I agree with this

 

What y'all is?

NeoValues Test

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of the Past

From my early days I was always interested in digital art. The first images I saw fascinated me. They were unlike any other art I was familiar with and I had to learn how to create them.  Smilies also fascinated me and, likewise, I had to learn how to make my own. Then came digital animation and that topped my list of cool things to learn to do.  So I jumped into Blender (a software program) and mocap (motion capture). I got pretty good at making meshes and have made steady income from selling them for many years now. I specialize in, not realism, as I at first did, but in realistic animation.  That gives me a chance to be expressive without the confines of what actually is. I do use myself as the model, or one of my friends. Even the hairstyles I use in my animations are based on my own. Zoë Mozert, the woman who invented the pin-up -- and the term "pin-up" -- used herself as her model, so I'm in good company. 

Of course, with the coming of AI and LLM all those skills are obsolete.  It's progress, I guess, opening up the most sophisticated creative processes to everyone. And AI will take those creative processes in directions I doubt we can imagine.  These are just the early days.  

But us old timers will remember the thrill of creation as it was in the golden days of yesteryear. This, using myself as the model, is from my high school days when digital art was, I suppose, no longer new, but it being available to anybody with a PC was. It got over 250,000 views when I uploaded it to an old blog I had, which was pretty good in those days.

 

 

 

 

Dancing the days away

I went into town, invited to a dinner and dance affair, lots of chatting and slow dancing before chow. I was the only solo dame at the shindig and I danced with every one of the husbands there, some of them two and three times.  The boys exhausted me.  I thought it was merely a matter of courtesy that they offered to trip the light fantastic with me, or I did until I noticed the looks, or should I say glares, that their wives were giving me.

It took me a while to notice that while the husbands spent a goodly amount of time shoulder-tapping each other to get their turns with me, a lot of the wives were never asked to dance even once, even by their husbands. That was not my fault. I was invited to a dance party and I danced.  I was amused by it because it was the wives who had invited me. They planned to solicit me to become a financial supporter.  I knew that was their plan and I probably would have but they became so resentful over nothing they forgot their goal. Ladies, emotions and business don't mix, especially nasty emotions. Keep your eye on the prize. Will I become a financial supporter? Haha. Ha. Ha. Will I recount this episode? Well, I is, ain't I?

 

Incidentally, or maybe not, the venue was an opportunity to notice how many women let themselves go once they've been married a while.  Don't do that.  It's an insult to yourself, and, even more, it's an insult to your husband.  You should always make sure he considers you his prize and never has cause to look at another woman and think he made a mistake with you. 

They reminded me of some woman I read on the internet who was advocating what she called "duty sex" with husbands.  Don't even pretend you're interested, just let the sad sack climb on you and do his thing for three minutes. That's what she did with her husband, whom, apparently, she had not a spark of interest in. I wondered why she married him. Just to get a room mate to share expenses with? Was that why he wanted to marry her?

I really and truly do not understand that. I just don't. I've written before about how I felt about my dear husband. And that included sex.  I wanted him and I wanted him to want me. All the time, anywhere, however he wanted it. His desire for me was an enormous turn on for me. We were on an endless honeymoon. You think that's an exaggeration. It's not. It was the way it was. As I've mentioned before, he photographed me, carved and sculpted me and every session involved me teasing him to turn him on, and every session I got turned on just by the act of getting him aroused, and every session ended in him well and truly nailing me to both his and my great satisfaction.  I was crazy about the big lunkhead. The years we were together never diminished my affection and desire for him.  I think English has a four-letter word for that emotion.  One's not supposed to mention it, though, so I won't.

******

I've been dancing a lot with my second cousin.  He belongs to a ball-room dance club at the academy and has gotten very good and wants to stay in practice. We dance mambo, Cuban salsa, bachata and freestyle club as well as the more traditional styles, including the tango.  Sometimes my uncle drops by and I dance with him.  He is, as I've mentioned before, an excellent dancer. We work up quite a sweat. Sometimes I wish I had somebody to dance with who wasn't a relative, but then I think it's best I don't. 

My cousin has suggested we go somewhere with a live band like we did a while back, so we might do that. I'm going to have to fly down to Argentina pretty soon, and I've invited them both to come along. It will be fun to tango in its home country.

Yeah, I bought the estancia.  It's a sheep operation with a good return.  I'm going to have a landing strip built so I can fly directly to it, gravel, 100x5,000 ft. is what I'm looking at, a hanger, fuel facility (eventually), PAPI, REIL, MIRL with PCL and an AWOS among other goodies. That may sound like overkill, but the weather there is a bitch and the terrain will get your attention. 

