2026 Jessie Gussman Print Calendar

Excerpt:

I've been wearing long, flowing skirts lately. I'm not sure why. I guess I never really did the princess thing when I was a kid. Although I did use a shirt my aunt made me as pretend hair for like three years. 

One day I went to my drawer to grab my “hair” out and it was gone. I asked my mom what happened to it, and she said, “Honey, I gave it away because, not only was it too small for you, but it was too small for your little sister, too.” 

I'm not sure if my mom truly didn't notice that I wore that shirt every day (on my head, not on my body) or if she DID notice and that's why she gave it away. That's probably not the first thing I'm gonna ask her when I get to Heaven, but it's on my list. 

Anyway, I was wearing one of my long, flowing skirts (and feeling very princess-like : ) last week when the girls asked me if I wanted to go check the cows with them.

I'm always down for checking the cows, especially now when we have so many new babies. They're adorable and I never get tired of watching them.

So, we all go out and we see that we have a new little guy that needs tagged. We had the tagger and the supplies in the four-wheeler, so we were able to fill out the tag, and we park a little ways away.

We're not expecting this mama to be super aggressive, so Julia is going to catch the calf, my middle daughter is going to tag it and DNA test it and Pie and I are gonna keep the mama away.

It starts out a little bad because Julia misses the calf (or maybe she finds it more challenging to make the calf run first so she has to chase it to catch it, I'm not sure. ; ) Anyway, the only thing she can grab is the tail.

That slows it down enough so that my middle daughter can put her arm around its neck. The calf isn't too happy about that, and the mom, who was kinda jogging along beside it, is unhappy as well. 

We have the calf stopped, and the girls start working on it, but the mama is upset and turns and puts her head down.

So, I don't know if you all have ever seen bull fighters where they wave the red flag in front of the bull and it charges it? It's always red, right?

I kinda thought cattle were color blind, but I guess I figured maybe they could see red or something.

I could be wrong, but I think it is actually the waving of the material that gets the bull's attention and makes it charge. I think that because when the girls grabbed the calf, it bawled and the mama cow turned. She saw me, in my long, flowing, blue skirt which was blowing in the wind, and totally lost interest in her calf. 

(And, let's be honest, princesses don't wear boots with their long, flowing skirts, so I was also wearing flip flops.)

So, she was still angry, and ready to defend her calf, but I guess she gave the girls who were actually working on her calf a pass, and figured I looked more dangerous because instead of going after them, like I was expecting, she charged me. 

Or she charged my skirt, to be completely accurate.

So, I was not expecting that, and I have to admit it was a little disconcerting. 

The thing about Pie is, while she's great with working with cattle, she has a tendency to laugh over things that aren't funny at the time. Like, when I was on fire. She couldn't blow me out because she was laughing too hard. And, like, when my skirt is acting like a beacon to a charging mama cow. She was only moving about a quarter as fast as she usually does because she was doubled over laughing. 

Good help is hard to find.

Anyway, I gathered my skirt up in one hand and hobbled away (flip-flops, remember?) as fast as I could toward the four-wheeler. I guess I thought I'd hide behind that, but I was also thinking about what the guys in TN had said about how they started using Gators to do their calves after the cows flipped the fourth four-wheeler over.

Anyway, I guess Pie decided she didn't want to be motherless, and she  got the attention of the cow off of me. By that time, the girls were done and away from the calf and for some reason both of them were laughing too. Maybe I should feed my kids more than once a week and they'll be more concerned about keeping me around?