"Texas Crude"

  I was on a mission today. There is a small room in my garage that kind of turned into a "let's dump everything here room". My Christmas totes were still in there, and a bunch of other stuff as well. I wanted to clean it up so I could get my new treadmill out of the box, and clean off the bowflex! When my son Bryce was small he had a whole collection of Tonka trucks. I saved them after he outgrew them, and I haven't been able to find them for years. I was sure Mr. Wonderful (my ex-husband) had lost them along the way somewhere, somehow! I've bitched and moaned about Mr. Wonderful losing that box of Tonka trucks for years. Well, a couple of months ago Bryce was cleaning out the loft area in the garage we use for storage. And guess what he found? Yep, the whole box of the trucks I had saved. I still blame Mr.Wondeful though because never cared about saving stuff like this and the box did have "pillows" written on the outside of the box! While cleaning up the room in the garage, I unpacked all of Bryce's old Tonka trucks. I had planned to take them out front to hose them off and get them all clean for Riley to play with. As I unpacked the boxes, I found the toy truck that was an oil truck that said, "Texas Crude". I remember my mom, who was born and raised in Temple, Texas, had bought Bryce this truck when he was a little boy, along with a pair of cowboy boots! You see, my mom's dad had been employed as truck driver for an oil company somewhere in Texas. I quickly forgot about still being pissed off at Mr. Wonderful, and thought back to how proud my mom was of her home state of Texas. She died four days after Riley was born, but I know that "she knows" that Riley is now playing with the "Texas Crude" toy truck and is happy Riley will know, from my stories, how proud my mom was of her dad and to be a "Texan"!!