There's No Place Like Oz...click, click, click

Okay, close your eyes, imagine Little House on the Prairie theme. Caroline putting the fresh peach pie on the window sill to cool. Laura and Mary feeding the chickens in their little floral smocks and smiles. Charles coming in from the fields after plowing his 40-acres of wheat. Ahhhh...yes, the quintessential homesteaders.

Now open your eyes. The peach pie has made a bubbly mess in the oven, flour and peach juice coat the counters and table. A rogue fly is trying to land on the pie. I finally get the kids to feed and water the chickens and now they come in with chicken poo shoes on and track it as far they can before I start yelling at them. The husband comes in after working, yes, but then throws his sweat-soaked shirt anywhere after trying to give me a hug. Ewww on both accounts. So, we are not there yet, are we?

Today was one of the days I could have flipped the switch and fed my "city-slicker" ways. A nice mani-pedi, sipping a verde White Chocolate Mocha while facebooking at Barnes & Noble. Nope, didn't work out that way. Instead, let's start the day feeding the chickens and stepping in a pile of fireants. There is three months of scratching my itchy left big toe. Around midday going to check the chickens again, didn't remember if I turned the light off, and they are all huddled in the corner. Why? Couldn't be that 5 foot chicken snake that already ate one for a midmorning snack, could it? I am ready to find the axe, but mom comes in and catches him and lets him go. "He won't be hungry for another month or two and he keeps away the other snakes like water moccasins and copperheads." And, of course, if you have to handle a chicken snake, they leave a wonderful essence on your hands to enjoy-base of burnt rubber with an overtone of skunk. At dusk, Bruce and Sarah were out frog fishing (that is another story) and heard bees in a tree. Mom and I went out to see if we had a hive swarm. That would not be a good end to the day. Nope, it wasn't our bees. It was HORNETS! Not a nest of hornets, just a mass of hornets flying around an old oak tree. I went out to see if it was light enough to get a picture, which it was not, and there was not a buzz to be heard? So on the way back up to the house, a HUGE beetle, like something out of "Land of the Lost" fell out of the tree or off the roof of the tool shed, wallowing around right next to me.

I think God was just showing me a glimpse of what to expect, not enough to scare me into metoprololis, but enough to make me realize that Little House on the Prairie is just a well-directed, tear-jerker television show that gives you a fuzzy feeling--much how it feels when a tick crawls on your scalp and you lose it, thinking 'never mind, I will get it when it itches.'

Nonetheless, I will take homesteading, the good, the bad, the ugly...