you got to like the taste of it....must have been real healthy, as I remember it would grow mold over the weekends. When the paste dried on your hands, you could tear it off in sheets that looked like your skin. I remember getting scolded for being immature, I used to hide under my rug at nap time.....I would never get to the music box in time to find anything but wooden blocks to clap together. No cymbols or triangles to make beautiful music with....just wood blocks...clap clap....My school career went downhill after that.
Did you really read all the way down to here? That was silly....I have nothing to say.
I hope you have a wonderful day anyway. Do something fun....eat something delicious...and I hope you find someone to play rocky horse with in your old age too.