By the way, I love, love, love my KA260. I don't want to fly anything else. I do still enjoy the Baron, but...you know....

Oh, another by the way: In the actual world -- not the stupid on-line "world," men are supportive and encouraging and even pleased to see me engaged in the endeavors that I am, while -- not all, but a significant number of -- women react with coolness, nay iciness, when they discover what I do. That used to puzzle me, but I've come to expect it. I think the main cause is that I represent a challenge to and a reproval of them for slouching through life or something.  But that's not true.  I have no opinion on their lives, their achievements, lack of them or anything else.  We each live our own lives as fortune steers us. My own life has certainly not been smooth sailing along my desired path. It's gone this way and that, uphill and downhill until, for the nonce, here I am.

Some things I am and some things I can do, but others I am not and yet others I could not do even when I tried.   

Okay, I do have at least one strong opinion about others:  Anybody who puts Ph.D after their name is an ass.  I have a Ph.D in a hard science, one that was hard-earned. Both my Ph.D mentor and thesis advisor were on the short list for the Nobel Prize. My research focused on traumatic brain injury, the signature injury of the GWOT, and I helped discover the cause of battlefield PTSD.  And Uncle Sam paid for everything. No student debt. But I would under no circumstances consider putting Ph.D after my name.  In my field, everyone had a Ph.D.  It wasn't even table stakes. It was one white chip. You would be laughed at if you pranced around telling everyone you were a Ph.D. It was assumed if you were doing that research you had a doctorate.  Nobody would be impressed by it.  It would just be something to list in your resume. People would be more interested in who your mentor was.  That was important.

 So why ain't I doing Ph.D stuff now? Well, that's the way the cookie crumbles. I've written about it before so I shan't go over it again. But maybe why I'm not is why I don't judge the life paths and achievements or lack of them of others. Fate, luck, circumstance, decisions made by others outside your control, bad decisions you've made yourself...and on and on.  Life can be like walking a tightrope while playing dodgeball. You're lucky to keep your balance as long as you do, and nobody ever makes it to the other side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey, y'all!

Apparently, I do, indeed, have a southern accent.  I was not born in the  South.  I was a Navy brat and picked up the accent from the descendants of the Johnny Rebs I hung out with as a child. I found this explanation on line:

"It's a common belief that accents are passed down from parents, but that’s not typically the case. Instead, kids pick up accents from the people they interact with daily—usually their peers, teachers, and neighbors. While parents play a huge role in language development, accents are more about social adaptation than family influence. In fact, many people may not even realize how much they adapt to fit into their social groups, subconsciously choosing speech patterns that help them feel connected."

Well, a blonde with a southern accent might as well be carrying a sign saying, "I'm dumb."  I've been called a corn pone and laughed at because of my accent. That wouldn't be so bad if I actually was from the South.  But not to be a Southerner and to catch their grief...  No fair! Gee whiz.

Apparently the second, I am what they call a Third Culture kid, and one of that particular subset the military brat, with no particular place to call home. So I can equally be a southern California surfer girl, a Montana cowgirl or a Southern Belle gobbling goobers and grits -- or none of the above. Whatever, man.  But southern gal is okay.  I'm fine with that. Boy, howdy, I tell you what...wait -- is that southern or Texan?

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fifty years ago today

Marion Haley plays the
lady cop. She was Brenda
in the 1970 movie
Lovers and Other Strangers.

 Half a century ago, the country was celebrating it's 200th anniversary.  It was a big deal and people were proud of the accomplishments of our country and the sheer fact that we had made it for 200 years.  That was despite the fact that in 1976 there was, it would seem, not a lot to celebrate.  The country had just lost a war for the first time ever, and a brutal one that had lasted a decade and torn the country apart, with radicals setting off bombs, battles between "students" and "hard hats," the Kent State thing, and on and on.  There had been in recent years race riots in which dozens had been killed, political assassinations.  There was the Patty Hurst-Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapping and bank robberies.  There had been a bird flu outbreak with mandated vaccinations that the public rebelled against, there had been the oil crisis and gas lines, there was a national speed limit of 55 mph, stagflation was in the news, unemployment and inflation were rising, Red China was admitted to the United Nations and Taiwan thrown out, Watergate and Nixon's resignation were fresh in memory, there was...Lord, I don't know but probably a lot more. Oh, right, disco. 

