My Tough Face

My youngest daughter, Pie, and I have been on the farm in Virginia by ourselves for a while. I mentioned last week we’re cooking and watching movies and working, of course.

The apples on the tree in our yard are ready, and so before we go out to check the herds, we grab some and take them with us. We have a few cows we love and who love apples, so we take them out to feed them and pet them a bit. I always laugh, because one of our favorite heifers is Dazzle.

She’s a real sweetie and loves apples and attention. Would you believe she’s #16’s calf? She’s the calf that was with #16 when she rammed me into the fence.

She’s due to freshen this fall. I guess we’ll see then how much she’s like her mom. : )

Pie has been practicing different things on the horses. So, practicing means falling, and she’s fallen a lot.

Saturday night we watched a movie together. Once it was over, we carried our stuff out, but couldn’t get it all in one trip (lots of junk food ; ) so we walked back into the living room to get the rest. I’d already turned the lights out, and I think I might have mentioned at one point how odd the lights are in this house, so I didn’t go trying to figure out how to turn them back on. I figured we could make it to the coffee table in the dark.

Yeah, so anyway, we have a sunken living room, with two steps down. I knew this, but when you have two steps, you actually have to step down three times.

I stepped down twice and started to walk, only the floor wasn’t there (you’ve been there, right?) and I started falling, so took a quick step to catch myself and ran right into the corner of the end table with my knee.

It smarted.

But, you know, my kid had fallen off her horse a bunch that day and she hadn’t complained once about any pain, so I said to myself that I couldn’t whine or whimper because my kid was so tough. I have to be, too, right?

Well, anyway, I saw stars and red and scrambled words in my head, but I kept walking.

Pie said, “Are you okay, Mom? That sounded bad.”

Me: “Eh. I just walked into the coffee table. I’m fine.”

We got our stuff (with me being VERY careful and doing my best to walk normally) and took it out.

On the way into church Sunday morning she was talking about all the bruises she had and showing me her arms and lifting up her ankle and I mentioned my swollen knee.

Pie said, “What’d you do?”

Me: I ran into the coffee table, remember?

Pie: No? When did you do that?

Me: (I had done such a great job of pretending I wasn’t hurt, she didn’t even remember! I was pretty happy.) Last night. My knee’s all swollen. You want to see it?

So, yeah, we sat down in the church pews and I lifted my skirt (only to my knee ; ) and showed her MY injury. Pie oohed and awed over it and we chuckled because I got hurt worse in our living room than she did trick riding on her horses.

Alright, thankfully that’s the most excitement we’ve had here (other than the power outage) this past week. I’m good with quiet days on the farm. : )

Thanks so much for spending time with me this week!

Hugs and love,

~Jessie 🌻