T100

I wrote this story for a High School report and it just made me smile:)

We’ve had the Toyota for years now and it’s been mine since I started to drive. My Dad had to get it because his old Chevy actually blew up, yeah not good, anyway back to the Toy as we call it. It’s not a big pickup, yet it’s not as small as my sisters Ranger (which I can never help but let her forget.) It’s really the perfect size because it’s small enough to be easy to park and maneuver but big enough that you feel safe in it. It’s got a long bed but has a standard size cab. It’s kind of a sandy brown sparkly color with the paint peeling off of the cab showing primer grey. One of the biggest things about it is that it’s a five speed stick shift, making it really entertaining to learn to drive when you are a kid.
This thing has so many stories it could tell. I think that the first incident to happen had to do with my Grandpa. He was driving my pickup as a pilot car for my Dad, who was moving a dirt mover/scraper /very BIG tractor, down Vineyard Drive. Well these particular tractors don’t have any brakes and Grandpa decided to stop right in front of my Dad. It didn’t cause too much damage, just creasing in the back bumper and breaking out one of the taillights so it did survive.
For my poor little pickup’s sake I wish that was it but it just keeps going, sigh. My family was on vacation and my Grandpa (yup the same one) borrowed the Toy to get some cows in. It’s a 4x4 and can get you anywhere in any weather, yeah it’s a good little pickup. Him, being my Grandpa that he is, got a little impatient with one of our cows and tried to "hurry it along" by pushing it. He didn’t hurt the cow but now there is a rather nice dent right in the middle of my hood.
The next thing was when my dad put a thirteen foot long, 1,300 pound, Cat D9 ripper shank in the bed. I think that it was a little too heavy because it bowed the bed in so much that the tailgate won’t stay on any more. So now I’m using a couple of two by sixes screwed together as a temporary fix.
Luckily I’ve only added one "flaw" to it. Once when I was really little and I couldn’t see where I was going all to well I scraped the right side of it on a green a gate. If you would have been there you could’ve seen why I did it: Short kid + long pickup x sharp corner > pretty gate = Trouble. So now there is a rather nice shade of green making a beautiful stripe along one side of my pickup. I’m glad that I like green.
This thing should be terrified of tractors by now because it’s worst injury came from my Dad’s Excavator. He was moving his excavator over a hill to another work site and had an extra bucket to take along. He couldn’t safely carry it with him so he thought that he would just gently set it in the back of the Toy and be off, wrong. While he was trying to put it in one side slipped out and it fell into the bed, bouncing off both sides of the bed railing as it went down. It ended up bending the sides in even more than the ripper shank had and left a few rather large holes in the wheel wells.
I think the most recent ordeal included a can of undercoating. For those of you who don’t know what that is, picture spray on tar, it’s NASTY stuff, anyway… Dad jumped into the Toy and slid the seat back really quick. (I always had to have the seat slid all the way forward when I was younger so that I could reach the pedals, remember short kid here.) Well there just happened to be one of these awful cans of undercoating behind the seat. When the seat slid back it smashed the can and made it explode, no joke. It made a Huge mess and totally killed the drivers’ side seatbelt clip. We were finally able to track down a replacement although it’s grey not brown , it is nice to have a seatbelt that works again though.
As for the inside it’s seen some hard times too. The horn only works when it wants too. You can’t read what the radio station is. The speaker covers have popped off and the speakers themselves are starting to fall out of the doors. The windshield has little metal B B’s imbedded in it from someone welding to close to it. And the seat hasn’t had a much better life. Most of the foam from the drivers side of the seat has been torn out from people getting in and out in a hurry. Having a pair of pliers or some other tool in your back pocket while you are doing it probably hasn’t done it any good either. Now people say that it is an "anatomically correct seat" you come to your own conclusion on that one.
Other than the cosmetic body damage though it’s actually in pretty good shape. It only has about 65,000 miles on it and for a ninety four that’s not to bad. Those were some pretty hard miles tough. I feel bad for my pickup because everybody is always making fun of it. Especially because of that pink and purple curly ribbon still on the antenna from last September, oh well. This pickup has been good to me and I’m thank full for it. One of these days it would maybe be nice to replace the bed with a wooden flat bed though.
Who wants to take bets on how long it would take for someone to catch it on fire?

Smile

I just found this. I wrote it down like about a year ago and it just reminded me about all of my blessings. These aren't necessarily things that I have done, some are, but more so some things that I would dream of doing. . .
Here ya go. . . .


Lay outside and watch the stars. Run through the sprinklers. Go on a walk to old buildings and find old stuff like antique bottles. Get flowers, Gerber Daisies, from a boy, wrapped in newspaper, like they do at farmers market. Watch the sunset from the top of a huge hill. Decorate gingerbread houses. Sleep out in the middle of no where under the stars. Go to small town random pet stores and play with the puppies. Make a scavenger hunt and take pictures with everything on the list. Go to a park. Cartwheel across a room. Send a message in a bottle. Make a fort in the living room. Go thrift store shopping. Go to garage sales. Roast marshmallows. Go hot tubbing. Spend a day with a dolphin and it’s trainer and be able to play with it all day. Walk on train tracks. Lay on the grass and find shapes and animals in the sky. Take a plane. Take a helicopter. Build a sand castle. Try to surf. Listen to music. Make obstacle courses through my yard. Get really cuddly in a blanket with food and watch a movie. Be spontaneous. Go out to breakfast and eat French toast covered with powdered sugar. Get dressed up and go out for a date-dinner and movie. Get my cartilage pierced. Buy a pizza for the first homeless person I see. Drive in a Mustang with the top down laughing and listening to music. Go snorkeling in tropical water. Ride a dirt bike up a steep hill and make it. Catch a thirty-two inch bass. Target practice with .22’s. Get all dressed up and go out dancing all night long. Hike up a local mountain. Learn to ride horses. Read a really sappy book. Watch funny movies. Have a surprise Birthday party. Take beanie babies to the ICU and pass them out. Make mud pies. Light candles in my room. Take a missions trip to Mexico. Go bowling and wear silly shoes. Decorate and shop for Christmas. Go caroling to my neighbors houses. Try on every pair of sunglasses in a store. Play in the snow. Get my pickup stuck. Coffee, nuf’ said. Climb a tree. Dance in the rain. Talk to a stranger. Love. Help a little old lady cross the street. Walk barefoot. Laugh until I cry. Learn to dive off of a diving board. Eat an entire container of ice-cream all by myself. Visit the rose parade. Volunteer in a kids Sunday school class. Go on a road trip to who knows where. Go to a NASCAR race. Add a little sparkle to someone’s life. Carve a humongous pumpkin. People watch. Grow a sunflower forest. Play baseball with black walnuts and sticks. Catch fireflies in a jar.