Things I know how to do

The list is many and varied and pretty entertaining:
I can dress the ookiest wound and tend to it for weeks. I do provide sound effects (IICK! Yuck! What is THIS?)
I can scrub it out so the wound will get some granulation and make new skin.
I can sew people and animals up. Pretty neatly, too.
I can drain abscesses. (Drain them and pack them in salt)

I can move households.
I can throw down a meal in 30 minutes. (It’s not that I can’t cook, it;’s that I don’t LIKE to cook.)
I actually am the gal in the neighborhood who trots casseroles over to neighbors who are ill. It’s not hard or inconvenient, but it is kind….and I am short on kind points.

I can sew–really sew. I can make anything I can see, including a tailored coat. I can make slipcovers, too. My daughter, who isn’t in the market for a wedding dress, has picked out a pattern I’ve made 50 times. She wants it to be plain, with seed pearls stitched on the off the shoulder neckline.

I can also vaccinate, brand, de-horn and castrate cattle.(Hard, hot,noisy,bloody and smelly work).
I can shear sheep by hand. (In New Zealand, you can make $1.50 per. It’s hard work. If you get in too big of a rush, you’ll clip them and then you have greasy blood as well. Plus they are noisy and really stink.

I check the Farmer’s Almanac to make sure that it’s the right time of the moon to do this stuff (of course). I even check with the FA to make sure it’s the right time to do any cutting on my own self. It’s worked on everything so far, so who am I to scoff at it. (No one. It worked for my Da and for his Da and that is scientific enough for me!)

I can irrigate with pipes. There’s a little trick to it, plus you’ll find yourself setting a couple of hundred pipe at a clip. Not for crybabies.

I can tell what is growing pretty much every where I go. If I don’t know what it is, I’ll get out of the car and go look.
My kids can recognize most everything that grows in California.

I have a sometimes foolish belief that you should stay in a friendship and work things out. Not all friendships are meant to be forever. They wax and wane, of course and sometimes you discover a friend is one of those who delight in getting pissed off and saying “How. Dare. You.” Those? The ball is in their court. Sometimes walking away is the smartest in my humble opinion. I’ve learned some relationships are poison from the get go. Then there are friendships I’m willing to wait out because I am so truly fond of the person. It’s a case by case thing and none of it is done on a whim.

I’m a passable knitter. I do it for the Zen, not to pile up sweaters and socks. Speed is not my aim. I like the way it all feels and sounds, so when I am totally frazzled, I knit.

I love to read. I have books in stacks everywhere I light, because I’m afraid I’ll be stuck somewhere with NOTHING TO READ.
In fact, my most serious worry in life is that I will close a half finished book and die before morning and never know how it ended.

I love my children and my dogs to a distraction. It has been hard to let my children go off and chose their own paths. It was hard to let them have their own experiences in school, since I was all too eager to MAKE them be what I wanted them to be. My way was better. Let them explore. Let them make and live with their choices. Let the chose friends and decide that maybe they weren’t the best choices in the long run. Of course, my dogs aren’t nearly as well behaved as my children.

I think the sweetest thing my daughter ever said to me was “You were sooo right, Mom! You were right about EVERYTHING! X was no friend at all. Z makes terrible choices. J just wants to party. You let me figure it all out on my own and now I know how to do it!”

Well, that was my goal. So I guess that’s something I knew how to do, too.