A postage stamp today costs 78¢

And yet the country seems to have been in a great mood.  My mother remembers it as a time of relief and celebration.  The bad old Sixties were in the past.  The gas lines were gone, the seemingly endless Viet Nam War was finally over and who cared if we won or lost as long as the damn thing was done with. We were sure never going to get into another mess like that. We had learned our lesson.

Anyway, here is a radio drama from this very day 50 years ago.  It's a routine cop story but does provide a window into what the world was like as our 200th anniversary approached.  Before the story begins there is a news commentary anticipating the very first Mars lander, expected to touch down on the Red Planet on July 4th, talking about what we might find there, including -- people really thought this was possible -- actual Martians. Notice that 50 years later we went to the moon again after two generations and nobody really seemed to pay much attention.

The ads are interesting relics of the times.  For instance, there's a commercial for a pressure canner.  How many people can their own fruits and vegetables today? Fifty years ago, it was common enough that a national radio program carried ads for canners, as it did for women's magazines promoting recipes.  CB radio was the hot new thing. I find the style of songs backing some of the commercials also interesting, very sweet and pleasant.

The story itself has interesting elements.  The cop duo who solves the crime consist of the old, jaded guy looking forward to his retirement and a young, eager-beaver girl cop new on the job. I know, what a yawn.  But I guess back then it wasn't.  Then there is a reference to the new phenomenon of public pornography, X-rated, explicit, as they called them, movies.  And an amusement park that features a professional chess master that customers pay a dollar to try to beat.  If they do, they win two dollars.  Do amusement parks today tout, "Try to beat our chess master"?  Does the average amusement park-goer even know how to play chess today? 

Anyway, for old time's sake, give it a listen. 

  "Checkmate," first broadcast over CBS Radio Mystery Theater on June 21, 1976.

 

 

 

 

California roots

 My first ancestor in California that I know of was William Wolfskill who came to Los Angeles  in 1831 (yes, it existed then) and tried hunting fur seals, but the Russians, who were all over the California coast with their Aleut sidekicks, had pretty much cleaned them out (as well as killed off the Channel Island Indians). He married a Spanish señorita and settled down to develop vineyards and citrus orchards, then got into cattle ranching, doing quite well in all his endeavors.  One of his descendants helped finance the Chaffey brothers in establishing Etiwanda and had extensive citrus groves in that area.

 Years later, another one of my ancestors, part Northern Cheyenne (I've written about how this came to be a couple of times), scouting for the Bartleson emigrant wagon train, made it to California in 1841.  Years later, one of his sons participated in the  second  Pitt River expedition of  1857 against the hostiles under Gen. George Crook. When the Civil War broke out, he tried to go east to join Crook's boys in the Army of West Virginia but ended up joining a cavalry unit in Nebraska that didn't serve with Crook but fought the Cheyenne and Sioux in the war that erupted after the Chivington Massacre. So he was probably fighting some of his own distant  relatives, a kind of civil war of its own, if you will.

Another of my ancestors, who made his fortune in ranching and mining in Montana, came to southern California around the turn of the 20th century and invested in real estate, oil, the early movie industry and the rising aviation industry.  He hired the architect Horatio Cogswell to design houses on his real estate projects.  Cogswell created the quintessentially classic Los Angeles bungalow as well as such houses as Pickfair for Mary Pickford, who was a good friend of my great-grandmother.  I have seen a photo of her (my great-grandmother) with Pickford and Anne Morrow before she became Mrs. Lindbergh at some social function at Pickfair.

 He invested in the Keystone Film Co. of Mack Sennett and sprung for $100,000 in 1915 to build Mabel Normand a studio at Fountain and Brae. He was driven out of the movie industry by the arrival of gangsters from back east, specifically the goons of Murder, Inc., the Bugsy Siegel mob.

My great-grandfather became friends with Donald Hall when he worked at Douglas in Santa Monica before he moved to Ryan in San Diego and designed The Spirit of St. Louis.  While he was serving in the Navy as an aviator, he (my great-grandfather) met and became friends with Charles Lindbergh at Panama in 1929 when he (Lindbergh) visited the USS Saratoga after the completion of Fleet Problem IX, probably in part because great-grandpa knew Hall, so they had a mutual acquaintance to spark the friendship.

Bits and pieces

I'm not sure, but I think I may have mentioned that in my wild and woolly days I was a photographer's model, even was a calendar girl.  Well, Some people have asked me if I am not concerned that my boys might come across these photos and wouldn't that be...awkward, and rather embarrassing?

