Farmhouse Ramblings by Charlene Watson

Farmhouse Ramblings

By Charlene Watson

Have you ever noticed that sometimes when things start going wrong they cascade into a landslide of ongoing unfortunate happenings that upset your whole equilibrium and send you into a state of major upset and irrational responses? Well, I am here to tell you that yesterday turned into that kind of day for me. Everything I tried to do ended in disaster.

I think my first mistake was getting out of bed. This progressed into the oatmeal boiling over on the stove while I was putting in the toast. From there I upset the Christmas tree while trying to move it to its place of honor by the dining room window. Next, I dropped a Christmas ornament and broke it while trying to put it on the tree after I set it up and put it back together. No, much to my embarrassment we now use an artificial tree. Something I swore I would never do. Moving on to the closet I tipped a box of ornaments upside down because I didn’t want to take time to go get the step stool. I am always in too much of a hurry to get things done.

I would like to blame it on “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” or say my friend Murphy was back again to upset my life but in all truthfulness, it was just my stupidity that caused all the trouble.

Then, I decided to wash some of my husband’s jeans and shirts. Big mistake! I remembered to check the jeans pockets and zip up the zippers and I even removed his pen from his shirt pocket. What I evidently did not do was check the pocket close enough to find his pocket diary for this year even though I would have sworn I did.

This little book has all of his addresses, phone numbers, when he did what, what he plans to do, cattle data, plus rainfall amounts and when they occurred listed in it for the whole year. My husband has every pocket diary from every year dating back to sometime in the 1980’s and probably before that if I looked hard enough.

Folks! I have to confess to you now that I committed one of the most unforgivable sins a farm wife can perpetrate against her farmer husband. I WASHED HIS SACRED POCKET DIARY. There was nothing left but the water soaked cover and even the year was soaked off.

To make it worse, he was sitting at the computer in the same room with me when I opened the washing machine and let out a shrieking “OH, NO!” loud enough to wake the dead. He jumped up and said with concern for my safety in his voice, “What Happened?” as I slammed the lid and put my hands over my head on the washer lid too upset to speak. I couldn't believe this had happened!

Then came the moment of truth when I had to confess my flagrant sin. This is something I have dreaded would happen all the years since I did it once after we were first married. All those years of abstinence and now I had once again committed this terrible sin. I couldn’t believe it.

All the pages were soaked into little chunks of white dotting the entire surface of everything in the washer. Nothing was left to salvage, not even an address or phone number. In short, there was not a single note or date left in one piece. NADAH! NIL! NOTHING! ZILCH!

I took a deep breath and said a short prayer before I raised my head to face the music. By then hubby had guessed what had happened and I saw my him sitting at the desk with his head in his hands trying to deal with my latest screw up. I put my arms around him and asked for forgiveness while I stood there feeling lower than the low woman on a totem pole (if there is such a thing)

While I know he would have liked to throttle me, he just shook his head and said, “It’s O.K.” Even though I knew it wasn’t O.K. I was glad to know I wasn’t going to have to sleep in the garage with the dog and cat that night.

As the days go by I will learn to live with this and I guess he will too. There will just always be a missing year in his drawer full of pocket diaries to remind me of this fateful day. In my self-defense, this is only twice in over 50 years I have done this.

I guess being able to forgive each other -- even when it hurts -- is one of the things that have kept us together all these years.

So ladies, take my advice and remember to check all the pockets of before you wash your husband’s clothes. Put this on your list and check it twice because it might just save a life and it may just be your own. -- Charlene. (Charlene’s Freelance Publications, Barnard, Ks.)