A Texas Style Friday

I think the Texas Woman is one of the first people who started reading my blog and commenting regularly.  When I visited her, I was instantly hooked.  One of the first posts I read featured a deer’s rear end with a door-bell implanted in its’ butt hole.  How could I not continue to read?

My kids still talk about that doorbell and secretly wish I would put one on the front of my house.

Texans can do it all and Cher, the Texas Woman, is no exception.  She paints, re-purposes junk, and wrote an action packed novel with more twists than a pack of Twizzlers.

I’ll just let the Texas Woman speak for herself.  You’ll be hooked too.  I know it!

How long have you been blogging and what or who motivated you to launch your site?

I’m almost to my 200th post.  I can’t believe it.  My first post was mid-August of last year.  Yah, a lot of us started then.  I don’t know why y’all did, but I started because I’ve always heard a writer should write everyday.  I was working (and still am) on a long-term project and I needed the stimulation of daily, non-bogged-down writing.

I also have a lot of handicapped clients who use the computer as a lifeline.  I thought some of them would enjoy reading something “safe” on the Internet, written by someone they knew.  As it turns out, not many of them visit my blog, but The Texas Woman still forces me to write almost daily, even when I’m the only one reading it!

When you were a child, what did you dream of becoming when you ‘grew up’?

I knew I’d become a cowgirl, marry Roy Rogers after Dale got shot dead on TV, and be rich.  None of those things happened and I’m happy they didn’t.  Cowgirls have to carry TT in their saddlebags and use the terlet behind a tree.  Roy, I realize now, would be too bland for me, and besides, I support women as heroes today so I’d want to be Dale’s sidekick, not Roy’s wife!  And rich ain’t all it’s cracked up to be!

We read your blog and catch glimpses of your current relationship, but tell us about your FIRST kiss.

Lordy, who can remember that far back.  All I know is it wasn’t with Roy and it wasn’t with my husband!  Since I was in college when my husband was in kindergarten…well, you can imagine where I would have ended up if it’d been with him – in JAIL!

In several of your posts, you allude to the fact that you’ve had more husbands than handbags over the years.  Please tell us how you roped ‘IT’ guy?

I didn’t.  His humor roped me in.  We lived in different towns and I couldn’t just pop over to date him.  After all, I wasn’t some innocent, young thing.  I had three children, a farm, and a business.  I was busy.  I told him he could join the kids and me in our activities and I guess he looked us over and decided he would.  He always says that if my kids had been bratty, the dating outcome would have been totally different!  My first post on The Texas Woman is about the night IT Guy and I met.  He’s kept me laughing ever since and we’ve been together twenty years on this April Fools Day.  By the way, “IT” stands for “information technology” since he’s a computer repair manager.

Tell us what you are passionate about…what makes your blood boil, your hackles rise, your heart soar?

Animal abuse makes me see red and reach for my gun – and I don’t mean I’d grab my pistol to shoot the animal!  I’m for severe penalties for animal abusers.  Bug abuse is OK with me.  I’m a plant abuser/killer myself so I attend a 12 step program at a local greenhouse for that.

What is your 15 minutes of fame?

I’ve seen my name in lights, so to speak, several times, sometimes for my art work and sometimes for my writing.  But I guess my real 15 minutes of fame lasted eight years.  That’s how long I owned my own business.  From conception to final sale, I had a blast.  The place sometimes felt like the Cheers bar on TV, even though it was a one hour photo and portrait studio.  Everybody in town knew the place and customers turned into friends.

Please tell us a little about your novel Shuffle and how you were inspired to begin writing.

I’d had the plot and characters rolling around in my head for some time because writing a book was on my bucket list.  I like twists and turns and fun in the books I read.  So when my daughter Code Woman broke her leg and couldn’t do ANYTHING, we needed something to occupy her little pea brain.  We decided that was the time to go for it.  Email is a wonderful thing and God bless the person who invented it!  Code Woman’s too busy now, so I’m writing a sequel by myself.  I’m also writing a ….well, I can’t say anything about that just yet.

What object in your home are you most embarrassed about owning?

Pick any room in our house and there’s sure to be something that normal people wouldn’t own, let alone display.  Dead, stuffed animals line the walls and tables.  Antlers, horns, and skins are all over the place.  Visitors are a little overwhelmed.  They leave with that glazed, dazed, deer-in-the-headlight look!  But it works for us.

How did you begin collecting dead, stuffed animals?

It all started with our snake.  I had just been diagnosed with cancer in a place I didn’t even know a woman could get cancer (really think of a strange place here).  I’d had the biopsies done that day and IT Guy was hovering over me, cutting off my oxygen supply.  So I chased him out to work on his project at the front of the property.  About twenty minutes later I heard a rattlesnake in the house, but it didn’t sound right.  The buzzing wasn’t fast enough.  I turned around and there was hubby shaking the rattlers of a huge snake he’d just killed.  The moral of the story is:  Always get a second medical opinion before you start to worry (no cancer) and if you have to kill something at my house, you’d better be prepared to eat it or get it stuffed!

Exactly how many animals do you have (living and stuffed)?

You’ll be happy to know that there are no dead animals in the cooking area, in the eating areas, in the terlet areas, or on the lawn.  Many cows have voluntarily given us their skulls and hides.  And deer have willingly and freely donated many, many horns to assorted projects and mirrors around the house.

We have two living dogs that are spoiled worse than any child.  In the dead and stuffed department we have a raccoon, a squirrel, the snake, a bobcat, and a deer butt.  We might have more, but those are the ones I can see from where I’m sitting.

Assuming you are not a swimsuit model (although I’m sure you could be), please explain why you wear a swimsuit to work.

I wear a swimsuit because the pools where I work do not permit nudity.  After I retired from Texas A&M, I took up water aerobics like a maniac.  I decided i might as well get paid to work out so I got certified and became an instructor at the gym near our house.  That led to working in a rehab pool with Parkinson patients, which led to more classes at rehab, a hydrotherapy class back at the gym, and a couple of hours a week life guarding.  Until I retired, I couldn’t swim a lick because I had feared water all my life.  Another bucket list thing!

If you could add any work to the dictionary, what would it be?

I love Urbandictionary.com!  Sure, some of it gross or sexual, but it provides definitions for words and phrases that real people use today.  I’m proud to say I submitted a phrase to it and a year later it was accepted.  The term is “poker folker.”  Look it up and give me a thumb’s up on it!

Please leave us with one brief thought.

That’s an oxymoron.  No writer has brief thoughts.  But if I must…laughter is better than tears.  Love is better than hate.

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Visit the Texas Woman HERE for daily adventure and laughter.

Read Shuffle HERE.

Thank you Texas Woman!!!

I don’t know about you, but I think I need to make a bucket list.

At some point on Saturday, I’ll be posting a review of a book geared towards parents who want to foster a love for reading in their children.  The publisher sent me a copy to give away, so I’ll also be picking a lucky winner.

Entries will be open until midnight Sunday.  Please pass the word along and encourage people to enter.

Enjoy your weekend!