Thursday Thirteen: Edition "F"

1. Fire: only idiots start a grass fire deliberately on the windiest, driest day of the year. You'd just have to be here to know what I'm talking about.

2. Fifties: I believe the fifties were the best years in which to grow up. I entered them a five-year-old and left them as a sixteen-year-old.

3. Farm: We've never had a real one, but we've had the best of both worlds here. We don't have to depend on the vagaries of weather, politics, and other things that make farming as a livelihood such a risky business, but we've been able to enjoy any of the animals and crops that we find entertaining.

4. friends: I'm not a person who has a lot of close friends; when people get too close, I tend to push them back. It's my loss, I know, but it's just the way I'm made.

5. failure: We all fear it, but let's face it: everybody's a failure at something or other. The good news is that failure isn't final.

6. fat: I've gained some this winter.

7. fig newtons: One of my favorite cookies as a child. In fact, I wish I had some right now. I wonder why I never buy them? Excuse me while I add that item to my grocery list.

8. fried: I love all things fried. Taters, liver, catfish, okra. Kentucky Fried Chicken. However, we limit frying around here.

9. fish: I could never keep them alive as pets and I don't have much luck catching them at the lake for eating. But I sure do like to eat the catfish our neighbor gives us.

10. Forgiveness: It's hard to give, and sometimes even hard to accept.

11. fleeting: Life, indeed, is fleeting.
1 Chronicles 29:15 "For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding."
James 4:14 "Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

12. formaldehyde: I remember its smell from ninth-grade biology when we dissected frogs, fish, earthworms and oysters.

13, Foxtrotter: My horse, Boogie Midnight Rhythm Blues, is a registered Missouri Foxtrotter.

I really am having fun doing this with Izzy 'N Emmy. I keep a sheet of paper on my desk here, number 1 through 13, and every time I think of a good word to use on the next weeks letter I jot it down. I don't worry about what I'll say about the word until the evening before the next Thursday Thirteen.