Once upon a time, my husband, Electric Horseman, took a job in a foreign country, France.

Electric Horseman

We left my then septuagenarian mother, Butterfly, here to take care of our mini-ranch.

Butterfly

Our daughter, Fifinella, was not too far away, in college and on-call to render aid as needed (tending lame horses, rattlesnake-bitten dogs, fox-tailed cats, ailing Grandma, etc.).

Fifinella

This is me, blog call sign Tammy, and one of my favorite French dogs, Barney (Butterfly in back).

Tammy & Barney

I could see that communication was going to be a huge problem, since Butterfly was not computer savvy and I knew she was going to be peppering me with questions daily.  I set her up with a device called a Mailstation™, which allowed her to send and receive emails without bothering to think.  It was the perfect solution, if you didn’t mind that it could not access the internet, nor could it receive attachments and photos.

I’ve been a closet writer my entire life.  Moving to a country where I didn’t speak the language and had no ability to ever speak the language (despite 6 months of private lessons and almost 3 years of living there) provided me with unending fodder for stories.

I started writing and emailing my daily adventures to Butterfly, who started sharing them with friends and relatives, who started sharing them with their friends and relatives, until pretty soon I developed a regular following for my stories. 

I wasn’t in France long before I started illustrating my stories with photos from a newly acquired digital camera (Butterfly, of course, got versions sans photos – see, I did learn some  French!).  I was in heaven, since I had also long been a closet photographer, although I remain to this day very much an amateur.  In the old days, I went the 35mm SLR route.  Now that I am old (ok, ok, middle-aged, heading toward older), I have one requirement for my camera: it must fit in my pocket.  I am always doing one of two things when I take a picture – hiking or laughing hysterically.  Neither lends itself to fancy camera equipment.    

The most common theme in replies to my stories is, “Write a book!”  You know what?  Not gonna happen.  I have the attention span of a gnat.  I write when the mood strikes, when it grabs me and slams me down in front of the computer and not until then.  And I write only about the incredibly silly, crazy, unbelievable things that happen to me.  As I’m often known to say, as my life is unfolding, “I feel an email coming on,” meaning the story is starting to percolate in my brain and my fingers, looking for a keyboard, are starting to twitch.

You’d think I make this stuff up, but I truly don’t.  Take, for instance, Butterfly, my now octogenarian mother - what a constant source of entertainment!  Here is a woman who started downhill skiing at age 65, who takes piano lessons from a 95-year-old blind lady living in a nursing home, who can out-hike people half her age (she completed the Susan G. Komen 60-mile 3-day breast cancer walk last year without even getting a blister!), and who, just for fun, started taking pastel painting lessons last year.  She also gardens from sunup ‘til sundown, is an avid reader, tackles the ever-present jigsaw puzzle in my home, and has recently become a pretty accomplished computer user!

Which leads me to this website.  It solves a whole bunch of problems.  Since I can’t seem to concentrate long enough to put anything together in book form, and since people actually seem to want to buy some of Butterfly’s artwork, I decided that a website would provide the solution.  I can post my ramblings and Butterfly can paint to her heart’s content.

I don’t promise to have a daily posting.  Sometimes I’m off rescuing animals, or people, or just dealing with life – and no doubt you’ll hear about it eventually.  You can sign up to get an alert when I do have a new posting below and on my Ramblings page!

Thanks for checking in!  I’m looking forward to your reactions (as long as they’re not “You should write a book”).