Do You Have a Pioneer Spirit?

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I didn’t write a blog post last week. It was a bad week. The lawnmower broke, the clothes dryer broke, and I worked extra shifts driving bus.

While driving the bus, I overheard a conversation between a driver and the head mechanic. The driver called the garage and said, “Hey, I am driving this spare bus and I think a horse drawn carriage would drive better than this bus. Will my regular bus be ready soon?”

The garage mechanic replied that the regular bus would be done and if it was not done, he would make sure to “upgrade the spare bus to a horse drawn carriage”.

This gave me hope. After all, our ancestors survived when things were much tougher. There were no buses, no lawnmowers, and clothes only dried if you hung them on a line and let them air dry.

But if they didn’t have lawnmowers, how did they keep their yards from turning into hayfields? I believe I have the answer and decided to propose it to my wife.

Over evening coffee, Beloved was trying to plan out the next week’s meals, along with scheduling trips to take our dirty clothes to her parents to wash and dry. By the way, my in-laws are awesomesauce, and I am not just saying that because I have clean clothes. I am saying that because they are.

Waiting for just the right moment, which was when my wife took a breath, I sprung my idea on her. “What if we didn’t replace the lawnmower and simply bought sheep instead. They would keep the grass down.”

She replied, “The town won’t let us have sheep and our neighbors probably wouldn’t like the noise and the smell.”

“We could shear the sheep and you could knit fine wool hats that we could give to our neighbors. Then they would be happy and have warm ears.”

“I don’t know how to knit hats. We are not getting sheep. Now let me figure out dinner for next week.”

She diligently worked out a fine menu for the next week’s meals. Until I interrupted again. “What about goats?”“

“Goats? Seriously?”

“Yes goats. We could make cheese from the milk and that would help with dinner. You do know how to milk a goat, right?”

“No, I do not know how to milk a goat. We are not getting goats. The town won’t let us have them anyway.”

The flame of the pioneer spirit that once burned bright and hot within my soul was quickly being snuffed out and had been reduced to a smoldering ember. Undeterred, I gave it one last try and suggested, “Why don’t we just dry our clothes outside on the clothes line?”

Beloved shot me a look. You know that look. The look I wrote about a couple weeks ago. She very firmly responded, “Absolutely not.”

“But why?” I asked.

“Stop being silly. It is obvious that if we hung the clothes outside, the goats would pull them all off the line and eat them.”

Needless to say, we bought a new lawnmower and have scheduled a repairman to look at the dryer. Even if I think it is a baad idea.