Honestly, no.  It's unlikely they would ever see them, but if they did, so what?  They've seen their mom in her birthday suit before. As I've mentioned before, my husband photographed me in the nude and also used me as his model for his wood carvings.  He displayed the photos and sculptures in his office and workshop here at the ranch. The kids don't even notice them.  They prefer the ones he made of wolves, mountain lions, dogs, horses and bulls, not their dopey mom.

Also, we all used to go skinny dipping. I don't do that with them anymore because they are growing up, faster every day, it seems.

And anyway I make sure they they meet lots of pretty girls to focus their attention on, not their dumb old mom.  Pretty soon they will have girlfriends and be deep in puppy love and their mother will fade into the background. Which is how it should be.

****** 

My second cousin, of whom I've written, has come to spend his summer vacation on the ranch, working the odd jobs that always need doing.  He broke up with his girlfriend but doesn't seem upset about it at all.  He just shrugged when I asked about her and said it was fun while it lasted but you know how those things go. I suppose it wasn't that serious. Then he said he still had a crush on me and I said, oh, pshaw, when did you ever have a crush on me and he said you know. But I didn't. Not then, whenever it was, and not now. 

I do see echoes of the diffident, shy guy he was before he went off to the academy, but he is much more of a self-confident person than he was. It's hard to believe he's just 21. He takes charge like a much more mature man. 

My boys look up to him and hang out with him whenever they can. He takes them out in the sailboat and teaches them how to sail it, tacking and reaching and so forth. He also teaches them water rescue techniques and lifeguard stuff that he has learned.  They all go skinny-dipping. I'm tempted to do it, too. But I just stay on shore fixing the picnic lunch.  My daughter doesn't swim with them, either, let alone go skinny-dipping with them, although she used to.  She's getting to be all grown up and instinctively knows it's not wise.  The innocence of childhood passes so quickly.

****** 

I came across the assistant ranch manager, good old Mr. Shoe, sitting in the shade looking rather glum and I asked him what was wrong. I was afraid it was some ranch trouble, but he asked if I had a minute, which I did, so I sat down beside him while he told me of some of his personal problems. I couldn't help him with any of them, but just getting things off his chest seemed to lighten his mood. To help cheer him up, I told him I had some old shoes I was planning to throw away, but if he wanted any.... 

He perked right up and we went up to the house where I let him browse my shoe closet (yes, I have a shoe closet) and pick out a pair of heels.  I really wasn't going to throw any away, I just said that.  And no he doesn't wear them. He has a shoe fetish.  It's a harmless quirk  -- which I can kind of understand; I love shoes, too, but not in that way, heh. He is valued and I need him so I let it go. He said he would return the shoes after he was done but I said not necessary, you can keep them. He seemed a bit disappointed so I said okay bring them back. That made him happy and he asked if I would wear them after he returned them and I said sure I guess and that made him really happy.  But I won't. Maybe I won't. Well...they are really nice shoes.  It would be a shame not to wear them anymore.

 ******

My mother and father are both baby boomers and they have always been the best in my mind. I love, admire and respect them more than I could ever express. They have always been my role models and from as far back as I can remember I always wanted to have the life my mother has had and always wanted to marry a man like my dad, which I did. The people who educated me, trained me, helped me achieve my goals, develop my abilities, were almost all boomers.  All good people that I looked up to and relied on.

So I really can't get my head around all this hatred of boomers I see whenever I venture onto on-line sites where people let fly with all their resentments, hostilities, complaints and just plain bitchiness. I don't get it.   

Oh? You're going to explain it to me? Listen, kimo sabe, I don't care. Put a sock in it.  Talk to the hand because the face doesn't care. ¿Comprende? 

These Sixties kids had no idea that they would become the target of burning hatred from their ungrateful spawn half a century later just for living their lives as best they could, making their way through a world they never created.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 How to Regain Your Soul

by William Stafford

Come down Canyon Creek trail on a summer afternoon
that one place where the valley floor opens out. You will see
the white butterflies. Because of the way shadows
come off those vertical rocks in the west, there are
shafts of sunlight hitting the river and a deep
long purple gorge straight ahead. Put down your pack.

Above, air sighs the pines. It was this way
when Rome was clanging, when Troy was being built,
when campfires lighted caves. The white butterflies dance
by the thousands in the still sunshine. Suddenly, anything
could happen to you. Your soul pulls toward the canyon
and then shines back through the white wings to be you
     again. 


So Much of the World

by Gregory Djanikian

So much of the world exists
without us

the mountain in its own steepness

the deer sliding
into the trees becoming
a darkness
in the woods' darkness.

