Beauty and Recreation......farmer style

Sometimes a girl needs a little beauty in her life. Sometimes it's new shoes, new curtains........or hamburgers carefully shaped, staggered, and stacked with parchment papers in between. Just like a butcher shop or a gourmet whole foods. I think i need a life.

Farm life has a way of changing a person. Take, for example, a denim skirt that i had tucked away in our other house. I was going to throw it away cause i thought it looked tired and wore out. After all, my man was working with carefully dressed women every day and i didn't want him coming home to a hag. We moved and i found the skirt the other day. I held it up for inspection and much to my surprise, it looks almost new. Wow, how exciting, to be living in my very own thrift store. I also ironed Marlin's barn shirts before we moved. Now i only hit the biggest creases on his Sunday shirts and figure it'll be wrinkly before we get to church anyway. Let me tell you, the children get dirty like no other and their mama? Spotless, crisp and edges pressed razor sharp. O wait, that was Marlin's pants in another life. I feel clean as long as i don't stay sticking to the sink. It doesn't help that we now have open ditches coming right up to my back door. That's not a tan on Jacob, that's dirt! The ditches are for the new water lines for both us and my parents. Fortunately for the children, they also cracked the sewer line so there's a great cheer when someone heads for the bathroom. The front door flies open and there's a rush outside so they can watch the crack. Sure enough, it's like their very own "show and tell." O wow, check that out.........does this make us weird? Or, oh horrors, does that make us rednecks? According to our children we are. The boys informed Emily one day that we are rednecks and she most heatedly told them we are not. "Yup," says Zac, "we're farmers and that makes us rednecks." The same child also informed me yesterday that we no longer have to worry about being clean since we're now farmers. Son, does this house look like a barn? Do i look like a slop? Well, ok, please don't answer too honestly. Underneath the tomato stains, sweat rings and cow poop, i'm actually quite clean and dainty. And someday i might even act it. :)