“Is life so boring and uneventful out there in the country that all you can write about is your operations?” teased a farmer friend of mine recently during a pause in a basketball game we were both enjoying.

Of course, Chuck was teasing me – but the shock came because of the realization that he and others like him actually read the crazy things I tell about myself and my family.

So – what do we do out here in the country that’s different than in the city?

For one thing, I sweep up a bucket of mud from my kitchen and utility floor three times a day. The city of Payette has the big problem of ‘the hole’ in the middle of their town. If I had been doing my civic duty and hauling the dirt I sweet up each day over to Payette and sprinkling it in ‘the hole’, the problem would be no longer. But – I don’t know – it’s hard to say we’re wild and woolly country…the closest thing to wild we have out here is ‘Sunny’, the old Holstein cow…and when I try to ‘shoo’ her into the other pasture she turns, lowers her head, and knocks up against me trying to get me to scratch her neck. Actually, if I want to get her someplace special I have to get a handful of grain…and then run like crazy to wherever I want her to go.

Admittedly, things are pretty slow out here right now. On the morning after Christmas, the entire family was sitting lazily around the living room, yawning and half asleep. I had to laugh at the scene…we could actually have posed for the ‘Hee Haw’ show if the old hound dog had come in and plopped down in the middle of us.

My son is home for the holiday vacation after just completing his first college semester. Doing his usual bit of philosophizing, he remarked to me, “This family makes me disgusted. Everyone goes around complaining and looking mad when they’ve got so much to be thankful for…They ought to come up where I live for a while…Then they would appreciate this place.”

But, things are looking up, at least as far as I’m concerned. God did a beautiful whitewash job on our place on Christmas Eve Day. Gone is the ugly mud and scraggly weeds and bushes. In their place glows the sparkling, crystal-like snow as it covers everything it touches. Frost puts hands to the bushes creating a beauty no artist can create.

I love the snow, even though it always irritates my husband when I say that. Somehow, it’s the way the whole world slows down when the snow flies. We’re always wanting an excuse to escape from the ‘hurry-up’ phobia which poisons our lives, and a good snowfall seems to be the perfect antidote.

Well…it’s not always perfect. A couple years back we awoke one morning to an over-abundance of new snow. Knowing that, without a doubt, it would take us until noon to shovel our way to the highway, my husband called his employer and told him he was snowed in and would not be to work. There was a pause on the other end of the line, then a reserved “okay”.

It was not until the next morning that my husband realized why the hesitancy. They had only a skiff of snow there, and it was just 12 miles down the road from our home. It took a heap of talking and several news stories to convince his co-workers he was telling the truth.

We all like the snow – my husband says he doesn’t, but I know he does. He claims to have developed an aversion to that cold, wet, white stuff during the winters we spent in Sandpoint and Hope in northern Idaho.

Being one who enjoys the ‘creature comforts’, he could find no pleasure in laying on a ‘creeper’ underneath the vehicles he was repairing as they proceeded to thaw out and drop huge chunks of dirty, greasy, melting snow on his face. What a baby! You would think he could put up with that for eight hours a day, wouldn’t you?

Maybe it’s just a poor sense of humor – at any rate he denies any appreciation of God’s whitewashing process. Encouraging him to appreciate his blessings, we tell him, “Psyche yourself into it, Dad…just look, isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yeah,” he growls. “You can say that because you don’t have to go out in it.”

There’s one part of the snow that he doesn’t know about, though. He has never been a mother staying home with a bunch of little kids who want to go out and play in the snow. I’ll bet it takes two hours out of a mother’s morning just to get the children into their snow things, making sure they will stay warm. Finally, out the door they go. Mother thinks that finally she can get a chance at the breakfast dishes, but no such luck – here come the kids – they are wet, cold, hungry.

But being prepared is important. First off, when the snow does fly and the walk needs shovelled, you need to be able to find the snow shovel. If you get up in the morning to that first snow and you can’t find your mittens…you’re going to be in trouble. And if all of a sudden you remember throwing away your worn out snowboots last year, with plans to purchase some new ones – which you have not done…then you have real trouble.

It can go on and on and on. We need to be prepared. Chopping wood in the snow is not exactly fun, but it can be adventuresome. Dragging frozen hoses into the kitchen by the cookstove to thaw them out can definitely destroy the pleasure of winter. A tractor that won’t start can cause irritability, fatigue and even heart attacks brought on by overexertion in the cold.

Well, here we are…and here we go…so we better get ready! Preparation is the key, and we all know how far we can get without unlocking the door. The New Year begins and we must bring ourselves up out of the doldrums of life to continue on. So, first of all, let’s make plans. What you plan will be different from what I plan.

Somehow, it seems like the exciting things that happen in a person’s life are never planned. However, and especially for Chuck, I will not be planning any ‘operations’ this year!