@submissivelittlewoman @MrsRachelEvans My Da ran a cattle ranch and we worked hard from sun up until sun down. I put up fence post, worked the cattle, chipped the ice from the horse’s water trough at 4am in the morning. One of the few pleasures we had was a long hot shower or hot bathe to soak. I think I would have just sat there and cried. That’s just horrible.
@Pinkstarburst I still would have cried. I worked harder than anybody in my high school class, even the boys. That was a small pleasure I needed. Plus at 16, I had started modeling… so I had beauty regimen to keep my skin looking good. It was really important. I’d have totally cried. I don’t think they would have pushed me there. I was a pretty good girl and I never really caused any trouble. I didn’t ask for very much.
@Pinkstarburst I don’t even get my modeling money. It all went into an account for college. I got some money from working on the ranch for gas and clothes but we didn’t get much of a free ride of anything with my parents. Everybody worked and worked hard.
@Pinkstarburst That’s not enough time to get really clean. What would your father have said if everybody had come around him smelling rank because they couldn’t get clean ?
@bijouxbroussard I would be scratching and shit. We have ragweed where I live. It’d be crawling out of my own skin. I don’t even care about the smell at that point.
@bijouxbroussard Maybe. I had such few creature comforts (my Da had all of us kids work really hard, everyday,) I’d have lost my mind… I think. I just can’t even imagine that rule.
@bijouxbroussard @littlepuppywantanewlife It’s doable actually. There’s just no relaxing aspect to it. You got in and you got done. When I moved into my own place, the first call I made was to my dad to tell him I took a shower and used all the hot water. 😁 We both had a good laugh over it…as I got older he had loosened up in the rule a bit.
To this day, I can knock out a shower (the works) in about five minutes 😁
@Pinkstarburst My muscles were often bunched up from working the ranch. That’s the thing, I needed to be able to relax, so I could sleep and be ready to chip ice off the horses’ water trough at 4am sharp. Da didn’t like you being late. 4:01 was late. lol
@Pinkstarburst My Dad is a very hard man. He was born and spent his whole childhood in Iceland. He came to the US as a teenager with my grandparents and worked his ass off to become a cattle rancher. He is without a doubt the toughest and hardest man that I’ve ever known my entire life. He is also kind and compassionate but he is never weak and suffers no fools. I’ve always been his princess but princesses have to be smart and tough as nails as well in his book. Probably the only reason I survived my own hell is based on what he taught. Don’t remember the exact details but one summer when I was an arrogant teenager, I was helping my dad and he noticed a break in our fence. Somebody on the dirt road must have clipped it with their car. We hadn’t had any cattle wander out but it needed a temporary fix to keep them in until we could fully repair the fence. I told my dad I’d fix it with some bailing wire and he asked if I needed help and I said no because I wanted to prove to him that I can do anything my brothers can. It had been hard to see from the road but when I walked over the break was worse than I had thought. The section of fence that was still up was really bad and the whole section too long for any bailing wire to really work at all. I tried to bail it up the best I could but I knew it wouldn’t hold them in if they pushed up against it but I was way too embarrassed to tell him that it was a bigger job than I could handle. My Dad thought he had at least a few hours to fix it. About an hour later we had about a dozen head break through my shit job. After we got the cattle back he went over and saw that I had to have known that many of the posts were pulled up and I’d have to be a dumbass to think it would have held. He wanted me to apologize for not asking for help when I knew better. My stubborn pride felt that would be weak. He said any child of his too stupid or too arrogant to apologize when they are wrong and know it, could walk the fuck back to the house. It was a very long walk and getting to evening by the time I got home (our ranch is just over 400 acres total,) but I learned a whole lot during my long walk that evening.
1.) I learned my Dad don’t fuck around. 2.) That I’m strong enough to hold to my convictions even when I’m dead wrong. 3.) I learned my Dad won’t expect me to apologize unless I’m actually wrong because he wouldn’t. 4.) Most importantly that arrogance is not strength, even it feels like it, it’s stupidity & weakness of mind.
I’ve watched my Dad apologize since. Not very often because he’s rarely wrong but all the more moving when he does because it’s very fucking real.
@DarkHeaven Thank you for this. Now I see where you get your strength and grit. He’s sounds like a great man. My dad was a true hard ass when I was growing up. We struggled in many ways; but he taught me so much and I’m strong now because of him.
Dads are pretty wonderful…even the ones who are pretty rough around the edges. 🤗
@Pinkstarburst Definitely. Have a wonderful day, my beautiful friend.
🎶 “He never went nowhere without a rod-n-reel” 🎶
“I saw him strum this thing every chance he could And he left it to me like he said he would And if you ask me why it sounds so good It's cause I'm holding more than strings and wood I'm holding more than strings and wood...”
