See how happy Retired Mountain Lady and I are?
It’s because we’re not cooking dinner.
We are at a former restaurant where an old friend is cooking steaks for lots of other old friends and we get to watch.
And drink a little wine. While sitting down.

I met Retired Mountain Lady in 1975. Now today we might look like pleasant, unassuming grandmothers (which we are, of course) but…we once butchered a deer on RML’s kitchen table. We had no idea what we were doing, but we had the knives and a lot of newpaper so we did our best.

It’s one of my all time favorite stories. I shared it at a writers’ conference cocktail party once and the Hollywood-type in the group spit out his martini.

We went to a cattle auction one time, when our husbands were into raising beef. I remember having to pull the car over to the side of the road and threaten my fighting boys with a spanking.

(Yes, we even spanked (swats on the butt to get their attention) our kids. And they turned out to be fine upstanding young men with no discernible facial tics.  They had happy childhoods and still love their mothers, so I figure discipliine works.  But that’s just me.)

RML’S younger son hated wearing his snowsuit.  He’d scream all the way home from town and we’d roll down the windows and finally laugh at the craziness of it.  I don’t know why I still think that’s funny.  He’s all grown up now and lives in Montana, and I wonder if he ever zips up his down jackets.  And if he makes his son wear snowsuits.

One time RML and I actually tended bar at Murphy’s so old Frank Murphy could go to the boxing matches in town with our husbands.  The regular patrons were not thrilled with us.  Not one bit.  We were in our twenties and not as experienced with alcohol as we are now.

(note to self:  post the peach margarita recipe)

Here’s Retired Mountain Lady rockin’ her grandson at the keyboard.

And here’s Retired Mountain Lady rockin’ a Willie Nelson song with the Chick Band.

Check out her blog (scroll up to the link in the sidebar under “blog roll”).  If you’re especially into flowers and wine-making and mountains, you’ll swoon.