Top Five Ways to know you Live Alone on a Farm

Top 5

The Second Installment of Monday Night at the Farm brings you

The Top Five ways to know that you live alone on a farm

5 You find yourself trying to decide if it is actually cold enough to turn on the heat, and if it is, whether it is more or less efficient to turn the heat on only to warm the house until it is bearable again and then to shut it back off until you can no longer feel your toes, or just to leave it on. 

(Incidentally I decide that it’s only forty, and hell I’d camped in colder, and so I put on my fleece wrapped myself into my huge green comforter and made a hearty bowl of condensed chicken noodle soup.  Ahh, nothing wrong with that)

4 You overhear intellectual conversations at the local lumberyard.

Clerk: That’s what I say.

Farmer: Yep.

Clerk:  Exactly, so what can I do you for?

Farmer:  Welp, I’ve got a bit of a gofer problem out in the back forty and my son, lazy little guy can’t seem to get him with my shotgun, I was wondering if you’d got any traps in here.

Clerk:  Welp, (this isn’t a word is it, because I find myself saying it and I’m pretty sure it’s not a word, right?) We’s all outta gofering traps, but I tell you a little trick.  You get yourself some juicy fruit from Jim Skeleton out there at the 76 station there and ball it up and put it in their runs you see, theys got the wrong kind of digestive system there or sometin and theys’ll die if they eats it.

Farmer:  Hah, you sound like my eight-year-old son, always looking for some hokey trick or something, ‘dad the gun hurts my shoulder when I shoot it, can’t we just smoke em out.’  That stuff never works I tell you.  But thanks anyway.

Clerk:  It works I tell you, go talk to Skeleton, he’ll tell you too, he will.

Farmer:  Yeah, welp thanks.

(I of course began to think of Caddy Shack at the mere mention of gophers and when he mentioned that his son was only eight and already toting around his dad’s shotgun I thought, welp, he might never be all that bright, but the kid can shoot, so he’s got that going for him.)

3 Your parents, while visiting for the weekend, realize suddenly that it is a farm and there really isn’t anything to do, so they insist on rearranging the furniture in the house and then I’m dumb enough to let them take the dog when they leave.

When my parents show up they do all sorts of things to my way of life, nagging me, making me do silly things like eat off of plates, use silverware, do the laundry, wash myself, you know.  But to move all of the stuff in the house . . . I spent the better part of Monday evening just looking for things . . . like the couch.

2 When the only thing on television is boring you find yourself playing games like count the holes in the ceiling, and make new holes in the ceiling to count.

The game, which was a blow out, is hardly worth mentioning, that is except for a few key moments.

Favorite football moment #2

The failed end around.  A trick play that if it is sniffed out early enough sends an entire defensive unit rushing into the backfield to take out a tall but certainly not stable receiver.  He jukes left to find a two hundred fifty pound linebacker with $$$’s in his eyes knowing a tackle for a loss gives him an extra forty million per year, jukes right to see his tight end get run over by a three hundred pound defensive lineman that will do anything to get his name mentioned on Monday night Football and he does the worst possible thing, turns backwards looking for more room, meanwhile the quarterback who tried to block a defensive back is on the ground with a groin pull and the Linebacker and defensive lineman converge and smother the poor receiver for a ten yard loss, knocking them out of field goal range.  The receiver doesn’t get up the quarterback doesn’t get up, the only one who is happy about the play on the offensive side of the ball is the running back who didn’t have to get creamed on this one play.  Ahh football.

Best commercial.

I wanted this to be one of the very touching patriotic commercials that have been floating around on the air, but it has to go to this really freaky singing belly button commercial, if you haven’t seen it, the word is yeesh, with a little shiver.  Downright weird, I love it.

1 You accidentally run into a piece of furniture that wasn’t there the day before and out loud apologize to it.  Then and still out loud you ask yourself if you just vocally apologized to a piece of furniture while alone in a house.  Then, still out loud, you ask yourself if you’re now talking to yourself. 

If my dog had been there at least I could have talked to her, I mean that’s bad enough, but the furniture?

Monday Night at the Farm

MONDAY NIGHT AT THE FARM

Obviously I have been reading too much of Bill Simmons on ESPN page two, but as I get a little goofy here, too goofy to try to sleep, hopped up on Sunkist orange and Diablo XXX salsa, which has less punch then a twelve year old girl with cirrhosis of the liver, I have decided to write MONDAY NIGHT AT THE FARM,  Right so without further ado, (Blaring Country Music)

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FARMING?

6:30 p.m. Indiana (This would be 7:30 eastern because the entire state of Indiana is either too ignorant or too lazy to change their clocks like the rest of the freaking country.  Why is it that rednecks always got to be different?)

            A bit of college nostalgia leads me to start peeling potatoes and cooking sausage, and despite the fact that I now have a dishwasher and trust the fact that my plates are clean I mix my mashed potatoes and sausage and frozen corn all into one pot and eat out of it ala college keg table Simpson/Friendsathons.

7:00 p.m.  Dinner finally ready I sit down to watch television.

Unfortunately it was ruined because, since the only channel I get on the TV is ABC, I was forced to watch Who Wants to be a Millionaire, this time the absurdity of the questions reached a new low as they brought in sports stars like Carl Lewis and Steve Young.  After eating I go outside with Kelly, my dog of course, to pee, well for her to pee, I can do that inside; well she could do that inside . . . never mind.

8:00 p.m. It’s the start of Monday Night Football and my Favorite Al Michaels moment.

