The Jane West Chronicles
Being an action figure and all, Jane decided to ride Thunderbolt bareback last Friday night, blatantly ignoring husband Johnny West's protests that the horse was way too frisky and full of himself in addition to his strongly worded suggestion that perhaps she should use a saddle, at least a bareback pad.
She especially appreciated his not-so-subtle reminder that she's not exactly twenty-something anymore.
Really—although Jane couldn't quite bring herself to say it—she just wanted to go for a little ride and be left alone for half an hour or so, thank you very much. It had been a long week with office travel to exotic (not) places, kids, house stuff, etc., and she was left with only one course of action.
As The Fully Moveable Cowgirl sat smugly astride the jigging black horse, who snorted and blew through his large nostrils before swinging into a trot, her (now in retrospect—questionably) faithful ranch dog
decided that Thunderbolt needed a good bite on the hocks.
Well, you can probably imagine what happened ...
As Jane hauled herself up off of the rock hard ground, Thunderbolt peered down at her somewhat sheepishly, his ears pricked forward as if to say Hey, cowgirl, those were just my little bitty baby bucks. (To the tune of over 1,300 pounds...)
Suddenly, her children were flocking around her, eyes big with worry. Rapidly deflating, she watched her husband heading down from the front porch of the ranch house like the United States Cavalry, waving his arms, shouting, "Are you ALL RIGHT?"
After brushing herself off, telling everyone, Yes, I'm fine. No, really. It's OK. I'm FINE., Jane gimped back up to the house where she sulked in a steaming hot bathtub for over an hour—interrupted every now and then by annoyingly well-meaning children and husband— mulling over the fact that she might need to rein down her occasional action figure braggadocio.
Sometimes the truth hurts. And she is still sore.
