Since I didn’t wake up until noon, after being up until dawn, I’m not sure if it’s today or tomorrow. Or maybe it’s still yesterday. Time, after all, is relavent–to what I couldn’t tell you, but I heard that once and liked it, so I use it as often as I can because it makes me sound intelligent–or stupid. Whatever. I just like to say it.
That’s my grandson Noah in the picture here, with his Gold Medal winner, Big Red. Noah has a goal in life, something very important for kids. He was 11 when this picture was taken. His goal is to have 20 of those beasts by the time he graduates high school. He’s 12 now, and I don’t know how many beasts he owns, but he’s the next farmer in the family. He does have a tendency to make pets out of all of the animals around him, but that’s not such a bad thing. Especially since his dad really hates those particular beasts as much as I do.
Now why do his dad (Mike) and I hate the beasts? Different reasons. I spent 30 years of my life as a farm wife, and we raised the beasts for the market. We also planted a huge garden every year. The night before the corn was ready to be picked for freezing the beasts on the home farm always broke through the fence and used the rows of corn for their own buffet table. My favorite veggie, and those beasts, with fields full of clover to munch on, were helping themselves to it. How did they always know I was going to pick it at daybreak? How did they always find a place to break through a weed burner fence to get to it? I never could figure that one out. But, I always had to chase them out before I could go in and pick what they left me.
Mike just doesn’t like animals. Not any kind of animal. Of course Mike is a little bit strange anyway. He’s a Leap Year baby, so he keeps reminding me he will be 11 for three more years. The whole problem is that he still acts like he’s 11 when he’s around me. At work he is a very dependable, knowledgable man, but around me he’s still the oddball kid that I could have sworn belonged to someone else, except we were the only ones in the delivery room when he was born other than the doctor and nurses. My first two kids were bald as eagles, and then there was Mike. A head full of dark hair, big blue eyes, beautiful baby, but I just had to ask them if they were sure he was mine. I think I would have asked them to put him back where he came from, but the memory of what the last several hours were like was still fresh and I had a feeling the reverse action would not be pleasant. So, I decided to keep him. For the most part I have never regretted it.
If you read my first post you know I have MS. That means that for the past ten years I fall a lot. And it seems like every time I fall I hit my head. My kids have different ways of dealing with that. Gina is concerned and always wants to know if I’m okay. Don asks if I cracked a wall and if he will have to pay to have it fixed. Mike–well, Mike says as long as I only hit my head I’ll be okay, since that’s the hardest part of my body! I bought a rubber mallet with Mike’s name on it, and also have his name on my cast iron skillet, so if he says that at just the wrong time I’ll use whichever one is handiest to hit the hardest part of HIS body, which of course, is his head. He’s a little bit too much like me. I have decided I will have the last word though. I have told my kids I want to be creamated–preferable after I die. What I haven’t told them is that I want my ashes put in three urns, and that each of them is to take an urn home and place it in the middle of the dining room table, so I can be there for dinner with them the rest of their lives.
Maybe I should include a movie after dinner. Mike can barbeque one of Noah’s beasts, we can have baked beans and potato salad, with iced tea or lemonade, and then kick back and enjoy a movie, and since people shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, Mike should choose Casablanca–my favorite movie, and just enjoy it for my sake, with no bad comments about me hitting my head one too many times.
Angie
Angie's Place 
Mike has always hated inside pets, but he really enjoys the cattle and helping his Dad and especially Noah with his calves. I’m glad you decided to keep him, because he is the most amazing husband and Dad I know. He is my man of all trades. So blessed to have him in my life!!!
I’m glad I kept him too. I don’t know what I would do without him now, and I really wouldn’t have made it without him when Jennifer died. Such a sweet, cuddly little guy. He sure didn’t like the cattle when he was young though. Ask him sometime how he broke his toes. LOL.