Home sweet home

First I want to thank all of you who have let me know that my “comments” section is not working. I have found the problem, it is in the blog template and I am working to add the correct HTML code to rectify the situation. In the meantime while I work with this issue there may be times the blog goes back to the original boring background I started with so I appreciate your patience while I try to fix this.

It is kind of an old cliché but the saying “home sweet home” really rings true for me. I really do love to travel and meet people from different areas but when the time comes to head home I am rarely disappointed. Heading home from the cattlemen’s tour yesterday was no different. This made me think about why it is that getting home is something I really look forward to.

I guess the first thing that comes to mind is the comfort of being someplace where you do not have to be worried about being around people or situations that you potentially don’t like. In other words you are in a place where the terrain is familiar. I really like people for the most part but sometimes in an urban setting like a crowded restaurant or an airport I can find plenty of folks that make me glad I spend more time around plants and animals than time around people. Maybe just being around living creatures that are not ignorant, rude, and have the good sense to move out of the way in an aisle at Wal-Mart is more comfortable than being around many humans.

Another reason I look forward to coming home is when you are in my line of work things change daily. I cannot imagine looking forward to coming home to an office like setting of work. The same walls, the same desk, the same pain in the ass coworkers makes me shudder to even think about. When I return home something is always different on the ranch. For example I was away from 5 am Friday morning until 6 pm on Saturday and my workspace had changed quite a bit. 3 new calves had been born, the triticale had grown just a bit and thanks to my brother-in-law I had more hay in the hayshed than when I had left. Those were all great things to come home to. My one coworker Festus was still somewhat of a pain in the ass but I did not have to sit in a cubicle and listen to him complain that his wife had acted like a bitch all weekend. Which brings up the question, if male dogs did have wives wouldn’t they all be “bitches” all the time? Just sayin.

Getting home to see the family is another reason to look forward to if I have been away without them. I really can’t believe how much I miss them after being away for even a short time. I would say that’s because I love them so much and life just is not complete without them around. They would claim that I just missed teasing them about something or I missed having a captive audience who feels they should humor me a bit by listening to my stories. Having the hottie wife I do adds a whole new meaning to being excited about getting home to my own bed. rawr

All those are certainly considerations but for me it is just the fact I am really “home” now when I return to the ranch and the house I now live in. I now return to the same house with the plumbing and electrical issues and the massive 1400 square feet space. Despite its sprawling size the house has brought our family closer together than ever before. The same house that as a child I made sugar cookies in and as an adult shared a beer with my paternal grandmother. The same house that my grandfather built with his own hands, the same house I helped him put a new roof on in 1973. The same house both grandparents expected their visiting grandkids to be noisy in except for an hour each Saturday night when Lawrence Welk was on TV when complete silence was the rule. Back to the same dirt that I played in, worked in and that directly provided for my needs for the first 18 years of my life and now provides for my family once again. Everyday I walk the same ground my grandparents homesteaded and broke out of the desert. I get to work around cattle, some of which are direct descendants of the original cows my father started our cow calf operation in the early 1960’s. I am less than a mile from the house where I returned to after my birth and where my mother still usually has some fresh baked treat on the counter almost daily. Yep it really is fun to get away sometimes, but there is nothing better than returning home, home sweet home.

Today’s real environmentalist species found on the ranch is the Rockchuck, proper name yellow bellied marmot aka Marmota flaviventris.

Today’s picture is of cow number 5502w and her new calf born while I was away from home.