Adventures Including Cows

 If you have never lived on a farm you likely do not understand the true excitement of living on one.  You, perhaps, may think that goats and cows and chickens are boring and only add chores to an otherwise blissfully free day—which is partially true.  Sadly, if this is your conception, you have been thoroughly misguided.

Owning cows has made for many, many different adventures throughout my childhood.

The first cows we ever got were Black Angus cattle, four steers, large, rather ugly, and not particularly bright beasts.  As children we immediately went about naming them—for all "pets" must have names.  The first cow we named was the largest of the lot, a large hulking black thing.  Naturally we named him Big Red.  Why we named a black cow Big Red I'm not sure.  When my mother asked me shortly after the cow was named why I picked that name I couldn't tell her—nor could I be talked out of the name—and my answer has not changed since.  The other cows must have had more reasonable names because I do not remember what we called them.

The Crabapple Trees

I grew up on a farm as a wild, very tan girl with tangled hair and calloused feet.  Perhaps the most farm-ish thing I did was to go through a phase of wearing cowboy boots.  The cowboy boot adoration went on all of one summer.  White cowboy boots and overall shorts—I'm not sure quite what kind of an image I made.

One of the many endeavors we had on our farm was to try and raise turkeys.  My father and mother decided that instead of buying turkey for thanksgiving, they would just buy poults (baby turkeys) and raise their own meat.  My brothers and I were not opposed to this idea and welcomed the strange looking baby birds into our family readily—which was not exactly the kind of greeting my parents had planned on.

Turkeys are not really a very beautiful variety of bird, but we did our best to love them despite this flaw. We provided them with water and food, and probably more attention than a turkey has ever wanted.

Turkeys are heavy birds, they aren't meant to fly for long distances, but rather waddle through life rather awkwardly.  Our turkeys grew into their lumbering walk quickly.  At night we kept them inside of a chain-linked fence and then we would let them out during the day to go scavenge for food—turkeys like to eat bugs and grasshoppers and such.

My Life with Tomatoes

I have had quite a large amount of obsessions in my life, some of them were normal-ish obsessions for a child, some of them weren't.  One of the stranger obsessions I had was with tomatoes.  Yes, the strange, round, red food that seem to defy even definition as a fruit or vegetable, and squish out their red guts when you smush them.  Why did I love them so?  I'm not really sure, I think it had something to do with being a very easily entertained child.

Phase 1
Tomatoes first caught my attention as a very young child.  My mother planted cherry tomatoes, and as all cherry tomatoes seem to do, they flourished, and grew, and flourished, and eventually became so prevalent they were almost a weed.  There were so many small spherical red balls I could hardly contain my excitement.  Although, as it would happen, I didn't particularly love eating them myself.  Instead I decided to share the prevalent goodness with everyone I came into contact with.

The first problem, or perhaps largest problem, with this plan was my eagerness.  A basket was too hard to find, or too far away—or perhaps never even entered my mind to begin with. I picked a handful of tomatoes and then realized that I had nowhere to put them — oh, but I did.  

Princess

Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived on a farm with her parents and brothers.  This little girl was rather obsessed with princesses.  I believe at one point or another I managed to act out one scene or another of every single Disney princess show I was privy to.

Cinderella
Cinderella was one of the first princesses that I decided to copy.  As a two or three year old at family parties I would run up to every single relative I could find and assign them a part in the story—they could be the prince.  I would promptly run away and then "lose" my shoe as I went.  They would then have to pick up my shoe, chase after me, and then allow me to direct them to every other person at the party to discover that my shoe did not fit anyone else who was there (convenient and surprising for a two year old's shoe).  Then they would have to fit my shoe on me and declare me the princess.  Then I would go and find my next victim and relive the scenario again.

