Anyhow. I was standing in the driveway with the aforementioned purse slung over my shoulder trying to decide which vehicle to jump into to take a quick trip. My handy-dandy little cell phone rang. It was Paul from the milking barn asking me to please make sure there were eggs available for the people who were about to arrive. Okay. Trip cancelled.
I rush to the shop on foot to get an egg basket and go in search of the Kubota RTV. Oh there it is, right where someone left it in one of the cattle raceways. I settle the wire basket in among the many sundry things that filled the RTV bed. Oh my purse. I whisk it off my shoulder and fling it into the empty egg basket. Trevor joined me on the seat, and off we went, bumpity-bump back the dusty lane to see if we could rounge* up some more eggs from the chicken bus aka chicken house. (*rounge isn't a word??? really??? MOM!! DANIELLE!! Haven't we ALWAYS said that word when we wanted to find something?? I had to invent the spelling because, I come to find out, there doesn't appear to BE a spelling for this word!!)
Eggs gathered, chicken mites not withstanding, we race back to the buildings so I can get them washed up and put into cartons in time for customers. Mission accomplished. Those eggs are now on their way to Columbus, Ohio and I am sitting here with a dusty purse. There must've been a partly used bag of fossil flour back there in the Kubota bed and it, mixed with dust from the raceway, plumed up in a cloud over my purse. My open purse.
The purse wouldn't actually be mine if Shannah hadn't bought it for herself. When I told her I liked it, I think she took a quick glance at the one she had supplied me with the previous year and decided it was time I had a new one. She was all casual about it and everything, telling me she bought it with my credit card anyhow and how she could just get another one next time she was out and how it was a little too big for her liking anyway. She's sweet like that.
I do like the purse. It's so roomy. Not that I even carry anything in it. Sometimes I like to put in homeschool catalogs. Those do take up space. There are other things you would just never know you'll end up carrying. Once I checked in there and I found a metal ball valve for a water line. My mother thought this was ridiculous. I don't even know how it got in there. I was sort of freaking out that maybe somehow one fell off a shelf when I was at the hardware and wound up in my purse by mistake.
So back to the fashion thing. I try. Not hard, but I try.
One time I attended a ladies' meeting. I was out getting tires for the skid steer anyhow and the meeting happened to be in the same neighborhood, so I rolled up to a parking spot in my old farm truck and joined in. The speaker was talking about summers and autumns and colors and making sure things matched your skin tone and stuff. Was she serious? I glanced around and everyone else seemed to be taking notes, so I guess she was serious. I went home and said to my girls, "Remind me again, am I a summer or a winter?" Even now I can't remember what they said. They said summer, right? No, wait. It was winter. I think.
Not that it matters. I go to the store, often alone and often Kmart, and look at stuff on bargain racks. Hmmm. This is my size, and it's 20% off. I toss it into the cart and move on to the next sale rack. Sometimes I click a selfie in the dressing room mirror and send it to the girls to give me their opinion. If they protest too much, I put it back.
See, most of my "occasions" are really not that snazzy. I butcher chickens a lot. Dead chickens don't really care what I'm wearing. Such is my life. I spend an awful lot of time with dead chickens. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I am actually really good at it.** Shop 'til ya drop: no. Chop 'til ya drop: yes. I guess you can't be good at everything.
** One time Paul and I and another guy were asked to do a chicken butchering demonstration in front of a crowd of people interested in doing small farming. The host of the event announced Paul and the other guy with a flourish. I was standing there, too, but I turned out to be the unnamed mystery woman with the knife. Nobody ever did tell the crowd who I was. Oh well. It was probably my outfit....
It is now time to feed my ravenous little boys. I guess I will need to rounge*** up some food for them. (***It's really scrounge, isn't it? I feel so betrayed....).
~Colleen