He looks at Dennis Miller after his monologue of outrageous metaphors and tells him he always seems a mile high.  Dennis Miller on camera at the moment first starts to laugh, and then realizes that he is so whacked out on cocaine or vodka or Zoloft that it is actually true so he makes a look as if to concede the point.

9:00ish p.m.

While the game was fascinating I was distracted early in the second quarter as a moth violently attacked my copper lamp, nearly knocking itself unconscious and then going back for more.  It continued to hurl itself at the light bulb bounce off and smack into the lampshade, I haven’t seen such blind persistence since I was last at the bar and needed a beer.  So here’s to Brutal Moth dude, a fighter even when the odds are against him, someone who knows what he wants and goes to get it no matter what the consequences

9:25 p.m.

After smelling something burning, and looking around for a while I was dismayed to find that brutal moth fried to a lovely golden brown in my halogen lamp.  The funeral is cut short when he falls out of my hand onto the floor and Kelly eats him.

Shortly later:

One of my favorite sports sites, a Quarterback stumbling off the field grass sticking out from all over his helmet, his shoulder pad sticking out from under his jersey.   Yet another reason turf should be banned.

One Second Left in the Half:

Dragged out as usual, but this time in unusual style.

Something you don’t see everyday one team attempting a field goal and then on the next play the other team attempting the field goal, something about that thin air at Mile High Stadium, either it’s easier to kick, or it kills so many brain cells it makes you call crazy plays.

Best Monday Night Football Commercial: Southwest airlines IT MUST BE FOOTBALL SEASON campaign is back, this time a young check out worker at a supermarket walks up to a lane turns on the light and says “I’m open over here.”  Meanwhile, football fan shopper hears this and grabs a pineapple, (The perfect fruit for the occasion,) and guns it into the unsuspecting boys chest and face.  Two notes, one it was the perfect throw, right on the numbers, and two, either this kid is going to be an academy award actor, has absolutely no reflexes or was actually taken by surprise, because no one can have anything thrown at them like that and not even flinch, I mean give this kid a golden globe, that astronaut statue with the popcorn, an old Grammy, something.  Damn that boy is good.

Third Quarter:

Third down-and-one, tie game, and I make the mistake of looking at my dog, fishing under the daybed.  She comes out with an ancient Koosh Ball and starts shaking it like it was a rabid Squirrel coming after her family, then she promptly falls on her side rolls over, Koosh hanging from her mouth and starts sneezing.  Seriously, if you aren’t laughing you haven’t quite pictured this correctly, big dog lying on her back legs out in all four directions blue and yellow Koosh hanging down sneezing violently over and over, her face twitching with every blow.  Either that is high comedy or I am beginning to be starved for a viable release for my under used sense of humor, I think maybe it’s both. Somehow the Broncos score.

Minutes Later:

Koosh now found I set up a little football of my own, sending Kelly deep she instead runs a curl route while jumping and barking, under pressure I am flushed from the pocket, (aka I start running around in my pajama bottoms pretending I am eluding would be sackers) I throw deep to the end zone, and it is intercepted by the TV antenna and Monday Night Football disappears into a ball of snow.  Winded I have to sit down for about ten minutes, I only get up to pop about four IB2s, my old knee injury kicking in, okay, okay, my old sit on the couch, watch football, drink beer, go to the bar, jump on a trampoline and fall off, laziness, stupidity, injury kicking in.

Still Third Quarter:

Antenna still broken Charlie, (alias Richard Dean Anderson) finds an old Exact-O knife three pieces of duct tape and some aluminum foil and Monday Night Football is back on the air, I also now get PBS and what appears to be scrambled porn.

Get the game back in time to see a vicious hit and Ed Mcaffery go down.  He doesn’t get up.  Announcing from the booth sounded something like this.

Al: . . . and Mcaffery shaken up on the play, still down.

Dan: Yeah this is a violent, violent game and you hate to see this, but anytime that you throw the ball down the field and a receiver catches that ball, and begins to run with it, and a guy from the opposing team tackles that guy and brutally snaps his leg in two places, you’re probably not going to see him play again tonight.

Dennis: Wow I could hear that from the booth, that hit had more decibels than a Greco Roman Wrestler’s fart in a tin shed after eating peanut butter, am I right?  I mean what are the odds of Eddie getting up after that, I mean, really, am I right?

Dan: What did he say?

Al: you hate to see this, a prominent player, a go to guy getting hurt . . .

Melissa Stark: That’s right Al, Ed Mcafferey has a fractured leg and is very hurt, I asked team doctors what they thought of the replacement officials Al, and I think Brian Griese is hot, back to you Al.

Al: Eric Dickerson, how are the running backs doing tonight.

ED: Well, Albie dey is dun fine oder here, bud now dat Eddie substanified dat leg breakage, dey really god to run.

Dan: What did he say?

Dennis: HBO rules!

Al: Somebody shoot me now.

Late in the Game Random Note:

Is it just me, or does mike Shanahan, the coach for the Denver Broncos have twitchy face?  It goes from a blank stare, to a grimace, to a smile, to a furrowed brow in cycles of about ten seconds.  What the hell is that? 

My “Only In Football” Moment

Ed Mcaffery breaks his leg and is carted off the field in a little golf cart.  The crowd tries to cheer him off the field, make him feel better about the situation.  What does he do?  He raises his hands in the air clasped together in an effort to pump up the crowd.  The crowd sees this and goes absolutely nuts screaming and stomping.  76,000 fans cheered that man off the field, what a fucking sport.  Oops sorry about the language.

End of Game

Lost for something to do, I write this instead of opting for sleep.  Yeah, good call.