Dear Reader,
I am here to make your day or week better. Maybe not really make things better, but at least make you feel like you aren’t the only one that feels like their week or day was just kinda frumpy. You know, those days when you are just surviving and nothing is going horribly wrong, but nothing is going terribly right either. And you know your hair looks ok, but you don’t feel like you look your best, and you can’t concentrate on anything because your socks have been feeling funny all day. Then you try to figure out why you are in a grumpy mood while everyone else seems to be having a wonderful day, and then you get stressed out because you feel like you wasted time being stressed out and irritable over nothing?
Because I totally have those days.
Curated feeds on social media only increase these feelings.
When you escape in your mind, do you dream about this idyllic life in the countryside where everything is ok, and you can escape from the grind and melancholy mundaneness of city life? Where the children frolic barefoot in the pastures with their pets, and everyone sits down to a thanksgiving dinner cooked from scratch. I’m sure you know deep in the logical side of your brain that that isn’t always true. In fact, that is probably an ideal day for a ranching family too. On social media, some ranchers have shown the harshness of ranching life. The cold days and sick animals, back ache and heart ache. But then they always say it’s all worth it for those glorious sunsets and starlit nights away from the light pollution of town.
But there is an in-between in ranching of raw survival and glorious sunsets.
Ranchers have frumpy days too.
What does a frumpy day look like for a rancher, or at least the rancher’s daughter?
It means feeding in your pajamas and jacket because you didn’t feel like getting dressed up in your cowboy hat and wild rag. Or maybe it’s so cold that you do use your wild rag, but you just tie it over the baseball cap that you shoved your hair under and now you look like a Russian peasant. After feeding and some judgmental looks from the mare, you come in to make some coffee and realize that you are out of creamer. You briefly think of trying to milk the cow in the lot that lost her calf, but mastitis flavored creamer doesn’t sound great. So, you just settle for black coffee while you stare at your ranch house kitchen and wonder what is next on the list. (For an accurate description of ranch house aesthetic, you can read a previous blog here)
Frumpy days also mean those days where you are just doing survival work on the ranch. Cleaning stalls, fixing fence, fixing the a/c, or fixing truck. Everything else just gets a lick and a promise and while you are trudging from one project to another sweaty, possibly in muddy boots, while it’s raining, and hoping no one comes up the driveway because you are still in your pajamas. It you wonder when you will actually have time to do real ranch stuff like work cows or ride colts. But instead, you trudge on through the mud. It’s just one of those days where nothing feels completed, but you get enough done that nothing should fall apart through the night. (You say an extra prayer though when you go to bed and try not to look out the window on your way to the bathroom at 3:00 AM.)
If you have an off ranch job like I do, you will have those days where you wake up, go to work, maybe run some errands after work, come home and feed your horse and some other random chores and then contemplate your life choices while you watch your horse eat. But there isn’t much time for contemplation because you have too many things to do. Sometimes you wonder if you are a fraud because you are so busy doing other things that you don’t feel like you are actually a rancher, you just live here and help on the weekends or pick up parts from town on your commute home.
A few weeks ago, I had somewhat of a frumpy week. I started a new job that had more hours than my last job on the same week as the county fair, in what also happens to be my sister’s senior year of high school. So, it was a full week of learning a new job, trying to make it to milestone events, and feeding in the dark because everyone got home late. It was a great week, with lots of stories and smiles, but it was also a week of staying awake by sheer willpower and coffee. I think it was the following Sunday that I actually took the time to look up at the clouds and the sun while I was feeding. That is a great stress reliver, to look up at something beautiful and bigger than yourself, I don’t know what it does, but it just puts your feelings in perspective.
So, when you are having a frumpy day, don’t forget to look up.
Sincerely,
The Rancher’s Daughter
