Nature or Choice?

The cowboy has asked the Bag Lady many times, “How can you be so f***ing cheerful in the morning?”

This makes the Bag Lady wonder how someone can NOT be cheerful in the morning. She is cheerful most of the time. Perhaps she is too dumb to know that she shouldn’t be cheerful. In fact, her mother was fond of telling people that when the Bag Lady was a baby (of course, she wasn’t called the Bag Lady then – she knows you’ll be shocked to discover she has a different name!) when she was a baby, her mother never knew when she was awake because she never cried. Hmm, perhaps there IS something wrong with her! Actually, she made up for that in her angst-filled teen years, according to her brother. HE accused her of being hyper-sensitive, which upset her all the more until she figured out what that big word meant.

The Bag Lady has quite a happy nature, but she also made a conscious choice years ago to strive to be easy to get along with, to have a positive outlook and, for the most part, to ignore the negative. She does not always achieve this, mind you; she’s cheerful, not a total idiot! She has a dark side to her nature, too, but she chooses to keep it to herself most of the time.

Now, she wonders how her blogging relatives will respond to this post. Do they see her as cheerful? Hmmm.

The Bag Lady must have an open, honest countenance, though. She is the lady in the supermarket that strangers talk to. Almost everyone smiles at her (perhaps she’s funnier-looking than she realizes), and she is always surprised when total strangers speak to her. Case in point: she was in the baking goods aisle one day when a young, 20-something woman walked up to her and asked her if she had a recipe for fruit dip. Now, as it happens, the Bag Lady does have an absolutely fabulous, simple recipe for fruit dip, but what she doesn’t understand is how this young girl knew that the Bag Lady would! Does the Bag Lady look like she throws fabulous parties? Or does she just look like she must have a lot of recipes for really Good Things (Martha, eat your heart out…)

But I digress.
What the Bag Lady wants to know is this: how much of being cheerful is nature, and how much is choice? Are you cheerful most of the time? Or do you make an effort to appear to be cheerful? Or do you go around, bitchin’ and moanin’ about your plight, growling at anyone in the vicinity, making everyone else’s life miserable? And if you do this, does it make you happy?
Just wondering.

Guessing Game

Okay, most of you have by now figured out that the Bag Lady has a couple of relatives who are also blogging - her cousin, Leah, has a blog named The Goat's Lunch Pail, and her sister, Reb, has a blog called SibuPegasusPower. (Unfortunately, the Bag Lady still can't figure out how to link to those blogs...one day, perhaps.)

So here's a little game for you.

Can you figure out from this picture who is who?

Sorry it isn't the best photo of the girl on the back of the pony...

Post your guesses in the comment section.

Ranching, Again

The Bag Lady hasn’t always been a rancher. (I know, I know, it’s a shock, but get back on your chair, you can’t read your screen from the floor!)
Once upon a time, the bag lady wasn’t even a bag lady (but that is another story for another day)! She was just your average, everyday city girl who worked in an office, lived in a city (a small city, but nevertheless; there was pavement and all the trappings of civilization), ate in restaurants, ran to the corner store if she needed a loaf of bread or a jug of milk – in other words, she led a normal city life. Oh, sure, she went camping occasionally, and had lots of relatives with farms, so she wasn’t totally unacquainted with country life, but she was pretty much citified. She even wore dresses and high heels and jewelry occasionally.
Then she met her cowboy and her life changed. Oh, not all at once. It was gradual, and actually quite painless, for the most part. First to go were the dresses and high heels. Jeans and sneakers were more practical – it’s next to impossible to chase a cow through the bush in a dress and heels! Then she had to learn how to fix a barbed wire fence. Barbed wire fences have to be tight because cows have a sixth sense about these things. If there’s one single small inch of a weak spot in a 10-mile long fence, they’ll find it, and the next thing you know, the neighbour is calling ‘cause he’s suddenly got a lot of live lawn ornaments dropping fertilizer everywhere!
One of the proudest days of her life was when her father-in-law was astonished that she knew how to tighten a barbed wire fence with a claw-hammer! He didn’t think a city girl would have a clue about that. And she hadn’t until a few days prior, when her cowboy “learned her how”.
She has learned to recognize when a cow is getting close to calving, how to tell if a granary full of oats is heating, how to drive a tractor and a wheel-loader, and how to open a wire gate. She has chased cows in all kinds of weather, has strung barbed wire for miles of fence, and driven a tractor pulling a haybine to cut hay. She has shoveled shit, carried pails full of water or oats, and doctored sick calves.
She has also learned what is important in life. Having the latest technological gadget or the newest style of running shoes is not even on the page. Without farmers to provide the rest of the world with food, having the latest Ipod won’t mean a thing. Your Ipod won’t feed you or keep you alive. It may help some people keep their sanity, but without the lowly farmer, the world will starve.
The Bag Lady suspects there are children in the big cities who think their food is produced in the grocery stores. In fact, the Bag Lady suspects there are some adults in some of the large cities who think that, too! In a way, she feels sorry for the city folk who never get a chance to experience the joy of watching a calf take his first wobbly steps, or watching the sunrise when you are totally alone except, of course, for the birds and wildlife.
Ranching is hard work, but it is fulfilling. We will never be rich – in fact, most farmers and ranchers have to work off the farm to make ends meet. But we will keep at it because we love it, and somebody has to do it.
So the next time you venture outside the city and see some poor hayseed driving his rusty old pick-up truck, give him a nod or a wave to show your appreciation for playing his part in feeding this nation!