So much of an open field
lies somewhere between the grass
and the dragonfly's drive and thrum

the seed and seedling,
the earth within.

But so much of it lies in someone
standing alone at the edge of a field
with a life apart

feeling for a moment
the plover's cry
on the tongue

the curve and plumb
of the apple bough
in limb and bone.

So much of it between
one thing and another,

days of invitation,
then of release and return.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ah, yes

 

 

  

So there!

I'm not hyper masculine.
In fact, I'm quite feminine.
I've been tested! 

 

The Fleet

  I found this photo of the Fleet Model 2 that my grandfather was posing with when he was a young man.  It looks like the kind of picture you would take of your new car, doesn't it? Maybe this was taken the day he got it. I don't know. But it's a nice-looking airplane.  It's in pretty rough shape now, neglected for I don't know how long, decades,probably.

It's kind of sad to see it that way, but that's the way all our material possessions end up. Things we dearly longed to have eventually finish as just some old junk, stored in the attic or basement and forgotten, tossed out, donated, hauled to the dump. All the wishes to have, all the work you do to save the money to buy the most wonderful thing in the world and it ends up just being trash.

Oh, stop that, Wanda. You're going to depress yourself.  So okay, maybe I will have the Fleet restored.  It would make another great project for my boys, especially if they know once they get it in flying condition they can take to the skies in it and zoom around like Ace Drummond in the 1930s. ♫"Oh give me a ship and a song!"♬  Knowing them, one will pilot the Fleet and the other the Waco and they will dogfight each other. And their mom will be on the ground shouting up at the sky, "Be careful!"

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dead at 24

Forgot to publish this! 

For the week of Memorial Day

Today, May 30, is the real Memorial Day, as my grandparents assured me.  They hated that all our holidays were turned into three-day weekends, erasing their importance and meaning.  Memorial Day used to be a day everyone took off from work specifically to take them out of their ordinary lives to remember and honor those of their fellow Americans who no longer had lives, ordinary or otherwise, because they had been killed in our wars. There were parades, speeches, prayers, visits to cemeteries.

Oh, well.

Then 2nd Lt. Stiles when a B-17 co-pilot.

Here's one of my relatives from the Colorado branch of the family killed in World War II, lst Lt. George Wilbert "Bert" Stiles.  He flew 35 missions as the co-pilot of a B-17 with the 401st Bomb Squadron of the 91st Bomb Group from March through August, 1944, then volunteered for a fighter squadron flew P-51s with the 505th fighter Squadron of the 339th Fighter Group, which he joined in late October, 1944.  He was killed November 26, 1944 on his 16th mission in a dogfight with FW-190s over Hanover, which was defended by 400 Luftwaffe fighters.  He is credited with shooting down one FW before he failed to pull out of a dive while pursuing another, probably because G forces caused him to black out.  That was a common occurrence in those days before the invention of the G-suit. He was 24.

 Bert's passion was to be a writer. The Saturday Evening Post  published four of his short stories about life as a forest ranger in Estes Park, and he had others published in Liberty, The Writer and The American Mercury. While in England, he wrote articles for the Daily Mail as well as Yank and Air Force magazines.

I've read “Portrait of a Guy Thinking About an Island” which was published in Air Force, November, 1944; “Situation Normal” also in Air Force, February, 1945; “It’s a Sad World, Cardwell” published in The American Mercury, April, 1942;  “The Case of the Lucky Amateur” published in The Writer, June, 1943; “Solo” published in Yank, October 15, 1943; “You Can’t Win with Women” published in The Saturday Evening Post, November 22, 1941 (guys have been writing the same lament forever!); and “The Ranger Is a Dame” published in The Saturday Evening Post, February 27, 1943, about a female forest ranger (Do take note trad wife enthusiasts: even back in the good old days you'd be hard-pressed to find one. Women worked "men's" jobs even then.).

 I think Bert would have been a successful and popular writer had he lived.  He had an easy, friendly, conversational style, evidenced in his autobiographical Serenade to the Big Bird. If you want to know what a difficult job it was to fly a B-17 in formation, give it a read.

I can't help but wonder how much talent we lost in that stupid war that was none of our business.  Even the Pacific war, where the Japs attacked us first, we could have avoided if we had not started the Spanish-American war, and thus acquired the Philippines and Guam.  So the fighting in East Asia wouldn't have affected us. And had we adhered to the Neutrality Acts, we could have avoided any involvement in the European fracas.  Yeah, fracas.  Those Euros are always going at each other; they're doing it today.  It's what they love best, slaughtering each other.  Not our business.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ah, yer mother wears combat boots!

