When you are a ranch woman or woman living at a ranch…

or a female who loves her serene country lifestyle even if it exists at least 30 to 70 miles away from the nearest shopping mall/friendly neighborhood coffee joint/specialty pub/bowling alley/mexican restaurant…

or a lady who happens to have an extensive fancy shoe collection hiding out under her bed but mostly just plops around in muck boots whenever she pulls her hair up to leave the house…

or just a plain old country girl surrounded by dogs and dirt and sky, there are certain and particular instances where you may have to leave the cats and the cowboy hat clad hubby in the dust, pluck your eyebrows, apply heat to your hair, dig out those shoes and head toward civilization to get some things done.

Yes, even though it takes a certain amount of coaxing for some, it is necessary, can and should be done for the sanity and femininity of our species.

That being said, besides the sudden realization that it may be necessary to pay attention to her outer appearance, there are a list of activities that increase a country girl’s odds of painting her toenails and taking the long highway to the big city.

One of the items on this particular list has to do with work, of course.  Occasionally a ranch woman treks to the big city in order to network with other country girls, to learn about her profession and to talk it out the way women do so well.  But rural girls are resourceful and if they are going to go all that way for the sake of professional development there is no way she is going to pass on the opportunity to enjoy the other items on the aforementioned list:

Shopping

Eating

Dancing

And all of the above are done with a passion that only a remote country girl can possess for the activities that city girls, surrounded by such luxuries,  have come to take advantage of.

Luxuries like the easy access to pizza prepared in someone else’s oven, seventeen-thousand coffee choices, buffalo wings, specialty margaritas and brand new jeans of every shape, size and color waiting for you around every corner.

It should go without saying that in these situations country ladies waste no time and take no prisoners. And while we are waking up early to drive to the coffee-shop to get started on that list of specialty brews to help propel us through Hobby Lobby and Bed Bath and Beyond and Home Depot and all the quaint downtown gift shops before lunch at our favorite restaurant where we order a fancy cocktail, an appetizer, soup, salad, entree and dessert then take a deep breath of preparation to tackle the next phase of taking on the town and every store at the mall, we are busy making plans for the dancing.

Cue photo montage of a few country girls in action so you can catch the vibe I’m throwing…

Ok moving right along…

So while country girls immerse themselves in life between stoplights and restaurants and pavement, back at the ranch the snow carries on with the melting, the grass with the growing, the clouds with the rolling, the husband with the working, the horses with the grazing. We call home in the morning and get the report and most of the time it’s “Oh, nothing new, just working….the weather’s been shitty, the dogs ran away…nothing new at all.”

But sometimes a country girl, a ranch woman donning the appropriate footwear choses to hit the big town for a week and accidentally misses a milestone, some activity, a transaction, a big exciting, adorable event and nothing she can purchase or drink or stroll around in the big town could compare to being on the road on her way back home…

to find this walking out into the barnyard…

to tend to the newest additions to the Veeder Ranch….

Sigh…

This country girl’s not going anywhere for a while…

And while I love my fancy shoes and seventeen thousand unattainable flavors of coffee and music ringing in the streets from open bar doors, it is and always will be…

so sweet to be home.