I swear there are things that happen out here on the ranch that don’t happen to normal women or men who are married to dentists or chiropractors and living in perfectly lit houses alongside a groomed sidewalk, clean cars parked on garage floors spick-and-span enough that I wouldn’t hesitate finishing the cupcake I dropped, five second rule or not.

Those people? Their garages are nice enough to have parties in. My people? Well, give me five days and a pressure washer and I’ll do the job good enough to invite you over to help work cattle. By the time you’re done, you’ll be so worn out, dirty and hungry that my garage full of scrap wood shoved in the corner with the tools, barn cats and miscellaneous broken machinery parts is pretty dang nice, you know, compared to how you smell.

That’s our tactic anyway. That and make sure we have plenty of food to distract you. And beer.

These days, as true rural North Dakotans do, I’m using that garage and my back deck as extra cooling space for the piles of holiday goodies that don’t fit with the boxed wine in the fridge or full beef and two deer worth of venison in the deep freeze. It’s a perk to have the great outdoors serve as your personal, endless walk-in freezer — that is until a raccoon gets away with a bag of your homemade fudge, ribbon and all. True story.

And I bet my chiropractor doesn’t have one epic tale that involves his wife letting a wounded chickadee into their house to have to call him for backup to help get the fully recovered (and quick) little thing out of her Christmas tree… and then off of the curtain rod… and then out of the Christmas tree again, and so on and so forth until her husband finally finds his fishing net, thick gloves and motorcycle helmet.

Me and my people? Well, you could replace the chickadee with a bat, a chipmunk, a mouse, a barn swallow and another couple stray birds and you would have about the same story across the board, at least a few times a year.

Yes, the day to day looks a little different out here in the wild, but it doesn’t stop us from trying our hardest to keep as civilized as possible, even if that looks like mowing over cow pies, making the robin’s nest in the front dormer part of the decor and kicking the deer carcass the dogs drug home off the driveway on our way to help our holiday guests with the pies.

The fact that we have more mud than concrete and that the UPS man has been stuck in our yard multiple times this year is overshadowed by the whole beautiful wide-open spaces thing. And the fact that we have plenty of it to keep all our ponies.

And this time of year, if we get a fresh dusting of snow, it does make the holidays seem romantic. Couple that with the fact that we hoofed it across the winter prairie to cut our own cedar Christmas tree to stand tall and sparkly in the corner of our ranch house and, well, we might have a chance at making that chiropractor/dentist jealous.

At least that’s what I was thinking last week while dressing my young daughters up in their holiday best. The floor was swept, the garland was hung, the elf was on a shelf somewhere and I was feeling like I was in a freakin’ Hallmark movie.

Fully prepared to find myself under some magical mistletoe somewhere, overwhelmed by the sweet voices of my daughters singing “O Christmas Tree,” we all stopped in our Christmas socks when we heard a giant crash.

Glass shattering. Whoosh. Smash.

And timber. Down it went.

“Oh Christmas $*#^.”

Our Christmas spirit was too much for the tree. Again.

“Shoulda tied it to the wall!” I called out to my husband from upstairs, fully aware that phrase has likely never been uttered by the dentist’s wife.

And neither has “The raccoon got my fudge.”

Or, “There’s a chipmunk on the curtain rod!”

Merry Christmas. I hope you got some nice things, because we sure can’t have them around here.