A Great Big Thanks to everyone who visited me yesterday for my big SITS Day in the sun!

I am overwhelmed that my little blog received over 1,600 hits yesterday and hundred of comments.  I’m working on sending everyone a proper thank you for your visit.  I so appreciate it!

The May edition of our small town newspaper came out today.  And nope, it’s still not online.  And because I want a copy of my monthly articles, I am sticking them on this here blog.

This month’s article is custom written for the good folks who live in our little town.  But if you happen to be from a small farming community,  you’re sure to appreciate the humor.   For security purposes, I’ve changed the name of our town and some of the points of interest.  But if you’re from here, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

Enjoy!

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I must apologize.  I missed the deadline to submit my April article.  I don’t usually miss that type of thing.  All right,  I do sometimes.  But I had a really good excuse.  I upgraded my cell phone and signed up for unlimited texting!

As usual, I’m a little behind on this cell phone stuff.  My old phone was consistently on the verge of battery death, stuffed somewhere in the bowels of my purse.  On the rare occasion that it did get charged, I had a chorus line of messages from telemarketers waiting to be “deleted“, “saved in the archives” or “replayed“.  My friends knew better than to leave a message on my cell phone and definitely knew there was no chance that I was familiar with texting.  I was a virtual cellular technology dinosaur.

But as my circle of friends has grown here in Cowpoke, I’m finding that more and more of them are “Texters”.  So when my husband suggested that maybe I’d like to get a phone I could text with, I caved.

I spent the last couple of weeks engaged in Texting Proficiency 101.  I figured out how to space between words, capitalize letters, and backspace.  But I found that it takes up so much time writing out all my sentences with correct spelling,  proper grammar and punctuation.  My daughter would watch me fumbling around on my miniature keyboard with distain in her eyes.

“Geez, Mom.  Why don’t you use abbreviations?  It’s so much faster!”

My knowledge of abbreviations was limited to the universal LOL (Laughing Out Loud) and ROFL(Rolling On Floor Laughing).  So, as I do with all things unfamiliar, I Googled “texting abbreviations”.  A whole new world opened up to me!    I made myself a little cheat sheet on a sticky note and stuck it on the back of my phone.  I can’t say that it’s any faster for me to un-stick the paper, look up the abbreviation and type it out than it is for me to write out the entire word, but it’s pretty fun.

Included in my list are these fine and useful abbreviations:

G2G          Got to Go
JK          Just Kidding
MTFBWY      May the Force Be With You (trust me, in a house full of Star Wars             fans, it comes in handy)
PLZ          Please
L8R         Later
SRY         Sorry
THNX      Thanks
PUKS         Pick Up Kids
KROS      Kid Reading over Shoulder
IBL          I’ll Be Late
ADL          Article Deadline Looming (Just a little reminder to myself)

As I was thinking about the efficiency of texting abbreviations, I had a thought.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a universal list of abbreviations specifically for our community here in Cowpoke?  I present  you with my list of Cowpoke Texting Abbreviations:

GV!              Go Vikes!
CTSBST          Can’t Text Stuck Behind Slow Tractor (Please never text while driving. Have your teenage passenger do it for you)
CLSAR         Case Lot Sale at Ridley’s
ABBDTFFBS      At Burger Boy Drive Thru For Fresh Banana Shake
LLIBY          Livestock Loose in Back Yard
CUAHSC          See You at Hunter Safety Class
MBBDCSPFD      Must Be Burn Day Can’t See Past Front Door
4HMAS          4-H Meeting After School
WBHISSB          Wind Blowing Hard I Smell Sugar Beets
JBHCFN          Just Bought Half a Cow From Neighbor

Feel free to write them down on your own sticky note and share them with your  “Texting” friends here in town.  And if you come  up with some of your own, email them to me  and I’ll share them in next month’s article.  And PLZ keep them clean, because I may have KROS.  L8R!

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Happy Thursday!