Cowgirl Kelly
There isn’t much my sister-in-law Kelly can’t do, and even less that she’s afraid to try. When her oldest son Thomas wanted a dirt bike, she bought one too. On sunny days, she and our twins and Thomas ride together. The twins think Aunt Kelly is super cool, and Thomas, well, he’s accustomed to his mother being right in the thick of things.
Last week when I called her cell phone it sounded like a cow answered. I never heard so much mooing in my life.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Working cattle,” she replied nonchalantly.
And that’s just what she does on weekends. During the week she’s an elementary school principal. To get her students excited about testing she held a pep rally, put on her leather jacket and pants, climbed on her dirt bike, and led a parade around the playground. That year their CATS scores jumped 19 points; this year they went up 10 more.
When I saw her this Sunday at church, her hands were covered with Band-Aids.
“What happened?” I asked.
“While working the cows I accidentally vaccinated myself. The good news is I don’t have to worry about getting black leg,” she said with a laugh.
She’s great with big animals but smaller ones have been known to give her problems. Three years ago, she and my brother decided to build a house, and while it was being built they lived in a very old, beat-up mobile home. One night while Robert and the boys were watching television, Kelly tore out of the bathroom doing 90 miles an hour and screaming at the top of her lungs.
“There’s a rat in there the size of a small dog!”
Upon further investigation, the rat turned out to be a possum that had crawled under the trailer and squeezed through a hole between the bathtub and the floor.
Since there is no official holiday to honor siblings or sisters-in-law, I’m going to designate March as the month to do so. Grab your brother or sister and give them a big old hug. Tell them how much they mean to you.
I’m going to do it myself…just as soon as I can catch up with my brother and his cowgirl Kelly.