My daughter found an old photo of me in Afghanistan the other day. It was poorly exposed and out of focus so she ran it through ChatGPT to clean it up. Chat-chan did an okay job but got some things a little wonky.  The M249 looks like the magazine has been replaced by a Kleenex box or something, for one thing.

What struck me, though, was how young I was then. I still think of myself as the same as I was in those days, the same as I have always been, but old photos put the lie to that. Would I like to be that young again? Not if I had to go through all that I have in the years since then.  At least now they are all in the past. What a blessing that is.

Oh, I was just posing with the M249.  Some guy wanted to take my picture with it (and have my hair down rather than in its usual bun). I had other duties assigned to me by the Great Black Father in Washington.  

That thing was heavy.  With the 200-round drum magazine  it weighed something like 25 or 30 pounds, if I'm remembering correctly.  Anyway, it was heavy.  And needed lots of CLP to keep it working. I can still hear guys cussing it out. Each fire team had one and the poor guy who lugged it also carried a spare barrel or two, three or four ammo drums plus all the usual crap everybody humped, PPE and ruck, so the guy could easily be loaded down with 150 lbs. or more. No wonder so many now suffer knee and back problems. 

I was always armed with my service pistol, the Beretta M9. Due to green on blue incidents, orders were to have it in Condition 1 -- magazine inserted, round in the chamber, slide forward, hammer down and safety on -- at all times and be prepared to defend myself at any moment. Somebody told me that about a quarter of all American deaths in Afghanistan were green on blue, meaning they were the result of Afghan Army soldiers turning on us. I remember one incident where three MARSOC men were killed while meeting with the local police chief in Sangin. He invited them to dinner with him, then murdered them while they were eating.  That same day at FOB Delhi in Garmsir, three other Marines were gunned down by an Afghan Army soldier. With allies like that....

Just thought I'd throw this in here. Good for a laugh. IYKYK, lol.

By the way, Afghanistan had a population of about 28 million people in those days and is the size of Texas.  We put 100,000 troops in there with sort of hand-wavy orders (and lots of ROE) to stop it from being a haven for terrorists, the Taliban and assorted bad guys.  Now you might think 100,000 troops is a lot, but consider that for the army there were something like 14 support troops for every trigger-puller.  I think the Marines claim 10. So in actuality there were, what, at the very most 7,000 guys outside the wire patrolling Indian country trying to keep a lid on things.

Oh, that was gonna work.  Fer shure. 

Get real.

I've heard the American armed forces described as a military of lions led by sheep, but my dad said it's more like a military of lions led by jackasses. And I agree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whatever

I read some post by a woman telling women what types of dresses they should and shouldn't wear.  Yeah, okay, I guess -- if she is saying this is what I like to wear. None of it concerned me because I am going to wear whatever I like and I don't care about some stranger's opinion of what I'm wearing.  But I was curious, so I read on, until she said her husband pointed out a woman wearing a dress at the mall and suggested they could become friends because they were both wearing dresses.  Besides that being a really lame reason to try to befriend someone, what got me was the woman rejecting the suggestion because she didn't like the style of dress the woman was wearing.

Okie-dokie.

That got me musing about how I think I am a conservative but it always turns out I don't have much, if anything, in common with conservative women.  They are always judgemental. What about? Everything! What you wear, what you say, how you sit, what work you do, what you cook, how you raise your children, how you interact with your husband.... The list is endless.  But at the top of it is always something to do with sex and how, by God, you better sit up straight and keep your knees together and never, ever smile at a bawdy joke, let alone laugh.

Phooey on that.

Around the ranch I wear 5.11s or jeans, baggy shirts and clodhoppers.  About the sexiest I get is in summer wearing cut-offs made from worn out jeans and an old tied-off shirt, blouse, cut down tee-shirt or tank top. Some guys do like that, it's true, although my intent is my own comfort and if a work gang of shirtless, muscled, sweating men stops what they are doing when I walk by and I hear a few muttered Oh, my Gods I can't say I mind. (No, really, I don't, Ms Feminista. Sometimes I stop and chat with them so we can each get a good look at the other.)  But when I go out high steppin' it's look out boys, Wanda's back in town! 

 

 

 

 I can hear Paul Hogan as Crocodile Dundee saying, "That's not a boner. This is a boner!"

 

 

Need a hand with that?

     

I'd like to see that!