The Girly-Girl Tomboy and her Dinglehopper

So I wrote my very first article last week for my new Examiner position, and the editor gave it the green flag! It isn't anything to brag about, but it felt good to have my  friends and family cheer me on and let me know that I am hopefully on a right track. I have always loved writing. I get a thrill out of writing something that is entertaining and informative. Plus, this goes back to the days when I was a kid. I wanted to be three things in life. First, I wanted to be a mommy. It is something I still strive for. I make up for the lack of children with spoiling my niece and nephews, as well as having fur babies. Second I wanted to be a writer. I didn't care what kind, I just wanted to go to U.T. (sorry to my Aggie friends and family!) and be an accomplished author. While I am far from accomplished, I am certainly closer to that goal than I was back then, heck, I am closer to that goal than I was on Monday! The third? Well this is slightly embarrassing, but I wanted to be a mermaid. When my sister and I were little we played for hours in the pool, pretending to be mermaids! Don't judge me! The little mermaid was big when I was a kid! I've never told anyone that secret, and now, I have shared it with you all. Consider it a thank you for reading this. Everyone gets commemorative dinglehoppers with every site hit!

While I may be far off from that best selling novel my husband has declared I write so he can retire, I am making small strides and that makes me happy. Although it leaves me less time for things like, laundry,  reading, and laundry. I know I said laundry twice, but you won't believe how much laundry we produce! I guess when I was old enough by my parent's standards to stay home with my sister in the summer, I was forced to vacuum and do laundry. I hated having to have to watch my sister and have chores. Even when my dad was working the graveyard shift and sleeping in the day, I hated that he would make sure the monster Shopvac that served as the daily cleaning tool was pushed out into the hall before he went to bed. I can at least say that we didn't always get up and clean the house right away. I mean I was 12, and Crystal was 10 when we stayed home alone. We played, and made lunch. We watched TV, and we fought. Crissy watched the Lion King 83.4 times one summer. I am not exaggerating. We knew when mom would pull into the drive. We had getting the house clean just before she got home to a science.

It is not that I feel that kids should go without chores, just don't give them ALL of the chores.  I teased my mom this weekend about having children only because she wanted help around the house. It wasn't as bad as it seems. We had a pretty normal child hood, and some of my favorite memories are of Crystal and I cleaning up the kitchen after hot dog night and playing hot dog baseball with the dogs. There were no rules to it, and I guess it would have been more aptly named "hot dog frenzy" because we would just toss pieces of hot dog up in the air and which ever dog caught it won. French fries were bonus!! We would laugh loud enough for mom to call from the living room and tell us to get back to work. Slave Driver!

Actually, if she had been more relaxed in her parenting, who knows how Crystal and I would have turned out. On drugs, kids running around not knowing their own mamas, worthless lumps in the world. We were better for being house cleaning slaves as children. Although I detest doing laundry to this day, I am thankful that when I went out into the world, I knew how to cook and clean. I almost feel sorry for some of the more pampered children these days, who go into the world clueless of how to survive. So thanks mom for teaching us the domestic arts, and how to be tough as nails. Thanks Daddy for teaching us common sense and the golden rule, also for giving me my own shot gun, and teaching me how to use it.  Because I might be a goddess of the domestic arts, but I could hunt for my own food and defend myself too. I got the best of both worlds.