.Peeing On Tires.

I’m going to start this off with a teeny, tiny disclaimer lest I offend anyone because I’m pretty good at that – this is JUST FOR FUN, something that popped into my mind and made me laugh. I’m sticking with that story.


Men are like dogs…that’s a scientific theory I’m working on. And it’s not a derogatory statement on my part because I love dogs. I’m a total dog person.

But really. Here’s my theory:

Have you ever seen the way a dog acts when it wants something another dog has? Even though it may never have shown a speck of interest in a particular item before, when another pup gets a hold of it, it suddenly becomes the most fascinating object on the face of the planet. I have been this object. I’ve always noticed that when I’m single I seem to be invisible…it’s as if I cease to exist as soon as I become available. But literally the minute someone shows a little bit of interest, I become inexplicably interesting and irresistible.

There are those men that I have dated that seemed to be unable to make an “official” commitment. We hung out regularly, talked regularly, spent more time together than apart in many cases, but when I’ve started to broach the subject of exclusivity, I got the same old standard line – “Why does it have to be so serious? Can’t we just have fun?” Sure. Fine. Whatever. I’m totally down with fun. Love fun. In fact, some other cute puppy – er, guy—wants to take me out, and I think it would be tons of fun!

And this is where the shit seems to hit-eth the fan. Apparently, dudes get jealous. Despite their protests to the contrary, they don’t like other dogs – I mean, dudes—playing with their toys. It doesn’t matter if they haven’t looked at that toy in ages, or have moved on to some other toy…by golly, they already slobbered on it and it’s theirs and what if they want to slobber on it again someday?? It should be there waiting for them, not being slobbered on by someone else!! I actually asked a member of the male species about this particular phenomenon, and his answer was profound: “I don’t know why. Even if I don’t give a shit about a girl, it pisses me off when I see her with another guy after I hang out with her.”

Very insightful.

I’m pretty sure I know what a tire feels like at this point. I’m forever running around after my mom’s Pomeranian, flapping at him like a mad woman trying to keep him from lifting his stubby leg on the tires of my pickup. He never rides in my pickup. Ever. Yet, if I wash my pickup and soap his markings off of my tires, or if I happen to go somewhere and another male dog pees on my tire, Hank is rabid about the reclaiming of the territory. But here’s the thing: once he finishes, he never gives so much as a sniff or a sideways glance to them again until the next time his tinkle spots are removed or covered up. And just like Hankie and the kicks on my GMC, I see this pattern in men and the girls they chase around with. They’re perfectly content to float through as long as their “markings” are still intact, but as soon as another testicular-ed being comes sniffing around, the legs start lifting. It’s enough to make a girl crazy.

So here’s my word of advice (for girls as well, because women can be real bitches); there’s nothing wrong with just having fun or chasing around with someone…life is short and there are plenty of opportunities, and as long as everyone is on the same page, it’s pretty no-harm-no-foul. But people aren’t tires or chew toys or “territory”. If you’re not willing to make it serious business, you have no right to get all pissed off if someone else comes around to check things out.

 (Pepper...aka, this girl's BFF)

.The Dreaded M Word.

There’s a word my Grandma likes to throw at me, pretty carelessly, in my opinion. I call it “the dreaded M word,” and even though I’ve railed against it as violently as I can ever since I was of an age to start being accused of it, it has snuck up on me in bits and pieces. Most people call it maturity. Shudder.


I am also not the kind of girl that likes to be alone with my thoughts undisturbed. I’m not a social butterfly by any means, but I am not a solitary creature either…in fact, I consider myself the queen of distraction; always music playing, always a book to read or the television on in the background, always with the dog by my side. I like white noise, and I like the comfort of my little bubble being full of familiar clamor.

Recently, though, a lot of shitty things have happened in my life and the aftermath has left me craving to be alone with everything cluttering my head and my heart. I want nothing more than to sort it all out and learn what my true, deep feelings and motives are and what’s just the pressure and influence of my surroundings. Even though I am pretty sure of the path my life is taking right now and I’m very happy going in that direction, I have the urge to know more about myself and figure out my innermost workings. And I’m beginning to see that maturing doesn’t have to be a death sentence for spirit and creativity, that maybe it just means I’m a creative, free-spirited person who is getting better about stacking my dirty dishes in the sink. It could be that I’m ready, at least in some areas of my life, to accept that particular label.

It’s strange the things I find comforting now, things that were tedious to me before, like reading the newspaper cover to cover instead of just the horoscopes and the funnies or actually cleaning the lint filter of the dryer after every load instead of just when dust comes puffing out of the trap after six or seven loads. I put real pants on to run errands rather than heading to the Wal Mart for nail polish remover in my SpongeBob Squarepants pajamas. I make lists for things to keep myself on track. I am actually looking forward to doing my taxes this year.