My second phase of Cinderella obsession was when I decided to clean the fireplace every single day.  My mother was not opposed to this stage of my obsession and even provided rags and cleaner to assist me in my cleaning.  I slaved away for at least three or four days in perfect bliss before I got bored.  After that I decided it was a much better idea to sleep next to the fireplace instead of clean it (thank goodness I did not decide to befriend and sew clothing for mice).  My mother was a little less encoraging with this idea, but still provided me with blankets for my endeavor—which as a very thoughtful child I rejected because they weren't authentic enough.  I also decided that I wanted to make an authentic dress for myself to wear out of real rags—fortunately my mother was able to talk me out of that particular idea before I acted upon it.

First Car

This is the sad and rather long history of my first car—how I obtained it, how I abused it, and finally how it died a rather startling death.

Part 1
The summer I turned seventeen I decided it was time to buy a car.  I had saved and scrimped, and worked, and slowly amassed just enough money to buy a cheep, old, high millage car.  First of all, I hate car shopping.  Possibly the only thing I hate more is job hunting.  I live in a small city—technically I live just outside a very small city in the county—which means I am far away from where most people live—which means that their cars are far away from me also.  Ultimately I end up dragging friends and family around with me for long extended trips when I go car shopping.  It is rather miserable.

On one such excursion out into the very large city of about 190,000 people I found my dream car.  It was old, it had high millage, and it was everything I had ever wanted in a car!  I have this thing about red cars.  I was sold on getting this car right up until I actually sat down in it to take it for a test drive.

Things you should not collect

My family likes to plan vacations once or twice every year.  Usually we'll have one big vacation each year.  One such year my parents decided to take a trip down to Oregon.  They found a beach house there and rented it out for an entire week.

The first thing to do when you prepare for a vacation is to go shopping.  Oregon has beaches.  We should buy sandals and shorts and suntan lotion.  Little did we know that beaches can be cold—very cold.  We spent our days in the one pair each of long pants we had packed and wore jackets constantly.  We did not even bother finding the suntan lotion.

When one is at the beach, they must go collecting randomness on the seashore.  My siblings and I found a plethora of broken shells and starfish.  One of my favorite past times was to collect sand-dollars.  I collected buckets of them and took the treasures home with me—my very own stash of riches!  I put them in the cupboard under the bathroom sink and became a seashell collector.

A Birthday Present

When I was about eight or nine I had a birthday—this usually happens once every year.  For this particular birthday I wanted to have a friend party, which I did, and it was very fun, etc.  However, what I remember most about this particular birthday was a present I received after the actual birthday and party were past.

Two of my closest friends were twin girls just a few weeks younger than me.  They had been unable to attend my birthday party and they dropped by the next day to give me my present.  It was not wrapped and so I immediately got an eye-full of a rather ragged, browning unicorn.

I don't particularly love stuffed animals to begin with—but they do, so I suppose it was a nice thought.

They both smiled and proceeded to hand me my new unicorn.  I took it and wondered where they had gotten such an old, worn animal from.

Still smiling one of them answered my unvoiced question:

When I was an endearing child . . .

I think I have slowly grown into my strangeness, it didn't suddenly come upon me.  My mind has always thought just a little bit differently than everyone else's—here are some of my best childhood stories. 

Ladybugs:
To me Ladybugs were one of the world's greatest tragedies.  How unfair that every single one of them were "ladies" and none "gentlemen."  As a child I felt sorry for them.  However, I did not become horrified for them until the day I realized that such an injustice was also the plight of the "daddy-long-legs."
Ladybugs are bright red and polka-dotted and darling . . . daddy-long-legs look like spiders—need I say more.  What a strange couple.


Dandylions:
When I was a little girl my mother told me that dandelions were good for me.  Being rather oblivious to the fact that people eat dandelion greens, the first thing I thought of when she said this was the bright yellow flowers I called dandelions.  As well as being oblivious I was also curious.  I decided I would try this healthy food one day when I was playing outside and bored.  I discovered that dandelion flowers are edible (and later found that they aren't poisonous), they taste rather like nothing and feel like fluff in your mouth.  I have not delighted my taste-buds with another dandelion flower since.