Time, Well, Wasted

Agent Double or Nuthin' should have turned down this particular assignment. She did not sell many bags (but her salsa and pizza sauce went like gang-busters, thank the powers-that-be!) She will chalk it up to a learning experience.

She did sell enough bags to cover the cost of her table, as well as put a little in her pocket, but the crowd was not buying. A lot of the vendors went home with almost as much as they took, so at least the Bag Lady wasn't alone.
The best thing was that some of the other vendors turned out to be people the Bag Lady knew years ago, so she got caught up on their lives. And even got a hug from one lady she hadn't seen for many years! And met a few other really nice people. And wishes many blessings on the nice lady who bought a bag, then came back half an hour later and bought another one!

Today is the first day of her two-day fast, and she is becoming light-headed and cranky, already!! She wishes the medical community could come up with a different diagnostic method, but doesn't want to risk having a cancer go undiagnosed, so she will put up and shut up. Sigh. She reminds herself that she may actually lose a pound, and this can only be a good thing. Of course, as soon as she wakes up after the Procedure, she will eat an enormous amount of food and gain back the 12 ounces she is going to lose...

Okay, she won't bore you any longer with her random babbling. Go out and enjoy the rest of the weekend, and have a nice, thick, juicy, medium rare steak for the Bag Lady! (with a big salad, yum!) And maybe some cheesecake...

The Big Day

Well, it’s Friday and agent Double or Nothing is off on assignment (thanks Dawn!). Her assignment (if she chooses to accept it) is to spend two days at a Craft Sale, disguised as a meek Bag Lady (thanks Leah!) watching for the mysterious stranger who may be smuggling diamonds out of Canada’s wilderness.

(For any of you who think the Bag Ladys' velcro isn't closing tight, check out yesterday's post, including the comments section!)

Thanks to everyone who posted a comment yesterday – the Bag Lady really appreciates your support. She’ll let you know how everything turns out – especially if she apprehends the mysterious stranger smuggling diamonds!

Stress - Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

Okay, the Bag Lady is starting to get a little stressed. She has rented a table at her first big craft sale since designing these CartSmart Bags, and she is getting panicky. The Bag Lady is, in Real Life, quite shy, and not a very good salesperson.
That said, she has sold almost 50 of her bags just by word-of-mouth in the 6 months since she came up with them, so she can force herself to do it. She has suffered from “stage-fright” all her life – from exam-anxiety in school, to the terror of performing on-stage; which she has done quite a lot of, but somehow, once the house-lights go down and the spots come on, and the audience is a blur, AND she is in character, she doesn’t have nearly as much trouble as she does when she actually has to Be Herself. Even going for job-interviews causes her great distress. The Bag Lady is a bundle of nerves right now, and has been fluttering around the house, CLEANING, which she hates passionately, all to avoid actually sitting down and sewing a bunch of bags!! And the sale starts tomorrow!! She won’t have enough bags, and she will disgrace herself, and why, oh why did she decide to do this?
On top of the mental distress, the Bag Lady’s body will start to betray her. She gets all weak and trembly, and needs to go to pee Every Ten Minutes!! All she wants to do is take to her bed (oh, she longs for the Victorian Era at times like this – nothing like a good case of the vapours to hide behind), as if this wasn’t enough, the second day of the sale she won’t be able to eat anything because she is having a Procedure done on Monday for which she needs to be completely and totally empty. (But she isn’t stressing about the Procedure, yet…there’s only so much she can stress about at one time!)
So the Bag Lady may not be able to post anything for a few days. She’ll probably be too busy. Sewing, or cleaning in order to avoid sewing, or throwing up, or hiding in the bathroom… On second thought, blogging is also a good avoidance tool, so she may be showing up everywhere!
Why, oh why... Maybe she can hire some good-looking, skinny, vivacious little chick to be her salesperson… Any volunteers?



Does this happen to anyone else? Am I the only one who procrastinates until the last minute, then mentally berates herself for being so lazy?

Happy Hallowe'en

Living in the country, at the end of a dead-end road, the Bag Lady doesn't get many trick-or-treaters. (She does, however, get the occasional trick-or-beer-er)

One year, the cowboy's cousin brought his 4 year old daughter. We thought it would be funny to try to scare her, so the cowboy put on a mask and cape and snuck out the back door, ran around to the front and came up behind the little girl. The obligatory scream and jump and we all laughed (the little girl included) until she lost her balance and fell against the door, banging her nose and making it bleed a little. The cowboy felt terrible for having caused this, but the little girl was fine.

In the years since, the first words out of her mouth on Hallowe'en have not been "trick or treat?" but "where's Uncle?"

Happy Hallowe'en, everyone.