And I’m not really afraid to be alone with my thoughts anymore. In fact, I’m beginning to find that I relish the absolute quiet of being completely by my lonesome. I have discovered that I love my own inner-dialogue and that, usually, conversations with me, myself, and I tend to work out my personal issues faster than involving anyone else. It doesn’t make me antsy if my phone doesn’t ring for hours on end; I don’t have to take off and go somewhere if there’s nothing on television, and I don’t have to have the radio blaring when I’m driving…I can just sit with myself and feel what I’m feeling without being uncomfortable with what I might discover. I think that might be a bigger gift than always having a distraction, even a happy one.

I don’t know if this is all a side effect of one’s life being turned upside down, or simply a part of getting older, but I intend to ride the wave and see what comes of it.

There’s no point to this post, really, other than giving myself a sounding board, but truly, I’m excited to find out if this little phase is going to stick. I think it will. I think I’ll be pretty okay with that. After all, aren’t you supposed to be your own best friend?

.She Loved Cows.

All I can remember about her right now is that she loved cows.


Isn’t it amazing? You spend almost your whole life knowing someone and when it comes right down to summing up a life in a few words, it’s all a huge blank. All I can remember is a feeling…just a particular feeling deep in my heart that is the very essence of what she was to me.

We met in the third grade. It was in the park across from Horizon Elementary school in Jerome…I crawled in one end of a cement tube and she had crawled in the other, and we met in the middle. We were both chubby little brown girls with glasses. We were wearing the exact same outfit – purple tie-dyed stretch pants (her favorite color was purple) and a white top with fringe around the bottom. Instant best friends.

But I loved horses and she loved cows.

No matter what she wore – polka-dotted vintage-inspired pumps and red lips or her curly hair in a ponytail and shit-covered muck boots, she was always the same girl. She was always laughing, always joking, always texting. I always teased her about the fact that her phone never left her hand…it was constantly buzzing with incoming messages and calls. She was everybody’s friend, everybody’s angel, a ready shoulder to cry on, a girl with a huge heart who just wanted to help. She was a farm-raised, punk-rock Mother Theresa.

We were always on an adventure…we never had a goal or a plan. We’d just put on our mascara and head out the door, ready for wherever the night would take us. She called me Marilyn, I called her Audrey. She was classic. She was the most scattered, crazy, free-spirited girl I’d ever met; she always encouraged me to open up and live life and have fun. She used to think I was crazy because I wanted to settle down and be a ranch wife. She had no use for love in those days, so when she ended up married and domestic and I ended up a gypsy, wandering around unsettled, we laughed so hard at our Freaky Friday switcheroo. I called her my pin-up Betty Crocker. I remember when all we ate was chocolate pudding for a whole week because I bought an entire case on sale at Wal Mart…now she was whipping up culinary masterpieces in her little kitchen. She wanted a white picket fence, a clothesline, a ruffled apron, tattoos, piercings, and a closet full of heels.

And she always dreamed of having cows.

I love her with all my heart. No matter how far away we were or what arguments we had or how long we spent apart, we could pick up a conversation in the middle like we had spoken five minutes before. She’d text me the most random things and say, “I saw this and I thought of you!” and she’d always be right on. She knew my heart, sometimes better than I ever knew it. She was so much wiser and stronger than I think anyone ever gave her credit for. She could be in so much pain and she’d put a big smile on her beautiful face and laugh and find one tiny thing to turn her situation into a positive one. I always wished I could have her strength.

How do you write something like this? How do you say goodbye to someone you could never imagine your life without? When I sat down at my computer this morning, this was not what I had in my head to write. Life changes in an absolute instant.

I will always have that girl in my heart. I will always remember driving down the back roads in my 1988 Toyota Corolla with her riding shotgun, and every time we’d pass a bunch of Black Angus bulls in a pasture, she’d yell out “THEY’RE SO CUUUUTE!!” And we’d make smooch faces at them as we passed.

There are far too many memories and inside jokes and incidents and stories to tell…there’s no way I could write them all, or obviously even write a few of them into a coherent thought. There are no coherent thoughts to be found when someone is taken from the world so quickly and unexpectedly. There’s no way to prepare. We all have our memories of her, and I promise you there isn’t a one of them that’s bad. You couldn’t NOT love her. You couldn’t not feel better when you were with her. You couldn’t not have fun when she was around.

She wanted to be Holly Golightly. She wanted to be a Playboy Bunny (not to be naked, but just because they were so glamorous). She wanted everyone to know that her last name is pronounced Schul-TIES, not Schul-tees…and when she got married, she was adamant about hyphenating because she was proud of who she was. She wanted to be there for her little sister; she wanted to be the best Army wife that ever wore her husband’s dog tags. She wanted to be everything to everyone she loved…what she didn’t know was how much she was to all of us.

But what will always stick in my mind when I think of her, is this dazzling, glitzy girl in red lipstick and polka dot heels putting a big, crimson smooch on the snot-covered nose of an unsuspecting Angus bull.

She never stopped loving cows.