I’m No Pioneer Woman

I’m No Pioneer Woman

Let’s face it, I’ve been living in the sticks for a little over a week and already I’ve let Caroline Ingalls down.

When a large brown van came barreling up the lane in a cloud of dust the first day by my lonesome, I realized how truly vulnerable I was. Going over to an unpacked box near the coffee table, I extracted my husband’s hunting knife, tucked it behind the couch cushions, and stepped out on the porch. I watched through narrowed eyes as the vehicle parked behind mine and a tall man dressed in a brown shirt and matching shorts stepped down out of it. “Are you expecting a package from UPS?” he asked.

I really should start wearing my glasses.

Then you’ve got the care of the livestock on our forty acre farm, which consists of a small stray dog and her five four-week-old pups. I went out to tend them soon after I woke up and only counted four puppies. The fifth was wedged somewhere beneath the boards and leftover piping stowed under the carport. Its pitiful whimpers filled my ears, and I got down on my hands and knees (in my pajamas, mind you) and tried to lift the boards off of it. As my heart started thumping, I recalled all those stories of hundred pound mothers who lift a two ton car off their child by sheer adrenaline and will power alone. I gritted my teeth and heaved the boards until my arms shook. The boards went nowhere. Carefully lowering the boards back down, I leapt to my feet and ran inside the house.

“Honey!” I called. “A puppy’s stuck!”

My mountain man, more attached to the pups than he lets on, hurried outside and together we found the panting fluff ball flattened between a board and a piece of tin. The only way it was still breathing was because the position of its fat stomach over the indention in the metal.

But protecting our “livestock” is not the only pioneer duty I have failed. I’m also not too great at keeping the home fires burning . . . or at putting them out. The second afternoon I was alone on our property, I was writing outside when I was hit with a pregnancy craving for goldfish crackers. As soon as I opened the French doors and stepped into the living room, my nose was pricked with the acrid smell of something burning. When you have spent the past four days unpacking boxes in your brand new house, that is the worst scent in the world. I ran to the laundry room and sniffed at the washer and dryer. I ran down to the basement to see if the water heater had exploded. Only when the burning smell continued and I could not locate the source did I call my husband who told me to flip the switch on the breaker box.

“It–it won’t flip!” I cried, frantically jerking on the lever. Finally, once my shoulder was about wrenched from its socket, the stinking breaker flipped into the off position. Randy then did some quick research online and told me that our fridge, which we had purchased a week before and already had to have one part replaced, was probably burning up.

“Burning up?!” I cried. “Is it going to burn down the house?”

Randy reassured me that it was not going to do any such thing and that it was safe to flip the breaker back on.

“Safe nothing!” I thought but did as he’d suggested because I didn’t want to lose the pickles and ice-cream.

Over the next three days, when our new HE washer started into the spin cycle and a part began rattling inside of it, when I noticed a strange rotten-egg smell wafting up from the bathroom drains, when I almost toppled out of the upstairs window while trying to wash the “easy to clean” windows, I understood that though I hadn’t had to fight off any paint-streaked Indians or sweep the dirt floor of my soddy house with a grass broom like Caroline Ingalls in Little House, dealing with a slew of brand new modern conveniences sure brought with it its own kinda problems.

Pioneer woman or not.