9/26/2014 -- Day 44 --City Girl VS. Country Girl

If someone in high school would have told me I would live in a small town, own chickens, not only raise a garden, but freeze and can the harvest for the better part of 3 weeks, and live as a country girl I would have laughed and figured they had the wrong person.

I was all about the theater.  I kind of wanted to do sports, but that interfered with acting (plus I don't think I was good enough to actually make any team) and at my large school only the very best were able to do both.

I dreamed of the spotlight, New York, and took every acting and singing class I could.

I was so unaccustomed to 'country life' that I didn't know a single country song (maybe Friends in Low Places, but who doesn't know that song), and I had NO CLUE was 4H was.  I still am a little confused by it all.  When my hubby pulled up to his house on the 'farm' I was very confused--it didn't have the white picket fence, or the bard where the animals each had their own stalls.  I saw a horse, some cows, a couple geese, and a dog or two.

I think I even asked him "Where are all the animals?"  He was confused and I said "You know, like Charlotte's Web, the movie.  They live on a farm."  His family still laughs about it to this day.

But boy did I learn.

I live in a town where the mail man won't deliever mail to our house because we live to close to the post office.  My address is actually XXXX Main Street, Small Town, CO.  The mayor is also a mechanic, the UPS man is also the judge, the cop works part time, and I know almost all school board members by their first name.  It is a wonderful slice straight out of Mayberry.

I married that country boy.  He was the closest thing to a cowboy I had ever known.  We had 'cowboys' at my high school, but none of them actually owned horses, or cows, or rode horse, or even knew HOW to ride horses.  He kept telling me he wasn't a cowboy, but in his senior class picture he is wearing a cowboy hat--and he graduated with a TOTAL of 18 students.  TOTAL!  I had never heard of that before!

I learned quickly that redneck and white trash are very different.  I learned that not everyone is missing teeth, wears overalls, drinks beer, or lives in single wide trailers.  I also learned that people who DO live in trailers are normal people cause I was one of those people for about a year.

So fast forward some years forward--and I am as far from the spotlight as possible.  The only acting I have available to me is the Summer reading program and the VERY few times a year I get to face paint.

Would I trade my life? Nope.  But I have to say that I would like to see what my life would have been like if I had gone to that acting school in New York, or if I had pursued the theater more.  Like in the movie Sliding Doors.  While the movie was OK, the idea of seeing how different our life could be because of one simple choice is totally intriguing to me.

Anyway--back to being a country girl.  I guess I still have a lot to learn. I can never remember what all the different pieces of farm machinery do (they aren't all tractors--who knew?).  And I keep wondering when I will FEEL like a country girl.  Maybe if I learn to drive a tractor.  Maybe when we own a cow, a horse, and a pig.  Maybe when I can kill, or butcher, a dying chicken or rooster by myself.

Until then I am SO happy that I got to live both lives and wish everyone had that opportunity.