Sometimes I consider the hundreds of small things I enjoy in life, the ordinary things that make me happy. After all, life is a billion mundane seconds punctuated by several high and low points and then we are gone. The secret to happiness is surely in the details.
Every day I love reading the headlines for the weird and wonderful news. Drunken human behavior generates the overwhelming majority of those headlines. Here is a good one: "Drunk Horseman rides into crowd on Mule Day." Hints of some dark jealousy - his best horse excluded from the parade? No horses allowed on Mule Day?
As it turns out, Cowboy rides into the crowd to ask for more beer, falls off the horse, which spooks and careens into two people, one of whom was injured. Fines, tickets, court costs, public embarrassment and humiliation ensues.
Here is a twist on drunk driving a riding lawnmower: "Man on Mower Charged with DUI, Fishing Pole Theft." I did not read this article but let me guess - fines, tickets, court costs, and humiliation ensues.
Last week I read about a poor drunk who tried to revive a dead opossum with mouth to mouth. The article said the opossum had been dead for some time. Ewwwwwwwww!
A coworker and I maintained a file of funny newspaper stories for many years. "Here's one for the file!" we would say to each other whenever we found a good one. Over time we became connoisseurs of the truly funny. It could not be just any drunken behavior, there had to be a twist. One year we hit the jack pot. Two friends had an ongoing public feud after one pulled into the drive way and drunkenly ran over the other as he sat in a lawn chair drunkenly waving hello. Sometimes friendship is a challenge.
A lot of the weird and wonderful never makes it to the newspapers. For instance, it is weird that two middle aged single women who own horses bought property within two miles of one another in the middle of farm country. That would be me, and my neighbor Kathyrne. We were able to ride to work together for several years. It was wonderful that we have similar politics, instantly understand living with a ton of animals, and solemnly help one another when we lapse into moments of crazy-old-ladyness.
Sometimes I go to work and leave the water running to the horse tank. Even though I walk within three feet of the faucet, step over the damned garden hose to get in my truck and still forget, Kathyrne cheerfully agrees to drive over to turn off the water. She never makes fun of me just like I never make fun of her for letting her three Salukis into the car for the 30 second drive through the front gate.
Kathyrne also owns three cats and five horses. There is Camella, the old mare and her son, Little Bit, a huge gelding. There are the three Morgan "girls": Katie and her daughter Janie, and Topsy. Kathyrne rides dressage on the Morgans. Sometimes she rides Little Bit, but he is a willful guy when it comes to riding, though well behaved otherwise. I have looked after her animals when Kathyrne has been away. She said if Little Bit intimidated me I should just pick up a stick to show him. He is a very large horse and he did intimidate me at first. He met me at the gate when I first came through with the buckets of feed and would not back up. I picked up a little stick, about ten inches long, and showed it to him over the fence. He snorted and threw his head up, galloping away as if I had threatened him with a buggy whip! He made me laugh, which was his point. He has a grand sense of humor.
Kathyrne lives with generally higher life forms than I do, (no chickens) but that is because she is a PhD.
It is wonderful when my neighbors blade the snow out of my driveway without me ever asking. When my mailbox fell off the post and laid on the ground for a couple of days before I could get it fixed, the postman left my mail in the box anyway.
Weird or wonderful, "it's all good" as my son always says.
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